The Financial Crisis: A Radical Perspective

28 October 2008

Save Meadowlilly Woods!

9 September 2008

  • The LPPS has endorsed the London Coalition for Sustainable Cities, and we fully support the work they’ve been doing, with others, in promoting the campaign to save the Meadowlily Woods environmentally sensitive area. Londoners need to get behind these campaigns, which are not only important for moral reasons, but also stand a good chance of winning. Local environmentalists have been doing great work in the past few years, pressuring city council to take issues of environmental justice and sustainability seriously. It needs to continue, and we all need to do our part.
  • Please check out the web sites of the London Coalition for Sustainable Cities and the Save Meadowlily Woods campaign, and do what you can to help out.

Update on the LPPS

2 June 2008

  • Those who haven’t been to an LPPS meeting for awhile may be interested in an update on our activities. So here it is.
  • Since our formal founding meeting (October 2007), we have had several “regular general meetings” (or RGMs). These RGMs have never had fewer than 8 people in attendance, and never more than about 15. We have also had a few “special event” meetings (film showings and a public forum with John Clarke and Justin Podur as speakers), which have had between 20 and 50 people in attendance. Details about the above events are available on our “Events” page.
  • Over this time, we have continued to clarify the nature of our project. One expression of this is our adoption by consensus of a “What We Do” statement, to supplement our original “Mission” statement. Essentially, we see the LPPS as a vehicle for promoting the visibility and “presence” of radical (anti-racist, pro-feminist, anti-capitalist) politics here in London, Ontario, and for enhancing the effectiveness of radical activism. We accomplish these ends in two key ways: first, by organizing discussion of radical analysis, strategy and vision, supplemented by skill-sharing workshops; and second, by organizing LPPS committees through which members of the LPPS can work collaboratively on pursuing more focussed political projects in a sustained way. (So far, we have a “public space committee” underway, and a committee on co-operatives is probably going to be established very soon. There is also talk about a “Right to the City” committee possibly to be established this summer.)
  • In some ways it is a difficult time to be launching an initiative like this one. It is not happening in the context of a major upsurge of progressive activism, as happened in the early days of the Global Justice Movement (say, from 1999 to 2001), and then again in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq (early 2003). Instead, today in London (Ontario) there are widespread problems of morale on the activist left, with a certain amount of infighting and a lot of difficulty building and sustaining organizations with active memberships. But these difficulties only underline the importance of what we’re trying to do. London needs people willing to actively work on helping to strengthen the left, and to help build the capacities of our activist community, and the LPPS is committed to participating alongside others in that process.
  • Another aspect of our work has been getting in touch with the wider network of “PPS” groups, extending not only to different North American groups, but also to groups in Africa, Europe and Oceania (see our “Links” page to visit some of their web sites). An email network has been established between these groups, and a common newsletter may be developed. (These groups are all quite different, having sprung up spontaneously and independently, with somewhat different priorities and methods. But we share a common commitment the transformative ideal of a post-capitalist, participatory society, based on social and environmental justice, and economic and political democracy.)
  • Anyone wishing to find out more about the LPPS, is invited to contact us via email, at participatory.society@gmail.com, or to come to one of our meetings, as listed on the “Events” page. You can also ask a question by commenting on this post.

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