Here is some background information about a group that organizes
communities on principles of cooperation, mutual aid, and human and
economic equality. There is more information at the url listed in the
text. this info may be useful to some groups figuring out how to
structure themselves.
kelly
From: [log in to unmask] (Eric Sommer)
Hi there,
We recently joined the NOA list, and thought other participants might like
to know about our work as outlined below.
Eric Sommer,
coordinator, stewards movement of poor and working people
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RADICALLY DIFFERENT THAN OTHER APPROACHES.
USES `CONTRACTS OF CARE AND OBLIGATION'.
NO ONE SHOULD BE LEFT TO STRUGGLE ALONE.
"ORGANIZE THE PLANETARY UNDERCLASS MAJORITY AS THE STEWARDS OF THE WORLD"
Hi there,
The Stewards Corporation Movement, also known as the Stewards Planetary
House, is a new just-being-born movement of working and non-working poor
people who seek to become
increasingly able to work together to care for one another together with
the planet. Our approach is highly inquiry-oriented and includes new
methods of social organization, economics, information technology,
childcare, personal development, care of the earth, `co-obligation contracts
to work together to care for one another', and much else.
Our approach could, in a nutshell, be summed up as: `Organize the planetary
underclass as the Stewards of the world!"
The SPH also combines the seven ways people have traditionally sought
liberation: The human potential movement, progressive social change,
religion or spirituality, ecology, feminism, progressive art, and science.
The Stewards Planetary House is open to all poor people, wherever they may
be on the planet. People are needed to help us to begin our program of
`organizing the poor people of the world - beginning with ourselves - to
work together as Stewards to care for one another together with the world.
Stewards support all progressive struggles for greater freedom, equality,
and democracy. But we place emphasis on another principal not generally
utilized by other movments. This is the principal of `co-obligation', of
specific and frequently written formal and informal obligations which we
undertake, outside the capitalist system, to work together to meet one
anothers needs and to care for one another and the planet. This
`co-obligation' approach is exmplified in a customizable `template contract'
for the Stewards `houses' which is linked from the `contents' page at our
website.
Stewardship is for us the ability to work together to care for one another
and the world. Stewardship is formed through three inter-related forms of
underclass struggle: 1) the struggle of working and non-working poor people
to wrest *rights*, ultimately including property rights, from the state and
capital; 2) the struggle to form cooperative mutual *obligations* with
respect to working together to care for one another and the planet; and 3)
the struggle for *the total physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social,
and ecological development* of each person. Traditionally, only the first
of these concerns - the struggle for rights - has been persued by
progressive movements, whereas we believe that connected work in all three
areas is crucial.
A key reason for our unusual emphasis on building mutual obligations to one
another, and on personal development, is our belief that advanced capitalist
conditions increasingly turn people into `isolates'. By `isolates', we do
not mean that people become hermits but that they become unable to sustain
long-term patterns of cooperation and relationship, and become able to
combine their creative powers and labour only through participation in
business corporations. To overcome these conditions, and to enable people
to combine their labour and powers to care for one another and the Earth, we
believe that a new kind of organization, which we call a `stewards
corporation' is necessary.
It should be emphasized that Stewards corporations are *not* business
corporations but `corporate-communities' which provide a means by which
working and non-working poor people can organize together to build the three
aspects of Stewardship in their own lives and in the world.
The URL for the Stewards homepage, where you can read about us, and connect
with us, is: http://www.stewards.net The short book, `The Stewards
Corporation: A System for Total Human Development', is accessable along with
many other writings and services from the `contents' page at our website.
Finally, it should be emphasized that our use of the term `Steward' goes
well beyond the conventional ecology movement usage meaning `Earthcare'. By
`Steward' we mean those who work consciously to care for one another and the
world, and to `organize the planetary underclass as the Stewards of the
world'.
If you are interested in entering into dialogue or communication with us
regarding Stewardship, or about how you might begin developing a Stewards
Corporation in your area, please e-mail us at: [log in to unmask] or call us.
Cordially yours,
Eric Sommer
coordinator of B.C. Stewards Corporation http://www.stewards.net
and The Chiapas Alert Network. http://www.stewards.net/chiapas/10.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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P.S. In addition to the Stewards organizaton and website, we also support
and operate web facilities for a number of partner organizations. These
include:
A) The `socialist planning listserve', which networks together leading
economists, social scientists, and activists who are concerned with, or who
have developed, contemporary approaches to democratic cooperative economic
planning on the basis of social ownership in the means of production.
Proponents of a number of current `schools' of thought are represented in
our listserve and its corresponding webpage, including Cockshott and
Coctrells' `Towards a new socialism', the `Participatory Economics School',
proponents of Che Guevara's planning approach while he was minister
responsible for Cuban economic planning, and so forth. To access the
socialist planning homepage, which is the most inclusive single source on
post-Soviet socialist or cooperativist planning on the web, go to
www.stewards.net/socplnh.htm You can also read about - and join - the
socialist planning listserve there.
B) The Chiapas Alert Network which uses `real world' political action AND
internet media such as our Chiapas Alert listserve and website at
www.stewards.net/chiapas/10.htm to help defend 3 million Mayan and other
Indigenous people of Chiapas Mexicao from the extreme violence and
intimidation currently imposed on them by both paramilitary and Mexican
military forces. We currently have an appeal on their behalf, signed by 42
NGO's, before the UN. We are somewhat unusual in that, while we are in
solidarity with the Zapatistas, our primary orientation as an organization,
and at our website, is the defence of the human rights of the Indigenous
people of Chipas.
C) The `World Crisis Listserve' which facilitates dialogue and information
disemination regarding the burgeoning multi-stranded world crisis (economic
crisis, ecological crisis, Y2000 bug crisis. To see some documents or to
join the world crisis listserve, go to the worldcrisis website at:
ww.stewards.net/worldcrh.htm
D) Finally, we also work actively with SAPED, the `Shuswap Association for
(cooperative) Ecological development' in Latin America.
Our SAPED organizers work directly with the federations of cooperative
associations (NGO's) of the 3 million Mayan and other Indigenous people of
Chiapas and Guatemala who are seeking to construct a cooperative ecological
path of development in that region.
SAPED provides both material support in the form of eco-technologies and
skills and organizatonal assistance to these little-known (outside the
region) organizations which are far more powerful in the social sense than
the Zapatistas (who number 5,000 in troops), with whom they are frequently
confused. It is also of interest that the Indigenous cooperative
federations leadership, with whom we work closely, has set a high priority
on computer and network technologies, with which we assist them. The SAPED
website URL is: www.stewards.net/shuswap
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