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Mumia Abu-Jamal's presentation at RTC Mumia Abu-Jamal prepared a 6 minute presentation that was featured at the Racial Justice Day of Action during the San Francisco Reclaim the Commons mobilization. Mumia addresses a breathtaking range of issues, from prison abuse in Iraq and the US, to historic struggles for the commons and the commodification of life. Not to miss! Download it here.
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Audio from Teach-in Press Conference Reclaim the Commons pre-teach-in press conference, featuring Brian Tokar, Anuradha Mittal, Marcy Darnovsky, Anne-christine d'Adesky, Inga Olson and David Kahn from Books not Bars. Play or download mp3 (22 minutes) from radio4all.net.
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Brief schedule of events, June 6-9th Brief schedule here. For full details, see www.reclaimthecommons.net
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About our Speakers Biographical information on panel and workshop speakers...
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Full Workshop Schedule Full workshop schedule and room assignments. See "Schedule and Program" entry for keynote panels.
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Directions and Maps to Teach-in Venues Full driving and transit directions and maps to teach-in venues: Unitarian Church, Women's Building, New College.
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Teach-in Schedule and Program Click on [MORE] for the full Reclaim the Commons teach-in, program as of 6/1/04
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Registration form for Reclaim the Commons Teach-In and Conference Registration at the door begins at 6 PM on Thursday at the Unitarian Church and at 8 AM on Friday at the Women's Building...
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Reclaim the Commons Teach-in Confirmed Speakers Confirmed speakers for panels and workshops, including Vandana Shiva, Anuradha Mittal, Ignacio Chapela, and other US and international guests. Click 'MORE' for full listing.
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Reclaim the Commons Teach-in Schedule Thursday, June 3rd - Saturday, June 5th in San Francisco. Click 'MORE' for details!
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2004: Come to San Francisco June 3rd - 9th Dazzle the forces of corporate globalization with streets full of resistance and vision! While the biotechnology industry and its lobbyists meet in San Francisco and the G8 meets in Georgia, join us in San Francisco for a mass mobilization that says NO to corporate profiteering and destruction and YES to the world we want.
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From Biodevastation to Reclaiming the Commons: A brief history The “Reclaiming the Commons” mobilization in San Francisco continues a series of international grassroots gatherings on issues of genetic engineering, the patenting of life, and corporate dominance over our food and health that began six years ago in St. Louis. Since May of 1999, most of these gatherings have coincided with the annual convention of BIO, the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
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Reclaiming the Commons, from The Corner House, UK by Nicholas Hildyard, Larry Lohmann, Sarah Sexton and Simon Fairlie. . . To Western eyes, the streets and lanes of Bangkok, like those of many cities in the South, may seem a strange mixture of order and chaos. In the shadow of high-rise hotels, apartment and office blocks, people live in dark, seemingly random collections of shacks near railway lines, on construction sites, and over swamps. In front of rows of concrete shophouses and air-conditioned banks, carts and stalls selling noodles, dried squid, curries and iced drinks jostle for kerb space with amulet sellers, fruit vendors and beggars. Souvenir merchants block pedestrian traffic by jamming their tables up against those of purveyors of cheap baby clothes, leather goods, sweets and dubious athletic shoes. Street corner vendors show open contempt for the solemnities of intellectual property by loudly inviting passers-by to invest in fake Rolex watches, pirated rock music cassettes and bogus Lacoste shirts. Under the eyes of bored traffic police, pedestrians jaywalk across roads congested with trucks, buses and motorcycles.
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Reclaiming the Commons, Part 2 The creation of empires and states, business conglomerates and civic dictatorships -- whether in pre-colonial times or in the modern era -- has only been possible through dismantling the commons and harnessing the fragments, deprived of their old significance, to build up new economic and social patterns that are responsive to the interests of a dominant minority. The modern nation state has been built only by stripping power and control from commons regimes and creating structures of governance from which the great mass of humanity (particularly women) are excluded. Likewise, the market economy has expanded primarily by enabling state and commercial interests to gain control of territory that has traditionally been used and cherished by others, and by transforming that territory - together with the people themselves - into expendable "resources" for exploitation. By enclosing forests, the state and private enterprise have torn them out of fabrics of peasant subsistence; by providing local leaders with an outside power base, unaccountable to local people, they have undermined village checks and balances; by stimulating demand for cash goods, they have impelled villagers to seek an ever wider range of things to sell. Such a policy was as determinedly pursued by the courts of Aztec Mexico, the feudal lords of West Africa, and the factory owners of Lancashire and the British Rail as it is today by the International Monetary Fund or Coca-Cola Inc.
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Reclaiming the Commons, Conclusion It would be a mistake to see acts of resistance and reclamation solely as the province of those active in party politics, or of those whose "backs are against the wall". On the contrary, resistance to enclosure takes place in countless everyday ways in both the south and the North. Acquiescent behaviour towards enclosers, and feigned ignorance or incompetence in their presence, allow individuals to retain their own sense of dignity by mocking the stereotypes that have been imposed upon them. As an Ethiopian proverb has it, "When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts."
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