PROGRAMS: 2008-2009 Global Commons Foundation programs, projects, and events all address the themes of anti-systemic movements, alternative knowledge, and the Global South. Through our panels, conferences, events, and research groups we provide platforms for critical discussion, reflection, and education on the systemic crises at hand in the world, in historical perspective and in immediate context, and on viable, democratic, alternatives to neoliberal globalization. These gatherings also provide the opportunities for networking and commoning, as often as possible bringing together individuals and groups from different disciplinary perspectives as well as from different cultures, nations, and geographies, and with different experiences as activists and intellectuals, thus advancing, through dialogue and mutual education, our common goals of global social change. At the same time we also support and create programs that put into practice actual alternatives for another knowledge, another production, another democracy. GLOBAL COMMONS LAUNCH EVENTS • The Emergency Biennale in Chechnya/ World Tour/ Stop 10: San Francisco . Exhibition of art relating to Chechnya and human rights. Playspace Gallery, California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Opening on January 25. On view through February 9. Public discussion with curator Evelyne Jouanno on February 8. • The World Social Forum: Past Achievements, Present Dilemmas, and Future Hopes. A community forum with Immanuel Wallerstein and Bay Area activists. Keynote by Immanuel Wallerstein and responses by: Ramon Grosfoguel, Ethic Studies; Walter Turner, Global Exchange; Eric Jolt-Gimenez, Food First; Tammy Ko Robinson, San Francisco Art Institute; Annie Fukushima, Women for Peace and Genuine Security; Andrej Grubacic, Z Magazine and Global Balkans; Iain Boal, Retort Collective; Evelyne Jouanno, Curator; Martha Wallner, Media Justice; Larry Everest, Revolution Books. Cultural Center, New College of California, San Francisco. January 26. • What next for the left? Retort Collective and Global Commons joint salon with special guests Immanuel Wallerstein and Bob Catteral. Private residence, Berkeley. January 26. MONTHLY DISCUSSION SERIES • Tostados and Insurgentes: Gender and Indigenous Perspectives of the Zapatista Struggle . A panel on the Women's Encuentro and the history of indigenous activism with: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, activist, writer, historian; Hilary Klein, community organizer; Amrah Salomón Johnson, activist, student; and Marina Sitrin, student, teacher, activist. New College of California. February 26, 2008 . • No! G8 Japan . As part of a global info-tour, presentation by Japanese anti-G8 activists Go Hirasawa, Sabu Kohso, and Umi of plans for actions in Lake Toya in Hokkaido, Japan. New College of California . March 20, 2008. • Contemporary East Asian social movements, politics, and culture . Retort/GCF joint salon with Sabu Kohso, Go Hirasawa, and Umi. Private residence, Berkeley. March 22, 2008. • Stuffed and Starved: A Discussion with Raj Patel on the Politics of Global Food Production . Panel discussion with Raj Patel, writer and activist; Monica Moore, founder of Pesticide Action Network North America, and Eric Jolt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First. University of San Francisco. May 21, 2008 . • Global Africa: African Liberation Movements from 1945-present . Panel discussion with Immanuel Wallerstein, Walter Turner, and Will Grant. At and co-sponsored by CounterPULSE, San Francisco. September 24, 2008 . • Anarchist Alternatives to Traditional Education . A talk by Andrej Grubacic. Alexander Berkman Social Club, San Francisco. September 25, 2008 . • Radical Inquiries in the field of Anthropology . A discussion with David Graeber, Jeff Juris, and others in association with Retort. Private residence. Berkeley. November 22, 2008 . • Report back from the World Social Forum , February 2009 . • What new economies? What new democracies? Multiple sessions. Dates and locations TBA. • Figuring Climate Change into our New World Visions . Multiple sessions. Dates and locations TBA. • Anti-systemic knowledge: Learning from the South. Co-sponsored by CounterPULSE, San Francisco. Date TBA. • Counter-hegemonic creation in the South: Arts, Media, Culture. Co-sponsored by CounterPULSE, San Francisco. Date TBA. • Global Commons and Global Enclosures. Co-sponsored by CounterPULSE, San Francisco. Date TBA. • Federalism and Balkanization Date and location TBA • Other panels and discussions, TBA Alternative Summit of Indigenous Peoples . Co-produced with Coordinadora Andinade Organizaciones Indígenas (CAOI). Lima, Peru . May 2008 . On May 12, 2008, GCF, along with the Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas, which is a coordinating structure of all the major indigenous movements in the six Andean countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru), organized an Alternative Summit of Indigenous Peoples in Lima, Peru. Two members of Global Commons were participants. Approximately 1000 people were present. The discussion was led by intellectuals of indigenous origin with some interventions by persons from elsewhere. The debate centered about the situation of indigenous peoples today, their programs, and their demands on the national governments. The day included indigenous rituals, dancing, and music. 1968: The Great Rehearsal . 8 days of discussions and events, with international participation of scholars, writers, and activists, on the world revolution of 1968 and its current relevance. September 2008 The events were co-produced by PM Press, Historians Against the War, War Times, CounterPULSE, University of San Francisco, KPFA, UC Berkeley, Retort, Intertribal Friendship House, American Indian Movement, City Light Books, and Modern Times Bookstore. For full details on each event, as well as a statement on the week , see www.greatrehearsal.org . • SEPT 17 : American Indian Movement to the World Indigenous Movement, 1968-present • SEPT 18 : Archives of Dissent • SEPT 19 : National Teach-In on the Iraq War • 1968: A Discussion on the Lessons and Legacy of the Year that Shook the World • SEPT 20 : The Great Rehearsal? The World Revolution of 1968 (Main event - all day symposium with international participants) • SEPT 21: "Wobblies and Zapatistas" Book Launch; Cinema and the Long 68 • SEPT 22 : Paths to Liberation: Political Prisoners, Incarceration, and Struggle ; Paco Ignacio Taibo II in Conversation • SEPT 23 : Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement • SEPT 24: Global Africa: 1945 to today ; Real Cost of Prisons Comix • SEPT 25 : Incarceration, Resistance, Costs And Consequences: A Discussion with Authors, Activists And Former Political Prisoners Networked Politics . 2 day conference and public event, San Francisco, December 3-5, 2008 Global Commons is co-producing a two day seminar exploring the different values new information and communication technologies have for our social/political movements and for new forms of global organizing and network-building. On the third day we will have a public symposium on the World Social Forum, the European Social Forum, the US Social Forum, and the Americas Social Forum, each of which reflects a new form of networked politics but in some significantly different ways. The symposium will continue at the World Social Forum in Belém . World Social Forum. Belém, Brazil. January 27-Februrary 1, 2009 • Global Commons panel on 1968: The Great Rehearsal • Global Commons panel on Networked Politics
LONG TERM PROGRAMS UNDER DEVELOPMENT Popular University of Social Movements Popular University of Social Movements (PUSM) is a program, proposed by sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, which is currently under development in several locations in the world. It was created to educate activists and leaders of social movements, as well as social scientists, scholars, and artists concerned with progressive social transformation. The major objective of PUSM is to make help make knowledge of alternative globalization as global as globalization itself, and, at the same time, to render actions for social transformation better known and more efficient, and its protagonists more competent and reflective. PUSM aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice through systematic encounters between those active in the practice of social changes and those engaged in theoretical production about social change. At the same time, it addresses and redresses the lack of shared knowledge among movements and organizations active in different thematic areas and their respective struggles through a process of reciprocal teaching. PUSM is a broadly international and intercultural endeavor. We will set up a version of
PUSM in the San Francisco Bay Area that also draws on the tradition of
Liberation School that existed in San Francisco in the 1960s, where
people who had This program would offer a serious alternative in knowledge production and dissemination, with a focus on mutual education between communities, activists, educators and with a mutual sharing of knowledge between people engaged in different struggles towards the goal strengthening coalitions and our common goals of local and global social change. Pluriculturalism
1. The Intellectual/Political Issue : Historically, almost all states since the mid-18th century have been "Jacobin" in orientation. That is, they thought that states should be "nation-states," meaning that there should be only one "culture" in the state - usually defined at least by language, hypothetical history, and often by religion as well. Basically, the Jacobin position was that there should be no intermediate institutions between the individual (citizen) and the state. Factually, there has been no state in the last two centuries that did not have "minorities" of one kind or another, and therefore was in fact ethnically homogeneous, as the concept of nation-state willed it to be. In practice, there has been a wide variety of ways in which states have taken account of their "minorities" - from total repression to relaxed structures. In the last thirty years, there have been movements in again almost every state which have begun to contest not only the reality of an ethnically homogeneous state but its desirability. This position has led to demands for something different that has taken multiple names: multiculturalism, multinational states, plurinational states, etc. While many of these movements have been located politically on the left end of the spectrum, some of them have been on the right end. The exact nature of the demands and the political implications of the demands have varied in quite striking ways across the globe. There has been no serious attempt to confront the variety of these demands which we may call "anti-Jacobin" demands and to assess the different political consequences in different national situations. 2. The project : It is proposed to engage this issue in a three-step process: a) convene a conference of some 20 persons, coming from the entire gamut of different situations across the globe, to spell out the varying situations, and to attempt to assess a viable political position that will be maximally democratic and cognizant of multiple cultural traditions; b) distribute widely the proceedings (presumably a book) to encourage debate and discussion particularly among such anti-Jacobin movements; c) eventually convene a meeting of activist intellectuals from around the globe, possibly within the framework of the World Social Forum, in order to create a viable network pursuing concrete political objectives.
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