Webinar this Saturday 14th – Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee

Part of [[Conversations with Gamechangers]]. All the previous ones have been great.

"building a movement of Dalit (lower caste) landless farmers to reclaim access to land they are rightfully entitled to in the Punjab region of India. [..]building community power and making demands on the government for the rightful share, while developing collective forms of working the land and sharing the produce."

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conversations-with-gamechangers-zameen-prapti-sangharsh-committee-tickets-392471923087

Knee-deep in papers on ICT4S – ‘ICT for Sustainability’. Usually well-intentioned, but often of a ‘tech will save us’ bent, missing any political analysis or question of how we got here. Case in point: the suggestion of ‘bayesian networks to discover supply chains using child labour’. Great. But better to transition to a system that doesn’t have exploitation of humans and nature as an ineluctable part of how it functions, no?
"political education is always a crucial feature of movement building. In the process of questioning society, movements will necessarily develop new concepts, new terminologies, new ways of thinking about the past, the present and the future. Generating such ideas and communicating them is an essential part of movement building."

[[Twenty-First Century Socialism]]

Amazon workers in Coventry vote to go on strike in the new year. They were classed as key workers during the pandemic… but are treated like robots for low pay. Amazon has plenty money to go around.

> This time the turnout was 63%, with 98% of those backing strike action, marking the first time Amazon workers in the UK have voted to do so.

#Amazon

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/16/amazon-workers-vote-strike-coventry-depot-uk-first

Re-read [[Radical Technologies]] by @adamgreenfield@social.coop and it remains an absolute banger.

Thorough critique of the technologies you see bandied around as part of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ – smartphones, IoT, AR/VR, blockchain, digital fabrication, automation, ML/AI.

Fair, but mostly damning. And still right on point 5 years since publication.

The last two chapters on the Stacks, possible futures and tactics are gold.

Last but not least, it’s gorgeously written.

Continuing to read: [[Platform Socialism]]. Liked the chapter on guild socialism and democratic planning, heavily featuring G. D. H. Cole and Otto Neurath. And the subsequent chapter on civic platforms, featuring platform cooperativism, new municipalism, public-commons partnerships, all that good stuff.