The Youngstown Commons

What is Force? — Force is a Polite Word for Violence
https://beneicher.substack.com/p/what-is-force

https://beneicher.substack.com/p/mode-iii-force-as-suppression-when

Mode III: Force as Suppression — When Management Gives Way to Concentrated Force “The sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”

Introducing the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act

https://youtu.be/VN4b4UCWMKI?si=fXPIYpTowjStajK3

Introducing the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act I will soon be introducing a bill to give the public a 50% ownershi...

When the CEO has to answer the phone

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer Case Brief Summary | Law Case Explained

https://youtu.be/HgtajpNvN4M?si=QyPNANN9yfLvM1Xc

The Shoestring Press
Proof that a working-class media house can be built with little money, a skeleton crew and serious purpose.

The Youngstown Commons began as an answer to a question: what would a working-class press look like if ordinary people had the tools to build one?

For the past year, this page has been an experiment in civic education, local commentary, visual culture, public memory and working-class political literacy. It grew out of a larger project on Theft, Fraud and Force, and specifically centered around the concept of the commons. It was never meant to be a permanent house for content. It was meant to prove that another kind of public classroom was possible.

In many ways, I think it has done that.

But proof of concept is not the same as permanent pace. I am nearing the end of a long writing season and I am thinking carefully about what this project becomes next. The Commons has always been built with human direction, research, writing, editing, design and judgment. AI has been one tool in that process, not a substitute for it. It helped make possible what would otherwise require a staff, a studio, a design department and institutional funding.

That is part of why the current AI debates matter to me. I see independent creators being attacked for using tools that institutions are already integrating quietly into power: hiring, healthcare, insurance, finance, policing, advertising and platform visibility. I am not interested in defending every use of AI but I am interested in asking who gets condemned for using it, who gets paid for using it and who gets to hide it inside systems that govern people’s lives.

But I am also not interested in spending most of my time fighting bad-faith comment wars.The Commons certainly welcomes disagreement but it does not exist to be a cage match for people who refuse to engage in the actual arguments. Very few have put forth serious argumentation, most flail like little whining children who refuse to engage in mature dialectic.

So I am entering a period of reflection about the next phase. The work will continue but the form may change. The pace may change. The energy may shift toward essays, print, video, archives and projects that can sustain the work materially instead of draining it emotionally. That will probably be the website and an app as a permanent and more aesthetically organized home for the Commons.

This page was built to show what could be possible.
The next questions are: what is worth building from here and how will it be built.

DYK? When Quitting was a Crime
The Master and Servant Acts


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The Mechanism of Domination

Joseph Proudhon