Difference between revisions of "The Omni/Visions"

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add bookstore/collective
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We challenge our members to fully discover and master their senses, sensations, and states of being. Through the Hacker Spa we hope to manifest a community of fully alive and awesomely human beings.
We challenge our members to fully discover and master their senses, sensations, and states of being. Through the Hacker Spa we hope to manifest a community of fully alive and awesomely human beings.
= Bookstore / Cafe =
Our proposal for a café/bookstore at the entrance to the Omni is grounded in a radical vision of public space that we believe would be in harmony with the project.
We would like to build on the long tradition of the café and bookstore as a place for public meeting and discussion. The space would stand in opposition to the current "work station" café and retail heavy  bookstores. We would offer a comfortable, inexpensive alternative.  The café could be used as a meeting place for the various collective but would also be welcoming to people who live and work in the neighborhood. By providing inexpensive food and pastries we would be giving people a place to gather and talk. The café could also provide a center for a free food distribution project.
The bookstore would of stock the types of books that one would associate with a radical store, but would also stock books that, though not necessarily considered "radical", are in the spirit of the collective. We would provide a venue for others in the group, partnering with the public school by hosting readings, workshops and discussions, partnering with AK and the printing collective to issue pamphlets and small-run printings and could  provide a locus for distribution of the writings and ideas that are important to us and to the community.
One important reason for being part of Omni collective, or any collective, is the prospect of breaking with the wage slave system that most of us are forced to work in.  The concept of democracy in the workplace has become a forgotten idea in current capitalist culture. If the Omni collective could provide a place for its members to make a living without bosses and outside traditional capitalist business models we would set an example for the larger community of workers.
=== Larger Collective Vision ===
We cannot wait for the revolution (that may or may not happen) to make (or not make) the world we want to live in. We must make the new world now, in between the paving stones. Today is the only real time that matters. It is today that we suffer and struggle. Our hearts and bodies ache now. The Omni is the making manifest of a different way of being together. It is the concretization of our faith in and love for one another. An anti-capitalist space built on the principle of mutual aid.
The Omni is a Becoming. The Revolution of Everyday Life. The acknowledgement that the building of solidarity, love and respect are ongoing projects that do not end in the streets or at the barricades. We will not turn away from the discomfort, the anger, the frustration, the distress. We will embrace the messiness of tearing down and building anew. We will embrace each other - those who are ready to be embraced - and we will treat those who are not ready with tenderness.
This is not a project which aims to realize the impossible. Rather, the Omni represents a complete perspectival shift which allows us to see the world that has been held hostage - obscured behind the veil of capital.
The Omni will be a space which welcomes all those committed to collectively working to model a way of life outside of the mandates of the Market. It is a reclamation of the Commons. A digging up of the hedgerows. A place where resources are mutually cared for, cultivated and shared.