Global University for Sustainability

Communique of Founding Members Community

No.20 (8 June 2019)

Dear Founding Members, Dear Friends,

1.     Sixth South South Forum on Sustainability (SSFS6) (2019)

SSFS6 will take place in Hong Kong on June 24 - July 3, 2019. The central theme is “Ecology, Livelihood, and Community Regeneration”. For Programme, Reader, Registration Form and other documents, please visit https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/sixth-south-south-forum-on-sustainability-ssfs6/

Up to now, we have about 100 registered participants for the three events:

June 24-26: Summer School on “Nuclear Weapons and Power: Current Challenges and Responses”

June 28-30: Forum on “Ecology, Livelihood, and Community Regeneration”

July 1-3: Workshop on Architecture and Urbanism  

You are most welcome, especially to the June 28-30 Forum where we anticipate dynamic debates. If you cannot come, we provide live streaming in English and Putonghua for the Summer School and the Forum. Please check the website for details. Please also check the SSFS6 Reader for the discussion materials. We are making an effort to translate the papers into English and Chinese.

Please note the dates for SSFS7 in 2020 are tentatively set for June 10-18, in Hong Kong. Proposals for holding SSFS in other sites are welcome.  

2. Alternatives Debate

This project was launched in mid April. The idea is to facilitate more interaction and debate among members of the Global U community. Please see https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/the-alternatives-debate/ for the details.

So far, we have the following contributions:

Category A, Revisiting Alternative Theories: Annemarie Bucher, Fatima Harrak, Francine Mestrum, Han Shaogong, Michael Hudson, MP Parameswaran, Sonja Lokar.

Category B, Revisiting Alternative Practices: Patrick Bond

Category C, Reviewing Alternative Organizing: Ariel Salleh, Muto Ichiyo.

There is no time limit to send in your contribution or to comment on other’s contributions, but please be engaged.

3. WAPE Conference on July 19-21, 2019

Michael Hudson will be keynote speaker at the 2019 World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) conference in Winnipeg, Canada. He will be talking about de-dollarization, and afterwards the paper will be uploaded to Global U for Alternatives Debate. Please see http://gergconference.ca/. If any of you are attending this conference, please meet up with Michael Hudson. The theme of seeking alternative monetary systems and different world orders will be a central one in the Global U debate.   

4. Global U Publications

Please visit https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/global-university-for-sustainability-2/ for free downloads of Global U publications. We have uploaded two books: 200 Years of Marx: Capitalism in Decline, and Bandung at 60: New Insights and Emerging Forces, in addition to The Biography of Francois Houtart and Dreams without an Expiry Date.

Samir Amin’s new book The Long Revolution of the Global South: Toward a New Anti-Imperialist International has been published by Monthly Review Press. https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-long-revolution-of-the-global-south/ 

5.  International People’s Assembly

The International People’s Assembly was inaugurated in Caracas, Venezuela, on Feb 24-27, 2019. One key organizer is Joao Pedro Stedile. Please also see the Global U link to “Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research” at https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/links/

6.  Debates and Comments within Members Community

We hope you all will make more use of this google group email list for exchange. Simply click “Reply all” to send your message. However, please send personal greetings to individual members and not the group.

You may also wish to send articles or comments for internal circulation on the “Community” section of the Global U website. How? When you visit the Global U website, on the home (global) page, please go to “Members Community”. Log in with the password “oguoguogu”. You will be asked again to log in. Enter username: “member”, and password: “oguoguogu”. Click “remember me” so you will be automatically logged in next time you visit this site. This is a space exclusively for the Founding Members Community. There are two sections. One is archive of all Founding Members Communiques. The other is “Internal Documents for Members Community” (including books that otherwise would infringe on copyright, etc). When you send us something for uploading to this section, please specify that this is for internal debates.

You can also choose to upload your comments directly in the “Leave a Comment” section. Please follow the instructions on the website to login.

With very warm regards,

Kin Chi
On behalf of the Executive Team at our.global.u@gmail.com