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The commons at the World Social Forum, Dakar, Feb. 2011

on Sat, 11/20/2010 - 06:30

 

The Reclaim The Commons Manifesto is born in during the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem. The World Social Forum and the World Forum on Science and Democracy will be two opportunities for the "Commoners" with other civic and social movements to move forward by appropriating this idea. A discussion list is now available for those who want to participate in the organization of this dialogue at : https://bienscommuns.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dakar

 

The struggles for the commons knowledge, open science, diversity in knowledge generation, collaboration between scientists and social actors are questions discussed in the World Forum Science and Democracy (4 and 5 February). To expand the dialogue to develop the concept of commons and its appropriation by social movements and citizens to strengthen their struggles is one of the issues in this forum.

 

The framework of the WSF (February 7 to 11) is the place to address the consequences and possibilities of reclaiming the commons to change the world:

- How to design the welfare state at the age of commons ?

- How do the Rights of Mother Earth and the Commons approach complement each other in re-designing international solidarity?

- What about popular education in the commons context ?

- What are the transformations of political processes and governance  in the era of the commons? How are changing the ways of doing politics ? what consequences and opportunities for social movements?

- What role does economic actors play in the commons (free software, wiki, foundations, corporations, mutualism, local solidarity economic actors, ...) in the economy at global and local levels ? How ? what alliances ? Business and so what ?

- What are the roles of the commons regarding the consequences of the exploitation of natural resources (war, slave-work, environmental diseases, destruction of cultural patrimony, ...) ?

- What are the structures needed by social movements, and that they will assume, in order to be able to spread the idea of the commons as a political objective or demand, and to build an inclusive dynamic that allow people who are not at this point producers of commons to become part of the game ?

The list is open to new questions.