For the new year, we thought we would start with a newsletter that highlights a critical task of the movement for transformation – the creation of alternative systems to replace the current dysfunctional systems. There are exciting advances in this work.
There were many actions of resistance this past week, especially around the holidays, and you can read about them here. In addition to stopping harmful policies and practices, people are creating alternatives that may mature to a place where they replace the current systems and the current systems of capitalism, oppression, militarism, racism, etc, will wither away. We call this combination “Stop the machine, create a new world“.
The late Bill Moyer (the activist, not the journalist) wrote about this in “The Eight Stages of Successful Social Movements“. He stated that there are three ways that ‘success’ can be achieved: a dramatic showdown, victorious retreat or attrition (they are not mutually exclusive). The third way, “attrition”, where the social, economic and political machinery slowly evolve to new polices and conditions, leads to a more stable transformation.
Economies that put people and planet before profits
Economic and political systems are intimately connected, and so changing the economy is fundamental to political transformation.
Capitalism and democracy are at odds with each other. Put simply, capitalism leads to wealth inequality and such inequality makes democracy impossible because those with the wealth have the power to control the political system. This manifests itself in myriad ways as described here. This is why the US is a plutocracy, as demonstrated by researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page.
The Solidarity Economy provides the basis for a new economic system that is rooted in participatory democracy. Here is how Ethan Miller describes the Solidarity Economy (click on the link to learn more):
“Instead of enforcing a culture of cutthroat competition, they build cultures and communities of cooperation. Rather than isolating us from one another, they foster relationships of mutual support and solidarity. In place of centralized structures of control, they move us towards shared responsibility and directly democratic decision-making. Instead of imposing a single global monoculture, they strengthen the diversity of local cultures and environments. Instead of prioritizing profit over all else, they encourage commitment to broader work for social, economic, and environmental justice.”
This is evident in the growth of worker-owned businesses. Instead of working for companies that exploit workers through non-living wages and ‘disposable employee‘ practices, people are forming cooperative businesses where workers make decisions in a democratic and transparent way.
The TESA Collective explains “how co-ops build stronger communities, a new economy, and a better world” in part “by keeping money, resources, jobs, and economic control local.” And two leaders in the cooperative movement, Melissa Hoover and Esteban Kelly, discuss how cooperatives can build wealth in low income communities, how cities can use coops to create a new economy and how coops can form federations of cooperatives to solve the challenges of business development. Grassroots Economic Organizing and The Democracy Collaborative are other places to find information about cooperatives.
Other aspects of the solidarity economy involve banking and investment of taxpayer dollars. The Public Banking movement is growing to the point where there may soon be victories in Philadelphia and Santa Fe with public banks at the local level. Public banks remove our public dollars from the risky private banks so they can be used to support local communities. Other countries among them Russia, Iceland, Ireland, the UK and Ecuador are also trying alternative banking systems.
And instead of giving our public dollars to private corporations which greedily hoard them, some governments are transitioning to a universal basic income. Finland is the first country to try this on a national level. Imagine if every person had a guaranteed income to meet their basic needs. How would your life change if you had a guarantee of $1,000 each month? A basic income would eradicate poverty, end the need for poverty programs and people would be freed, if combined with other public policies, to pursue more education, raise their children, try new businesses or practice arts. A basic income is also a major economic stimulus. Read about efforts in the US here.
Here is another common sense tactic, this one dealing with homelessness: the city of Buffalo, NY is on track to end chronic homelessness by, of all things, prioritizing finding homes for everyone. Given that many cities have more vacant homes than there are homeless people, this model of getting homes for the homeless and then working to solve the other problems that led to being homeless could spread.
Another popular idea: Imagine if we invested our taxpayer dollars in supporting the Solidarity Economy from the grassroots up instead of continuing the deadly Empire Economy where more than half of federal discretionary funds go to the military and so-called security state.
The opposite of plutocracy
In a plutocracy, everything is seen as a potential for profit – health care, education, energy, infrastructure and more. The trend in a plutocracy is toward privatization so that the wealthy can control access and reap all the profits. The opposite of plutocracy is a system that prioritizes the needs of people, provides greater public access to space and resources and promotes public participation in decision-making. These are some of the principles of The Commons. David Bollier does some of the best writing about The Commons.
Community-owned and managed spaces are being used for food and renewable energy production. Food Tank lists more than 100 projects in the US and around the world that are contributing to a sustainable and healthier food system. This is important for mitigating the climate crisis too. Michael Pollan writes that the food system is the second largest emitter of Greenhouse Gases.
Community space is also being used to plant community solar gardens. Growth of renewable energy sources, coupled with reduced usage and greater energy efficiency, will hasten the end of the dinosaur fossil fuel era. Portland, Oregon set an example this year by moving to ban new fossil fuel infrastructure.
The internet is a commons in many ways. It allows us to share information freely and to collaborate on projects through open software platforms. Perhaps our most important victory in 2015 was reclassification of the internet as a common carrier to ensure net neutrality, this made 2015 an important year for protecting the internet as a commons with equal access for all. Cable and media outlets will continue to try to control the internet because controlling information is necessary to control populations, so we must be vigilant to protect it.
To counter that, alternative media outlets, including tools for public media, are growing. At the international level, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) held their first Media Summit to build alternatives to Western-dominated corporate media. You may enjoy the reporting of Jonathan Pie who tells it like it is, or friends of Popular Resistance Lee Camp with “Redacted Tonight” and “Moment of Clarity“, Eleanor Goldfield’s “Act Out“, Abby Martin’s Empire Files and Dennis Trainor, Jr’s “Acronym TV“. We have a regular radio program called “Clearing the FOG” on We Act Radio.
The TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and its sister agreements will cement systems in place that will prevent efforts to build a commons-based solidarity economy. Because the TPP is advancing rapidly, we do want to include what you can do in 2016 to stop it. For a limited time, the US Trade Representative is accepting public comments on the TPP and employment. We urge you to spend a few moments to comment (almost 500 people have done that so far this week). Here are instructions and tools for you. We are also gearing up to counter the lies that will be told about the TPP during the Presidential State of the Union on January 12 and for a nationwide day of action when Obama signs the TPP on Feb. 4. The next step will be in Congress, so we need to continue to build opposition to prevent that. Join the Wednesday night calls for more information. And you can help to build trade justice by joining the Buycott.
Reducing militarism
A necessary component of a plutocracy is the military-security state. Naturally, when people are oppressed, they will rise up at some point and the military-security state is there to protect the plutocrats from the people.
The Black Lives Matter and other movements have been pushing back against the security state to demand de-militarization and greater community control. Barbara Arnwine of the Transformational Justice Coalition also outlines eight steps to end prosecutorial misconduct as we recently witnessed in the cases of Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice.
In Ohio, public pressure in one community is working to prevent the local police from siding with the fossil fuel industry against landowners.
There are also signs that the Drug War is coming to an end. 2016 will be a big year for ending the prohibition of marijuana. This will help patients who use medical marijuana and will decrease incarceration rates as has happened in Colorado and Washington State.
It would be wonderful if all wars would come to an end. We have a lot of work to do on that front. We applaud the efforts of David Swanson, Leah Bolger, David Hartsough and others at World Beyond War to create a movement for the abolition of war and CODEPINK and others who regularly confront Empire.
Breaking the corporate duopoly
Recent developments in Spain are inspiring and have lessons for the movement for this election year. In Spain, electoral politics have been dominated by two parties for decades. In the past few elections, activists running in third parties have been elected at the local and national levels. And this past December, the people officially ended the stranglehold of the two major parties by winning enough third party votes to prevent a majority.
Click here to read more about what is happening at the local level in Madrid. And here is more information about the recent national elections.
Our metamorphosis
We live in a time of crisis, but out of that crisis comes opportunity for bold transformation to create a new world that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. In 2016, let’s continue to dedicate ourselves to resisting things that harm us and building positive alternatives.
We close with the words of Alnoor Ladha of The Rules who calls this the “Chrysalis Stage of Humanity“:
“What seems certain to me is that we must each hold for ourselves the potential of the world we want to see. Another world is possible not because we can describe or even theorize her, but because the seeds of her potentiality already exist within our collective being…. The only question is, will we kill our host environment’s ability to give us life or will we act as the Imaginal cells, killing off the caterpillar logic of neoliberalism in time for metamorphosis.”
