Declaration of Intent to Exist

Dear citizens and guests of the city of Oakland,

As the 5 thousand year Baktun draws to a close and we enter a new cycle of evolution as foretold by ancestral Mayan cosmology, it is an immensely auspicious time for the foundation of open and collaborative creative spaces where residents of urban landscapes may help each other engineer solutions to the challenges of modern life and contribute beauty, ingenuity and enthusiasm to the realms of science, art and social organization. With networked communication and information technologies resurrecting ancient ethics of cooperation, the potential for individual and community empowerment is increasing dramatically. Makerspaces, hackerspaces, open schools, open labs and other such DIY initiatives serve to transform that potential into productivity, problem-solving and action by bringing together the tools and the passions of those who seek to help each other, their communities and the planet.

We are Sudo Room (that’s s-u-d-o room), an unincorporated association of technologists, scientists, lawyers, artists, and community activists, and Sudo Room will bring this spirit of the networked age to Oakland by fostering citizen science, collaborative art, hardware hacking, social entrepreneurship and many other facets of the DIY (Do-It-youself) maker movement.

We hope you will visit us at Sudoroom.org, join our mailing list at hackerspaces.org, or ‘follow’ us on your favorite social media platform. We are drafting our documents publicly on our wiki. We’ve agreed on a process by which to establish ourselves with a minimum threshold compact, and we’re renting this space you see behind us as our first. We’ve so far held several successful events and are now having a presence at Art Murmur. We meet here at 7pm on Mondays.

Our next step is to “officially exist”, which is tough without a Tax ID. This “recognized existence” is necessary to engage in any financial or legal activities, such as having a bank account. We have found a bank which will permit us to open an account based merely upon the intention of existing, which, however, must be proclaimed and witnessed for it to be considered a true and authentic goal of existence.

Therefore, it is with great reverence and inspiration that we have gathered here before the press, amidst these murmurations of local artists and art lovers, to engage willfully in the word magic of civil by-laws, codes, ordinances and regulations. For it is only through the sacred scripts and mantras of Legalese that an entity can achieve the noble and privileged status of ‘being.’ To enjoy this lavish luxury of ‘isness,’ certain specific rituals and agreements must be carried out, such as sealing contracts with the mysterious temples of power we call ‘banks’ to manifest an ethereal corral of currency known as a ‘bank account.’ However, this bank-ordained birth into the club of actuality can not be consecrated without first performing a specific, mystical incantation. Before the Lords of By-Laws and Banking grant us that precious gift of existence, the will to exist must first be summoned and invoked. Through the very act of vocalizing this powerful, magical spell, the Sudo Room will take its first step towards joining this blooming, buzzing confusion we call reality.

Henceforth, let it be known that on this, the 7th tone of Ahau and Blue Lunar Hand in the calendar of the Maya, the third day of the month of August, 2012, in the calendar of Pope Gregory, Unix time stamp 1344049200, We, the Sudo Room, do hereby declare our rightful and lawful Intent to Exist. With this intent we shall steadfastly seek to establish and make known our actuality, factuality and reality, as acknowledged by the IRS, the State and all the gods that prevail over this sacred land of Oak.

In celebration of our official existence, we are also gathered here to answer a question asked on our sudo-nymous etherpad space as to: “How many hackers can you fit in a Sudo Room?”

We will now try to answer that question by asking our crowd here about who is interested in joining us and filling up these 100 sq. feet– and please announce your name or “sudo-name” on your way in. The first 50 people will also get a ticket to see Ghostbusters next door at the Paramount in about an hour.

Thank you.