To everyone fighting corporate rule and corrupt government
Expand the spaces of the revolution!
A call for developing a network of mutual aid and solidarity for Free Communities
The Occupy Wall Street movement has created numerous zones of protest run by consensus-based General Assemblies where the rules of capitalism and the state are set aside and a space is created where alternative futures can be imagined and made.
Project Autonomy has two simple goals: First, to promote the ideas of free communities and autonomous zones to spread the values of the Occupy movement into a broader range of spaces in our communities. Second, to encourage individuals and groups to form free communities and develop a network of solidarity to support them.
Project Autonomy has two simple goals: First, to promote the ideas of free communities and autonomous zones to spread the values of the Occupy movement into a broader range of spaces in our communities. Second, to encourage individuals and groups to form free communities and develop a network of solidarity to support them.
The Occupy movement has demonstrated the possibility for making autonomous zones of protest permanent. Permanent Autonomous Zones (PAZs) or “Free Communities,” are enduring spaces where laws and rules are determined by members of the community instead of the government and the imperatives of capitalism.
The Occupy camps now rising in cities across the world, however, are only one kind of space where corporate rule and repressive governments can be challenged. Free Communities can be established in any space where people decide they can live better by making the rules themselves instead of following the ones exploiting corporations and out-of-touch governments wish them to follow.
A Free Community can be a neighborhood, a farm, a protest camp, a caravan, a house, a whole town, a bookstore, a social center, a workplace, a squat, an island, an indigenous community: Anywhere people proclaim their space autonomous.
While every Free Community shares a desire for finding different ways of living outside the current system of government corruption and corporate greed, they are also all different because the norms that govern each space are determined collectively by the people living within them.
So how does Project Autonomy aid the creation of these Free Communities? In the past, when people gathered together to contest corporate and government domination the result has often been repression and the destruction of those spaces where the seeds of a new world had been planted. Today, however, we know from the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street protests that when people with a different vision for the world are in solidarity there is too much strength for the new ideas and spaces to be repressed. Project Autonomy builds on this energy for a new world by applying this same principle of solidarity and mutual aid to permanent Free Communities. We recognize that a critical mass of support is needed for solidarity and mutual aid to overcome repression.
The Occupy camps now rising in cities across the world, however, are only one kind of space where corporate rule and repressive governments can be challenged. Free Communities can be established in any space where people decide they can live better by making the rules themselves instead of following the ones exploiting corporations and out-of-touch governments wish them to follow.
A Free Community can be a neighborhood, a farm, a protest camp, a caravan, a house, a whole town, a bookstore, a social center, a workplace, a squat, an island, an indigenous community: Anywhere people proclaim their space autonomous.
While every Free Community shares a desire for finding different ways of living outside the current system of government corruption and corporate greed, they are also all different because the norms that govern each space are determined collectively by the people living within them.
So how does Project Autonomy aid the creation of these Free Communities? In the past, when people gathered together to contest corporate and government domination the result has often been repression and the destruction of those spaces where the seeds of a new world had been planted. Today, however, we know from the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street protests that when people with a different vision for the world are in solidarity there is too much strength for the new ideas and spaces to be repressed. Project Autonomy builds on this energy for a new world by applying this same principle of solidarity and mutual aid to permanent Free Communities. We recognize that a critical mass of support is needed for solidarity and mutual aid to overcome repression.
The premise of Project Autonomy therefore is simple: groups and individuals sign-on pledging aid to each other so self-ruling spaces can be created for Free Communities wherever they are declared. When a Free Community comes under government repression the signers pledge to provide non-violent aid and support according to each person's and group's means and ability. This may mean sending supporters, giving donations, giving refuge to members of communities pushed out of their spaces by police actions, or other kinds of aid. Project Autonomy also aims to be a resource for Free Communities and individuals interested in autonomy to share stories, information and inspiration.
The Project Autonomy Collective is a group of activists from across the United States and has no desire to direct or co-opt the energy of the vibrant struggles going on in the world seeking economic justice and genuine democracy. Project Autonomy exists to do just one thing: Put groups and individuals in contact with each other to expand the spaces of revolution through pledges of mutual aid. We encourage individuals who are signing on that represent a larger group / Free Community to bring this idea for solidarity to their respective General Assemblies (or group meetings) to reach consensus on the idea before signing up.
Support Free Communities
Sign-on and Pass it on!
In Solidarity, The Project Autonomy Collective
Project Autonomy can also be followed on Facebook/ProjectAutonomy and twitter.com/ProjectAutonomy - #ProjectAutonomy
