Outside the Galway in JP. Photo by Marc W.
Residents in areas such as Jamaica Plain and Brighton may have been pondering the new fliers showing up on utility poles advocating things such as free transit and a ban on yuppies.
They're the work of People for Democratic Revolution, which advocates a revolution (right down to troops turning their guns on their commanders if need be) to turn the US into a massive series of tiny little classless communities where all decisions are made by mutual agreement of members.
This would include the selection of commanders of the militias they would set up to ward off hostile actions by the baser class of people out there
Ed note: They really need to get the UI collective to re-do what is possibly the worst Web site you will see this month; every time you click on a link, you need to remember to scroll way down the page.
A sharing economy is one in which all the people in it mutually agree to work reasonably and to share among themselves the products and services they produce, for free, according to reasonable need or desire, with scarce things rationed according to need in an equitable manner. The local assembly decides what is reasonable, and how scarce things are to be equitably rationed.
In their ideal society, these little communities would occasionally have to work with surrounding communities:
Social and economic and all other kinds of order or coordination on a larger-than-local scale is accomplished by local assemblies sending delegates to meet with delegates from other local assemblies (in what we call non-local assemblies). Non-local assemblies do not write laws; instead they craft proposals that the local assemblies implement or not as they wish. In practice, there is back and forth negotiation between local assemblies and non-local assemblies (i.e., of delegates) in an attempt to arrive at a proposal that is acceptable to enough local assemblies to be actually implemented.
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Comments
So, wait... they're communists?
By Dan Seitz
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:22am
First of all, I'm guessing there is a "person" for "democratic" "revolution."
Secondly, man, come on, if you're a communist, just come out and say it. It's the twenty-first century.
Sounds like they are Anarcho
By Kropotkin
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:57am
Sounds like they are Anarcho-Marxist.
Hi I am a cofounder and we
By Abram Spritzler
Tue, 12/30/2014 - 8:37pm
Hi I am a cofounder and we are anti-marxist. For one, a central gov cannot be truly democratic and the marxist ideology views ordinary people with contempt. as you know you are free to ask any clarifying questions.
Per his "writings."
By bibliotequetress
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 1:17pm
no. He's virulently anti-communist/socialist. Some sort of libertarian collective something something.
(This is from memory, as I don't really want to give them more page clicks. When the flyer first appeared on my street, I checked it out because I was intrigued that meetings had already been held to decide who the revolutionaries had picked to purge from Hyde Square, in the name of Us All, I suppose. As someone who has been priced out of many neighborhoods, including JP, and struggled to move back, I should be on their side, but imperious nonsense is annoying from the left, the right, or the middle.
Given that the prime mover behind this group, if it really is a group, works at MIT, I guess we shouldn't be surprised he immediately & specifically says that doctors & scientists are okay if they play by the rules.)
"Citizens in good standing" was a neat little phrase used by the apartheid government in South Africa during the 50's & 60's as code for people of mixed race who were "white enough." So, ick.
The equivalent of "citizens in good standing"
By anon
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 3:41pm
Is "students in good standing" and appears in almost every school (elementary, middle, high, and university) handbook, regarding the extensions of certain privileges to students (like extracurricular activities, library access, etc.)
I'll forgive him that one, I'd never heard the apartheid usage until now. I thought it was an edu-bureaucrat thing.
How's that working out for
By moxie
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:27am
How's that working out for them so far?
It starts in JP
By bulgingbuick
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:30am
and is headed to....Beacon Hill! Egad!!
Wait, wait...
By whyaduck
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:41am
but what happens to the yuppies?
Soylent Green
By greenmtn1
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 12:31pm
Soylent Green
The more things change,
By anon
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:42am
the more they remain the same.
Purity of Essence
By Markk02474
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:44am
Must be something in the water there.
What year is this?
By anon
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 10:47am
I remember seeing broadsides like those stuck on poles around here back in the late 60s/early 70s. Who are these Johnny-Come-Latelys?
same people
By anon
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 3:08pm
they're just all retired now with nothing better to do.
Public Transportation is free!
By anon
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 11:26am
In certain stations where there are no csa's passengers pour in without paying on the orange lien while transit cops ride bicycles along the southwest corridor.
That's Correct, The Orange Line Is Now Free For Everyone
By Elmer
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 12:52pm
[img]https://elmercatdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014/08...
"We're an autonomous collective"
By MC Slim JB
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 11:27am
"Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here."
"You can't expect to wield executive power..."
By Sally
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 3:27pm
...just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!" God, I'd forgotten how brilliant that was--hooting laughing.
"Strange women lying in ponds. . .
By Nonymouse
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 4:47pm
. . .is no basis for a system of government!"
That is quite possibly my favorite moment in any comedy, ever. It never gets old.
Come and see the violence
By Finn
Mon, 08/04/2014 - 12:38pm
Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!!
I think this guy may actually
By Roslindaler
Mon, 08/04/2014 - 10:24am
I think this guy may actually be proposing an Anarcho-Syndiclist Commune. If this is a joke, it may be the best joke ever.
Gentriciation is Illegal?
By John Costello
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 12:10pm
Great. Then move. It was only after the Sandalistas moved into JP, to use one of the very few funny Howie Carrisms, did the area become unaffordable. No one I knew who grew up in JP still lives there. They had to move out after being priced out of Brookline and the Oberlin / Smith / MassArt / Mount Holyoke vanguard elite started flocking to the then working class enclave because of the cheaper rent than Coolidge Corner.
The same type of people rise up (and let the People For Democratic Revolution lead you) mentality was used on posters and graffiti in Roxbury, the South End, and Symphony back in the mid-80's. That worked out great for the people who used to live there because of the substandard housing and cheap rent. Today those areas, at least Symphony and the South End have wonderful, diverse market rate housing rates, right?
My time machine tells me that 20 years from now the intellectual descendants of the PDR will be posting these same signs in Fields Corner, East Boston, and Chelsea Square protesting the results of the gentrification of these neighborhoods owing to the same economic conditions that exist there now; cheaper rent (so to speak), an influx of small shops, and rising rents in nearby areas forcing the I'm three years out of college with my degree in Mid-19th century German Poetry and sweating rent person to contemplate Taft Street in Dot since they heard there are some cool pho restaurants and its close to the T.
.
#GetJOHNCOSTELLOtoTEACH
By Diamond Kartel
Wed, 08/13/2014 - 4:51pm
#GetJOHNCOSTELLOtoTEACH
Gentrification is American
By SoBoYuppie
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 12:40pm
but..if you want to call it illegal, then everyone should move back to wherever their ancestors came from and leave the land to the Native Americans...
- The Original SoBo Yuppie
"Native" Americans came from someplace else, too.
By Pat Roberts
Wed, 08/06/2014 - 5:17pm
But "Native" Americans came from someplace else, too (across the land bridge from Siberia, back when glaciers had sucked up water so the sea level was lower). If everyone else has to return to where their ancestors came from, the "Native" Americans will have to go back to Siberia, and since they migrated to Siberia from someplace else, maybe they'll have leave Siberia and go back to wherever they migrated from. Maybe we should all go back to the Olduvai Gorge in Africa, since humans seem to have originated there.
"We demand
By Brian Riccio
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 12:41pm
free Netscape Composer for all!!!"
so...a kibbutz
By joelgjr
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 4:06pm
so...a kibbutz
1999 called
By Ari O
Sun, 08/03/2014 - 8:19pm
It wants its web design back.
CREATE YOUR OWN WEBSITE WITH WIX.COM
I think I won't thank you.
Website reads like timecube
By gotdatwmd
Mon, 08/04/2014 - 11:38am
Website reads like timecube.org
No one needs to pay rent!
By Ryan
Mon, 08/04/2014 - 1:24pm
No one is being forced to sell their homes and move. The only people that get priced out of their homes are renters - and that is because landlords are raising rent (and they have every right to raise rent). Are these people claiming that landlords cannot raise rent ever?
And their sign says no one should be forced to move because of economic hardship... So how does that work, exactly? Do the banks have to just ignore missed mortgage payments? Do landlords have to allow people to live in their building for free? This is just silly.
Hi I am a co founder of
By Abram Spritzler
Tue, 12/30/2014 - 8:32pm
Hi I am a co founder of PDRBoston. ask away!
check out their ABOUT US
By stoney brook
Fri, 08/08/2014 - 12:30am
People for Democratic Revolution (PDR) is the name that a handful of us individuals in the Boston, Massachusetts area, in April of 2012, decided to call ourselves--because that is what we are. We are not connected to any other organization and we have no funding except what we take out of our own pockets. One of our members is the editor of a website--newdemocracyworld.org--that has a lot of articles on many topics, many of which some of us like; but that website is not a PDR website and members of PDR may or may not agree with the articles on it. Because newdemocracyworld.org supports what PDR is doing, it features PDR-related articles. Also, because our PDRBoston website has extremely long urls for its documents that can be posted with much shorter urls on the newdemocracyworld.org site, we sometimes give the shorter url for convenience. Additionally, because our PDRBoston website cannot handle very large files, we use the newdemocracyworld.org site for that purpose.
It's like reading the stream of consciousness of a basket of heirloom tomatoes
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