Radical Realism for Climate Justice. A Civil Society Response to the Challenge of Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible, and it is our best hope of achieving environmental and social justice, of containing the impacts of a global crisis that was born out of historical injustice and highly unequal responsibility.

To do so will require a radical shift away from resource-intensive and wasteful production and consumption patterns and a deep transformation towards ecological sustainability and social justice. Demanding this transformation is not ‘naïve’ or ‘politically unfeasible’, it is radically realistic.

This publication is a civil society response to the challenge of limiting global warming to 1.5°C while also paving the way for climate justice. It brings together the knowledge and experience of a range of international groups, networks and organisations the Heinrich Böll Foundation has worked with over the past years, who in their political work, research and practice have developed the radical, social and environmental justice-based agendas political change we need across various sectors.

Radical Realism for Climate Justice includes the following eight volumes:

A Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production by Oil Change International shows that the carbon embedded in already producing fossil fuel reserves will take us beyond agreed climate limits. Yet companies and governments continue to invest in and approve vast exploration and expansion of oil, coal and gas. This chapter explores the urgency and opportunity for fossil fuel producers to begin a just and equitable managed decline of fossil fuel production in line with the Paris Agreement goals.

Another Energy is Possible by Sean Sweeney, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) argues that the political fight for social ownership and democratic control of energy lies at the heart of the struggle to address climate change. Along with a complete break with investor-focused neoliberal policy, this “two shift solution” will allow us to address some of the major obstacles to reducing energy demand and decarbonizing supply. “Energy democracy” must address the need for system-level transformations that go beyond energy sovereignty and self-determination.

Zero Waste Circular Economy A Systemic Game-Changer to Climate Change by Mariel Vilella, Zero Waste Europe explains and puts numbers to how the transformation of our consumption and production system into a zero waste circular economy provides the potential for emission reductions far beyond what is considered in the waste sector. Ground-breaking experiences in cities and communities around the world are already showing that these solutions can be implemented today, with immediate results.

Degrowth – A Sober Vision of Limiting Warming to 1.5°C by Mladen Domazet, Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia, reports from a precarious, but climate-stabilized year 2100 to show how a planet of over 7 billion people found diversification and flourishing at many levels of natural, individual and community existence, and turned away from the tipping points of catastrophic climate change and ecosystem collapse. That world is brought to life by shedding the myths of the pre-degrowth era – the main myth being that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is viable while maintaining economic activities focused on growth.

System Change on a Deadline. Organizing Lessons from Canada’s Leap Manifesto by The Leap by Avi Lewis, Katie McKenna and Rajiv Sicora of The Leap recounts how intersectional coalitions can create inspiring, detailed pictures of the world we need, and deploy them to shift the goalposts of what is considered politically possible. They draw on the Leap story to explore how coalition-building can break down traditional “issue silos”, which too often restrict the scope and impact of social justice activism.

La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by the international peasants movement La Via Campesina highlights how industrialized agriculture and the corporate food system are at the center of the climate crisis and block pathways to a 1.5°C world. In their contribution, La Via Campesina outline key aspects of system change in agriculture towards peasant agro-ecology and give concrete experiences of organized resistance and alternatives that are already making change happen.

Re-Greening the Earth: Protecting the Climate through Ecosystem Restoration by Christoph Thies, Greenpeace Germany calls to mind that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and the destruction of forests and peatlands contribute to global warming and dangerous climate change. His chapter makes the case for ecosystem restoration: Growing forests and recovering peatlands can sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and protect both climate and biodiversity. This can make untested and potentially risky climate technologies unnecessary – if emissions from burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions are phased out fast enough.

Modelling 1.5°C-Compliant Mitigation Scenarios Without Carbon Dioxide Removal by Christian Holz, Carleton University and Climate Equity Reference Project (CERP) reviews recent studies that demonstrate that it is still possible to achieve 1.5°C without relying on speculative and potentially deleterious technologies. This can be done if national climate pledges are increased substantially in all countries immediately, international support for climate action in developing countries is scaled up, and mitigation options not commonly included in mainstream climate models are pursued.

We hope that the experiences and political demands, the stories and recommendations compiled in this publication will be as inspiring to all of you as they are to us.

Lili Fuhr and Linda Schneider

Please help us spread the word about this 1.5°C collection:

Twitter
Web link to share pics

Photo by Jason A. Samfield

The post Radical Realism for Climate Justice appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The Plot is more than interesting. It touches something deep within us – the yearning for connection, for conviviality, for joining up with people in a shared place that together we can co-create, a place where community can be meaningfully experienced and strengthened.

I discovered ‘The Plot’ in the early spring. I was alone. Even in it early stages I was a bit astonished by the level of creativity and care so evident in its design. Symbols meaningful to me were embedded, from the gate to the sacred circle to the radiating garden beds that bore such nourishment in the months that followed.

While the artistic invitation of ‘the plot’ created the possibility for a new urban commons, the people who were drawn to it shaped it into a vibrant intergenerational, inter-racial, inter-faith common space where all were welcomed; quite extraordinary, to say the least!

One Sunday, at the gathering for what became the weekly pot-luck feast, I met people from all the major faiths, including people practicing traditional indigenous spiritual traditions. Fifteen languages were in play, maybe more. The youngest was less than four; the eldest I am guessing somewhere in his 9th decade.

The unfolding this space over the months is cause for celebration. But it is more, and not just in a context of one neighborhood.

In the unprecedented period of human history we are living, it is increasingly difficult for more and more people to cope. Climate change, rising inequality, the growing precariousness of work and environmental degradation feed fear, powerlessness, grief and alienation. Loneliness and a growing mental health crisis are symptomatic of the impacts.

Originally a creative art installation that aimed to engage citizens in its creation as well as culinary benefits of a collective food growing experiment, the Plot has been an amazing unfolding of community building and the creating of a new commons. By providing the access to the property, the local government enabled the blossoming of a connective conviviality and new relationships, not to mention the nutritious fresh vegetables I and others were able to regularly harvest.

Citizen led initiatives such as this are a growing trend globally, one often referred to as the commons movement. In cities like Bologna (Italy), Barcelona and Madrid, to name but three, local governments are creating a collaborating environment and policy to actively encourage and respond to citizen led propositions focused on creating commons for citizen and environmental benefit.

It is an idea whose time has come. The plot is clear. The Newton ‘Plot’ not only needs to be have its access to the land extended, the city has an opportunity to use it as a lens through which to explore its local government becoming an active agent in encouraging the multiplication of such initiatives. I hope it does.

Republished from theplot.ca

About the video: The P.L.O.T (Peas. Lettuce. Onions. Tomatoes) is a free food-sharing garden in Surrey (BC, Canada) which connects generations, diverse cultures and socio-economic groups through fresh food, art, culture and a shared sense of wonder of the natural world. Made by Jasmeen Virk, Anna Choi, Yasmeen Hakimi as part of Moving Images course.

The post The Plot: A short documentary on a community garden appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“In Quebec cities, the church is the landmark,” historian Paul Mackey says. “In Europe you have castles — here, we’ve built churches.”

From the arrival of the first French settlers in the 1600s to the last half of the 20th century, the Catholic Church and the rest of society in Quebec were tightly intertwined in a way difficult to imagine in the rest of North America. Hospitals and schools were church-run, and priests played a key role in political and family life in the province.

“Since many people finished school in grade nine, the priests, who were more educated, became social and political leaders,” Mackey says.

St.Gabriel’s Church of Scotland in Old Montreal 1889. Photo by Philippe Du Berger via Flickr

A wave of nationalization and secularization in the 1960s, known as the Quiet Revolution, upended that dynamic almost overnight. “This was also the time of the birth control pill and the Second Vatican Council which called for the church to be more open to the world,” Mackey says. “At the same time there was a political transition in Quebec, which put hospitals and schools in the hands of the state, and made higher education available to more people.”

As a result, church attendance plummeted, from more than 80 percent in the mid-1960s to nine percent in 2012, according to a study by University of Ottawa researcher Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme. Data from the Quebec Religious Heritage Council shows that between 2003 and 2016, one in six Quebec churches closed its doors. By the late 20th century, many of the buildings had fallen into abandon and disrepair.

“Two hundred and thirty-three churches still belong to us, but since 1980 we’ve had to sell 42,” says Rémy Gagnon, head of the department of buildings and religious heritage at the Quebec City regional diocese, the second largest in the province. “You can see the rhythm that we’re talking about.”

But now, with the support of municipal governments, residents, and religious leaders, some of these centuries-old churches are in the process of being transformed into community hubs and cultural centers. And it’s not just Catholic churches. Anglican and other Protestant churches are also changing, Mackey says, pointing to St. Michael’s Anglican Church, now a library, and the former Lévis Anglican Church, now a concert hall appropriately baptized L’Anglicane. Mackey has observed several innovative church conversions, often to libraries or concert halls.

“I know of one church in Shawinigan [between Montreal and Quebec City] that was turned into a bar called The Confessional,” he recalls. “Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long.”

Of Quebec City’s four “giant” churches, two — Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Saint-Charles — have closed in the past ten years. A third, the Quebec Basilica, remains open, but a nearby Augustinian convent has become a health resort. The fourth, Saint-Roch, still holds regular masses. However, it has rented out spaces which once held reliquaries, to local fashion designers and to a nonprofit that operates a communal food fridge. Another vast church, Saint-Esprit, which closed in 2000, now houses the Quebec School of Circus Arts.

Citizens Take Charge on Transforming Church Buildings

Conserving the church as a gathering place is a top priority for Edouard Blanchet, coordinator of Espaces d’Initiatives, a citizens’ group working on the transformation of Saint-Charles. That building, in the heart of the working-class neighborhood of Limoilou, has sat empty since its closure in 2012.

Blanchet, 29, talks with overflowing enthusiasm of plans to turn the church into a coworking space with a café, a neighborhood history exhibit, a daycare, and a small public garden with a play area.

“There is a lot of concrete in this neighborhood; it traps heat,” Blanchet says. “The garden will be amazing in the summer.”

Sunset in Limoilou. Photo by Caroline Gagné via Flickr. 

In summer 2016, Blanchet and his colleagues organized a series of concerts and set up a sidewalk café and a small edible herb garden in front of the church, as a precursor to their plans for the interior. Their plans already have the support of the parish priest, who holds the keys.

“We want to make the place profitable, but keep it open for everyone,” he says. “This building was maintained for decades by the nickels and dimes of people’s offerings, and it has to continue to belong to them.”

Blanchet estimates that in two years, the building inspection, the technical plan, and the business plan needed to get the center running will be complete. He hopes the multi-purpose center will be a unifying force for his neighborhood, which is torn between its working-class roots and a wave of recent gentrification.

“We want it to be intercultural, intergenerational, and inter-class,” Blanchet says.

Through his multifaceted business, he wants to maintain the church and create opportunities for neighbors to meet. Blanchet is hoping to receive city funding and crowdfund more extensively once his business plan is complete.

“These buildings have lost their initial purpose, but we can’t lose them,” Blanchet says, adding, “Just doing this is an act of faith — but you’ve got to believe.”

Preserving the space also matters to the Monastère des Augustines in Old Quebec, which was founded in 1639 and housed more than 200 nuns at its peak. As recently as 1958, a new wing wasbuilt onto the vast structure adjacent to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, the oldest operational hospital in North America. Now, only 11 nuns and a postulant live on the site. Excluding the postulant, only one nun is under 40 and most are over 80. As the world of skilled professions opened up to women, becoming a cloistered nun, once the only way to work as a nurse or teacher, lost its appeal, explains museum guide Amélie Nadeau. “As early as the 1970s, the nuns were contemplating what to do with all this space,” says Nadeau.

The remaining nuns live in one wing of the monastery; the rest was ceded to a trust and now houses two museums, a historic chapel, meeting and concert spaces, a restaurant with an emphasis on local food, and a health retreat. Nuns’ cells have become small but cozy hotel rooms. It opened in 2015 after an investment of $41 million, a combined investment by the Canadian government, Quebec’s provincial government, Quebec City and the Augustine order.

An inside view of Monastère des Augustines. Photo by Museomix Quebec via Flickr. 

“The sisters wanted the monastery to be a public place, to mark their legacy of serving the public, and to have a mission to sustain people’s health, because they were nursing sisters,” says project manager Denis Robitaille.

Guests stay for 3 to 14 days, wandering the vast, serene halls, attending daily yoga sessions, feasting on healthy, local fare, and going to the occasional concerts, which are open to the public.

“For the past 20 or 30 years in Canada, people have been dealing with stress, anxiety, overwork, and over-connection,” says Nadeau. “People come here to learn how to breathe, how to meditate, how to feed themselves. Although we’re not a religious retreat, the chapel is open for people to pray or sit in silence. We want people to slow down, and everyone does that differently.”

From Church to School of Circus Arts

Slowing down, however, is not part of the plan for the Église St-Esprit, now the Quebec School of Circus Arts. The church closed in 2000 and reopened as a circus school in 2003. Several hundred students, from kindergarteners attending after-school programs to professionals in their 20s, learn the finer points of clowning, juggling, dance and trapeze artistry. Half of the older students come from outside Canada. Dozens of schoolchildren attend after-school programs that mix tutoring in school subjects with circus arts. The school’s annual “circus days” festival draws thousands.

Église St-Esprit, which now houses the Quebec School of Circus Arts. Photo by Ruby Irene Pratka/Shareable

“We needed a new building, and the bishop wanted to let this church go,” explains the school’s director, Yves Neveu, whose office is in the former baptistery. “I took a look inside and said, ‘You can’t close this beautiful place.'”

Where the organ once sat, aspiring acrobats stretch on padded mats. A juggling class is underway in the old wedding chapel and trapeze artists fly above the altar. Anyone can come and watch the students practice. “Every now and then, someone will poke their head into the wedding chapel and say, ‘I got married here.'” says Neveu.

Gagnon, the diocese representative, says he’s “very proud” to see the century-old church converted into a school.

“We hired an architect, and worked with the church to remove all the relics and things like that; we installed the supports for the trapezes, but a lot of things have been conserved,” says Neveu, pointing out several frescoes of saints along the walls. “We needed depth in a building, and this gives us that. The walls inspire us, and the fact that it has some history makes the students treat the place with more respect.”

Dominique Drolet wants to use that history to breathe new life into St-Jean-Baptiste Church. The vast grey stone church at the center of the Faubourg-St-Jean-Baptiste neighborhood, to which it gave its name, closed in 2015. Drolet and her neighbors are working on plans to transform the church into a genealogy center.

“Traditionally, the church was the keeper of the archives,” she says. “We won’t have the paper archives here, but we will have the virtual archives. There will be permanent exhibitions and school trips, and a training center for traditional arts as well.”

“The city financed a feasibility study and told us it would be very positive for tourists, not to mention locals,” says Drolet, who gave tours of the church when it was open. “Families from around Quebec and the United States would come here year after year to see the church where their great-grandparents were baptized. They were very disappointed to see it closed.”

Profitability is a major challenge for all of these ventures, especially considering their vast, aging buildings. At its closure, St-Jean-Baptiste was expected to need over $10 million in repairs.

“The church is in good shape now, but we can’t expect it to remain that way for 15 years,” says Drolet. She and her fellow volunteers are raising money through a crowdfunding program and a partnership with a local brewery, which gives the project a percentage of sales.

“Whether you’re a believer or not, the church is still a meeting place,” Drolet says. “It’s the heart of the neighborhood, and we’re going to give it back that role.”

Header image of Église St-Esprit, which now is home to the Quebec School of Circus Arts, by Ruby Irene Pratka/Shareable

Cross-posted from Shareable.

The post Quebec’s Vacant Church Buildings Resurrected as Community Spaces appeared first on P2P Foundation.

At its Winnipeg 2016 Biennial Convention, the Canadian Liberal Party passed a resolution in support of “Basic Income.” The resolution, called “Poverty Reduction: Minimum Income,” contains the following rationale: “The ever growing gap between the wealthy and the poor in Canada will lead to social unrest, increased crime rates and violence… Savings in health, justice, education and social welfare as well as the building of self-reliant, taxpaying citizens more than offset the investment.”

The reason many people on the left are excited about proposals such as universal basic income is that they acknowledges economic inequality and its social consequences. However, a closer look at how UBI is expected to work reveals that it is intended to provide political cover for the elimination of social programs and the privatization of social services. The Liberal Party’s resolution is no exception. Calling for “Savings in health, justice, education and social welfare as well as the building of self-reliant, taxpaying citizen,” clearly means social cuts and privatization.

UBI has been endorsed by neoliberal economists for a long time. One of its early champions was the patron saint of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman. In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman argues for a “negative income tax” as a means to deliver a basic income. After arguing that private charity is the best way to alleviate poverty, and praising the “private … organizations and institutions” that delivered charity for the poor in the capitalist heyday of the nineteenth century, Friedman blames social programs for the disappearance of private charities: “One of the major costs of the extension of governmental welfare activities has been the corresponding decline in private charitable activities.”

To Friedman and his many powerful followers, the cause of poverty is not enough capitalism. Thus, their solution is to provide a “basic income” as a means to eliminate social programs and replace them with private organizations. Friedman specifically argues that “if enacted as a substitute for the present rag bag of measures directed at the same end, the total administrative burden would surely be reduced.”

Friedman goes on to list some the “rag bag” of measures he would hope to eliminate: direct welfare payments and programs of all kinds, old age assistance, social security, aid to dependent children, public housing, veterans’ benefits, minimum-wage laws, and public health programs, hospitals and mental institutions.

Friedman also spends a few paragraphs worrying whether people who depend on “Basic Income” should have the right to vote, since politically enfranchised dependents could vote for more money and services at the expense of those who do not depend on these. Using the example of pension recipients in the United Kingdom, he concludes that they “have not destroyed, at least as yet, Britain’s liberties or its predominantly capitalistic system.”

Charles Murray, another prominent libertarian promoter of UBI, shares Friedman’s views. In an interview with PBS, he said: “America’s always been very good at providing help to people in need. It hasn’t been perfect, but they’ve been very good at it. Those relationships have been undercut in recent years by a welfare state that has, in my view, denuded the civic culture.” Like Friedman, Murray blames the welfare state for the loss of apparently effective private charity.

Murray adds: “The first rule is that the basic guaranteed income has to replace everything else — it’s not an add-on. So there’s no more food stamps; there’s no more Medicaid; you just go down the whole list. None of that’s left. The government gives money; other human needs are dealt with by other human beings in the neighborhood, in the community, in the organizations. I think that’s great.”

To the Cato Institute, the elimination of social programs is a part of the meaning of Universal Income. In an article about the Finish pilot project, the Institute defines UBI as “scrapping the existing welfare system and distributing the same cash benefit to every adult citizen without additional strings or eligibility criteria”. And in fact, the options being considered by Finland are constrained to limiting the amount of the basic income to the savings from the programs it would replace.

Photo courtesy of Julien Gregorio: https://flic.kr/p/H95TrQ

“Basic Income” Won’t Alleviate Poverty

From a social welfare point of view, the substitution of social programs with market-based and charitable provision of everything from health to housing, from child support to old-age assistance, clearly creates a multi-tier system in which the poorest may be able to afford some housing and health care, but clearly much less than the rich — most importantly, with no guarantee that the income will be sufficient for their actual need for health care, child care, education, housing, and other needs, which would be available only by way of for-profit markets and private charities.

Looking specifically at the question of whether Friedman’s proposal would actually improve the conditions of the poor, Hyman A. Minsky, himself a renowned and highly regarded economist, wrote the “The Macroeconomics of a Negative Income Tax.” Minsky looks at the outcome of a “social dividend,” which “transfers to every person alive, rich or poor, working or unemployed, young or old, a designated money income by right.” Minsky conclusively shows that such a program would “be inflationary even if budgets are balanced” and that the “rise in prices will erode the real value of benefits to the poor … and may impose unintended real costs upon families with modest incomes.” This means that any improved spending power afforded to citizens through an instrument such as UBI will be completely absorbed by higher prices for necessities.

Rather than alleviating poverty, UBI will most likely exacerbate it. The core reasoning is quite simple: the prices that people pay for housing and other necessities are derived from how much they can afford to pay in the first place. If you imagine they way housing is distributed in a modern capitalist society, the poorest get the worst housing, and the richest get the best. Giving everyone in the community, rich and poor alike, more money, would not allow the poorest to get better housing, it would just raise the price of housing.

If UBI came at the expense of other social programs, such as health care or child care, as Friedman intended, then the rising cost of housing would draw money away from other previously socially provisioned services, forcing families with modest incomes to improve their substandard housing by accepting worse or less childcare or healthcare, or vice versa. A disabled person whose mobility needs requires additional expenditure on accessible housing may not have enough of the basic income left for any additional health care they also require. Yet replacing means testing and special programs that address specific needs is the big idea of UBI.

The notion that we can solve inequality within capitalism by indiscriminately giving people money and leaving the provisioning of all social needs to corporations is extremely dubious. While this view is to be expected among those, like Murray and Friedman, who promote capitalism, it is not compatible with anticapitalism. UBI will end up in the hands of capitalists. We will be dependent on these same capitalists for everything we need. But to truly alleviate poverty, productive capacity must be directed toward creating real value for society and not toward “maximizing shareholder value” of profit-seeking investors.

Photo courtesy of Julien Gregorio:https://flic.kr/p/H95TrQ

There Is No Possibility of Another Kind of “Basic Income”

Many people don’t dispute the fact that establishment promoters of UBI are only doing it in order to eliminate social programs, but they imagine that another kind of basic income is possible. They call for a basic income that disregards the “deal” that Charles Murray advocates, but want UBI in addition to other social program, including means-tested benefits, protections for housing, guarantees of education and child care, and so on.This view ignores the political dimension of the question. Proposing UBI in addition to existing program mistakes, a general consensus for replacing social programs with a guaranteed income for a broad base of support for increasing social programs. But, no such broad base exists.

Writing in 1943, with the wartime policies of “full employment” enjoying wide support, Michal Kalecki wrote a remarkable essay entitled “The Political Aspects of Full Employment.” Kalecki opens by writing, “a solid majority of economists is now of the opinion that, even in a capitalist system, full employment may be secured by a government spending programme.” Though he is talking about full employment, which means an “adequate plan to employ all existing labour power,” the same is true of UBI. The majority of economists would agree that a plan to guarantee an income for all is possible.

However, Kelecki ultimately argues that full employment policies will be abandoned: “The maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. Indeed, under a regime of permanent full employment, ‘the sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and class-consciousness of the working class would grow.”

The conflict between the worker and the capitalist, or between the rich and the poor, can not be sidestepped simply by giving people money, if capitalists are allowed to continue to monopolize the supply of goods. Such a notion ignores the political struggle between the workers to maintain (or extend) the “basic income” and the capitalists to lower or eliminate it in order to strengthen their social position over the worker and to protect the power of “the sack.”

Business leaders fight tooth and nail against any increase of social benefits for workers. Under their dominion, only one kind of UBI is possible: the one supported by Friedman and Murray, the Canadian Liberal Party, and all others who want to subject workers to bosses. The UBI will be under constant attack, and unlike established social programs with planned outcomes that are socially entrenched and difficult to eliminate, UBI is just a number, one that can be reduced, eliminated, or simply allowed to fall behind inflation.

UBI does not alleviate poverty and turns social necessities into products for profit. To truly address inequality we need adequate social provisioning. If we want to reduce means testing and dependency on capitalist employment, we can do so with capacity planning. Our political demands should mandate sufficient housing, healthcare, education, childcare and all basic human necessities for all. Rather than a basic income, we need to demand and fight for a basic outcome — for the right to life and justice, not just the right to spend.

• Cross-posted from Furtherfield
• Lead image courtesy of Michael von der Lohe: https://flic.kr/p/GhRAk3

The post Universal Basic Income Is a Neoliberal Plot To Make You Poorer appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The first featured session is –

THE COMMONS, STATE POWER AND NEW POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

https://commonsspace.hackpad.com/THE-COMMONS-STATE-POWER-AND-NEW-POLITICAL-MOVEMENTS-tznP7zj0hTd

The Market/State is in crisis and representative democracy seems to be broken. Many argue that both problems need to be addressed for the sake of social coherence and security. We think, that adressing them properly implies rethinking the core ideas that state power and representative democracy are based upon.

The commons provides a framework that allows to protect traditional ways of living wherever people wish them to be protected, while at the same time enabling voluntary forms for creating new ones. It allows for thinking a fair, free and sustainable future. Hence, there is nothing in the current institutional arrangement or in the system of representation that truly recognizes and defends the commons. There are no emancipatory world-views nor special types of institutions — which helps explain why the commons are usually ignored.

It is often claimed that the Commons points to a way beyond both Market and State. We claim that the also provides a way to deepen democracy – if a multitude of people and political agents stand up for it. That is: if we want to strengthen the Commons and deepen democracy, we need to challenge how economic and political power are being shaped, channeled and reproduced – through market forces and through (the territorialization of) economic and political power via the State and the political apparatus. That is what commoners are doing! They take power and production into their own hands. Political parties and state institutions should support such efforts. Instead, their often-corrupt ways of „doing politics“ and their economic policies — neoliberal, developmentalist and/or extractivist — ignore or even criminalize the commons and commoning.

During the last decade, several new political movements have challenged the forces that solidify power relationships in society: Occupy, M15, social movements in several Latin American countries, DIEM25 in Europe, the climate justice movement, digital activists including Wikileaks, the people who supported the Bernie Sanders campaign in the US, and others.  Each  of these movements has shown that change comes from the edges and from below, from common people doing uncommon things, while using new technologies and ways of relating to each other.

How transformative and “commonistic” are these movements? How do they frame their work, strategies and slogans?  What role do they play in the fight for the commons and what role does the commons as a discourse and political paradigm play for them? This is a fairly unexplored topic!

In a moderated fishbowl discussion at Commons Space of the World Social Forum 2016 in Montreal/Canadá, we want to assess and openly discuss some of the achievements and aspirations of these political transformations from a commons perspective.

Some questions might trigger the conversation (the focus will finally be determined by participants):

On the notion of the commons:

• (How) Does the commons provide a strong and positive narrative to empower progressive political movements?
• Is the notion of the commons and is the practice of millions of commoners present in the discourse of these movements?
• Is there an understanding of the commons as a political framework and paradigm shift in values, rather than (only) a policy for managing resources?
• … [YOUR QUESTION]

On commons principles and political movements:

• What is the relationship of these movements to the commons (movement), if any?
• Does commoning exist within social/political movements and if so, how does it transform them?
• Are these movements acting according to commons principles?
• … [YOUR QUESTION]

On strategies:

• Do new political movements rethink and reshape democracy toward a more radical democracy?
• Are progressive political movements (and commoners) up to re-imagining state power as a strategy for shifting legality, resources and support for the commons?
• Do these new political movements represent a window of opportunity to widen the space for commoning — or will their protests simply accelerate enclosures, hyper-nationalism and repression?
• … [YOUR QUESTION]

Organizers:

Silke Helfrich, Commons Strategies Group (concept, methodology, moderation) Elizabetta Cangelosi, Transform (coordinator, logistics)

contacts: [email protected] ; [email protected]

Participants:

Everybody(!) is invited to participate in this fishbowl discussion especially if belonging to one of the new political movements or active for the commons (the methodology will be explained at the beginning), starting with 4-5 inputs, 5 minutes each.

There will be a sequence of thesis being discussed to structure the debate.

Invited guests:

• Juliano Medeiros, Fundação Lauro Campos/ Member of RAIZ, tbc
• Elizabeth Peredo, Trenzando Ilusiones (Bolivia), tbc
• Lisa Fithian, (USA) (http://organizingforpower.org/about/about-lisa/)or
• John Restakis, Synergia, Cooperative Movement (Canadá, tbc)
• sbd. from Occupy or the Bernie Sanders campaign, tbc
• sbd from Climate Justice Movement

? please SUGGEST AND INVITE OTHERS as you see fit. Remember, it’s a FISHBOWL discussion! (drop me a note to [email protected]

When?

August 11, 2016 (Thursday):    lunch and discussion

12:00 to 2:00pm:         lunch, mingling & 1 on 1 interviews

with Remix the Commons broadcast team

2:00 to 4:00pm:         fishbowl discussion

Where?

Radio Auditoire; Montréal, 5212 Boulevard St. Laurent

Related events at WSF (Commons Space)

Commons and Public Power: Wednesday,  August 10, 9 – 11 am , Radio Auditoire

Commons as a new Political Subject: (Transform! Global Social Justice), Thursday, August 11, 9 – 11 am, UQAM Pavillon A, Local A-2580, 400 rue Sainte-Catherine Est

You can also join the mailing list here – http://lists.p2pfoundation.net/wws/review/wsf2016

The post THE COMMONS, STATE POWER AND NEW POLITICAL MOVEMENTS appeared first on P2P Foundation.