2006-09-04

Ideas for Building an ECODEMA Movement


Below are a few excerpts from an interesting article titled:

Other Economies are Possible!
Organizing toward an economy of cooperation and solidarity

Can thousands of diverse, locally-rooted, grassroots economic projects form the basis for a viable democratic alternative to capitalism? It might seem unlikely that a motley array of initiatives such as worker, consumer, and housing cooperatives, community currencies, urban gardens, fair trade organizations, intentional communities, and neighborhood self-help associations could hold a candle to the pervasive and seemingly all-powerful capitalist economy. These "islands of alternatives in a capitalist sea" are often small in scale, low in resources, and sparsely networked. They are rarely able to connect with each other, much less to link their work with larger, coherent structural visions of an alternative economy.

Indeed, in the search for alternatives to capitalism, existing democratic economic projects are frequently painted as noble but marginal practices, doomed to be crushed or co-opted by the forces of the market. But is this inevitable? Is it possible that courageous and dedicated grassroots economic activists worldwide, forging paths that meet the basic needs of their communities while cultivating democracy and justice, are planting the seeds of another economy in our midst? Could a process of horizontal networking, linking diverse democratic alternatives and social change organizations together in webs of mutual recognition and support, generate a social movement and economic vision capable of challenging the global capitalist order?

To these audacious suggestions, economic activists around the world organizing under the banner of economía solidaria, or "solidarity economy," would answer a resounding "yes!" It is precisely these innovative, bottom-up experiences of production, exchange, and consumption that are building the foundation for what many people are calling "new cultures and economies of solidarity."
Here's the full article

This article deals with many important questions on how we should build a movement for Economic Democracy (one version thereof being Solidarity Economics) from the array of local projects and initiatives that are scattered accross the americas.

Economic Democrats pride themselves in the fact that instead of merely opposing the effects of global capitalism and neoliberalism, they actually propose alternatives via examples and proposed models and various historical experiences.

The next step for those who believe in a truly and democratic and authentically popular economy is to start organizing.

Coops, think-tanks, labour unions, political parties, and other grassroots organizations must now come together in an international Forum for Global Democratic Economics.

First, we must organize locally, them municipaly, then at the state/provincial level, then at the regional and naitonal levels and build a continetal movement for economic democracy for the Americas that can send delegates to a Global Forum. A daunting task indeed...but there are more of us then there are of them.

Hope you find this article helpful.




Blog (main) / Blogue principal | Tom Vouloumanos



COMMENTAIRES

Très bonne référence. Merci Tom.

Par Pierre Ducasse le 2006-09-04 22:25



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