Convergence for Post Capitalist Transition

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By Kevin Flanagan:

"On Wed 10th of August over 150 people attended the Convergence on Post Capitalist Transition at the 2016 World Social Forum in Montreal. It was clear from the many discussions and initiatives present that ‘There are Plenty of Alternatives’ to capitalism and neoliberalism. Following the convergence activists convened at the WSF Agora on Sat 13th of August and came to agreement to work together on common goals and actions.

Over the next 3 months from Sept to Nov 2016 the initiators of the Post-Capitalist Convergence will host a series of online dialogues with the aim of supporting networking and the creation of working groups for shared actions –

1) To transition to a post-capitalist society and challenge capitalism on local, regional, national and international levels by building political power, through participatory democracy, local assemblies and economic democracy.

2) To support and extend trans-national networks of solidarity.

3) To share knowledge and experiences of transition initiatives, in all their diversity, through both networking and popular education.

4) To develop policies and practices to support inclusive initiatives that respect women, gender diversity, ethnic, religious and cultural diversity.

5) To support the creation and issue of alternative and community currencies.

6) To move away from societies based on mass consumption towards societies where resources are cared for, upcycled, recycled and shared. This also requires political action and transformation to move beyond economics based on extractivism.

7) To use non-corporate communications tools (Dégooglisation). To Support Independent media and control of communications infrastructure that respect and protect the privacy and free expression of activists based on Free Libre Open Source Software.

8) To get the influence of big money out of politics.

9) At a fringe meeting in the context of the World Social Forum 2016’s Commons Space, members of Transformap, RIPESS and Greenmap decided to convene for Mapping the Alternatives during a Winter Camp late 2016, early 2017. With no more than 15 participants – contributors to different movements, programmers and common users among them – this Winter Camp in the form of a Deep Dive shall allow for an in-depth analysis of the existing challenges to a distributed, semantic mapping process. This will help distill collective steps to meet the shared vision. The concrete aim is to prepare an international mapping happening at a site where caring oikonomies are alive. This event is mainly conceived as a productive open space. It combines various local mapping activities in multiple workshop formats and takes place during 2017.

10) To build a shared political agenda for the advocacy of Commons. To develop Commons Charters for the defence and creation of Commons. Taking inspiration from initiatives such as the Bologna Regulation of the Urban Commons and the Barcelona Procomun Declaration. As a first action in this direction the following call from WSF participants to GSEF participants (Global Social Economy Forum) to adopt Urban Commons Charters.


From participants to the WSF who met in Montreal (August 9th-10th 2016) to the municipal elected officials and actors of the SSE gathering/convening at the GSEF in Montreal (September 7th to 9th 2016).

Proposed by the Commons Space, the Post-capitalist Transition Convergence Assembly, which included many thematic spaces of the WSF (Emancipation, Degrowth , Environment, SSE, Open Technology), invites the GSEF to study and recommend that cities adopt an Urban Commons Charter. The crafting of these charters should be based on the principles of participation and co-creation by all the citizens. These charters should give an institutional, economic and juridical framework for the emergence, self-organisation and sustainability of civic commons initiatives in cities. They also should stay open to contribution by citizens and be part of a proactive participatory decision-making process in all aspects of city life.

GSEF participants can refer to the Charters developed in many European countries, like Italy (97 cities with commons charters), France and its annual festival ‘Cities in Commons’ or Spain, where the city of Barcelona contributed recently, with civil society actors, to the development of a policy framework based on the social and political principles of the Commons.

There is common ground with other initiatives that were presented at the Agora and we hope we can work together on those points." (https://fsm2016.org/en/groupes/initiatives-of-the-convergence-for-post-capitalist-transition/)


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