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A WORKERS' PARADISE – REVISTED . . . AGAIN and AGAIN
 -- Well, what went wrong with the workers' paradises we invented a few years ago, only to see them bomb?
 By Jim Miller


We, in the vanguard of the worker cooperative movement, have seen many idealistic worker cooperatives come and go and those which are still with us, endured tremendous struggles to simply form and survive. Most of the Utopian communities of the 18 and 19 hundreds were faith based and bombed because of doctrinal disputes and failed economies. Most of the hippie intentional communities of the 60's bombed when the authorities closed them down for zoning violations and public health issues. The Farm (Tennessee) is a notable exception. That weed-based commune was at 2000 population lead by a guru which, when it reformed into a more democratic society, dropped membership to 200.
 Following the economic, political and social devastation in the Southern Cone from the 70's into the 90's, worker cooperatives arose in South America to take over factories which had been economically and physically gutted by the elitist owners. This history is well documented by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis and is well stated in the archives of Lavaca. 1

As Raul Zibechi observed in Privatization: The End of a Cycle of Plundering:

“One of the cornerstones of the neo-liberal policies adopted by most Latin American governments in the 1990s was the privatization of state-owned enterprises. This process of passing national wealth on to the private sector has been so injurious that it could soon render entire countries unviable. On occasion, citizen organization has succeeded in halting privatizations through public demonstrations that at times have turned into outright insurrections.” 2

Following years of exhaustive research, analysis and, with amazing insight, Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis connected the dots in their 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, 3 in which they document and explain how the Chicago Boys birthed several generations of “economists” who modeled their brand of economic, social and political chaos theories after Hitler, Stalin, Machiavelli and other “evil doers” to move massive amounts of wealth from public institutions and from the mass of society, into private hands of a few super-rich elites. It is my opinion that this book and its associated cousins will equal or exceed the impact on our society that Rachael Carson's Silent Spring has had on the environmental movement. 4


The effect of shock works both ways, it seems. At first the killers win the race. As one commentator said, “ If you have a guy by his balls, his mind will soon follow”. Once the pain has been suffered and the truth of the crimes of the Al Capone Capitalists are exposed by the bright light of widely distributed publications, the workers and their allies will arise from their stupor and impressment as serfs, create the will to take back their economic rights and lives, and establish a truly democratic culture, political and economic system. We need not debate the truth of the expose's which are beginning to change the politics of the USA and are making progress in many countries still ruled by the super rich elite.
The model for governance of the democratic system is well established among the worker cooperatives. We simply rewrite the constitutions to mirror the best of the worker cooperative governance methods.

The model should have these elements:

  • One voter, one vote. Eliminate the Electoral College. Change the role of state legislatures in ratifying changes to the Constitution so that the power of ratification is by majority vote of all registered votes in the United States.

  • Voter qualifications. The only requirements are that the voter be a U. S. Citizen eighteen years or older and be alive at the time he/she votes. A federal registrar of voter registration and voter ID cards would complete the registration process, thereby eliminating the need to register in any state or county for federal elections.

  • Initiative and referendum. Add to the new constitution, the power of the voters to pass initiatives and referendums (by a 60% vote of those voting). Initiative and referendum laws must apply to the constitutions as well as legislative acts. Provision should be made to vote by secure Internet means.

  • Reform the tax system. Repeal the income tax and substitute a federal consumption tax. Excise taxes on luxury goods and services should be retained in order level wealth. There should be an inheritance tax on the extremely wealthy.

  • Reform land use regulations. The new constitution will explicitly allow for land use by worker collectives/intentional communities so that they can “Work where we live and live where we work”. This approach will cut down on long commuting, multiple car families, the continued expansion of the huge highway grid, pollution (air, water and ground), and transportation and storage costs. This approach will allow for the gradual reduction in per capita energy consumption, especially in the “developed” countries.

  • Sunshine laws. Enscribe in the constitution, the right of the people to know what all governments are doing, have done, and their deliberations and records.

  • Family planning. As part of the family planning and family promotion, ample efforts should be made to provide for family planning with the objective of reducing our total population. Demographers predict that the exponential growth in the Earth's human population is expected to greatly outstrip the available finite resources of the Earth in the not too distant future.

  • Protection of private property. Restrict the power of government and quasi-government corporations to “take” private property for “public use” (even with “fair compensation”). All takings proposed by government should be explicitly subject to the referendum process. This same right of referendum should extend to when one government proposes to take the property of a different governmental unit for a “higher and better use”.

  • Eliminate joint powers entities. Many state laws allow two or more governmental entities to use a “joint
  • exercise of powers” law to form a separate entity which can have the same governmental powers as the forming entities have. This new creation of government is not subject to popular election. This aspect of joint exercise of powers should be explicitly prohibited or, at the very least, provide for election of the governing board directly by the voters and to subject the regulations of such third entity to the initiative and referendum process.

  • Outlaw private armies. Blackwater is a private army authorized and funded by the U. S. Government. Their agents can commit murder with impunity. This practice must be absolutely prohibited.

  • Social justice. Social justice requires that each government provide for a wide range of social, economic and political rights.

  • Judicial justice. Reform our judicial system to provide for active oversight of the performance of all aspects of the judicial system, with independent funding and governance, not dominated by the judicial system.

  • Random acts of kindness. Ultimately he presented the idea of performing random acts of kindness ("RAoK"s), preferably to a stranger, every Friday. Fridays thus came to be called Good Fridays. Over time it has become accepted that the day of the week is not important, and that random acts of kindness may be performed whenever the opportunity presents itself. Subsequent publicity and word-of-mouth has brought his "collective" over 12,000 members.[2] Join Me enjoyed a resurgence in 2005 thanks to Wallace's BBC television comedy series, How to Start Your Own Country, in which he founded the micronation of Lovely. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_Me

  • Community action groups and networks.
    There is strength in numbers. Take one small stick you can easily break. Then add a dozen of the sticks together, bind the tight with string and try to break them with your hands. You can't unless you are Andre the Giant. The same holds true for organizations which are well formed, organized and focused on their goals. We can “start our own country” as Wallace states above.
    We need a medium of conversation and a repository of what we have learned which is open to all. Wikipedia is a good source as are many other free sources. As time goes by the fear of the academics is being realized: Good articles, well written and vetted are iincreasingly taking over the academic libraries and private stashes of knowledge, making the academic oligopolies obsolete.
    The means of communication are now omni present, for a price. The price is falling rapidly. The most awesome resource is the World Wide Web and the Open Source Community. In the field of wikiwebs, there are many platforms which are free (with advertising) an for a few bucks a month, the advertising is gone. My favorite is wetpaint.com. I've tried out wikispace.com which an OK free wiki. I use a wiki sponsored by Central Desktop which rents you space on their server. It has five major applications which are very well organized and are potentially very useful.
    Sight and sound on the Web are now rapidly approaching early maturity with YouTube and other social networks. On a more disciplined approach, my current favorite platform is iLink for Meeting. Use your search engine on these names and you will find them: Key in: video conference and you will get mostly their high priced, pay in advance services for corporations. Most of my research is available at: http://worldcybercafe.wetpaint.com/page/Research
    We now have the platforms for linking active communities of thinkers and doers, forward and backwards, top to bottom and bottom to top, sideways, upside down and over time, distance and circumstances. We need to make good use of the platforms and really mount a determined effort to knit the community action organizations together into a very strong economic, political and social force for sanity, environmental values, human values and sustainability. I'm collecting URLs which are contact points for community action organizations and individuals. Please add to the list which is on a separate page of this wiki article: click on SOCIAL ACTION COMMUNITIES.

  • How do we succeed? There are actions we can take, which seem simple, but will take some thought and some creativity (and some resources). Here's my list; you are welcome to add to it.

    • Boycott. Stop buying from brown and black enterprises; buy only from green ones. There are many green directors. I've been a member of Co-op America which has a very good green directory: http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/greenpages/

    • Stay clear of governments. Stop dealing with government as much as possible. Support green candidates. Send in your written objections to waste of tax payers' money.
      Most governments are very poor problem solvers and generally just throw good money (your taxes) after bad, then cover up their mistakes. A good example is the Oregon Department of Transportation plans to increase the clearance of the Highway 34 over Interstate 5. OR DOT propose to rip up lanes of I-5's valuable concrete, dig out and repave 500 feet of the lanes 500 feet north and south of the bridge at the cost of millions of dollars. An easier way is to free the ends of the bridge from soil next to the abutments, then using high pressure systems, pump wet concrete under the footings of the bridge supports, thus raising it 10 inches. All they need to do is to create a lift of the spans of the bridges to take some of the weight off the footings as the concrete is being pumped under the footings. This approach is not rocket science and would be a whole lot less expensive that the proposed method.

    • Vote your ethics. Vote against all bond issues which are not clearly green in the result.

    • DIY food. Start a kitchen garden or join your neighbors in supporting community gardens. Ask your school to create an outdoor classroom in the form of a garden. See: http://mccsedu.wetpaint.com/page/GARDENING+AND+LANDSCAPING+PAGE

    • Become a Locavore. Buy only goods which are produced locally. Become a “Locavore”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locavore Buy your foods in bulk from your local food co-op. Food shop in the Farmer's Markets. Join a Community Supported Agricultural club. Get to know your local farmers who offer self-pick crops or farm stands.

    • Recycle. Recycle x 10 to the third power.

    • Take some trips to the rural farming areas during picking season and help the growers pick berries and other fast ripening fruit and offer to deliver some crates on your way home to the grower's customers to save on transportation costs.

    • Kill the hog. Get rid of one of your gas hogs.

    • Cool pools. Car pool, use public transportation, ride a bike.

    • Network nerdie. Develop your skills in using the computer to network with folks who have similar values across the globe.
    • Learn a foreign language and study the culture of a foreign society. Develop friendships and help where you can.

    • MicroLoan. Join a micro-loan program such as KIVA and put $100 out a week or a month to a vetted business person. See: www.kiva.org.

    • Green investing. If you are an investor, invest only in companies which have been seriously vetted by an alternative trade organization. Google keys: “social justice investing” or “green investing”. See a global list of alternative trading companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_trading_company

    • Micro enterprises. Create or support the creation of micro-enterprises which are locally owned with your loan through the micro-loan program and directly by purchase of shares issued by the startup. Stay close to your investment by using an highly interactive website to help the company any way you can success. Examples: write testimonials, tell your friends, create an emailing list by pooling your addresses with other friends of the company. Be a volunteer, such as giving plant tours if that is appropriate.

    • Stick-up for leaders. Help leaders like Luis Erasmo Arenas Hurtado, stay alive and when he riddled with bullets from a machine gun operated by an assassin, help his family deal with murder and carry on his green work. 5
The above list is not exhaustive nor as complete as one would wish. It is a start. We need to charge our worker cooperative think tanks to shift their focus from what has happened and finance the building of our worker-based economic and political systems. It is time to hit the “start” button. Let's start our own country. Let's be the Mouse that Roared. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mouse_That_Roared
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417@yahoo.com
March 1, 2008; revised 8/10/08

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END NOTES

1. Sin Patron www.Lavaca.org http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://lavaca.org/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dlavaca.org%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG.

2. Ezechiel, Raul, Privatizations: The End of a Cycle of Plundering, Americas Program , http://www.globalpolicy.org/globaliz/special/2004/1101privatization.htm, November 1, 2004

3. http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204479327&sr=8-1

4. “Almost 30 years after its publication, the book Silent Spring (Carson, 1962b) is instantly recognized, evoking ominous images of DDT, bird and fish kills, and pesticide danger. The book can still galvanize reaction in readers and engender controversy.”

Source: Caula A. Beyl, History of the Organic Movement, 1991, Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Environmental Movement, http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/lecture31/r_31-3.html

5. Green Letter No. 6 http://www.dodgydoda.freeserve.co.uk/1995/18oct95.htm
This 'Green' letter comes to you edged thickly in black. I have just received the news that my friend and colleague in the tiny emerging green movement of S.E. Colombia, LUIS ERASMO ARENAS HURTADO has been murdered. He was the only person in Lower Caquetá - the hot, flat, destroyed land that lies below our mountain range - who was doing any significant Green work.

Luis was 62 years old, strong and healthy. Ironically for me, he was a Conservative, an ex-police officer, a straight, firm, determined, highly educated man. His crime: efficiency in leadership of green community work in the little river port of Milán, Caquetá, and the massive surrounding coca-growing area. Three hours before his death, Luis wrote to me, telling me he was now President of the Association of Community Action groups (Juntas Comunales) in his area and very busy working on the issue of crop substitution, that is, teaching people alternatives to growing coca; reforestation, and concentration on rubber-production. He was delighted to hear that members of the Irish green Party might want to visit and offered his home 'unconditionally' to anyone who comes. (This offer remains open with his family)

He then left his house to visit some friends. At 8.15 p.m. an unknown man (a 'sicario' - hired killer) entered the room with a machine-gun and filled Luis with 19 bullets. He died instantly. His wife, my friend Dolly Arenas, fled from Milán. His large family of sisters and brothers fear for their lives. Then days before his death, Luis had written to the Mayor of Florencia saying he had been threatened and asking for a transfer to continue his work elsewhere. The letter 'disappeared', then reappeared after his death.

Luis's death is an extraordinary blow to all things green in Lower Caquetá, as well as a huge sorrow personally to his family and friends. It means that the only person brave enough to try and stem the tide of get-rich quick environmental destruction in that huge region, has been wiped out, precisely because he was working effectively. It is obvious he would have been elected Mayor of Milán in the next local elections and that this could only increase his effectiveness. And so to the huge question, who killed Luis?

This is where my small English brain was in for a shock. 'The narcos', I naturally thought. Wrong. The guerrilla? Highly unlikely: they support all community work. The next sentence you're not supposed to say in Colombia (It's OK to kill people, but not to mention who did it). Everyone suspects that the present Mayor of Milán, one Ricardo Leyva of the Liberal Party, planned Luis's murder in conjunction with others. A reflection of the old political battles that caused the death of thousands in the Fifties' 'Violencia' in Colombia. It seems the long-standing, self-seeking political club of Milán, seeing Luis was a clean, honest, ideological man, chose not to argue or compete but to resort to the 'easy' Colombian way of the gun.

I see my task as making sure it doesn't turn out so easy, and that his green work does not get disrupted. Much as they loved him, Luis's family feel scared, paralysed. They want something done, but they certainly don't want to risk the assassination of further members of the family. They don't dare to return to Milán and they have little faith in the DAS (Security Police) investigations - there are tens of thousands of unpunished murders in Colombia. They brighten up enormously however when I say, “But I'm not afraid and nor will my friends be, and we intend to do something.” They have a touching, almost disturbing faith in the “international community” whence, it seems, all magic emanates.

Certainly, those who murdered Luis rely on this common Colombian terror, and they would never have suspected that Luis has foreign friends not prone to the understandable but paralysing Colombian disease of fear. What they say they want is for 'investigators' to come in from outside and get something printed about Luis's death in a ('magic') foreign newspaper, and that this report would then be picked up by the prestigious Conservative Colombian daily “El Tiempo.” How this results in the assassins being apprehended, I don't quite understand, but will certainly work to get them what they want.

In conversations with the family, we have worked out some daring plans of action, which we will report after they have - hopefully - worked! A dangerous business maybe, but not as cancer-producing as cowering in fear. So why are we communicating all this to a 'green' European audience? Because the death of Luis is much bigger than Luis, great as he was. And busy as he was, his work was only a tiny drop in a great ocean of indifference and cynicism. The only drop in that enormous hot, flat area. Luis's death means all green work in Lower Caquetá stops. Unless we make it not stop! We must make sure that those who saw murder as the way to create SILENCE, find that what they have brought about is the most unholy NOISE.

PLEASE HELP US TO CREATE THIS NOISE!-

  • By sending letters of condolence and support to Luis's family. His wife's name is Dolly Rendon Arenas, and one of his sisters is Beatriz Arenas. If you use our postbox, A.A. 895 Neiva, Huila, we will make sure all letters get passed to the family with translations attached.
  • If any of you have connections with Amnesty International, please ask for their advice and help in this matter.
  • If you have contacts with any newspapers or magazines, however small in circulation, and can get something printed, please do so and send us a copy so that we can try this mysterious route of 'international disapproval' to force the authorities who should be doing something to do it.
  • If any of you are adventurous enough to want to come out here and to do something yourself - make concerned enquiries on the spot for example, brilliant! We will combine efforts and give all the support and advise we can.


+++++

One thing we can't do though; as Northern Europeans we could never live and work in hot flat Milán, an area at least two days' travel from our mountainside. That remains a loss which shows how great was the soul of Luis Erasmo Arenas Hurtado.

Please don't let his be yet another useless Colombian death.

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SOCIAL ACTION COMMUNITIES

Alternative Trading Companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_trading_company

Association of Community Action Groups: EPC Global Action Groups: http://www.epcglobalinc.org/what/action_group

Everybody's-talking: http://everybodys-talking.org/community-groups

Gepa The Fair Trade Company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gepa_The_Fair_Trade_Company

Greenpeace – Austrialia -Links to other action organizations: http://www.epcglobalinc.org/what/action_group

Interaction – American Council for Voluntary Internatonal Action: http://www.interaction.org/library/detail.php?id=2520

Cooperative Agreements Using Coordinated NGO Efforts: Central Asia: Community Action Investment Project (2002-2005)

The three-year, $25 million Community Action Investment Project, or CAIP, encourages cooperation on development projects as a way to knit together the rich tapestry of ethnic groups in Central Asia and reduce tensions in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It works with implementing partners to provide communities and groups with the skills necessary to improve public dialogue and communication. Bringing together representatives from across the social spectrum of a community, including local government representatives, this program helps give citizens a stake in the future of their societies.