---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Silke Helfrich <[email protected]> Date: 29 June 2016 at 20:55 Subject: [commoning] The Commons, The State & New Political Movements -> WSF Montreal To: COMMONING LIste engl <[email protected]> Cc: Tomislav Tomasevic <[email protected]>, Heike Loeschmann < [email protected]>, Sophie Bloemen <[email protected]>, David Hammerstein <[email protected]> Dear all, within the "Commons Space" of the next WSF in Montreal (August 9 to August 14); we plan to organize a session on The Commons, the State and New Political Movements! (probably on Thursday, August 11 in the Self-Organized Workshop slot of the WSF) We would love to have this discussion with people who plan to go to Montreal anyway and are concerned with the issue. Therefore, I need your help: Please let me know if you: - participate in the WSF and are interested in the topic - know other ppl. who go and should be part of the discussion (from Greece, Spain, Brasil, Croatia, France, the USA, Bolivia etc, etc?) - have in mind ppl. you would love to involve in this discussion and who need to be part if it but don't plan to go to Montreal, let me know anyway for some further coordination (Name dropping is ok, I can do some further research, an e-mail contact would be fine however) For more commons related activities at the WSF, you might consider to subscribe at: https://lists.p2pfoundation.net/wws/info/wsf2016 (there is also a hackpad we are using for some basic coordination, you might have seen it on this list.) Thanks a lot in advance, Warm greetings Silke SHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE SESSION: 6. The Commons, the State and New Political Movements (Commons Strategies Group) The Market/State is in crisis, and the Commons offers a way to go beyond both Market and State. So can the Commons help us move beyond the current crisis? Does this moment represent a window of opportunity to widen the space for commoning -- or will the deep structural crisis of neoliberalism simply accelerate enclosures, hyper-nationalism and repression as it struggles to retain its hegemony? If we understand the state as a complex institutional system that solidifies power relationships in society, the question for our time is whether commoners are capable of re-imagining state power to shift legality, resources and support for the commons. We need to assess the achievements and limitations of the many system-change movements to date. What lessons can we learn from the Occupy movement worldwide, "Nuit debout" in France, M15/Podemos in Spain, the Bolivian social movements that spurred political change years ago, Brasilian movements, the climate justice movement and, more recently, the surprising success of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign? Each of these movements have shown that change comes from the edges and from below, not from within the system. But it remains an open question how transformative and "commonistic" these movements have been or could be. How do they frame their work, strategies and slogans? What role do they play in the fight for the commons and what role does the commons as a discourse and paradigm play for them? This topic is fairly unexplored. Therefore, we suggest an open space for discussion with 4-5 inputs, 5 minutes each and a moderated discussion (evt. fishbowl) Organizers: Silke Helfrich, Commons Strategies Group Elizabetta Cangelosi (transform, Coordinator, Logistics) Participants: from, Mexico, Bolivia, Spain, Europe, USA, Greece -- Silke Helfrich www.commonsblog.de _______________________________________________ Commoning mailing list Commons-Institut e.V. Germany [email protected] https://lists.schokokeks.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/commoning -- https://twitter.com/flgnk Skype: kev.flanagan Phone: +353 87 743 5660