Welcome to No Boss News, conceived last summer in Chicago at the Active Resistance (AR) radical organizing conference. The idea was developed by a focus group that met for several days on "Co-ops, Collectives and Alternative Economics." I (Andrew) volunteered to produce at least the first issue, and back in December I put out No Boss News Number Zero (NBN#O) as an announcement to the world that this project existed.Welcome to No Boss News, conceived last summer in Chicago at the Active Resistance (AR) radical organizing conference. The idea was developed by a focus group that met for several days on "Co-ops, Collectives and Alternative Economics." I (Andrew) volunteered to produce at least the first issue, and back in December I put out No Boss News Number Zero (NBN#O) as an announcement to the world that this project existed.
I got a lot of response, including enough contributions to break even on the printing and distribution of NBN#O. Special thanks for their generosity to Sunshine Propane of Port Hadlock WA, and to Mifflin Street Food Co-op of Madison, WI for their generosity. And thank you to everyone else who sent me support, financial or otherwise. This issue is a lot larger, so I will probably have to do some fund-raising; so here's another reminder that donations are welcome Please send all correspondence to the address on the front cover, or email to amcl@iww.org. Checks should be made out to Andrew McLeod. I would love to keep sending this to everyone I know, but after this issue I will only be sending out copies to worker collectives and those who have written back to me at least once.
The past few months have been very interesting for me, which was a huge distraction from NBN. This distraction took two major forms: The first was simple financial reality. After months of traveling between Sacramento and my various projects in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had to get a job, and that turned out to be more interesting than I had planned. I will expand on that experience later in this issue.
The second part of my little drama was a heavy bout of questioning what am I doing, what is the point of even trying to save the world from itself, and how can cooperative business be revolutionary? This began (not coincidentally) at the conference Building a Community of Resistance (BCR), which took place in San Francisco this spring. Ironically, a conference that, like this paper, was inspired by AR, almost killed this project. I'll spare everyone the details, because this isn't supposed to be a platform for my soul-searching. In any case, BCR was more than just an orgy of cynicism, and here is a more general summary:
Building a Community of Resistance a description of the conference
A Lesson in Revolution from the Man your trusty editor takes a stab at investigative journalism, going undercover at Borders
What's Next for No Boss News? self-explanatory
Selected Resources a brief list, soon to be eclipsed by the links section of the website
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