Institute for Social Ecology http://www.social-ecology.org Popular Education for a Free Society Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:40:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 New Book Coming Soon: “Rebel Cities” http://www.social-ecology.org/2012/02/new-book-coming-soon-rebel-cities/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2012/02/new-book-coming-soon-rebel-cities/#comments Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:37:34 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3828 ISE alum Rob Augman writes:

David Harvey has been positively referencing Murray’s work on his recent writings and public talks. I just noticed this announcement of a new book of his, which similarly addresses the city as a site of struggle and reconstitution, speaking about the meaning of citizenship in relation to the city and to [...]]]> ISE alum Rob Augman writes:

David Harvey has been positively referencing Murray’s work on his recent writings and public talks. I just noticed this announcement of a new book of his, which similarly addresses the city as a site of struggle and reconstitution, speaking about the meaning of citizenship in relation to the city and to the commune:

New Book Coming This Spring – Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

To be published in April 2012 by Verso Books. More information at http://davidharvey.org/2012/01/new-book-coming-this-spring-rebel-cities-from-the-right-to-the-city-to-the-urban-revolution/

Long before the Occupy movement, modern cities had already become the central sites of revolutionary politics, where the deeper currents of social and political change rise to the surface. Consequently, cities have been the subject of much utopian thinking. But at the same time they are also the centers of capital accumulation and the frontline for struggles over who controls access to urban resources and who dictates the quality and organization of daily life. Is it the financiers and developers, or the people?

Rebel Cities places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles, looking at locations ranging from Johannesburg to Mumbai, and from New York City to São Paulo. Drawing on the Paris Commune as well as Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots, Harvey asks how cities might be reorganized in more socially just and ecologically sane ways—and how they can become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance.

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2012/02/new-book-coming-soon-rebel-cities/feed/ 0 From Spain: The movement beyond the protest http://www.social-ecology.org/2012/01/from-spain-the-movement-beyond-the-protest/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2012/01/from-spain-the-movement-beyond-the-protest/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:41:20 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3821 From ROARMag.org, thoughtful reflections from Spain by Carlos Delclós and Raimundo Viejo, calling for a renewed focus on building alternative institutions. However in the context of the right wing triumph in the recent Spanish elections, their focus is on social centers, activist collectives, cooperatives, etc., which frequently do not directly challenge [...]]]> From ROARMag.org, thoughtful reflections from Spain by Carlos Delclós and Raimundo Viejo, calling for a renewed focus on building alternative institutions. However in the context of the right wing triumph in the recent Spanish elections, their focus is on social centers, activist collectives, cooperatives, etc., which frequently do not directly challenge the status quo. How can social ecologists best continue to push for counterinstitutions that can also continue to offer a direct challenge to the hegemony of economic and political elites?

An excerpt:

As Amador Fernández-Savater recently put it, the questions on a lot of peoples’ minds seem to be: “where are all those people who occupied the plazas and neighbourhood assemblies during the spring? Have they become disenchanted with the movement? Are they incapable of making lasting compromises? Are they resigned to their fates?”

Fernández-Savater doesn’t think so. “With no study in hand and generalizing simply based on the people I know personally and my own observations of myself, I think that, in general, people have gone on with their lives … But saying that they’ve gone on with their lives is a bad expression. For once you’ve gone through the plazas, you don’t leave the same, nor do you go back to the same life. Paradoxically, you come back to a new life: touched, crossed, affected by 15-M[ay].”

And as he so eloquently puts it, 15-M is no mere social organization, but “a new social climate.” But how does a social climate organize itself? What new possibilities have revealed themselves after months of self-management, cooperative civil disobedience and massive mobilization, and what remains to be done?

Full article is at http://roarmag.org/2012/01/delclos-viejo-indignados-2012-15-m-spain/.

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2012/01/from-spain-the-movement-beyond-the-protest/feed/ 0 Solidify Occupy: A Suggestion for What’s Next http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/solidify-occupy-a-suggestion-for-what%e2%80%99s-next/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/solidify-occupy-a-suggestion-for-what%e2%80%99s-next/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:22:34 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3722 An essay by social ecologist and Prescott College student, Charles Imboden, drawing on writings by Zizek, Kovel, Bookchin, and others, as well as the author’s own experiences with Occupy Tucson. The full essay appears on Charles’ blog, Better Worlds, Brighter Futures: Social ecology analysis from [...]]]> An essay by social ecologist and Prescott College student, Charles Imboden, drawing on writings by Zizek, Kovel, Bookchin, and others, as well as the author’s own experiences with Occupy Tucson. The full essay appears on Charles’ blog, Better Worlds, Brighter Futures: Social ecology analysis from the Sonoran Desert. Here are two key excerpts:

Calls to “Occupy everything!” have been sounded, and  people across the country have begun turning to their communities with projects and groups that retain the directly-democratic principles of Occupy and serve to increase the self-reliance, communality, sustainability, and autonomy of their neighborhoods. Occupy Our Homes works to protect neighbors from eviction and foreclosure, while Occupy the Hood reminds us that the indigenous and peoples of color are at the forefront of the political and economic injustice that affects all poor and the working-class. Very recently, Willie Nelson has also advocated, “Occupy the Food System,” citing the degraded and polluted condition of this system in the United States, and the control of our food by only a handful of giant corporations…

One way [forward] is to preserve and protect the General Assembly originated with the Occupy encampments, by expanding their scope to become a forum for popular, directly democratic decision making on all matters affecting the local community. General Assemblies should be created throughout our communities, allowing residents a space to guide the direction of their neighborhoods. Simultaneously, this movement should work to demand the City Council recognize these assemblies as having some degree of legal authority. In this way, the Occupy movement would become a movement for the empowerment of individuals and communities in ways that overcome the corruption and corporate influence so prevalent in our existing representative electoral system.

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/solidify-occupy-a-suggestion-for-what%e2%80%99s-next/feed/ 1 On Restorative Justice – From ISE alum Marie-Isabelle Pautz http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/on-restorative-justice-%e2%80%93-from-ise-alum-marie-isabelle-pautz/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/on-restorative-justice-%e2%80%93-from-ise-alum-marie-isabelle-pautz/#comments Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:10:42 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3719 After the summer I attended ISE my friends and I started a food project called EarthShare Gardens, which is still in existence. A couple years later I moved to New Orleans to work with Turning Point Partners and the Louisiana Violence Prevention Alliance. Turning Point Partners introduced me to Restorative Practices. It was [...]]]> After the summer I attended ISE my friends and I started a food project called EarthShare Gardens, which is still in existence. A couple years later I moved to New Orleans to work with Turning Point Partners and the Louisiana Violence Prevention Alliance. Turning Point Partners introduced me to Restorative Practices. It was a relief to find a model that embodies my values, i.e. means ends. Katrina hit, and I stayed with family in Lafayette continuing to work for the two above organizations and also organized the Lafayette Hurricane Survivors – visiting shelters and FEMA trailers. We organized several mass meetings and coalition between local activist groups and non-profits and the survivors. The primary accomplishment of that group was expanding the city bus route to include isolated FEMA trailers. I did some traveling and worked on a farm at an interfaith intentional community.

Then I went to Rochester and worked at a Catholic Worker house and volunteered as a Community Conferencing (restorative Justice) facilitator with JAC and PiRI organizations at a couple schools, mostly Monroe High. I liked the Catholic Worker model, but thought we were missing some pieces and wanted to learn more about incorporating Restorative Practices into institutions, so I got a Master’s degree at the International Institute for Restorative Practices. I moved back to NOLA, and got a position at the Center for Restorative Approaches at Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans. I am the Coordinator of the program.

I was hired the first year of the program. Our first year, we partnered the Community Conferencing Cneter in Baltimore, MD and trained about 40 community members in Community Conferencing (a process wherein all people impacted or involved in a conflict or crime have an opportunity to come together and talk about what has happened, how people have been impacted, and what needs to be done to repair harms and move forward ). CCC also helped us train Cohen High staff in community building circles. The first year, we worked intensively with Cohen High School. We went into the school and helped teachers integrate teambuilding and community building circles into their classroom cultures. We also helped teachers establish alternative forms of classroom management and accountability systems in their classrooms. We worked intensively with the school disciplinarian to introduce opportunities for students to take responsibility and repair harms and to change the discipline process from a punitive to a more restorative process. That first year my co-worker and I facilitated many many many conflict resolution circles between students at the school and students began requesting circles. Cohen has been stigmatized as one of the most violent schools in the U.S. and the majority of the students I worked with their have experienced and lost loved ones to violence. We also conducted Community Conferences as a an alternative to suspension, expulsion and arrest. We did trainings throughout the school year for school staff and we also took several neighborhood cases.

Since that first year, we have expanded to include a k-8 school Langston Hughes Academy and have done district wide trainings and take referrals from a number of schools throughout new Orleans.

You’ll see more information about our services in the brochure.

I really think Restorative Justice would be a great resource for the ISE to include in courses. It’s becoming a world-wide movement with institutions handing back community problems to the community – Family Group decision Making in revolutionizing Child Protective Services in a process in which the professionals leave the room so that families actually make the decisions about how best to keep family members safe and healthy in the context of abuse……. http://www.americanhumane.org/assets/pdfs/children/fgdm/purpose.pdf

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/on-restorative-justice-%e2%80%93-from-ise-alum-marie-isabelle-pautz/feed/ 1 OWS video thanks supporters http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/ows-thanks-supporters-video-link/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/ows-thanks-supporters-video-link/#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:14:54 +0000 Brian Tokar http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3700 ... with an inspiring review of the events of the past month, highlighting the voices of some of the people of many different backgrounds who have put other parts of their lives aside to help sustain Occupy Wall Street since mid-September. A few of us from Vermont were in NYC this past weekend to participate in a host of Occupy-related events, including the action at Duarte Park, the 10th anniversary of the lockout of the Charas-El Bohio community center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an immigrant rights march from Foley Square to Zuccotti Park and a very large strategy and long-range visioning conference at Pace University. While people in New York are confronting many of the internal problems that movements invariably struggle with as they begin to dig in for the long haul, it is still very clear that the Occupy movement has changed New York, and continues to change the way we think and talk about politics and economics everywhere.]]> … with an inspiring review of the events of the past month, highlighting the voices of some of the people of many different backgrounds who have put other parts of their lives aside to help sustain Occupy Wall Street since mid-September. A few of us from Vermont were in NYC this past weekend to participate in a host of Occupy-related events, including the action at Duarte Park, the 10th anniversary of the lockout of the Charas-El Bohio community center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an immigrant rights march from Foley Square to Zuccotti Park and a very large strategy and long-range visioning conference at Pace University. While people in New York are confronting many of the internal problems that movements invariably struggle with as they begin to dig in for the long haul, it is still very clear that the Occupy movement has changed New York, and continues to change the way we think and talk about politics and economics everywhere.

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/ows-thanks-supporters-video-link/feed/ 0 What’s Next for the Occupy Movement? http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/what%e2%80%99s-next-for-the-occupy-movement/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/what%e2%80%99s-next-for-the-occupy-movement/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:51:53 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3669 This commentary by Brian Tokar will appear in the winter issue of Broadcast, the newsletter of SEEDS, the Social Ecology Education and Demonstration School, based in Seattle and Vashon, Washington:

Since mid-September, actions inspired by the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York have awakened the imaginations of people [...]]]> This commentary by Brian Tokar will appear in the winter issue of Broadcast, the newsletter of SEEDS, the Social Ecology Education and Demonstration School, based in Seattle and Vashon, Washington:

At Foley Square, N17, © Eliot Tokar

Since mid-September, actions inspired by the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York have awakened the imaginations of people worldwide. Just as the movement approached its two-month anniversary in mid-November, several of the founding Occupations across the US fell victim to apparently highly-coordinated police raids. While the coming of winter was long-predicted to shift the focus of the Occupy movement, the expulsion of iconic tent encampments in New York, Oakland, and other cities has invigorated and intensified discussions about the movement’s next steps and its longer-term strategies.

Inspired in part by the Arab Spring events in Tahrir Square and beyond, the Occupy movement initially focused on the physical occupation of public space. But it’s always been about much more than that. The transcendent quality of the physical occupations was elaborated in a recent commentary by the Cincinnati-based author/activist Dan LaBotz, originally written for the journal New Politics. He described in rich detail how this fall’s Occupations resonate with the long history of popular revolts and occupations of public squares that, since ancient times, were often rooted in the utopian dimensions of the city itself. His outlook strongly resonates with social ecologist Murray Bookchin’s efforts, beginning in the mid-1960s, to reclaim the city’s historic legacy of freedom for today’s revolutionaries.

“We are witnessing something that goes beyond the symbolic,” LaBotz wrote, “something that both threatens the deep foundations of our social structure and, equally important-no, more important- something that touches our deepest spiritual yearnings. The occupation is utopian in the best sense. Whatever its political program, its practice says: ‘We will no longer live in hatred and competition. We will live in love and community.’”

Even the Occupy movement’s oft-criticized resistance to focusing on achievable, short-term “demands” speaks to its long-range, utopian character. Rolling Stone reporter and long-time critic of Wall Street’s excesses, Matt Taibbi describes how, after some initial skepticism, he was soon won over by Occupy Wall Street:

On the Brooklyn Bridge, N17, © Eliot Tokar

“Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It’s about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become… We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.”

For some 30 years, the progressive Left in the US has been on the defensive. Against a unified, ideologically-driven assault against all of the social progress of the twentieth century, we’ve learned to fight one battle at a time, to “frame” our issues carefully and often circumspectly, and to try not to rock the boat too much. We have been up against a sometimes frightening confluence of neoliberal economic policies – privatization, deregulation, shredding safety nets, reorienting economies toward global trade – and a fundamentalist “culture war” that has mobilized significant numbers of disenfranchised people in a reactionary crusade to defend “traditional values.” We’ve insisted that “another world is possible,” but often only believed it in the most abstract of terms.

Now, for the first time in decades, the terms of the conversation are shifting. People are fed up, and no longer too timid nor too defeated to speak out loudly against the status quo, and for a different kind of society. We have learned that we can challenge financial elites, defend labor rights, call to overturn capitalism, and our numbers continue to grow. In cities large and small, we experience the exhilaration of direct democracy, of reclaiming public spaces, and of reinventing our future. And we know that we are not going to disappear when elites respond with too many police, or even with small victories.

This movement, with its unbounded creativity, is going to decide its own future. Some trade unionists, Move-On bloggers, and people tied to the Democratic establishment want it to be about the 2012 congressional elections and about reclaiming the long-discredited “American dream.” Some movement participants will, understandably, choose to become involved in the elections. But, for the first time in recent memory, the election may not turn out to be the center of our attention. Instead of a movement narrowing its sites to elect candidates, the candidates may just have to listen to the much farther-reaching demands of this movement. If they don’t – if they instead continue to harp on deficits, budget cuts, and reforms constrained by the demands of Wall Street – they’ll simply make themselves irrelevant.

Occupy Wall Street and its counterparts across the country and around the world have exposed the underside of an economic system that only benefits the wealthiest 1 percent – or less – and begun a new, potentially revolutionary conversation. With the coming of winter, it will evolve in many directions: toward occupying abandoned urban spaces, confronting politicians and CEOs, intervening against foreclosures, organizing university campuses, and more. The movement – and its emerging vision of a different kind of world – will continue to grow and evolve.

In a recent ZNet column, activist scholar Marina Sitrin described what it’s like in Spain today, in the aftermath of their summer 2011 uprising. “[W]hile the indignado movement no longer has encampments, its presence is felt everywhere,” she wrote, most notably in a new flowering of cooperatives in all spheres of life. It has evolved “to the point that in some places in Spain it is almost possible to live without having to depend on the resources hoarded by the 1 percent.” Perhaps not since the anti-nuclear power actions of the 1970s have we seen a movement so dedicated to uniting the oppositional and reconstructive dimensions of radical politics. As snow begins to blanket the North (and the rainy season arrives in the Northwest), we can already feel the anticipation of the Spring awakenings to come.

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/what%e2%80%99s-next-for-the-occupy-movement/feed/ 1 Libertarian Municipalism events in Geneva http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/libertarian-municipalism-events-in-geneva/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/libertarian-municipalism-events-in-geneva/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:27:30 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3665 Vincent Gerber reports from Geneva that the city’s annual “Anarchist Week” events will run from Tues.-Sat., December 6-10, and will focus on Murray Bookchin’s concept of libertarian municipalism, a social ecological strategy for confederal direct democracy, rooted at the municipal level. Full details are at http://www.genevelibertaire.ch/?p=2048.

Schedule highlights:

Tuesday, 12/8: Film showing: “Ici [...]]]> Vincent Gerber reports from Geneva that the city’s annual “Anarchist Week” events will run from Tues.-Sat., December 6-10, and will focus on Murray Bookchin’s concept of libertarian municipalism, a social ecological strategy for confederal direct democracy, rooted at the municipal level. Full details are at http://www.genevelibertaire.ch/?p=2048.

Schedule highlights:

Tuesday, 12/8: Film showing: “Ici et Maintenant” (Here and Now), followed by a book presentation and café discussions.
Weds., 12/9: Film on struggles in Oaxaca, Mexico, with discussions to follow.
Thurs., 12/10: Presentation on the political and philosophical visions of Murray Bookchin, followed by discussions and music.
Fri., 12/11: Presentation on libertarian municipalism, focusing on direct democracy, citizen associations, confederation, and models of social governance, with discussions and music.
Sat., 12/12 (afternoon session): Discussion and debate on the potential for bringing this strategy to Geneva’s Jonction neighborhood; film on the urban comune of Spezzano Albanese in southern Italy; free dinner and music.

Background materials are available at the website of the bookstore, Fahrenheit 451, at http://www.fahrenheit451.ch.

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/12/libertarian-municipalism-events-in-geneva/feed/ 1 Revolutionary Democratic Social Change — The 2012 ISE Intensive http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/the-2012-ise-intensive-on-revolutionary-democratic-social-change/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/the-2012-ise-intensive-on-revolutionary-democratic-social-change/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:15:27 +0000 admin http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3654 we will host more programs in the coming months.   Feel free to email: seminar@social-ecology.org with any inquiries.

READINGS: http://www.social-ecology.org/learn/ise-intensives/ise-seminar-reading/

Drawing immense inspiration from the Occupy Movement, this year’s ISE Intensive will focus on providing tools to deepen our analysis, [...]]]> The Current Intensive is now full.

Due to the overwhelming interest,
we will host more programs in the coming months.  

Feel free to email: seminar@social-ecology.org with any inquiries.

READINGS: http://www.social-ecology.org/learn/ise-intensives/ise-seminar-reading/

Drawing immense inspiration from the Occupy Movement, this year’s ISE Intensive will focus on providing tools to deepen our analysis, historical knowledge, and strategic visions for revolutionary democratic social change.  The 8-day intensive will offer seminars on:

Social Ecology: From Theory to Practice — Daniel Chodorkoff (Saturday, Jan 7th 1:00-6:30pm)

Social ecology advocates a reconstructive and transformative outlook on social and environmental issues, and promotes a directly democratic, confederal politics. Social ecology envisions a moral economy that moves beyond scarcity and hierarchy, toward a world that reharmonizes human communities with the natural world, while promoting diversity, creativity and freedom. This afternoon workshop will begin with an overview of key philosophical, political, and strategic issues that surface in the theory and practice of social ecology.

Download the Readings

Climate Justice — Brian Tokar (Jan 8th, 9th, 10th & 11th, 10:00-11:45AM)

While policymakers and mainstream environmentalists are busy debating parts per million of carbon dioxide, people around the world are already suffering the impacts of worldwide climate chaos. In response, climate justice activists worldwide are proposing a holistic, human rights-centered approach to the climate crisis. We will address the broad scope of climate justice perspectives, examine false and real solutions, and discuss how a broad-based, international revolutionary movement is essential to transforming the current climate debate.

Download the Readings

Rethinking the Left — Chaia Heller (Jan 8th, 9th, 10th & 11th, 1:00-2:45PM)

The U.S. left has gone through at least four major sets of transformations over the last century.  After its peak in the 1930s, the Old Left gave rise to the New Left and New Social Movements that emerged in the 1960s. Since the mid-1990s, we saw the eruption of what could be called an Alter-Left spurred forward the Zapatista Uprisings, the alter-globalization movement, and more recently, the Occupy movement.  This class addresses the unique potentialities and challenges faced by those in the Alter-Left who seek to build upon the Leftist tradition while moving beyond many of its limitations.

Download the Readings

Revolutionary Organizations — Peter Staudenmaier, Ashanti Alston, (Jan 8th, 9th, 10th & 11th, 3:00-4:45PM)

Many of the most successful revolutionary movements in widely different historical situations have had some sort of organizational core, some form of revolutionary organization attempting to respond to and engage in unfolding events. The legacy of such revolutionary organizations is ambivalent, revealing both powerfully emancipatory impacts as well as deeply authoritarian consequences. Which forms of revolutionary organization — ranging from centralized vanguards to broadly participatory grassroots approaches — have been most effective at catalyzing liberation struggles, and which have been destructive? With an eye toward current conditions, we will examine a wide spectrum of past revolutionary organizations.

Download the Readings

Liberating Land for Community Control — Rachel Falcone, Michael Premo (Jan 8th, 9th, 10th & 11th, 5:00-6:45PM)

For generations, families and communities across the United States have been gripped by a severe housing crisis. This crisis has only worsened in recent years, displacing ever more people from the land that they call home. This course explores critical movements of resistance in this struggle and the politics behind liberating land for community control. We will explore different cases from the Human Right to Housing Movement, the Homestead Movement, the Landless People’s Movement, Take Back the Land, the Homeless Union, and ongoing efforts to liberate land for community control.

Download the Readings

Aligning with Frontline Communities — Hilary Moore (Jan 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th, 10:00-11:45AM)

The occupy movement has given us the “99%” frame, encouraging participation from a diversity of people en masse. The truth is that though we are all negatively impacted by the current economic system, we are not impacted equally. Studies show that poor communities of color are suffering much greater economic consequences than white communities. If we are to move toward a more equitable society we must as a movement be able to respond to this reality. This course looks at political projects, past and present, that have tackled these tensions consciously and proactively; and challenges us to locate our own experiences in the strategic call to “find our frontline.”

Download the Readings

Direct Democracy and Dual Power — Chaia Heller (Jan 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th, 1:00-2:45PM)

This class explores the history of direct democracy from ancient Athens and indigenous cultures to the present. We will also consider what direct democracy looks like when practiced within movements as well as how a revolutionary movement could lead us to create a directly democratic society.  Central to our discussion will be questions of movement building, dual power, and organizations that speak to both general freedoms as well as the particular forms of oppression and liberation within movements and a free society.

Download the Readings

Alternatives to Capitalism — Peter Staudenmaier (Jan 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th, 3:00-4:45PM)

As discontent with capitalism grows around the globe, we face challenging questions about just what form of society we’re working toward. Questions of political economy, in particular, present a series of dilemmas for anti-capitalist activists. This intensive course aims to work through several of these core questions collectively and critically. We will examine several alternative economic visions put forward by a range of radical thinkers on the libertarian left. We will take a utopian yet skeptical approach to these proposed frameworks, evaluate their merits and flaws, consider their practical implications.

Download the Readings

Building Strategic Mass Movements — Paul Getsos, Brooke Lehman (Jan 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th, 5:00-6:45PM)

We find our selves in a truly rare moment in history.  If seized strategically, we have the potential to build a mass movement capable of transforming our political, economic and social realities.  This course explores how we can build movement structures that allow for broad based participation and active strategic engagement from the ground up. How can we build movements capable of integrating direct action, education, legislative work, and alternative building in a way that moves us self-consciously and explicitly towards revolutionary change.

Please join us!

What Is the ISE?

For more than thirty years, the Institute for Social Ecology has been offering educational programs on radical social and ecological transformation. The ISE views the penetration of systems of domination and homogenization of culture as impediments to human freedom and as the root causes of the ecological crisis.  It is the ISE’s core belief that humans have the potential to foster vibrant, self-governing communities free from hierarchy, social inequity, and ecological degradation.

*Note to Second Year Students: We invite you to organize additional independent studies during the Intensive.

Dates: January 7 – 15, 2012, from 9AM to 7PM Daily

Location: The Brecht Forum 451 West Street @ Bathune St. in NYC  http://brechtforum.org/about

Tuition Cost: $200 for the whole Intensive (9 classes) or $30 a class

Scholarships: Available upon request and no one turned away for lack of funding

Application: Required and below — Our January Intensive is now full. 

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/the-2012-ise-intensive-on-revolutionary-democratic-social-change/feed/ 3 New from Annie Leonard and Naomi Klein http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/new-from-annie-leonard-and-naomi-klein/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/new-from-annie-leonard-and-naomi-klein/#comments Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:05:45 +0000 Brian Tokar http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3638 From Story of Stuff creator Annie Leonard, we now have an accessible and visually engaging outlook on the financial crisis, deficit mania in Washington, and how to shift public funds toward a greener future. She makes a few compromises in the pursuit [...]]]> From Story of Stuff creator Annie Leonard, we now have an accessible and visually engaging outlook on the financial crisis, deficit mania in Washington, and how to shift public funds toward a greener future. She makes a few compromises in the pursuit of mainstream appeal that may not sit so well with social ecologists — focusing on electoral solutions, and simply replacing petrochemicals with “bio-based materials” – but overall this 8 minute animation does an exceptional job of illuminating the links between environmental and economic priorities for our time.

After viewing The Story of Broke, be sure not to miss Naomi Klein’s exceptional cover story on “Capitalism vs. the Climate” from next week’s issue of The Nation. Following a close-up examination of the mentality behind right wing climate denial, Klein makes the best case yet for why the climate crisis is “the most powerful argument against capitalism since William Blake’s ‘dark Satanic mills’.” She argues compellingly that “climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.”  It’s essential reading. (It’s also available on ZNet at http://zcommunications.org/contents/182656.)

 

]]> http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/new-from-annie-leonard-and-naomi-klein/feed/ 0 Dan LaBotz: The Power of Occupation http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/dan-labotz-the-power-of-occupation/ http://www.social-ecology.org/2011/11/dan-labotz-the-power-of-occupation/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:13:44 +0000 Brian Tokar http://www.social-ecology.org/?p=3633 This beautifully written article by author/activist Dan LaBotz asks, “Where does the tremendous power of the occupation of city spaces, particularly the square, come from?” He replies that it’s powerful because it resonates with the long history of popular revolts, since ancient times, that were often rooted in the utopian dimensions of the [...]]]> This beautifully written article by author/activist Dan LaBotz asks, “Where does the tremendous power of the occupation of city spaces, particularly the square, come from?” He replies that it’s powerful because it resonates with the long history of popular revolts, since ancient times, that were often rooted in the utopian dimensions of the city itself. Social ecologists will recognize many parallels with Murray Bookchin’s writings since the early 1960s that sought to reclaim the city’s legacy of freedom for today’s revolutionaries.

It’s hard to do justice to this piece in a short excerpt, but here’s a passage that helps set the stage for what follows:

We are witnessing something that goes beyond the symbolic, something that both threatens the deep foundations of our social structure and, equally important-no, more important- something that touches our deepest spiritual yearnings. The occupation is utopian in the best sense. Whatever its political program, its practice says: “We will no longer live in hatred and competition. We will live in love and community.” And, of course, that would mean turning everything upside down. That is why the occupation frightens and angers the bankers, the CEOs, the politicians and the generals. It says we no longer need your system. We need you no more.

The article appears in this past weekend’s online edition of Counterpunch, and was first published by the journal New Politics.

 

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