Tonight was another great graphic design meeting. It’s hard to describe the nature of building a local currency and all the labyrinthian and intricate pathways we have had to (and can anticipate having to) explore together. Sometimes it feels like we’re not making progress, but rather talking in circles to ever widening networks. But tonight, we really moved forward. Melissa’s right in saying that we went “one step back, and then three steps forward.” That means we netted two steps! Woo, us!

Now that I’m fully inside of this audited class with David Harvey on Marx’s Capital (vol. 1) I can say that there’s so many winding pathways in both the social history of exchange and also in the politicization of exchange that we fight another battle on these grounds just to experiment with paper money. Are we fighting capitalism? Supporting it? Doing both in alternate strokes so that we’re only engaging in dialectics and not progress? It’s enough to make us throw our arms up in despair. Annie and I are sitting in on this class together, and I we’re determined find way to challenge systems of exchange and not despair of the present conundrum of monetizing our social interaction.

Our next meeting is Tuesday, March 16 at 7:00pm. This will be a System Design Meeting during which we will discuss models for the currency exchange system, strategies for outreach, and practical questions for security and circulation tracking. If you’re interested, please email us. Our meetings are at our headquarters in Greenpoint Brooklyn. Come on down!