hi James,

On Tue, 08 Nov 2011, James Wallbank wrote:

> Hi Vicky,
>
> It's interesting to see how roles that are higher and higher up the
> value chain are seen as suitable for free working. The priorities of
> mainstream society seem to valorise:
>
> * Public sector managers - particularly those concerned with quality
> assurance and risk management.
> * Financial speculators.
> * Accountants.
> * Chief Executives of major multi-national companies.

[...]

> In our city high tech skills have been labeled as a NUMBER ONE
> PRIORITY. This is because there's a high level of unemployment,

[...]

> And in response to this priority our City Council have cut their
> Adult Learning team from 15 people to... two. And funded our FabLab
> by £2000 - and that's a priority.
>
> So I have been thinking hard about developing a new centre motto -
> "Will Innovate for Food".

familiar roundup. same situation here in Amsterdam, after so much buzz
and networking and bricoing around, a remarkable local and
international participation, still our diversely connected "dyne.org"
operations have received very limited support by the usual suspects
(with many thanks to Rob for what he could involve us in so far)

so all I do to keep it up is part-timing in an Institution doomed by
financial cuts and hilariously enough "my department" (a R&D half-man
show pulling out of the magic hat stuff like http://syncstarter.org
and much more) is not even represented in the "E-Culture" picture,
which is crowded by all these "cultural industries" people praising
the bunch you list to give them some attention and resources.

Squatting is banned and slowly but heavily repressed. Spaces are
empty. good people are depressed, they leave or simply die in a
spiral. the picture gets so grim and actually we might get more
depressed. I think what we should do is precisely this:

STOP hoping for the upper cast of public sector managers, financial
speculators, accountants and chief executives to let us survive on
this ridicolous conditions and contradictions.

STOP giving up our critical potential to the attempt of obtaining
anything from them.

STOP playing nice.

STOP acting like well tamed horses and giv'em a hard ride.

I start thinking that we should use all our capacity to criticize,
debunk injustice and emerge all kinds of contradictions we see. We
should stop compromising for nearly no gain and open up a clear front
of conflict aimed at the reappropriation of popular support, even if
it might get pretty populistic this might still get us into the
political game where things get ultimately decided.

Yes you hear me, I'm talking about *conflict*.

I'm not sure. but what do you think?

I might be wrong, but really I have enough of this mediation that is
getting nowhere. We always obtained more on the barricades and that's
exactly what these people fear. They can beat us down but they cannot
stop us from talking, publishing, telling and singing the story of
babylon.

what else?

what do you think?

or are you applying for the next lottery funded shmoosing round?

ciao

--
jaromil, dyne.org developer, http://jaromil.dyne.org
GPG: B2D9 9376 BFB2 60B7 601F 5B62 F6D3 FBD9 C2B6 8E39