A class struggle has been brewing in the co ops ever since the first year of North Country Co op, when the middle class leadership of the hippie movement won near total control. People with working class experience and others who were serious about desiring social change began to feel isolated from the masses --- and that their work was being exploited to perpetuate a set of bourgeois-escapist attitudes.

This struggle has been building up behind the scenes for the last two years. Now it has taken a qualitative leap and burst out into open confrontation.

The Beanery paper was only the first shot in this ideological struggle, and the Beanery paper only the first co op to go through a transformation. At a mass debate of the Beanery paper, desires for transformation in the coops that had been building up all over the system came out in the open for the first time - along with some of the opposition.

The Beanery is no longer the center of attention. The Beanery paper has served its purpose of putting the coop struggle in a class perspective. Now people are moving beyond that to deal with the other coops and the whole coop system.