Pedal Power – OWS Sustainability at Zuccotti Park. November 2, 2011. CC BY 3.0 Shankbone

Radical Alternatives Think Tank: Meet-Ups
#1 Thursday, October 22nd, 7:30–9:00 p.m.
#2 Thursday, November 12th, 7:30–9:00 p.m.
#3 Thursday, December 10th, 7:30–9:00 p.m

FACEBOOK INVITE: Radical Alternatives Think Tank @Sunview Luncheonette

Sunview Luncheonette
221 Nassau Ave, Greenpoint Brooklyn | G Train to Nassau Ave – Google Map

This fall and winter, Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Working Group will be convening at Sunview Luncheonette to discuss the cultural-political landscape in New York City. We invite artists, activists, cultural workers, community members, and anyone who is interested in joining our “think tank” and brainstorm on how we can work together to find solutions to our current situation.

read more on the Alternative Economies Working group page…

Alternatives workshop at Free University NYC, Cooper Union, May 1, 2013. 7 days before the school was occupied.

Time: Wednesday February 11, 9:00 am—1:00 pm
Event: Participatory Workshop & Discussion with invited artists and activists (TBA)

Location: College Art Association Annual Conference 2015
New York Hilton 1335 6th Ave, 2nd Floor,  Media Lounge

The economic and structural realities of art schools as they exist today can often be a source of anxiety and frustration for art students, faculty, and staff alike, so what might an alternative school of art look like? In this workshop the participants will familiarize themselves with over 30 alternative economic models that are in practice throughout the world today.

More info here…

More info here:
http://artsandlabor.org/alternative-economies/alternative-to-what/imagining-future-models-alternative-to-what-session-3

Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn

Join Arts and Labor Alternative Economies for a Screening of Paper Tiger Television‘s Rerooting the Motor City: Notes on a City in Transformation followed by round table discussion with
Matt Birkhold
Executive Director at The Brecht Forum, Co-founder at Growing Roots, National Organizing Committee at James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership
Amaka Okechukwu
Co-founder of Growing Roots, and Doctoral Candidate of Sociology at New York University
Reg Flowers
Actor, Producer, Director, Playwright, Co-learning Facilitator, Grassroots Organizer

Rerooting the Motor City: Notes on a City in Transformation
From food deserts, to the plans to “rightsize” the city, how are Detroiters responding to the localized failures of post-industrial global capitalism? How are they re-mediating the frontier mythologies perpetuated by the mainstream media that complement “creative class” policy promotion? With a critical lens on race and class dynamics, this documentary weaves together segments on Detroit’s labor history, the budding urban agriculture movement, a critical look at philanthro-capitalism and its relationship to redevelopment as well as media (mis)representations of a city in transformation.

The work that is currently being done at Embros embodies some of the most fundamental aspects of fostering a creative and responsive cultural space in which alternatives to the current system can be explored [2]. In this time of urgency and economic crisis around the world, Embros is forging new directions that should be enthusiastically supported and celebrated by the local and national government rather than aggressively repressed and threatened.

Culture is a basic sign of being alive, a space of reflection and growth, and most importantly it is the place where the processes that define democracy such as freedom of speech, expression, and criticality, is apparent in more ways than a set of law books can ever describe.  Governments from Russia to China, United States and Europe [3] seek to crush within its citizens the freedom of cultural expression. It has become apparent that the democratic, life-expressing aspects of art are being systematically repressed and commodified into pure spectacle and entertainment by these governments, institutional bureaucrats, and their capitalist cohorts. We will not stand-by as they reduce culture to an admission fee, VIP bonus, or something you can buy at the gift shop. We wish to dance, to perform, to visualize, to speak, all without being restricted by the amount of money we have or the so-called credentials and permits that these institutions have invented. Because for us, this is true freedom, this is true a democracy that no currency can equate.

Embros provides much needed free and open community space and brings people from all walks of life together to learn, engage, and create. Therefore, we ask artists and communities around the world to look closely and continue to follow these events as you would a canary in a coal mine, so that we may provide support for artists and cultural spaces when similar events that arise. Furthermore, these instances should provide a lens to reflect on the situation in our cities and to better understand the mechanisms of cultural control, repression, cooptation, and exploitation so that we can continue, through this solidarity network, to expose and ultimately overcome this political, economic, and cultural crises that has become the marker of our times.

Arts and Labor Alternative Economies Members

Maria Juliana Byck, Emily Baierl, Antonio Serna and Laurel Ptak
– – – –

[1] Communique from Embros on the Arrest of 2 performers. October 30, 2013

[2] On October 19, 2013, as part of ‘What Do We Do Now?’ the first annual Alternatives Fair in New York City, we invited members of Embros Theater to participate in an international panel on autonomous spaces. Through this panel we hoped to learn how autonomously run cultural spaces function to provide a more horizontal way to operate while remaining inclusive to all members in the community. From this exchange we learned how Embros’ organizing by way of a weekly general assembly has become a dynamic and invaluable community-run space in which creativity and innovation is encouraged to thrive.

‘What Do We Do Now? Alternative Fair’ was organized by Alternative Economies, a subgroup of OWS Arts and Labor. Alternative Economies working group explores alternative methods of sustaining the livelihood of artists, art-workers, and other communities interested in alternatives to the current system. We view the concept of labor through the lenses of time, choice, and value, and we research the ways that ideas like the commons, solidarity economies, precarious worker centers, and participatory budgeting can nurture more sustainable art worlds. Believing that vibrant creative communities come from the bottom up, we encourage relationships based on mutual aid rather than competition, and we advocate for cultural institutions rooted in a framework of social, economic, and environmental justice.

[3] Links to similar crack down on autonomous cultural spaces and artists:

ZAM is Culture, Eviction of ZAM by Milan Police, May 2013

Footage of Police Eviction of ZAM w/ minute by minute account, May 2013

Extreme show of force by of Swiss police at Basel, May 2013

“Art Makes Money” Communique from ‘Basel Will Be Occupied’ after the Art Basel raid

NY Police Arrest of artist in Brooklyn for Decorating the Street  “I (heart)nyc” bags, May 2012

Another Art World Is Possible
Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Workshop
NURTUREart 56 Bogart St, Brooklyn NY 11206
May 11, 2013 3-6pm

The economic and social realities of the art world as it exists can often be a source of frustration for artists, but what might an alternative model look like? In this workshop we’ll discuss the things we like and things we don’t like about the current art world. Then we’ll learn about various alternative models and discuss amongst ourselves how they can be applied to or replace the current system.

Facebook rsvp: Another Art World is Possible

What Do We Do Now?
Alternative Economies Resource Guide
Edition 1, Fall 2012

booklet launch at:
Building The Commons
Making Worlds Commons Forum 2
March 29th & 30th
Fri 6-10pm / Sat 10am-8pm

The Commons Brooklyn
388 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

*Children Welcome / Wheelchair Accessible / Free & Open to the Public*

Join us this Friday & Saturday for the first edition release of What Do We Do Now? Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies Resource Guide. Input for subsequent editions is welcome; we plan to update periodically!

Over the course of several months in 2012, members of Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies group decided to research and compile a list of alternative resources for living in New York. This resource guide contains examples of barter for health care programs, times banks, workers coops, community social services, alternative transportation advocates, and more. We are now ready to distribute the resource guide throughout the city at various events and with friends whose work forms part of building an alternative economy in New York City.

**A brief introduction to the guide will be made during Friday’s potluck Dinner 7-8pm & Saturday’s potluck Lunch Noon-1pm.**

After the discussion, we went to meet with members of Kotti & Co, a group of local activists from Kreuzberg in the Kottbusser Tor neighborhood organizing against increasing rents and gentrification. The area is home to a mixed group of artists and other residents with Turkish, Tunisian, Circassian, German and Afghan roots. People from all backgrounds and professions have come together to fight rapid gentrification, displacement, city housing laws and financial policies. We sat down with members of Haben und Brauchen and one of the Kotti organizers and had a lively conversation about solidarity and how the cultural workers in Berlin can offer support. Kotti & Co. had set up a 24-hour protest camp where tea was served, musicians played and people passing by could learn how to become active. At midnight some of us went to the camp and stood by a discussion between locals and politicians. This discussion, coupled with Haben und Brauchen’s advocacy for arts funding through formal written address to political representatives, showed us how certain artists in Berlin were engaging in strategies much different from our approach in Arts & Labor. There was an attempt to engage with politicians directly to achieve specific goals and demands, a strategy that we and most OWS arts groups have not embraced. This also speaks to the different economic climates that we are working within, specifically a system that offers state support to artists versus one driven predominantly by private funding and the market.

596 Acres workshop at The South Williamsburg Garden

This year the NYC Community Garden Coalition invited the working groups of Occupy Wall Street to help organize their first city-wde Community Garden Unconference. A member of Arts & Labor Alternative Economies / Making Worlds Commons Coalition  stepped up to organize a schedule of events for the Occupy the Land! Unconference, June 1-3.

Beginning at noon on Saturday, the schedule worked it’s way through two community gardens in South Williamsburg. Berry Street Garden, the first stop, was started by the local community over 35 years ago while The Southside Community Garden, the second garden on the schedule, was only a few years old. The first discussion concerned community gardens as a commons and was co-organized by Making World Commons Coalition and Occupy Williamsburg members. While the second garden was host to a workshop by 596 Acres, a group dedicated to helping people acquire and develop green community spaces.

The schedule then moved over the East River and into the East Village, known to have the highest concentration of community gardens. A childrens’ art making workshop at the Children’s Garden was held in tandem with a swarming for activist workshop at Green Oasis Garden by a member of The Nsumi Collective. The swarming workshop was closely followed by a lip balm making workshop with honey treats also at Green Oasis Garden. The last workshop of the day was held at El Jardin De Paraiso and was about squatting vacant lots with a brief history of green space squatting in the village by members of C (See) Squats’ Museum of Reclaimed Urban Land.

As the sunset, the community was invited to join a group of spatial & social practice concerned artist for a night of food, video, live music and conviviality at La Petit Versailles Garden, organize by vizkult.

#OccupyWallStreet has cracked open a little hole in history, creating a moment where some of the very core institutions of our economy are called into question. Along with indignation and outrage, there is a certain excitement in the air. Things that have been terrifyingly stuck seem to be moving. Something seems possible today that wasn’t just a month ago. In this space, our conversations and our imaginations are buzzing. What are we doing? What should we do? What’s coming next? -Ethan Miller, Occupy! Connect! Create! Imagining Life Beyond ‘The Economy’

The second Arts and Labor Alternative Economies Teach-In looks to the model of the Solidarity Economy as a strategy for organizing new art economies. Rather than waiting for revolution, the solidarity framework allows us to begin where we are, to identify the struggles within our current economic structures, and to imagine alternatives. Built around values such as cooperation, individual and collective well being, social justice, ecological health, democracy, and diversity, the chief principle behind the Solidarity Economy is that rather than creating a new blueprint for society, our task is to identify the alternatives that already exist through the activities of seeing, naming, connecting, strengthening, and creating. How can we apply these principles of the solidarity economy to organize different structures for work, life, art, and labor? Come be part of the conversation.

Schedule: 3:15 PM
Tour of 4th Arts Block led by Tamara Greenfield, Executive Director.  Maximum Capacity: 20.  Please RSVP at owsartsandlabor@gmail.com.
4-5 PM: Presentation by Cheyenna Weber and Caroline Woolard of SolidarityNYC
5-6 PM: Discussion

Fourth Arts Block (FAB) (http://fabnyc.org/) is a non-profit organization founded in 2001 by cultural and community groups to establish and advance the East 4th Street Cultural District, between 2nd Avenue and Bowery.  FAB is leading the development of the East 4th St Cultural District, the only official cultural district in Manhattan. Home to more than a dozen arts groups, 10 cultural facilities and 17 performances and rehearsal venues, the East 4th Street Cultural District attracts an annual audience of 200,000, serves 1,200 artists and provides more square feet of active cultural use than any other block in New York.

SolidarityNYC (http://solidaritynyc.org/) connects, supports, and promotes New York City’s solidarity economy. The solidarity economy meets human needs through economic activities–like the production and exchange of goods and services–that reinforce values of justice, ecological sustainability, cooperation, and democracy. From credit unions to worker cooperatives, Community Supported Agriculture to time banks, community land trusts to participatory budgeting, it’s an economy actually worth occupying. Our vision is a vibrant and growing movement that provides greater economic security, improved physical and emotional health, and increased democracy for our communities and ecosystems.