Communecracy verses corpocracy
Kasra Irani
If you happen to pass by Vancouver Art Gallery at Georgia, you will get a feeling you had never had in this city where some people believed is dead comparing to New York, Paris, Toronto and other big cities.What we see now could be called a tent city, as the first impression is the sight of blue, white, gray, colourful tents. When you approach though, it feels another world, a festivity; the music is heard from distance and every one is dancing at any time of the day and night you might want to have your presence on the ground and be a part of %99 as they have called the movement. Happy faces, friendly associates, and energetic ambiance created by any single person, radiate smell of hopeful secure future, without worries.
First day of occupation, the free kitchen consisted of just a table, now it is a giant tent serving free vegetarian and vegan food made by the volunteers with the ingredients sent enormously by generous and caring people.On Oct.15, the first World Occupation day, there were just few tents set on the ground, now you can hardly find a spot to settle. But don’t worry; the occupants share their tents with new comers.
You might address to the library tent, information tent, media tent and other individual tents sustaining the movement.
The movement was launched by Adbusters and started voluntarily, kindly, heartily with a bunch of young Vancouverites. It is a new movement from the target & form and organizing point of view. Decision making is based on present public consensus. It seems like there is not a strong leadership, not everyone is completely formulated on how to exactly go forward in order to preserve the great movement that it is going on everywhere in the world and reach to the definitive ambition. But it will go on and find the right path based on education, recognition and realities, as well as difficulties.
Some people take it as a kind of entertainment and fun, some people uses it as a place to inhabit and have free food. There are some drunk people and drug users, some homeless people who have found refuge. The big question here is why not. It is the role of a decent society to take everyone in its arms. And then see what will happen, how those people, called junk, could be, each of them, a useful citizen helping the others. It is not about encouraging people to begging and being lazy. It is about to give them opportunity to rise on their feet and build a wonderful society together.
Other than that, you can come across the most educated and informed people amongst the occupants and ones who come and go constantly, who are part of movement and do what they can do. Most of them feel like they are living in a new world. When you don’t have worries about your depths, about your future security, smiles come on your face, your energy increase and you become a galloping engine to move on.
There are now new solutions and new ideas to improve the commune. Yes we can call it a commune already what has been created at Vancouver Art gallery, following Occupy Wall Street movement which spread widely in American and Canadian major cities.
First days you could see lots of police men around, now they have convinced that it is a peaceful movement appealing politicians to open their eyes and try to make more efforts for the society and go forward being helpful to improve it and fill the gaps.
We talked about the Communes. Let’s see what Wikipedia say: “A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become important core principles for many communes.”
What we see on Occupy World and Occupy Vancouver is not considered a commune? A commune, of course, with its own characteristics, at our age, & its particular freedom, but collective responsibilities?
Wikipedia continues:
“In Germany, a large number of the intentional communities define themselves as communes and there is a network of political communes called "Kommuja" with about 30 member groups (May 2009). Germany has a long tradition of intentional communities going back to the groups inspired by the principles of Lebensreform in the 19th century. Later, about 100 intentional communities were started in the Weimar Republic after World War I, many with a communal economy. In the 1960s, there was a resurgence of communities calling themselves communes, starting with the Kommune 1 in Berlin, followed by Kommune 2 (also Berlin) and Kommune 3 in Wolfsburg.
In imperial Russia, the vast majority of Russian peasants held their land in communal ownership within a mir community, which acted as a village government and a cooperative…The very widespread and influential pre-Soviet Russian tradition of Monastic communities of both sexes could also be considered a form of communal living. After the end of Communism in Russia monastic communities have again become more common, populous and, to a lesser degree, more influential in Russian society.
In United States, although communes are most frequently associated with the hippie movement—the "back-to-the-land" ventures of the 1960s and 1970s—there is a long history of communes in America. Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times wrote that "after decades of contraction, the American commune movement has been expanding since the mid-1990s, spurred by the growth of settlements that seek to marry the utopian-minded commune of the 1960s with the American predilection for privacy and capital appreciation."
Notable examples of communes
· The Harmony Society started by Johann Georg Rapp in Harmony, Pennsylvania, in 1804 and dissolving around 1905 in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, was one of the longest-running financially successful communes in American history.
· Brook Farm in Massachusetts existed from 1841 to 1847. Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the commune's founders, fictionalized his experience in the novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).
· Fruitlands was a commune founded in 1843 by Amos Bronson Alcott in Harvard, Massachusetts. The tempo of life in this Transcendentalist community is recorded by Alcott's daughter, Louisa May Alcott, in her piece "Transcendental Wild Oats."
· The Oneida Community was a commune that lasted from 1848 to 1881 in Oneida, New York. Although this utopian experiment is better known today for its manufacture of Oneida silverware, it was one of the longest-running communes in American history.
· The commune Modern Times was formed in 1851 in Long Island.
· The Amana Colonies were communal settlements in Iowa which lasted from 1855 to 1932.
· The anarchist Home Colony was formed in 1895 across the Puget Sound from Tacoma, Washington on Key Peninsula, and lasted until 1919.
· The Twin Oaks Community is a commune that was founded in 1967, and it continues to this day.
· Ganas is a commune currently in existence in the New Brighton neighborhood of Staten Island, New York.
· The Latin Settlements by German freethinkers mostly in rural, south central Texas in the mid-19th century.
· The Cecilia Commuity in Brazil, an anarchist community founded by Italian immigrants around the turn of the century in the southern region of Brazil.
· The Brotherhood of the Spirit/Renaissance Community, created by Michael Metelica in 1968 and lasting until 1988, was the largest commune in the northeast United States.
· Jesus People USA (JPUSA), started in 1972 and based in Chicago, Illiois' Uptown area, is perhaps the largest urban commune in the United States, and is still strongly flavored by its hippie / 60s roots.”
We can acknowledge that communes have been existed mostly in USA. Now Occupy Wall Street has taken the traditional initiative to go for a world communal type of life in the world.
Imagine in Vancouver, each district has its own commune, and then imagine intercommoned human infrastructure and associations. It would be paradise. The corporations would be vanished automatically.
Let’s work on it. Occupy Vancouver is a great opportunity to go for the model life every one is dreaming.
Let’s study on it, arranging revision committees in little serious stydy work groups, in regard of preparation right communes, then bring it to Occupy Vancouver Assembly General and make it happen, happen something real to save our lives, our planet, our future and bring back the smiles on our faces.
Zuccoti Park
Wall Street Occupation
New York City
