Peer2Politics

Last week, the White House strengthened its support for Open Educational Resources (OER) and committed to expanding access to them through open licenses and technology.

In this interview, Neal Gorenflo (founder, Shareable), Michel Bauwens (founder, P2P Foundation), and John Restakis (author, Humanizing the Economy) speak with Enric Duran. Duran is a Catalan anti-capitalist activist, best known for his act of “financial civil disobedience” announced on September 17, 2008, in which he took out half a million Euros in bank loans and distributed the funds to anti-capitalist movements. As it was never his intention to pay these debts, but instead to stir debate about the unfair legal advantages afforded to the powerful financial elite, he was soon labeled “Robin Banks,” and faced with a lengthy prison sentence. The resulting legal actions and his subsequent seclusion have left him living virtually underground, although he maintains selective contact and has stated that he may return, contingent on a variety of factors. Despite his precarious legal status, his work continues undiminished in the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC), which describes itself as a “transitional initiative for social transformation from below, through self-management, self-organization, and networking.” Here is Enric Duran talking about his work and life.

In 2012, the city of Seoul launched Sharing City Seoul to create a local, government-sanctioned sharing culture – establishing the city of 10 million as a frontrunner in the sharing cities movement. City officials committed to cultivating a vibrant local sharing economy, and Seoul was quickly praised as a global sharing leader. But results on the ground have been mixed, and the initiative remains a work in progress. Sharing City Seoul hasn't taken off as hoped, and awareness of the sharing econo

A small team of 10 people called Etalab recently released a brand new version of Data.gouv.fr, France’s open data platform. Etalab essentially acted like a startup within the French government, utilizing its open data initiative to surreptitiously modernize the state itself.