I've posted an open letter to #MayorMamdani's newly created Office of Mass Engagement urging that “mass engagement” mean more than better public-input collection.

The post argues for an open-source, federated civic infrastructure (that expands beyond the narrow social-posting scope much of the #Fediverse still reproduces): locally grounded civic commons for mutual aid, public memory, deliberation, collaboration, accountability, and community self-organization.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/mass-engagement-is-not-mass-intake

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity #CommunitariumProject

This month's newsletter release for paid subscribers is a compilation of the six biggest things we think you need to consider before going off on your homesteading, permacultur-ing, or back-to-the-land-ing dream.

While this might sound corny, we see you. We know that lots of you are disillusioned with the polycrisis and the economic and social institutions we live under and you wish for either sovereignty or an exit from capitalism or just to get out of your day job (or all three). Alternatively, we see those of you who are just trying to figure out how to reduce your own impact while seeking to solve some of the more structural issues, because let's face it: there is a possibility that all we can do is what *we* can do, because we know that the powers-that-be really might not care that we need change.

So we sat down and thought about what mistakes we made, and what mistakes others make, and what it is that people are ultimately looking to do when they try to get into a life like this. The result is useful, we think, and we hope that if you can spare $5 you'll look into it. Any contributions help us with our own sovereignty project, and help us feed others, and help us rewild this section of the Mojave and (we hope) a big enough section to make meaningful microclimate impacts one day.

If you read it, or contribute in any way, or share it, thank you very much. We appreciate you, and you're helping to keep us going.

#RanchoDeLaLibertad #RegenerativeAg #Rewilding #Homesteading #Permaculture #IndigenousOwned #Decolonize #ClimateJustice #ClimateAction #ClimateChange #Polycrisis #FoodProduction #SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://rancholibertad.com/6-things-to-consider-before-you-even-think-about-homesteading/

‘Seeking connection’: the video game where players stopped shooting and started talking

In a post-apocalyptic landscape of cutthroat scavengers, surprisingly peaceful players are opting to team up and open up – a phenomenon that’s intriguing game developers and psychologists alike

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/apr/15/arc-raiders-players-stopped-shooting-started-talking

Left theorizing (and praxis) has mostly failed to incorporate the insights and lived experience of the last 30 years of open-source development, ownership, and distribution—leaving the field largely shaped by a kind of humanist libertarianism: strong in its expression of democratic individualism, weaker on the requirements of coordinated mutualism.

This is disappointing, given that socialism itself developed in part as an attempt to reclaim, organize, and systematize the commons tradition within expanding state societies.

What might come from a deliberate and sustained attempt to bring these traditions together within the federated web—perhaps through a worldwide network within the Fediverse oriented toward global collective solidarity, mutual support, and active resistance?

Would anyone be interested in forming an online community to explore and advance such an effort?

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#TheCommunitariumProject

**Such Interesting Aunties: Queering Care**

*Joel is the only non-parental member of a queer parenting collective; Cody is a trans man who’s been mistaken for his chosen niece and nephew’s dad*

My son Joel is one of the subjects of this Substack post from Lisa Sibbett, who writes **The Auntie Bulletin**, about "practical, everyday kinship".

I'm proud of him: he is working out the practice of what, so far, I have merely theoretically gestured toward:

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://theauntie.substack.com/p/such-interesting-aunties-queering-care?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=nwk0&triedRedirect=true

Many local candidates build campaigns on messaging and fundraising, but some recent successes grow from deeper involvement in community life. A “communitarium”—a community-owned, open-source civic commons—can help residents work together long before elections. It strengthens trust, aligns means with values, and gives political life a place to exist between campaigns.

#TheCommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#UnderstandMamdani

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/preparing-to-run-by-strengthening-the-ground-toward-a-more-embodied-local

Gifting with Integrity: Federated Digital Spaces for Mutual Aid Networks

When friends told me, years ago, about "Buy Nothing" -- a Facebook group that implemented an impressive mutual aid ecology, I was intrigued... but did not follow up...because Facebook.

Now, though, they are undertraking a move to the Fediverse, using @bonfire as their online framework!

#CommunitariumProject
#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

https://bonfirenetworks.org/posts/gifting-with-integrity-federated-digital-spaces-for-mutual-aid-networks/

Do like me, support Framasoft !

PeerTube is crucial in the fight to erode the control of user content by centralized, commercial, exploitive interests.

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

https://soutenir.framasoft.org

Democracy as Practice, Socialism as Counter-Community

If democracy is a practice, then it cannot be sustained by electoral ritual alone. It must be enacted in everyday life, through communities that share power, resources, and meaning.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/democracy-as-practice-socialism-as-counter-community

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity
#CommunitariumProject

Why Redefine Socialism?

#SeizeTheMeansOfCommunity

Classical socialism—especially in its Marxist and state-centered variants—tends to treat sociality as either:

- a derivative of economic conditions, or
- something that will naturally emerge once class antagonisms are resolved.

But our project insists that sociality is not a byproduct—it is the substrate.

https://seizethemeans.communitarium.org/baslow/why-redefine-socialism

#TheCommunitariumProject