Thanks Diane! Looking forward to building and disrupting tendencies toward white supremacy in our cooperative spaces.
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Thanks, Diane. Looking forward to this session.
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Sorry I can’t be there today, hopefully I can attend the next meeting.
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@LLK Your absence was felt We wondered whether this new time might work for you and others in Europe.
Thanks @ode12 for facilitating again! Thank you @tshiunghan & @piper for sharing your presence and participation.
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below are the chat notes:
Collective Courage
rich he/they says:Centrality of Pluralism
rich he/they says:Text exceedingly popular in Brazil
rich he/they says:Comments about terms: Solidarity Economy: strong international term
8:17
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:Kita jaga kita
8:21
me says:ujima- swahili
me says:adequate resources, financing, participation- human energy, ENTHUSIASM, solidarity and trust among members, conflict TRANSFORMATION, internal education and training, study circles management training, public education and publicity, local control inter/intra-cooperation
8:37
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:adding friction
8:38
me says:sitting with ‘relationality’ - and how does work demonstrate this, in its dimensions
8:39
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:fluency in pluralism
8:42
rich he/they
rich he/they says:concept of ‘cultural auditor’
rich he/they says:heartbreaking and true… han
8:46
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:conflict transformation
8:53
rich he/they
rich he/they says:Relying interested in Bookchin/Öcalan - Rojava
rich he/they says:gender equity
8:55
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:Thanks for sharing, Peter
han (he/him) says:The co-op meta
8:58
me says:gender equity- to what end (marginalized genders included)? and can we think about human energy, solidarity, enthusiasm in this context?
8:59
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:attentional budget
han (he/him) says:What’s DEI?
9:05
rich he/they
rich he/they says:I’ve got about ten minutes more for the session…
rich he/they says:Diversity / Equity / Inclusion
9:05
han (he/him)
han (he/him) says:
9:05
rich he/they
rich he/they says:Standard ‘Business/Academic’ term
rich he/they says:collective protocol to facilitate pluralistic relations
looking forward to our next one soon!
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Some Members and contributors have been working on a document called Maintainers’ Role to set out standards for collective work on the co-op’s software.
I have questions about how these standards might conform to the mission expressed in the Resonate Manifesto, particularly sections 8 and 11.
Is ‘democracy’ an ahistorical concept based on administrative procedures? Or are such procedures and the concept of ‘democratic standing’ themselves determined by historical legacies and social context?
In the context of offering a prefigurative order for the present world systems crisis can a circle dominated by cis males of European descent plausibly conduct work on a planetary-scale utility like the web in a manner that is ‘democratic’? If not, are there tactics that can be employed to require the manifestation of inclusivity, social repair and empowerment of historically exploited and dispossessed communities in these efforts?
I added some comments and suggestions to the draft document and thought this next DWC@Resonate might be an appropriate venue for discussion.
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Is ‘democracy’ an ahistorical concept based on administrative procedures? Or are such procedures and the concept of ‘democratic standing’ themselves determined by historical legacies and social context?
The way the above paragraph is framed makes me think of The Tyranny of Structurelessness which is an often misunderstood and misrepresented text but gives super valuable insights into how when a lack of clearly defined structure and accountability processes within non-hierarchical organizations creates cliques and processes that are obscure to outsiders, that often fall along well established lines of oppression, and prevent people from getting more involved. It emphasizes that if you want to be inclusive to people, you need to make it clear how decisions are made, make decisions transparent to the rest of the group, and show who is making the decisions (and how that group of decision makers can be changed).
A couple of personal and observed experiences within Resonate have made me think of this essay, it might be worth it for the group to read it!
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I tend to think that ahistorical concepts are concepts whose (usually problematic) historical origins have been erased. IQ comes from eugenics. The Tragedy of the Commons has its roots in ecofascism. There’s a direct line between slavery and business management. So many ideas which we use to understand society and the environment have been consumed uncritically.
For some people, perhaps democracy belongs on this list of dangerous ideas, for enabling the rise of fascism. In a lot of the organizations I participate in on a regular basis, more democracy is thought to be bad or “too costly to implement”; anathema to decision making because nothing gets done.
I agree with Graeber here: more democracy means more real problems get solved, at the expense of the status quo. Democracy enables fascism when it’s co-opted in the form of representative democracies. The closer we can move towards direct democracy, the better.
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Hey all, @ode12 is travelling this week so I’ll be facilitating this upcoming session.
I had all these grand ideas about what I wanted to assign as reading this week, but I haven’t been in the best of health so I thought we could build on the texts that were referenced in the recent discussion here:
Reading over these materials, I keep returning to Marx’s understanding that capital is a set of social relations and in order to abolish capitalism those relations, too, need to be abolished or re-imagined. But the logic of capital is so powerful (as Frederic Jameson has said) that we can imagine the end of the world more easily than we can imagine the end of capitalism.
And so this task of re-imagining social relations has to be an explicit and collective effort. And I vibe with the idea that “The Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house,” but perhaps some of those tools can be repurposed for the time being.
Looking forward to continuing this discussion real soon.
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hey hey, if i make it i may show up super late, my schedule is has times and dates overlapping because of the time zone difference 
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My apologies @tshiunghan and @psi. I didn’t shift my thinking to the new time for the meeting this morning. I was looking forward to the session (but 5 hours later than scheduled. oof.) Let’s carry the themes forward two weeks?
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No worries, Rich! Happy to continue discussing and building on these themes next session.
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Thanks for attending @LLK and @piper! And thanks for your forthcoming answers regarding white culture at Resonate, because I had to squint to see it.
I made some notes in the chat and, like an idiot, I forgot to copy them before leaving the call. I’m going to make some comments off the top of my head so that we have a record. Feel free to fill in the gaps as needed.
I was surprised to learn that Resonate has 150 founders. We didn’t have time to go into detail about this. Would it be possible to do it here?
I was also surprised to learn that the manifesto is less than 2 years old. The manifesto played a big role in my decision to join Resonate and I got the sense that these values were being practiced for much longer.
In the spirit of reframing our thinking about the manifesto, I’ve started to make public annotations on the page with Hypothesis. I hope that turning it into a social text will help us move it closer to becoming a living text.
That’s all I got for the time being. I’ll add more later.
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peace everyone,
i wanted to offer this resource from another coop based in the U.S. that i saw shared on the New Economy Coalition mailing list which i feel may be useful to our situation. especially considering the intentional work related to white supremacy and culture we’ve been embarking on.
check it out!
"AORTA’s Uprooting White Supremacy in Orgs Training
Training Dates: Sept. 16, 3-6pm ET / Oct. 9 1-4pm ET / Nov. 2, 6-9pm ET
Change and liberation are possible in our workplaces and beyond. Our Uprooting White Supremacy (UWS) in Organizations training provides an engaging synthesis of the things we’ve learned in our 12+ years of experience supporting organizations to transform toward racial justice.
This training highlights:
- some of the primary ways we see dynamics of white supremacy show up inside of organizations
- common challenges and pitfalls in policy and practices in implementing racial justice
- our most-recommended and tested strategies for laying the groundwork for ongoing discussion and change work within your organization
Here’s what some of our participants have shared about their experiences in the UWS training:
“As a woman of color that is new to leadership I have felt so vulnerable and criticized for steps I’ve taken to address white supremacy in my organization. This training has given me confidence in my actions and encouraged me to stand firm by my values. I feel validated and empowered and hopeful that change is actually possible.”
“Through years of careful and thoughtful engagement, AORTA has collected a clear picture on complex structures of oppression that are so well hidden in plain sight. Every moment of this training brought value, insights and respect into the collective awareness of those who participated together. I left feeling safe, energized and hopeful about next steps.”
Bring yourself, your collaborators, colleagues, and communities to our next session on Friday, September 16th (3-6pm ET). Can’t make our September offering? We’ve just opened two more dates in October and November.
These are the only dates we will be offering this training in 2022, and we may be sunsetting this program next year. If you need these tools now, be sure to sign up for a training this Fall! "
If you have any questions, it might be good to reach out to Neily Jennings, a worker owner with AORTA who would definitely have more information.
– Neily Jennings, Worker Owner
– Pronouns: she/her
– 802.881.8267
– aorta.coop
AORTA: Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance
thoughts?? could we have a couple of reps that would be open to participating and reporting back?
register here👇🏾
https://aorta.coop/register-uprooting
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The timing isn’t great for me (3-6 am), but I hope some people are able to take this opportunity and share what they learned with the group.
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Yeah same 9pm to midnight is really not ideal/workable for me these days, neither are 7pm to 10pm or midnight to 3am. I would have been really interested, although I wouldn’t have wanted to take a more legitimate person’s place. Hope we’ll be able to have someone, it’s really too bad all the timings are so awful outside of US and South America.
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I’d be able to do the October 9th workshop if there are others!
I’ve heard pretty good things about AORTA.
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I signed up for the first session on September 16 before seeing your post @psi! Unfortunately, September 16 works better for my schedule.
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