Reposted from The Laura Flanders Show. What would students in debt, worker coops, and entrepreneurs stand to gain from a public bank in the financial capital of the world? This week, putting communities over commodities with leading figures in the fight for a new economy for working people. Is a Public Bank in the financial… Continue reading
These community groups are transforming Rio de Janeiro into a Sharing City
Cross-posted from Shareable. Shanna Hanbury: Rio de Janeiro is a city of extremes. Inequality is rampant, and while a small elite enjoy the “luxury” of housing, high quality education, and concentrated public funding, the majority of its citizens share the rest. The best examples of sharing are born not out of excess but from scarcity and… Continue reading
Patterns of Commoning: A Finale
This is our final post on Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier. The book has been serialized over the last two years in the P2P Foundation blog. Click here to see all posts or visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources. David Bollier and Silke Helfrich: If there is one… Continue reading
Book of the Day: Joyful Militancy: Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times
Joyful Militancy by carla bergmanand Nick Montgomery. Foreword by Hari Alluri, published by AK Press, in collaboration with the IAS. The following is reposted from JoyfulMilitancy.com: Joyful Militancy by carla bergmanand Nick Montgomery. Foreword by Hari Alluri, published by AK Press, in collaboration with the IAS. Why do radical movements and spaces sometimes feel laden with fear, anxiety, suspicion, self-righteousness and competition? The authors call this phenomenon rigid… Continue reading
How to Start and Maintain a Micro-Revolutionary Project
“Hold my hand I need you for courage. We become who we are together, each needing the other. Alone is a myth.” ~Gunilla Norris The beginning of Kommune Niederkaufungen illustrates that a group of engaged people can bring a new way of living once they meet and share their dreams. Over thirty year… Continue reading
From Lab to Commons: Shifting to a Biomedical System that’s in the Public Interest
Commons Network releases a paradigm-breaking paper on practical commons-based alternatives to the EU’s pharmaceutical policies Today Commons Network publishes a new policy paper that takes on the pharmaceutical system and presents real alternatives, based on open source research and the knowledge commons. Commons Network proposes a new vision for the biomedical research system that safeguards… Continue reading
Re-imagining Fashion as an Ecosystem of Commons
It turns out that the fashion world has quite a large cohort of designers, fashion houses, scholars, and activists who want to revamp the global fashion marketplace. To my surprise, there is quite a movement underway to invent new ways to design, produce and distribute clothing. Disgusted by a global system that depends on underpaid,… Continue reading
Why the left needs Elinor Ostrom
This interview with Derek Wall was conducted by Aaron Vansintjan and was originally published in Uneven Earth. Aaron Vansintjan: At some point during the Quebec student strike of 2012, I found myself in an enormous protest in downtown Montreal. We took up the street as far as the eye could see. All of a sudden, a mass… Continue reading
Accra and Tema, Ghana: Struggle Against Prepaid Water Meters
A civil society campaign managed to successfully stop the installation of prepaid meters by the Ghana Water Company LTD (GWCL) which would have affected the human right to water. The campaign against prepaid water meters was initiated by the Water Citizens Network of Ghana after it identified the issue as a serious threat to the… Continue reading
Holochain – the perfect framework for decentralised cooperation at scale
Holochain is a new technology project with huge potential for the cooperative economy. Members of The Open Co-op have been promoting the idea that new software could, potentially, revolutionise both our failing democracies and our predatory capitalist economies, since 2004. Back then we weren’t quite so clear on exactly how the required information architecture should… Continue reading
Towards a Politics of Listening
Reporting from “The Direct Parliament” conference in Florence If you’ve read any of my writing, you will have guessed I have some opinions about how we could do large scale governance differently. But the tool we’re building is designed only for small scale: If you’ve ever used Loomio, you’ll see that it’s designed for groups of… Continue reading
Solidarity with Aurea Social, the Catalan Integral Coop’s open, self-managed space
You may already be familiar with Aurea Social which, for many years, has been an integral part of the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC). Now Aurea is in trouble and the collective needs your help. This is taken from their GoFundMe campaign. For more on the CIC read our in-depth report: The Catalan Integral Cooperative: an organizational… Continue reading
Can the open hardware revolution help to democratise technology?
A fast-growing open hardware movement is creating ingenious versions of all sorts of technologies, and freely sharing them through social media. CERN is home to some of the largest and most complex scientific equipment on the planet. Yet back in March, scientists gathered there for a conference about DIY laboratory tools. Scientists in poorly funded… Continue reading
What is Community Composting?
Past attendees of the National Cultivating Community Composting Forum & Workshop share their answers to the question, “What is Community Composting?” Community composters serve an integral and unique role in both the broader composting industry and the sustainable food movement. They are the social innovators and entrepreneurs that are collecting food waste by burning calories… Continue reading
Patterns of Commoning: Reality as Commons, A Poetics of Participation for the Anthropocene
An essay by Andreas Weber “What is, then, a philosophy of relation? Something impossible, as long as it is not conceived of as poetics.” – Edouard Glissant The World as Consciousness Near Sant’Andrea, Italy, the sea laps onto the slabs of rock that form the edge of the island of Elba. The waves, smooth as… Continue reading
Combining HANDS-ON EXPERIMENTATION with expert input: Our week 6 learnings in REMODEL
The 10 companies in the REMODEL design-sprint are continuing their soliciting of feedback in order to challenge the emerging open source-based business strategy that they are exploring for their product. In this 6th phase that feedback comes from two sources: The global REMODEL Expert Panel and from actual stakeholders in the companies’ potential co-creator community…. Continue reading