The Commons Reading Group will begin our second phase of readings in April 2008, this time focused on primitive accumulation. The cross-cutting historical, economic, social, and metaphorical concepts of commons/enclosures left us with many questions about how to think about resistance to privatization and commodification. A crucial aspect of this answer seems to lie in the ways in which societies are pulled into the market society, in order to understand what it may mean to pull out.

This is the first official campaign for Property Taskforce: www.abandonmentissues.ca

Last night we had our campaign launch and the room was overflowing with over 150 people, including local city councilor Gord Perks. Allan Lissner displayed 3 diptych photos on housing themes, St. Christopher House brought maps of socio-economic neighbourhood change, and we had a slide-show running of around 50 images of abandonded buildings. We also displayed our own map, with pins stuck in reflecting the location of abandonded buildings in town.

Call for Participation
Part of A Potential Toronto

Mondays, 8-10pm, Oct. 1 to Dec. 3, 2007
Location TBC

Free, but spots are limited. Copies of readings provided.

Facilitated by Shiri Pasternak

Property regimes have been making the news lately in spades. it seems like every time one nation transitions away from nationalized or collectivized resource management, another is waiting in the wings to take its place. The contrast between incredibly short life spans of national property regimes to long-held traditional collective and familial property regimes also refers us back to the social nature of property relations. Shifting ownership entitlements mean shifting social values.