Governance

Scotland’s Red Council

February 8, 2021 Joe Cullinane, Tribune Magazine. Create! Governance, Municipalism, Scotland, Socialism

As roads to socialism close nationally, the need for a municipal road to socialism is borne by those of us on the Labour left who are privileged to hold power at a local level. We may be few, but our impact is big. From Matthew Brown and the ‘Preston Model’, Paul Dennett’s ‘Sensible Socialism’ in Salford, and Rohksana Fiaz’s ‘People Power’ participation in Newham, through to Jamie Driscoll’s green agenda in the North of Tyne, the Left is demonstrating that we have the ideas to drive change. In Scotland, my North Ayrshire minority administration bears the responsibility for driving a socialist agenda in Scottish politics.

Nevada Bill Would Allow Tech Companies To Create Governments

February 6, 2021 AP News. Educate! Big Tech, Corporatization, Governance, Nevada

Carson City, NV - Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state’s economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday. The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services. The measure to further economic development with the “alternative form of local government” has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.

Home Rule For London

January 24, 2021 Owen Hatherly, Tribune Magazine. Strategize! Governance, Labour Party, London, Socialism

The Labour Party became the largest political force in inner London—the area then covered by the London County Council (LCC)—in 1919, and it has remained so for a century, a ‘heartland’ at least as crucial as the North East or South Wales. Labour’s first twenty years as the major party of the capital saw a pitched battle between its left and centre, which the centre eventually won. But that battle was along lines that are deeply unfamiliar today, with the ‘centre’ standing firmly for nationalisation, council housing, and pacifism. Given that inner London has been Labour’s most enduring success, we would do well to understand how that red base was first built. After the removal of the property franchise on voting, Labour won control of most of the poorer boroughs in London in the 1919 general election.

Our Democratic Prospects: What The Ming Dynasty Can Tell Us

January 14, 2021 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Democracy, Equality, Governance, Public Good

How best to understand the assault on the Capitol this week? Might some historical perspective help us better comprehend how endangered our democracy has become? Could that perspective point us to a more promising post-Trump path? A global team of anthropologists from the United States and Mexico may be offering up just the sort of historical perspective we need. The team’s newly published research — on premodern societies — might at first glance seem more than a bit irrelevant. Wednesday’s mob violence has Americans by the millions, after all, worried about “democratic backsliding.” But we had no democratic nation states in premodern times.

Marx Didn’t Invent Socialism, Nor Did He Discover It

December 16, 2020 Steve Lalla, MR Online. Educate! Governance, Indigenous culture, Karl Marx, Socialism

There’s no debate that Marx didn’t invent socialism. As co-editor of a French-German radical newspaper by 1843, a young Marx would have read the term “socialism” used by French author Pierre Leroux (1797–1871)–generally credited with coining the term–or the German Lorenz von Stein (1815–1890). England’s Robert Owen (1771–1858) had bandied the word about as early as 1835. French philosopher Victor d’Hupay (1746–1818) called himself a communist author around 1785, thirty-three years before Marx’s birth, and his colleague Nicolas-Edme Rétif (1734–1806) even used the term to describe a form of government.

Demonstrators Deliver 800 ‘Failing Report Cards’ To Iowa Governor

November 23, 2020 Andrea May Sahouri, Des Moines Register. Resist! COVID-19, Governance, Iowa, PPE

As confirmed coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to increase in Iowa, activists and community members sent Gov. Kim Reynolds nearly a thousand "failing report cards" during a Friday afternoon demonstration to speak out against the governor's response to the pandemic. Over a dozen demonstrators gathered in front of the Governor's Terrace Hill mansion for a planned action by community organization Iowa CCI demanding a statewide mask mandate and more leadership from the governor.

Indigenous Anarchic Hierarchy

November 13, 2020 Eepa, IAF-FAI.org. Create! Anarchy, Governance, Hierarchy, Indigenous culture

It is possible to characterize positions of hierarchy within some Indigenous systems as hierarchies based on respect, not domination. People may hold a position as ‘chief’ in a hierarchy that encourages people to follow their guidance, but there is no mechanism to enforce obedience or observance of these leaders’ ideas. Caribs/Kalinago would never abide an order to go fishing, but at the suggestion that fish was needed by the chief, people would join him in fishing. Among Yuman tribes, chiefs & orators would lead in offering suggestions for activities, but mutual consent was required for action.

Meet The 1%: “Giants: The Global Power Elite”

August 26, 2018 Marc Eliot Stein, World Beyond War. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Globalization, Governance, Power Elites

Peter Phillips, professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University and media researcher for Project Censored and Media Freedom Foundation, presented a summary of his groundbreaking new book “Giants: The Global Power Elite” last week at Fordham University’s campus in Manhattan. This was an information-packed session that explained the unique purpose of this new book: exposing to public view the private workings of the influential investment partnerships, global councils, think tanks, consortiums and other non-governmental organizations that...

The Search For A New Politics

May 20, 2018 Cliff DuRand, Truthout. Create! Capitalism, Democracy, Governance, Neoliberalism

For the last four decades, political discourse has been dominated by the ideas of neoliberalism. This ideology has been promoted by elites to direct public policy not only in the US, but worldwide. Neoliberalism offers a simple story of our times by which people can make sense of the world in which they find themselves. British journalist George Monbiot has pointed to the importance of such stories in his recent book Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. His aim is to construct a new story to mobilize people into political action and create social change.

How US Legal System Prevents Community Self-Governance

January 3, 2017 Staff, www.celdf.org Create! Governance, Legal System, Self-Determination

By Staff of CELDF - In 2015, residents of several rural Ohio counties watched in shock as Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted unilaterally removed citizen-sponsored initiatives from county ballots. The initiatives, which had already qualified for the ballot, would have banned oil and gas drilling and fracking in those communities. The Ohio Supreme Court sharply rapped Husted’s knuckles for using authority he didn’t have. However, a year later, the people of those same counties watched in disbelief as Husted again blocked their initiatives. This time, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed his actions.

How To Make City Budgets Racially Just

October 30, 2016 Paulina Phelps, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Equity, Governance, Participatory budgeting, Racism

By Paulina Phelps for Yes Magazine. The amount of money spent on hiring sworn law enforcement officers to patrol public schools shot up nearly 40 percent between 1997 and 2009, despite the fact that crime in school has steadily declined for decades. A coalition of civil rights groups, including the NAACP, argues that this policy funnels kids of color into the school-to-prison pipeline. But that debate doesn’t always make it into the process of setting the budget, which is where important decisions, like how much money goes to counselors in schools and how much goes to police, ultimately get made. Budgets are usually determined by elected officials and their advisers, while ordinary residents may only get a chance to comment at a public hearing.

Habitat III: Stronger Urban Future Based On Right To The City

October 30, 2016 Mike Herd, www.theguardian.com Create! Cities, climate crisis, Governance, Sustainability

By Mike Herd for The Guardian. All the major global challenges – climate change, the economy, inequality, the very future of democracy – will be solved in cities. If nations want to succeed with their policies, we must be counted as serious actors on the global stage. I believe national governments are hostages to the momentum of the previous century – but that’s not the real world any more. We live in a world that functions by networking, by faster and more agile contact between cities. Of course, the perfect city does not exist; the democratic city is in permanent conflict and permanent construction. The point is to be really open; to keep innovating, listening to citizens and watching what is done in other cities to make constant improvements. Cities are able to make politics more cooperative, and not so competitive.

15 Indigenous Struggles You Need To Know About

October 23, 2016 Intercontinentnal Cry, www.intercontinentalcry.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Governance, Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Rights, Land

By Intercontinental Cry Magazine. Despite making up a tiny fraction of the world's population, Indigenous Peoples hold ancestral rights to some 65 percent of the planet. This poignant fact speaks well to the enormous role that Indigenous Peoples play not only as environmental stewards, but as political actors on the global stage. We're seeing that role play out right now on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota; but there are hundreds of other indigenous struggles just like that almost never make headlines. All over the world today, Indigenous Peoples are confronting the destructive practices of industry—leading the charge against climate change while defending the lakes, forests and food systems that all of us depend on. At the same time, they are blocking governments from weakening basic rights and freedoms and turning to the courts of the world to correct over 500 years of historical wrongs.

Internet Undergoes ‘Biggest Change In A Generation’

October 2, 2016 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Create! Governance, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Lauren McCauley for Commondreams. Though Republican lawmakers have painted this moment in Internet history as 'doomsday,' and rallied a last ditch-effort to block it, at midnight on Saturday the U.S. government cede control of the web's core naming directory to a multi-stakeholder nonprofit. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based group of international stakeholders will now control the functions of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which includes the database that translates website names into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The handover, hailed as "the most significant change in the Internet's functioning for a generation" by the U.K.-based technology site The Register, was long fought for by open Internet advocates.

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