Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks

When friends told me, years ago, about "Buy Nothing" -- a Facebook group that implemented an impressive mutual aid ecology, I was intrigued... but did not follow up...because Facebook.

Now, though, they are undertraking a move to the Fediverse, using @bonfire as their online framework!

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/gifting-with-integrity-federated-digital-spaces-for-mutual-aid-networks/

Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks

When friends told me, years ago, about "Buy Nothing" -- a Facebook group that implemented an impressive mutual aid ecology, I was intrigued... but did not follow up...because Facebook.

Now, though, they are undertraking a move to the Fediverse, using @bonfire as their online framework!

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/gifting-with-integrity-federated-digital-spaces-for-mutual-aid-networks/

Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks

When friends told me, years ago, about "Buy Nothing" -- a Facebook group that implemented an impressive mutual aid ecology, I was intrigued... but did not follow up...because Facebook.

Now, though, they are undertraking a move to the Fediverse, using @bonfire as their online framework!

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/gifting-with-integrity-federated-digital-spaces-for-mutual-aid-networks/

Do like me, support Framasoft !

PeerTube is crucial in the fight to erode the control of user content by centralized, commercial, exploitive interests.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://soutenir.framasoft.org

Democracy as Practice, Socialism as Counter-Community

If democracy is a practice, then it cannot be sustained by electoral ritual alone. It must be enacted in everyday life, through communities that share power, resources, and meaning.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/democracy-as-practice-socialism-as-counter-community

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Why Redefine Socialism?

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Classical socialism—especially in its Marxist and state-centered variants—tends to treat sociality as either:

- a derivative of economic conditions, or
- something that will naturally emerge once class antagonisms are resolved.

But our project insists that sociality is not a byproduct—it is the substrate.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/why-redefine-socialism

#TheCommunitariumProject

Redefining Socialism

"[S]ocialism is not a set of policies. It’s a way of organizing life so that the systems we build, maintain, and inhabit serve the flourishing of people in their full, embedded, interdependent existence. That means not just changing ownership structures, but changing the terms of belonging and the terms of engagement."

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/redefining-socialism

How ‘The Dawn of Everything’ Speaks to the Current Moment

Graeber and Wengrow make the case that both [Hobbes' and Rousseau's] views are misguided, that there is no linear tale of human history. They argue that a closer look at the data reveals that human beings have been experimenting with models for how to live as far back as we can look.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://undark.org/2025/05/29/opinion-dawn-of-everything/

Lowering the Threshold: Socialism Begins with Shared Life, Not Just Shared Demands

What if socialism began not with political identity, but with shared life? This post explores how DSA’s strongest cultural practices could be extended outward—through low-threshold, participatory platforms we call communitaria—so more people can live socialism before they’re asked to name it.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject
#DSA

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/lowering-the-threshold-socialism-begins-with-shared-life-not-just-shared

The photo below shows the current state of #CommunitariumProject

This article gives a basic idea of what I would like us to build:
https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/communitaria-what-we-need-to-do-i-think

Elaborations can be found in these articles: https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/tag:TheCommunitariumProject

If you are interested please DM me or send an email to baslow@communitarium.org

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

From Seattle to Atlanta, new social housing programs seek to make homes permanently affordable for a range of incomes

Urban planner Jonathan Tarleton has highlighted another issue: the danger of social housing reverting over time to private ownership, as has been the case with some cooperatives in NYC. He stresses the need for “social maintenance” – the importance of telling and retelling the story of whom social housing is meant to serve.
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://theconversation.com/from-seattle-to-atlanta-new-social-housing-programs-seek-to-make-homes-permanently-affordable-for-a-range-of-incomes-255097

Zohran Mamdani Won’t Save New York—But He Can Help New York Save Itself

Zohran Mamdani won’t save NYC—but he might help it save itself. His campaign opened the door to an ongoing collaboration between elected leadership and ordinary people. If we organize ourselves as durable, visible communities, we can turn shared values into lasting power.

#TheMamdaniMovement
#MamdaniForMayorNYC
#UndesrstandMamdani
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#NYC

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/zohran-mamdani-wont-save-new-york-but-he-can-help-new-york-save-itself

Unofficial vendors often set up tables on the sidewalks bordering the block on Isham Street where, every Saturday morning, the GrowNYC-sponsored Farmers' Market takes place.
This morning there was a "Gaza Market" table, whose proceeds go to families in Gaza.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Unofficial vendors often set up tables on the sidewalks bordering the block on Isham Street where, every Saturday morning, the GrowNYC-sponsored Farmers' Market takes place.
This morning there was a "Gaza Market" table, whose proceeds go to families in Gaza.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

I've initiated a new series on my blog with the article:
Zohran Mamdani as DSA in the Flesh: Disindividuated Politics, Foundational Justice, and the Power of Sincerity

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/zohran-mamdani-as-dsa-in-the-flesh-disindividuated-politics-foundational

#MamdaniForMayorNYC
#ZohranMamdani
#UnderstandMamdani
#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#TheMamdaniMovement

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

🔥 Bonfire Install Party #1 – Get your fediverse instance running!

Bonfire (@bonfire) seems to align technologically with many of the values which I am trying to promote with the #CommunitariumProject* (and with the more general approach of #SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity ). Unfortunately, I have something scheduled for that time, so I'm hoping that a video record of the event will be made available.

https://mobilizon.libretic.fr/events/c0c0b536-5216-412b-a277-1dadead06997

* https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/tag:TheCommunitariumProject

🔥 Bonfire Install Party #1 – Get your fediverse instance running!

Bonfire (@bonfire) seems to align technologically with many of the values which I am trying to promote with the #CommunitariumProject* (and with the more general approach of #SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity ). Unfortunately, I have something scheduled for that time, so I'm hoping that a video record of the event will be made available.

https://mobilizon.libretic.fr/events/c0c0b536-5216-412b-a277-1dadead06997

* https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/tag:TheCommunitariumProject