First convened in July 2000, Norway’s annual Protest Festival aspires to protest powerlessness and indifference and promote political action. This year’s Protest Festival will be held in Kristiansand from September 4-11 – and it will include basic income among its topics.
The week-long festival includes lectures and discussions on various social and political topics, in addition to musical acts and other performance events. (The headline music acts are American singer-songwriters Kris Kistofferson and Eric Andersen.)
Of particular interest are two successive events on Tuesday, September 6:
• Guy Standing, BIEN’s co-founder and honorary co-president, will be speaking on the coming “precariat revolt”. His lecture will draw from his newest book, The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Doesn’t Pay.
• Several researchers, writers, and politicians will be debating the question of whether Norway, like Finland, should investigate a basic income. To set the stage for the debate, sociologist Olli Kangas will speak about the Finnish experiment. Kangas is Director of Community Relations in the Research Department at Kela, Finland’s Social Insurance Institute, which will be conducting the basic income trial next year.
For more information about the event (in Norwegian), see protestfestivalen.no.
Reviewed by Asha Pond
Kristiansand photo CC BY 2.0 Germán Poo-Caamaño
Credit also to Kate’s supporters on Patreon