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	<description>and/or Evacuate</description>
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		<title>2011: Occupied</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2012/2011-occupied/</link>
		<comments>http://occupyeverything.org/2012/2011-occupied/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:14:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Editors</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://occupyeverything.org/?p=3133</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Essays and features appearing on occupyeverything.org during 2011]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011C.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3144" title="2011C" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011C.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="500" /></a></p>
<p>The following is a list of essays and features appearing on occupyeverything.org during 2011:</p>
<p>January 8, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/a-counter-conference-strategies-for-defending-higher-education/">A Counter-Conference: Strategies for Defending Higher Education</a><br />
organized by Bob Samuels; video by Cameron Granadino</p>
<blockquote><p>The 2011 MLA Counter-Conference took place during the annual Modern Language Convention in Los Angeles, January 8th, 2011 at Loyola Law School.  While thousands of people were meeting at the traditional convention, this one-day event centered on discussing actual strategies for making higher education more just.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>January 10, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/moving-towards-a-socially-anti-social-dialogicaly-autonomous-psychedelic-social-practice/">A Socially Anti-Social, Dialogically Autonomous, Psychedelic Social Practice</a><br />
by Marc Herbst</p>
<blockquote><p>Occupy Everything because everything has already been occupied.<br />
Occupy Everything because everything is a site for contestation.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>January 11, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/knowledge-commons-power-pedagogy-sivia-federici-feminism-and-collective-practices/">knowledge commons, power, pedagogy, feminism and collective practices</a><br />
interview with Cara Baldwin by Paula Cobo</p>
<blockquote><p> Art institutions have historically operated as corporations, with varying effects/affects. At this particular moment what interests me in terms of collective practices are those that are incredibly open.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>January 30, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/masks-or-the-illusion-of-power-by-ken-ehrlich/">Masks, or The Illusion of Power</a><br />
by Ken Ehrlich</p>
<blockquote><p>So… when our actions become too rehearsed, we search for ways to re-animate our own sense of what constitutes collective, direct action. We try to shake off the distracted paralysis and the tormented mask. We look for ways to inject into our cynical narratives moments of off kilter gestures, we try to most of all to surprise ourselves.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>February 22, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/operational-aesthetics-briefing-script/">Operational Aesthetics: Briefing Script</a><br />
by Michael W. Wilson</p>
<blockquote><p>An operational aesthetic is perceptual capacity in movement. Rather than seeking the productive end (communism), it seeks the procedural dynamic (communization). In doing so, it moves its focus to systemic functionality without fetishizing design. This dynamic is, by necessity, located within a system of exchange. When the operative threatens the circulation of existing goods, services and/or values, (s)he risks losing a position within that system.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>March 4, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/ask-about-an-autonomous-university-5-exam-questions-for-life/">Ask About An Autonomous University: 5 Exam Questions For Life</a><br />
by Louis-Georges Schwartz</p>
<blockquote><p>Common university ideology makes us feel that our work is a labor of love, yet resentment and fear fill our days. Exhaustion grips us to such an extent that we have no choice but to withdraw, but rather than fleeing into our families, the latest 3D entertainment or the hippest new bar, perhaps we could collectively seek refuge in an autonomous school we might tolerably call our own.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>March 9, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/notes-on-labor-maternity-and-the-institution/">Notes on Labor, Maternity, and the Institution</a><br />
by Jaleh Mansoor</p>
<blockquote><p>How do others less lucky than I make it in the global service industry (in which education and so called higher education now takes it place, now that Professors at State schools are classified as mid level managers?) How do women who have babies and work make it? They pay to work; they pay with their children. Sacrificial economies.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>April 13, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/occupy-everything-intimacy-and-scale/">OCCUPY EVERYTHING [I]ntimacy and Scale</a><br />
by Cara Baldwin</p>
<blockquote><p>I am first struck by the foreign impression of my own hand hitting paper. To set out to write in this way is to see my own handwriting for the first in a very long time. It’s grown sloppy. I dreamt last night I was looking at my writing from years ago. How clearly cloying my penmanship was then. It expressed a sincere desire for legibility and understanding–even approval.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>June 17, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/three-crises-30s-70s-now/">Three Crises: 30s – 70s – Now</a><br />
by Brian Holmes</p>
<blockquote><p>What we face is a triple crisis, economic, geopolitical and ecological, with consequences that cannot be predicted on the basis of past experience. Can we identify some of the central contradictions that will mark the upcoming years? Which institutions and social bargains have already come under severe stress? In what ways will the ecological crisis begin to produce political responses? How will class relations within the United States interact with crossborder and worldwide struggles? Is it possible to imagine — and work toward — a positive transformation of the current technopolitical paradigm?</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>July 7, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/contents-1-usership/">CONTENTS #1: USERSHIP</a><br />
by Stephen Wright (introduced by Sean Dockray)</p>
<blockquote><p>The first issue of Contents is a contribution from Stephen Wright on “Usership.” For the past few years I’ve been fascinated by Stephen’s ideas about invisibility, use, and redundancy, all of which come into play in the writing below. In particular, I’ve wondered about the relationship between “the user” and “the worker” – on the one hand, the difference is one between playing the role of a consumer and that of a producer; but on the other hand, as users, our activity is producing value somewhere (websites, telecoms, IP holders).</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>July 22, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/the-summary-execution-of-kenneth-harding-and-police-terrorism-in-the-san-francisco-bay-area/">The Summary Execution of Kenneth Harding and Reaction to Police Terrorism in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Timeline</a><br />
by Louis-Georges Schwartz<br />
August 5, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/an-introduction-to-tahrir-documents/">An Introduction to Tahrir Documents</a><br />
by Tahrir Documents</p>
<blockquote><p>Tahrir Documents collects printed matter from Cairo’s Tahrir Square and its environs. Since the first week of March, volunteers in Cairo have gone to the square, usually on Fridays, to gather documents distributed at protests and rallies. The archive continues to grow as new groups emerge, rallies continue, and the production of printed material keeps pace. We also accept scanned or  photographed submissions sent in by individuals not directly involved in the project, such as friends in Alexandria documenting the appearance of printed material there.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>August 5, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/tahrir-documents-a-guide/">Tahrir Documents: A Guide</a><br />
by Tahrir Documents</p>
<blockquote><p>The following is a sample of some of the documents we have collected from Tahrir Square, translated, and published in English alongside the Arabic originals. They are arranged here alphabetically by title and linked to the full-length translated document, along with a PDF of the original, on <a href="http://www.tahrirdocuments.org/">our website</a>.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>August 9, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/tolerance-or-universality/">Tolerance or Universality</a><br />
by Kailash Srinivasan</p>
<blockquote><p>In August 2010, The Guardian ran a graphic segment on female genital mutilation, which represented extremely violent imagery of victimized women and girls. The piece produced, however, a mix of fascination and guilt.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>August 16, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/contents-2-they-are-several/">CONTENTS #2: they are several</a><br />
by Cara Baldwin (introduced by Sean Dockray)</p>
<blockquote><p>An introduction to Cara Baldwin’s contribution, they are several. At the end of April, when Cara was compiling links related to a situation in which Facebook shut down the pages of dozens of anti cuts groups in the UK, I invited her to use the platform of CONTENTS (at that point more of an idea than a platform) as a tool to organize and make public this research.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>August 23, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/notes-from-tehran-a-green-movement-after-the-arab-spring-by-milad-faraz/">Notes from Tehran (a Green Movement after the Arab Spring?)</a><br />
by Milad Faraz (introduced by Jaleh Mansoor)</p>
<blockquote><p>Two years after what has emerged as a “Green Movement”, it is the author’s critical understanding of the movement, its historical significance and the threat posed to it by what is characterized as its liberal and secularist articulations. The piece draws on critical reflections on conceptions of “religion” and “secularism” and argues for a historical understanding of such concepts in making sense of Iranian modern politics.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>August 31, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/eat-the-rich/">Eat the Rich</a><br />
by Brian Holmes</p>
<blockquote><p>Americans like to keep things simple and direct, so here it is: they rule. For the simple reason that they (the ruling class) have all the money. The top 5% of US citizens own almost 2/3 of the country’s wealth, or 63.5%. Compare that massive share to 12.8% for the bottom 80% — that is, “the rest of us,” as Rhonda Winter puts it in the <a href="http://ecolocalizer.com/2011/04/02/top-five-percent-in-u-s-own-nearly-23-of-everything/" target="_blank">excellent article</a> from which this pie chart is taken.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>October 4, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/the-time-of-crisis/">The Time of Crisis</a><br />
by Joshua Clover</p>
<blockquote><p> The class is not that of Multitude, of dematerialized labor, but is the class of debt — and the politics of time, I think this is an inevitable conclusion, is that of debt default. Debt default — and perhaps this is my only claim — is the temporal complement to the specific or general strike, and is the route of solidarity with material labor, with the place of exploitation.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>October 10, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/open-letter-re-occupyla%e2%80%94solidarity-critiques-reinventions/">Open Letter Re: OccupyLA—Solidarity, Critiques, Reinventions</a><br />
by paracaidistas collective</p>
<blockquote><p>Many of us are not shy about expressing our hatred for capitalism itself, and the entrenched institionalized inequalities that stem from it. We do not believe that a legislative solution will lead us out of this crisis; the entire legislative system exists in the service of structures of power designed to privilege the few at the expense of the many, and based on profound disrespect for the needs and perspectives of the majority of the humans on this planet (not to mention the planet itself).</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>November 1, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/the-oakland-commune/">The Oakland Commune</a><br />
by Louis-Georges Schwartz &amp; Michael W. Wilson</p>
<blockquote><p> The Oakland Commune doesn’t grow by seducing public opinion in order to enlarge its membership. It grows by showing what it can do. The Oakland Commune can make Oscar Grant Plaza habitable for a large number of people; itcan run a library; it can resist assault by the police; it can fight other factions in the 99% for the right to actively defend itself against state violence; it can retake the territory from which it had been evicted by the brutal force of the police; it canspark direct action by 0%ers as far away as New York City; it can declare a general strike.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>November 22, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/the-%e2%80%9cpepper-spray-incident%e2%80%9d-and-the-inevitable-radicalization-of-the-uc-student-body/">The “Pepper Spray Incident” and the Inevitable Radicalization of the UC Student Body</a><br />
by Eric Lee</p>
<blockquote><p>The participation of thousands of students across the state in the anti-Wall Street movement represents the rapid radicalization of California students, which in itself is indicative of the quick move to the left by millions of movement sympathizers. The radicalization of the students manifests itself on the busses, in the restaurants, and in the coffee shops on and around my campus, where discussion of political strategy dominates. Of course, these anecdotes mean relatively little—but the politicization of the student body is significant nevertheless. Though the process of politicization is experiencing its birth pangs, it is emotionally moving that the process has finally begun.</p></blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>December 15, 2011<br />
<a href="http://occupyeverything.org/2011/how-many-sexual-assaults-happened-at-occupyla/">How Many Sexual Assaults Happened at #OccupyLA?</a><br />
by Micha Cardenas</p>
<blockquote><p>To those who would say this is a peripheral issue, I absolutely disagree. I propose that the question as to whether we can create spaces which challenging existing institutions of violence, such as economic inequality, without reproducing and even worsening other institutions of violence, such as a patriarchal rape culture, must be central to the occupation movement. Whose liberation and equality is this movement about?</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Occupying L.A.</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/2577/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:22:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Editors</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

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		<title>CONTENTS #2: they are several.</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/contents-2-they-are-several/</link>
		<comments>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/contents-2-they-are-several/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:57:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sean Dockray</dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://aaaaarg.org/contents/they-are-several"></a></p>
<p> An introduction to Cara Baldwin&#8217;s contribution, <strong></strong><strong>they are several</strong>. At the end of April, when Cara was compiling links related to a situation in which Facebook shut down the pages of dozens of anti cuts groups in &#8230;</p>]]></description>
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<p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #808080;">An introduction to Cara Baldwin&#8217;s contribution, <strong><strong>they are several</strong></strong>. At the end of April, when Cara was compiling links related to a situation in which Facebook shut down the pages of dozens of anti cuts groups in the UK, I invited her to use the platform of CONTENTS (at that point more of an idea than a platform) as a tool to organize and make public this research. It seemed to be another instance (after Wikileaks and then the government imposed internet cutoff in Egypt during the revolution) of power swiftly and decisively intervening in the infrastructure that supported a certain type of horizontal organizing or dissemination. Although her contribution has evolved into a reflection on horizontality and more generally the metaphors with which we imagine our collective formations, I still think these questions among others are lurking within Cara&#8217;s text and selections &#8211; what happens when horizontality occupies a vertical landscape? or the reverse? how do we manage at the intersection of these ways of thinking and living, what new languages and subjectivities are to be articulated here? -SD</span></p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>CONTENTS #2: they are several.</h2>
<h4>Cara Baldwin</h4>
<p>Cara Baldwin is an artist, writer, researcher and theorist whose work focuses on art practice, public art, and intersections of cultural production and political organizing.</p>
<div class="subissue">
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<p>&#8220;Our ribs are broken to spare planes of glass.&#8221;</p>
<p>— Escalate Collective, UK</p>
<p>Abstractly, social struggles are configured horizontally and vertically. Concretely, social struggles are centered around resources, power and their distribution. In this field of the everyday we find social forms.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Just as life challenges us to redefine the terms through which we live in a personal sense, in the last decade, new words have emerged to describe new cultural forms. In the wake of economic collapse in Argentina in 2001, for example, the term <em>horizontalidad</em> came to describe parity of exchange that was both creative and dynamic.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Horizontality</em> or horizontalism is a social relationship that advocates the creation, development and maintenance of social structures for the equitable distribution of management power. These structures and relationships function as a result of self-management, involving continuous participation and exchange between individuals to achieve the larger desired outcomes of the collective whole.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[<em>Horizontalidad </em>is a word that encapsulates most directly the ideas upon which the new social relationships in the autonomous social movements in Argentina are founded. It is a word that previously did not have political meaning. Its new meaning emerged from a practice, from a new way of interacting that has become a hallmark of the autonomous movements. <em>Horizontalidad</em> is a social relationship that implies, as it sounds, a flat plane upon which to communicate. <em>Horizontalidad</em> requires the use of direct democracy and implies non-hierarchy and anti-authoritarian creation rather than reaction. It is a break with vertical ways of organizing and relating, but a break that is also an opening.]</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Speaking for myself, I became radicalized in the context of the anti-globalization movement and collectively organized media and art projects. In the same way that Lucy Lippard traces herself back to the Argentina in the summer of 1968 and experiencing the work of <em>Tucumán Arde</em>, I often find myself in the doorway of the LA IMC in the summer of 1999. Occasionally, I leave my post and look out at oceans of police and friends from the fire escape. Sometimes I join them. And then I am not there. In fact, I am here now. This is just to say layers of shared experience are formative—they are under our skin.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>In 2004 in the UK, the terms &#8216;horizontals&#8217; and &#8216;verticals&#8217; [re]emerged to describe ideological orientations that are respectively non-authoritarian and authoritarian. In 2011 in the UK, the same terms again [re]emerged in organizing debates in the student movement. Nina Power and friends from Occupied Goldsmiths in London shared several instances in which this occurred and I represent some of those here.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Thankfully, social struggles are not only characterized as tussles over power and resources. These vital moments of rupture are also art and life; they are sites of creation as well as destruction. As Brian Holmes recently noted in relation to ACT-UP, “The <em>event</em> can be a glance or a tear in private, a gesture or a speech in a meeting as much as a public action.&#8221; Little by little —and sometimes explosively— it’s through these moments that we develop humor, imagination, discernment and experience embodied action and feeling.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[Returning to this idea of <em>horizontalidad</em>; when explaining how an <em>asamblea</em> or unemployed workers movement functions, in the months and even years after the rebellion it was common to have people set the palms of their hands to face down and then to move them back and forth to indicate a flat plane, as well, in order to indicate how it does not function, joining the tips of their fingers together to form a kind of triangle or pyramid. In many ways is these hand gestures with the knowledge that they genuinely represent a new and powerful set of social relations. As Neka, a participant in the unemployed workers movement of Solano, outside Buenos Aires, Argentina explains:</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>"Constructing freedom is a learning process that can only happen in practice. For me, <em>horizontalidad</em>, autonomy, freedom, creativity, and happiness are all concepts that go together and are all things that both have to be practiced and learned in the practice. I think back to previous activist experiences I had and remember a powerful feeling of submission. This includes even my own conduct, which was often really rigid, and it was difficult for me to enjoy myself, which is something sane and that strengthens you, and if you do it collectively it is that much more so. Like under capitalism, we were giving up the possibility of enjoying ourselves and being happy. We need to constantly break with this idea, we have life and the life that we have is to live today, and not to wait to take any power so that we can begin to enjoy ourselves, I believe it is an organic process." Quoted by Marina Sitrin in <em>Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina</em>, 2006]</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Just as one of the significant ways that contested social fields are [re]defined is through language, the <em>sort</em> of sorting that takes place on AAAAARG <em>is</em> political. As Stephen Wright points out this space is one that actively challenges authoritarian notions of ownership and expertise and enacts <em>instead</em> a space of exchange and intersectionality. One of the affects of this flat architecture, this impermanent archive is that it allows users to reconfigure ideas and histories of ideas. Therefore, subversive power of this project is not simply a matter of copyright or intellectual property, but rather, a challenge to those who think they benefit from keeping ideas from freely circulating and associating.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[These are not authors—they’re brokers.]</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>I chose these texts because they show some of the problems with free labor and collective organizing. Much has been said, for example, about the self-managing worker whose communicative production is monetized and exploited. While I do share these concerns and have long felt that the ‘open platform’ is capitalism’s response to self-organizing labor, I’m more concerned at this moment that public libraries, schools and museums are being closed.</p>
<p>This year, many of my friends allowed institutions to charge money to hear them talk or to read their writing—a few got paid—even fewer were exposed to their work.  This year saw the near dismantling of our commons. <em>Others</em> stand outside. What is the quality of this exchange? What does it have to say? Moreover, what life does this work aspire to?</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[A shelf-life.]</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>In this way, production by and for a common is, increasingly moving from <em>a luxury we cannot afford </em>to a <em>criminal </em>act. As you read through these texts I want you to think about your relationship to them. I want you to be aware of the way you look at them. In this archive, we can set ideas alongside one another.</p>
<p>While this means we look at relationships like <em>intersectionality</em> and <em>horizontality </em>wondering how they came to be so far apart— it also means the way we are looking is different. We are casting a sideways <em>glance</em> rather a furtive<em> gaze</em>. Entire histories of ideas will bounce off and thread through one another freely and everywhere.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>[They are several. They will not be contained.]</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>And <em>us</em>? <em>I </em>think we need to insist on the logic of <em>free</em>.</p>
<p>This is not surplus. This is not content. This is <em>ours</em>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>affect | anarchism | anti-globalization | archive | autonomia | autonomy | cognitive capitalism | collaboration | collective | communicative capitalism | communization | composition | commons | crowd-sourcing | critical pedagogy | direct democracy | effect | enclosure | event | everyday | factory line | feminism | field | flat interface | flexible worker | globalization | horizon | horizontalidad | horizontality | human resource management | individual | intersectionality | lines of flight | marxism | multitude | neoliberal aesthetic | networked economy | participation | platform | post-fordism | post-neoliberalism | post-operaismo | post-structural | post-workerist | relation | urban planning | structural | verticality</p>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>The Edu-factory Collection</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?zxtcq4bq95gxfih">Toward a Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory</a></span></p>
<div class="text-description-block">
<p class="description">[The Edu-factory Collection - Toward a Global Autonomous University: Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge. Especially "All Power to Self-Education" as read against <strong>George Caffentzis</strong> and <strong>Silvia Federici</strong> (Midnight) Notes on the edu– factory and Cognitive Capitalism.]</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Jasbir Puar</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/euivtj0">‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’: Intersectionality, Assemblage, and Affective Politics</a></span></p>
<div class="text-description-block">
<p class="description">[<strong>Jasbir Puar o</strong>ffers some preliminary thoughts on the limits and possibilities of intersectionality and assemblage Cultural Feminism meets Material Feminism. Thinking this in relation to Jo Freeman's excellent Tyranny of Structurelessness.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Jo Freeman</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/80jvq1y">The Tyranny of Structurelessness</a></span></div>
<div class="text">On so called leaderless, structureless groups as the main form of the movement: <strong>Jo Freeman's</strong> essay has been a hidden touchstone for many. This work seems both timeless and timely in what it says about cultural production. Thinking about kinship and other insidious power-forms such as flex and self-managing labor in relation to horizontalism and the inform.</div>
<div class="text"></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Marina Sitrin</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/stifvgl">Horizontalidad: Where Everyone Leads</a></span></div>
<div class="text">Argentina's workers took over factories, citizens took over the streets—no one seemed to miss having a boss.<br />
[A foreshortened history of horizontalidad by <strong>Marina Sitrin</strong>, author of <em>Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina</em>, AK Press.]</div>
<div class="author"><strong></strong></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Voices of Resistance from Occupied London</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/o1vnzar">Issue Four, Winter 2008/09</a></span></p>
<div class="text-description-block">
<p class="description">[Especially "turning cracks into landscapes" by <strong>Marina Sitrin</strong>, author of <em>Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina</em>, AK Press.]</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Escalate Collective</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?8pdquwddvs6359i">THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING</a></span></p>
<div class="text-description-block">
<p class="description">[UK student organizers debate around organizational structure; horizontalism. Thanks to <strong>Nina Power</strong> and <strong>University of Goldsmiths Occupation.]</strong></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Paolo Virno and Alexei Penzin</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?q48ht32ikm1ghqc">The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[<strong>Paulo Virno</strong> interview by <strong>Alexei Penzin</strong>, a member of the interdisciplinary group “<strong><em>Chto Delat / What is to be done</em></strong>?”]</div>
<div class="author"><strong></strong></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Colectivo Situaciones and Brian Whitener et al.</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/7w5b6c1">Genocide in the Neighborhood</a></span></p>
<div class="text-description-block">
<p class="description">[<strong>Brian Whitener</strong> edits and translates an English translation of <em>Genocida en el Barrio: Mesa de Escrache Popular by <strong>Colectivo Situaciones</strong></em>) documents the autonomist practice of the "escrache", ChainLinks Press]</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Eyal Weizman</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="/">The Politics of Verticality: The West Bank as an Architectural Construction</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[While the term 'verticals' has been used in the UK to describe an authoritarian approach to organizing, here Goldsmiths architecture grad <strong>Eyal Weizman</strong> uses it to frame material enclosure and colonization of Palestine.]</div>
<div class="text"></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Stan Allen</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?o3nomzzdz00">Field Conditions</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[Read against <strong>Brian Holmes'</strong> swarmachine and considered with horizontal and cellular forms of organization and action such as a riot, mob, escrache. Also interesting in relation to urban planning and infrastructural control of public space.]</div>
<div class="text"></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Jodi Dean</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/s4yu5aw">The Communist Horizon</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[Draft of political theorist<strong> Jodi Dean's</strong> forthcoming book of the same title shared recently through <em>Not An Alternative</em> and The Public School, NY. Emphasizes the 'horizon' to point out limits of hortizontal organizing. Desire, here is centered on future and the Party.]</div>
<div class="text"></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Christopher Newfield</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/5vdjcs3">Structure and Silence of the Cognitariat</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[<strong>Christopher Newfield</strong> connects the precarity of knowledge workers and the crisis in the university.]</div>
<div class="author"><strong></strong></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Brian Holmes</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?82s7rib64v9wp6p">SWARMACHINE</a></span></div>
<div class="text"><strong>[Brian Holmes</strong> on the role of decentralized media intervention as a catalyst for grassroots action at the global scale from Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society, Half-Letter Press.]</div>
<div class="text"></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Markus Malarkey</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="/">Why we shouldn’t centralise the student movement: protest, tactics and ways forward</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[From Ceasefire Magazine August 8, 2011: UK student organizers debate around organizational structure; horizontalism. Thanks to <strong>Nina Power</strong> and <strong>University of Goldsmiths Occupation</strong>.]</div>
<div class="author"><strong></strong></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Matt Hall</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="/">The movement must organise, but formal leadership will fail us</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[Posted on January 2, 2011 by UCL Occupation: UK student organizers debate around organizational structure; horizontalism. Thanks to <strong>Nina Power</strong> and <strong>University of Goldsmiths Occupation</strong>.]</div>
<div class="author"><strong></strong></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Stevphen Shukaitis</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?tqt21syuqsu9lt2">Imaginal Machines: Autonomy &amp; Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life</a></span></div>
<div class="text">[<strong>Stevphen Shukaitis  </strong>describes militant collective action and imagination in response to the present, but also comes out of the 90's and antiglobalization struggle.]</div>
<div class="text"></div>
<div class="author"><strong>Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/jto43hx">Notes on the Edu-Factory and Cognitive Capitalism</a></span></p>
<div class="text-description-block">
<p class="description">[Autonomist Marxists<strong> Silvia Federici</strong> and <strong>George Caffentzis</strong> of <strong><em>Midnight Notes Collective</em></strong> on the Edu-Factory, critical pedagogy and forms of social reproduction.]</p>
</div>
</div>
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		<title>CONTENTS #1: USERSHIP</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/contents-1-usership/</link>
		<comments>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/contents-1-usership/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:13:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Sean Dockray</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://occupyeverything.org/?p=2143</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The first issue of Contents is a contribution from Stephen Wright on "Usership." For the past few years I've been fascinated by Stephen's ideas about invisibility, use, and redundancy, all of which come into play in the writing below.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://aaaaarg.org/contents/usership"><br />
<img class="size-full wp-image-2149   aligncenter" src="/wp-content/uploads/Snapz-Pro-XScreenSnapz002.jpg" alt="" width="287" height="287" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="color: #808080;">The first issue of <em>Contents</em> is a contribution from Stephen Wright on &#8220;Usership.&#8221; For the past few years I&#8217;ve been fascinated by Stephen&#8217;s ideas about invisibility, use, and redundancy, all of which come into play in the writing below. In particular, I&#8217;ve wondered about the relationship between &#8220;the user&#8221; and &#8220;the worker&#8221; &#8211; on the one hand, the difference is one between playing the role of a consumer and that of a producer; but on the other hand, as users, our activity is producing value somewhere (websites, telecoms, IP holders). It&#8217;s understandable to be repulsed by the idea of the &#8220;user&#8221; because that&#8217;s exactly how the dot.com industry and its funders name us when they&#8217;re diagramming about how to monetize our activity. But, that&#8217;s why this contribution is important: it looks at our situation plainly and begins to ask how we should act in our position as users, what kinds of rights we should have, and then how these concepts might help us map our relationship to the commons. All of the texts are available somewhere on the Internet &#8211; each issue of <em>Contents</em> simply points to them. -SD</span></p>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Stephen Wright</h2>
<p>Stephen Wright is an art writer, independent researcher and curator and professor of art history and theory. A selection of his writings are available on the blog n.e.w.s. to which he is an active contributor, <a title="http://northeastwestsouth.net/node/56" href="http://northeastwestsouth.net/node/56">http://northeastwestsouth.net/node/56</a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="subissue">
<h3></h3>
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<h3>An AAAAARG Users Guide to Usership</h3>
<p>What makes aaaaarg function? And beyond its functionality, what kind of relationality does aaaaarg at once require, engender and transform? How can its terms of engagement be simply but accurately named? The term that comes immediately to mind is: usership. Readership may describe our engagement with some book, author or set of readings, but not the relationship between aaaaarg and its&#8230; users. Participation &#8212; that loathsome term bantered about by the neoliberal ideologues of the mainstream artworld &#8212; may describe one aspect of the empathetic but anonymous community that has coalesced around aaaaarg, but completely fails to address why we use it, and how. Not as participants nor as mere readers, but as users. And though the collective noun &#8220;usership&#8221; remains dramatically undertheorized &#8212; indeed the word itself, though immediately understandable, has not been ratified by those indexes of expert culture called dictionaries &#8212; aaaaarg itself has, here and there in its vast, user-uploaded archive, contains some compelling resources to help better grasp the philosophical underpinnings of the concept and to unpack some of the implications of a politics of usership. Of course there is no &#8220;proper&#8221; way to use aaaaarg; usership is an inherently restive and unpredictable category, meaning that the word for alleged misuse is simply actual, factual use. A tremendous amount of latitude exists between existent infrastructures, services, rules and dispositives and the countless uses to which they are put. If one were to define the premises of an emancipated usership, it could be said that a kind of reflexive poaching supersedes faithfulness and obedience. These contents are proposed in that spirit, and hopefully, in sorting and repurposing the contents of aaaaarg around usership, usefully instantiating usership while taking a first stab at shoring up the concept.</p>
<p>Though aaaaarg is exemplary of a usological turn in contemporary culture, it is not alone; the past ten or fifteen years have witnessed the broad expansion of the notion of usership as a new category of political subjectivity. It&#8217;s not as if using is anything new &#8212; people have been using tools, languages and odd and sundry goods and services (not to mention mind-altering substances) since time immemorial. But the rise of 2.0 culture and user-generated content and value, as well as democratic polities whose legitimacy is founded on the ability of the governed to appropriate and use available political and economic instruments, has produced active &#8220;users&#8221; (not just rebels, prosumers or automatons) whose agency is exerted, paradoxically, exactly where it is expected.</p>
<p>Usership represents a radical challenge to at least three deeply entrenched conceptual institutions in contemporary society: spectatorship, expert culture, and ownership. That is, it challenges hegemonic assumptions of relationality in the aesthetic, the epistemic and the ontological realms. Modernist artistic conventions, premised on so-called disinterested spectatorship, dismiss usership (and use value, rights of usage) as inherently instrumental &#8212; and the mainstream artworld&#8217;s physical and conceptual architecture is entirely unprepared to even speak of usership, even as ever more contemporary artistic practices imply a different regime of engagement than that described by spectatorship: a regime at once more extensive and more intensive. Usership represents a still more deep-seated challenge to ownership in an economy where surplus-value extraction is increasingly based on use: how long will communities of usership sit idly by as their user-generated value is privatized? In the artworld and other lifeworlds, it is expert culture &#8212; whether it be the publishing industry, or the city hall&#8217;s design office &#8212; which is most hostile to usership: from the perspective of expertise, use is invariably misuse. But from the perspective of users, everywhere, so-called misuse is simply&#8230; use. None of which is to deny that usership is a something of a double-edged sword &#8212; which is precisely what makes it interesting to consider. The challenge would seem to be to imagine a non-instrumental, emancipated form of usership.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s not much theoretical work on usership per se, and though it&#8217;s probably high time to fill that gap, it is also easy to understand what explains that lack: usership always plays itself out in occupied territory. Usership names a mode of groundshare, a reappropriation of a territory that will never be all its own. Usership never plays out on home ice, but is inherently on the road, challenging not merely home advantage but reinterpreting the rules of the game. For this reason, it can only be observed at play on familiar yet foreign conceptual territories, such as those of spectatorship, expert culture, and ownership &#8212; some of the most abundantly theorized institutions in our society.</p>
</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Ludwig Wittgenstein</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/94w0qrp">Philosophical Investigations</a></span><br />
Wittgenstein&#8217;s second major philosophical work on language, mind, meaning and philosophy, published in 1953 after his death. Wittgenstein here puts forth his theory of user-based meaning. With disarmingly simple logic, he argued that words, propositions, languages at large have no &#8220;true&#8221; meaning independent of the way speakers use them, outside the pragmatics of common use.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Michel Foucault</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/1y35e8l/Power.pdf">Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Volume 3: Power</a></span><br />
Book &#8212;&gt; Michel Foucault &#8211; Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Volume 3: Power</div>
<div class="text">&#8220;The Subject and Power&#8221; is Foucault&#8217;s key text on the politics of usership. In a way, usership shapes the focus, function and adressee of his later work: a theory of uses, a useful theory, intended for a community of users.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Michel Foucault</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/85ftw3e/Foucault%20-%20The%20History%20of%20Sexuality%20Volume%202.pdf">The History of Sexuality Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure</a></span><br />
1.9 MB, OCR&#8217;d PDF, full book scan</div>
<div class="text">In analysing the Greek understanding of &#8220;Chresis Aphrodision&#8221; &#8212; the &#8220;use of pleasure&#8221; &#8212; Foucault emphasizes the tremendous leeway in terms of how laws and customs regulating pleasures were followed &#8212; thereby defining the conceptual space of usership.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Mathieu Potte Bonneville</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.vacarme.org/article1373.html">&#8220;Politique des usages: une boîte à outils pour la lutte des usagers&#8221;, in VACARME 29 &#8220;Michel Foucault 1984-2004&#8243;</a></span><br />
Indispensable introduction to the concept and politics of usership in Foucault&#8217;s thought published in a special issue of Vacarme on Foucault</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Giorgio Agamben</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/pqbhs0a">Profanations</a></span><br />
it begins with the Genius</div>
<div class="text">That which is sacred is removed from the realm of usership. As such, usership is premised on an act of profanation &#8212; returning to common usage that which had been separated into the sphere of the sacred.</div>
<div class="subissue">
<h3>Spectatorship and the usership challenge</h3>
<p>To an even greater extent than objecthood or authorship, spectatorship continues to enjoy almost self-evident status in conventional discourse as a necessary component of any plausible artworld. The critical sermons of contemporary art are rife with celebration about free and active viewer participation. Yet is there not something almost pathetic about such claims at a time when ever more practitioners are deliberately impairing the coefficient of artistic visibility of their activity, challenging the very regime of visibility designated by the collective noun “spectatorship”? When art appears outside of the authorized performative framework, there is no reason that it should occur to those engaging with it to constitute themselves as spectators. Such practices seem to break with spectatorship altogether, to which they prefer the more extensive and inclusive notion of usership. Is the current mainstream focus on spectatorship – as a number of recent theoretical publications suggest – not merely a last-ditch effort to stave off a paradigm shift already underway in art? Why and when in the history of ideas did spectatorship – let alone disinterested spectatorship to use Emmanuel Kant’s paradoxical term – emerge as the linchpin institution of visual art? And above all, what alternative forms of usership of art are today being put forward to displace and replace it?</p>
<p>The end of spectatorship does not mean the end of public engagement with art. Spectatorship is an historically determined regime of engagement &#8212; it is not synonymous with seeing art, but rather a specific mode of looking. In recent years, there has been a spate of &#8220;invisible&#8221; art practices &#8212; it has become something of a fashion to elude immediate recognition by spectatorship. But this is not a challenge to the institution of spectatorship, but merely a game of now-you-see-me, now-you-don&#8217;t, played within the relational frame of spectatorship. Still, within our art-historical moment, these games may suggest deeper discontent; however, they have often described as &#8220;participation&#8221; &#8212; the artworld version of 2.0 culture: the value of the work (such as it is) in this case is produced by the unpaid, unnamed &#8220;participants&#8221;, while their surplus value (what they contributed to the work but did not get back) is extracted by the artist alone. Usership is an entirely different, and entirely more restive regime of artistic engagement. For a work to have use-value for a community of users it must not only have a finality other than spectacle, it must actually have a purpose and finality other than art.</p>
<p>AAAAARG.ORG is not something to look at, nor some convoluted portrait of its instigator and still less of its community of users, but at once a massive and working online archive and a proposition of a massive and working online archive. In philosophical terms, a user-driven project of this kind has a double ontological status: it is both what it is and a perfectly redundant proposition of that same thing. Redundancy is usually considered to be depreciative, a term used to discredit something – be it an activity, phenomenon, device, or utterance – whose function is already fulfilled by something else. But given the number of practices adopting a logic of redundancy today, it may well be emerging as the single-most useful focusing tool in understanding the dynamics of forward-looking art today. These practices, however, though they refuse to embrace existent conventions, do not – as so many vanguard practices of the past century did – engage in a frontally antagonistic relationship with mainstream institutions and practices. On the contrary – and this is where redundancy comes into the equation in an invisible but powerfully tangible way – they do indistinguishably what is already being perfectly well done in other realms of human activity, yet they do it with an entirely different self-understanding. Redundancy is perhaps the single best concept to describe non-mimetic, or post-mimetic art that is deliberately and perfectly redundant with respect to what it also is. One could always say that a Rembrandt was both a picture and an ironing board (to quote an example chosen by Marcel Duchamp to instantiate what he brilliantly called the “reciprocal readymade,” no doubt because ironing is so ironic). However, redundancy in this sense inverses the primary-secondary logic: it is first of all an engineered system, an online archive or anything at all, and only in an accessory way a proposition of an engineered system, online archive or whatever the case may be. Whereas art used to dream of becoming non art, it now appears to have increasingly opted for a caustic form of calculated redundancy.</p>
</div>
<div class="subissue-library">
<div class="author"><strong>Jacques Rancière</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/vest1zm">The Emancipated Spectator (2009)</a></span></div>
<div class="text">The Emancipated Spectator (full text, London: Verso, 2009)</div>
<div class="text">&#8220;It is in the power of associating and dissociating that the emancipation of the spectator consists&#8230;&#8221; The argument, indeed the book, is elegant, powerful but odd. It reads better if one replaces &#8220;spectator&#8221; with &#8220;user&#8221;&#8230; Rancière vs Rancière&#8230;</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Friedrich Nietzsche</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?gyhl01pqrbiy7t6">On the Genealogy of Morality</a></span><br />
Cambridge translation of Nietzsche&#8217;s &#8216;On the Genealogy of Morality&#8217;</div>
<div class="text">As Nietzsche points out, it was Kant who first introduced the ‘spectatorship&#8217; &#8212; or what he paradoxically called &#8216;disinterested spectatorship&#8217; into aesthetics. See essay III, 6.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Immanuel Kant</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?3v0zb2n2ruelsvz">Critique of Judgment (Oxford 2007, Walker&#8217;s update of Meredith trans)</a></span><br />
3rd Critique &#8211; Walker&#8217;s revision of Meredith&#8217;s translation. Excellent pdf document with bookmarks &#8211; searchable.</div>
<div class="text">To get to the root of the problem. Upon a close reading, it is remarkable to see the extent to which the conceptual architecture of contemporary art conventions of display is derived from Kantian premises.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>James Kirwan</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?ymze5dozymz">The Aesthetic in Kant: A Critique &#8211; </a></span><br />
A critique by Kirwan</div>
<div class="text">An interesting reading of Kant&#8217;s &#8220;pre-Wittgensteinian&#8221; attempt to bolster up disinterested spectatorship by language-use arguements: &#8220;you can&#8217;t say &#8216;beautiful for me&#8217;&#8230;&#8221;</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Michele White</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/phx8lr/gigapedia__0262232499.rar">The Body and the Screen. Theories of Internet Spectatorship</a></span><br />
The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship</div>
<div class="text">An telling case of what can happen when &#8220;spectatorship&#8221; is conflated with any form of seeing &#8212; a common but disastrous error in the age of 2.0 and post-spectatorship.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Claire Bishop</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?yuoqzgztkhz">Participation</a></span><br />
Introduction to collection of writings</div>
<div class="text">There has been a great deal of talk of &#8220;participation&#8221; in art practice recently, to describe practices breaking with the spectatorship paradigm, while carefully avoiding the unwashed category of usership. Limp, but instructitive.</div>
</div>
<div class="subissue">
<h3>Expert culture and the usership challenge</h3>
<p class="notes">As a collective noun, &#8220;usership&#8221; names not merely a paradoxical but a dialectical relational category. This is what makes it so uncomfortable for many, and why talking about the politics of usership invariably draws contestation. Because usership is a double-edged sword, whose immanence to the merely existent (users use what is, rather than proposing something else, yet through that use, which is also misuse and abuse, transform the very terms of engagement) is at once its immeasurable strength and its inherent stumbling block. Is it possible in a general way to tease out the dialectics of use? By dialectics, here, one would refer to the play between the two opposing but inseparable faces of usership: emancipated and encumbered, one the one hand offering a way out of the impasses of spectatorship-ownership-expertise, yet on the other hand constantly prey to the pitfalls of self interest and prosumerism.</p>
<p>Because usership is not a form of counter-expertise, it stands in a hostile but asymmetrical relationship to expert culture. Users are consistently dismissed by expert culture that discredits their claims as contaminated by self interest. Take the experts of State. Anxious to uphold their regime of exception with respect to the market-driven private sector, public-sector experts are quick to point out that they serve users, rather than customers or clients; and on the other hand, they are the first to again uphold their exceptional status by stigmatizing users (or consumer advocacy groups) as the Trojan Horse of this same market-driven logic… But the person who takes such and such a bus line every morning at dawn to get to work knows something about that line which no urban planning expert, whose perspective is informed by countless disinterested &#8220;studies&#8221;, can simply never know. This cognitive privilege is user specific. As such, usership at once designates the site where individuals and their comportments and needs are expected, where a space is available for their agency, both defining and circumscribing it; and it refers to the way in which these same users surge up and barge into a universe, which, though accustomed to managing their existence, finds itself thrown off balance by their speaking out as users. In other words – and this is related to Foucault’s theory of political action – it is not as if users burst forth in places where they are not expected, but rather the very immediacy of their presence that is ambivalent, and cannot be reduced to a progressive recognition nor to a mere cooptation by the powers that be. Governance, control, disciplines of all kinds, necessarily produce usership comprised of users and not just rebels or automatons submissive to an exterior norm. Users take on those instances of power closest to them. And in addition to this proximity, or because of it, they do not envisage that the solution to their problem could lie in any sort of future to which the present might or ought to be subordinated (very different in this respect to any revolutionary horizon). They have neither the time to be revolutionary – because things have to change – nor the patience to be reformists, because things have to stop. The radical pragmatism of usership struggles then have this specificity that they renounce power in the name of power. “We are all governed, and as such in solidarity”: such is Foucault’s conception of usership as a model of political agency and action, setting aside both a horizon (in the name of the present alone) and sovereignty (that it, the ultimate identity that he saw between traditional resistance movements and the power which they contested and wanted to transcend).</p>
</div>
<div class="subissue-library">
<div class="author"><strong>Michel de Certeau</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/t5xj4r2/7361-the_practice_of_everyday.pdf">The Practice of Everyday Life</a></span><br />
University of California Press, Berkeley.1984.</div>
<div class="text">&#8220;Innumerable ways of playing and foiling the other&#8217;s game, that is, the space instituted by others, characterize the&#8230; activity of groups which, since they lack their own space, have to get along in a network of already established forces&#8230;&#8221; MdC</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Mackenzie Wark</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/5advt1p/Hacktivism.pdf">A Hacker Manifesto</a></span><br />
Full Book VersionAs a modern-day, reflexive poacher, the user is often a hacker, in Wark&#8217;s expanded understanding of hackership.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Jonathan Hill</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/lmzdnis">Actions of Architecture: Architects and Creative Users</a></span></div>
<div class="text">institution, creative user, reader, viewer</div>
<div class="text">Refreshing to note how decomplexed architectural theory is with respect to usership, and how the centre of creative gravity has long since shifted from the authorial to the usological axis.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Jonathan Hill</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/gd3ox4s/20949-occupying_architecture_between_the.pdf">Occupying Architecture &#8211; Between the Architect and the User</a></span><br />
Interested in how Death of the Author can influence architecture</div>
<div class="text">The very title, &#8220;Occupying Architecture,&#8221; reads like a definition of the usership challenge to expert culture.</div>
</div>
<div class="subissue">
<h3>Ownership and the usership challenge</h3>
<p>Ownership describes a legal institution that codifies a relationship of exclusivity with respect to an object, or any property construed to be an object, in terms of rights and control. It is made up of complex sets of instruments of regulation and enforcement, and is such a mainstay of liberal ideology that it would virtually self-evident status in majority opinion were it not for&#8230; usership, which challenges its very conditions of possibility by insisting on use value and rights of use.</p>
<p>Though radicals have challenged ownership over the centuries, the perspective of usership is original in many respects and may have the potential to turn back the tide on the wholesale privatization of everything. Usership as a community of users has taken on particular importance in 2.0 culture, where inter-cerebral networks of online or offline users generate content, knowledge, affect and value of all kinds. When Google purchased YouTube, how did they calculate the price tag? Not based on the value of the hardware, nor even the software, but as it were on the basis of the user-wear (and tear). They calculated how many people had ever, even just once, used YouTube, and fixed a common price on each and every user &#8212; not that they thought all usage is equal, but because it was as a community of use that value had been generated. But this is not just a paradox, it is a scandal. Because none of those value-producing users received anything for the value they produced. Their user-generated surplus value was expropriated, in that case of mass collaboration and countless others. When in the 1970s Jean-Luc Godard quipped that television viewers ought to be paid to watch, it was assumed he was sarcastically commenting on the quality of broadcasting. Thirty-five years on, the remark appears premonitory: if usership generates value, it should be remunerated. If it produces surplus value, great &#8212; we may be witnessing the end of work as we know it. But that surplus value must be redistributed within the community that produced it, not foster capital accumulation for a rentier class of owners. Never before has ownership seemed more akin to theft, as Proudhon so flatly described it in 1840. And as ownership seeks to extend the regime of artificial scarcity to the commons of use, withdrawing from common use that which allows usership to produce value, it becomes increasingly mired in a contradiction which can only be its demise. Sooner, let us hope, rather than later.</p>
</div>
<div class="subissue-library">
<div class="author"><strong>Pierre-Joseph Proudhon</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?rj4o3e1h77lc2c9">What Is Property?</a></span><br />
(book) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon &#8211; What Is Property? (medium to low quality copy)</div>
<div class="text">Never before has ownership seemed more akin to theft, as Proudhon so flatly described it in the nineteenth century.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Pierre-Joseph Proudhon</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?ksw8s73fb96s767">Qu&#8217;est ce que la propriété ?</a></span><br />
The property prejudice&#8230;</div>
<div class="text">On sait ce que c&#8217;est: c&#8217;est le vol. Et pourtant, Hadopi vient nous dire, avec une certaine force de l&#8217;évidence, que &#8220;le libre c&#8217;est le vol.&#8221;</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Matteo Pasquinelli</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://matteopasquinelli.com/docs/Pasquineli_PageRank.pdf">Google’s PageRank Algorithm: A Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and the Rentier of the Common Intellect</a></span></div>
<div class="text">PageRank is introduced as a diagram of &#8220;cognitive capitalism&#8221;, a machine to transform the common intellect into network value. One of the hardest-hitting, counter-intuitive essays on how surplus-value extraction in cognitive capitalism is linked to rentier capitalism and ownership to present day usages.</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Maurizio Lazzarato</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?nmzq5jxicwli8je">From Capital-Labour to Capital-Life</a></span></div>
<div class="text">(essay) Maurizio Lazzarato &#8211; From Capital-Labour to Capital-Life</div>
<div class="text">&#8220;Capture, both in creation and realization, is always a reciprocal seizure open to the unpredictable and infinite, because the &#8216;creator&#8217; and the &#8216;user&#8217; tend to merge.&#8221; ML</div>
<div class="author"><strong>Clay Shirky</strong></div>
<div class="text"><span class="title"><a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mediafire.com/?mwl2i5mnx5o">Gin, Television, and Social Surplus</a></span><br />
Humorous talk on technology&#8217;s transformative power toward society</div>
<div class="text">The redistribution of the &#8220;cognitive surplus&#8221; generated by usership is one of the most pressing issues of political economy today. Yet most users don&#8217;t even realize they are producing surplus value&#8230;</div>
<div class="text">originally posted at http://aaaaarg.org/contents/usership</div>
</div>
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		<title>Three Crises: 30s &#8211; 70s &#8211; Now</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/three-crises-30s-70s-now/</link>
		<comments>http://occupyeverything.org/2011/three-crises-30s-70s-now/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jun 2011 07:04:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian Holmes</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Here is the outline of a self-organized seminar which we are preparing at Mess Hall in Chicago for the Fall, as one activity of the <a href="http://messhall.org/?page_id=771">Slow-Motion Research/Action Collective</a>. It is an outgrowth of <a href="http://messhall.org/?page_id=771" target="_blank">Four Pathways through Chaos</a>&#8230;</p>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here is the outline of a self-organized seminar which we are preparing at Mess Hall in Chicago for the Fall, as one activity of the <a href="http://messhall.org/?page_id=771">Slow-Motion Research/Action Collective</a>. It is an outgrowth of <a href="http://messhall.org/?page_id=771" target="_blank">Four Pathways through Chaos</a> and the <a href="http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/1211" target="_blank">Technopolitics</a> projects, as well as the Public School events around the UC strikes. Hopefully in this seminar we can develop and share a precise but also useful analysis of the current crisis, and lay some foundations for autonomous research and education practices in this city and in collaboration with other groups. Get in touch if you are interested!</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">***</p>
<p>GOALS: The seminar program seeks to develop a framework for understanding the present political-economic crisis and for acting against and beyond it. Historical study is integrated with militant research and artistic expression. The program is a first step toward a self-organized university, including Internet resources for sharing research notes and reference materials.</p>
<p>FORMAT: Eight two-part sessions, each four hours long with a half-hour break in the middle. The first part of each session will be a course delivered by Brian Holmes, with readings that may be done in advance or afterwards. Each installment of the course will be accompanied by another presentation, screening, artistic event or organizing session offering some parallel to or resonance with the material; these are developed by a collective working group. Readings will be posted on the web and full course notes as well as reference materials will be made available immediately after each session. Distanced participation or parallel sessions in other cities are welcome.</p>
<p>CONCEPT: The development of capitalism is marked, every thirty or forty years, by the eruption of extended economic crises that restructure the entire system in organizational, technological, financial and geopolitical terms, while also affecting daily life and commonly held values and attitudes. In the course of these crises, conditions of exploitation and domination are challenged by grassroots and anti-systemic movements, with major opportunities for positive change. However, each historical crisis has also elicited an elite response, stabilizing the worldwide capitalist system on the basis of a new integration/repression of a broad range classes, interest groups, genders and minority populations (whose definition, composition and character also change with the times). In the United States, because of its leading position within twentieth-century capitalism, the domestic resolution of each of the previous two crises has helped to restructure not only national social relations, but also the international political-economic order. And each time, progressive demands that emerged from the crisis period have been transformed into ideologies covering a new structure of inequality and oppression. By examining the crises of the 1930s and the 1970s along with the top-down responses and the resulting hegemonic compromises, we will cut through the inherited ideological confusions, gain insight into our own positions within neoliberal society, identify the elite projects on the horizon and begin to formulate our own possible agency during the upcoming period of instability and chaos.</p>
<p>SESSIONS:</p>
<p>1. Introduction: technopolitical paradigms, crisis, and the formation of new hegemonies.</p>
<p>We begin with a theoretical look at more-or-less coherent periods of capitalist development, known as technopolitical paradigms. During twenty to thirty-year periods, technologies, organizational forms, national institutions and global economic and military agreements all find a working fit that allows for growth and expansion, up to a limit-point where the paradigm begins to encounter conditions of stagnation, internal contradiction and increasing crisis. Autonomist Marxism helps us understand the dynamics of grassroots protagonism during the crisis periods. To grasp the mechanisms whereby systemic order is recreated, we can draw on Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony as the construction of a set of discourses and practices that articulate the behaviors of the diverse classes, in order to secure their consent to a new social hierarchy. Hegemony is first achieved at the national level; but when its formation is successful it spreads throughout world society. The ingredients of a hegemony are moral, aesthetic, philosophical and epistemological; but these abstract categories of thought and imagination are intertwined from the start with economic practices and institutional forms. Hegemony is the force of desire and belief that knits a paradigm together and sustains it despite manifest injustices.</p>
<p>2.Working-class movements and the socialist challenge during the Great Depression.</p>
<p>This session describes the emergence of Fordist-Taylorist mass production in the United States, then turns to economic and geopolitical conditions following the Crash of ‘29. We follow the interaction between labor movements and socialist/communist doctrines, while examining the major institutional innovations of the Roosevelt administration. Can the 1930s be understood as a “regulation crisis” of assembly-line mass production? What are the forces that provoked the crisis? Has the “New Deal” become an idealized figure of class compromise for succeeding generations? What does it cover over?</p>
<p>3. The Council on Foreign Relations during WWII and the US version of Keynesian Fordism.</p>
<p>Only after 1938 was the economic crisis resolved through the state orchestration of innovation and production, effected by wartime institutions. Corporate leaders from the Council on Foreign Relations were directly inducted to the Roosevelt government and planned the postwar monetary and free-trade order enshrined in the Bretton-Woods agreements. How was the intense labor militancy of the 1930s absorbed into the Cold War domestic balance? To what extent did the American experience shape the industrial boom in the Keynesian social democracies of Western Europe and Japan? How were the industrial welfare states supported and enabled by neocolonial trade and resource extraction?</p>
<p>4. The ‘60s revolts, Third-World self-assertion, stagflation and the monetary chaos of the ‘70s.</p>
<p>The brief convergence of labor movements, student revolts and minority rights campaigns in 1968 was a global phenomenon, spurred on by Third World liberation and the struggle in Vietnam. Wildcat strikes, entitlement claims and the political imposition of higher resource prices (notably by OPEC) were all key factors in the long stagnation of the 1970s. We examine the breakdown of Bretton-Woods, the conquest of relative autonomy by Western Europe and Japan and the last surge of decolonization movements in the 60s, followed in the &#8217;70s by the Third World push for a New International Economic Order. We also look at the fear and anxiety that the &#8217;68 revolts produced in ruling classes across the world. Does the US internalize global economic and social contradictions during this period? Which aspects of the social and cultural revolts posed real obstacles to the existing economic structure? Which ones became raw materials for the formation of a new hegemonic compromise?</p>
<p>5. The Trilateral Commission and the transnational hegemony of Neoliberal Informationalism.</p>
<p>The launch of the Trilateral Commission by Nelson Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1973 is an elite response to the crisis, with concrete political effects: some twenty members of the Commission were named to the Carter administration in 1976. During the decade the coming of “postindustrial society” was announced by sociology, while technoscientific innovations like the microprocessor went into production. Cooperation among trilateral elites was paralleled by financialization, the rise of networks, the creation of transnational futures and options exchanges, etc. However, the Treasury-induced US recession of 1980-82, the “Star Wars” military buildup and the emergence of a new innovation system are specifically American contributions to the new technopolitical paradigm that takes shape in the US in the 1980s, before going global after 1989. So we have to understand the difference and complementarity of Republican and democratic responses to the crisis (the right-wing Heritage Foundation was also founded in 1973). What are the defining features of Neoliberal Informationalism? Who are its beneficiaries – and losers? How is the geography of capitalist accumulation transformed by the new hegemony? What sort of commodity is transmitted over the electronic networks? And what does it mean to be a consenting “citizen” of the trilateral state-system?</p>
<p>6. BRIC countries, counter-globalization, Latin American and Middle Eastern social movements.</p>
<p>With the breakdown of the USSR in 1989, followed by the first Gulf War, the world-space is opened up for transformation by the trilateral economic system. The 1990s witnesses the largest capitalist expansion since the postwar industrial boom, driven by Neoliberal Informationalism. The global boom of the net economy was supposed to be synonymous with &#8220;the end of history” and the universal triumph of liberal democracy – but that soon hit the dustbin. After tracking the expansion of trilateral capitalism we focus on the economic rise of the Gulf states and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), as well as the political currents of the counter-globalization movements, Salafi Jihad, Latin American Leftism and finally, the Arab Spring (and following hot summer). Do these diverse economic and political assertions mark the end of the trilateral hegemony and the reemergence of a multipolar order?</p>
<p>7. Financial crisis, climate change and elite attempts to stabilize Neoliberal Informationalism.</p>
<p>Here we examine the inherently volatile dynamics of the informational economy, culminating in the Asian crisis of 1997-98, the dot-com bust of 2000 and finally, the credit crunch of 2008 and the ongoing fiscal crisis of the neoliberal state. The central product of Neoliberal Informationalism now reveals itself to be the financial derivative. Little has been done in the United States to control finance capital, but the debt crisis has massively punished the lower ranks of society and seriously eroded the status of the middle classes, with a major attack on the public university system and a move to cut all remaining welfare-state entitlements. What is the significance of the bailout programs? How have the European Union and Japan faced the crisis? What paths have been taken by the Gulf states, and above all, by China? Is contemporary economic geography now changing? Do we see the beginnings of new alliances among international elites, outside the traditional arenas of trilateral negotiation?</p>
<p>8. Perspectives for egalitarian and ecological social change in the upcoming decade.</p>
<p>In the absence of meaningful reform and redistribution, continued financial turmoil appears certain, along with a reorganization of the monetary-military order. Meanwhile, climate change is already upon us, advancing much faster than previously anticipated. The result of all this is unlikely to be business as usual. What we face is a triple crisis, economic, geopolitical and ecological, with consequences that cannot be predicted on the basis of past experience. Can we identify some of the central contradictions that will mark the upcoming years? Which institutions and social bargains have already come under severe stress? In what ways will the ecological crisis begin to produce political responses? How will class relations within the United States interact with crossborder and worldwide struggles? Is it possible to imagine &#8212; and work toward &#8212; a positive transformation of the current technopolitical paradigm?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">***</p>
<p>Comments. Ideas. Contributions. Welcome.</p>
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		<title>EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Organizing Inland</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2010/empire-strikes-back-organizing-inland/</link>
		<comments>http://occupyeverything.org/2010/empire-strikes-back-organizing-inland/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Editors</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Inland Empire has emerged as an epicenter for the relentless growth/crash dynamic of global capitalism - forcing workers out of jobs, families out of homes and students out of school. This massive displacement is the context for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Organizing Inland.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/EmpireStrikesBack.pdf"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-206" style="margin-right: 5px; margin-top: -5px; margin-bottom: -10px;" title="EmpireStrikesBack1" src="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/EmpireStrikesBack1.png" alt="" width="283" height="400" /></a>The Inland Empire has emerged as an epicenter for the relentless growth/crash dynamic of global capitalism &#8211; forcing workers out of jobs, families out of homes and students out of school. This massive displacement is the context for <em>EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Organizing Inland</em>.</p>
<p>Just four years ago, you couldn’t find a better symbol of the  economic  boom than California’s Inland Empire—subdivisions, malls and  warehouses  were going up everywhere, filling in nearly every last empty  spot on  the map between LA and the desert. Today it’s hard to find a  better  symbol of what went wrong. Official unemployment is 15 percent,  more  than three times what it was in 2006. In the jobs that remain,  wages  are low and the future uncertain. State and local budgets are in   tatters. Students are struggling to stay in school, while families   wonder if they can keep their homes. And after a decade of explosive   growth, the air quality is as bad as the foreclosure rate. But all over   Southern California—from Boron to Fontana to Riverside—people are   fighting back and organizing for a just and sane economy in the Inland   Empire and beyond.</p>
<h3>Part 1 &#8211; <strong>Neoliberal Appetites (March 3, 2010 at UC-Riverside) 
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p> </strong>
<p><strong> </strong><strong> </strong><strong> </strong><strong> </strong></p>
</h3>
<p>This event, led by Brian Holmes, focused on neoliberal subjectivity &#8211; the ways in which the present economic system both <em>encourages</em> and is <em>encouraged by</em> a set of fundamental assumptions, attitudes and perspectives.</p>
<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/bh_neoliberal_appetites.pdf">Download the LECTURE (PDF)</a></p>
<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Inland-Empire.pdf" target="_blank">Download the FACTS (PDF)</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;"><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/EmpireStrikesBack.pdf" target="_blank">Download the POSTER (PDF)</a></span></p>
<h3>Part 2 &#8211; <strong>Public Forum (April 6, 2010 at Universalist Unitarian Church of Riverside) 
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p> </strong>
<p><strong> </strong><strong> </strong><strong> </strong><strong> </strong></p>
</h3>
<p>Mike Davis, Victor Valle and representatives from seven  organizations fighting for justice in the Inland Empire gathered in a public  forum about what&#8217;s gone wrong and how we can join together to fight for a  just and sustainable future.</p>
<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/victor-banner.jpg"><img title="victor-banner" src="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/victor-banner.jpg" alt="" width="550" height="174" /></a></p>
<p>Victor Valle (author of <em>City of Industry: Genealogies of Power in Southern California</em>) addresses the crowd at the Unitarian Church of Riverside on April 6, 2010.</p>
<p>&#8220;You are standing on valuable land&#8230;We have to have <em>more</em> occupations. We have to occupy the universities&#8230;We have to let ordinary people know what value is in their landscape.&#8221;</p>
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<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.com/downloads/victor.mp3">download mp3</a></p>
<p>The full text of Victor Valle&#8217;s address is available <a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Riverside.pdf">here</a></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">organized by Ben Ehrenreich, Ken Rogers &amp; Michael Wilson</span></p>
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		<title>Proposition Project</title>
		<link>http://occupyeverything.org/2010/proposition/</link>
		<comments>http://occupyeverything.org/2010/proposition/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:04:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Editors</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Projects]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://occupyeverything.com/?p=499</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In honor of the 2010 U.S. Social Forum and in light of the ongoing economic/social crisis in California, we invited the attendees and all other citizens of Earth during the week of June 20 to join us in developing a set of initiatives or 'propositions' for debate and consideration for adoption via the ballot initiative process in the State of California.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/OccupyEverythingQRcode-e1277234048538.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-513" style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="QR Code (for the Proposition Project)" src="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/prop1.jpg" alt="" width="550" height="170" /></a></p>
<address>NOTE: SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED (we welcome your comments)</address>
<p>In honor of the 2010 U.S. Social Forum and in light of the ongoing economic/social crisis in California, we invited the attendees and all other citizens of the world during the week of June 20 to join us in developing a set of initiatives or &#8216;propositions&#8217; for debate and consideration for adoption via the ballot initiative process in the State of California.</p>
<p>These initiatives might emerge from one (or more) of three central areas of shared concern:</p>
<p>• Re-Education<br />
• Strategy/Tactics (Occupation, Evacuation, etc)<br />
• Resources</p>
<h3><strong>Submitted Propositions:</strong></h3>
<h4><strong><em>Prop 1 &#8211; People&#8217;s seizure of Walmart, Inc. / Communize all Walmarts in State of California<br />
Prop 2 &#8211; Occupy Disney / Common-ize Disney<br />
Prop 3 &#8211; Truck Stop Autonomization Network Plan<br />
Prop 4 &#8211; Guaranteed Minimum Income Act<br />
Prop 5 &#8211; Green New Deal<br />
Prop 6 &#8211; Lift All Travel Restrictions Across the Border with Mexico<br />
Prop 7 &#8211; Legalize All Humans<br />
Prop 8 &#8211; Common Fund for Public Education<br />
Prop 9 &#8211; Outlaw Commercial Advertising<br />
Prop 10 &#8211; Decriminalize Drugs<br />
Prop 11 &#8211; Replace Money with Labor Vouchers<br />
Prop 12 &#8211; Consumer Goods Priced According to Time Spent Making Said Goods<br />
Prop 13 &#8211; Publicly-Owned Industry<br />
Prop 14 &#8211; Democratic Decision-Making at Local, National and Union Levels<br />
Prop 15 &#8211; Print Labor Value on Dollar Bills<br />
Prop 16 &#8211; Abolish Usury / Criminalize Interest as a Form of Income<br />
Prop 17 &#8211; Re-purpose 90% of U.S. Military for Domestic Public Works Projects Under Union Authority<br />
Prop 18 &#8211; Land Tax on Rentable Value (High Threshold Exempting Farmers)<br />
Prop 19 &#8211; Jubilee 2010 &#8211; Forgive all Non-Corporate Debt<br />
Prop 20 &#8211; One year paid parental leave with guaranteed employment upon return<br />
Prop 21 &#8211; Free day care and babysitting<br />
Prop 22 &#8211; California Musician Corps (CMP) providing free music in parks, on street corners and beaches, kids&#8217; birthday parties<br />
Prop 23 &#8211; Maximum Income Cap (The Hollywood Gives Back Act)<br />
Prop 24 &#8211; Government-subsidized health food coops in low income neighborhoods (The No Whole Foods Whole Paycheck Act)<br />
Prop 25 &#8211; Disarmament for Social Satisfaction<br />
Prop 26 &#8211; Technological Development for Social Satisfaction<br />
Prop 27 &#8211; Economic Bill of Rights<br />
Prop 28 &#8211; Democratisation of All World Financial and Economic System to Allow for Full Participation by All Countries (DAWFESAFPAC Now!)<br />
Prop 29 &#8211; Re-distribute all existing bank assets to credit unions under worker/community control<br />
Prop 30 &#8211;  Public Ownership of All Large Databases<br />
Prop 31 &#8211; The Immediate Abolition of All Private Health Insurance Companies through the Creation of a Single-Payer Health System (with full standard and alternative medical, dental, vision, and mental health coverage for all)<br />
Prop 32 &#8211; Public Ownership and Worker/Community Control of the Pharmaceutical Industry<br />
Prop 33 &#8211; Rent control for all rental units<br />
Prop 34 &#8211; End to home foreclosures<br />
Prop 35 &#8211; Public ownership and worker control of the airline industry<br />
Prop 36 &#8211; Federally funded auto insurance<br />
Prop 37 &#8211; Immediate transition to renewable fuels<br />
Prop 38 &#8211; End to the expansion of the interstate highway system<br />
Prop 39 &#8211; Fully-funded high-speed national rail system with low-cost access<br />
Prop 40 &#8211; Fully-funded development of renewable fuels<br />
Prop 42 &#8211; Fully-funded formation of non-profit land trusts and of socially owned, tenant controlled housing cooperatives<br />
Prop 43 &#8211; Massive increase in Section 8 housing subsidies<br />
Prop 44 &#8211; Fully-funded public housing construction project (low cost, scattered site, community-based, high quality housing)<br />
Prop 45 &#8211; Student representation on all governing bodies at educational institutions<br />
Prop 46 &#8211; Student, parent, and teacher control of curriculum formation, and in the hiring and dismissal procedures of school personnel, through the formation of local school/community committees<br />
Prop 47 &#8211; An egalitarian, progressive educational system based on leading-edge research in non-authoritarian education modalities.<br />
Prop 48 &#8211; Guaranteed incomes and grants for artists and performers<br />
Prop 49 &#8211; Fully-funded libraries, museums, cultural centers, and historic sites<br />
Prop 50 &#8211; Worker/community-owned public utilities<br />
Prop 51 &#8211; Free Wi-fi for everyone<br />
Prop 52 &#8211; Redefine economic theories of value so as to better account for immaterial labor<br />
Prop 53 &#8211; Abolish the drinking age<br />
Prop 54 &#8211; Violent social revolution<br />
Prop 55 &#8211; The negation of the state and authority<br />
Prop 56 &#8211; Free Revolutionary Discipline<br />
Prop 57 &#8211; Abolish taxation by the state<br />
Prop 58 &#8211; Workers and Community Self-Management. Period.<br />
Prop 59 &#8211; Eco-Communes Now.<br />
Prop 60 &#8211; Abolish Property.<br />
Prop 61 &#8211; Time banks<br />
Prop 62 &#8211; Let a million autonomous zones bloom<br />
Prop 63 &#8211; Archaic revival<br />
Prop 64 &#8211; Clear-eyed resistance without nostalgia<br />
Prop 65 &#8211; Permanent revolution<br />
Prop 66 &#8211; Evacuation of all corporate institutions<br />
Prop 67 &#8211; Evacuation of all government institutions<br />
Prop 68 &#8211; Evacuate everything<br />
Prop 69 &#8211; Immediately establish a decentralized, federated society of smaller, autonomous communities<br />
</em></strong></h4>
<p>(updated June 28, 2010)</p>
<p>____</p>
<p><a href="http://occupyeverything.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/OccupyEverythingQRcode.pdf">Click here</a> to download the &#8216;QR&#8217; Code image that links to this page. Please feel free to distribute as widely as you&#8217;d like.</p>
<p>Thank You.</p>
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