liberty, fraternity, equality

The Global Teach-In

Building a New Economy through Democratic Networks, Green Jobs, and an Alternative Financial System
A Four Hour Participatory Live Broadcast

Spring (to be announced), 2012 12:00PM EST, 18:00 CET

The conditions in each country, region and city clearly differ. We believe, however, that three themes provide a common foundation for global cooperation, national examination and local deliberation. I. Democracy Networks: The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the UK Uncut and the Spanish Indignants movement are each examples for thinking about how a global movement might emerge. Alliances among diverse political forces can strengthen the hand of various communities facing common problems. Democratic networks must defend the right to collective bargaining, housing and meaningful employment as well as the provision of public services answerable to democratically elected governments. II. Green Jobs: We are facing a triple crisis defined by economic, environmental and energy supply problems. The solution to these crises requires a Green New Deal that expands investments, research, jobs and infrastructure related to alternative energy and mass transportation. III. An Alternative Financial System: We need a new way to organize our banking capacities and financial system. The people have the immediate power to influence direction of financial investment, limiting the financial volatility that is the basis for a high frequency trading system expropriating the majoritys savings every nanosecond. Tax, budget and investment policies must change to promote income equality. We must move our money out of investments that dont create sustainable growth. Endorsers

Teach-ins in planned: Ann Arbor, Michigan; Belfast, United Kingdom; Las Vegas, Nevada; Madison, Wisconsin; New York, New York; Stockholm, Sweden (list in formation). (Yellow, indicated interest but must follow up).

The Global New Economy Teach-In Email: globalteachin@gmail.com, Skype: globalteachin, www.globalteachin.org, Twitter: Globalteachin @Globalteachin, http://www.livestream.com/globalteachin, Press inquiries: +46727836534

The Role of Democracy Networks, Green Jobs and an Alternative Financial System I. Democracy Networks: The concentration of power in large corporations and banks has placed serious constraints on democracy. Many large companies have outsourced work overseas and failed to organize work at home. The megabanks, backed by bond rating agencies and governments, have created austerity programs, and have received bailouts when many are jobless or homeless. Yet, we have democratic responsibility for the economy (taking the form of bailouts) without democratic influence on how these bailout funds are invested. The result: disinvestment and austerity for the majoritywhile a massive public investment helps the private corporate minority. We need to organize globally and locally to counteract the non-democratic power of these mega-institutions. A Global Teach-In, bringing together diverse constituencies in real time, is an excellent way to do this. The Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the UK Uncut and the Spanish Indignants movement show how alliances among diverse political forces can strengthen the hand of various communities facing common problems. We must defend the right to collective bargaining, housing and meaningful employment as well as the provision of public services answerable to democratically elected governments. Cooperative economics, family and worker-owned firms, and locally anchored businesses are key ways to achieve these goals. II. Green Jobs: We are facing a triple crisis defined by: economics (inequality, deindustrialization, mass unemployment, or the privatization and de-democratization of public goods), the environment (pollution, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and depletion of species) crisis and reliance on unsustainable energy supplies (diminished stocks of cheap oil, use of oil in hard to get or insecure areas, and substitution of land used to grow food to supply alternative fuels). The solution requires a Green New Deal that expands investments, manufacturing and infrastructure related to alternative energy and mass transportation. This will lower our reliance on non-sustainable and costly energy systems while promoting a wealth-creating system. The creation of wealth is a way to transcend the politics of scarcity and austerity. The budget deficits of some countries have led or will lead them to cut back military budgets. Such cutbacks represent an opportunity to advance the conversion or diversification of defense firms into green industries. The advance of green jobs depends on regulations which penalize carbon emissions and research and production networks promoting firms capacities. For a green job to be a good job, labor rights must be extended and jobs must be more locally anchored. Locally anchored jobs are more sustainable (reducing transit costs in production) and provide economic security. III. An Alternative Financial System: The tax breaks received by the super rich and the bailouts received by large banks have not prevented austerity and economic decline. They have strengthened their ability to continue to manipulate governments and lowered accountability. We need a new way to organize our banking capacities and financial system. The people have the immediate power to influence direction of financial investment, limiting the financial volatility that is the basis for a high frequency trading system expropriating the majoritys savings every nanosecond. Five key sources of capital can support locally-anchored and/or green growth alternatives: (a) Move Your Money: This U.S.-initiated movement takes funds out of large banks and moves the money to smaller banks and credit unions. Cooperative banks and low-interest charging banks are also important alternatives. (b) Selective Reinvestment: Unions, universities, hospitals, religious and other organizations can reinvest their large payroll and pension fund accounts that have supported megabanks, various stock portfolios and bonds. (c) New Budget Priorities: Security challenges include climate change and economic insecurity. So we must redirect military budgets towards green investments (mass transit investments help security by helping move populations from flood zones, earth quake regions and other areas under attack). (d) Green and Local Procurement: Cities and communities that federate or cooperate can create consumer or purchasing cooperatives, leveraging their buying power to advance a triple bottom line, i.e. not just profits, but local employment and sustainability. (e) More Equitable Tax Policies: When the rich and corporations dont pay their fare share of taxes the result is often reduced welfare state services and a failure to invest in needed public goods. 2

The Global Teach-In Broadcast

Teach-In

Part I Part II Part III Part IV

Times 12:00 Eastern Standard Time 13:00 Eastern Standard Time 14:00 Eastern Standard Time 15:00 Eastern Standard Time

Program The Triple Crisis and the Democratic Opening The Triple Crisis & Local Communities Alternative Institutions and Local Case Studies Open Town Meeting

Part I: The Triple Crisis and the Democratic Opening We will discuss the problems and potential solutions associated with the Triple Crisis with participants across the globe. We analyze the challenges to democracy associated with growing concentration of political, media and economic power. We will look at how the current wave of democracy movements presents an historic opportunity for overcoming the Triple Crisis. How do these movements address these multiple challenges? Part II: The Triple Crisis & Local Communities This part of the program examines how global challenges appear on the national and local level. We get the reaction of scholars, activists and political leaders. We will look at the role played by specific economic, media and political organizations and how these impact each specific crisis. Part III: Alternative Institutions and Local Case Studies We examine how regional coalitions and actions on the local level can promote more democratic and sustainable society. These examples show how green jobs, alternative banks, mass transit and democratic participation have emerged in local communities in different parts of the world. Part IV: Open Town Meeting In this part of the program we invite the public at large to ask questions and present examples regarding how alternatives to the triple crisis can be overcome and how democracy and equality can be promoted.
The logic of planetary responsibility is aimed, at least in principle, at confronting the globally generated problems pointblankat their own level. It stems from the assumption that lasting and truly effective solutions to planetwide problems can be found and made to work only through the renegotiation and reforming of the web of global interdependencies and interactions. Instead of aiming to control local damage and local benefits derived from the capricious and haphazard drifts of global economic forces, it would pursue results in a new kind of global setting, one in which economic initiatives enacted anywhere on the planet are no longer whimsical and guided by momentary gains alone, with no attention paid to the side effects and collateral casualties and no importance attached to the social dimensions of the cost-and-effect balances. In short, the logic is aimed, to quote Habermas, at the development of politics that can catch up with global markets.
Zygmunt Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers?, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008: 29.

The elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the state republics, and the republic of the Union, would form a graduation of authorities, standing each on the basis of law, holding everyone its delegated share of powers, and constituting truly a system of fundamental balances and checks for the government. Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day; when there shall not be a man in the state who will not be a member of some one of its councils, great or small, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.
Tomas Paine, quoted in Richard K. Matthews, The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson, Lawrence, Kansas, 1984: 82-83.