Folks, what are you doing tomorrow night at 7pm? Join us for our last Assembly Reading Group meeting, as well as the beginning of something new. PM for details.
Coming Soon… La Zad / The Zone to Defend
The Zone to Defend is written by a collective residing on the zad, 4000 acres of liberated territory in North Western France, occupied against an airport and its world. The small book pulls you in through its dream-like narrative describing the almost unbelievable transformation of proposed infrastructure site into laboratory of commoning. The zad is a tangible act of hope against the wrecking of our worlds by the megamachines of profit and growth. With its 60 living collectives experimenting with a diversity of forms of life, and with popular support across the country, this occupied zone is a key front line struggle in Europe. The zone brings together farmers and activists in the fight for climate justice, against urban sprawl and for autonomy beyond the state, “its like living in the playground you always dreamt of as a child” is how one of its inhabitants describes life there.
It’s authors experiences on the edge of art and activism inform the books’ politics, and its voice documenting the ongoing struggle in relation both to French politics and, surprisingly, an art world that seeks to find a way out of endless cycles of symbolic struggle.
LA ZAD / THE ZONE TO DEFEND: A Liberated Territory Against an Airport and its World by Mauvaise Troupe (Amber Hickey- contributing editor, Alice Le Roy & Silvie Decaux- Translation) will be published summer of 2017 through the Tools in Common imprint Canary Press, a publishing collaboration between Marc Herbst (ed; Journal of Aesthetics and Protest) and Sam Gould (artist, editor; Red76 / Tools in Common / Beyond Repair).
A wonderful turnout on a beautiful spring afternoon for a talk about Spain’s Municipalism movement and the ways, and possible roadblocks, of energizing something similar here in Minneapolis. I am extremely excited to move forward; generating more questions, moving those questions around through publications and assemblies, and activating the thoughts and ideas which come to the surface through these processes. This will all take a tremendous amount of work, but the commitment and desire expressed by those who assembled along the Midtown Greenway this afternoon gave me confidence that it’s an achievable proposition.
Much thanks to Alan Moore for his days and insights while here with us as the inaugural resident within the Beyond to the Future Neighborhood Residency Program.
And another huge thank you to Marc Herbst, and to Fernando Canteli de Castro for sharing his experiences and considerations of working through municipal strategies in Spain with Barcelona en Comu. As we ended our gathering with today, “onward, to something!”
Dear Friends and Conspirators:
Our political system is hopelessly broken: corporate elites control the state, white supremacy has been mainstreamed, and democratic institutions do not represent the people. This is not just a description of our situation; it is also a global problem. Many around the world, including anti-fascists, workers, anarchists, and others seeking radical change, are working on alternative models for democracy and finding incredible success. One that excites us is the Municipalism movement in Spain under the banner of Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona in Common). The movement is working to ensure that public institutions respond directly to the will of the people and not to the interests of a handful of corporate or political leaders working behind closed doors. Going beyond the simple act of voting, it is a “politics from below” that invites citizens into the direct democratic management of the city in order to ensure that public institutions are always accountable to the people.
Over the next year (or more) a number of us who find interest and value in organizing, reflecting, and, most importantly, acting on these ideas have decided to convene a series of talks and workshops on Municipalism and direct democracy. Our conversations begin next week at Beyond Repair. We welcome you to attend, add your thoughts, and become collaborators in this process.
We have invited artist / theorist Alan Moore to Minneapolis to discuss his research and work with the Municipalist and self-governance communities in Spain and Europe and the anarcho-art punk scene of late 1970s lower Manhattan. From his work as a founding member of Colab, whose project The Real Estate Show is one of the best-known artist squat actions in New York history, to his research on anarchist squats and collectivity in Europe, Alan’s broad and rich history with critically and creatively engaging space and its politics serves as a productive bridge for the many of us; artists, activists and thinkers whose work engages the social and political landscape of our day-to-day lives with each other.
Below you will find the various events we have scheduled for next week, as well as opportunities for “critical downtime” while Alan is in town. Please feel free to join us for any and all of them. We are excited to invite you, and anyone else you feel would value inclusion, into this urgent conversation.
Sincerly,
Sam Gould, John Kim, Bruce Braun and a growing list of others…
Sat, Apr. 1, 2017 ⁄ 2:00pm–3:30am
Municipalism and the Lives We Make: Governing Outside of the Electorate
On Saturday we begin our first in a continuing conversation on the Spanish Municipalism movement and the possibilities of translating the movements experiences and social tools into an overtly American context.
Please join us for an overview on municipalism through the work of Barcelona en Comu with Alan Moore, along with Skype contributions from Marc Herbst, artist / publisher of Mortgaged Lives: From the Housing Bubble to the Right to Housing by Ada Colau and Adriá Alemany, and writer Bue Rübner Hansen, author of the essay Building Power in a Crisis of Social Reproduction.
Rev. Billy and Benjamin Heim Shepard at COP21
“There’s the ‘the earth is going to fall apart’ narrative. The dialectic of apocalypse and desolation versus utopia, but I think we can take a leap into abundance, with BioDiversity, and loving each other…”
We’re excited to be working with Marc Herbst at the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest on a dual imprint, the first edition of which will, hopefully, be released early in the New Year. One of the folks we’re talking with about releasing work is the incredibly smart and adept Benjamin Heim Shepard. Here’s a clip of Benjamin and Rev. Billy taking a breather from days of actions during COP21. More power to them. What ways can we bring this clear headed and “abundant” thinking into the 9th Ward, right at the neighborhood level?
Message from Rev & Ben Shepherd in ParisIn Paris, we feel the sea-change that is taking place within the souls of the activists. It is dawning on us that a revolution must take place. For the centuries that the CO2 has been rising, a middle class has been building in the imperial industrial countries. We consumers have been taught to look the other way when it comes to the violence of our businesses that our nation states press on people around the world. Now finally with climate change we can no longer do this. The other end of this colonialism, sweatshop economies and military occupation is coming back to haunt us. Why would our governments believe that we would offer serious opposition? We never have, but we will now. —–Below a conversation with old friend Ben Shepherd at the Zone Action Climate meet.
Posted by Reverend Billy And The Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on Friday, December 11, 2015