The Man­i­festo

The log­ic is sim­ple, so we can keep things short and sweet:

Things are in­sane­ly messed up in this world.

Things look re­al­ly, re­al­ly bad.

As cre­atives and cul­tur­al work­ers, we feel it.

Our art gets thrown into the ex­trac­tive so­cial me­dia ether; sapped by me­dia con­glom­er­ates that reach lots of peo­ple, but not with­out forc­ing us to com­pro­mise on our artis­tic in­tegri­ty first; or, if we’re lucky, chan­neled into mem­ber­ship/sub­scrip­tion mod­els that might mean fi­nan­cial suc­cess and sus­te­nance, but not with­out some de­gree of iso­la­tion and a lack of real com­mu­ni­ty with oth­er cre­ators.

It feels like cul­ture is dy­ing, be­ing sucked dry by mega­cor­po­ra­tions and world sys­tems that make it hard­er for us to sur­vive and, as a re­sult, cre­ate.

It feels like we have no more con­trol. It even feels like there isn’t an­oth­er way.

We’re tired. Very tired.

But we’re here.

Whether we want to be or not.

We’re alive.

Even if it feels like we aren’t at times. Even if it feels like we’re dead peo­ple walk­ing. Even if it feels like we’re shells of our for­mer selves.

We’re here.

And there is an­oth­er way…

The odds are against us.

But that doesn’t mean the odds are rel­e­vant…

At the end of the day, all of us have the same two choic­es:

Re­main stag­nant, as­sum­ing that the worst will hap­pen, feel­ing the only oth­er op­tion is to sit still and take lit­tle-to-no ac­tion with naive dreams of things mag­i­cal­ly chang­ing for the bet­ter.

Or…

Ac­tive­ly push for some­thing dif­fer­ent with oth­ers… by do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly.

Very dif­fer­ent­ly.

For 400,000,000 (400M) – the artist col­lec­tive and fed­er­a­tion of work­er co-ops be­hind Jad­ed Fo­rum – “do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly” means:

1. Pro­duc­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing art and events co­op­er­a­tive­ly/de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly (with­out boss­es and share­hold­ers stand­ing over our shoul­ders).
2. Us­ing the re­sources gen­er­at­ed through co­op­er­a­tive/de­mo­c­ra­t­ic pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion to ser­vice hu­mans/cre­atives (via cre­ator sur­vival funds, hous­ing, and more), cre­ation (via art funds, tool-shar­ing, new tech­nol­o­gy, and more), cul­ture, the hu­mans who sup­port cre­ators and events, and the shap­ing of co­op­er­a­tive/de­mo­c­ra­t­ic com­mu­ni­ties all around the world (not just in the arts/en­ter­tain­ment).
3. Not be­ing ab­sorbed (en­sur­ing our in­sti­tu­tions are un­buyable and un­govern­able – this means no sell­ing of our or­ga­ni­za­tions or op­er­a­tions to ex­ploita­tive cor­po­ra­tions, large or small, that are un­in­ter­est­ed in de­moc­ra­tiz­ing and sup­port­ing co­op­er­a­tive la­bor and trans­for­ma­tive world-build­ing as a whole).

The Prin­ci­ples

Co­op­er­a­tive

This means that we work with each oth­er in a hor­i­zon­tal way in­stead of or­ga­niz­ing our­selves un­der ver­ti­cal, cen­tral­ized, and hi­er­ar­chi­cal ex­ploita­tion. As a co­op­er­a­tive net­work, all work­ers in­volved have the op­tion to “own” and/or con­trol 400,000,000 in­sti­tu­tions to­geth­er, in­stead of all op­er­a­tions be­ing dic­tat­ed from above by a few share­hold­ers who are only in­ter­est­ed in a re­turn on in­vest­ments and prof­it.

Di­rect­ly De­mo­c­ra­t­ic

This means that we de­cide things our­selves, don’t be­lieve in hav­ing “rep­re­sen­ta­tives” or “del­e­gates” de­cide all things for us in­side or out­side of our or­ga­ni­za­tions as a de­fault, and in the cas­es where we do wish for peo­ple with­in our or­ga­ni­za­tions to rep­re­sent us on the in­side or the out­side, we have the op­tion of re­call­ing them in­stant­ly if we have an is­sue or change our minds.

Hu­man-Cen­tered

This means that our ul­ti­mate aims and goals are around serv­ing the cul­tur­al la­bor­ers with­in our or­ga­ni­za­tions, their com­mu­ni­ties, and the broad­er sub­cul­tures that they nur­ture (in­stead of prof­it or cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion). There is no get­ting around mon­ey and the broad­er el­e­ments of our glob­al econ­o­my un­der our pre­sent sys­tems, but we choose to nav­i­gate “busi­ness” in a way that pri­or­i­tizes the sur­vival and dig­ni­ty of the hu­mans who make every­thing go.

In­clu­sive

This means that our or­ga­ni­za­tions will ac­count for dy­nam­ics around rep­re­sen­ta­tion, un­der­stand­ing that there are mul­ti­ple, in­ter­con­nect­ed lay­ers of op­pres­sion im­pact­ing dif­fer­ent peo­ple with­in our so­ci­ety in dif­fer­ent ways (along axes of class, race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and more), and that this calls for all of our cre­ative in­sti­tu­tions to have mea­sures in place that en­sure the most dis­en­fran­chised have a say along with every­one else.

Glob­al

This means that we don’t be­lieve bor­ders and na­tion-state bound­aries should lim­it our col­lab­o­ra­tion with cre­atives in oth­er places around the world. We seek to con­tribute to a glob­al me­dia net­work where peo­ple with shared val­ues in dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts can re­in­force each oth­er's ef­forts. The log­ic here is sim­ple: we are stronger to­geth­er.

In­de­pen­dent

This means that we are un­in­ter­est­ed in unit­ing with tra­di­tion­al cap­i­tal­ist firms or gov­ern­ments of any kind (do­mes­tic or for­eign), and seek to build out on our own plat­forms/tech­nolo­gies con­trolled by us + de­signed to serve the com­mons (real-world and dig­i­tal). We un­der­stand that, as a means to sur­vive, mem­bers of our or­ga­ni­za­tions will each have their own par­tic­u­lar re­la­tion­ships with “out­side” in­sti­tu­tions we con­sid­er ex­ploita­tive or op­pres­sive, but the un­der­stand­ing through 400,000,000 net­works is that the spaces we open up will serve as a refuge from the log­ics that de­fine these in­sti­tu­tions and the sta­tus quo, and lend them­selves to sys­tems change.

The Struc­ture

Jad­ed Fo­rum is a show host­ed by artists Z and Yedoye Travis that in­cludes com­mu­ni­ty dis­cus­sion, live per­for­mances, and par­ties. Jad­ed Fo­rum as a show is pro­duced by 400,000,000 Pro­duc­tions, a mul­ti-stake­hold­er co-op with var­i­ous lev­els of mem­ber­ship.

Have a co­op­er­a­tive or col­lec­tive in any of the ar­eas be­low? Reach out, plug in, and let’s fed­er­ate.

• De­sign
• Mu­sic Pro­duc­tion
• Film Pro­duc­tion
• Event Pro­duc­tion
• Game De­vel­op­ment
• Web De­vel­op­ment and De­sign

Re­mem­ber: The le­gal “co-op” des­ig­na­tion does not mean that (1) all co-ops are com­mit­ted to democ­ra­cy in­ter­nal­ly or (2) com­mit­ted to a more de­mo­c­ra­t­ic com­mu­ni­ty and/or world. In ad­di­tion to the qual­i­ty of what groups are bring­ing to our net­work, col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to di­rect democ­ra­cy both in­ter­nal­ly (with­in re­spec­tive groups) and ex­ter­nal­ly (with­in wider com­mu­ni­ties and so­ci­ety) is what we are most con­cerned with.

Notes on Fi­nanc­ing

Through 400,000,000 Pro­duc­tions, we in­tend to gen­er­ate rev­enue through eq­ui­ty crowd­fund­ing paired with live events and par­ties.

Start­up cap­i­tal will be pro­vid­ed by co-op mem­bers with op­tion­al guar­an­tee of re­turn of prin­ci­pal in­vest­ment (no in­ter­est) once the co-op has be­come prof­itable, and we also in­tend to al­low “sup­port­er shares,” which of­fer an­gel in­vestors and/or donors the po­ten­tial for a re­turn of pre­ferred in­ter­est, but no guar­an­tees of a re­turn or vot­ing rights in the gov­er­nance of 400,000,000 co-ops.

We also in­tend to is­sue pa­tron­age div­i­dends for mem­bers of the co-ops once they have be­come prof­itable.

‍