Donner Creek Project

Thanks for taking the time to speak with me.  I have just gotten done with 17 days in a row where I transitioned from one new job to another --  I am now an appliance repair technician.  Wahoo -- getting a trade at 52!

I loved your ideas about the Donner Creek Project and "The House Keepers Inn".  Would you be willing to meet with me and help format a questionnaire to begin the conversation in a more structured way than I have been able to do so far.  And to help to learn about the dreams, goals, and needs of the people of Donner Creek Community.  I was also wondering if Flashvote might be willing to make an "in kind donation" and host the Donner Creek Project's miniscule database on your robust system -- allowing us to utilize the self governance tools you have created?  As an added benefit it will look great in your next Prospectus or in your Investor's Newsletter.

The Donner Creek Project is an endeavor of "Social Entrepreneurship".   While getting my Master's at Yale, I was given the great pleasure of being a student of, and mentored by, Bill Drayton of the Ashoka Foundation.  This project is in a large part inspired by his work. 

The Donner Creek Project and the proposed development project with the working title of "The Housekeepers' Inn" will have a continuous legacy impact on a range of social challenges from teen pregnant, to minority voter registration, to drug/child/spousal abuse, to the elimination of poverty and hunger.  I know this sounds like an "almost too good to be true" outcome, but this is what is possible with the kind of systems thinking solution that "The House Keepers' Inn" will be.  At very least, this will be a bold initiative allowing the opportunity, but not the guarantee, for significant capital accumulation by the historically indigenous people of the Americas who have lived in this community for multiple generations in the instance of people from Central and South America; but plans also include the inclusion of the Tel Mel Ti Band of the Wa She Shu (Washoe) people, an Ancestral Technology Village, and a historically accurate Tel Mel Ti Village as a tourist destination activity run by historically indigenous local people.

Do you think there may be a group of Digerati and friends in the area who would be willing to help launch this project?  After all, this will be a full on resort development with the best people hired in IT, Marketing, Health and Spa Services, Accounting, and all other aspects of Hospitality and Dining; and, non-historically indigenous individuals need not be limited to strictly altruistic motives for getting involved.  In addition to the advise and inspiration of Mr. Drayton,  The Donner Creek Project has also gotten the advice and inspiration of Elliot Aronson and we will be striving to implement the lessons learned from the Jigsaw Classroom to an economic structure.   This will be an experiment in Reciprocal Altuism and the sharing mechanisms pioneer by Vampire Bats and Honey Bees. 

While from a public relations perspective we will be highlighting the benefits of the project to the under-served communities of historically indigenous people, our primary goal will be an integrated community with the largest functional alliance of diversity as possible -- not merely ethnicity but sexual orientation, socio-economic gradients, educational experience, and political thought.  In diversity will be our strength.

Thank you for your consideration,

Michael Rogers

Mobilization of the People of Peace

I am feeling like it is necessary to call to all people of peace -- immediately to mobilize for the evolution of humanity -- for the starling moment that we CAN manifest. We must focus now on that beautiful moment in the future where (in an flick of a wing) we all turn away (together) from the dominant systems of greed, death, selfishness, free-riding and the delusion of separation: towards loving new systems of collaboration, partnership and the incorporation of all the hopes, dreams, and wishes that we have for ourselves. Towards the visions we share of "US" as a common humanity. There are forces now gathering of violence, anger, resentment, injustice, and coercion. In these systems demagogues can rule. These malevolent forces are growing and they could develop into a mutation that could cause our children -- and to the seventh generation -- the increasing pain of loss, death, torture, aggression, want and predation. I believe it is the IMMEDIATE duty of all people, who believe that peace can reign, to gather together now into a global confederation that is at once an economy, a society, a community, an environment, an evolution of complexity, where human activity on a place is governed by the people who live at that place. A new indigenism. A global indigenous tribe of old and new indigenous people in confederation where the leaders are the servants who help people work together and are accountable. Thoughts? Stone Carver

10/16/09

Thanks. The ideas are very serious for me however. I believe that the democratization of capital is the great task of our generation. For me it is an important idea to get out into the world and your talents could be the very way to do so in a humorous, entertaining way. How much would I need to raise to contract with you for a Captain Capitalism cartoon like the ones you have done already? Say, were Captain Capitalism has an epiphany, maybe with the help of a little yoda like Gandi who tells him "Change the be you want the world to see" then he falls asleep and Thomas Paine's Common Sense falls off the bookshelf and clobbers him on the head.

Then he wakes up realizing that his beloved capitalism is in danger and he must save it, but he can't do it alone. He needs all the boys and girls to help. To gather all their dimes an quarters and energize new corporations of the people, by the people, and for the people. Corporations with out kings. Corporations there to serve the governed.

One of the largest shifts in human society has occurred in the last 20 years - up there with the wheel, the hunter/gatherer band, and the rise of the nation state. The majority of the 100 largest economies in the world are now corporate states, not nation states. The corporate state is the ascendant form of governance in our world and we must begin the work of making them self-regulating, accountable structures if we have any hope of a free and prosperous future for our children.

Peace.

The New League of Peace and Power

We seem to have been dreaming many of the same dreams.

I am writing to find out if you have any interest in hearing about a
vision that has been incubating in my head for the last 30 years.

I was jarred "asleep" by the statement of Akio Morita, the Founder of
Sony, that "Nations are a dying industry, corporations are the
structures of the future." And every day since, the truth of that
statement has become ever more clear. For many this is the "nightmare"
of our times, but for me I asked the simply question "what if a
corporation could be a people, instead of a person?" What if we could
have an economic "incorporation" of us -- a company "of the people, by
the people, and for the people." This simply shift of thinking has
allowed me to make, what at one time would have been unthinkable, the
statement that "I love corporations . . . it is kings that I can do
without."

Yes, there have been many incarnations of this same urge, ESOPs, worker
cooperatives, etc., but all the well intentioned ones seemed to share a
fatal flaw -- ironically the same fatal flaw as the occupy movement.
This flaw lies in simple mathematics -- what I call the "Movie Picking
Paradox". Anyone who has ever tried to pick a movie with more than a
handful of people has discovered the truth of the towering logarithmic
barrier of the paradox -- 10 people can't even pick a movie together.
So, in this modern world of complexity, how can people come together to
produce a well managed economic enterprise large enough to "compete"
with modern global multinational corporations? This quest has led me to
study a range of knowledge from the work of The Great Peacemaker, the
man who I believe invented "America", to the seminal work of the
diminutive academic and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Elinor
Ostrom. The "Ostrom Parameters" are the distillation of thousands of
years of human creativity and she gives us the road map on how to govern
resources as a commons. Then I asked, "Can capital be a commons?"

The emphatically affirmative answer to this question is what lead me
conceive of the "New League of Peace and Power." The first global
indigenous tribe, an economic confederation. Taking the structure of a
multinational corporation but rooted in what I have for years termed
"Sacred Economics" and patterned after the model of confederation as
imagined by the Great Peacemaker in his formation of the historic
confederation that is still in existence today called the League of
Peace and Power, or the People of the Longhouse.

The Great Lakota Chief, Sitting Bull was asked, "do we use the White
Man's technology?". His answer was matter of fact -- "If the White Man
leaves something of value in the road, pick it up. Otherwise, let it
lie." We now have the ability to pick up the best of this new technical
world and blend it with the best of the long arc of human collaborative
evolution to help heal this wounded human society.

The time is now. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

--
m@sumpeople.org
www.sumpeople.org

"Little people can add up to big changes"

The Western Slope of the Sierra

I have learned about Summit from my friends Linda Vilatore and James "Woody" Woodruff.  I am writing to see if the vision of your enterprise might match my own.

I own 160 acres of land on the West Slope of the Sierra with a mile of South Yuba River frontage, surrounded by Tahoe National Forest and at the threshold of what I call the "Nisenan Wildness"*.   I have had a longterm vision of helping this land start a complete resource-secure human/nature interface transformation for the Tahoe Basin.  The vision includes the building of a "string of pearls" which are concentrated developments in the middle of wildness linked by mass transit, liberated from fossil fuel addiction, and organized around loving and deeply sustainable, nurturing incorporations of community and based on the principal of Sacred Capital. 

I imagine traveling from the Bay by high speed rail in my "mod" -- a personal tram like mobile room that can be docked on a train, a ferry, a semi truck, connected to a cable, or simply add square footage to my home when not in use.  I dream of being whisked over abundant nature to my ARC (awesomely resourceful community) while I sleep, work, or play.  I see myself looking down on the poor souls stuck in I-80 chain control, or watching a pack of wolves take down an antelope in Bear Valley.  I see my ARC being connected to an ARC on the top of Signal Peak with back country access into the Grouse Lakes Recreation Area, a hub of a series of guided recreation opportunities at the crest of the Sierra Nevada and home to an economically diverse community that is capable of surviving the vagaries of catastrophic climate disruption. 

Just as the current transportation and residential/commercial infrastructure of Tahoe was built with bonds, as a Commonteer, I see the construction of the new resource paradigm being built with funds from the Act of Common Bond, a government guaranteed bond measure that provides both a secure and evolutionary investment opportunity for the hard working middle class, but also a pool of money for every native born citizen over the age of 26 to invest in a democratically structured company with at least 300 other partners.

I have much more to share, but if I have not peaked your interest by now then I wish you well.  I have recently undergone a series of extreme challenges and am looking for what the future might hold for me.

*"In wildness is the preservation of the world" Thoreau

"I dwell in Possibility-- A fairer House than Prose-- More numerous of Windows-- Superior--for Doors-- Of Chambers as the Cedars-- Impregnable of Eye-- And for an Everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky-- Of Visitors--the fairest-- For Occupation--This-- The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise--" -- Emily Dickinson

Reply to Commons Rising Coordinator 12/13/2012

No website yet. We have the business site at www.shinneyboocreek.com and
will have a sales brochure and website for the ARC as the designs are
developed, and some initial conceptualizing gets done. The ARC will be
in the Sierra Nevada near Tahoe just 2 and 1/2 hours from the Bay Area.
The idea is to construct a radically efficient (as only a commons can
achieve) , small footprint, live/shop/work/play, automobile free,
critical grid independent, fair, just, loving community that also has
lots of room for the one leggeds, four leggeds, wingeds, and crawling
things, and where the essential capital need to run the community is
governed as a commons based on the Ostrom Parameters. This community
will be poised for prosperity as the Resource Revolution (our modern
equivalent of the Industrial Revolution) unfolds and it will be built to
survive "in style" Peak Oil, Catastrophic Climate Change, the
Yellowstone Caldera, disruption of thermohaline circulation, or just
resource vulnerability and tyranny.

My blog hiatus reflects a difficult divorce and the placing of my
children's needs above my business (or passion for economic evolution).
During this time, I almost lost, the 160 acre peace of paradise that is
this property, to foreclosure -- and yet {SHABBAMMMM!, Batman} I have
come back strong, with my kids on solid ground (and behind me all the
way). And this was all accomplished to a large degree because of my
commitment to Common Capitalism and the team of partners that has
coalesced around me to run the business, develop events, and pursue an
evolutionary development plan for the future.

I can see many ways I will be enriched by this group based on first
impressions. For one, I need more knowledge about the technical aspects
of commons management and I hope that this group can help me in that.

Next, I seek to build a coalition of Commonteers to form into an
aggregated voting block to demand the passage of the Act of Common Bond
to form a pool of capital so that every citizen of the United States who
is at least 26 years old can borrow money to invest $100,000 in a common
constitutional partnership with at least 300 other partners that is
democratically structured (preferably based on the Ostrom Parameters).
The $19 Trillion dollar government guarantee required by this program is
significantly less than the country is currently investing in propping
up the corrupt banking system via the Federal Reserve "Discount" Window.
The Act of Common Bond requires no federal operating funds unless the
bond insurance system [similar to the FDIC] would become insolvent.
Proper thought and regulation would need to be done to insure prudent
controls.

The Act of Common Bond will also create a high tax-free yield,
government guaranteed, investment vehicle for the besieged hard-working
retired middle class -- protecting them from the financial improprieties
and low yields rampant within the current investment systems.

Finally, I hope to produce an Interdependence Day Dance/Party with a
Purpose/Seize the Commons event at Shinneyboo Creek that I could use
help with to design the program.

I will be in Philadelphia on December 21st for the Declaration of
Interdependence on the Independence Mall and at the Wainwright House in
New York on the 22nd to present our Declarations to a representative of
the United Nations but cannot stop talking about the work of my life and
many other good people.

With Hope, Love, and Determination,
Michael "Pilgrim" Rogers
http://letterstopatriots.blogspot.com/

Application to Join Commons Rising

Your organisational affiliations? (primary and secondary) *
SumPeople.org and The Commonteers. SumPeople is an aggregation platform
and The Commonteers is a social club where commonteers can meet and plan
coordinated attacks against the tendrils the Privateers have around our
common government, community, and economy. The Commonteers are also
committed to a campaign to reclaim the language of the commons and
redefine words correctly so that "noble" means greedy, violent,
uncaring, and self absorbed, whereas, "common" means hard working,
honest, reliable, and kind.

What is alive for you when you think of the commons? *
I fucking love that question. I am a commonteer. I fight for the right
of people to claim their rights to govern resources as a commons. I
have dedicated myself to stopping the privateers, at any turn, thus
seeking to converting them, through strength and love, to see the joys
of giving to, and investing in, the commons, and failing to do that to
marginalize their influence on the systems of the earth.

I am also, with a brilliant team, bringing into reality a global
economic commons that I believe can achieve the Alchemy of Non-Zero and
capture the "Greater-Than" quotation and build the largest economic
enterprise in the world as a decentralized but coordinated tribe of
friends hunting sustenance together to care for our families.

What are the skills/talents you bring to this group? *
Everything I have. My heart, my head, my Yale University Masters in
Administration, my 160 acres of land where I am building an ARC
(Awesomely Resourceful Community) designed to survive in style, my 30
years of engineering a new economic model to compete with Privateering
Capitalism -- with its foundations firmly rooted in the compost of the
mind of Elinor Ostrom, Game Theory, Coordination Theory, Reciprocal
Altruism, Judgment Aggregation, Complexity Theory, Systems Thinking, and
in the indigenous wisdom of the commons that reaches deep into our DNA.

--
Pilgim