The ISE's tribute to our comrade Carmelo Ruiz.
http://social-ecology.org/wp/2016/09/carmelo-ruiz-presente/
An important struggle for indigenous rights, ecology, and democracy is now unfolding in North Dakota:
"Our state of being is not our fault. ... And now again, even what little we have left is under attack," Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault II said in a statement. "To poison the water, is to poison the substance of life. Everything that moves must have water."
2016 ISE Summer Gathering. Stellar community, conversations and camping!
Join a growing international community of radical thinkers - enroll now in the ISE's Ecology Democracy Utopia online course!
The eight unit course explores the core themes of Social Ecology, including:
Hierarchy and Domination in Society...
Understanding Capitalism
What is "Nature"?
Food, Technology, Politics
Direct Democracy versus Statecraft
Social Movements and Community Organizing
Reclaiming Utopia: Reconstructive Visions
Email us at social-ecology@mail.mayfirst.org to register; cost: $50
We look forward to learning and changing the world together!
Enroll now in our online course Ecology, Democracy, Utopia!
The eight unit course explores a broad range of interconnected themes, including:
What is Social Ecology? ...
The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchical Society
Understanding Nature
Capitalism, Critique, Alternatives
Technology, Agriculture, and Society
Politics Beyond the State: Direct Democracy & Popular Assemblies
Social Movements and Community Organizing
Reconstructive Vision: Reclaiming Utopia
To Register, email us at social-ecology@mail.mayfirst.org and pay the $50 registration fee (http://social-ecology.org/wp/donate/), and we’ll send you the links, instructions, and syllabus to start immediately.
We look forward to learning and changing the world together!
ISE board member Eleanor Finley has published a new interview piece with Kurdish activist and once mayor in Diyarbakur, Kurdistan, Abdullah Demirbaş. Helpful for those trying to make sense of the current crisis in Turkey or wanting to understand some of the specific ways the Kurdish Movement has brought forward a holistic model of peace in the Middle East.
https://opendemocracy.net/…/sur-against-state-violence-in-t…
The ISE will be hosting a discussion at the World Social Forum in Montreal this August - exact date and time to be announced soon.
“Reviving Communalism in Practice”
The Institute for Social Ecology (ISE), est. 1974, invites social ecologists, communalists, and like-minded individuals and organizations for a round-table and discussion about bringing communal politics into practice. We believe that as communalist theory becomes more widely accepted, the next step is to begin building a global movement that addresses the real needs and desires of real people. Our goal is that, together, we can begin answering how communalists can bring our politics of confederal direct democracy to particular cases and contexts.
Great overview of Bookchin's life and legacy, as well as a section on the ISE:
"Bookchin founded the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) in the early seventies in Vermont with anthropologist Dan Chordokoff. As Biehl outlines, in probably the most optimistic and lively sections of the book, the ISE was run on a shoestring but became a central hub for all manner of charismatic teachers and utopian dreamers.
At its peak, roughly three hundred radical intellectuals, activists, art...ists, and technologists would come to study with Bookchin and participate in the school’s three-month summer program.
The ISE offered some of the first courses in the country on urbanism and ecology, radical technology, ecology and feminism, activist art and community. There really was nothing like it. Students read critical theory, studied the history of popular assemblies and experimented with urban aquaculture or solar collectors.
The ISE also became the center of a wave of political activism that swept the country in the seventies and eighties: John and Nancy Todd experimented with living machines and closed-loop production systems at the New Alchemy Institute in Massachusetts (anticipating subsequent research programs in Industrial Ecology); Karl Hess and David Morris tested neighborhood democracy and self-management in DC; Ynestra King and Chiah Heller did much to instigate debate around the contours of a social ecofeminism.
All taught at the ISE at different points. Longstanding relations were also built between the ISE and Puerto Rican radicals in New York City. Chino Garcia and his CHARAS group were regular visitors to Vermont as they explored various strategies for bottom-up community development and socio-ecological retrofits of their neighborhood in the Lower East Side."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/…/murray-bookchin-ecology-kurdi…/
ISE co-director Blair Taylor will be in Vancouver B.C. on Thursday July 14th to discuss the collection of Bookchin essays "The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy." If you're in the area, join us for a night of political discussion!
Debbie Bookchin calls for U.S and E.U pressure to STOP human rights violations in Turkey: http://kurdishquestion.com/…/3261-u-s-and-e-u-must-step-up-…
We are happy to announce that Kristin Ross will be joining us for the ISE annual gathering. Her recent book, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (Verso, 2015), is a masterful study of the ideas and aspirations which drove this historic revolt. In this interview she discusses the legacy of the Commune and its continued political relevance today.
Video presentation by ISE faculty member and longtime activist Brian Tokar: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change.
Slide show presentation of the latest global climate change predictors and climate science models with documentation of current impacts on countries in the global South, and the emergence of an international Peoples' Climate Justice Movement - highlighting the role of indigenous peoples, organized labor and environmental activists. Features the recent and on-going actions of RisingTideVT and 350VT.org as well as film footage of Ende Gelande anti-coal activists in Germany.
The program for the ISE annual gathering is shaping up and looking great! Just today Andy Cornell confirmed he'll be speaking about his exciting new book Unruly Practices: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century
The program for the ISE annual gathering is shaping up and looking great! Just today Andy Cornell confirmed he'll be speaking about his exciting new book Unruly Practices: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century
Our first online course Ecology, Democracy, Utopia was a great success! We are now offering a self-directed course featuring the same video lectures, readings, and discussion forums but without the fixed time commitment of a weekly seminar. This allows for more flexible participation; you can start the course at any time, at your own speed, and according to your own schedule. The course explores a broad range of interconnected themes divided into eight units:
What is Social E...cology?
The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy
Understanding Nature
Capitalism, Critique, Alternatives
Technology, Agriculture, and Society
Politics Beyond the State:Direct Democracy & Popular Assemblies
Getting from Here to There: Social Movements and Community Organizing
Reconstructive Vision: Reclaiming Utopia
We look forward to learning and changing the world together!
http://social-ecology.org/…/now-offering-flexible-and-self…/
It seems the US greens have adopted a motion on ecosocialist economics heavily influenced by Communalism/Libertarian Municipalism:
"The Green Party seeks to build an alternative economic system based on ecology and decentralization of power, an alternative that rejects both the capitalist system that maintains private ownership over almost all production as well as the state-socialist system that assumes control over industries without democratic, local decision making. We be...lieve the old models of capitalism (private ownership of production) and state socialism (state ownership of production) are not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic and that both contain built-in structures that advance injustices.
Instead we will build an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy. Some call this decentralized system ecological socialism, communalism, or the cooperative commonwealth, but whatever the terminology, we believe it will help end labor exploitation, environmental exploitation, and racial, gender, and wealth inequality and bring about economic and social justice due to the positive effects of democratic decision making."
Interesting article by a Greek comrade which compares the political ideas of Cornelius Castoriadis and Murray Bookchin:
"Despite the differences and disagreements between them, Castoriadis and Bookchin shared a lot in common – especially the way they viewed direct democracy and ecology. Their contributions in these fields provided very fertile soil for further theoretical and practical advance. It is not by chance that in a period in which the questions of democracy and ecology are attracting growing attention, we listen ever more often about the two of them.
