The ICH logo

ICH was born in 2015 through two local networking initiatives with an activist bent. On the one hand, the Platform for Autonomy, Self-Sufficiency and Equality, an intiative of people from the milieu of Autonomy, had been preparing the ground since 2013, propagandizing and agitating for the networking of productive projects on the basis of a framework of values inspired by the ideological principles of the CIC. During the same period, another networking initiative had begun to germinate in the bosom of the local movement of the Commons (dating back to the 1^st Festival of the Commons in 2013), which was also influenced by the cooperative model of the CIC.

Τhe two networking initiatives came close through a CommonsFest event in April 2015: in the context of this event, three core members of the CIC came to Crete for a week of workshops and meetings with local projects, which gave a strong impetus to the idea of creating a local ‘integral cooperative’. The arrival a few months later of the self-exiled charismatic leader of the CIC (who is now the driving force behind FairCoop), Enric Duran, pushed in the same direction. A visionary himself, Duran showed great zeal in propagandizing the reproduction of the CIC model in Crete. And so, the ICH emerged through the processes (in the milieu of local projects) triggered by the visit of the CIC members to the island, which resulted in the informal founding of the ICH at an open assembly in Heraklion at the end of the summer of 2015.

CommonsFest workshop by CIC members in April 2015

From the moment of its launch two years ago, the ICH has been closely integrated with the local exchange network in Heraklion, the so-called ‘Kouki’, which the ICH set up with the aim of covering the daily needs of the community. As in the case of the CIC in Catalonia, the local exchange network is a structure embedded in the operation of the Integral Cooperative and one of the main ‘tools’ it offers its members. More specifically, through the ‘kouki’ the ICH provides its members with a marketplace where they can exchange products and services by using the alternative currency of the local exchange network.

In practice, the exchange network constitutes a self-organized marketplace for the local community in which its members can buy and sell locally-available products and services. The payment can take the form of barter exchange or if that is not possible, it can be made by means of the alternative currency of the exchange network. From a technical point of view, keeping track of transactions and of members’ credit and debit balances is done through the Integral CES online platform (which, though originally developed by the CIC for its own needs, provides a plethora of local exchange networks around the world with the ‘technological infrastructure’ required for their operation); to put it simply, it is the ‘tool’ that members of local exchange networks use to manage their accounts.

Some of the stalls at the 1st ‘autonomous public market’ in April 2016

One of the most important things ICH has done to increase its visibility is the autonomous public market, which it has been organizing (in collaboration with the local exchange group) since April 2016. At this public market, which takes place once a month at Georgiadis Park in the centre of the city, members can set up their stalls and exchange products with alternative currency. In parallel, various events – such as talks by ICH members – serve the purpose of spreading the principles of the ICH and mobilizing visitors. As a true cooperatively-organized project, there is an open assembly at the end of every autonomous public market, with the aim of coordinating the tasks required for the organization of the next one after a month.

Presentation about the CIC at the 1st ‘autonomous public market’ in April 2016

The reason why this public market is called ‘autonomous’ is because it has consciously chosen to operate without the relevant license from the authorities: in that way it demonstrates in practice its autonomy from the structures of the state and exemplifies the principle of ‘economic disobedience’, that is, the conscious refusal to strengthen the state by paying taxes.

After two years of hard work, ICH believes that the time has come to scale-up its activities. Its immediate plans for the future include the development of ‘common infrastructures’ (like the cauldron ICH members could use this autumn to distil alcohol) and the provision of support for ‘partner projects’ like the retail outlet for the products made available through the local exchange network that some ICH members plan to open in the city in the coming months. Another important goal of ICH for the future is the organization of the autonomous public market on a more frequent basis and its expansion outside the city, helping thus the ICH reach out to the agrarian population in the countryside.

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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

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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.

There has been a real surge of festivals on the commons in recent months, and in the months ahead!   The First International Festival of the Commons – Festival Internazionale dei Beni Comuni – will be held in Chieri, Italy, from July 9 to 2.  The event is a cultural happening sponsored by the borough Chieri near Torino.

The festival will consist of meetings, round tables, music, cinema, theatre, art and performances (hashtag, #commonsfestival).  The primary focus, organizers declare, is “how to live and produce in common…..The Festival will be well more than an extemporaneous and spectacular event: it will bethe beginning of a shared journey to the imagination and construction of a more just, open and participated society.”

While there will be plenty of focus on “global theories” presented in Chieri, there will also be a focus on how to reclaim “those local spaces left empty and useless by the crisis of Fordist production.”  A number of panels will look at how to develop alternatives that are not just sustainable, but generative, and political models that let people share responsibilities and choices.

The legendary Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil will perform reggae, samba and folk with Caetano Veloso on July 10 at Piazza Dante in Chieri.  Tickets are available now. Free culture fans will recall that Gil, besides showing exemplary courage as a political dissident in Brazil decades ago, was Culture Minister in the early 2000s and an early, critically important champion of Creative Commons licenses.

The Chieri festival will feature a number of headliners such as Vandana Shiva from India; Italian legal scholar, politician and commons theorist Stefano Rodotà; Italian legal scholar Ugo Mattei; Salvatore Settis, President of the Scientific Council of the Louvre; Italian jurist Gustavo Zagrebelsky; and a number of prominent Italian writers, directors and cultural figures.

I am pleased to join this august roster of commoners for a panel on “The State of the Digital Commons” on July 11 at 10 am.  I will also have the opportunity to celebrate the release of the Italian translation of Think Like a Commoner, as masterfully translated by Bernardo Parrella.  Professor Ugo Mattei has contributed the preface.

There’s another festival of the commons coming up in October – Le Temps des Communs, which will take place in a variety of Francophone locations http://tempsdescommuns.org/Temps des Communes, from October 5-18.  More than a dozen partners and sponsors are organizing the festival:  Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer, Conseil Région Ile de France, Fondation Mozilla and Région Rhode-Alpes, as wel as Vecam, Mairie de Brest, the Open Knowledge Foundation, La Quadrature du Net and Brussels Commons, among others.

In the past month, there were two other notable festivals on the commons:  The Ouishare conference in Paris, and the Athens CommonsFest.

The Greek event on May 15-17 was the third annual occasion of this festival, moving its location this time from Heraklion to Athens.  The Greek event had an accent on tech commons – or as the conference organizers put it, “to promote freedom of knowledge (or free knowledge) and peer-to-peer collaboration for the creation and management of the commons.”

The Athens festival hosted an exhibition, talks, screenings and workshops, all with the aim of promoting commons-based peer production and the philosophy of the commons.  There were talks by free software pioneer Richard Stallman, economist Massimo de Angelis and British co-operative finance expert Pat Conaty.  There was an exhibition of projects that embody peer-to-peer production, self-management and self-organization practices, which included Peliti, VIOME, the 136 water initiative, the Elliniko and Thessaloniki social clinics and hackerspace.gr.

You can find a copy of the CommonsFest program here.

Finally, the Ouishare Fest 2015, a three-day event in Paris about the collaborative economy, was held May 20-22.  About 1,000 people converged to discuss the future of collaborative consumption, open source software, makers and fablabs, coworking, crowdfunding, alternative currencies and horizontal governance. The event frankly embraced the dilemmas that it currently faces with a subtitle, “Lost in Transition?” which refers to the push-and-pull on sharing innovators by business and socially minded activists.

Neal Gorenflo of Shareable provides a great overview and summary of the Ouishare Fest, noting that a recurring topic was addressed in the keynote talk, “Venture Capital vs. Community Capital,” by Nick Grossman. The great potential of the blockchain ledger – the code at the heart of Bitcoin – for building new types of sharing communities, was apparently much on the minds of conference-goers.  It also seems that the fierce surge of the “sharing economy” (i.e., tech-assisted micro-rental economy) has “catalyzed a counter-movement to create democratic sharing economy platforms,” in Gorenflo’s words.  A lot of attention was also given to “sharing cities” such as Amsterdam and Nijmegen, and other sharing initiatives.

Inspiring to hear of all these gatherings to explore the potential of commons in their many guises.

The post A Burst of Festivals of the Commons: Italy, Greece and France appeared first on P2P Foundation.