What does a care-based economy look like in practice? On Thursday, August 20, we're convening with Emma Coley Fitzgerald and Bert Fitzgerald to envision an alternative attention economy: not the industrial-scale monetization of human eyeballs, but the structures of mutual care that undergird "a society where it is easier to be good."
As co-founders of the Simone Weil House, Emma and Bert built an initiative called Living Communion that helps local communities in Portland, Oregon to self-organize their own zero-interest micro-credit unions. Simone Weil House also hosts the Second World kiosk in the center of the Village Commons free exchange area, allowing the “heart” of their neighborhood to have the function and feel of a heart - not profit but free recirculation, not transaction but sharing. Their project, which sits in the anarchist Catholic Worker tradition, is one of many projects throughout history that imagine alternative modes of social and economic organization beyond market mechanisms.
Join us to explore these worldbuilding efforts in theory and in practice!