http://www.grittv.org/ “On this special Mayday episode, we look at worker movements in places least covered by the corporate media, from Nairobi to a factory in Chicago, to the Vatican. Journalist Nathan Schneider was a part of Occupy Wall Street from the earliest planning stages. His journalism since has taken him from Nairobi to Spain to… Continue reading
Date archives "May 2015"
In from the cold…the growing case for a new money system
By Ed Mayo Iceland suffered first from the crash of financial markets and is perhaps first to champion the cause of a new financial system. A proposal commissioned by the Prime Minister of Iceland, authored by Frosti Sigurjonsson argues for a new system of money, created at source by the state rather than the banking… Continue reading
University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisation: University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Final extract from the article by Rebecca Ratcliffe at the Guardian looking at how students around the world are fighting back against the commercialisation of University education. University of Amsterdam, Netherlands What’s happening? Students are occupying Maagdenhuis, the university’s main administrative building, calling for a democrastisation of the institution. What prompted the protest? Protesters want to… Continue reading
May 19: franco-italian seminar on the legal status of the commons
Frederic Sultan informs us on “the Franco-Italian seminary program organized on Tuesday May 19 at the Maison des sciences de l’Homme in Paris. With as key theme: * Statut juridique pour les biens communs ? Réflexion à partir du rapport propriété, Etat, société civile The morning will be devoted to the presentation by Alberto Lucarelli… Continue reading
University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisation: York University, Canada
We continue with extracts from the article by Rebecca Ratcliffe at the Guardian looking at how students around the world are fighting back against the commercialisation of University education. York University, Canada What’s happening? Teaching assistants, graduate assistants and contract faculty at York University have been on strike since 3 March. What prompted the strike? Staff… Continue reading
Bernie Sanders on Co-ops
Good to see Bernie Sander focusing on worker-owned coops. I hope he’s in contact with Wolff, Alperovitz and other leading figures in the US-coop movement. Originally published in Alternet. After his presidential announcement this week, many wondered how Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would distinguish himself from the other candidates running in the Democratic primary. With… Continue reading
Network democracy for a better city: D-CENT Barcelona May 5th
Source – http://www.nesta.org.uk/event/network-democracy-better-city-d-cent-event “D-CENT is a Europe-wide project creating next generation democracy tools and applications that are decentralised, privacy-aware, and enhance citizens’ rights. D-CENT is trying to change the decision-making processes and makes it easier for citizens and social movements to participate in the political process and change things. On 5 May we will host the… Continue reading
Since 2008, the workers’ cooperative movement has been strongly revived
From a good overview article in the Guardian. The full article discusses five countries in depth. Excerpted from Jon Henley, Ashifa Kassam et al.: “The economic meltdown unleashed by the 2008 financial crisis hit southern Europe especially hard, sending manufacturing output plunging and unemployment soaring. Countless factories shut their gates. But some workers at perhaps… Continue reading
The Cybersyn experiment, lessons from a past failure in mutual coordination economics
What pricing is for market allocation, and decisions are for planning, mutual coordination is for commons economics. Two previous experiments, the failed Russian internet described in Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty and the Cybersin experiment described in Eden Medina’s Cybernetic Revolutionaries, failed. We have argued that commons-oriented peer production offers a unique chance to revive these… Continue reading
Commons Fest 2015 Program
The program of the CommonsFest 2015, which is taking place the weekend after this in Athens, has just been announced here. The event will include seminars, workshops, interactive discussions, exhibitions, and concerts. This year, Richard Stallman, Massimo de Angelis and Pat Conaty are going to deliver the keynote speeches during the three days of the festival… Continue reading
How Twitter shot itself in the foot when it decided to kill its third-party ecosystem five years ago
Why is the twitter stock evaluation tanking? A hypothesis excerpted from Mathew Ingram: “A crucial turning point in Twitter’s evolution that arguably helped put it where it is today, both in a positive sense (it is a publicly-traded $25-billion company) and a negative one (its growth potential is in question and its strategy doesn’t seem… Continue reading
How far can we go in unifying p2p initiatives ?
I’ve been using the term “Archipelago Island Model” to describe an approach to managing local economic tools (such as credit unions, CDFIs, time banks, time networks, mutual credit variants, the gift economy) by enabling each “island” (neighbourhood, village, town, region, on-line social network, common bond, and so on … scaling in various “recursive dimensions”) to… Continue reading
Chris Martenson’s Crash Course
Original article here. The Crash Course has provided millions of viewers with the context for the massive changes now underway, as economic growth as we’ve known it is ending due to depleting resources. But it also offers real hope. Those individuals who take informed action today, while we still have time, can lower their exposure… Continue reading
The 35st National congress of urban planning agencies on the common good in urbanism
Conference report via the ‘Revue Urbanisme’: “What is at stake when goods don’t belong to anyone but still have a great role for communities ? That is the issue we have been discussing about during the 35e National congress of urban planning agencies. Violaine Hacker (president of the Common Good Forum) describes common goods as… Continue reading
Video: Trebor Scholz et al. on how good digital labor practices will depend on the emergence of platform cooperativism
“Given the mounting attention to the unethical labor practices in the so-called “collaborative sharing economy” with labor brokerages like Handy and Uber, what are the alternatives? Imagine for one moment that the algorithmic heart of any of these citadels of anti-unionism could be cloned and brought back to life under a different ownership model, with… Continue reading
A new economy struggles to be born
We reject soulless, mindless globalization, but can we picture a more just and humane order? If so, we can start to frame policies to support it. I’ve only a few fragments of a vision, but hoping to extend the conversation, I’ll describe them. Excerpted from Bill Curry, former White House counselor to President Clinton: “Right… Continue reading