Bring on the resilience crowd!

Workspaces Resilient Cities Challenge
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I learned to use the word “resilience” in Edgeryders – we had a whole campaign in the original exercise. I think it’s fair to say that the most cutting edge people in the European resilience crowd are either in the community or one phone call away from someone that is. I mean, we are the unMonastery people: it does not get more resilient than that, right?

Well, it turns out that the Rockefeller Foundation is launching an initiative called Resilient Cities. Here’s how it works:

  1. Cities that want to be resilient applies to the initiative. The application happens by a letter from the mayor, or the most senior decision maker if there is no mayor. The deadline for applying is September 23rd.
  2. The Foundation selects a hundred cities worldwide among the applicants.
  3. The chosen cities commit to developing a resilience plan; to appoint a Resilience Officer; and to play an active role in the network of the hundred resilient cities. The Foundation helps with funding both the plan and the Resilience Officer's salary. They have allocated $100 million to the whole initiative.

I propose Edgeryders partners up with some willing European city to apply. After all, we are (also) a consultancy company now, and this kind of consultancy is right up your street. And personally I would love to see one or more of us become resilience officers! It must be the coolest job title ever. I already pitched this to Matera (my post, in Italian).

Matera makes sense, since it is the seat of the first unMonastery, and resilience is one of the themes of the city’s application to European City of Culture 2019; also, I like it a lot. But we should not wait around. Edgeryders LBG is up for doing the heavy lifting of preparing the applications, making sure competent people in the resilience space are lined up behind the city’s proposal and that, in general, the application is a strong one. We are easily among the most credible teams in Europe that can do that – because we can involve you, hiring the experts on resilience among you to deliver.

So, I encourage entrepreneurial edgeryders who care about resilience to get in touch with cities they have a good relationship with and pitch the idea to them. If you need a corporate shell, you are welcome to use ours. If you find a client, we’ll back you up, on a first come-first served basis; we’ll hire you as project manager and we can move forward.

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Sounds tempting

I really hope at least some Edgeryders take a shot at this. I’m looking for a regulations document on the initiative’s website to foresee how much involvement they actually need from the public municipalities. As i understand it, they are the ones that will be in charge to put forward a resilience plan and allocate the money, with a lot of consultancy and expertise from the resilience officer.

In practice, at least in my town, i can’t imagine who knows about resilience. There is definitely room for this, because the few who probably do can or should be able to run the show by themselves…

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i can’t imagine who knows about resilience

LOL

Yes. Resilience is usually the task of a team that works like an insect’s eye: fractions of expertise in actionables. Plus civil protection, as resilience is usually reactive. The most proactive imaginable is municipal plans… to react better next time.

We ERs have some experience between us, not sure how much. From Vinay, Jay and myself there’s ResilienceMaps.org and tinyurl.org/fluscim and pemusantacruz.com Descargas #13 (this is me mingling with my very own local level, ongoing, yay!) and, more recently, stacktivism.org.

Not easy internet for tbe next two weeks. Can do email.

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Just the man :slight_smile:

[LucasG], do stay in touch. I am certainly going to give this thing a stab.

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cant find tinyurl.org/fluscim

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silly me

It is tinyurl.COM/fluscim == plescamac.com then click on Documentos (or something like that, blue folder on the right)

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direct link

http://www.plescamac.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=89&Itemid=499 (as my phone browser doesn’t give me the blue folder on the right)

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The Rockefeller Foundation???

The C.I.A, Neo-Eugenics based population control via vaccines, drug cartels, biotech funding, dirty lobby-groups…this list goes on and on…have you examined the details of this ‘Foundation’…it has an agenda, and in taking its money and doing its work you are furthering that agenda.

‘Tempting’ is a good word Noemi. As for taking a ‘stab’ I’m reminded of hotel California…definitely no way to ‘kill the beast’.

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Links?

Hello [Eimhin],

can you share a link or two? These are pretty serious allegations you make, and I would like to give it some thinking.

That said, I am quite confident in our ability to use resources we come across to further the community’s agenda. Many people here are quite the experts on resilience, and will not be easily led by the nose; plus, one of the benefits of openness is that everybody that does not like what we do can step in and contribute to a correction; finally, there are too many of us to be all bought out. Chances are we can do a good job; if not, we’ll walk away. No big deal.

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Linkage:

Re the resilience approach:http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/media/download/1439f964-b2a2-4829-8c78-4264a7151212

If you read this throughout you'll notice it starts simply enough, relatively inoffensive, but into the middle their involvement-by-interest sows itself with articles and citations from CEOs of Coca-Cola, the World Food Program and Dow chemicals on how support of resilience will serve their own resilience strategies. My point here is: Do we want to serve the resilience strategies of these kinds of forces? (e.g read about the WFP alliance with Kenya during the 2011 crisis there...in 2012 40% of agricultural produce in Kenya was refused by exporters for failing to comply with 'cosmetic standards' and was subsequently 'destroyed'. These are realities that cannot be ignored. These people claim foodscarcity and the need for measures such as biotech to overcome these difficulties and yet the difficulties are being caused by their own outlandish policies...I dont care for the shape of a carrot, this surface treatment is essential to the lack of depth these people experience...a lack of understanding reminicent of letting folk eat cake.

Re: Vaccines-

"OpenLMIS was formed by VillageReach, JSI, and PATH with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation in part to help countries strengthen their logistics systems by providing a global commons for sharing tools, experience, and best practices. OpenLMIS presents an opportunity to rapidly move this work forward if work on common solutions can be easily shared as public goods for any country to have access to. The confluence of recent leadership changes and learning in multiple countries combined with the call by donors and stakeholders to improve the delivery of vaccines, pharmaceuticals, health commodities,"
 
http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/news/publications/case-developing-deploying-open-source
 
http://www.openlmis.org/
  • built in Ruby
  • started 3 years ago, last updated 10 months ago

https://github.com/villagereach/openLMIS/blob/master/sample/en.yml - vaccinations as the ONLY example

 
Bill Gates Wants Depopulation Through Vaccines and Health Care
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=a155d113455fac882a3290536575c723
 
"Many groups have contributed to the concepts and approaches reflected in this paper. The World Health Organization and its collaborating partnerships—especially the Health Metrics Network and Project Optimize, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—have played an invaluable role. The Rockefeller Foundation has provided essential catalytic funding to energize and accelerate initiatives spanning global as well as country-specific efforts. Other organizations that have contributed technical knowledge, experience, and resources include the Public Health Informatics Institute, VillageReach, Partners in Health, Jembi, John Snow Inc., Management Sciences for Health, United Nations Children’s Fund, Pan American Health Organization, US Agency for International Development, and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Special credit must be given for the leadership and courage of ministries of health and their implementing partners, especially in Albania, Cambodia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Peru, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Vietnam, and Zambia." 
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More on the Rockefellers

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation

So the green revolution, biotech, the CIA, the federal reserve…

We are not shared value holders. If I am to be a member of this community it is not to have a harness thrown on me, along with a thousand or so other well-meaning folks I call friends, by those who would ‘ride’ us for their own thrist of power, dominion and gain.

Dragons bite, and there be words of flame!

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Debate?

Really, is no-one going to debate this? Is there anyone actually here at all??? C’mon…so what are the sides of the debate?


Position 1: Rockelfeller Foundation is an arm of a world dominant strategy on behalf of ill will, power, dominance and control and we should not work with these folk, or work toward any kind of shared strategy with them.


Position 2: While the Rockefeller Foundation are a bunch of (see above) the ER community here have a chance to work in such a way as to promote awareness as to the actual position of such organizations while furthering the cause of people and the planet.


Ok, lets go 

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Not convinced

I respect the doubts advanced by [Eimhin] in the above comments, but I don’t buy in at this stage. By reading the resilience brochure you linked and browsing the RF’s website, I learned what follows:

  1. once you factor out the obligatory hype and corporate BS about Coca-Cola being resilient, the resilience PDF is actually not bad. I especially liked the Akiba Mahinami Trust story (building financial institutions to purchase land on which Nairobi slums are built, to secure the rights of slum dwellers to their homes and, consequently, enable them to plan. This is fully consistent with Stewart Brand's and others work I admire on cities); and the oral rehydration therapy in Bangladesh (again, makes sense with what we know non-monetary benefits of addressing the health concerns of poor people who are not on the helath care services market).
  2. of course, any donor will paint an optimistic picture of their grants' destiny; but the RF seems to have funded some unsexy (but useful) work, like malaria campaigns (also in Italy!) or AIDS research in Africa. Some very respectable scientists have been recipient of RF grants. The list incudes Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon and John McCarthy for computer science; Alfred Kinsey for health (the Kinsey reports were funded by the RF, apparently); and Jane Jacobs for city planning. Jacobs even served as a regular advisor to the RF on city planning issues. You can hardly accuse people like these of wearing harnesses.

Furthermore, there are three factors that make me think an application to the Resilient Cities programme is quite safe.

  1. It is not worse than where we come from. I have a lot of respect for the Council of Europe. But yes, it is a large corporate intergovernmental organizations; and yes, it is run by diplomats, and, the job of diplomats is to watch the back of governments, not of people. Good work gets done at CoE, including, I like to think, Edgeryders, but it has to be constantly negotiated with the people who foot the bills.
  2. I trust the Edgeryders community. I think the combination of a fairly progressive mayor, the more hardcore members of the community and a million dollars might lead to many outcomes. Some would be great, most would be interesting. And some would be bad, because that's life. But in general we would probably run rings around everybody in the room – if only because there are many more of us than there are of them, whoever "them" is.
  3. It's an application process, not signing a blank cheque. This means we would write an application in which we spell a resilience project we can stand for. If the application is successful, we get to implement what we have proposed – and so, unless we are complete idiots, forward what you call our values, or at least some shared goals. If the RF does not like what we envision, it will simply reject the application and we can all move on. Where is the risk, exactly?

A final note of warning: we pride ourselves on a lot of diversity in Edgeryders. Diversity means we will usually disagree. For example, you list biotech in a list of bad things. I do not think this makes sense. What biotech? Prosthetics? Genetic engineering? I like genetic engineering. Vinay likes fracking. We both have our reasons for these positions, which might make for a good dinner conversation at some point. I don’t see any point in trying to eradicate these differences among the people I hang out with (I would not succees anyway). I recommend focusiing on goals we can achieve together, rather than on potentially divisive values.

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kinda abstaining

Hi Eimhin,

Thanks for pointing out vast material to read, I read through and I cant say I’m suprised that the Rockefellers control big chunks of the Federal Reserve. This simple fact is enough to generate controversy and attach a lot of responsibility for a lot of bad things. It’s a lot like the stories you hear about bad guys ruling the world… the few.  About the Rockefeller funding programmes that in their turn make a contribution to the national health systems in Tanzania and Zambia, I dont really understand where do you point out there’s harm done. But then again, I’d  have to read more in connection to supply chains, but it’s a difficult reading right now.

However I don’t think this is about blame, since like Alberto writes a lot of people feeling cosy and doing good things within the RF umbrella deserve recognition. I also thought about the Council of Europe, which is an organisation many would blame for not being fully accountable of tax money spent, programmes with little impact or what not, yet it’s not a building or one guy behind it, it’s a sum of people and diverse interests, many times conflicting. And I also don’t think we should never take advantage of a good opportunity with potentially good results just because there is mixed association with some bad and not-so-bad things. But i get you, unfortunately every choice we make is political. And in this case you never know how your immediate personal action can affect change. maybe you can affect more positive change if you put a resource to good use than if you boycott it.

PS I’m not holding on to any strong opinion, just felt i needed to let you know you’ve been read.

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Stepping out:

I’m stepping out of the way so this debate can continue without my bogging it down. I really hope the community engage this one as Alberto has cited a few very very sticky points there that a lot of people will have a lot to say about. Please speak up.

Before stepping out though I would like to draw attention to the difference between two types of agency among two types of agent. There are human agents, and there are non-human agents. There is the motivational agency and the intentional agency. A human can be motivated, acting in such a way that their activity is not necessarily rationalized, preconceived, evaluated, or focally directed. They do what they do because they ‘are passionate’, or perhaps they ‘know its the right thing to do’.

Intentional agency applies to non-humans as well as humans. A computer program can be intentional in that it acts according to programmatic criteria, it intends results, having goals, and planned processes to achieve those goals. Business plans are intentional, and human beings initially ‘motivated’ can also pass through hybridization and can become wholly intentional agents (soldiers, spys, police, investors…).

I am motivated by honesty, truth, and the will to live and lean with life toward these values. I’m aware that the Romans used to kidnap Saxon chiefs and have them

‘sign up’ for Christianity by force, knowing that this would be their saving grace later amidst the inevitability of the Saxon’s eventual overpowering of the Empire. Thus the Holy Roman Empire, the Golden Bull, and the societal evolution of the last 1500 or so years.

Now we are faced with another bull, the Bronze of Wall St. And you are asked not to consider your values, but instead focus on the goal…forget your inherently human motivation, focus, rather, with intent…

The choice will be yours.

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It’s good to be aware of what structures we’re dealing with are, but if we don’t apply and try make some cool stuff using resources which “the arm of a world dominant strategy on behalf of ill will” might hand to us,

then the arm hands it to someone else, and the result might be not as good as one the Edgeryders can achieve. Specially when it comes down to resilience. If we’re going to run away from every structure of domination and ultimate evil, it will be rather difficult to create lovely alternatives to those structures.

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interesting times

Resilient cities, to me, means helping many people who currently live in cities (such as myself and my families) to stay alive thru their next big crises.

If you look at the sheer number and variety of logos in (dare I say it, in the understanding that all interesting work emerges thru lots of conversations,) my tinyurl.com/fluscim, you’d say institutions wrote it. Well, they didn’t. The conversations around my typing hands did it.

And that’s just for a severe pandemic. A risk that everyone in the room, plus the cat, know is fictional cos it won’t happen and we have vaccines. :wink:

Would I give some work towards general city resilience? My answer is an enthusiastic “maybe”. I won’t stop looking into it too soon. I need to know more, and will look into procedures etc as soon as my bandwith goes back to normal. (Writing this inside a smartphone is a PITA.)

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Vote with (metaphorical) feet, as always

Look guys; this is all very theoretical right now. Only a city can apply to be a resilient city. None of us is a mayor, last time I checked. If someone gets enthusiastic enough about the idea, she will approach some mayor. If that blossoms into a possible alliance, then that person (and whoever wants to help her) will sit down and write a road map for a project called “X, City of Resilience On The Edge”. If the project is evil, stupid or hopeless, people will walk away – myself included. If it is good, clever and has hopes of succeeding, people will consider fighting the fight – again, myself included. That’s four ifs so far. Right now, we are arguing on whether to do a project without having one!

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Hahah, good point,  - Edgeryders Ph.D!

Matera seems to be a good choice to me too: interested in new stuff and Edgeryders are already doing stuf there.

  • How cozy are the relationships with administration of Matera, if we do have any? Can we get people from Matera administration to be introduced to the concept of resilience by the most resilience savvy-edgeryders at the same time as LOTE takes place?

Any info on how administration in Matera is interested in resilience, and to which extent they’re familiar with this word?

(If I think of a city I live in: they like new stuff and their buzzword they invested a lot of money in is “sustainability” The city did set up structures to work on it, ordered fridge magnets and mugs with “sustainability” etc. So I imagine that it will take some energy to get them interested in resilience, even though the subject is connected to their favourite area, it means they will need to order new mugs.)

Matera is focusing on culture at the moment because of the contest. Some definitions of culture fit the subject of resilience very well, specially if we’re talking about urban culture.

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resilience, sustainability, and that other notion

Sustainability is getting what you need/want/prefer from what you have, indefinitely.

Resilience is a subset: what you need, from what you have or your allies can give you, in a rush.

I’d go for abundance. See quote in Appropedia.org/Localpedia

Theory, so far. #justsaying