Originally published in Shareable, Neal Gorenflo shares his impressions of OuiShare Fest 2015 The third annual OuiShare Fest, hosted with the theme “Lost in Transition” in Paris’ charming Cabaret Sauvage, concluded last Friday. This unique gathering of sharing economy leaders from around the world found itself in at least two ways with their latest edition. First,… Continue reading
Date archives "June 2015"
1200 students are ready to strike #DebtResistence
https://personaldemocracy.com/media/reverse-engineering-vampire-squid Astra Taylor speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum on debt resistance . The Debt Collective in which she is involved are organising a Rolling Jubilee and organising more 1200 students to strike to have their loans wiped out by the department of education. “We believe people should not go into debt for basic necessities… Continue reading
Disenclosing the Crises of Imagination and Power
Max Haiven introduces his book: * Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power. By Max Haiven. Zed Books, 2015 By Max Haiven: “In Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power (Zed Books, forthcoming), I argue that this sense of futility is the residual effect of the way capitalism ‘encloses’ not only our time, our communities and our… Continue reading
Ada Colau, Barcelona’s New Mayor, interviewed on Spain’s Political Revolution by Democracy Now
Worth watching! ” A longtime anti-eviction activist has just been elected mayor of Barcelona, becoming the city’s first female mayor. Ada Colau co-founded the anti-eviction group Platform for People Affected by Mortgages and was an active member of the Indignados, or 15-M Movement. Colau has vowed to fine banks with empty homes on their books,… Continue reading
Encommuns.org in Lille works on Urban Commons Economic Development
En Commmuns is an initiative in Lille, France, by Simon Sarazin and colleagues from the Coroutine and Mutualab ‘open source third places’, to map and document the commons economy, by identifying entities producing for the common good, their immaterial and material commons, and the value streams between them. Simon writes that: “”Encommuns.org make transparent all… Continue reading
Video: Juliet Schor on the goods and bads of sharing economy
At the first International Workshop on the Sharing Economy Martijn Arets interviewed Juliet Schor about her keynote Will the sharing economy lead to a new form of hyper-capitalism or to a sustainable alternative? Very interesting and balanced intervention. Watch the video here:
Coop Housing for Any Community in Wales
Public-social partnerships and democratic housing innovation An interesting collaborative economy development has emerged in Wales over the past two years that is already advancing locally and practically co-operative housing solutions. Most people and politicians are unaware that Democratic forms of housing come in many shapes and sizes. These examples below give a flavour of the… Continue reading
Raising the profile of the Social and Solidarity Economy
By Françoise Wautiez The socioeco.org website is celebrating its third anniversary, and to mark the event, here is a brief overview of the project. Socioeco has continued to grow, with over 3,500 analysis documents, including 500 case studies, more than 1,000 identified publications and almost 180 SSE training courses. The site has five working languages,… Continue reading
Can Syriza still avoid failure ?
Excerpted from ALEXANDROS ORPHANIDES: “These dire conditions have led to the continuation of anti-austerity protests and a further weakening of Greece’s economy, as savers withdraw their funds and investors remain reluctant to expand business. To be fair, Syriza inherited this situation. But the party has done little to drag its way out; in failing to… Continue reading
Hacking Financial Markets For the Common Good…?
Being involved with FairCoop has piqued my interest in the direct use of finance for activist means, and reading Brett Scott’s excellent “The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money”I have become aware of various attempts to do just that. Whereas FairCoop (and the related cryptocurrency Faircoin) seek to establish a parallel financial… Continue reading
Income security: Why Unions Should Campaign For a Basic Income
This article argues that because of the changing character of work and labour in the context of globalisation, progressives and particularly trade unionists could make a basic income a key part of their agenda. It considers the standard objections and then reviews the various advantages of moving in that direction, towards the realisation of a… Continue reading
Is the commons movement becoming a political force in Europe?
Sophie Bloemen on the occasion of the creation of a ‘Common Goods Intergroup’ at the European Parliament: “The commons intergroup ended up joining the already existing one on Public Services and in the process of political shuffling, the name ended up shifting to common goods. So officially referred to as ‘intergroup on commons goods’, it… Continue reading
Affordable Housing
By Martin Adams. Original article here. Image Credit: Øyvind Holmstad There can be no fairness or justice in a society in which some live in homelessness, or in the shadow of that risk, while others cannot even imagine it. —Jordan Flaherty Community Organizer and Journalist This is an excerpt from Land: A New Paradigm for… Continue reading
Co-Creating as Disruption to the Dominant Cultural Framework
“Vision requires execution…execution requires relationships…relationships require trust” – Steve Case From – http://wirearchy.com/2013/05/09/co-creating-as-disruption-to-the-dominant-cultural-framework/ Co-creating is a term we’re starting to hear very often, and perhaps too often too soon. I think it might cheapen and mis-direct the important process of making deep changes to the ‘colonization’ (due to the rampant corporatism of today) of… Continue reading
How Faircoin v2 could be improved
A contribution from Sepp Hasslberger. Sepp’s comments have been addressed by Enric Duran and Thomas König in FairCoop’s own forum, which you may visit here. “I like the procedures for validation of transactions that were developed and are described in the White paper. I am with the P2P foundation and am especially interested in monetary… Continue reading
The state of labor and unions in the world today
“Effective unions have rarely if ever been organized by ‘non-committed’ workers, i.e. casual workers who change jobs frequently, return periodically to their native village, and have no specific industrial skill, even of a very simple kind. Yet even fully committed industrial workers with little or no skill are capable of engaging in effective collective bargaining… Continue reading