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

Thu Feb 24 04:35:17 CET 2011

Thanks Mark,

This a long-term perspective/investment. Based on an ideas first
articulated to me by Richard Schulte of Flywheel Tech Collective, who
is copied on this email, the idea is to work with Unions to start
building worker-owned cooperatives of various types, especially based
around production and design of open source technologies/software.
Mark, I copied you because I know that you've been in dialogue with
Unions right here in Michigan for years. I wondered if you might know
of some Union folks here in Michigan that might be candidates for this
type of thing?

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Mark Dilley <markwdilley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sam  - thank you for sending this out what seems so many days ago - I have been following this pretty keenly and am curious about the title of your email "+ Unions and P2P alternatives"
>
> open ears from anyone here.
>
> Best, Mark
>
>
> On 19Feb2011, at 5:19 PM, Samuel Rose wrote:
>
>> "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/
>> _______
>>
>>
>>
>> Aso worth reading:
>>
>> http://prop-press.typepad.com/blog/2011/02/report-from-day-five-first-chance-to-reflect.html
>>
>>
>> ________________________________________________________________________
>>
>>
>> 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
>
>

-- 
--
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