by Kate McFarland | Jul 8, 2016 | News
From July 8-10, hundreds of progressive activists will convene in Buffalo, NY, for CommonBound, an international conference organized by the New Economy Coalition (NEC).
Among its many workshops, the conference will include one on basic income: Basic Income as a First Step Toward a Care-Centered Economy, led by Liane Gale and Ann Withorn, coordinators of the Basic Income Women Action Group.
The organizers describe the basic income workshop, which will be held on the morning of Sunday, July 10, as follows:
The concept of Basic Income has much potential as an element of a feminist and post-patriarchal economic system that values contributions to society by everyone. This workshop seeks to explore the various dimensions of how bringing together the concepts of a Basic Income and a Care-Centered Economy solidifies the vision of a new economic system, where caring for self, each other, and the planet is the primary focus. We are also committed to providing space for spontaneous relationship-building and horizontal decision-making processes as means of arriving at grassroots-formulated strategies and solutions to global issues and problems.
The workshop will incorporate the views of scholars and researchers such as Riane Eisler, Ina Praetorius, Elfriede Harth, and Ann Callie Manning, who were interviewed in the video Basic Income and the Care-Centered Economy, originally presented by Liane Gale at the 2016 North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress.
The NEC is a network of more than 100 organizations in the United States and Canada that share a commitment to building a better world through democratic governance, community ownership, and racial, economic, and climate justice (as paraphrased from the NEC’s vision statement).
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (To see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News, click the link.)
by Tyler Prochazka | Jul 7, 2016 | News
“Shouldn’t I have enough to eat? And don’t I deserve a safe place to sleep?”
These are the first lines from the song that shook up this year’s North American Basic Income Guarantee Congress. The song, “Just Because I’m Alive,” was performed live at the congress by musician Brandy Moore, an advocate for the basic income.
Moore is starting a GoFundMe campaign to help fund a studio version of the song that she hopes to release in August. Moore said she has already raised over 10 percent of the goal, and hopes “the momentum keeps going.”
One of the primary reasons that Moore supports the basic income is that it would let all of us be “free to do what we want with our lives.”
“I believe that art is a priceless contribution to society and that artists should be valued. I believe that all the unpaid work that people carry out in our society should be recognized as priceless as well. Anytime anyone is caring for another who cannot care for themselves in some way,” Moore said.
About two years ago, Moore came across the idea of basic income on Facebook and, as she puts it, became “intrigued.”
Her curiosity did not stop there . Moore was inspired to write a song about basic income and wrote it in “one sitting.” She said she started with the first two lines of the song “and everything else flowed out of that.”
Moore said that it is important to create art related to the basic income, because art “has the ability to touch hearts and inspire minds in a very immediate way.”
“It gives a voice to feelings and subjects that people often find hard to talk about in words to each other about, but still need to be expressed. It helps people feel less alone and more connected with the rest of humanity,” Moore said.
“It beautifies our lives. It captures people’s attentions and gets conversations going. It can make an unfamiliar idea feel more acceptable because it has touched people in a deeper way than it would have by just talking about it.”
Ursule Critoph, an attendee at NABIG, said Moore’s performance “struck a chord” with the audience. Critoph said using art to promote the basic income will help “appeal to the human heart and spirit.”
“While Brandy never mentioned the words basic income, her lyrics express the essential foundations that underlie the importance of a guaranteed basic income. Appealing to the universal human need for affirmation, food, shelter and other aspects of a full life is critical to convincing persons that access to a basic income must be a universal right,” Critoph said.
Maria Wong, a worker at the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, also listened to Moore’s live performance. She said loved the lyrics because it illustrated the reason she is “fighting” for the basic income: “it’s a human right.”
Wong said the basic income would help women, such as those at the shelter.
“Women experience poverty at higher levels because of their responsibilities to care for family and lack of options or value in the workforce. We think a Guaranteed Livable Income will give women more autonomy and be less invisible in society,” Wong said.
Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Moore worked as an office temp, but she said she “hated the way it would suck all my energy away,” so she started focusing wholly on her music.
She said she thinks that others should also have the choice to do what they love.
“We were meant to be free,” Moore said. “And when enough of us believe that we deserve to be free, we will be.”
Click here to see the live performance.
Lyrics:
Shouldn’t I have enough to eat?
And don’t I deserve a safe place to sleep?
Where no one can take what doesn’t belong to them,
And I don’t have to look over my shoulder
Why must I pay for my existence
And why must I prove my worthiness
I have a right to basic needs
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Just because I’m alive
I don’t look like you
And I don’t act like you
And I could never make it in your world
But I still deserve a decent life
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Just because I’m alive
I’m alive. Just because I’m alive
I’m hungry
I’m cold
I’m lonely
I feel
Just like you do
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Just because I’m alive
I’m alive. Just because I’m alive
Alive Alive Alive
Just because I’m alive
Shouldn’t I have enough to eat?
And don’t I deserve a safe place to sleep?
by Guest Contributor | Jun 27, 2016 | Opinion, The Indepentarian
By Karl Widerquist, co-chair BIEN, and Louise Haagh, co-chair BIEN
BIEN has made great strides in the last few years. Two years ago, our main goals were to charter BIEN as a legally recognized non-profit organization, to organize the 2016 Congress in Seoul Korea, and to expand Basic Income News. We succeeded in all three. The Seoul Congress will be our first in Asia, and it will bring together hundreds of Basic Income supporters from around the world. Official non-profit status will be completed if and when it is ratified at the 2016 Congress. This status will allow us to raise and spend money more easily in the coming term.
Our biggest success of the last two years has been Basic Income News (along with its accompanying email NewsFlash). Basic Income News has grown both in how much news it reports and how many people it reaches. Before the creation of Basic Income News, BIEN produced one NewsFlash (with perhaps twenty news stories) every two or three months, most of them excerpted from elsewhere. Today BIEN’s all-volunteer news team produces an average of two or three news stories every day, most of them original. Thanks mostly to Basic Income News, BIEN’s website has grown from 60 unique visits per day in June of 2013 to 1,365 unique visits per day in May of 2016. Some articles have reached more than 45,000 people. NewsFlash subscriptions have more than doubled in the last ten months, from 2,100 subscribers in August 2015 to 4,300 subscribers by June 2015.
Basic Income Earth Network’s Logo
BIEN’s growth has coincided with an enormous growth in the Basic Income movement around the world. New groups are forming. People are taking action. And people in power are taking notice. Government-funded pilot projects are going to take place in at least two countries and possibly several more over the next few years.
Major international institutions such as the Council of Europe and the Economic Commission for Latin America of the UN, have funded research, conferences and reports that endorse basic income and seek to connect it with other contemporary progressive movements and ideas. BIEN representatives have been instrumental in these developments, which is evidence of the influence BIEN is having in official organizations. An important objective for the coming term is to continue and extend these efforts to engage with these organizations, and we currently have activities and plans in the works to do so.
With BIEN’s Congress and General Assembly approaching, now is a good time for BIEN to set some goals for what it can do to strengthen the movement in the following year. This article proposes some priorities for the coming year-our “vision” for BIEN if you will. We speak for ourselves, but we hope others will agree.
We begin with one thing that BIEN should not do. It mustnot to dictate a grand strategy to the worldwide movement for Basic Income. The movement has gotten as far as it has by different people in different places attempting very different strategies. Some have worked better than others, but they have all made their contribution, and the combined result has been enormous growth in the political prominence of Basic Income. Any effort to force that diverse movement to follow one central script would be arrogant and divisive.
BIEN’s charter calls on us to serve that movement, “as a link between individuals and groups committed to, or interested in, basic income … to stimulate and disseminate research and to foster informed public discussion.” BIEN. How can BIEN serve that movement better?
We suggest two board objectives: our news service (Basic Income News) and our efforts to improve our outreach and networking with Basic Income groups and sympathetic individuals. In pursuit of these two broad objectives, we suggest the following priorities:
- Expand Basic Income News.
- Start holding yearly congresses.
- Improve BIEN’s outreach to affiliates and nonaffiliated organizations.
- Set up the website to take online donations and determine a crowdfunding strategy through means of Paypal, Patreon, ect.
- Improve BIEN’s website (which may be a complete website redesign), including an effort to create a depository of research and expertise.
- Increase BIEN’s presence on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, ect.
- Attempt to obtain representation on international bodies.
- Create better democratic institutions within BIEN.
This is an ambitious agenda for next year (and the coming years). This op-ed is the third in serious arguing for this vision. Louise Haagh and I argued in two previous op-eds for yearly Congresses, and for the importance of these taskforces (and others our supports might create) in improving our outreach and networking.
With those goals of BIEN already discussed, this article makes a special case for expanding Basic Income News-the only website in the world specializing solely in news about Basic Income. This service provides a badly needed source of just-the-facts reporting on Basic Income by well-informed writers. This kind of news reporting is something that we do well. It is something that no one else is doing. It is something that few other groups could do or are likely to do. Basic Income News provides an important way for BIEN to inform and to the influence debate over Basic Income. Basic Income News provides a mouthpiece for BIEN’s members and affiliates by reporting and publicizing their activities. Basic Income News provides information that our affiliates and other groups need to work together to build the movement.
In this way, Basic Income News supports BIEN’s other certain objective: outreach and networking with other groups and individuals interested in Basic Income. BIEN is able to do the other things it does because it reaches out to people daily on the web and monthly by email.
Basic Income News is BIEN’s principle strength. We need to build on this strength.
Basic Income News has done all this on a budget of less than $100 a month for webhosting and emails services. It has no paid labor. Everything Basic Income News does, it does with an all-volunteer workforce, and is unlikely to move to a paid labor force anytime soon. We have too many other things that we need to do with the money we raise before we can start paying our volunteers.
So, what do we do to expand? We suggest, four things.
First, BIEN’s Executive Committee (EC) has agreed to dedicate four of its members to Basic Income News as their specified task for the coming term. (Every EC member commits to work several hours per month on a specified task.) Dedicating four EC members to the news reflects its high priority, but it is not out of line with BIEN’s other priorities. The list of EC functions for next year provides for two Co-Chairs, two Co-Secretaries, and four people working together on outreach and communication.
The four news editors share the joint responsibility of keeping Basic Income News up-to-date, ensuring that it has regular features, trains volunteers, and so on. With oversight from the whole EC, they divide those functions among themselves as they think best. Typically one member acts as lead editor, taking overall responsibility for the news service. One takes on the role of “features editor,” recruiting guests to write reviews, Op-Ed, interviews, and so on. One or more trains new volunteers. We need several EC members to take charge of these very different roles.
Second, Basic Income News needs to recruit more volunteers. Although we publish a lot of stories, many more stories go unreported because we don’t have enough writers to cover them. Very often we are asked, “why didn’t Basic Income News cover this…” and the answer is almost always the same: “We wanted to, but we didn’t have enough volunteers.” This is our principle limitation. We need to have one scheduled reporter online every day of the week, every week of the year, so that we can cover news stories as they come in. We also need reporters to clear out our backlog of story ideas on our website. We also need to find reporters who are fluent in German, French, Spanish, and other languages to improve our reporting from non-English sources and perhaps to translate some of our content into other languages. We need copyeditors to review the work of our reporters. Maintaining and improving quality is a constant struggle in any all-volunteer organization. All of these things require us to recruit a lot more volunteers.
Third, Karl Widerquist has made the following motion to the General Assembly: “BIEN encourages all affiliates to provide at least one person to work with Basic Income News to report on their news and the news from their region.” We make this request to improve our reporting of each affiliate’s activities, to improve our reporting of local events around the world-especially those in non-English-speaking countries. The relationship between Basic Income News and its affiliates should be a two-way street. We should not only gather news from our affiliates, but we should also provide a platform for them to publicize their activities and to discuss their concerns with a worldwide audience. If at least one person from each network learns to use Basic Income News’s system, they can directly use it to broadcast their events and concerns. We can also offer to our affiliates using our news stories in their newsletters and on their websites, if that is a help to them.
Fourth, Basic Income News has to increase-not only its hard news reporting-but also its opinions, reviews, analysis, interviews, audio, video, and so on. One strength of Basic Income News is a clear separation between just-the-facts news reporting and opinions. With this separation, people in and out of the movement can learn how the movement for Basic Income is progressing without being distracted by propaganda or by uninformed reporting. The “Features” side of Basic Income News has been minimal, publishing perhaps one feature per week. Yet, there is no limit to how many features we can publish. In this effort, Basic Income News has appointed a features editor who is in charge of contacting our affiliates, other organizations, and individuals to contribute occasional features.
None of this means that BIEN should promote Basic Income News to the exclusion of everything else we do, but we have to have priorities, and Basic Income News should be our top priority or very close to it. We have done a lot, but we can do a lot more, and we can do it better.
In sum, over the coming years, we see BIEN improving its efforts to serve as a link between individuals and groups that support Basic Income by having yearly congresses, raising funds, creating a web depository of research, increasing our social media presence, working more closely with our affiliates and other Basic Income groups, creating ties with appropriate institutions, and by creating a larger and more professional news service that will provide news about Basic Income and a mouthpiece for Basic Income supporters around the world.
-Karl Widerquist, co-chair BIEN (Karl@Widerquist.com)
-Louise Haagh, co-chair BIEN (louise.haagh@york.ac.uk)
BIEN Congress 2016
by Guest Contributor | Jun 24, 2016 | Opinion
Karl Widerquist, Co-Chair BIEN <Karl@Widerquist.com>
Louise Haagh, Co-Chair, BIEN <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
As co-chairs of BIEN, we would like to invite members and prospective members of BIEN, to join the leadership of BIEN. Getting involved is easy. There are two ways to go it:
- Run for an elected position at BIEN’s next General Assembly at the 2016 BIEN Congress in Seoul (July 9, 2016)
- Volunteer to work on one of BIEN’s volunteer taskforces.
BIEN currently has 9 elected positions, 8 members of Executive Committee (EC) and the chair of the International Board. There is a proposal to expand that number to 11. The duties of the potential 11 elected members are described at the links below:
The BIEN EC
The International Board:
BIEN
In the past, BIEN’s elections have usually not been very competitive. There have been few nominations. Most candidates have run unopposed. We think that BIEN has outgrown that phase of its existence, but we will explain a little about how that happened. When BIEN began there was no Basic Income movement. The group was small. It didn’t have to make many controversial decisions. It needed people to volunteer to do things. The difficult was not in deciding who got the positions, but finding someone willing to do the things BIEN needed to do. So, the outgoing EC has always recruited people to run to sure that there is at least one candidate who is willing and able to do each job. Again this year, the outgoing EC has recruited people to run next time, but we also want to open it but and make sure that every BIEN member (and everybody willing to become a BIEN member knows that they are invited to run for a leadership position.
As BIEN and the Basic Income movement have grown, we need more people to take an active part in running the organization. So, we are doing two things: First, we invite everyone to make nominations. We hope for a lot of them and for good, healthy, competitive elections. Second, we have proposed some changes in BIEN’s statutes to create a more open, inviting election process in future years.
We stress that the EC is an executive committee, not a legislative committee. By this, we mean that the role of the EC is to do the day-to-day work need to maintain and expand BIEN and further its goals. Although the EC does make policy for BIEN in between General Assembly (GA) meetings, its primary role is work.
If you are elected to the EC you commit to attending monthly EC meetings over the internet and to put in approximately 10 hours per month of work for your assigned specialized task. If BIEN has funds available, it might as you to travel to represent BIEN at an event or to attend a meeting.
Getting involved in the leadership of BIEN is easy for anyone who wants to contribute to the work of BIEN. Often, when more people are interested in joining the EC than there are spaces on the committee, the EC invites the additional candidates to join as informal non-voting members of the committing. Volunteer members of the EC share the duties with official members and participate in EC discussions even if they do not officially vote. Many of them later become full members of the committee.
In addition to these positions, BIEN has unlimited opportunities to get involved as a volunteer. Volunteers work with BIEN on some agreed task, but do not attend meetings of the EC. Volunteering is a good way to get involved with BIEN. Many people do so for a year or years before they run for an elected position. Please see our call for volunteers to see how you might get involved.
If you would like to run for one of the positions on the EC, here is now you do it:
- Join BIEN, if you haven’t already. See the instructions for becoming a member.
- Nominate yourself or get another member of BIEN to nominate you by emailing the Secretary. Get another member to email the Secretary of BIEN to second your nomination. (You can also nominate yourself in person at the BIEN Congress.)
- Send the secretary a paragraph about yourself and why you would like to join the committee. This is not a requirement, but it will help your chances of getting elected.
- You do not have to be present at the General Assembly in Seoul to run for a leadership position in BIEN, or to nominate someone, or to second someone’s nomination, but you do have to be present to vote.
If you would like to see who has been nominated for these positions so far, they are listed here with links to their bios. We will continue to update this list as more nominations come in.
Karl Widerquist, Co-Chair BIEN <Karl@Widerquist.com>
Louise Haagh, Co-Chair, BIEN <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
by Guest Contributor | Jun 23, 2016 | Bios & background Info
We need your effort and ideas to help spread the word about Basic Income.
BIEN is an all-volunteer organization. We have no paid labor and hardly any budget. And so we have created several volunteer taskforces to work on projects over the coming year or more. Some of these taskforces have been around for years, but most of them are just getting started, and a few of them are just ideas at this point. We invite volunteers to take part in any and all of these taskforces, to help shape them, and to decide what needs to be done. Most of these taskforces have an open structure chosen by the taskforce members themselves.
We also ask volunteers to join existing taskforces, and they can also suggest additional task forces. What taskforces BIEN ultimately has will be driven largely by what goals our volunteers choose to pursue.
To get more info about any single taskforce contact the point-person listed for the task force.
To volunteer, please contact the point person(s) (listed below) for the taskforce(s) that most interests you. If you’re not sure which suits you best, or if you have an idea for a new taskforce, contact Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk> (BIEN chair).
Existing and proposed taskforces:
BIEN’s Basic Income News: This is BIEN’s news service and the only news service in the world dedicated entirely to the issue of Basic Income. It is BIEN’s most active and visible taskforce. The work and structure of Basic Income News is described in BIEN’s EC functions. Three members of the EC and many volunteers are in this task force. (See Volunteer for Basic Income News for more information or to apply to volunteer.)
Point person: André Coelho <ascmenow@gmail.com>
Affiliate Outreach: This taskforce is very active and energetic. It’s job is to coordinate BIEN’s interaction with its dozens of affiliates around the world to plan joint strategy for research and educational activities to advance public knowledge and understanding of basic income and of public policy developments and debates linked to basic income. It helps the Local Organizing Committee plan BIEN’s yearly academic congress, such as by organizing a session in which affiliates report on their efforts to educate the public about basic income.
Point Person: Jenna van Draanen <jennavandraanen@gmail.com>.
Public Outreach: This committee is currently being spun off the affiliates outreach taskforce. It will aid in furthering joint events among relevant organisations and the wider public around the world to help educate citizens, and offer research-based engagement with local public officials and citizens, and support informed public debate and increase understanding of Basic Income. This taskforce will also investigate how to expand BIEN’s representation at relevant policy-making bodies and think tanks. This committee does not yet have an point person. In the meantime, contact Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk> (chair of BIEN), Pablo E. Yanes Rizo <pyanes2007@gmail.com>, and Ana Klincic Andrews <anaklincicandrews@gmail.com>.
Social media: This taskforce is a subcommittee of BIEN’s public outreach committee. It consolidate all BIEN’s social media activities on Facebook and other platforms. It’s a very visible taskforce with tens of thousands of followers on Facebook alone. It is in need of more volunteers so that we can do more things.
Point person: Jason Burke Murphy <jason.burke.murphy@gmail.com>.
Crowdfunding/fundraising taskforce: This taskforce will find ways to use our website, NewsFlash, social media presence, and other avenues to raise funds. It is working on a strategy to promote donations to BIEN online and elsewhere.
It has no point person yet, but the current members of the taskforce are:
Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com)>
Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
Aoife Hegarty <aoife.hegarty@gmail.com>
Ana Klincic Andrews <anaklincicandrews@gmail.com>
Website taskforce: The role of this taskforce is improve the functioning and content of BIEN’s website. This taskforce needs a webmaster(s) and anyone with web-skills to maintain the website. It also needs people to decide how to create on BIEN’s website a depository of research and expertise: to consolidate BIEN’s web-page as a place interested parties can locate relevant experts and find information on policy studies, experiments, and published research on basic income and related topics.
It currently does not have a Point Person. To get involved contact Louise Haagh <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>.
Research Taskforce: This taskforce is working on creating a online database of research on basic income, and to improve research on basic income in any way it can.
Point person: Kate McFarland <faceless.watcher@gmail.com>
Point person: Toru Yamamori <toruyamamori@googlemail.com>
Wikipedia Taskforce: This taskforce is a subcommittee of the research committee. It’s goal is to improve the breadth, depth, and accuracy about Basic Income on Wikipedia.
Point person: Karl Widerquist <Karl@Widerquist.com>
We hope you will get involved.
-Karl Widerquist, Vice-Chair <Karl@Widerquist.com>
-Louise Haagh, Chair <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
BIEN
