1st in a series of pamphlets on the new Stewards way for poor people:
The Stewards Corporation: A New Way For Poor And Working People To Work Together
 
 

S-haring the wealth. T-totally developing ourselves. E-cologically Caring For the Earth. W-orking together in all things. A-cceptatance of one another. R-endering creativity, inquiry, and learning part of our lives D-esigning and building a future together. S-ocial technology to empower our lives and work.

The Stewards Six Step Program  for Understanding and Transforming your life:

1.  I accepted that I was a poor  person, or at best a stressed-out  working person,
and that alone I had little power to change this condition.

2. I saw that I had been an `isolate', wandering and struggling alone in the darkness of the marketplace.

3. I saw that I was part of a vast planet-wide `underclass' of working and non-working poor people,
who are in fact the majority of humankind.

4.  I recognized that the water, air, land, and living beings of the planet are also being poisoned
and are dying as a result of the current economic culture.

5.  I saw that it is by working together, and not remaining as isolates of the marketplace, that
we can transform our condition.

6. I decided to work together with other poor people as a steward, as one who cares for
other people and the earth.
 

Want to change your life?  Contact us now…discover the new world of Stewardship…where working and non-working poor people are welcome…and where we work together to meet one another’s needs and to care for the planet.
Email us.

THE FOUR STEWARDS  PRACTICES

 1.  The total human development of each individual steward.  This practice involves working together - in a disciplined but
experimental manner - to utilize specific methods which promote full development of our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual,
social, and ecological powers.

2. The building of the roles, relationships, and systems through which we work together as a Stewards Corporation.
This practice involves `building a future together' by collaboratively agreeing on and gradually developing the  rights, responsibilities,
and systems - including material, communication, informational, and other systems - through which we can work together on a
long-term basis to produce and share the means to meet both our basic material and higher level needs, and through which we
can `hear and see and know one another', and care for one another and the planet.
 
 

3. Connecting ourselves as stewards to the knowledge, resources, and potentialities of the planet and its people as a whole.
 This practice involves deployment of information technologies, and of the skills of inquiry, creativity, learning, and openness, in order to
learn from one another and from the  other people and cultures of the world, and in order to access positive possibilities and new
developments on the planet.

4. Organizing the planetary underclass as the stewards of the world.  This practice involves doing all in our power to support
the planetary underclass, and each national underclass, in struggling for greater rights, including greater freedom, democracy, and equality,
as well as greater poor people's economic and property rights, and in assisting underclass people in becoming conscious stewards
and caretakers of one another and the planet.

RECLAIMING THE POWER TO BUILD A FUTURE TOGETHER.

Through the Stewards Corporation, of which we ourselves are the owners, workers, and managers, we reclaim the power which we had previously given to business corporations.  In this new kind of corporation, we directly combine our labour-power, our power of creation and of work, so as to:  produce and share the goods, services, and conditions necessary to meet our needs; develop all our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social powers; and care for one another and the planet.  In so doing, we humbly strive to serve as  an organized `vanguard', an advanced or leading force, of the planetary underclass of poor people, whose interests we seek to represent in the struggle for planetary stewardship.   You can learn more about the Stewards Corporation community system by reading the short book `The Stewards Corporation: A System For Total Human Development’ at our website at www.oocities.org/ericsommer .

As working or non-working poor people, we frequently experience internalized shame as a result of the negativity and stigma which have been projected onto us.  To avoid feeling badly about ourselves, we may consequently be in a state of denial regarding our status as poor people.  Such denial causes an internal split within our being, because in not accepting poverty as part of our current condition, we have rejected part of who and what we currently are.  Denial also prevents us from recognizing our commonality with other poor people, and defeats our solidarity and our attempts to work together.

Coming to the full knowledge that we are poor, we begin to realize that this poverty is nothing to be ashamed of; it simply makes us part of the planet-wide `underclass' of working and non-working poor people, who are in fact the majority of humankind.  Healing the inner `social wound' we have each sustained as poor people, and externally working together to care for one another and the planet, begin the moment we `come out to one another as poor people'.

If this has been your life, Stewardship is a means to change your life:

"I saw that I had been an `isolate', wandering and struggling alone in the darkness of the marketplace."

I saw, that is, that we had each been fundamentally isolated, whether or not we had money or friends, by an economic culture which had forced us to struggle alone.

Jobs', if I could get them, were for the most part both stressful and unstable, and in many cases meaningless, low-paying, and temporary.

Welfare and pension payments, if these were available to me, were so small as to be almost impossible to live on.

The personal relationships available to me had been weak and flimsy.  They had involved `friends', `acquaintances', and even `relatives' with whom I shared little deep communication; no long-term commitment to work together or care for one another; and had in fact involved little more than a  `here today and gone tomorrow' basis.

Isolated struggle, social misery, poverty, stress, and inability to `build a future together', had been the real result of living our lives through the economic culture.

If you want to complain about these conditions in your life, you can go to the café and talk to others who also dislike them.

If you want to protest these conditions, and it is often important to protest, you can go to demonstrations.

But if you want to change these conditions, and really try something new, come to the Stewards.

The Stewards: Poor People Working Together to Care for one Another and the Earth.
 

A wealth of material on our Stewards work, and on our poor people’s Stewards Corporations, is available from the contents page at our website at www.oocities.org/ericsommer/contents .  Additional pamphlets in this series will also be available; just ask any Steward, or any `friend of the Stewards’, for copies.  The article `The Stewards Corporation' is an especially important starting place for any poor person seeking to change his.her life.  Please also feel free to get in touch with us to learn more about Stewardship, or to explore the possiblities for yourself becoming a Steward.  We are a `new world’ in which poor people are welcome and valued, and in which we are moving towards working together to directly produce and share what we need and to care for the planet.  In all the world, there is nothing else like a steward.  Please get in touch with  us.  You’ll be glad you did.

“We work together in all things.”
“Now there is another way!”

WEBSITE: www.oocities.org/ericsommer
EMAIL: ericsommer@yahoo.com or book20@yahoo.com
 

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