Niko Georgiades: Athens, Greece – Tools born from the internet, applied across autonomous networks and movements seeking alternatives to capitalism, are providing the infrastructure of alternative societies. In the last of our specials on community currencies and alternative economies, we showcase FairCoop, a self-organized and self-managed global cooperative created through the internet outside the domain of the nation-state.

During a conference on alternatives to capitalism inside of the self-organized and squatted Embros Theater in Athens, Greece in the summer of 2017, a Catalan speaker (who remained anonymous for safety purposes) gave a presentation on FairCoop, which informed much of this reporting.

Alternative economies are typically separate economic structures operating outside of the traditional economy and based on the common principles of a community. FairCoop is a function of an alternative economy and was built out of the necessity to provide an “alternative system outside of capitalism” and merge many autonomous movements and networks together to form a society based on each community’s values.

FairCoop was created a few years after a nearly half a billion euro banking system expropriation action from 2006-2008, generally attributed to Enric Duran. The expropriation of monetary value from the banks was used to fund social movements and as a way to jump-start alternatives to the capitalist system.

Watch the video below for an introduction to FairCoop:

During the presentation on FairCoop, the speaker inside of Embros Theater said that in Catalonia, Spain, around 2009, 2010, the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) was created, to “build another society by self-organizing” and to provide the needs of the people, “from food, housing, education, and health, etc.”

Since the creation of the Integral networks in Spain seven years ago, “a lot of people [have been] working for the commons” as there are more than 1,000 projects that are autonomously self-organizing to create cooperative networks of sharing.

Watch the video below, or see our full report here, for more information on the CIC [also see The Catalan Integral Cooperative: An Organizational Study of a Post-Capitalist Cooperative by George Dafermos]:

The idea for FairCoop was brought to an assembly in 2014 as a proposal by Enric Duran and was created by people within the movement to serve as economic infrastructure for a new society.

The Catalan speaker described FairCoop as “an open global cooperative, self-organized via the Internet and remaining outside nation-state control,” but one “that is controlled by a global assembly.” The speaker explained, “We don’t say cooperative in the traditional way, we say cooperative because we work with economy and we work in a participatory way and in a equal way.”

The steps taken to get to the point of the creation of FairCoop were explained by the speaker as followed:

“The first action was hacking the banks [expropriation of money through the internet], the second action was hacking the state [creating a taxing system to fund the creation of autonomous alternative systems], and the third one was hacking the money markets.“

“Usually the powerful money markets attack the weak economies and they get their resources with inflation and things like that. So, for centuries people have lost a lot of resources, a lot of capital” from those in control of the money – the speaker continued, “with FairCoin we are, like, revenging on that, let’s say, and we are recovering value.” They are growing that value to “use it for the commons” and assist in building their self-managed alternative society, said the presenter.

“They’re are many people in more than 30 countries” that have combined their local currencies and communities into autonomous local nodes and are connected in a network of cooperatives, said the speaker, who gave examples in the presentation about a Guatemalan and Greek sharing network.

“Local nodes acts as decentralized local assemblies of FairCoop, and meeting point between global projects of FairCoop and the various projects developed locally, creating links, synergies, knowledge development and growth of the entire ecosystem we are creating together. Autonomously, they serve as a point to spread, help and welcome people in FairCoop, as well as an exchange point of FairCoin.” – Description of a local node, FairCoop website

To build “a society without money, takes money,” and also requires having a plan to fight against capitalism by empowering the “local, regional, and global level,” so, the speaker said FairCoop created a “global assembly” to determine the value of the currency in a way of “self-management in the political process, not in the market“.

Listen to the fifteen minute presentation on FairCoop (full presentation with Q&A session is further down the post):

Audio Player

FairCoop was described as “a political movement building an alternative” that operates with many open decentralized working groups and assemblies deciding by consensus what actions to take in the FairCoop.

“FairCoop understands that the transformation to a fairer monetary system is a key element. Therefore, FairCoin was proposed as the cryptocurrency upon which to base its resource-redistribution actions and building of a new global economic system.” – FairCoop website

FairCoop utilizes FairCoin cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies, the most famous being Bitcoin, are digitally created on the internet, decentralized, and out of the control of central governments.

The difference between FairCoin and Bitcoin, said the speaker, is that “in Bitcoin, they are not one community, there are many different interests fighting each other, like what’s happening in the capitalist world is happening in the Bitcoin.”

They utilize FairCoin to the “benefit of the self-management of the alternative economy, not in the benefit of decentralizing capitalism that is around Bitcoin,” and to economically sustain the process of building the network of FairCoop.

For a bit of an explanation on what FairCoin is, watch this excerpt of an interview with Theodore, from the Athens Integral Cooperative, below:

Cryptocurrencies are block-chain transactions tracked through public ledgers, however, FairCoin has recently created the world’s first ever “co-operative blockchain … by creating an algorithm based on mining processes that rely on a proof of co-operation.”

FairCoin was developed “as a transition tool for building that eco-system at the global level that can be useful for supporting the building of autonomy and the building of self-organizement” around the world, said the speaker.

The speaker said that with the self-management of FairCoin, they are recovering value instead of extracting it from the people as the current banking system with its money markets does.

Faircoin governance image

In efforts to control all of the FairCoin, 80 to 90 percent of the FairCoin is now in the hands of the “movement“, said the speaker. With FairCoin, the value of funds is over 2 million euros and the speaker said, “this is just the beginning of the way how we are creating value by this hacking.”

When asked for a practical example of how FairCoop could be put to use in the self-managed Embros Theater, the speaker said that the first step would be to start accepting FairCoin for the transactions of economy inside the theater, such as beer. The next step would be to share that you accept FairCoin, which will then be seen in the FairCoop network and when more people start exchanging FairCoin, local nodes create assemblies focusing on different qualities that branch out to the global networks.

The speaker touched on Freedom Coop, which according to their website, is a “European Cooperative Society (SCE) that creates toolkits for self-management, self-employment, economic autonomy and financial disobedience for individuals and groups striving for fairer social and economic relationships.”

On the larger scale of building “a new way of life,” newly created Bank of the Commons is “a project for bringing on an alternative banking system to the world“, said the speaker, who explained it’s a way to bring different movements, cooperatives, and different groups the “capacities for doing their activities without the control of the normal banks.”

See the 2017 FairCoop Structure Chart for a visual learning experience of how the networks connect to each other:

After the presentation by the Catalan speaker, dozens of audience members asked many clarifying questions as to how this system of an alternative economy works. The presentation lasted a bit over two hours. Listen to the full presentation below:

With the building of these networks of social economy and solidarity, people are rethinking their ideas of how society could be more equitable. Creating alternative economies using the internet and autonomous working groups to decentralize the power has many people in Europe and across the world very excited at the prospects of a new society outside of capitalism and nation-states. In the words of the speaker, the future of mass movements providing real change are based in being able to have economic power, “As a movement, we need to be stronger economically to be stronger politically.”

The post Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 3 – FairCoop appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Niko Georgiades: Athens, Greece – Experimenting with alternatives to capitalism has continued to become more popular as huge wealth divides devour chances of relieving poverty across the world. During the summer of 2017, a speaking engagement at the self-organized squat of Embros Theater in Athens, Greece, showcased alternatives to capitalism. In the second of our three part series on alternative economies and community currencies, we spotlight Kenya’s Sarafu-Credit.

Community currencies are types of complimentary currencies shared within a community that are utilized as a means of countering inequality, class, debt, accumulation, and exclusion.

With community currencies, lower-income communities are given the ability to improve living standards by building infrastructure sustainability through networks of sharing, providing access to interest-free loans, and increasing the economic viability of the community.

This is a major departure from conventional national currencies. Most are generated today through fractional reserve banking, wherein units (“broad money” or M3) are created at the bank when loans are instantiated and destroyed upon repayment.

During economic slowdowns including the US Great Depression, the “velocity of money” drops as fractional currency is unavailable. Locally issued “Depression Scrip” substituted for fractional money in the 1930s. Today alternative currencies that improve velocity of money by distributing credit creation power to the whole population are taking root in many countries.

The first speaker of the discussion at Embros Theater was Caroline Dama, a Board member of Grassroots Economics (GE). GE is a “non-profit foundation that seeks to empower marginalized communities to take charge of their own livelihoods and economic future” in Kenya.

Caroline Dama, Board member of Grassroots Economics

Will Ruddick, who started the Eco-Pesa (no longer in circulation), a complementary and community currency, founded Grassroots Economics in 2010, which has created six networks of community currencies that now works with over twenty schools and twelve hundred businesses in Kenya.

In 2013, 200 businesses, 75% of which were owned by women, became part of the new self-organized and self-determined community currency, Bangla-Pesa, in Mombasa’s largest slum, Bangladesh.

Kenya’s government quickly saw the formation of these community currencies as a threat. Five individuals involved with Bangla-Pesa, including Will Ruddick and Caroline Dama, were implicated on charges of undermining the national currency, the shilling. They were all eventually cleared of all charges and the Sarafu-Credit system continues to break new boundaries and change the narrative of alternative economic systems.

SARAFU CREDIT – BANGLA-PESA

Drastic economic and social inequalities run rampant throughout Kenya as at least 46 percent of its population is living in poverty. With basic needs like clean water and healthcare becoming hard to attain, the Sarafu-Credit community currency system was created as a safety net for citizens to improve living conditions.

The word sarafu means currency in the Kiswahilli language. Sarafu-Credit is system of community currencies used as a “regional means of exchange supplementing the national currency system.”

The community in Bangladesh, the biggest slum in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, is very poor and has little access to the shilling, the national currency. Caroline Dama, from GE, stated that the community is “able to come together and come up with a system to exchange our goods and services” using “community dollars.”

A Bangla-Pesa voucher

These community currencies are complimentary with the national currency and Caroline stated that not all of them work towards abolishing the current currency or system, but that they are “trying to make sure that the community banks have a way to survive in times that they wouldn’t otherwise survive.”

“it’s a form of community governance and self-taxation … the community has been able to come up with its own rules to solve its own problems.” – Caroline

GE explains Sarafu-Credit as: “A network of businesses, schools, self-employed and informal sector workers form a cooperative whose profits and inventory are issued as vouchers for social and environmental services as well as an interest-free credit to community members. These vouchers circulate in the community and can be used at any shop, school, clinic or cooperative businesses and form a stable medium of exchange when the Kenyan Shilling is lacking. This injection of money into the community in the form of a community currency, based on local assets, increases local sales and helps directly develop the local economy. Sarafu-Credit, Grassroots Economics’ Kenyan Community Currency program, creates stable markets based on local development and trust.”

How the Sarafu-Credit system works

Caroline stated that only with a bottom-up approach can the community create economic equality. “Communities thrive when they are able to make their own decisions.”

“Community currency gives that power to the people because they are talking to each other, they are able to exchange, and now they are meeting their basic needs, they have enough to sell and when they sell they can pool their resources together to build that better school.” – Caroline

Graph of how the Community Currency Vouchers operates

“If we have problems in the society we want to deal with … what we do, is we can come together as businesses instead of waiting for the government to do it for us”, said Caroline, who stressed the importance of self-determination and community empowerment.

The community currency vouchers are issued for social services and mutual credit for all sustainable needs of the community.  According to the Grassroots Economics website, “The community currency circulates around the community helping to connect local supply and demand for people who lack regular access to national currency.”

Furthermore, Caroline gave an example of women in a village collectively working on projects together, like helping each other build new houses. They would make each person in their network a new house and they would gather the material needed to build the house from other cooperative businesses.

There was a lively discussion with plenty of questions after the presentation on Sarafu-Credit’s Bangla-Pesa. One of the many questions focused on hatching new ideas around sharing-based communities, instead of exchange based communities that could present inequalities based on the ability of services to exchange. Caroline said,

“We are trying to move into a community whereby we are recognizing individual talents … that there is diversity in the community and that we should move away from the idea that we should monetize that. We try to live in a community that recognizes peoples needs, not monetizing them.” – Caroline

Grassroots Economics have created .pdf with their user guide and have plenty of resources on their website. The video below shows how the Bangla-Pesa works.

To hear the full speech and question session of Sarafu-Credit listen below:

For further reading on the Bangla-Pesa, here are a few attention-worthy papers:

• Complementary Currencies for Sustainable Development in Kenya: The Case of the Bangla-Pesa (PDF)
• Re-imagining Money to Broaden the Future of Development Finance – What Kenyan Community Currencies Reveal is Possible for Financing Development (PDF)
• Trust and Spending of Community Currencies in Kenya (PDF)

The post Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 2 – Kenya’s Sarafu-Credit appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Niko Georgiades: Athens, Greece – While capitalism and consumerism dominate the culture of the United States of America and the Western world, community currencies are creating a buzz elsewhere. The radical need for alternative economies and community currencies is becoming more commonplace among societies across the globalized world dealing with the crisis of mass poverty and inequality. In part one of our three part series shining a light on some of these alternatives, we look at the Athens Integral Cooperative.

In the summer of 2017, the self-organized squat of Embros Theater hosted a speaking engagement discussing community currencies and alternative economies. After the discussion, we interviewed Theodore from the Athens Integral Cooperative (AIC) inside a social center in Exarcheia (Athens, Greece) about the parallel economy they are creating. Theodore gave a run down of what AIC is, the importance of it, as well as its struggles and how it modeled itself after Catalan Integral Cooperative (see our special on the Catalan Integral Cooperative).

“We are building a substantial, alternative, and autonomous economy.” – Theodore of the Athens Integral Cooperative

Alternative Economies in Greece: an Interview with Theodore from the Athens Integral Cooperative

WHAT ARE COMMUNITY CURRENCIES & ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIES?

• Community currencies are types of complimentary currencies shared within a community that are utilized as a means of countering inequality, class, debt, accumulation, and exclusion.
• Alternative economies are typically separate economic structures operating outside of the traditional economy and based on the common principles of a community.

Aggressive neoliberal policies have created a vicious cycle of austerity in Greece for the last seven years. Many people living in Greece, even today, experience a lack of dignity, unable to gain access to employment, housing, education, healthcare, and having to deal with pension and salary cuts.

In 2011, as the crisis was beginning to deeply impact public life, a ‘movement of the squares‘ swept through Greece, modeled after the indignados in Spain and the Tahrir Square Uprising in Egypt. Thousands took the public commons, occupying Syntagma Square across from the Greek Parliament in central Athens. Through direct democracy, they imagined a future without capitalism; this movement eventually made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the USA in the form of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

These movements in Spain and Greece birthed political parties, Podemos and Syriza respectively, that have each taken power, and yet the effects of the crisis continue and evolve with no end in sight. We sat down with Theodore to talk about capitalism, the crisis, and the alternatives that have taken form to provide a sustainable living.

Theodore told us that a lot of people lost their jobs when the crisis first hit and that the banks imposed austerity measures and “social rules that were unbearable.”

“We tried to continue with our lives by building autonomous movements and trying to live by ourselves. This was a necessity during this seven years of our financial crisis where people [started] to create social groups and movements in order to cope with the diminishing structure of society, both economical and social.” – Theodore

Autonomous networks, mostly created by self-organized assemblies of anarchists, anti-authoritarians, autonomous groups and individuals, are a counter-force to the social services that the State either never provided, or stopped providing for the people due to the crisis. As Theodore stated, these networks are needed to gain the basic fundamentals of life.

Self-organized forms of resistance to capitalism and ways of implementing mutual aid to those in need are producing experiences that advance the prospects of the ability to live in an equal society, devoid of poverty.

Among the networks of resistance throughout Athens there are at least an estimated 1,000 assemblies with over 5,000 people participating in them. These assemblies are akin to horizontally organized working groups, each working towards a branch of fulfilling the needs of a community, or society, like; healthcare (see video below), housing, food, organizing space and even alternative economies that push to instill a non-consumer based economy.

ATHENS INTEGRAL COOPERATIVE

Self-organized through direct democracy, Athens Integral Cooperative operates through an assembly that makes collective decisions based on consensus. The Athens Integral Cooperative (AIC) was inspired by the Integral networks of Spain, which Theodore says are “similar movements, cooperatives, and individuals who have managed to integrate their activities to a bigger network that could actually produce economy of livelihood.”

“From 2015 to now, we established an infrastructure for our network that is premises that we can do the exchanges and a platform that we can work the exchanges out.” – Theodore

In describing the ideas behind the alternative economy of AIC, Theodore said that “time banks” were “the first step in the social economy“. Time banks are “not money that you can claim from someone” and it isn’t debt; it is peer-to-peer exchanges, or services, that are valued by the hour. The hour is not exact, but is a tool by which to measure productivity.

“It [time banking] has this very good social effect of making people understand they can exchange their production.” – Theodore

The “social economy” is a facet of networks of cooperatives, individuals, organizations, and more, which have created institutions and policies prioritizing the social good over profits. The infrastructure built within a social economy is based on the common values or principles of the community(s) that are in participation with the social economy.

Theodore said that AIC works to integrate “individuals, collectives, and social forces, that already make a social economy” into a substantial economy. In the Integral network, there is “no such thing as debt or accumulation.”

Theodore of the Athens Integral Cooperative

Exchanges through the network are done with a self-institutionalized monetary unit through a digital platform using the LETS network (Local Exchange Trading System), using the free software of Community Forge. The alternative currency holds value only within collective working groups and cannot be exchanged outside of the network.

The goals for the “solidarity economy” of the Athens Integral Cooperative are clearly stated on their website as follows:

• Horizontal organization, with participation in general meetings, collective decision making and solution finding
• Coverage of basic needs and desires rather than consumerism focusing on self-sufficiency
• Jointly defining a fair price/work ratio on products and services
• Producing quality goods and services while minimizing our energy and ecological footprint
• Reciprocity in relations beyond the logic of profit and “free market” monopolies
• Monetary autonomy within the network using a local self-institutionalized monetary unit (LETS network)
• The foundation of and support for productive projects
• Cooperative education, direct democracy and ecological awareness

“People are always interested in finding a way of escaping the present situation.” – Theodore

AIC has at least 100 participants and around 30 people providing production in the substantial economy. Compared to the eco-networks of the model Integral societies in Spain, this is small, but as Theodore said, the necessary transformation into an alternative economy “takes time” especially in an urban environment. He furthered that people can’t rapidly “evolve to another system” without understanding the culture of it.

As Theodore says, education is key. One of the first goals of the AIC is educating and inspiring the community to become self-managed and autonomous within the networks. They are working on making their community full of producers, not simply consumers. They are re-learning the value of the exchange, of their production, and of their productive value.

Theodore stated that things would have progressed much more if, during the time that the crisis was hitting, people knew what they now know.

“The interest of the people was huge, I mean, hundreds of people were gathering in assemblies, trying to find a way out. But, we didn’t have the knowledge then.” – Theodore

This said, Theodore was still very optimistic. Theodore participates in the assembly of the Alliance of the Commons, which he states is “another step of the gathering of social forces.” The Alliance of the Commons is important, Theodore said, because in order to have a “community that is self-managed, we have to have a political basis.”

“The , they bring the Commons as a political issue, as a political subject. So far, the alternative economy didn’t have the political direction … it was useful only for taking the pressure off the people.” – Theodore

Athens Integral Cooperative is pursuing a cultural revolution to transform the culture of consumerism and valuing one’s life in fiat currency, like the Euro or Dollar, into a culture of “autonomous exchange and autonomous productivity,” said Theodore, who continued by saying AIC was “doing a very good job at it.”

Stay tuned with Unicorn Riot for more on alternatives to capitalism, as we have two more specials on community currencies coming out in the next couple of weeks.

Photo by ashabot

The post Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 1 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Festival of the Commons will take place on 6-7-8 October 2017, at the Athens School of Fine Arts. The Festival of the Commons unites the efforts of the Festival for Solidarity and Cooperative Economy and the CommonsFest.

Our desire is for the Festival of the Commons to be a celebratory meeting point for cooperative ventures, for ventures which produce and defend common goods, as well as a forum for the development of productive collaborations focusing on the commons and the social and solidarity economy. In particular, we want the Festival of the Commons to work as a springboard for the launch of all kinds of ideas on political/productive collaborations and for the formation of working groups which will make them a reality.

For any further contact you may use our email: media [at] commons [dot] gr

Web page

Facebook page

===

POLITICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE COMMONS ALLIANCE- v 3.0

The Alliance of the Commons is a social alliance of individuals and initiatives that combines politics with production. It is an alliance of the initiatives / movements of both the Commons and the Social and Solidarity Economy with autonomy of structures, decisions and actions. It is in itself a commons for individuals, initiatives, social groups and movements that make it up.

Who we are

The people who compose the Alliance of Commons are not, neither seek to become, a uniform community. We come from different starting points, paths and worldviews. We approach the commons from different perspectives, experiences and practices, such as those of our personal mood for sharing and co-operation; personal and collective creativity; equal opportunities; social justice and equality; political participation and democracy; rejection of all arbitrary power; opposition to exploitation; ecology; anti-racism; feminism and critique of patriarchy. We value this diversity of ours as a fundamental feature and empowering element of the Alliance.

We are united however by the desire for joint activation. So, some of us have organized meetings, festivals such as the Commonsfest, conferences and workshops on cooperation, production, the environment, innovation, networking of social initiatives. Others are engaged in struggles against the fencing of goods such as water, energy, public spaces and knowledge. Many of us are giving life to self-organized solidarity structures for health, food, shelter, education. That is goods to which everyone is entitled. Some have done whatever we could to influence politics in the direction of empowering projects with a positive social impact. Several have a long history within movements and political action from the grassroots. Others again do not. Some represent specific productive and social groups, organizations, perceptions. Others again represent simply our common need for creation and way out of the imposed social catastrophe. More specifically, a way out of the failure of the binary: ‘state and market’, as we are currently experiencing it in Greece of the crisis, just as many other people on the planet, and are seeking more sustainable alternatives.

All of us however seek a way out of the logic of outsourcing our economy, politics and our lives to specialists, middlemen, professional politicians. Instead, we seek answers and solutions to our everyday problems through active participation, collective knowledge and support for the anthropocentric economy of the commons.

Finally, we perceive our action and the Alliance of the Commons as part of a wider movement that is activated locally but is coordinated and strengthened globally for the good of humanity. We are in solidarity with contemporary movements to defend and spread the commons in every corner of the globe. We desire the co-ordination, networking and community-based production, together with any other community that is contributing to the production of common goods, aiming at the open and without space-time restrictions on circulation and accumulation of value for the commons.

Why do we care about the commons?

In the crisis, another world is not only feasible but already existing. Throughout the country, initiatives have been born in every aspect of production and of our lives. Traditional seed distribution networks, farmers’ cooperatives and ecocommunities, horizontal food solidarity networks and no-middlemen markets, social pharmacies and clinics, social and cooperative learning centers, conservatories and daycare centers, cooperative power plants, community electronic communication networks, social waste management movements, open community and cooperative media, open knowledge and technology production communities, occupied factories and workplaces, free social spaces and places of solidarity for refugees and immigrants, social cooperatives in every area of production and distribution as well as movements of advocacy and expansion of the commons.

Our goal is to empower this world, to contribute to its maturity and to mature ourselves along with it so that it can be a realistic alternative, while we are building a society geared to our common needs and desires. A world where the satisfaction of the desire of one is not at the expense of the other. Where there are neither winners nor losers because we recognize that our prosperity depends on that of our fellow human being. Especially in the current period of the generalized and systemic global crisis (economic, ecological, political, but above all a crisis of the dominant norms and values), there is a dire need for further development and valorization of what we call the “economy of the commons” as an anthropocentric, ecologically sustainable and rational system of productive and social organization.

By “commons” we mean practices of joint production and management of material and immaterial goods on the basis of sharing, cooperation and democratic participation. The joint creation and / or management of social and intellectual wealth by the communities of its creators and users. For us, commons are primarily the act of “communion” and the community relations which it builds. We feel as relatives of the commons and the practices of peer production and social and solidarity economy. The economy of the commons is already operating alongside the state and the market, but at the same time constitutes a comprehensive social proposal with possibilities for overcoming them.

Why the Alliance of the Commons?

Because the production and management of goods as commons can be efficiently effected through cooperation, distribution and through the processes of participation of many towards the common interest.

The dominant system, based on perpetual profitability, is in rivalry with the economy of the commons. It encloses the basic social goods so as to exclude society from its free access to them, to manage them on its own behalf or to market them. With its inherent tendency towards perpetual economic growth, which has reached its limits worldwide, it continues to guard and exclude from free access goods that exist abundantly in nature (e.g. immaterial goods of intellect). At the same time, it appropriates and overexploits the finite resources (forests, minerals, etc.) and promotes the overexploitation of produced material goods, depleting rapidly the natural resources of our planet.

In this absurdity and the subsequent impasses of the system, society reacts and comes together again around the commons, developing and expanding it. Through our collective efforts, we aim to set up tangible examples of the economy of the commons in action in every region of the country and in every sector of economic activity. But that does not mean that there is wider awareness of the value of such initiatives or of the scale they could obtain. At present, many of these initiatives are pools of cooperativism and solidarity in a society that is concerned whether the commons are a serious proposition, being itself confronted with urgent living problems, the collapse of traditional forms of welfare, as well as suffocating dilemmas from above.

We believe that discussions and practices developing around the commons are already forming innovative and promising models for an organic development of economy and society in a sustainable direction.

What are our principles?

A new world has emerged through the crisis and has turned in recent years towards production based on the commons and social and solidarity economy. Faced with the deadlocked financial-centered system, it opposes a new anthropocentric system of values, which puts forth:
* cooperation rather than competition,
* sharing and reciprocity, instead of exclusion,
* sharing skills for the common benefit instead of individualism,
* solidarity instead of indifference and isolationism,
* active participation in collective decisions rather than acceptance of a future that others make for us,
* ecological value and sustainability rather than overexploitation and depletion of natural resources,
* self-management, autonomy and self-sufficiency.
* Fair trade without intermediaries and the solidarity market.
* the defense of the commons against enclosures and their promotion as a basis for a development of human, nature and economy.

These principles, along with others that will emerge from practicing the commons in the future, are perhaps more important than the resources themselves which we are called upon to produce and manage together. In this sense, the commons are not just social relationships around resources. They are also a new ethos and a political momentum that stems from our active participation in the economy of the common people, and with the intention of transforming the entire society.

What Are Our Goals?

The Alliance of Commons has the following objectives:
– Claiming as “commons” (not just as public property) all specific commons-related small and large-scale infrastructures.
-The study and evaluation of the commons, the systematization and dissemination of the knowledge they produce and, finally, the implementation and dissemination of best practices in existing and new initiatives around the commons.
– Networking and co-ordination of people and initiatives involved in the commons and the establishment of social structures that will effectively claim the application of such a model in every space.
⁃Cooperation for the creation of common resources, technical and economic infrastructures of support for the commons.
-The reinforcement of existing initiatives around the commons and the ongoing effort to produce new ones through collaborations and partnerships with all stakeholders.
-To cooperate with any available political, economic, scientific or activist initiative to set up a production-consumption-governance model applicable on a national or supranational scale.
-The production of discourse and policy for the acknowledgement of the social value of the commons and the dissemination of commons-based practices in society.
-The defense and widening of the commons of the country.
-The coordination of social actions aiming at creating the right conditions for the commons to thrive as well as the practices and values produced around them.
-To develop the commons as a comprehensive sustainable political, economic and social proposal with the ultimate goal of a society that is oriented towards the commons.
-The creation and widening of material conditions and processes for social empowerment and integrated human freedom.

What are we doing?

The Alliance of the Commons is not a substitute for any initiative but is a point of encounter and empowerment, of networks, initiatives and movements. It is an alliance that can add to, and not deduct from, a bold attempt to overcome the material, social and political conditions that are a bottleneck, through building the commons perspective and a vision against pessimism and “realism.”

We want our autonomous organization without assignments and representations through:
-the creation of the open coordination body of the Alliance.
-the creation of open working groups for different themes (both vertical e.g. thematic clusters as well as horizontal e.g. groups on legal matters, technical support, promotion, etc.).
-valorization and use of all existing Alliance members’ infrastructure to promote common goals and achieve actions.
– the organization of regular open meetings of the Alliance on the subject of discussion, information, networking, productive partnership, planning and coordination of the policies and productive actions of the Alliance.

How can you participate?

If at work you advocate cooperation rather than competition.
If in your daily relationships you prefer to share, rather than exclude.
If you wish to allocate your abilities for the common good.
If you function in solidarity with others.
If you are an active citizen and want to participate in the decisions that concern you.
If you are deeply concerned about the ecological crisis and want a more sustainable lifestyle.
If you believe in collective efforts to resolve common problems. If you are disappointed with mediation and you want to take things in your hands.
So, if you are one of the above, then you are part of the solution.

Communicate with us at our general or local assemblies, in the social initiatives where you will meet us, or through our website: http://www.commons.gr

Photo by sheilabythesea

The post Festival of the Commons, Greece, Athens, 6-7-8 October, 2017 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

So, what about politics? (#SWAP) is a fully packed symposium presenting mainly very concrete projects that deal with new forms of political action and governance in the contemporary network society. With examples from liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation.

From the event website:

So, what about politics? looks at initiatives that could be seen as the avant-garde of a new political era. In a critical period of crisis in our political systems, we welcome artists, activists, academics using innovative technological tools to reclaim political processes or to shape new forms of organisation, from local collectives to global movements.

As  Rebecca Solnit says, “It’s equally true that democracy is flourishing in bold new ways in grassroots movements globally”, and “There is far more politics than the mainstream of elections and governments, more in the margins where hope is most at home.” How does this apply to the margins of our technological imagination? Which tools and practices are being dreamed of, tested and explored?

In short, what is the impact of today’s Internet-inspired post-institutional thinking on the practice of political action? For this we focus on tactics, tools and visions of grassroots initiatives, as well as on changing government policies and strategies.

The symposium revolves around questions such as: What are the politics of a P2P society? How can we perceive a network as a real “distributed agora”? What can we learn from artist- or activist-led experiments focusing on collectivity and political agency?

And most important: What are the concrete tools and initiatives today that really try to facilitate and use new forms of agency such as liquid democracy, e-governance, civic intelligence, platform cooperativism and autonomous self-organisation?

PROGRAMME
Digital culture and technology. But what about politics?

Final Programme coming soon!

Day 1: FRI 3 November
Lectures and Debates, 10:00-18:00

Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation), Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam), Sandrino Graceffa (SMArtbe, Brussels), Xavier Damman (OpenCollective.com), Virgile Deville (Democracy.earth), Saya Sauliere (Medialab-Prado/ParticipaLab, Madrid), Arianna Mazzeo (DesisLab, Barcelona), Khushboo Balwani (Civic Innovation Network, Brussels), David Potocnik (totalism.org, Lanzarote), Lauren Lapige (unMonastery, Athens), Penny Travlou (University Edinburgh), Monica Garriga (Decidim, Barcelona), David Gómez (Texeidora, Barcelona), Emmanuele Braga (Macao, Milano), Panayotis Antoniadis (NetHood, Athens-Zurich), Sanna Ghotbi & Vanessa Metonini (DigidemLab, Gothenburg/Madrid), Barret Brown (PursuanceProject.org, USA).

Day 2: SAT 4 November
Workshops and Participative sessions, 10:00-17:00

Sanna Ghotbi & Vanessa Metonini (DigidemLab, Gothenburg), Arianna Mazzeo (DesisLab, Barcelona),  Civic Innovation Network (Brussels)

Register for Day 1 and take option for Day 2

Credits

The symposium is curated by Bram Crevits (KASK / School of Arts Gent) and Yves Bernard (iMAL.org).
This event is organised by iMAL (Brussels center for Digital Cultures and Technology) in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), Medialab Prado (Madrid) and KASK / School of Arts (Gent).

After the symposium Blockchain.Fact.Fiction.Future in 2016, So what about Politics? continues our exploration of how society can be improved with the digital world.

So what about Politics? is supported by KASK / School of Arts Gent and Saison des Cultures Numériques 2017, Ministery of Culture (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Photo by Artur Netsvetaev

The post So what about Politics? Toward a new political era appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Calling for action to protect open wifi networks, the Pirate Party’s Julia Reda writes how collectively built-up, not-for-profit wireless networks like Freifunk provide Internet access to refugees, “allow[ing] them to get in touch with relatives and friends who may still be in their countries of origin, who may be fleeing themselves or have found refuge in other cities or other parts of Europe.” In the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens, where activist-coordinated refugee solidarity groups support housing projects, there is a growing need for internet connectivity and regular maintenance. Working in a similar ethos, Exarcheia Net provides internet access and technical support to 10+ locations around Exarcheia – facilitating internet access for over 1,000 people.

Alongside this work, James Lewis, the initiator and facilitator of Exarcheia Net, is supporting community members in establishing cooperative networks. But the objectives of Exarcheia Net go beyond providing Internet connectivity to these places and include the following:

• providing internet access and service infrastructure for grassroots institutions like cooperative and non-profits,
• creating and maintaining associations to facilitate the sharing of Internet access among groups of people,
• piloting and prototyping a new type of neighbourhood/district-level community network that includes physical spaces and regular face-to-face meetings for governance, training and engaging people, cultural activities, etc ,
• demystification of technology and emancipation of citizens in building and operating their own technology infrastructures,
• using locally-run services (e.g. secure messaging, file share, video streaming, internet radio)
• organising ExarcheiaNet projects in a P2P way by facilitation rather than hierarchy and project management, building in peer-to-peer knowledge sharing peer to peer, and allowing networks to grow and connect to each other in an organic bottom-up method rather than ‘funded’ and top down.

Greece is home to a number of community network projects, each following their own governance model, such as Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN), Sarantaporo.gr, and Wireless Thessaloniki. Community network projects bring with them lower data costs, often faster internet speeds than telecom-provided internet, and benefits of privately owned infrastructure such as privacy and locally run services.

From June 12-16, you can join Exarcheia Net for a series of workshops,  where Exarcheia residents will join in on a public introductory workshop and guests from Freifunk (Germany), Altermundi (Argentina), Guifi.net (Catalonia), Ninux (Italy) and OpenFreenet (India) will lead an open debate on building self-organized community networks at the neighborhood level.

Exarcheia Net is looking for more people interested in working  “hands-on” in community networking and setting up p2p infrastructure. To connect with Exarcheia Net, check out the Wiki or join a weekly meeting by contacting James Lewis: lewis.james at gmail dot com.  

Lead image “Le libraire d’Exarchia – Athènes, Grèce” by ActuaLitté, Flickr

The post Athens’ community wifi project Exarcheia Net brings internet to refugee housing projects appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This is an excerpt from the upcoming book Funding the Cooperative City: Community finance and the economy of civic spaces.

In the past decade, with the economic crisis and the transformation of welfare societies, NGOs, community organisations and civic developers – City Makers – established some of the most important services and spaces in formerly vacant buildings, underused areas and neglected neighbourhoods. Consolidating their presence in the regenerated spaces, these initiatives are increasingly looking into the power of the local community, the dispersed crowd and new financial actors to invest in their activities.

Two years ago, the cultural centre La Casa Invisible collected over 20.000 euros for the partial renovation of the building including the installation of fire doors and electric equipments to assure the safety of their revitalized 19th century building in the centre of Málaga. A few months later, East London’s Shuffle Festival, operating in a cemetery park at Mile End, collected 60.000 pounds for the renovation and community use of The Lodge, an abandoned building at the corner of the cemetery. In order to implement their campaigns, both initiatives used the online platforms Goteo and Spacehive that specialise in the financing of specific community projects. The fact that many of the hundreds of projects supported by civic crowdfunding platforms are community spaces, underlines two phenomena: the void left behind by a state that gradually withdrew from certain community services, and the urban impact of community capital created through the aggregation of individual resources.

The question if community capital can really cure the voids left behind by the welfare state has generated fierce debates in the past years. This discussion was partly launched by Brickstarter, the beta platform specialised in architectural crowdfunding, when it introduced to the public the idea of crowdfunded urban infrastructures. Those who opposed Brickstarter, did in fact protest against the Conservative agenda of the “Big Society”, the downsizing of welfare society and the “double taxation” of citizens: “Why should we spend on public services when our taxes should pay for them?”

Nevertheless, in the course of the economic crisis, many European cities witnessed the emergence of a parallel welfare infrastructure: the volunteer-run hospitals and social kitchens in Athens, the occupied schools, gyms and theatres of Rome or the community-run public squares of Madrid are only a few examples of this phenomenon. European municipalities responded to this challenge in a variety of ways. Some cities like Athens began to examine how to adjust their regulations to enable the functioning of community organisations, others created new legal frameworks to share public duties with community organisations in contractual ways, like Bologna with the Regulation of the Commons. In several other cities, administrations began experimenting with crowdfunding public infrastructures, like in Ghent or Rotterdam, where municipalities offer match-funding to support successful campaigns, or with participatory budgeting, like in Paris, Lisbon or Tartu. Yet other public administrations in the UK, the Netherlands or Austria invited the private sphere to invest in social services in the form of Social Impact Bonds, where the work of NGOs or social enterprises is pre-financed by private actors who are paid back with a return on their investment in case the evaluation of the delivered service is positive.

Largo Residencias, Lisbon. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Alternatively, some cities chose to support local economy and create more resilient neighbourhoods with self-sustaining social services through grant systems. The City of Lisbon, for instance, after identifying a number of “priority neighbourhoods” that need specific investments to help social inclusion and ameliorate local employment opportunities, launched the BIP/ZIP program that grants selected civic initiatives with up to 40.000 euros. The granted projects, chosen through an open call, have to prove their economic sustainability and have to spend the full amount in one year. The BIP/ZIP project, operating since 2010, gave birth to a number of self-sustaining civic initiatives, including social kitchens that offer affordable food and employment for locals or cooperative hotels that use their income from tourism to support social and cultural projects. In 2015 the experience of the BIP/ZIP matured in a Community-Led Local Development Network, as identified by the European Union’s Cohesion Policy 2014-2020, which will grant the network access to part of the Structural Funds of the City of Lisbon. The CLLD is a unique framework for the democratic distribution of public funds: it foresees the management of the funding to be shared between administration, private and civic partners, with none of them having the majority of shares and votes.

While, as the previous cases demonstrate, the public sector plays an important role in strengthening civil society in some European cities, many others witnessed the emergence of new welfare services provided by the civic economy completely outside or without any help by the public sector. In some occasions, community contribution appears in the form of philanthropist donation to support the construction, renovation or acquisition of playgrounds, parks, stores, pubs or community spaces. In others, community members act as creditors or investors in an initiative that needs capital, in exchange for interest, shares or the community ownership of local assets, for instance, shops in economically challenged neighbourhoods. Crowdfunding platforms also help coordinating these processes: the French Bulb in Town platform, specialized in community investment, gathered over 1 million euros for the construction of a small hydroelectric plant in Ariège that brings investors a return of 7% per year.

ExRotaprint, Berlin. Photo (cc) Eutropian

Besides aggregating resources from individuals to support particular cases, community infrastructure projects are also helped by ethical investors. When two artists mobilised their fellow tenants to save the listed 10.000 m2 Rotaprint in the Berlin district of Wedding, they invited several organisations working on moving properties off the speculation market and eliminating the debts attached to land, to help them buy the buildings. While the complex was bought and is renovated with the help of an affordable loan by the CoOpera pension fund, the land was bought by the Edith Maryon and Trias Foundations and is rented (with a long-term lease, a “heritable building right”) to ExRotaprint, a non-profit company, making it impossible to resell the shared property. With its sustainable cooperative ownership model, ExRotaprint provides affordable working space for manufacturers as well as social and cultural initiatives whose rents cover the loans and the land’s rental fee.

Creating community ownership over local assets and keeping profits benefit local residents and services is a crucial component of resilient neighbourhoods. Challenging the concept of value and money, many local communities began to experiment with complementary currencies like the Brixton or Bristol Pounds. Specific organisational forms like Community Land Trusts or cooperatives have been instrumental in helping residents create inclusive economic ecosystems and sustainable development models.

Homebaked, Liverpool. Photo (cc) Eutropian

In Liverpool’s Anfield neighbourhood, a community bakery is the symbol of economic empowerment: renovated and run by the Homebaked Community Land Trust established in April 2012, the bakery – initially backed by the Liverpool Biennale – offers employment opportunities for locals, and it is the catalyst of local commerce and the centre of an affordable housing project that is developed in the adjacent parcels. Similarly, a few kilometres east, local residents established another CLT to save the Toxteth neighborhood from demolition. The Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust, with the help of social investors and a young collective of architects (winning the prestigious Turner prize), organised a scheme that includes affordable housing, community-run public facilities and shops.

The economic self-determination of a community has been explored at the scale of an entire neighbourhood by the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative in Southern Rotterdam. The cooperative is an umbrella organisation that connects workspaces with shopkeepers, local makers, social foundations, and the local food market: they have developed an energy collective in cooperation with an energy supplier that realises substantial savings for businesses in the neighbourhood; a cleaning service that ensures that cleaning work is commissioned locally; and a food delivery service for elderly people in the neighbourhood.

With community organisations and City Makers acquiring significant skills to manage welfare services, urban infrastructures and inclusive urban development processes, it is time for their recognition by established actors in the public and private sectors. The EU’s Urban Agenda, developing guidelines for a more sustainable and inclusive development of European cities, can be a catalyst of this recognition: it can prompt the creation of new instruments and policies to enable such community-led initiatives. While the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020 has developed the CLLD framework, not many Member States chose to use this instrument. The Urban Agenda could therefore envision the adoption of more methods to be experimented by City Administrations, to allow for a more sustainable and inclusive allocation of resources. Whether through matchfunding, grant systems, or simply removing the legal barriers of cooperatives, land trusts and community investment, municipalities could join the civil society in developing a more resilient civic economy with accessible jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, and social integration.

Lead image from homebaked.org, Liverpool UK. All other images from Eutropian.

The post Community Capital in Action: New Financial Models for Resilient Cities appeared first on P2P Foundation.

You can also participate now, before the event itself, by contributing your opinions and examples on the hackpads below.

If you plan to attend and want to receive more information, fill this form.

1. Open Assembly: “What Economy for the Commons?” – Exploring convergence between SSE and commons (Saturday June 10, 12:15pm to 2:15pm)

We will hold a 2-hour session with a short framing and then open discussion to explore our mutual understanding of how the commons and social and solidarity economy relate to each other. It is also an opportunity to discover the European Commons Assembly (ECA), make new introductions, and connect with local commoners.

There are a variety of views on the relationship between the Social and Solidarity Economy and commons. Some see the two as vitally complementary, while others are more hesitant. Where specifically are there points of convergence, and what aspects are crucial for the commons? Where do they diverge? How are these two movements growing together?

Hackpad: In order to frame this debate, we encourage you to share views on this subject in this hackpad – there are already some opinions there. There is also a space for links to resources that you wish to share (link).

2. Workshop: European policy for SSE and Commons (Sunday June 11, 10:00am to 12:00pm)

After the Assembly (ECA in Athens 1), we focus on developing policy for the commons and SEE. The rationale for this is laid out in the ECA’s SSE proposal Commons Social and Solidarity Economy.

This proposal was the outcome of a collaboration of members of the Assembly in the lead-up to our first meeting in Brussels at the European Parliament. The civil society movement(s) for the commons and SSE need to continue to develop methods and content for interacting with the public institutions. One of the ways the ECA proposes to do this is to focus on production of knowledge, via the sharing of tools and strategies that can be relevant for this interaction with policy institutions. In this workshop, we will explore some of these strategies. We also use it to collect concrete proposals for the next Forum for the Social and Solidarity Economy in Brussels at the EP.

Hackpad: Read more, contribute ideas, and share resources before through this hackpad.

Photo by massonth

Photo by Nonac_Digi

The post The European Commons Assembly in Athens: UniverSSE Congress (event) appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Click here to support the campaign

General Information

UniverSSE 2017 is the 4th European Congress for Social Solidarity Economy that will take place in Athens from the 9th till the 11th of June.

Cooperatives, grassroot initiatives, SSE organizations, groups and people that work to promote and advance SSE from all over Europe will meet for the event.

During the 3day Congress, we are going to have the opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas, experiences, expertise and common strategies around SSE. We consider SSE to be a dynamic space that spreads all over Europe, in which people organize their social and economic activity in many different ways

This event is a great opportunity to enhance SSE’s visibility in Greece and to build strong connections amongst people, groups and coops on a European level.

We are also happy to announce that the 6th General Assembly of Ripess EU will be held in Athens as well, as part of the Congress.

Main features

The Congress has 7 thematic zones that cover all the areas of Social and Solidarity Economy. In each thematic there will be discussions, presentations of initiatives and labs.

The thematic zones are:

1. Concepts, forms and fields of social solidarity economy and cooperativism

The universe of S.S.E is characterized by a vast range of operations that work in various sectors of the economy, such as food , education, trade, new technologies, alternative financing, communication, tourism and more.

Horizontal management, role distribution, labour relations, conflict management, social and economic sustainability, networking, marketing strategies, social impact and decision making process are some of the challenges that we want to discuss! And of course some questions: Social Economy? Solidarity Economy? Cooperative Economy? Social Entrepreneurship? What about Sharing Economy?

2. Responsible consumption, production and climate change

The globalized neo-liberal system seeks to maximize shareholder profits to the detriment of human and planetary resources, leading to climate change and severe social damage. The broad vision of solidarity economy is based on sustainability and this implies the relocalisation of production and consumption (food, renewable energies, goods, services, culture…) as specified in Sustainable Development Goal 12. Solidarity economy, by implementing this approach, (re)builds solidarity at all levels, empowers citizens to create and implement alternatives in direction of food sovereignty, reconnects rural and urban society, and significantly contributes to fighting climate change (SDG 13).

3. Practices of SSE on social integration with a special focus on refugees’ issues

Crisis management or empowerment policies for social groups experiencing exclusion? Can SSE transform the design and implementation of social policy in the direction of solidarity? How is “social work” affected in the context of crisis and what does the mutual help model imply? Bright examples of social solidarity initiatives towards refugees as housing projects from self-organized initiatives and social entrepreneurship will be presented.

4. Social innovation: Research, technology, education and tools for SSE

A fundamental part of the social innovation occurring in the solidarity economy is its pedagogic character. Pedagogic in the ways that education-related movements practice teaching and learning and, more importantly, in the way that take part in a movement with transformational impact on the personal, societal and political levels.

This session would like to explore how social innovation and knowledge production and sharing is practiced in the SSE: How assemblies act as an educational method and how novel pedagogic methods incorporate democracy as educational principle? What is the role of technology for the capturing and reproduction of the manifested social innovation and how the knowledge produced on the ground can be systematised and distributed? What new forms of research and educational institutions are bred by a practice based in solidarity and collective well-being in relation to the public, private and third sectors?

5. Commons: Approaches and practices on digital, natural, urban, cultural common goods

The movements for the defense, recuperation and development of Commons, consist of a growing wave of practices of mutuality and a proposal of a social and economic model of organization beyond the state and/or market bipolarity. This thematic aims to facilitate the exchange of experiences and self-management of Commons by the communities of their users in various fields – from the natural resources (water, land, food, energy etc.) to digital commons and from the urban space to knowledge production. Moreover, it hopes to enrich the discussion that already has started around the conception of institutional and legal frameworks for the establishment of Commons, in the prospect of radical social transformations.

6. Public policies (local, national, European level) promoting SSE: From whom, for who, what for.

Recently, a series of framework laws have been introduced in various countries of Europe (and not only Europe) with the intention to recognize Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE), to regulate a number of issues related to the respective entities belonging to the universe of SSE, to define the way through which the state at its various levels (central, regional, local) interacts with SSE.

To what extent the new public policies enable or restrain the transformative potential of SSE? Are the necessary conditions for the creation of a public space between SSE and the state assured? Are there any examples of local governance with a radical direction? How are local communities involved with the design and implementation of policies affecting their everyday life?

7. Open space / Free zone

This thematic is created in order to host any discussion, presentation, lab that does not fit in the above categories.

Hundreds of groups, that are on the SSE field across Europe, will join the Congress to discuss, exchange practices and experiences, create tools that will inspire the Society and plan all together a common future.

Our Goal is to Democratize Economy, Emancipate Society and Empower Change.

Why this is important

Our motivation is to include in the Congress as many key players in the field of SSE as possible.
Spread around Europe there are many different groups linked to SSE that are working on a local or a national level. In order to build a stronger network in between these groups we want to create a space of cooperation. So this summer in Athens the UniverSSE2017 congress will take place. It will be the meeting point for people, collective ventures, SSE organizations and groups all around Europe, who work to promote and enhance SSE. Based on the 7 thematic spaces of the Congress, we will discuss and exchange experiences, ideas, expertise and conclusions around SSE and decide on the next steps to implement strong cooperation on a European level.

These are the reasons that we want to organize the UniverSSE 2017 congress.

The participation of everybody is crucial in order to achieve the goals described above.
We want initiatives from all countries to be able to participate and share their experiences, especially groups from countries that face the bigger financial and social problems.
Everybody has a place in the SSE universe, regardless of the financial conditions, lets not forget that Solidarity is a building block of this economy.

Read the full text and support the campaign through Goteo’s Website.

The post Athens UniverSSE 2017 Congress: no one left behind! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Greek edition of “Think Like a Commoner”

After the governing coalition Syriza capitulated to creditors’ draconian demands in 2016, its credibility as a force for political change declined. Despite its best intentions, it could not deliver. The Greek people might understandably ask:  Have we reached the limits of what the conventional Left can achieve within “representative democracies” whose sovereignty is so compromised by global capital?  Beyond such political questions, citizens might also wonder whether centralized bureaucratic programs in this age of digital networks can ever act swiftly and responsively.  Self-organized, bottom-up federations of commoning often produce much better results.

Pummeled by some harsh realities and sobered by the limits of Left politics, many Greeks are now giving the commons a serious look as a political option. This was my impression after a recent visit to Athens where I tried to give some visibility to the recently published Greek translation of my book Think Like a Commoner.  In Greek, the book is entitled Κοινά: Μία σύντομη εισαγωγή).  Besides a public talk at a bookstore (video here), I spoke at the respected left Nicos Poulantzas Institute (video with Greek translation & English version), which was eager to host a discussion about commons and commoning.

Re-inventing law for the Commons, David Bollier from Institouto Nicos Poulantzas on Vimeo.

In my talk, I suggested that the Greek state might wish to re-imagine “the economy,” politics and law by considering what commons could accomplish (and are accomplishing), and how state policies might support commoning. Since the left cannot necessarily advance its larger agenda of social justice, fairness and human rights through the state – subservient as it is to neoliberal circuits of global power – it should entertain how the commons might open up some new solution-sets.

To that end, I discussed the promise of relocalized food and agriculture systems; the potential of re-imagining city policies and programs as a commons; the advantages of academic commons to more efficiently generate and share scholarship and scientific knowledge; the power of open source software and open design and manufacturing; the ecological wisdom of traditional agricultural, forestry and fishery commons; and the ways in which law could decriminalize and support commoning, moving beyond many pathologies of bureaucracy.

At the macro-scale, a commons-based economy could also help a country escape the massive inefficiencies, ecological costs, predatory behaviors and corruption associated with the conventional economy — while generating new forms nonmarket provisioning and socially legitimate political power.

I was told about medical care commons that have sprung up in Athens in recent years.  Staffed by volunteers and donated/low-cost supplies, the system is a desperate social improvisation to help people meet basic medical needs at a time when public hospitals turn people away.  The system has become a respected alternative system for medical care, engaging people as real human beings and not as mere “clients” or numbers. When patients don’t use all the pills they are given, for example, they return them, so someone else can use them. A kind of social solidarity has emerged. Supplies and personnel are obviously limited, but some aspects of healthcare have been reinvented as flexible modes of human caring, escaping the economic and social logic of conventional healthcare.

Of necessity, Greeks have established other commons as well – for food, housing and fuel.  There are active efforts to make Greek academic research and data more available as a commons, going beyond the logic of open platforms.  A Greek hacker community, the Libre Space Foundation, has even built the first open source satellite and ground station network – UPSat and SatNOGS — from readily available and affordable tools.

These are the sorts of initiatives that the traditional left may regard as interesting, but not politically significant. I think that is a huge mistake. In that gap of understanding lies the potential for inventing a new type of climate-friendly, socially just economy and political culture.

At this moment of transition, therefore, when the commons seems to be acquiring new traction and visibility in Greece, I am thrilled that my book Think Like a Commoner is now available there.

I wish to thank George Papanikolaou and Andreas Karitzis for their role in organizing the translation of my book, and Efstathiou Anastasio of Angelus Novus Editions for publishing and promoting the Greek edition.  My thanks also to two commons scholars, Antonis Broumas and Stavros Stravrides, for graciously sharing their thoughts on the commons at the bookstore event.  A salute, too, to the Nicos Poulantzas Institute for hosting my talk.

For any readers of Greek, here are a few press interviews with me and reviews of my book – in Epohi; in Avgi, a collective blog (and here); in efsyn; and in Left.

Even though it was cold and blustery — Athens in February! — I had a great time, including a visit to the Acropolis and Agora. Next time: longer discussions, a day at the National Museum, and a visit to Greek islands.

Cross-posted from Bollier.org

Photo by stevegarfield

The post The Greek Left Takes Stock of the Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.