"Building the Commons" Forum, Brooklyn, NY, March 29-30, 2013

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Making Worlds invites you to "Building the Commons"
Making Worlds’s 2nd Forum on the Commons

Friday, March 29, 6 PM to 10 PM (dinner included)
Saturday, March 30, 10 AM to 8PM (meals included)
At: The Commons Brooklyn, 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn 11217 [directions at bottom of msg.]

"Making Worlds: a Commons Coalition” was formed during the occupation of Zuccotti Park in order to bring projects working to reclaim the commons to the fore of the Occupy movement.

Initially Occupy Wall St (OWS) focused on protests against corporate greed and income inequality. However, many OWS supporters understand the movement as a way of creating solutions to inequality and envisioning a future inspired by the concept of the “commons.” Commons can be defined as resources managed and sustained by the communities that make use of them. The commons belong to the 99% yet are endangered by privatization and commodification.

We invite you to participate in a conversation to explore, strengthen, and connect our efforts, projects, and lives through practices of commoning. A core of commoning practices has always sustained human life. This is a call to envision new ways of organizing our lives and our activism through the lens of the commons.

Our last year’s Forum on the Commons sought to conceptualize and explore different areas for commoning – natural resources, arts and education, care and reproduction, alternative economies.

This year, we would like to open up space for a horizontal conversation with a strong focus on the concrete processes of commoning that are taking place or could take place in New York City now. Instead of the usual format of speaker presentations followed by discussion, we would like to see if an open conversation can take place in which knowledge and experience are shared horizontally. We acknowledge and value all the projects, processes, investigations and networks people are building in their daily lives and in their collaborations with others.

In order to have a common point of departure we are posing the following questions to reflect on projects that have taken place around the city and to launch a new commons space project to link and strengthen commons groups.

The questions are:
1) How are people in NYC creating common spaces?
2) How can commoning efforts support and strengthen each other?
3) How do communities identify with and participate in the process of commoning?
4) How can commoning be a form of resistance to neoliberal privatization?

We would like to finish the conversation with the creation of a tool for commoning spaces. This responds to a sense we have regarding the amazing speed with which many projects have started in the city, but without strong links among them. The goal will be to learn about them and to connect them.

We invite you to participate in the conversation! Come join us in Making New Worlds. Another World is Possible!

We would be really grateful to have you in the conversation!

PROPOSED CALENDAR

We would like to address the 4 mentioned questions in each session. Also, we propose some keywords as threads for the different sessions.
At the end of each session we would like to dedicate some time to collect ideas for a toolbox of the commons, which we would like to add later to the common text.

FRIDAY 29, 6 – 10pm
1. Introduction:

Reflections about last year’s Forum on the Commons
This year: what we would like to do?
2. Dinner.

3. Session:

How do communities identify with and participate in the process of commoning?
How do we envision the future of the commons? What would people like to see?

SATURDAY 30, 10am – 8pm
1. Session: 10-12pm

CARING
How can commoning be a form of resistance to neoliberal privatization?
2. Lunch. 12-1pm

3. Session: 1-3pm

SPACE
How are people in NYC creating common spaces?
4. Coffee Break: 3-3:30 pm

5. Session: 3:30-6

NETWORKS/NETWORKING
How can commoning efforts support and strengthen each other?
6. Dinner and open assembly: 6-8pm
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Making Worlds invites you to:

BUILDING THE COMMONS
Making Worlds’s 2nd Forum on the Commons

Friday, March 29, 6 PM to 10 PM (dinner included)
Saturday, March 30, 10 AM to 8PM (meals included)
At: The Commons Brooklyn, 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn 11217

The Commons, 388 Atlantic Ave. btw Hoyt & Bond Streets
Transit: A, C, G train to Hoyt-Schermerhorn (then walk south with Hoyt St. car traffic); #2, 3 to Hoyt St. (at Fulton); #4, 5 to Nevins (at Flatbush Av. Extension & Fulton St., then walk south with Nevins car traffic & turn right/west onto Atlantic); B, Q, R to Dekalb Av. (at Flatbush Ext.); F to Bergen St. (at Smith); D, N to Pacific St./Atlantic Av.-Barclay`s Ctr. (at 4th Av.); LIRR to Atlantic Terminal/Flatbush Av./Ratnopolis; B61 Red Hook bus; B63 via Atlantic & 5th Aves.; B57 via Court St. & Smith St./Jay St.; B103 via 3rd & 4th Aves.;
no weekend B train; no weekend #5 trains in Bklyn;
check current transit cuts in outer boroughs on weekends: http://mta.info
map: ; bus map: < http://ow.ly/6IMHH>
NYC suggests biking on:
venue info: http://thecommonsbrooklyn.org ;