April 2015 - P2P-Foundation - lists.ourproject.org

Fwd: New Research Links Neonicotinoid Pesticides to Monarch Butterfly Declines
by Michel Bauwens 05 Apr '15

05 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jonathan Latham <jrlatham(a)bioscienceresource.org> Date: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:17 PM Subject: New Research Links Neonicotinoid Pesticides to Monarch Butterfly Declines To: bsr-PROJECT-ELIST1(a)gn.apc.org Dear Colleagues and Friends Published Today (April 4th, 2015) on *Independent Science News* *New Research Links Neonicotinoid Pesticides to Monarch Butterfly Declines* By Jonathan Latham, PhD http://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/new-research-links-neonicotinoid… *Synopsis:* New research has identified the neonicotinoid insecticide clothianidin as a likely contributor to monarch butterfly declines in North America. The research, published on April 3rd 2015, identifies concentrations of clothianidin as low as 1 part per billion as harmful to monarch butterfly caterpillars. These concentrations of clothianidin were found in the populations of milkweeds sampled by the researchers. Previously, no research had been done on neonicotinoids and butterflies and therefore this is the first report of neonicotinoids affecting monarchs or any other butterflies. The research was conducted in Brookings, South Dakota and is published in the journal *Science and Nature* (Springer). Apologies for cross-posting. Please share this article. Best wishes and thank you. Jonathan Jonathan Latham, PhD Executive Director The Bioscience Resource Project Ithaca, NY 14850 USA www.independentsciencenews.org and www.bioscienceresource.org jrlatham(a)bioscienceresource.org Skype: jonathanlatham2 Tel: 1-607-319-0279 “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”—Edward Bernays, Propaganda _______________________________________________ BSR-project-elist1 mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.gn.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/bsr-project-elist1 To unsubscribe, email bsr-project-elist1-unsubscribe(a)gn.apc.org -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: lotsa new doings at Solidarity Hall
by Michel Bauwens 05 Apr '15

05 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Elias Crim, Solidarity Hall <elias.crim(a)solidarityhall.org> Date: Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 11:21 AM Subject: lotsa new doings at Solidarity Hall To: Andrew Haines <ahaines(a)cfmpl.org>, Anthony Annett < morningsminion(a)gmail.com>, Arthur Hunt <ahunt(a)utm.edu>, Audrey Anweiler < aanwei01(a)gmail.com>, Chad Pecknold <PECKNOLD(a)cua.edu>, Daniel Dear Friends, Some updates--cause we have some great new developments and we want you all to know. - *Radically Catholic*: the book is now available on Amazon <http://www.amazon.com/Radically-Catholic-Age-Francis-Anthology/dp/069240977…> and will shortly be on Kindle. Thus both e-books and print copies will be available. The title has a Creative Commons license so we do occasionally send out PDF copies at no charge. We don't intend to be too fussy about this free vs paid. The Lord will provide. (Only question is: who will provide until the Lord provides. Old Jewish joke, never mind.) So you'll be getting a nice shiny new paperback in the mail soon if you will do us ONE FAVOR: we need your SNAILMAIL ADDRESS. So please hit Reply here when you're done reading and send me your address, hokay? - Review copies are going out to a number of pubs--New Republic, First Things, the Nation, American Conservative, Road and Track, Parakeet Lovers Quarterly (forget those last two), etc. - The release of the Radically Catholic anthology is likewise the announcement of our foray into publishing with Solidarity Hall Press. (So feel free to ponder future publishing projects and then pitch us your ideas.) - Besides going into publishing, we are taking some steps toward forming local civic action groups--called C-Labs--which will extend our lofty localist/crunchy con/distributist/new urbanist principles down to ground level. Here in what you might called benighted, embattled Indiana, I've already had the first couple of meetups of an embryonic C-Lab in a local coworking space. More to say about all this soon but just wanted to alert you we're moving into community organizing, just so you can shock your families. - We are also filing for 501c3 non-profit status for Solidarity Hall in hopes that a fund-raising campaign will allow us to do lots of interesting new things--such as pay people at least something, occasionally. - And finally, we are relaunching the website <http://www.solidarityhall.org> (check thou it out!) and are hoping to restore its traffic via new posts, excerpts from our various new publications in the works, etc. So we're publishing and getting into community renewal--thanks to the inspiration of all you wonderful folk, many of whom I've not broken bread with--yet. If we can raise some geetus, we could fund some nice meetups in posh digs around the country. Here's hoping. Easter blessings! Elias P.S. Snail mail addresses, please! -- *Elias Crim* *Publisher* *Solidarity Hall**219.246.9019 <219.246.9019> (c)|312.253.2043 <312.253.2043> (fx)* *www.solidarityhall.org <http://www.solidarityhall.org>* *elias.crim(a)solidarityhall.org <elias.crim(a)solidarityhall.org>* -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Le tour de France des alternatives
by Kevin Flanagan 02 Apr '15

02 Apr '15

Hello, Have any French speakers come across this book and project? http://www.amazon.fr/tour-France-alternatives-Emmanuel-Daniel/dp/2021186083 http://www.tourdefrancedesalternatives.fr/ -- For P2P Foundation related messages please contact me at kevin(a)p2pfoundation.net http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/ https://twitter.com/flgnk Skype: kev.flanagan Phone: +353 87 743 5660

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Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: York strikers show the way — now let’s build a truly public university
by Michel Bauwens 02 Apr '15

02 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: peter waterman <peterwaterman1936(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 8:58 AM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: York strikers show the way — now let’s build a truly public university To: "CRITICAL-LABOUR-STUDIES(a)jiscmail.ac.uk" < CRITICAL-LABOUR-STUDIES(a)jiscmail.ac.uk>, "< networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>" <networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org> 1. 2014. From Coldwar Communism to the Global Justice Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist. <http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/1987-e-reader-ed-by-peter-waterm…>http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism _to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/ <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism_to_the_global_emanci…> (Free). 2. 2014. Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor), December 2014. 'Social Movement Internationalisms'. (Free). <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/> * <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>* 3. 2014. 'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's Others', in Jai Sen (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), The Movement of Movements: <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/>Struggles for Other Worlds (Part I). <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/> (10 Euros). 4. 2012. EBook: Recovering Internationalism <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/recovering_internationalism/>. [A compilation of papers from the new millenium. Now free in two download formats] 5. 2013. EBook (co-editor), February 2013: World Social Forum: Critical Explorations http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/ 6. 2012. Interface Journal Special (co-editor), November 2012: *For the Global Emancipation of Labour <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>* 7. 2005-? <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interf…> Ongoing. Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.???. Needed: a Global Labour Charter Movement (2005-Now!) <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interf…> 8. 2011. Under, Against, Beyond: Labour and Social Movements Confront a Globalised, Informatised Capitalism <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/>(2011) (c. 1,000 pages of Working Papers, free, from the 1980's-90's). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sid Shniad <shniad(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 8:16 PM Subject: York strikers show the way — now let’s build a truly public university To: *https://ricochet.media/en/373/york-strikers-show-the-way-now-lets-build-a-truly-public-university <https://ricochet.media/en/373/york-strikers-show-the-way-now-lets-build-a-t…>Ricochet March 30, 2015York strikers show the way — now let’s build a truly public universityProtracted labour dispute raises questions of post-secondary governance and fundingBy Justin Podur* The strikes at York University the University of Toronto, and elsewhere have opened a long overdue debate about student debt, precarious labour in the academy, rising tuition, and, to a lesser extent, university governance. The York University strike offers an opportunity to argue for the continuing relevance of universities as public institutions. The importance of the public in the public university is especially true for York, which, if it embraced its role as such, could tackle a new list of issues and lead the way for other educational institutions. *Precarity, debt, and defensive struggle* York's contract faculty are the precarious academic labourers whose difficulties have been brought into some public light by the York strike and other labour actions in North America. The contract faculty settled earlier in March. The teaching assistants and graduate assistants had to battle on until the end of the month to win their objectives. Although the strike ended in a victory, the struggle was mainly defensive. In previous contracts, the union on strike at York, CUPE 3903, won a funding package that includes work as a TA (or, for work outside the classroom, as a GA). The total package offered to a student is usually in the range of $12,000 to $18,000 for the year. Out of this, a domestic student has to pay around $6,500 tuition. International students might get the same package, but their tuition is much higher — somewhere around the size of their whole funding package. Students are eligible for such funding only if they have full-time status. If they work more than 10 hours per week outside of their studies and on-campus jobs as TAs or GAs, they are ineligible. So, when the administration presented the claim that TAs were getting paid $52/hour, they neglected to add that this was up to a hard limit of about $9,000 for a year. In order to get this $52/hour, students had to figure out how to live on about $30/day (or, for international students, $0/day). Of course, students could take on additional debt, the implicit solution that university administrations continuously try to impose on students. The union did not go on strike trying to get its members out of this low-wage situation. The union went on strike because management was trying to assert its right to raise tuition while maintaining the funding package at the same rate. This is the indexation issue that management avoided discussion of for a month, the gain won by the union in previous strikes that management tried and failed to roll back. Indexation means that if the university wants to take more from TAs and GAs in tuition, it also has to pay TAs and GAs more money so that they can pay the university. Losing indexation would have meant that, rather than helping TAs and GAs subsist, their work on campus would merely give them the slightest reduction in the massive debt they would incur while studying. The U.S. and U.K. systems, in which students at all levels incur ever more massive debt while receiving less and less, and with fewer and worse prospects after graduation, seems to be the model. The striking workers successfully held the line against that erosion. *The academic and the administrative* The York strike also highlighted the problem of a university no longer under academic control. This issue is of more public importance than it may seem on the surface. Unlike most workplaces that are under the uncontested control of managers, at universities the struggle for academic freedom has been linked to another struggle, that for collegial governance, the idea that academic matters should be under the control of academics (faculty and also students) and not under the control of managers. Defending collegial governance involves constant battles over policies and procedures, careful readings and debates, and can seem arcane and obscure to the non-university public. But collegial governance, like academic freedom, is an important thing for society to have, and it deserves some public attention — and protection. Let us look at it in the context of York's strike. The first way that the administration has strengthened itself has been by moving money. The erosion of the university's teaching budget has been accompanied by an expansion in the administrative share of the budget. Budgets are contentious and political, and university administrations contest the notion that they are bloated at the expense of the university's core activities. The analyses are worth looking at: Benjamin Ginsburg describes the growth of university administration at U.S. universities in his book The Fall of the Faculty, and scientist Bjorn Brembs tackles the issue in Germany in a blog post. York's faculty union, YUFA, did some interesting analysis of York's financial statements. While not discussing academic and administrative budgets in detail, it does deal with how to think about the financial statements of a public institution. YUFA also produced a report that described the growth of managerialism. The growth of the university's administration at the expense of its academic mission is not solely a matter of money, as Ginsburg's Fall of the Faculty documents. The growth of "student life" programs under the control of the administrative apparatus has seen students offered more programs in things like time management and study skills, while academic programs in languages, literature, or history are starved of resources. York University has a Senate that is the ultimate authority on academic matters, but the Senate does not have the power to decide what is and is not an academic matter — that is the prerogative of the administration. Before the current strike, the York community was presented with apocalyptic budget projections (which have since been challenged by YUFA and CUPE) as well as warnings about low enrolments. York's administration imposed a process called the Academic and Administrative Prioritization and Review, or AAPR — another management tool that was imposed on other Canadian universities, such as Guelph and the University of Saskatchewan, to destructive effect. Several faculty councils at York repudiated the AAPR and rejected its use in academic planning. Like the strike, the AAPR ended up opening an overdue debate on administrative attacks on the academic mission of the university (see Michael Ornstein's presentation for a fine example of applying academic criteria to a managerial exercise and Craig Heron's essay on the consultant Robert Dickeson, whose methodology is used in AAPRs across North America). Amazingly, in a context of enrolment and budget fears, the York administration walked into negotiations with CUPE 3903 seeking concessions that the union could not accept, and took over a month to make any movement towards an acceptable offer. As an alternative to bargaining, the administration used a reading of the university's policy on remediation — intended to provide guidance on how to restart the university after a disruption is over — to start remediating during the strike. The “remediation” ended up making students more uncertain, increasing physical pressure and fear of violence on the picket lines as thousands of drivers tried to cross daily to attend classes that may or may not have been proceeding. For an administration worried about enrolment, it is difficult to imagine how this could have been anything other than a nightmare scenario – unless low enrolments themselves might provide another tool that administrators could use to discipline the academics? *York, a public university* Like every public institution, universities are changing. They are becoming more hierarchical, more corporate, less accessible, and less free. Defending their role, even expanding it, may not be possible from within their walls alone. But should the non-university-going public care? Universities cost society massive amounts of resources, and everyone within them, from the administration to the student body, has some relative privilege compared to the many people who never get the chance to go. Scholars' reputations for obscurity and detachment from the real world doesn't make it easy for these same scholars to ask the public for resources or for help defending the institution. But public indifference to what is happening at universities only serves the administrators who are eroding them. And truly public universities could be extremely socially beneficial. Take York again, and consider some 2006 figures that will not have changed much in the decade since. Located in North Toronto, York's students come from families with a median household income of $55,881, compared to an average of $74,093 for all Ontario university families. The median household income for York students in 2006 was actually lower than the median household income for Ontario in 2005, which, at $72,734, was only slightly lower than the average for Ontario university-going families. Ryerson students came from slightly more affluent families ($56,733) and University of Toronto from slightly more affluent than that ($58,895). The contrast with universities such as Western and Queen’s, with median family incomes above $100,000, is striking. More than 50 per cent of York's students commute for more than 40 minutes, and 57 per cent of York's first-year students rely on public transit to get to school, compared to 32 per cent of Ontario students. Of first-year York students, 60 per cent are female, compared to 55 per cent for Ontario. Of senior-year York students, 72 per cent work for pay off campus, compared to 46 per cent for Ontario; 43 per cent are from a visible minority compared to 29 per cent for Ontario. Where 70 per cent of Ontario students had a parent with post-secondary education, 65 per cent of York students could say the same. York’s demographics present a picture of that kind of public university, a place whose student body looks like the population and not like the rulers. For many decades in North America, universities were designed to train and prepare the ruling class and the professionals who serviced them. But starting after WWII, public universities started to open up and transform into places that potentially everyone could go. York’s demographics present a picture of that kind of public university, a place whose student body looks like the population and not like the rulers. It may not be coincidental that at the most public of universities, there is a strong emphasis on humanities and social sciences — 53 per cent of first-year students compared to 38 per cent in Ontario, 51 per cent of senior-year students compared to 42 per cent in Ontario. I love science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and I think this type of education is both vitally important and under attack, especially under the Harper government. But social sciences and humanities — philosophy, literature, history, political science, geography, sociology, linguistics, economics - are fields that help students understand power and understand the world they live in. They are fields that give students a chance of shaping the future. In his 2008 book Unmaking the Public University, English professor Chris Newfield of the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that the attack on the social sciences and humanities — the devaluing of cultural knowledge — was a part of the assault on public universities and part of the assault on the North American middle class. The idea of a public university open to everyone, where the cultural knowledge to shape and change society is taught and developed, is a dangerous idea for those who fear the public. *Who is subsidizing, and who is subsidized?* Newfield's book is full of insights, many of which are highly relevant to Canadian universities and especially to York. One in particular relates to university budgets. Part of a professor's job, especially in the natural sciences, is to seek external research funding. The grants that professors win in competitions bring prestige to their universities and make it possible to do research. Many believe that these grants help subsidize other parts of the university, but Newfield points out that the grants never cover the full costs of the research, and the university has to provide some matching funds for every grant. Where do these matching funds come from? From the teaching budget from where most of the students are: the social sciences and the humanities. So, here again, what most people believe is the reverse of reality: it turns out that teaching in the social sciences and humanities subsidizes research in the natural sciences, not the other way around. In the background of the York strike is the provincial funding formula, which has continued to erode the public part of university budgets. Universities in Ontario responded by following what was done in the United States: they have sought to squeeze more tuition out of students and more funds from private donors. York’s administration has also sought to expand its science, technology, engineering and mathematics profile and reduce, in relative terms, its social sciences and humanities profile. The fact that the social sciences and humanities faculty and students are among the most “unruly,” the most likely to insist on collegial governance, and highly active in unions, may not be lost on the administration. But none of these strategies will work to the competitive advantage of York, many of whose students will either receive a public education or no education at all. This puts York in an interesting position, as it makes the public option the most strategic one for the institution to survive and thrive. Unfortunately university administrations are all alike, and there are no models for creatively managing public institutions. There are only corporate models of total top-down control, privilege, and power at the top, and obedience and fear at the bottom. York's social sciences and humanities programs, which attract huge numbers of students and probably subsidize the rest of the university, will never be shut down. But an administrative vision would see these programs carefully controlled, delivered by insecure teachers with no union protections or academic freedom, and students who pay huge amounts to shut up and study like their instructors, who gratefully accept a tiny share of the budget for the chance to shut up and teach. It doesn't have to be this way, especially at York. We could try, instead, to be who we are, instead of trying to be something we are not. What if York were to lead other universities in the aggressive pursuit of the public option? Embracing its progressive traditions, embracing its diverse and in many cases oppressed student body, and working on a whole new list of problems. What would it take to achieve free tuition? How could we speed up and open up the peer review process? How could we run the university on free software and free information? How could we ensure that everyone who works at the university has a good job at a living wage and the freedom to contribute creatively to the community and to say what they think? How could we have a totally seamless relationship with the non-university public, in which the university becomes a source of knowledge and not a place where knowledge is locked up to be accessed only by those who pay to be within its walls? These are the more interesting problems that we could work on at places such as York. The alternative is to become another all-administrative university with cowed, indebted students taught by cowed, temporary faculty. York's TAs, GAs, and contract faculty have shown the way, but the struggle for a truly public university will be a long one. _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisation
by Michel Bauwens 02 Apr '15

02 Apr '15

dear Kevin, could we serialize this overview on our blog, as you did for the urban commons thing ? at the end oriana or her students could then offer an update on the firenze experience, which his not mentioned here, Michel ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: peter waterman <peterwaterman1936(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 8:59 AM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisation To: "<networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>" < networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>, WSFDiscuss List < WorldSocialForum-Discuss(a)openspaceforum.net> 1. 2014. From Coldwar Communism to the Global Justice Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist. <http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/1987-e-reader-ed-by-peter-waterm…>http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism _to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/ <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism_to_the_global_emanci…> (Free). 2. 2014. Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor), December 2014. 'Social Movement Internationalisms'. (Free). <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/> * <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>* 3. 2014. 'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's Others', in Jai Sen (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), The Movement of Movements: <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/>Struggles for Other Worlds (Part I). <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/> (10 Euros). 4. 2012. EBook: Recovering Internationalism <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/recovering_internationalism/>. [A compilation of papers from the new millenium. Now free in two download formats] 5. 2013. EBook (co-editor), February 2013: World Social Forum: Critical Explorations http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/ 6. 2012. Interface Journal Special (co-editor), November 2012: *For the Global Emancipation of Labour <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>* 7. 2005-? <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interf…> Ongoing. Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.???. Needed: a Global Labour Charter Movement (2005-Now!) <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interf…> 8. 2011. Under, Against, Beyond: Labour and Social Movements Confront a Globalised, Informatised Capitalism <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/>(2011) (c. 1,000 pages of Working Papers, free, from the 1980's-90's). ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sid Shniad <shniad(a)gmail.com> Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 8:18 PM Subject: University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisation To: *http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/mar/25/university-protests-around-the-world-a-fight-against-commercialisation <http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/mar/25/university-…>The Guardian 25 March 2015University protests around the world: a fight against commercialisationAcademics and students in Canada, the Netherlands and the UK explain why they are taking a stand against their institutionsRebecca Ratcliffe* Students at University of the Arts, London, took over their university’s reception area last Thursday <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/24/students-occupy-central-st…> to protest against proposed cuts to some of its course programmes. This makes UAL one of the latest institutions around the world to be hit by occupations and strikes by staff and students. The causes of such protests vary: some are concerned about working conditions facing graduate students, others point to a lack of transparency about how universities are run. A key issue is the commercialisation of higher education, which many feel has led university leaders to prioritise financial goals over the needs of staff and students. We speak to academics and students in Canada, the Netherlands <http://www.theguardian.com/world/netherlands> and the UK to find out why they’re taking a stand. ‘Graduate students should be guaranteed a minimum amount of funding that sits above the poverty line.’ Photograph: Lennart Maschmeyer University of Toronto, Canada *What’s happening?* Graduate students at the University of Toronto have been on strike for three weeks. *What prompted the strike? *Graduate and teaching assistants are essential to the University of Toronto’s teaching. But they are paid a minimum financial package of C$15,000 – far less than is needed to meet the cost of living. The basic graduate student funding package has not seen any increase in more than seven years, leaving graduate students doing teaching and research to live more than C$8,000 below the poverty line. Sessional faculty, course instructors and teaching assistants do more than 60% of the teaching at the University of Toronto, but only 3.5% of the university’s budget is allocated to them. To address this, graduate students should be guaranteed a minimum amount of funding that sits above the poverty line and increases as inflation and the cost of living rises. Instead, management have sought to increase undergraduate and graduate student enrolment – particularly international students – in order to increase profits to the university. Rather than addressing the serious financial needs of its students, the university administration team spent weeks refusing to return to the negotiating table. A recent offer failed to address the negative impacts of precarious work in academia that have allowed for the exploitation of lower level and non-tenured academic staff. To prevent further labour action and disruption for all students across university campuses in Canada, university administrators will have to address these serious structural deficiencies that have decayed the quality of education and research at public universities in Canada <http://www.theguardian.com/world/canada> and across North America. - *Omar Sirri is a PhD student studying political science at the University of Toronto.* ‘LSE is the epitome of the neoliberal university. It is managed and organised around corporate interests, which promote elitism and perpetuate inequality.’ Photograph: Alex Kurunis *London School of Economics and Political Science, UK* *What’s happening?* A central administration room has been occupied by students since 18 March. *What caused the protest?* The occupation is a reaction against the marketisation of education. LSE is the epitome of the neoliberal university. It is managed and organised around corporate interests, which promote elitism and perpetuate inequality. OccupyLSE proposes that students, lecturers and workers should run a university – and we have named this project the Free University of London. We are occupying the main administrative meeting room to symbolically disrupt the management of the school, which is responsible for the neoliberalisation of our education. We have used the space to reclaim our education and encourage political participation by teaching and learning from each other. This is a rejection of the commercialisation of education – we are learning for free and we are learning freely. The space and workshops are being used to focus and refine the demands we are making as a movement on issues of free education, workers’ rights, university democracy and governance, liberation and ethics. The power of occupations is that they create a domino effect: this is only the beginning. - *Natalie Fiennes is an MSc student studying political sociology and Ellen Lees is an undergraduate student studying social anthropology at LSE. * ‘As PhD candidates... we pay for the “privilege” of our precarious jobs.’ Photograph: Alex Felipe York University, Canada *What’s happening?* Teaching assistants, graduate assistants and contract faculty at York University have been on strike since 3 March. *What prompted the strike?* Staff and students participating in the strike have a number of demands including: more funding for graduate and research assistants and better employment rights for LGBTQ workers. They also want to “strengthen the tuition indexation language”, which means that any rises in tuition for graduate students will be met with a rise in their funding. Once considered a radical institution, York now pursues aggressive divide-and-conquer strike-breaking tactics. On March 9, the university made a ‘final offer’ that largely appealed to senior contract faculty, a clear attempt to split the union. Teaching assistants and graduate assistants rejected the offer and remain on legal strike. York is now reconvening courses despite the strike, putting students in a position to cross increasingly tense picket lines to get to class, and has even invited striking workers to scab. Despite these moves, both faculty and undergraduate solidarity is growing, with many exercising their right not to cross pickets. As PhD candidates, we are not only tuition-paying students, but also frontline teachers. In short, we pay for the ‘privilege’ of our precarious jobs. We couldn’t pursue our careers without full funding. What does this mean for student-workers? One international student recently tweeted a Kafkaesque image of a pay cheque from the university for C$0.00, all that remained of their funding after paying international tuition. At the university, we call this “getting York’d”. - *Jessica Lee is a fourth-year PhD student in the humanities and Darren Patrick is a fourth-year PhD student in environmental studies and the York University. * <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgu.com%2Fp%2F46p9…> <http://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?description=University+protests…> ‘We have joined with our students on a weekly basis to think through the effects of managerialism and financialisation.’ Photograph: Julie McBrien University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Dutch student protests ignite movement against management of universities Read more *What’s happening?* Students <http://www.theguardian.com/education/students> are occupying Maagdenhuis, the university’s main administrative building, calling for a democrastisation of the institution. *What prompted the protest?* Protesters want to increase the transparency and accountability of the university decision-making processes and to pause and reconsider its programme of restructuring, cuts and sell-offs. How do you protest bureaucracy? How do you work against the financialisation and managerialism that has seeped into the university, forcing us to prioritise ‘rendement’ (efficiency), harmonisation, and profit, rather than creativity, education, and critical thinking? In Amsterdam we started by occupying symbolic university buildings , organising public rallies and taking to the streets en masse. We wrote articles, appeared on television and the radio and published open letters. But resistance takes many forms. As a mode of critique and change we have taken back our workspace. We have marked the very corporate-like environment we work in – all straight lines, uniform spaces, impenetrable concrete, unbending steel – with signs of alternative voices, thoughts-in-the-making and issues up for debate. We have joined with our students on a weekly basis to think through the effects of managerialism and financialisation and how, when there is no other way, we can disobey in everyday acts of resistance. In resonance with Bertold Brecht’s famous phrase ‘Stell dir vor, es ist Krieg, und keiner geht hin’ (just imagine, there is a war and nobody joins), we imagine what comes of bureaucracy when nobody fills out the forms. When we refuse to cooperate with the system that has hijacked our university, we make a step towards reclaiming and recreating the university. It’s not visible to most, but these forms of protest play a part in recreating the university as a space for learning and discovery. - *Julie McBrien is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.* _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: Civil Power and the Partner State - Keynote Address, Good Economy Conference, Zagreb
by Michel Bauwens 02 Apr '15

02 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Stacco Troncoso <staccotroncoso(a)p2pfoundation.net> Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 11:03 PM Subject: Re: Civil Power and the Partner State - Keynote Address, Good Economy Conference, Zagreb To: Michel Bauwens <michel(a)p2pfoundation.net> Here it is posted in Commons Transition, “What then, must a progressive government do with respect to the social economy? First, it must move beyond traditional statism to develop a role for government that understands how to democratize and share power with its citizens. This means understanding that the primary role of government in a new model is the empowerment and support of civil society for the production of social value – the creation of goods and services that place social needs ahead of private profit.” Read the full transcript of John Restakis’ keynote address at the Good Economy Conference in Zagreb http://bit.ly/1HmTqHX

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Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: Alfredo Saad-Filho - The Debacle of the PT
by Michel Bauwens 02 Apr '15

02 Apr '15

first one is a must-read analysis on brazil ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Orsan <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 4:32 AM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Fwd: Alfredo Saad-Filho - The Debacle of the PT To: "<networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org>" < networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org> Cc: transcollab(a)lists.so36.net, squares <squares(a)lists.takethesquare.net> The Débâcle of the PT Alfredo Saad-Filho Hundreds of thousands of chiefly white middle class protesters took to the streets in Brazil on 15 March in an organized upsurge of hatred against the federal administration led by President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party (*Partido dos Trabalhadores*, PT). These protests are far more cohesive and better organized than the previous wave of anti-government demonstrations, in 2013; their demands are unambiguously reactionary, and they include primarily the country's elite. <b1097.jpg> While the protests are presented as being against corruption and for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, they are actually about party political jockeying, shifting alliances between influential groups and disputes about political funding. The 2015 demonstrations erupted in the political vacuum created by the paralysis of Dilma's administration because of its own ineptitude and Brazil's worsening economy. Those difficulties were compounded by aggressive media reporting of the *Lava Jato* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera%C3%A7%C3%A3o_Lava_Jato>corruption scandal, focusing on a network of firms channelling vast sums to individuals and political parties through the state-owned oil company *Petrobras*. *Readers should not underestimate this crisis and its devastating implications for the Brazilian left*. At a deeper level, the economic and political crises in Brazil are due to the achievements and limitations of the administrations led by Luís Inácio Lula da Silva <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva> (2003-06 and 2007-10) and Dilma Rousseff <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilma_Rousseff> (2011-14 and 2015-present). They led a partial economic and social break with neoliberalism that has delivered significant gains in employment and distribution, but also entrenched poor economic performance and left Brazil vulnerable to the global downturn. In the political domain, the PT has transformed the social character of the Brazilian state, while simultaneously accepting a fragile hold on power as a condition of power itself. There has been no meaningful attempt to reform the Constitution or the political system, challenge the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism, neutralize the mainstream media or transform the country's economic structure or international integration. The PT also maintained (with limited flexibility in implementation) the neoliberal macroeconomic ‘Policy Tripod’ imposed by the preceding administration, including inflation targeting and central bank independence, free capital movements and floating exchange rates, and tight fiscal policies. The PT administrations were limited by the ‘reformism lite’ allowed by their unwieldy political alliances. This strategy alienated the party's base and provoked the opposition into an escalating attack that came to the boil in March 2015. Life before Dilma Lula, the founder of the PT, was elected President on his fourth attempt, in 2002. For the first time Brazil was led by a genuine worker-leader. Lula's power was limited by a powerful Congress that is also fragmented across two dozen raucous and unreliable parties. The PT has consistently elected only around 15 per cent of Deputies and Senators, and the ‘reliable’ left (including the PT) rarely exceeded one-third of seats. Consequently, Lula and Dilma have had to cobble together unwieldy coalitions prone to corruption – both from government, through pork-barrel politics, or from capitalists buying votes and funding rival parties fighting elections every other year. The PT had to manage this ungainly Congress under the gaze of an unfriendly judiciary, a hostile media, an autonomous Federal Prosecution and a corporatist Federal Police often working in cahoots. The first Lula administration introduced moderate distributional policies, including the formalization of labour contracts, rising minimum wages and new transfer programmes. However, broader social and economic gains were limited by the government's determination to buy ‘market credibility’ through the dogged implementation of the neoliberal Policy Tripod. The ensuing policies constrained transfers, public investment and industrial restructuring, and promoted the overvaluation of the currency and the reprimarization of the economy. Low GDP growth rates in the first Lula years frustrated everyone, especially the PT's traditional base. They felt that their concerns were being ignored and their support was taken for granted, while government officials schmoozed with bankers and industrialists. Even this apparent sell-out was insufficient to remove the political resistance against Lula, and his administration was criticized both for what it did (‘packing up the State with acolytes’ and ‘taxing producers to fund sloth’), and for what it did not do (deliver rapid growth and social quiescence). The political divide worsened over time. The opposition crystallized around a ‘Neoliberal Alliance’ led by the financial bourgeoisie (suffering economic losses and dwindling control of State policy), and populated by the middle class (tormented by job losses and its dislocation from the outer circle of power, and jealous of the economic and social rise of the broad working class), and scattered segments of the informal workers. Accelerating economic growth because of the global commodity boom and Lula's political talent supported his elevation to spectacular heights. He balanced the demands of rival groups through his legendary shrewdness and the judicious distribution of resources through state investment, development funds, wages, benefits and labour law. The economy picked up speed, and taxation, investment, employment and incomes increased in a virtuous circle. The dynamics was sufficiently strong to support bold expansionary policies in the wake of the global crisis. By the end of his second administration, Lula's approval rates touched on 90 per cent. Yet, the ‘Lula Moment’ was limited. Even though the neoliberal policy framework had been diluted, the government remained only weakly committed to the rearticulation of the systems of provision hollowed out by the neoliberal transition, and it was unable to diversify exports and raise the technological content of manufacturing production. Brazil created millions of jobs but they were mostly precarious, poorly paid and unskilled; urban services were neglected, manufacturing shrank, and there was alarming underinvestment in infrastructure. Dilma Mark 1: Policy Zigzag Dilma Rousseff was a revolutionary activist in her youth, and she rose through the ranks of the PT as a competent manager. She had never been elected to public office until she was chosen by Lula to be his successor. At a personal level, it is unquestionable that Dilma is the most left-wing President of Brazil since João Goulart was deposed in 1964. Dilma's first administration shifted macroeconomic policies further toward neo-developmentalism. Interest rates fell, fiscal policy became more expansionary and new investment programmes were introduced. The government intervened widely to reduce costs and expand infrastructure, and BNDES financed an increasing portfolio of loans. Some capital controls were introduced, and the government expanded its social programmes aiming to eliminate extreme poverty. The strategic goal was to shift the engine of growth away from a faltering external sector and toward domestic investment and consumption. This strategy failed. The international crisis tightened up the fiscal and balance of payments constraints; quantitative easing in the USA and UK destabilized the *real*, and global uncertainty and strident critiques of ‘interventionism’ limited investment. The public finances deteriorated, inflation crept up and GDP growth sagged. Government perceptions that the economic strategy was not working, that its credibility was declining and that the external environment was unlikely to improve led to a policy zigzag in 2012, when Dilma's economic team leaned back toward the neoliberal Policy Tripod. Fiscal austerity returned, and the inflation target became increasingly important. This about-turn came too late to be effective, and too hesitantly to restore faith in the government. Dilma's administration had to confront not only a worsening economy but also mounting political turmoil. Since Lula stepped down, the political hegemony of the PT depended on perceptions of ‘managerial competence’, the absence of corruption scandals, continuing growth and distribution, and stable political alliances. None was easily achievable under adverse economic circumstances; worse still, Dilma Rousseff never had Lula's political talent. She is allegedly impatient with her allies, intolerant with self-interested entrepreneurs and uninterested in social movements; she also intimidates her own staff. A vacuum emerged around the President just as the economy tanked. The media ratcheted up the pressure and started scaremongering about an impending ‘economic disaster’; the government's base of support buckled and it became difficult to pass legislation. The judiciary tightened the screws around the PT, and successive corruption scandals came to light. In early 2013, the opinion polls suggested that support for the government was falling, and, in June, vast demonstrations erupted. They exposed the tensions due to the economic slowdown, the government's isolation and its failure to improve public service provision in line with rising incomes and expectations. The middle classes also vented their fury against the widening of citizenship, changes in the State, transfer programmes, university quotas for blacks and state school pupils, labour rights for domestic servants, and so on. As the economy halted, the government reverted more and more fully to the Policy Tripod: once pinned to the corner, the PT abandoned their own social and political base in order to try to please domestic, international, industrial, financial and agrarian capital. This was still insufficient. The government never had the support of the financial bourgeoisie, and was not about to gain it now. It lost the middle class because of its distributional and citizenship initiatives. It alienated the organized workers because of the worsening economic situation, corruption scandals and the policy turnaround. It distanced the informal workers for those same reasons and the limitation of the transfer policies. And it lost the internal bourgeoisie because of the economic slowdown, lack of influence over the President and erratic public policies. These groups were bestowed a semblance of coherence by a hostile media claiming that the government was incompetent and the State was out of control. Finally, the administration earned the hostility of Congress because of its inability to negotiate. Dilma Mark 2: The Wheels Come Off Dilma Rousseff was re-elected in 2014 by the narrowest margin in recent Brazilian history. Her victory was achieved through a last-minute mass mobilization triggered by left perceptions that the opposition would impose harsh neoliberal economic policies and reverse the social and economic achievements of the PT. In the first weeks of her second administration Dilma faced converging crises leading to the collapse of the two axes of PT rule: the economic model and the political alliances supporting the administration. The government's earlier unwillingness to remove the Policy Tripod, the long global crisis and the insufficiency of the country's industrial policies fed the overvaluation of the currency, deindustrialization and a rising current account deficit. Balance of payments and fiscal constraints weakened the labour markets and induced inflation, and this vicious circle eliminated the scope for distribution and growth. Rising incomes in the previous period and insufficient investment in urban infrastructure led to an intolerable deterioration in service provision, symbolized by transport, in 2013, and water scarcity, in 2014-15. In both cases, the fulcrum was São Paulo, the country's largest metropolitan area, its economic powerhouse and – crucially – the bedrock of the political right as well as the birthplace of the PT. Dilma's desperate response to these crises was to invite a representative of Brazil's largest private bank to the Ministry of Finance, and charge him with the implementation of a ‘credible’ adjustment programme. The government's weakness and its adoption of the macroeconomic programme of the opposition triggered an escalation of the political crisis. Another corruption scandal captured the headlines. The *Lava Jato* operation led by the Federal Police unveiled a large corruption network centred on Petrobras and including cartels, fraud, robbery and illegal funding for several political parties, among them the PT. This scandal catalysed a mass opposition movement demanding the ‘end of corruption’ and ‘Dilma's impeachment’, even though there is no legal, moral or political justification for it. Examination of the opposition's grievances rapidly leads to a laundry list of unfocused and conflicting dissatisfactions articulated by expletives rather than logic. The protests against Dilma's administration are doubly misleading. First, they pretend to want her impeachment, even though this is legally untenable, the bourgeoisie knows that this would disarticulate the economic ‘adjustment’, and the PSDB (the neoliberal Brazilian Social Democratic Party, the largest opposition force) has no interest in delivering power to Vice-President Michel Temer's centrist PMDB or allowing the PT to play the victim and recover in opposition, perhaps led by Lula. It is more convenient to keep Dilma as a lame duck President. Nevertheless, the next Presidential elections are still three years away, and the government could collapse unexpectedly. Second, the demonstrations pretend to be against corruption in general, but this is not their target. The media and the opposition stress the financial flows involving the PT and downplay the involvement of everyone else, but almost every party and a large number of politicians are tangled up in *Lava Jato* and other investigations. They include the Speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the opposition leader Aécio Neves, and many more. For the media, only the PT matters, for two reasons: because scandals can be used to cut off the sources of finance to the Party, throttling it, and they can detach the PT from the internal bourgeoisie, that has supported and funded the Party since Lula's election. The detention of prominent executives and the CEOs of some of Brazil's largest construction and oil companies and the threat of bankruptcy against oil and shipbuilding firms because of the paralysis of Petrobras sends a clear message that the PT is not to be supported – or else. The demonstrations against Dilma are not what they seem to be, and they are not about what they ostensibly demand. While they are presented as being against corruption and for her impeachment, they are actually about party political jockeying, shifting alliances between influential groups and disputes about political funding. At another level, the shrivelling of Dilma's administration signals the exhaustion of the political project of the PT: a historical cycle of the Brazilian left is now coming to the end. Eight Lessons The protests against Dilma Rousseff are based on a double false pretence: they are not against corruption, and they do not seek her impeachment. This implies that the mobilization cannot be controlled precisely, and it can just as plausibly grow as it can taper off. In either case, it will leave behind a residue of disgust that can fuel a political spiral of unintended consequences. Beyond this irreducible uncertainty, the fate of the federal administrations led by the PT suggests eight lessons. First, under favourable circumstances the PT disarmed the political right and disconnected the radical left from the working class. However, when the economic tide turned policy confusion and political crisis fed a confluence of dissatisfactions that now risks overwhelming Dilma's administration. Second, unmet aspirations and the convergence of grievances, even if they are mutually incompatible, can trigger political isolation and volatility that can become hard to contain. Third, while the PT administrations have managed to reduce the income gap between the middle class and the working class, the political distance between them has increased. This chasm creates political instability in the short-term and obstacles for democratic social and political reforms in Brazil in the medium- and long-term. Fourth, economic growth, social inclusion, the distribution of income and wealth, employment creation and the expansion of infrastructure remain relevant goals, but the PT has become unable to build the political conditions to achieve them. “ This is not ... a crisis of the state or the political system, but a crisis of the hegemony of the PT. ” Fifth, despite its volcanic energy the opposition remains bereft of a programme and deprived of popularity. The PT has been implementing the opposition's neoliberal macroeconomic policies; the PSDB does not seek to overthrow the government (although Dilma may step down if the situation spirals out of control); the upsurge against Dilma and the PT did not raise the popularity of the opposition (‘they are all thieves’), and no one aims to ‘end corruption’. This is not, then, a crisis of the state or the political system, but a crisis of the hegemony of the PT. Sixth, the experience of the PT suggests that ambitious policy changes are needed in order to break with neoliberalism and secure gains in distribution and poverty reduction. They include changes in the country's economic base, international integration, employment patterns, public service provision, structures of political representation and the media. These were never contemplated by the PT, and those limitations have now returned to destroy the Party and its leaders. In Brazilian politics, self-imposed weakness is rarely rewarded; instead, it elicits escalating attacks targeting the jugular. Seventh, the Brazilian opposition has become increasingly aggressive. The 2015 movement is large and cohesive; in the meantime, the left is disorganized and bereft of aspirations and leadership. Despite these successes, the right is constrained by its inability to outline a consistent programme, and it has not gained popularity despite the *dégringolade* of the PT. The combination of strengths and weaknesses on the sides of the government and the opposition suggests that Brazil is entering a long period of instability. The emergence of a new political hegemony may take several years – and it is unlikely to be led by the left. Eighth, as the ‘Pink Wave’ crashes in Brazilian shores, the Kirchner administration walks toward the catafalque in Argentina and *Chavismo* crumbles in Venezuela. These outcomes suggest that transformative projects in Latin America, however radical (or not), are bound to face escalating resistance. Its form, intensity and impact upon the alliances supporting the government will tend to fluctuate with the global environment, making it difficult to plan reformist strategies. It follows that broader alliances are not necessarily better, because they are prone to instability, and that the social, political and institutional sources of power must be targeted as soon as possible. There can be no guarantee that the task will become easier tomorrow, and no certainty that the future will be better than the present. The future does not belong to the left; it must be seized. • Alfredo Saad-Filho is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Development Studies SOAS, University of London. *** Brazil uncovers multibillion-dollar tax fraud by Agency staff, March 29 2015 Dozens of Brazilian firms, including industrial companies and banks, are under investigation amid allegations they paid $5.9bn in bribes to tax officials, police said on Saturday. Brazil is already reeling from the biggest graft scandal the country has known, a $3.8bn scam involving inflated contracts between construction companies and state oil giant Petrobras, causing a storm after dozens of politicians were implicated. The new scandal, dubbed Operation Zeal, comes following a federal police probe into an alleged scam at CARF, an offshoot of Brazil’s tax authority that oversees appeals on tax disputes. According to police, the body managed to obtain tax appeals board rulings in the companies’ favor by either cutting penalties or waiving them altogether. In return, officials allegedly received bribes from some 70 companies believed to have benefited from the scheme. "The investigations, begun in 2013, showed the organization acted within the body sponsoring private interests, seeking to influence and corrupt advisors with a view either to securing the cancellation or reduction" of penalties from tax authorities, a police statement explained. Police said the scam could have netted the companies as much as 19 billion reais ($5.9bn) but evidence uncovered so far amounts to around a third of that amount. Federal police organised crime chief Oslain Campos Santan said the total sums could end up being "as much" as that involved in the Petrobras scam, which has left the government of President Dilma Rousseff reeling after dozens of political allies were implicated and charged. The firms involved in the latest allegations are said to have used a series of front firms to conceal their actions, along with laundered cash. ______________________________ Jai Sen jai.sen(a)cacim.net / jai(a)openword.in www.cacim.net / http://www.openword.in Now based in Ottawa, Canada (+1-613-282 2900), and New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) *RECENT PUBLICATIONS :* Jai Sen, ed, 2013 – *The Movements of Movements : Struggles for Other Worlds*, Part I*.* Volume 4 Part I in the *Challenging Empires* series. New Delhi : OpenWord. *Available @ http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/ <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/>* *FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS :* Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds, forthcoming (2015) – *The Movements of Movements : Struggles for Other Worlds**,* Part 2. Volume 4 Part II in the *Challenging Empires* series. New Delhi : OpenWord *CHECK OUT* *CACIM* @ www.cacim.net, *OpenWord* @ http://www.openword.in, and *OpenSpaceForum* @ www.openspaceforum.net *AND SUBSCRIBE TO* *WSFDiscuss*, an open and unmoderated forum for the exchange of information and views on the experience, practice, and theory of social and political movement at any level (local, national, regional, and global), including the World Social Forum. *To subscribe, simply send an empty email to worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net <worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net>* _______________________________________________ ** WSFDiscuss is an open and unmoderated forum for the exchange of information and views on the experience, practise, and theory of the World Social Forum at any level (local, national, regional, and global) and on related social and political movements and issues. Join in !** _______________________________________________ WSFDiscuss mailing list POST to LIST : Send email to WorldSocialForum-Discuss(a)openspaceforum.net SUBSCRIBE: Send empty email to worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net UNSUBSCRIBE: Send empty email to worldsocialforum-discuss-unsubscribe(a)openspaceforum.net LIST ARCHIVES: http://openspaceforum.net/pipermail/worldsocialforum-discuss_openspaceforum… LIST INFORMATION: http://openspaceforum.net/mailman/listinfo/worldsocialforum-discuss_openspa… _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements / Déclaration de l'assemblée des mouvements sociaux / Declaración de la Asamblea de los Movimientos Sociales
by Michel Bauwens 02 Apr '15

02 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Orsan Senalp <orsan1234(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 2:26 PM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements / Déclaration de l'assemblée des mouvements sociaux / Declaración de la Asamblea de los Movimientos Sociales To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org *Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly – World Social Forum 2015* *Tunisia, 27 March 2015* *People united will never be defeated!* The Social Movements Assembly of the WSF 2015, Tunisia is the place where we come together through all our diversity, in order to forge a collective agenda to fight against capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. We have forged a common history and a common stream of work which led to some progress, with the hope to garner some amount of victory against the ruling system and to create several alternatives for a socially just development that respects nature. People all over the world are suffering the effects of the aggravation of a profound crisis of capitalism, in which private transnational corporations, banks, media conglomerates and international financial institutions are trying to increase their profits by applying interventionist and neocolonial policies with the complicity of neo-liberal governments. War, military occupations, free-trade neoliberal treaties (Trans-Atlantic, Trans-Pacific, ALECA, UE-MERCOSUR, APE, MERCOSUR-Israel and different bilateral treaties) and “austerity measures” are expressed in economic packages that privatize the common good, and public services, cut wages, violate rights, increase unemployment and precarious conditions, overload women´s care work and destroys nature. Such neo-liberal policies have massive impacts both on the Southern and the Northern countries and contribute to an increase in migration, forced displacement, evictions, debt, and social inequalities. They re-enforce conservatism and the control over women´s bodies and lives. In addition, they impose "green economy" as a solution to the environmental and food crisis, which not only exacerbates the problem, but leads to commodification, privatization and financialization of life and nature. We assert that the peoples are in no way responsible for this crisis and they must not continue to pay for it. We also assert that no solution is possible within the capitalist system. Here, in Tunis, we reaffirm our commitment to join forces to forge a common strategy to guide our struggles against capitalism. This is why we, social movements, struggle: · *Against transnational corporations and the financial system (IMF, WB and WTO), *who are the main agents of the capitalist system, privatizing life, public services and common goods such as water, air, land, seeds and mineral resources, promoting wars and violations of human rights, and ransack resources. Transnational corporations reproduce extractionist practices endangering life, grabbing our lands and developing genetically modified seeds and food, taking away the peoples’ right to food and destroying biodiversity. We fight for the cancellation of illegitimate and odious debt which today is a global instrument of domination, repression and economic and financial strangulation of people. We reject free trade agreements that are imposed by States and transnational corporations and we affirm that it is possible to build another kind of globalization, made by and for the people, based on solidarity and on freedom of movement for all human beings. *We support the call for an international day of action on 18 April, 2015 against the free trade agreements.* · *For climate justice and food sovereignty, *because we know that global climate change is the result of the capitalist system of production, distribution and consumption. Transnational corporations, international financial institutions and governments serving them do not want to reduce greenhouse gases. We denounce “green economy” and refuse fake solutions to the climate crisis such as bio-fuels, genetically modified organisms and mechanisms of the carbon market like REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which ensnare impoverished peoples with false promises of progress while privatizing and commodifying the forests and territories where these peoples have been living for thousands of years. We defend food sovereignty and support sustainable peasant agriculture which are the true solutions to the food and climate crises and which also entail an access to land for all who work on it. *We call for a mass mobilization on climate in December 2015 in Paris alongside the COP21. Let's make 2015 the year of mobilizing social movements around the world for climate justice.* · *Against violence against women, *often conducted in militarily occupied territories, but also violence affecting women who are criminalized for taking part in social struggles. We fight against domestic and sexual violence perpetrated on women because they are considered objects or goods, because the sovereignty of their bodies and minds is not acknowledged. We fight against the traffic of women, girls and boys. We defend sexual diversity, the right to gender self-determination and we oppose all homophobia and sexist violence. *We call upon all people to support the activities of the 4th World March of Women during March-October 2015.* · *For peace and against war, colonialism, occupations and the militarization of our lands.* We denounce the false discourse of human rights defense and fight against fundamentalism, which is often used to justify military occupations. We defend the right to people’s sovereignty and self-determination. We denounce the installation of foreign military bases to instigate conflicts, to control and ransack natural resources, and to foster dictatorships in several countries. *We demand reparations for all the peoples who have been victims of colonialism across the world.* · *For democratizing mass media and building alternative media*, which are fundamental to overthrow the capitalist logic. · *For resistance and solidarity, *we fight for our freedom to organize trade unions, social movements, associations and all other forms of peaceful resistance. We denounce the intensification of repressive measures against people´s rebellions; the arrests, assassinations and imprisonments of activists, students and journalists; and also the criminalization of our struggles. Inspired by the history of our struggles and by the rejuvenating strength of the people on the streets, *the Social Movements Assembly call upon everyone to mobilize and develop actions - coordinated at the world level – in a global week of mobilization against capitalism from 17 to 25 October, 2015* Social movements of the world, let us advance towards a global unity to shatter the capitalist system! Let’s strengthen our solidarity with the people of the world who fight everyday against imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, patriarchy, racism and injustice in Tunisia, Palestine, Kurdistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Greece, Spain, Burkina Faso, Mali, Congo (DRC), Central Africa, and Western Sahara... *Long live the people’s struggle!* *People united will never be defeated!* Le 29 mars 2015 11:44, Jai Sen <jai.sen(a)cacim.net> a écrit : > Sunday, March 29, 2015 > > *Worlds in movement, worlds of movement…* > > *World Social Forum 2015 in movement :* > > (Here is the Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements that was held > at the World Social Forum 2015 in Tunis, but only in the two languages I > have received them in, French and Spanish (and not in Arabic and English as > originally announced would be circulated… I was sort of waiting for those > to come in before doing this posting, but since the Forum closed yesterday, > it seems to make sense to post at least these two without delaying the > matter. (And where I am NOT going to trust this kind of translation to Mr > Google… !) But I feel sure that those will become available soon, and I > will then post them. > > *The people united will never be defeated !* > > Déclaration de l’Assemblée des mouvements sociaux - Forum social mondial > 2015 > > *Les peuples unis ne seront jamais vaincus !* > > Declaración de la Asamblea de los Movimientos Sociales - Foro Social > Mundial 2015 > > *¡Los pueblos unidos jamás serán vencidos!* > > Thanks / merci, Mimoun Rahmani. And congratulations to all > of you in the Organising Committee for so successfully hosting and > organising the Forum despite all the tension – or perhaps that only made > you more determined ? > > JS > > PS : Mimoun, may I use this opportunity to invite you to consider > subscribing to WSFDiscuss ? Among other things, your doing this would mean > that we in the WSFDiscuss community will automatically receive your posts, > just like those on the Social Movement list do at the moment. > > *WSFDiscuss *is an open and unmoderated forum for the exchange of > information and views on the experience, practice, and theory of social and > political movement at any level (local, national, regional, and global), > including the World Social Forum. Started in 2005 as a list around the > WSF, it has now – and especially during 2012-2014 - matured into a > discussion around movement more generically. It now has a great list > membership, with people from many parts of the world including activists, > students and researchers, teachers, and others, and importantly, located > both near 'the centre' and towards 'the margins’ of societies as they today > are. *To subscribe, simply send an empty email* to > worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net. Thanks ! > fwd > Begin forwarded message: > > *From: *Mimoun Rahmani <rahmani.mimoun(a)gmail.com> > *Subject: **Re: [social-movements] Déclaration de l'assemblée des > mouvements sociaux* > *Date: *March 28, 2015 at 1:32:37 PM GMT+5:30 > *To: *Social Movements <social-movements(a)lists.riseup.net>, FSM-WSF - > International Council <wsfic_fsmci(a)listas.tiwa.net.br> > *Reply-To: *Mimoun Rahmani <rahmani.mimoun(a)gmail.com> > > > *Déclaration de l’Assemblée des mouvements sociaux * > > *Forum social mondial 2015 * > > *Tunis 27 mars* > > > > *Les peuples unis ne seront jamais vaincus !* > > > Nous, réuni-e-s lors de l’Assemblée des mouvements sociaux du Forum social > mondial 2015 à Tunis, avec notre diversité, pour construire un agenda > commun de luttes contre le capitalisme, l’impérialisme, le patriarcat, le > racisme et toutes les formes de discrimination et d’oppression. > > > Nous avons construit une histoire et un travail commun qui a permis des > avancées, avec l’espoir de réaliser la victoire contre le système dominant > et concrétiser plusieurs alternatives pour un développement socialement > juste et respectueux de la nature. > > > Les peuples du monde entier subissent aujourd’hui l’aggravation d’une > crise profonde du capitalisme dans laquelle les sociétés privées > transnationales, les banques, les conglomérats médiatiques, les > institutions financières internationales cherchent à accroître leurs > profits au prix d’une politique interventionniste et néo-colonialiste, avec > la complicité des gouvernements libéraux. > > > Guerres, occupations militaires, traités néo-libéraux de libre-échange > (Transatlantique, transpacifique, ALECA, UE-MERCOSUR, APE, MERCOSUR-Israël > et différents traités bilatéraux) et politiques d’austérité se voient > traduits en paquets économiques qui privatisent les biens communs et les > services publics, baissent les salaires, violent les droits, augmentent le > chômage, la précarité et la surcharge des femmes dans le travail de soins > et détruisent la nature. > > > Ces politiques néolibérales affectent lourdement à la fois les pays du Sud > et les pays du Nord, augmentent les migrations, les déplacements forcés, > les délogements, l’endettement et les inégalités sociales. Elles renforcent > le conservatisme et le contrôle sur le corps et la vie des femmes. Elles > nous imposent "l’économie verte" comme fausse solution à la crise > environnementale et alimentaire, ce qui non seulement aggrave le problème, > mais débouche sur la marchandisation, la privatisation et la > financiarisation de la vie et de la nature. > > > Nous affirmons que les peuples ne sont pas responsables de cette crise et > ne doivent pas en payer le prix, et qu’il n’y a pas d’issue possible au > sein du système capitaliste. Ici, à Tunis, nous réaffirmons notre > engagement pour la construction d’une stratégie commune de lutte contre le > capitalisme. C’est pour ça que, nous, les mouvements sociaux luttons: > § *Contre les transnationales et le système financier (FMI, BM et OMC), *principaux > agents du système capitaliste, qui privatisent la vie, les services > publics et les biens communs comme l’eau, l’air, la terre, les semences, > les ressources minérales, promeuvent les guerres, violent les droits > humains et pillent les ressources. Les transnationales reproduisent des > pratiques extractivistes nuisibles à la vie, accaparent nos terres et > développent des semences et aliments transgéniques qui privent les peuples > de leur droit à l’alimentation et détruisent la biodiversité. > > Nous luttons pour l’annulation de la dette illégitime et odieuse qui est > aujourd´hui un instrument global de domination, de répression et d´asphyxie > économique et financière des peuples. Nous refusons les accords de > libre-échange que nous imposent les États et les transnationales et nous > affirmons qu’il est possible de construire une mondialisation d’un autre > type, par les peuples et pour les peuples, fondée sur la solidarité et sur > la liberté de circulation pour tous les êtres humains. > > > *Nous soutenons l’appel à la journée d’action internationale contre les > traités de libre échange prévue le 18 avril 2015.* > > § *Pour la justice climatique et la souveraineté alimentaire *parce que > nous savons que le réchauffement global est le résultat du système > capitaliste de production, distribution et consommation. Les > transnationales, les institutions financières internationales et les > gouvernements qui sont à leur service ne veulent pas réduire leurs > émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Nous dénonçons « l’économie verte », et > refusons les fausses solutions à la crise climatique comme les > agrocarburants, les organismes génétiquement modifiés, la géo-ingénierie et > les mécanismes de marché de carbone, comme le REDD (Réduction des Émissions > liées à la Déforestation et à la Dégradation), qui font miroiter aux > populations appauvries des progrès, tout en privatisant et transformant en > marchandises les forêts et territoires où ces populations ont vécu > pendant des millénaires. > > > Nous défendons la souveraineté alimentaire et l’agriculture paysanne qui > sont les solutions réelles à la crise alimentaire et climatique, ce qui > signifie aussi l’accès à la terre pour celles et ceux qui la travaillent. > > > *Nous appelons à une grande mobilisation sur le climat au mois de décembre > 2015 à Paris en marge de la COP21. Faisons de 2015 l’année des > mobilisations des mouvements sociaux partout dans le monde pour la justice > climatique.* > > § *Contre la violence envers les femmes *qui est exercée régulièrement > dans les territoires occupés militairement, mais aussi contre la violence > dont souffrent les femmes quand elles sont criminalisées parce qu’elles > participent activement aux luttes sociales. Nous luttons contre la violence > domestique et sexuelle qui est exercée sur les femmes quand elles sont > considérées comme des objets ou marchandises, quand leur souveraineté sur > leur corps et leur spiritualité ne sont pas reconnues. Nous luttons contre > la traite des femmes, des filles et garçons. > > Nous défendons la diversité sexuelle, le droit à l’autodétermination du > genre, et nous luttons contre l’homophobie et les violences sexistes. > > > *Nous appelons à soutenir les actions de la 4ème marche mondiale des > femmes entre mars et octobre 2015.* > > § * Pour la paix et contre la guerre, le colonialisme, les occupations et > la militarisation de nos territoires.* Nous dénonçons le faux discours de > défense des droits humains et des combats aux intégrismes, qui sont souvent > utilisés pour justifier les interventions militaires. Nous défendons le > droit à la souveraineté et à l’auto-détermination des peuples. Nous > dénonçons l’installation des bases militaires étrangères pour > fomenter des conflits, contrôler et piller les ressources naturelles et > promouvoir des dictatures en divers endroits du monde. > > *Nous exigeons des réparations pour tous les peuples du monde victimes du > colonialisme.* > > > § * Pour la démocratisation des médias de masse et la construction > de médias alternatifs, *qui sont fondamentales pour faire renverser la > logique capitaliste. > > > § *Pour la résistance et la solidarité* : Nous luttons pour la liberté de > nous organiser dans des syndicats, des mouvements sociaux, des associations > et toutes autres formes de résistance pacifique. > > > Nous dénonçons l´intensification de la répression contre les > peuples rebelles, les arrestations, emprisonnements et assassinats des > activistes, des étudiants et des journalistes. Ainsi que la > criminalisation de nos luttes. > > > Inspirés par l’histoire de nos luttes et par la force rénovatrice des > peuples dans les rues, *l’Assemblée des mouvements sociaux appelle toutes > et tous à développer des actions de mobilisation coordonnées au niveau > mondial dans une semaine globale de luttes contre le capitalisme du 17 au > 25 octobre 2015.* > > > Mouvements sociaux du monde entier, avançons vers une unité globale pour > défaire le système capitaliste ! > > > Renforçons notre solidarité avec les peuples du monde qui luttent au > quotidien contre l’impérialisme, le colonialisme, l´exploitation, le > patriarcat, le racisme et l’injustice, en Tunisie, en Palestine, au > Kurdistan, en Syrie, en Irak, en Lybie, en Grèce, en Espagne, au Burkina > Faso, au Mali, au Congo (RDC), en Centre Afrique, au Sahara occidental… > > *Vive la lutte de tous les peuples!* > > *Les peuples unis ne seront jamais vaincus !* > > > Begin forwarded message: > > *From: *Mimoun Rahmani <rahmani.mimoun(a)gmail.com> > *Subject: **[social-movements] Declaración de la Asamblea de los > Movimientos Sociales - Foro Social Mundial 2015* > *Date: *March 29, 2015 at 4:24:10 AM GMT+5:30 > *To: *FSM-WSF - International Council <wsfic_fsmci(a)listas.tiwa.net.br>, > Social Movements <social-movements(a)lists.riseup.net>, Alessandra > Ceregatti - MMM <alessandra(a)marchemondiale.org> > *Reply-To: *Mimoun Rahmani <rahmani.mimoun(a)gmail.com> > > > Declaración de la Asamblea de los Movimientos Sociales - Foro Social > Mundial 2015. > http://cadtm.org/Declaracion-de-la-Asamblea-de-los,11451 > > > *Declaración de la Asamblea de los Movimientos Sociales - Foro Social > Mundial 2015* > > *¡Los pueblos unidos jamás serán vencidos!* > > *Túnez 27 de marzo* > > > Nosotras y nosotros, nos hemos reunido en la Asamblea de los Movimientos > Sociales, durante el Foro Social Mundial de Túnez 2015, teniendo en cuenta > toda nuestra diversidad para construir una agenda común de luchas contra el > capitalismo, el imperialismo, el patriarcado, el racismo y todas las formas > de discriminación y de opresión. > > Hemos construido una historia y un trabajo en común que ha permitido > avances, con la esperanza de conseguir la victoria contra el sistema > dominante y poder concretar alternativas en pro de un desarrollo > socialmente justo y respetuoso de la naturaleza. > > Los pueblos de todo el mundo sufren actualmente los efectos del > agravamiento de una profunda crisis del capitalismo, en la que sus agentes > (bancos, transnacionales, conglomerados mediáticos, instituciones > internacionales) buscan potenciar sus beneficios a costa de una política > intervencionista y neocolonialista, con la complicidad de gobiernos > neoliberales. > > Guerras, ocupaciones militares, tratados neoliberales de libre comercio > (Transatlántico, Transpacífico, ALECA, UE-MERCOSUR > <http://cadtm.org/Mercosur,1074>, ADE, e Israel-MERCOSUR y diferentes > tratados bilaterales) y políticas de austeridad se traducen en paquetes > económicos que privatizan los bienes comunes > <http://cadtm.org/Bienes-comunes> y los services publiques, rebajan los > salarios, violan los derechos, multiplican el desempleo, aumentan la > precariedad y la sobrecarga de las mujeres en el trabajo de los cuidados, y > destruyen la naturaleza. > > Estas políticas neoliberales afectan con intensidad tanto a los países del > Sur como a los países del Norte, aumentando las migraciones, los > desplazamientos forzados, los desalojos, el endeudamiento, y las > desigualdades sociales. Refuerzan el conservadurismo y el control sobre el > cuerpo y la vida de las mujeres. Además, nos imponen la “economía verde”, > como falsa solución a la crisis ambiental y alimentaria, que no solo agrava > el problema, sino que resulta en la mercantilización, privatización y > financiarización de la vida y de la naturaleza. > > Afirmamos que los pueblos no son responsables de esta crisis y por lo > tanto no deben pagar sus consecuencias. No hay salida posible dentro del > sistema capitalista. Aquí, en Túnez, nos reafirmamos en nuestro compromiso > para la construcción de una estrategia común de combate contra el > capitalismo. Y por ello, los movimientos sociales luchamos: > > ● *Contra las transnacionales y el sistema financiero (**FMI* > <http://cadtm.org/Fondo-monetario-internacional>*, BM y **OMC* > <http://cadtm.org/Organizacion-Mundial-del-Comercio>*)*, principales > agentes del sistema capitalista, que privatizan la vida, los servicios > públicos y los bienes comunes como el agua, el aire, la tierra, las > semillas, los recursos minerales, promueven las guerras, violan los > derechos humanos y saquean los recursos. Las transnacionales reproducen las > prácticas extractivistas perjudiciales para la vida, acaparan nuestras > tierras y desarrollan semillas y alimentos transgénicos que privan a los > pueblos de su derecho a la alimentación y destruyen la biodiversidad. > > Luchamos por la anulación de la deuda <http://cadtm.org/Deuda> ilegitima > y odiosa que hoy es instrumento global de dominación, de represión y de > asfixia económica y financiera de los pueblos. Rechazamos los tratados de > libre comercio que los Estados y las transnacionales nos imponen y > afirmamos que es posible construir una integración de otro tipo, por los > pueblos y para los pueblos, basada en la solidaridad y en la libertad de > circulación para todos los seres humanos. > > *Apoyamos el llamamiento a una jornada de **acción* > <http://cadtm.org/Accion>* internacional contra los tratados de libre > comercio prevista para el día 18 de abril de 2015* > > ● *Por la justicia climática y la soberanía alimentaria*, porque sabemos > que el calentamiento global es resultado del sistema capitalista de > producción, distribución y consumo. Las transnacionales, las instituciones > financieras internacionales y los gobiernos a su servicio no quieren > reducir sus emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero. Denunciamos la > “economía verde” y rechazamos todas las falsas soluciones a la crisis > climática como los agrocombustibles, los organismos genéticamente > modificados, la geoingeniería y los mecanismos del mercado de carbono, como > el REDD (reducción de Emisiones debido a la Deforestación y a la > Degradación), que ilusionan a poblaciones empobrecidas con el progreso, > mientras privatizan y mercantilizan los bosques y territorios donde han > vivido miles de años. > > Defendemos la soberanía alimentaria y la agricultura campesina que son la > solución real a la crisis alimentaria y climática, y que significan también > el acceso a la tierra para la gente que la trabaja. > > *Llamamos a una gran movilización sobre el clima para el mes de diciembre > de 2015 en París. En paralelo a la COP21. Hagamos de 2015 el año de las > movilizaciones de los movimientos sociales en todo el mundo por la justicia > climática.* > > ● *Contra la violencia hacia las mujeres*, que se ejerce con regularidad > en los territorios ocupados militarmente, pero también contra la violencia > que sufren las mujeres cuando son criminalizadas por participar activamente > en las luchas sociales. Luchamos contra la violencia doméstica y sexual que > se ejerce sobre ellas cuando son consideradas como objetos o mercancías, > cuando la soberanía sobre sus cuerpos y su espiritualidad no es reconocida. > Luchamos contra el tráfico de mujeres, niñas y niños. > > Defendemos la diversidad sexual, el derecho a la autodeterminación de > género, y luchamos contra la homofobia y la violencia sexista. > > *Llamamos a apoyar las acciones de la 4ª Marcha Mundial de Mujeres entre > marzo y octubre de 2015.* > > ● *Por la paz y contra la guerra, el colonialismo, las ocupaciones y la > militarización de nuestros territorios.* Denunciamos el falso discurso en > defensa de los derechos humanos y de la lucha contra los integrismos, que > muchas veces justifica las intervenciones militares. Defendemos el derecho > de los pueblos a su autodeterminación y a su soberanía. Denunciamos la > instalación de bases militares extranjeras utilizadas para fomentar > conflictos, controlar y saquear los recursos naturales y promover > dictaduras en diversas partes del mundo. > > *Exigimos reparaciones para todos los pueblos del mundo víctimas del > colonialismo* > > ● *Por la democratización de los medios de comunicación masivos y por la > construcción de medios alternativos*, que son fundamentales para derrocar > la lógica capitalista. > > ● *Por la resistencia y la solidaridad*: Luchamos por la libertad de > poder organizarnos en sindicatos, movimientos sociales, asociaciones y en > cualquier otra forma de resistencia pacífica. > > Denunciamos el aumento de la represión contra los pueblos rebeldes, los > arrestos, encarcelamientos y asesinatos de activistas, estudiantes y > periodistas, así como la criminalización de nuestras luchas. > > Inspirada en la historia de nuestras luchas y en la fuerza renovadora del > pueblo en las calles, *la Asamblea de los Movimientos Sociales convoca a > todas y todos a desarrollar acciones, coordinadas en todo el mundo, durante > una semana global de luchas contra el capitalismo, del 17 al 25 de octubre > de 2015.* > > > *¡Movimientos sociales de todo el mundo, avancemos hacia la unidad global > para derrotar al sistema capitalista!* > > Reforcemos nuestra solidaridad con los pueblos del mundo que combaten > cotidianamente contra el imperialismo, el colonialismo, la explotación, el > patriarcado, el racismo y la injusticia, en Túnez, Palestina, Kurdistán, > Siria, Irak, Libia, Grecia, España, Burkina Faso, Malí, República > Democrática del Congo, en el África central, en el Sahara occidental… > > > *¡Viva la lucha de todos los pueblos!* > > *¡Los pueblos unidos jamás serán vencidos!* > > > > ______________________________ > > Jai Sen > > jai.sen(a)cacim.net / jai(a)openword.in > > www.cacim.net / http://www.openword.in > > Now based in Ottawa, Canada (+1-613-282 2900), and New Delhi, India (+91-98189 > 11325) > > *RECENT PUBLICATIONS :* > > Jai Sen, ed, 2013 – *The Movements of Movements : Struggles for Other > Worlds*, Part I*.* Volume 4 Part I in the *Challenging Empires* series. > New Delhi : OpenWord. *Available > @ http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/ > <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/>* > > *FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS :* > > Jai Sen and Peter Waterman, eds, forthcoming (2015) – *The Movements of > Movements : Struggles for Other Worlds**,* Part 2. Volume 4 Part II in the > *Challenging Empires* series. New Delhi : OpenWord > > *CHECK OUT* *CACIM* @ www.cacim.net, *OpenWord* @ http://www.openword.in, > and *OpenSpaceForum* @ www.openspaceforum.net > > *AND SUBSCRIBE TO* *WSFDiscuss*, an open and unmoderated forum for the > exchange of information and views on the experience, practice, and theory > of social and political movement at any level (local, national, regional, > and global), including the World Social Forum. *To subscribe, simply > send an empty email > to worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net > <worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net>* > > <Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly.docx> _______________________________________________ ** WSFDiscuss is an open and unmoderated forum for the exchange of information and views on the experience, practise, and theory of the World Social Forum at any level (local, national, regional, and global) and on related social and political movements and issues. Join in !** _______________________________________________ WSFDiscuss mailing list POST to LIST : Send email to WorldSocialForum-Discuss(a)openspaceforum.net SUBSCRIBE: Send empty email to worldsocialforum-discuss-subscribe(a)openspaceforum.net UNSUBSCRIBE: Send empty email to worldsocialforum-discuss-unsubscribe(a)openspaceforum.net LIST ARCHIVES: http://openspaceforum.net/pipermail/worldsocialforum-discuss_openspaceforum… LIST INFORMATION: http://openspaceforum.net/mailman/listinfo/worldsocialforum-discuss_openspa… _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: [NetworkedLabour] Immaterial Labour Union
by Michel Bauwens 01 Apr '15

01 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rosie Gram <rosiegram(a)riseup.net> Date: Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 6:59 PM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] Immaterial Labour Union To: networkedlabour(a)lists.contrast.org Social media users, unite! The Immaterial Labour Union is a decentralized labour union which occupies the space of the *operaista* "social factory": Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, etc, where we're being stripped off of our data for the profit of a privileged few. Labour feels different, but it is still labour and to think or act otherwise is to let capital win once more! The choice to constitute a union when labour as we know it is changing in advanced capitalist societies is an ideological one: Against the tendency in the lowering power of the union, against the tendency in alienating the *produsers* from their statuses as workers, the union rises to create a blockade against extreme individualization. We need you to join the organizing committee of the union! We need your ideas and suggestions to dynamize what aims to be the workshop of the Immaterial Labor Union. We envision it as a network of variable architecture which tactically meets to bring to life different, concrete components of the toolkit for the liberation of the multitude! How can we negotiate terms of service? How can we re-imagine collective bargaining within the social factory? We need you to help us answer those questions! We need you to organize with us! *Join our organizing committee today!* Subscribe to our mailing list @ https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/immateriallaborunion and let us start collaborating! http://immateriallaborunion.net/ Rosie Gram _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list NetworkedLabour(a)lists.contrast.org http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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Fwd: [commoning] Literally Reclaiming The Commons
by Michel Bauwens 01 Apr '15

01 Apr '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Silke Helfrich <silke.helfrich(a)gmx.de> Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 1:16 AM Subject: [commoning] Literally Reclaiming The Commons To: "urbancommoning(a)lists.commons-institut.org" < urbancommoning(a)lists.commons-institut.org>, COMMONING LIste engl < commoning(a)lists.commons-institut.org> Architects and urban planners can be really creative Nice "image" for the slogan "The commons beyond Market and State" ... http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/why-not-move-mps-to- hull-and-turn-parliament-into-affordable-flats--xyIGykkBpg Regards Silke _______________________________________________ Commoning mailing list Commons-Institut e.V. Germany Commoning(a)lists.commons-institut.org https://lists.schokokeks.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/commoning -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/

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