#esteva

​Travis James x Esteva has released a new single called “Miss Those Days”. “Miss Those Days” is the type of song that will instantly make you think about someone you used to love or a time/place that you want to go back to. 

Stream/Download “Miss Those Days” here or listen below!

Cinq bons vins à moins de 15$

Puisque le printemps a pris ses quartiers, autant y aller avec cinq bons petits vins bien agréables pour avoir du bon temps et surtout qui devraient contenter tout le monde à petits prix. Les Fumées blanches, Sauvignon blanc, 2018, Côtes de Gascogne, France

Faut-il encore présenter ce blanc gascon du géant François Lurton ? C’est simple, franc et droit. Pas de chichis, juste un vin très…

Compañer@s,

After a short summer hiatus we will resume the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo and convene on Saturday, September 10, 2016, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose). Our goal will be to gather anew and to engage our regularly scheduled reflection and action space with the hope of exploring some of the questions and struggles briefly mentioned below and raised by the current conjuncture we find ourselves.

There is much to consider since our last gathering of UT Califas' Democracy Ateneo (April 9th). Of special interest this summer was our participation in the taller: "La Insurreción del los Saberes Sometidos, el agotamiento de los conocimientos constituidos y sus métodos" and the foro interactivo: "Saberes Insurrectos" in Mexico City in collaboration with Ibero's Centro de Exploración y Pensamiento Crítico. The central questions that animated these two interconnected spaces revolved around how to engage already existing knowledges, especially insurgent and marginalized knowledges, and how to produce new knowledges in relation to the violences of dominant institutions and the excesses associated with the decomposition of capital in the current conjuncture. Some practical questions that also emerged revolved around the challenges we all face as we engage spaces ripe with potent knowledges of opposition and when we are confronted by new social and political practices conducive to or in keeping with the many wisdoms emerging out of local struggles.  What are the obstacles we face as we think of the capacity of insurrectionary knowledges to intervene in the regimes of the production of truth? Can these knowledges contribute or provoke in such a way to produce in Illich’s terms, “a general theory about freedom with publicly chosen limits" such as the agreements of assembly and democracy? (see, Illich, "Disabling Professions")

Recently, Raúl Zibechi reminded us of the political potency of the lessons learned from the "zones of non-being," the zone where the disciplinary practices of consumer capitalism and all of the mechanisms of control around debt, consumption, and media do not obtain. "In these areas," explains Zibechi, "social relationships are very different, heterogeneous, regarding the hegemonic." Zibechi notes three major differences that are worth quoting at length. "The first difference is the hegemony of use value versus the dominance of exchange value in the zone of being." Zibechi continues noting, "the second is the power found in community relations and reproduction of life versus individualism and production, which characterize the area of being." "The third difference," concludes Zibechi, "relates to the existence of multiple forms of labor: wages, reciprocity, slavery, servitude and familial commercial ventures." In this world "organized below" affection and trust dominate; "social obligations narrow the possibilities of control." (see, R. Zibechi, "Narco y feminicidios: el control en espacios abiertos.")

But how to learn from these spaces and, more to the point, the communities committed to social relations determined by community defined obligations (e.g. cargos and tequio) and not market logics, individualism, or consumer values, much less contrived notions of freedom and equality? How do we engage struggles that are more about a renewed effort towards vernacularization rather than integration or assimilation or accommodation? Moreover, this tangle of questions and desires must account for the multiple violences that accompany the social and material enclosures that define this moment of decomposition. The occurrence and intensity of violence is reaching extreme levels and has become a quotidian affair —not only for folks in zones of non-being, which has long been customary, but increasingly for those once contented masses in the zones of being, spaces that had promised to be free of conflict.

In this regard, the spectacles that are rife in the zones of being are instructive. Take for example Donald Trump's recent visit to Mexico City at the invitation of who many now consider to be a "political zombie" for his historic blunder, Enrique Peña Nieto. For many the state visit was unequivocally a moment where Peña Nieto united a fractured Mexican polity in their resounding condemnation of his both inviting and hosting of Trump, a racist opportunist who parleyed the visit into political capital for his campaign —a campaign that brazenly promotes attacks against the ethnic Mexican community of Greater Mexico in the form of deportations and increased border militarization all symbolized by the border wall. But, in this moment what the media overlooked or deliberately ignored, especially the U.S media that refuses to cover news from Mexico, was the attack by special police forces on Javier Sicilia and other members of the Frente Amplio Morelense (FAM) in response to their longstanding, peaceful effort to remove Graco Ramirez, the current governor of Morelos associated with unprecedented levels of corruption and narco violence. The assault sent Sicilia to the hospital, the reward for insisting on radical change. Folks will recall that in 2012 Sicilia toured the U.S. as part of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity. Sicilia was then at the front of a caravan that crossed the border from Mexico in a monumental effort to say, or publicly post, the names of the many sons and daughters, husbands and wives, aunties and uncles, folks of all walks of life with families of their own who disappeared or were lost to the "narco violence" generated by the decades long U.S. War on Drugs on both sides of the border. In the political mobilization in Morelos, as is true of the political mobilization sparked by the teachers and the CNTE in Oaxaca and Chiapas, the zones of being and zones of non-being are converging.

According to Gustavo Esteva we must consider this moment a potentially revolutionary one, but what kind of revolution unfolds before us. Drawing our attention to Teodor Shanin's explication of a "revolutionary situation," Esteva asks: is the new society already here? are we seeing it? are we already in a "revolutionary situation?" is the commons the new society? how do we view the new social movements? is capitalism dead? are we in a phase of "terror," is there an alternative to "terror?" According to Shanin, "a revolutionary situation represents the combination and inter-dependence of (i) a major crisis of societal functioning, often brought about by war or severe economic depression; (ii) rapid crystallisation of social classes and other conflict-groups; (iii) the rise of organisations and ideologies offering an alternative outlook and leadership; (iv) a crisis of the governing elite, of the dominant class(es) and of the state apparatus, and (v) a linked 'moral crisis,' placing in doubt the socially accepted structures of authority of ideological hegemony and of common sense. All of this appears within (vi) an international context which facilitates or at least permits the revolutionary processes to take place. An actual revolutionary situation is necessarily related to the historical and societal context. A few of the general characteristics will appear more strongly, others will be more relevant for one type of society, still others unique to a set of circumstances. (Shanin, Russia, 1905-07: Revolution as a Moment of Truth, v. 2 pp. 7-8)

What then is a revolutionary act in the current conjuncture? Ivan Illich wrote: "I call an act 'revolutionary' only when its appearance within a culture established irrevocably a significantly new possibility: a trespass of cultural boundaries which beats a new path. A revolutionary act is the unexpected proof of a new social fact, which might have been foretold, expected or even called for but never before irrevocably shown as possible.... All revolutionary acts are attempts to do away with a limit of ordinary reality, with the intent to remain within its context... Revolutionary intent decreases the certainty that a certain social fact or limit could not be eliminated." (see, Illich, "Dissidence, Deviance and Delinquency in Style," The Dawn of Epimethean Man and Other Essays, CIDOC, Cuernavaca, Cuaderno No. 54).

In short, Esteva argues that "the system remains capitalist, but it is essentially dead." Capitalist mode of production continues with unprecedented levels of violence associated with accumulation, or what Zibechi and Esteva have been calling extractivism (mining, urban, and financial) without producing the required social relations —attempting to operate without labor, relying on a disposable worker. The state no longer functions to facilitate the reproduction of a labor relation. In fact, much of the state function once in service of capital to manage labor, now increasingly serves capital through supra-national institutions that have no obligation to address the demands of workers. It is in this context that Esteva invites us to examine the mobilizations underway and the obstacles we face as we consider how we circulate struggle. What challenges and opportunities are present in these spaces of convergence.

One local example of note might provide some insights and lessons. Recently, several collectives committed to ending police violence against Black and Brown communities and holding police departments accountable for the violence they have directed at communities under siege organized a bar-b-cue directly across the street of the Hayward Police Department. Determined to raise awareness about the police killing of James Nate Greer, families gathered to fight the injustice in the taking of Nate's life as well as the taking of so many other lives across the Bay. But how could a bar-b-cue be so politically potent? These spaces have sustained a serious political mobilization. They have emerged along side more traditional, expected direct actions such as militant protests on the streets, occupation of state and local buildings, physical reprisals, even a pro-football quarterback's recent refusal to stand for the national anthem. The space of the bar-b-cue included food, games and face painting for children and a bubble machine producing ephemeral, iridescent orbs that floated through the park and a balloon ritual where families wrote the names of lost loved ones on balloons and then released them. There was an alter with photos and flowers for Nate and other people from across the Bay whose lives were taken by police. Large timelines/maps hung in the park graphing state violence and policing strategies across Hayward and San Francisco. These maps emerged from a collective, community based research project organized around community safety. It is in the context of so many lives taken that many, such as Myrna Santiago, remind us that the execution of Black and Brown men and women by police is fundamentally a violation of human rights. (see, M. Santiago, "It is Human Rights.") All of these efforts and arguments draw attention to the frequency of shootings and the sustained outrage that there is no redress to date.

For many years, silent minorities have been challenging professional dominance over themselves and the socio-technical conditions in which they live. The current Age may close when these silent minorities can clarify the philosophical and legal character of what in common they do not want. They are today becoming a very active political force. As Ivan Illich observed fifty years ago, "the advantages of self-chosen joyful austerity evidenced by these people will acquire political form and weight only when combined with a general theory that places freedom within publicly chosen limits above claims for ever more costly packages of 'rights.'" (See, Illich, "Disabling Professions"). In the present, the bar-b-cue embodies a prefigurative moment —it's a moment of the embodiment of community safety, a moment where the community demonstrates it's ability to circulate knowledge about state crimes and the violence of the capitalist mode of production while at the same moment enacting relations more common to the zones of non-being, relations of care and reciprocity. It is in these spaces of vernacularization, a re-learning and re-claiming of the practices of community regeneration animated by obligation that demonstrate a way out of the multiple, intersecting violences of state and capital.

South Bay and North Bay Crew

NB: If you are not already signed-up and would like to stay connected with the emerging Universidad de la Tierra Califas community please feel free to subscribe to the Universidad de la Tierra Califas listserve at the following url <https://lists.resist.ca/cgibi n/mailman/listinfo/unitierraca lifas>. Also, if you would like to review previous Democracy Ateneo and Social Factory Ateneo announcements and summaries as well as additional information on the ateneo in general please see <http://ccra.mitotedigital.org /ateneo>. Find us on tumblr at <http://uni-tierra-califas.tum blr.com>. Please note we have altered the schedule of the Democracy Ateneo so that it falls on the second Saturday of the month from 2.00 to 5.00 p.m.