[P2P-F] 12 things you need to know about protests in Wisconsin, USA + Unions and P2P alternatives

[Samuel Rose]

"What's happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of
this year, the state was on course to end 2011 with a budget surplus
of $120 million. As Ezra Klein explained, newly elected GOP Governor
Scott Walker then " signed two business tax breaks and a conservative
health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among
other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a
surplus into a deficit."

Walker then used the deficit he'd created as the justification for
assaulting his state's public employees. He used a law cooked up by a
right-wing advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but I described
the organization in a 2005 article as "the connective tissue that
links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax
activists and corporate money." Similar laws are on the table in Ohio
and Indiana.

Walker's bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain
collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of
wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions
are clear -- before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify
the state's employees' unions (until he discovered that the governor
doesn't have that power)."

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/479560/12_things_you_need_to_know_about_the_uprising_in_wisconsin/
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Aso worth reading:

http://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/02/report-from-day-five-first-chance-to-reflect.html


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I think the time is here to start talking with people about
http://p2pfoundation.net/The_Political_Principles_of_Peer-to-Peer_Advocacy
here, in the Industrial Midwest (which includes WI)

One simple way to route around party politics is to give people a
direct p2p way to actively reflect existing poltics as we saw in
iceland with http://skuggathing.is/portal based on
https://github.com/rbjarnason/open-active-democracy

Another parallel approach is to start applying collective decision
making and pooling of resources directly to problems people are
addressing. In addition, creating cooperatives, supporting alternative
currencies when appropriate.

Unions in all of these states have resources, including pension funds,
that they could invest directly in worker-owned cooperative companies,
as has been discussed by Richard Schulte of flywheeltechcollective in
the past. Some of them have expressed interest in doing this. These
kinds of changes for entities like unions are long term changes and
investments, and will take time. However, I think every year that goes
by makes more and more on the left receptive to p2p alternatives.

If people are interested in working on P2P political advocacy and
approaches in 2011-2012, let's talk here and continue to build towards
thing people can really use in places like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan,
Eastern Europe, South America, etc



-- 
--
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://futureforwardinstitute.org
http://hollymeadcapital.com
http://p2pfoundation.net
http://socialmediaclassroom.com

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan