I have a proposal for a Europe-wide* experiment, that aims to bring together the movements around solidarity and ecology in order to build up the material infrastructure.
I'm looking for collaborators, please DM me!
Here it is briefly:
We try to raise 50 000 000€ over about 5-10 years and give that money as 1000 gifts of 50k€ each to new collectives for setting up housing cooperatives and land communes. The main vehicle for the fundraiser would be crowdfunding with focus on a high volume of small, recurring donations.
For example, this could be achieved with 200 000 donors, donating 5€/month on average for 50 months, or 4,17 years. That's 250€/person over four years.
Each recipient collective would make a legal pact with us or a trusted third party to ensure that the property will not be sold back to the market for financial gain. Additionally collectives would go through screening to ensure alignment with a shared vision.
*Even though internationalism on a global scale is important, I believe it makes sense to focus this effort geographically, to be able to have location-connected synergies between collectives.
In the end we would have boosted the 'ecosystem' with a network of maybe 10-30k members and created 1000 foci for social and ecological organizing. Additionally, we would have built up a network of Commons, that can help us gain a better understanding of this new, old, paradigm.
The leftist space is full of ideas and people with motivation to work and organize together, to try new forms of living and care, to grow food and to steward the land. I want to see this potential realized, but I'm afraid most of it will not happen unless we cooperate on a broader, international scale to push things forward.