Panel 1: “Solidarity Economy in Latin America: Lessons and Possibilities from Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba". Questions and answers. July 7, 2011, Caracas. Listen to the audio file in Spanish. – Read the original Spanish presentation.Random
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Panel 1: “Solidarity Economy in Latin America: Lessons and Possibilities from Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba". Questions and answers. July 7, 2011, Caracas. Listen to the audio file in Spanish. – Read the original Spanish presentation.
“The Solidarity Economy and Self-Management: Principle of Communal Power” by Claudio Nascimento, (Brazil) Historian, activist, popular educator, author of several essays on self-management and the Solidarity Economy. Cabinet member of President Lula da Silva, member of the National Secretariat for Solidarity Economy of President Dilma Rousseff. Listen to the audio file in English or audio file in Portuguese and Spanish. - Read the Spanish translation.by Dada Maheshvarananda
Solidarity, cooperation, and community empowerment are positive values promoted in Venezuela in contrast to the individualism and selfishness promoted by the corporate-owned mass media. Cooperatives are quietly transforming people's values in Venezuela, and the rest of the world, though they have been mostly ignored by the mass media and by many political leaders, too.
Solidarity, cooperation, and community empowerment are positive values promoted in Venezuela in contrast to the individualism and selfishness promoted by the corporate-owned mass media. Cooperatives are quietly transforming people's values in Venezuela, and the rest of the world, though they have been mostly ignored by the mass media and by many political leaders, too.The International Cooperative Alliance defines a cooperative as "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.” Worker cooperatives develop trust, solidarity, and teamwork.
Because cooperatives promote socialist values, it is natural that the Bolivarian government once promoted cooperatives in Venezuela; what is surprising is that now it does not.
Panel 4, “Ethics for Personal and Social Transformation” Translation of questions and answers. Facilitator: Nieves Pino, economist, social worker. July 8, 2011. Listen to the audio file in English or audio file in Spanish. - Read the Spanish text.
[Published in Gurukula Network]
By Viirabrata, Krsna and Mahaviira
Viirabrata and son Mahaviira teaching kids organic gardening
A framework to be happy
The educational process is a holistic phenomenon, where external objectivity is transformed into internal subjectivity. It goes beyond the school walls, or the family environment, or any other human relations. It goes even beyond that, straight into our own beings; it involves the universe around us and the way our souls interact with it. It does not depend on a particular school approach either, it simply happens as life does.
The Neohumanist Education framework and its learning methods encompass this holistic vision – physical, mental and spiritual – and aim for the liberation of all from exploitation sentiments (such as geo-sentiment and socio-sentiment) in order to achieve a free human society, in harmony and love within our environment.
“The Awakening of Consciousness: Prout and Socialism, Face-to-face” by Leopoldo Cook, former telecommunications chief of PDVSA, columnist, author, member of Board of Director of PRIV. Listen to the English audio file or audio file in Spanish. - Read the original Spanish presentation.
A conversation with Noam Chomsky about: The Occupy Movement, economic democracy and cooperatives, limiting the accumulation of wealth, consciousness raising, and Latin America. Watch the conversation here.Dada Maheshvarananda:
The viral growth of the Occupy Movement, and the public support of it, is testament to the tremendous dissatisfaction with the inequities and abuses of corporate capitalism. The slogan "We are the 99%" has resonated with many people. What is your view of the potential strength of this type of mass protest and its possibility to effect social change?Noam Chomsky: Well the Occupy Movement already has had a number of significant successes. One of them, as you say, is to kind of change the national discourse. These concerns and fears and so on were, of course, prevalent for a long time for perfectly objective reasons, having to do with changes in the socio-economic system in the last 30 or 40 years. But they weren't crystallized very clearly until the Occupy Movement put them forward. And now they are kind of common coin. So the 99 percent and one percent, the radical inequality, the farcical character of purchased elections, the corporate shenanigans that led to the current crisis and have been crushing people for a long time, the overseas wars, and so on. That's one major contribution.
The other one is not discussed so much, but I think it' s pretty important. This is an extremely atomized society. People are alone. It's a very business-run society. The very explicit goal of the business world is to create a social order in which the basic social unit is you and your television set, in which you're watching ads and going out to purchase commodities. There are tremendous efforts made, that have been going on for a century and a half, to try to induce this kind of consciousness and social order.
Two radio interviews of Dada Maheshvarananda with Maeve Conlan of KGNU Independent Community Radio in Boulder, Colorado, Dec. 11 2012 and Dec. 13, 2012. Listen download mp3.
The questions included: