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Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

696373

Fernando Gapasin's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/fernandogapasin
Bio: I am Fernando E. Gapasin, a Chicano/Pilipino/American, working class, male, age 62, who was born and resides in the U.S.A. I am also a Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO) President, Labor Educator and ... (More)

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My Resoc Interview

By Fernando Gapasin at Nov 09, 2009


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  1. At a public talk someone asks you, "okay, I understand what you reject, but I wonder what you are for? What institutions do you want that you think will be better than what we have, for the economy, polity, gender, race, ecology, or whatever you think is central to have vision for?

What I want is the ability of communities that are historically denied access to power within the U.S. polity to have voice in the allocation of resources and the development of policy.  Massive cultural (structural) changes must occur that are democratic, counter-hegemonic (non-racial [nonhierarchical], nonpaternal, pro-environment, noncorporate run media and anti-capitalist).  The two party system must be broken up and a multi-party system must be developed with each party having equal access to the media.


  1. Next, someone at the same event asks, "Why do you do what you do? That is, you are speaking to us, and I know you write, and maybe you organize, but why do you do it? What do you think it accomplishes? What is your goal for your coming year, or for your next ten years?

My writing and my practice are dedicated to creating social practice that can break down the obstacles to creating a society that allocates resources based on peoples needs.  I am dedicated to the notion of creating effective political organizations that can create and implement working strategies for political and social change (healthcare, housing, nutrition, transportation, employment, education and voice for all).

  1. You are at home and you get an email that says a new organization is trying to form, internationally, federating national chapters, etc. It asks you to join the effort. Can you imagine plausible conditions under which you would say, yes, I will give my energies to making it happen along with the rest of you who are already involved? If so, what are those conditions? Or - do you think instead that regardless of the content of the agenda and make up of the participants, the idea can't be worthy, now, or perhaps ever. If so, why?

If such an organizational effort were dedicated to what I’ve described above and someone like me asked me to join I would probably join in.

  1. Do you think efforts to organize movements, projects, and our own organizations should embody the seeds of the future in the present? If not, why? If yes, can you say what, very roughly, you think some of the implications would be for an organization you would favor?

Yes, the efforts should be the change we wish to create.  I have seen it done in some current organizations, but they lack the scale to be more effective.  In addition to adhering to principles described above these new organizations must be able to facilitate internal disagreements in a way that all concerned understand that their concerns were heard (even if we disagreed with the decision of the majority).  A democratic and transparent decision making apparatus must be in place.

  1. Why did you answer this interview? Why do you think others did not answer it?  

I have the hope and commitment to building an alternative world and will work with others to make that change happen.  Maybe they need results to overcome their inertia.

 

 

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