Today in Labor History March 23, 1871: Far left workers proclaimed communes in Lyon and Marseilles. The Paris Commune began March 18. Workers, including Cluseret and Mikhail Bakunin, had tried to create a commune in Lyon in 1870, as well. Prior to this, Cluseret fought the bourgeois moderates during the 1848 Paris uprising. And in 1860, he joined Garabaldi in his fight for Italian independence. In 1860, when William Sewell made a plea for European generals, he joined Union army with letters of support from Garibaldi, serving as a colonel, commanding troops in Shenandoah Valley. He eventually rose to the rank of general, but eventually quit when he was accused of insubordination for complaining about the abuse of civilians by Union troops. After that, he joined the Irish Republican cause, managing to escape a death sentence by the British. During the Paris Commune, Cluseret served as Minister of War. However, when he refused to arrest Monsignior Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, he was arrested for collusion with the enemy.

Cluseret once said, “the U.S. presents that strange anomaly of enslaved labor in a free nation. Politically free, the worker is socially the capitalists’ serf.”

Marx called him an opportunist and an overambitious babbler.

The story of Ireland's first socialist commune in 1830s' Clare

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/0318/1502600-ralahine-clare-socialist-commune-1830s-ireland-john-scott-vandeleur-edward-thomas-craig/

Comment le Venezuela déplace la montagne – Une révolution en résistance

Chávez l’avait promu : « La Commune ou rien ! »

Le film de Thierry Deronne et Victor Hugo Rivera plonge au cœur de cet univers insolite – pour ne pas dire avant-gardiste – des autogouvernements populaires… soutenus par l’État bolivarien.

À lire : “Au cœur des Communes populaires” sur mémoire des luttes
https://www.medelu.org/Au-coeur-des-Communes-populaires

Die Zeit der Pariser #Commune 1871 stellt den Beweis für ein Stück verwirklichter Utopie dar. Zum Jahrestag heute: #LouiseMichel lesen! Die Kommunardin prägte den sozialistischen Feminismus wie die Geschichte Frankreichs. Von der Mitgründerin einer Mädchenschule, die den Bonapartismus ablehnte, wurde sie zur revolutionären Aktivistin, Sie lernte Gefängnis, Deportation + Exil kennen, sie trotzte einem Attentat und der Zwangseinweisung in die Psychiatrie. Von Michel lernen: https://dietzberlin.de/produkt/louise-michel-oder-die-liebe-zur-revolution

Today in Labor History March 18, 1871: The Paris Commune began on this date. It started with resistance to occupying German troops and the power of the bourgeoisie. They governed from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners. The revolutionaries took control of Paris and held on to it for two months, until it was brutally suppressed. During Semaine Sanglante, the nationalist forces slaughtered 15,000-20,000 Communards. Hundreds more were tried and executed or deported. Many of the more radical communards were followers of Aguste Blanqui. Élisée Reclus was another leader in the commune. Many women participated, like Louise Michel and Joséphine Marchais, including in the armed insurrection. Nathalie Lemel, a socialist bookbinder, and Élisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian exile, created the Women's Union for the Defence of Paris and Care of the Wounded, demanding gender and wage equality.

Read my complete biograph of Louise Michel here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/louise-michel/

Today in Labor History March 1, 1871: The victorious Prussian Army paraded through Paris after the Siege of Paris. Three weeks later, on March 18, radical soldiers from the French National Guard seized control of the city and established the Paris Commune. The workers controlled the city for two months. They abolished child labor and gave workers the right to seize businesses abandoned by the owners. They also dismantled the police and established their own self-policing. The French army quashed the commune beginning on May 21 with the Bloody Week. During that time, they slaughtered up to 20,000 people and arrested over 43,000.

#Baromètre #velo #2025
Du 28 février au 2 juin, donnez votre #avis sur votre #commune !
LA PLUS GRANDE #ENQUÊTE #CITOYENNE SUR LE #VÉLO DU MONDE
par la
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New essay "WTF is Social Ecology" is now on substack.

https://usufructcollective.substack.com/p/wtf-is-social-ecology

"Social Ecology claims our major ecological problems are rooted in social problems– specifically problems of social hierarchy as well as capitalism in particular. This social definition of hierarchy refers to institutionalized domination where rulers command and the ruled obey. Contrary to anti-human myths, the ecological crisis is not caused by an excess of human freedom; it is instead caused by the destruction of social freedom that happens through domination and exploitation towards goals of profit and power-over others."

Today in Labor History February 20, 1931: An anarchist uprising in Encarnación, Paraguay briefly transformed the city into the revolutionary Encarnación Commune. Students and workers created popular assemblies to run the city. They tried to create communes in other towns, too, but the authorities thwarted their attempts. When the authorities began to retake Encarnacion, many of the insurrectionists stole steamboats and fled to Brazil. Along the way, they attacked yerba mate companies and burned records related to indentured servants. Gabriel Casaccia alluded to the uprising in his novel “Los Herederos.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #uprising #brazil #YerbaMate #Revolutionary #commune #paraguay #slavery #novel #books #author #fiction #writer @bookstadon

In building a community space, especially one where we are bringing together people from vastly different backgrounds, inclusivity at all costs is not -- can not -- be the goal.

And while that sounds counterintuitive, consider that each member that truly wants to be here, brings value and gains value from being here, deserves safety and space to authentically exist, grow, and be held. If that is our priority, then people who demonstrate predatory, disrespectful, or discordant behavior, or who simply do not value add or benefit in the same way from the community, have no place here.

That does not mean they have no place anywhere - but the beauty of building distributed networks is that people can be asked to leave and find themselves a community that they can serve better (and that can better serve them).

And yet, our [current society's] hyperfocus on inclusivity and our already disconnectedness and our fears of rejection, ostracization, and abandonment make being asked to leave embarrassing and painful.

But accountability is sacred, and we hold dear the right and responsibility of protecting ourselves and our residents from individuals who indicate a lack of regard for us, the hosts of this space, or our guests who are doing the most, quite honestly, to help bring this project forward.

When asking people to leave, or to be accountable to their behavior, leads to threats of violence (this has happened), slander (this has also happened), or the shifting of the situation to support a victimization narrative on the part of the person being asked to leave (this is most common) there is kind of a devastating loss of opportunity. It doesn't feel good to be told that your behavior is harmful, but it's an opportunity to change -- if this community is truly something you'd like to be a part of. It's also an opportunity for self-evaluation and growth regardless of whether or not the community serves you in the way you'd like it to. But when the impetus is to lash out and seek vindication instead, all of this is lost, and nothing fruitful comes of the conflict.

And conflict is necessary, and healthy. To truly shift the way we live, we must embrace discomfort and radical growth. It is not easy. I won't claim that it is. But it's the only way through to new ways of orienting to community, ourselves, and social life in general.

The community decides. These decisions are not made lightly. But the community has to have the right to deny access to, or to request the removal of, someone who is not aligned with the goals of the group.

That is all I'm going to say on the subject.

Today in Labor History February 10, 1794: The French revolutionist Jacques Roux (1752-1794) committed suicide on this date in his Paris prison cell after the Committee for Public Safety arrested him during the French Revolution. Also known as the "Red Priest," Roux denounced those monopolizing the revolution, the speculator, the merchant, government and the parliamentary state. Roux anticipated many of the themes that Karl Marx would later develop. Roux’s rhetoric inspired food riots during his day and discord in the Paris Commune, 80 years later.

Today in Labor History January 9, 1905: French anarchist Louise Michel died. Michel was a leader in the Paris Commune and cofounder of the Women’s Battalion. She also cofounded the journal “Le Libertaire,” with Sebastien Faure. 100,000 mourners attended her funeral. Before the Commune, she was a school teacher. After the Commune, while in prison, she wrote children’s books.

During the Commune, workers took over all aspects of economic and political life. They enacted a system that included self-policing, separation of the church and state, abolition of child labor, and employee takeovers of abandoned businesses. Churches and church-run schools were shut down. The Commune lasted from March 18 through May 28, 1871. Michel was elected head of the Montmartre Women’s Vigilance Committee. She also participated in the armed struggle against the French government.

Ultimately, the French Army quashed the commune, slaughtering up to 20,000 men, women and children. The authorities forced Michel to turn herself in by threatening to kill her mother. When asked if she had anything to say in her defense, she replied: “Since it seems that any heart which beats for freedom has the right only to a lump of lead, I too claim my share. If you let me live, I shall never stop crying for revenge and l shall avenge my brothers. I have finished. If you are not cowards, kill me!”

They deported her to New Caldonia, where she lived for the next seven years, working as a teacher for the children of both the French colonists and the indigenous Kanak people. Her ongoing struggle against French colonialism and her support for the Kanak people, including participation in their 1878 revolt against the French colonialists, is remembered today in their local museum of anarchism.

You can read my longer bio of Michel here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/louise-michel/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #LouiseMichel #paris #commune #Revolution #teacher #books #author #writer #prison #indigenous #school #children @bookstadon

I want to start from the very beginning, because I haven't chronicled the evolution of Rancho de la Libertad this way quite yet.

Summer of 2022, my partner & I were living in the mountains of Southern California with some of his family members. We had left Oakland with a bad taste in our mouth: the pandemic stratified the neighborhood we were living in -- already in the midst of extreme gentrification and community struggles -- to an intense degree; the school we were attending which exalted itself as "inclusive", "diverse", "progressive" simply used these terms as veils for avoiding accountability when it demonstrated through action it was anything but. The communities we had formed and those we'd tried to be a part of all existed in a continual state of internal dissolution, and we felt frustrated at the unwillingness to collaborate, engage in critical discussions or in-depth self analysis with the intention of actually listening to the voice of the other. At the same time, we had met some really wonderful people, improved our own community building and collaborative skills, and broadened our horizons intellectually and otherwise. So we were disillusioned, but hopeful, and ready for the next thing.

The mountains were a good balancing point and for the next year we planned, mused, formed conclusions about the social experiences of the previous years. We knew a few things, but knew little about how to put them into action.

So we decided to buy a house and some land in the desert, knowing very little about this area but that it was meaningful to my partner & that it called to him somehow. Our intention was to create an art space, a space for self-expression and communal experience.

At the time I don't think we fully accepted this, but that goal was self serving. A gallery unto ourselves, our own event space, a place to experiment when it would otherwise require significant networking or resources to do so had we stayed in Oakland or moved back to LA. And we had our work cut out for us: we moved into a house built in 1951 that had been vacant for five years. The house had never really been updated. The previous owner was old and had clearly done some work to preserve it, but there was also evidence that much went undone. He had what basically amounted to a private landfill on the property, the fence had been cut and broken into, the two outbuildings were horribly stuffed full of junk and dead birds and rats for some reason. The drawers in the kitchen were full of cactus spines, inexplicably.

And we had a three week old, and it was the middle of a brutal summer. To take this property on was insane, and we knew it. But from the very moment we stepped foot on the property to view it we both experienced a profound sense that this land needed us as much as we needed it.

We toiled by ourselves for months, and I recall those first hot days, sweltering as we got the ancient air conditioners running, coughing on dust from the smoke-saturated carpet we immediately ripped up, pulling down layers of curtains that had hid incredible mountain views, painted walls, sanded floors, pulled up baseboards, and scrubbed every inch of the kitchen (all in the short bursts of our daughter napping).

It began to feel impossible, and we started to re-evaluate our approach. We can't do this alone. The land was fighting us every step of the way - and eventually we would learn why, but then we just thought perhaps we'd made a huge mistake. #RanchoDeLaLibertad #Homesteading #Commune #Story

Me, a friend, and my son will look for acreage in MN.

If you build it, they will come. Right?

I see a few posts here and there people actively looking for communes to go and live at or join.
Clearly this isn't one of them at the moment but you know at least the last time I was looking around they were out there.
This is of course in the US. I would get deported from the EU/jailed very quickly so there's that :)
#Commune #Homestead