Public Bank LA: “Solutions for Social and Environmental Justice”

Posted on September 11, 2018 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday October 4, 2018

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 7:30 PANEL BEGINS!
6:30-7:30 Please arrive EARLY for NETWORKING and snacks
Followed by Q & A with the members of our Public Bank LA panel & more snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30/10)

COST: $10 (donation for location and snacks)

On November 6th, Los Angeles voters will have the chance to take the next step in making Public Banking a reality by Voting #YesOnB … Charter Amendment B removes a critical hurdle to creating the first Public Bank of Los Angeles. The Public Bank of LA will invest in socially and environmentally responsible projects like Green Energy & Infrastructure, Affordable Housing, Education, Healthcare, and Small Business Loans. Together we will create a new model of ethical banking that puts people and planet over profit and aligns our money with our values.  #PublicBankLA #YesOnB #OurMoneyOurValuesOurBank

The Public Banking movement in Los Angeles has already scored critical victories including divesting Los Angeles from Wells Fargo. Amendment B will begin a process that will ensure our public funds are no longer outsourced to Wall Street Banks to finance such things as Fossil Fuel Projects, Private Prisons, Immigrant Detention Centers, and Military Defense Contractors.  

MEET OUR PANEL:

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution.  A 13th book titled Banking on the People: Democratizing Finance in the Digital Age is due out later this year.  Her work traces the history and evolution of the current private banking system, showing how it usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how the people can take that power back through public banks operating in the public interest.  Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

David Jette is a financial analyst, writer and social finance activist living in Los Angeles with ten years of experience in the tech, real estate, and startup sector. He is the Legislative Director for Public Bank LA.  

Trinity Tran is the Co-Founder of Public Bank LA, and Founder and Lead Organizer for Revolution LA and Divest LA. The Divest LA coalition succeeded in pushing the City of Los Angeles to divest its finances from Wells Fargo Bank, paving the path for the Public Bank LA campaign. Trinity and the Public Bank LA team initiated the California Public Banking Alliance (CPBA), a coalition of grassroots public banking advocacy groups. Trinity is also a Board Member of Urban Partners Los Angeles, a non-profit organization dedicated to uplifting the lives of underprivileged communities in Los Angeles through food and educational resources.

Additional Resources:
New video explaining Public Banking & Charter Amendment B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9I-dgJ_n40
Recent interviews explaining what’s at stake:
https://vimeo.com/285635061
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RCYuY_kayk

 

 

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Film Screening: “PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes”

Posted on May 10, 2018 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday May 31, 2018

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 7:30 SCREENING BEGINS!
6:30-7:30 Please arrive EARLY for NETWORKING and snacks
Followed by Q & A with the filmmaker Holly Mosher, & more snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30/10)

COST: $10 (donation for location and snacks)

FILM SYNOPSIS: Driven to make the world better for his newborn daughter, John Ennis looks for ways out of our system of pay-to-play politics. Along the way, he journeys through high drama on the Ohio campaign trail, uncovers the secret history of the game Monopoly, and explores the underworld of L.A. street art on a humorous odyssey that reveals how much of a difference one person can make. PAY 2 PLAY: Democracy’s High Stakes is a fun guidebook to returning the United States government to its People.

PAY 2 PLAY features Robert Reich, Lawrence Lessig, John Nichols, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Springer, Van Jones, Marianne Williamson, Jack Abramoff, Thom Hartmann, Bob Edgar and more…

Holly Mosher, Producer

Holly Mosher is an award-winning filmmaker who brings socially conscious films to the public. Holly made her directorial debut with her award-winning documentary, Hummingbird, about Brazilian street kids. She produced two films on the pharmaceutical industry: Side Effects, starring Katherine Heigl, and the documentary Money Talks: Profits Before Patient Safety. She co-produced Maybe Baby, and executive produced Vanishing of the Bees, FREE FOR ALL!, and PAY 2 PLAY. The second film she directed, Bonsai People – The Vision of Muhammad Yunus, aired on Public Television.

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Beyond the Blocks: Thrivable Crypto Technology w/ Jean Russell

Posted on March 8, 2018 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday March 22, 2018

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 6:30-7:30 Please arrive early for brief NETWORKING and snacks
7:30 Conversation with COMMUNITY MEMBERS Followed by 
Q & A, snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30)

COST: $10 (donation for location and snacks)

Jean is project lead for the Holo ICO. She has been championing thrivability for a decade with several published books on the topic, the most recent of which describes organizational design and culture. She is bringing her skills and vision to the Holochain project where living system principles are being deeply woven into the design of a distributed computing crypto-platform.
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Holochain apps each use a monotonic Distributed Hash Table (DHT) to share data and enforce validation rules on data published from a user’s signed source chain. Each agent holds their own immutable hash chain and stores a portion of the app’s public data as a node in the DHT. This makes powerful and secure decentralized computing possible on devices as lightweight as mobile phones.
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JEAN RUSSELL:
Jean M. Russell is a culture hacker, facilitator, and writer on a quest to catalyze group productivity. As a founder of the Thrivability movement, Jean works with change agents, innovators, and new economy builders, globally, through the Thrivable Futures Consultancy.
In 2013, Jean published Thrivability: Breaking Through to a World That Works with Triarchy Press. She received an honorable mention on the Enrich List as one of the top 200 people enriching our path to a sustainable future. She is also listed as one of 100 women globally co-creating a P2P Society. In 2010, with 65 inspiring people, she curated, Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch which has been seen by well over 30,000 viewers. She has published articles on organizational design strategies, and her work on thrivability, innovation, philanthropy, and cultural shifts has been highlighted in The Economist, Harvard Business Review, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.
Since 2007, she has been facilitating strategy retreats, conferences, and workshops in North America, Europe, and Australia. She brings to her facilitation a keen understanding of social network analysis, motivation and behavior patterns, group dynamics, and culture change. Jean often custom designs participatory structures for group engagement that evoke play to achieve purpose.
Jean loves hiking to Tennessee Valley Beach for a picnic with some Vinho Verde, crusty rustic bread, and a selection of cheese so she can savor the flavors while watching crepuscular colors shift on sand and water at sunset. ​
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Crypto/Blockchain: What now?

Posted on November 7, 2017 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday November 30, 2017

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 6:30-7:30 Please arrive early for brief NETWORKING and snacks
7:30 Conversation with COMMUNITY MEMBERS Followed by 
Q & A, snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30)

COST: $10 (donation for location and snacks)

Living Economy Salon returns!

SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER: Ed Keebler! (Plus two of our regulars…) This time we will have a deep dive talk with our special guest Ed Keebler, after we begin with two brief speeches from David Lightman and John Hanecek, allowing time for an inclusive group discussion following the talk.
 
ED KEEBLER: Topic: Migrating from the waste of techno-finance anarchy to the next wave of alternative value exchanges frameworks that support real placed based economic development. By learning the lessons, and evaluating the shortcomings, of the current crypto confidence game, we can create the financial democratization that crypto libertarians strive for.
BIO: Edward Keebler is a Partner at Living Economy Advisors (LEA) and Co-Founder of Food Shed Project LLC.
Through his work at LEA, Edward and his team are working to redefine rational action in business, governance and capital markets. Edward has specific interest in accelerating the regenerative economy by supporting disruptors and innovators via a blend of traditional business consulting, market intelligence and resource connectivity.
 
DAVID LIGHTMAN: the founder of the Radical Decentralization group will speak briefly on “Decentralization”
 
JOHN HANECEK: “Thermodynamic economics, optimization and how to war-game an abstract system in a physical world ”
-I want to touch on the fact that solving a crypto hash uses time/space/energy and connect the abstract realm of math to the more tangible realm of physics to help the group make informed decisions about how to pick their systems based on how physically intensive the computations are. Moreover I need to help people understand there are some core themes of physical reality that can be exploited to centralize systems which claim to be distributed. I intend to instill a sense to others of how to look at computer networks as grounded in physical reality so they can use some natural reasoning to make inferences about how they might evolve.
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Crypto/Blockchain: Deeper…

Posted on October 19, 2017 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Wednesday October 25th, 2017

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 6:30-7:30 Please arrive early for brief NETWORKING and snacks
7:30 Conversation with COMMUNITY MEMBERS Followed by Q & A, snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30)

COST: $10 (for location and snacks)

Living Economy Salon returns! …Opening the floor to our community to speak briefly on Crypto/Blockchain, then we’ll break into discussion groups.
Speakers include:

ERIC PETERSON: Blockchain technology is already offering innovative ways to create and manage “decentralized organizations”. In this lightning talk, I’ll review several prominent blockchain governance platforms, and highlight intriguing features and challenges in this emerging model.

JOHN HANACEK: Will speak on how the nature of systemizing value creates a class of people who specializes in gaming the system itself rather than participating in the value it is supposed to represent and how to mitigate that. He will touch on the idea of institutions and the future of banks/insurance/identity protection services as human jobs and what he balance can be in how many people are involved in managing the system and how many people are playing with the system – trying to continue my previous thread but with a little more meat.

HOLLIS DOHERTY: Will speak briefly about bringing the feminine into economics via demurrage, what that means and how it might be implemented in blockchain currency design.
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Crypto/Blockchain, again!

Posted on September 21, 2017 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday September 28, 2017

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 6:30-7:30 Please arrive early for brief NETWORKING and snacks
7:30 Conversation with COMMUNITY MEMBERS Followed by Q & A, snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30)

COST: $10 (for location and snacks)

Living Economy Salon returns! …Last time we only scratched the surface! Opening the floor to our community to speak briefly on Crypto/Blockchain, then we’ll break into discussion groups.
SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED!
 
Our speakers will be the following:
Ray Podder will speak on FYL (Free Your Life) which is the first Free Exchange platform on the blockchain that pools shared resources together to shift business as usual to business as useful for everyone. Founded on valuing people before things, it’s a global consortium of investors, innovators, culture hackers and more co-creating the real story of abundance through an innovative access model that impacts people’s lives right now!
 
David Lightman will give a brief talk explaining why it’s important for people to have a nest egg in crypto-currency because there’s a significant possibility that widespread adoption will likely bring down the conventional banking system within about a decade. He’s a software designer and an expert in crypto-currency, having been involved with the space since 2012.
 
Francis DellaVecchia and Juston Brommel of Paper Lantern will share exciting projects in development with various collaborators around big system changes contemplated through use of the blockchain and tokens. We will discover what some are intending in the realms of renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, governance, intention based human exchange, and more. Think of Paper Lantern as lamplighters, illuminating the path toward the New Economy, one step at at time. Please bring more examples of this new economy that you would like to share and explore.
 
John Hanacek will highlight that in order for market systems to work there must also be non-market governance – aka voting rights/power cannot be for sale if the system is to stay competitive. He will touch on how to evaluate the future evolutionary direction of potential blockchain systems for use in a community based on the balance between the transactional game element and citizenship – the goal being to adopt systems that will resist power-law distributions as default to ensure a middle class in the future by keeping governance open and flexible.
Let’s take the conversation further on cryptocurrencies FTW: For The World
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Crypto/Blockchain FTW: For The World

Posted on July 28, 2017 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday August 10, 2017

LOCATION: The Satellite Flexible Workspace 3110 Main St., Annex Building C 2nd Floor Santa Monica, CA 90405

TIME: 6:30-7:30 Please arrive early for brief NETWORKING and snacks
7:30 Conversation with RAFE FURST Followed by Q & A, snacks and networking! (we will wrap it up by 9:30)

COST: $10 (for location and snacks)

A conversation with Rafe Furst…. “In the same way that the open source movement created new possibilities for collaborative software development, the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are powering open source business development. Ultimately, this could mean the end of traditional corporate structures, the demise of centralized platforms like Google and Facebook, and a radical remaking of business as we know it.”

BIO for RAFE FURST:

Beginning in Silicon Valley in the mid 1990s, Rafe has founded, invested in and advised dozens of startups, including Internet Sports Network, Expert Insight, Full Tilt Poker and Crowdfunder. Along the way, he’s won multiple awards for video production and cancer prevention, and raised millions of dollars for charitable causes.  While at Crowdfunder, Rafe created and managed the first-ever index fund for early stage venture capital. His other fintech innovations include the Personal Investment Contract and various Invest-it-Forward vehicles.

Rafe is currently the Chief Investment Officer at The Crypto Company, the first publicly trading company dedicated entirely to cryptocurrencies and the blockchain as an emerging investable asset class.
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Rafe holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems (Stanford University), M.S. in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence (Stanford University) and a World Series of Poker Championship in Pot Limit Holdem.

To date, Rafe’s companies have generated over $1 Billion in revenue and $450 Million in liquidity to stakeholders.

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SCREENING: “Money and Life” with Katie Teague

Posted on January 6, 2016 by livingeconomysalon

Date: Wednesday January 20th, 2016

LOCATION: Ocean Park Branch of the Santa Monica Library 2601 Main St. Santa Monica 90405

COST: free but donations encouraged

6:30-7:00 Please arrive early for brief NETWORKING and snacks
7:00 Screening of “Money and Life” STARTS PROMPTLY AT 7!
9:00 We must be out by 9pm, Greg will lead the group to a nearby watering hole for a conversation with KATIE TEAGUE the director of the film! 

ABOUT “MONEY AND LIFE”

Money & Life is an inspirational essay-style documentary that asks a provocative question: 
can we see the economic crisis not as a disaster, but as a tremendous opportunity? This cinematic odyssey connects the dots on our current economic pains and offers a new story of money based on an emerging paradigm of planetary well-being that understands all of life as profoundly interconnected. 

Money & Life invites us to meet the challenge of our time: to participate in the great transition to a sustainable, equitable and restorative economy that meets the needs and realities of the 21st century.

ABOUT KATIE TEAGUE (director of the film)

Katie Teague is a bike messenger turned psychotherapist turned visionary artist and award-winning documentary filmmaker. As founder of Storm Cloud Media, her work in the digital media arts is dedicated to telling the emerging story of humanity and bringing inspired transformational media to the social change process. Katie brings years of study in depth psychology, human development and the world’s wisdom traditions to her work as a multi-media mystic.

Katie’s documentary “Money & Life” was voted the best social issue documentary in the 2014 Atlanta Docufest.  Katie is also one of the 2012 Sundance Grantee filmmakers contributing on “99% The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film.”

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“The Resilient Investor: A Plan for Your Life, Not Just Your Money” with Michael Kramer

Posted on April 18, 2015 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Thursday May 7th, 2015

LOCATION: Ocean Park Branch of the Santa Monica Library 2601 Main St. Santa Monica 90405

COST: donations encouraged

6:00-7:00 NETWORKING and SNACKS
7:00-8 PROGRAM
8:00-9:00 more time for networking

DESCRIPTION: Come celebrate the release of longtime sustainability and ethical investment leader Michael Kramer’s new book, The Resilient Investor: A Plan for Your Life, Not Just Your Money (Berrett-Koehler, 2015). The book’s insightful framework expands the definition of investing to include time, energy, and money, engaging one’s personal, tangible, and financial assets in close-to-home, sustainable global economy, and evolutionary strategies that can help people, communities, and the planet thrive in these turbulent times. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

BIO: Michael Kramer is a Managing Partner of Natural Investments, a registered investment advisor with 30 years of expertise in sustainable and responsible investing. Michael has been an NI financial advisor since 2000 and a partner in the firm since 2007. He oversees the NI Social Rating of sustainable and responsible mutual funds, now in its 23rd year, and he coordinates the firm’s shareholder advocacy initiatives. He also serves on the Public Policy Committee of USSIF and writes the Sustainable Shareholder column at GreenBiz.com. A Los Angeles native, Michael has lived in Hawai`i for 15 years, where he has created HI Impact (a sustainable business and impact investing association), the Hawai`i Alliance for a Local Economy, and the Kuleana Green Business Program of the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce.

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Emerging Trends in New Economic Models with Heather Schlegel

Posted on October 28, 2014 by livingeconomysalon

DATE: Wednesday November 5th, 2014

LOCATION: Syrup Loft: 939 Maple Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90015 (Plenty of street parking available)

COST: $10 cash at the door

6:30-7:30 NETWORKING and SNACKS
7:30-9 PROGRAM
9:00-10:00 more time for networking

DESCRIPTION:
Heather will speak about her research into emerging and future economic transaction systems and models. She will cover existing types of alternative and innovative exchange mechanisms that currently exist, and then move us into the frontiers of the future of how humanity might continue to evolve our economic models. We’ll have a lively discussion interacting with the audience and exploring how these economic models might further our common interest in valuing people and planet and not just profit.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Heather Schlegel aka heathervescent
Heather Schlegel is a professional social scientist helping people perceive and capitalize change. Through her company, The Purple Tornado, she consults, speaks and produces design fictions and transmedia futures. Schlegel started in Silicon Valley in 1996 and helped build and launch over 50 Internet products at more than 30 startups.
She is the creative director of The Future of Money TV series, producer and creator of 3 short future films, including “Fly Me to the Moon;” which was nominated for Most Important Futures Award by the Association of Professional Futurists. Her research focuses on the positive visions of the future and solving humanity’s grand challenges.
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