🗓 Week of March 30, 2026
📣 Announcement from CIBC
Starting this week, we are fiscally hosted by The Social Change Nest — a UK organization that's distributed over £50M to community groups since 2020. We can now receive funding and contributions through Open Collective.
• Our new page: https://opencollective.com/citizen-infra
Artem built a new tool to manage it:
I've been using Open Collective through the web UI, but lately started accessing more tools via MCPs. Couldn't find an existing MCP server, so I built one: 19 tools covering profiles, projects, tiers, updates, financials, and members.
• Code is open-source: https://github.com/Citizen-Infra/open-collective-mcp
🏛 Democracy & Governance
Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" (1776) — the pamphlet that helped ignite the American Revolution, arguing that "the law is king" and proposing sortition-based governance where colonies would take turns providing the president by lottery. With the US Semiquincentennial — 250 years of independence — arriving on July 4, 2026, it's a fitting moment to revisit. Could we write a "Common Sense in 2026" collectively, as a networked cooperative ecosystem?
• Common Sense (Project Gutenberg) - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/147/147-h/147-h.htm
Citizens' Action for Democracy (CitiDem) — an EU-funded initiative organizing citizen assemblies across eight member states on disinformation, climate justice, migration, and governance. Runs through June 2026.
• Citizens' Action for Democracy - https://citizenstakeover.eu/citidem/
🌐 Protocols & Open Infrastructure
Alex (Devrel at Bluesky) published a post-Atmosphere Conference roadmap: 10 priorities including OIDC login via atproto identities, sustainable developer funding, feed builder docs, and Lexicon web components.
• 10 Things I Want to Work On After the Conference - https://alex-bsky.leaflet.pub/3mihn5pffz22p
La Suite numérique — open-source digital workplace tools (notes, chat, spreadsheets, video) built by the French government's DINUM and ANCT, with collaboration from the Netherlands and Germany. LaSuite.coop is the cooperative version making these same tools available to non-government orgs prioritizing data sovereignty.
• La Suite numérique (GitHub) - https://github.com/suitenumerique
• LaSuite.coop - https://lasuite.coop/
💰 Alternative Economics
Douglas Rushkoff on Crazy Town — why collapse awareness feels isolating, billionaire bunker projects (Prospera, Neom, California Forever), and how explaining real economic systems can make you sound like a conspiracy theorist.
• Crazy Town Episode 121: Being Team Human - https://www.resilience.org/stories/2026-03-25/being-team-human/
Our member @charlief7 on updating ancient models for community living — from the Oxfordshire Community Land Trust to OASA, Europe's first tokenized land trust (a 30-hectare regenerative project in Portugal). Commons-based landholding as "techno feudalism" enters the mainstream.
• Updating Ancient Models for Community Living (Good Standing podcast) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqBr39eNPuo
Valueflows — a vocabulary for coordinating economic activity using REA (Resources, Events, Agents) patterns. Tracks value creation, usage, and transfer across solidarity networks and supply chains.
• Valueflows Core Concepts - https://www.valueflo.ws/introduction/core/
🧠 Thinking & Learning
"Beyond the Noise" — a 6-week workshop (Tuesdays, 14 Apr – 19 May, UK time, £30-120 sliding scale) on disinformation, media literacy, and democratic renewal through People's Assemblies. Led by Paul Thistlethwaite.
• Beyond the Noise - https://thinkingbox.info/beyond-the-noise/
Another CIBC member @yuting_jiang wrote up a Paris workshop where participants played a "Civilization Prototyping Game" — small groups tackling AI's impact on work, ecological crises, and polarization through different philosophical frameworks, generating prototypes in one evening.
• So We Tried To Prototype The Future In One Soirée - https://whtwnd.com/yutingjiang.com/3mht5w6aobw2h