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

Thu Feb 24 04:26:07 CET 2011

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