[Forumlucca] Il crack finanziario di Detroit, capitale statu…

… è il capitalismo, miei cari !



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Thinking for Ourselves
Detroit Test Drive
By Shea Howell

Almost every media account of the Detroit bankruptcy process begins with the
word “historic. As we enter the final stages, we are also told that the
process has been surprisingly quick and smooth. The Detroit News called it
“fast paced” and reported on how pleased Kevyn Orr and Jones Day are with
their ability to defy the predictions that this would be “drawn-out battles
that could have stretched for years.”

The media rarely talks about what historic means. One way to answer that
question is to look to the past. Municipal bankruptcy used to be rare, with
less than 500 in the entire history of the country. There is little
precedent to guide judges as they approach complicated issues of rights,
responsibilities, and conflicting jurisdictions.

But if we look to the past, we will miss the very real future that is
unfolding not only for Detroit, but for the rest of the world.

Across the globe, in the halls of corporate power and financial
manipulation, the Detroit case is being considered an important example of
the kind of legal frameworks needed to force deep austerity plans on people
in the name of restructuring debt. Key to those legal frameworks is the
elimination of public, democratic decision making.

The single all powerful authority for our bankruptcy, Kevyn Orr, will not be
in the city during these last days of bankruptcy. He is moving on. He will
be in Modena, Italy speaking at a Global Restructuring Conference. Early
reports bill his speech as one that shares the Detroit success. Describing
Orr as the man “tapped to lead Detroit through its massive Chapter 9
bankruptcy,” conference organizers explain the importance of Detroit. They
say, “While Detroit is not a sovereign, its largely consensual
reorganization stands as evidence that politically charged government
workouts can be achieved if procedures exist to foster a negotiation.”

Those of us in Detroit know how hard we have fought against those
“procedures.” In fact the entire state voted against the “procedures”
designed to impose emergency managers, only to have Governor Snyder and his
legislature pervert the will of the people.

Now we are facing the consequences of a city given away to corporate
interests. And we are seeing a new industry being born by those who will
profit from this municipal rape.

Jones Day and company are likely to walk away from this 18 month experience
with $100 million in their pockets. Another way to think of this is Jones
Day earned in less than two years more than what it would cost the city to
maintain Belle Isle for 20.

Meanwhile, their New York offices are hosting conferences on how to handle
bankruptcy in Puerto Rico. Leveraging their Detroit experience, Jones Day is
aggressively pursuing the bankruptcy business.

And this business is evolving in ways that threaten the basic values of
civil society. The Global Restructuring Organization, hosting Mr. Orr, is
not some academic organization thinking about legal theories. It aims to
become a new global authority, much like the World Bank, to oversee the
international processes for the restructuring of sovereign debt.

Judge Cecilia Morris, the chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the
Southern District of New York and one of the group’s founders, said in an
interview with Reuters that we need a formal system to deal with sovereign
debt. "When a sovereign is in stress, the options are to do nothing and see
how it plays out, which sounds horrible, or do what Argentina did, to try to
restructure with no judicial umbrella," said Morris. The Global
Restructuring Organization (GRO) wants to provide that “umbrella.” The
values they intend this emerging global authority to reflect are embodied in
the comparison they invoked. Its organizers hope will become the "Davos of
restructuring," Morris said.

We who have resisted this process since the beginning have an enormous
responsibility to make clear that Detroit Restructuring has been
accomplished by cruel and unjust violations of human rights, from the
shutting off of basic necessities to the shutting off of democracy. No one
should think the closing of this bankruptcy is the end of the fight for a
more democratic, compassionate future.


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WHAT WE'RE READING




Can New Work Really Work?
Zak Rosen

<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/71bd7af2
5c> shareable.net



On a recent Monday morning at 9 a.m., when most of America was heading to
the office, a bookish, unassuming, middle-aged man named Blair Evans gave a
talk about the work he’s been doing in Detroit. Work that, if manifested in
the way he and his team are planning, has the ability to profoundly change
Detroit, and the world. He spoke to a crowd of around 300 people at the
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/6fe4053b
2f> Reimagining Work Conference, which brought together activists, artists,
entrepreneurs, writers, academics, baristas, carpenters and media-makers
from around the country, and a few from Europe, all gathered to talk about
the present and future of work. Specifically “New Work” as opposed to “Old
Work.”

New Work can be defined as the work we really want to do, rather than work
that makes us suffer. Whereas Old Work is the work people have to do, work
that's experienced as a mild disease, a kind of plodding suffering.

Evans, who’s Detroit raised and M.I.T educated, has the most coherent,
expansive, system-based analysis and plan for New Work I’ve come across. A
master permaculturalist and scientist, and director of the
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/bbadbeaf
7b> Incite Focus fablab in Detroit, Evans, an African-American with a small
team of predominantly people-of-color, is weaving together projects in
digital fabrication, permaculture, experiential learning, and appropriate
technology to help create sustainable communities.

Evans owns two large swaths of land in Detroit. On one of them, he and his
team are in the early stages of building an intentional community with and
for pregnant and parenting teens. The community will include net-zero
residential housing units with underground greenhouses and aquaponic
systems, intensive agriculture production, and a community fab-lab.

Evans straddled a fascinating line between pragmatism and utopianism,
reminding the audience that many of the skills, including 3D modeling and
digital fabrication, being taught at his community production lab are highly
sought after in the global marketplace. If one doesn’t want to devote their
life to hyper-local skill-sharing, they at least have the option to take
their skills elsewhere.
Despite how one applies New Work skills, the concept of New Work is
necessary because according to conference organizers at the
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/b0d5ba56
0c> Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership, the “J-O-B” system
reproduces entrenched racial and global disparities; it promotes conflict
rather than cooperation; it compels unequal relationships between employers
and the employed; it offers too much to some and little or none to others;
and it drives the insatiable destruction of precious natural resources.

While these are valid points there is also the reality of life in Detroit,
where job scarcity is the norm. The city’s unofficial employment rate hovers
around 50 percent and mass employment is a thing of the past. Standing in
its wake are entire neighborhoods of people without a job, over
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/ace35160
ef> 100,000 empty lots,
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/fa28bb16
f3> 80,000 vacant and dilapidated houses and structures. According to German
born Frithjof Bergmann, an 85-year old, grizzly-bearded, philosophy
professor emeritus who has spent much of the last 30 years (mostly in Flint,
MI and South Africa) theorizing and enacting
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/518317c6
40> New Work practices, Detroit today is the perfect space for New Work to
flourish.

At the conference's opening session, Bergmann argued that we are not in a
recession. “The definition of a recession is that it’s cyclical,” he said.
“Bullshit that we are in something cyclical. We are entering a new period of
history, a new age, something so different, we can't recognize it.” He
continues, “We are in a transformational period. It can go very wrong or
right.”

So, there might not be many jobs in Detroit, but there's lots to work to be
done. Houses to build and restore, gardens to plant, clothing to be made,
electricity to be generated, etc. Using 3D-printing, permaculture and
low-cost construction techniques, Bergmann argues, communities have the
ability to produce much of the food, clothing, housing, and electricity that
jobs formerly provided the money to purchase. New Work cuts out the
middle-man and enables people to produce what they and their community need,
thus giving them more time to focus on the work they care about. But New
Work also asks the question, how much do we really need? It’s not about
reviving the middle-class American dream, but rather creating a
community-based way of being.

Bergmann’s provocative, often bombastic-yet-elegant presentation prompted a
series of questions throughout the weekend. How does one finance a New Work
center? Where can credit unions come in? How can a B-corporation propel New
Work forward? What about slow money? Crowdfunding? Health insurance?
To get a thorough sense of Bergmann’s body of thought, check out
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/b098426b
91> episode 83 out the excellent Partially Examined Life podcast, or
<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?BoggsCentertoNurture/14c91af641/1b68a97cbc/c9362673
06/v=HPloo2CLH3Q&feature=youtu.be&list=UUN5ZOCaOLXyttn0USXwhDAA> this
conversation inviting people into the New Work fold.

A shift from Old Work to New Work, or “speculative jobs” to “functional
work” is only beginning to emerge. But what became clear over the course of
the Reimagining Work Conference, is that the current system isn’t
benefiting, and certainly not fulfilling most of the people present, whether
they were recently incarcerated citizens, laid-off engineers, or jobless
postgraduates. Luckily for them, in Detroit and around the world, there are
more and more examples of New Work manifesting everyday: urban farms, time
banks, co-ops, land trusts, decentralized electricity systems, wireless mesh
internet networks, fab labs, makers spaces. The conference provided a
context for bringing all these practices together, and thinking about how
they can shift from marginal anecdotes to a new way of being.


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