COMMONS MAGAZINE
The tremendous and widespread growth of the commons movement over the last year is testimony to the resonance of this ancient concept as a fresh solution to 21st century problems: dire environmental threats, widening economic inequity, out of control corporate power along with increasing privatization and eradication of the public sphere.
After being acclaimed as America’s best city for biking, what can you possibly do for an encore?
Well, in the case of Minneapolis, you do even more bicycling—and more walking too.
People here biked and walked 16 percent more in 2011 than in 2010, when Minneapolis was crowned “#1 Bike City”:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2011/1114/Lessons-from-America-s-surprising-No.-1-bike-town by Bicycling magazine. The same is true for St. Paul and some inner ring suburbs.
This is the giving season and we Americans are prodigious givers. Nearly two thirds of us donate to charities each year. This year we will send more than $225 billion to charities.
The soul of this country has always been nurtured by people more interested in freedom than in regular baths: revolutionaries, pioneers, cowboys, Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman all lived in sweat and dirt.
Yet in mainstream media I see a sentiment expressed time and time again: the Occupy movement and other challengers to economic order would be great if it wasn’t just a bunch of dirty hippies.
Homegrown Minneapolis:
Foundational Document for the Creation of the Minneapolis Food Council.
Adopted by the City of Minneapolis, Fall 2011
The Homegrown Minneapolis Local Food Entity Working Group researched, convened a multi-faceted public process, and worked with a design team to envision phase three of Homegrown Minneapolis. The central question for the group was how a leadership entity such as a Minneapolis Food Council could be structured to foster a thriving connection to and standing in the community and be sustained long-term.
The Detroit People’s Water Board (DPWB) isn’t waiting for someone else to solve Detroit’s water problems. This community coalition is taking an out-front role on everything from fighting water shutoffs and privatization schemes to helping create a watershed plan for the region.
On November 2nd nearly 70 students walked out of an introductory economics class at Harvard in solidarity with the Occupy movement. The mainstream media largely ignored the protest. That’s regrettable since the economics profession has provided the intellectual framework and justification for the inequality and centralization of corporate power the Occupiers are challenging.
On November 2nd nearly 70 students walked out of an introductory economics class at Harvard in solidarity with the Occupy movement. The mainstream media largely ignored the protest. That’s regrettable since the economics profession has provided the intellectual framework and justification for the inequality and centralization of corporate power the Occupiers are challenging.
It was two years before the first Earth Day in 1970 when Garrett Hardin penned the famous essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” and it fit a certain bleak and despairing mood of the time. Paul Ehrlich had just published The Population Bomb, a Malthusian account of a world overwhelmed by sheer numbers of people. Against the backdrop of that gloom, Hardin’s theory came as another dose of bad news, “proving” that we also had no hope of controlling our appetite for natural re¬sources. Because no one owned the oceans or the atmosphere, we would inevitably fish and pollute them into oblivion.
It was two years before the first Earth Day in 1970 when Garrett Hardin penned the famous essay “The Tragedy of the Commons,” and it fit a certain bleak and despairing mood of the time. Paul Eh¬rlich had just published The Population Bomb, a Malthusian account of a world overwhelmed by sheer numbers of people. Against the backdrop of that gloom, Har¬din’s theory came as another dose of bad news, “proving” that we also had no hope of controlling our appetite for natural re¬sources. Because no one owned the oceans or the atmosphere, we would inevitably fish and pollute them into oblivion.
Homegrown Minneapolis:
Foundational Document for the Creation of the Minneapolis Food Council.
Adopted by the City of Minneapolis, Fall 2011
The Homegrown Minneapolis Local Food Entity Working Group researched, convened a multi-faceted public process, and worked with a design team to envision phase three of Homegrown Minneapolis. The central question for the group was how a leadership entity such as a Minneapolis Food Council could be structured to foster a thriving connection to and standing in the community and be sustained long-term.
POP QUIZ: Who said each of the following?
1. The USA is in serious danger of becoming “a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.”
2. “Corporations are people, my friend.”
3. “What I’m talking about is the order of deportation, the sequence of deportation. It is almost impossible to move 11 million illegal immigrants overnight. You do it in steps.”
If you guessed, in this order: 1. Newt Gingrich; 2. Mitt Romney; and 3. Michelle Bachmann, you are right. (From MoveOn.Org, YouTube, the Nation, and the Washington Post.)
The Need for a Game Changing Strategy
Preface
A few of the most beloved commons in our lives are not actually commons— at least not technically. They are privately-run enterprises that nonetheless function as common gathering spots which loyal customers feel belong to them.
Here is some straight talk about the need for increasing taxes on the wealthy from the great-grandson of Oscar Meyer (yes, that Oscar Meyer), who admits he was born into the one percent.
The Occupy movement has done something amazing, getting Americans to start questioning our economic divides. It’s created spaces for people to come together, voice their discontents and dreams, creatively challenge destructive greed. It’s created powerful political theater, engaged community, and an alternative to silence and powerlessness.
You may already be a commoner…
1. If you question the prevailing myth that all problems have private, individualized solutions.
2. If you notice how many of life’s pleasures exist outside the money economy—gardening, fishing, conversing, playing music, playing ball, making love, watching sunsets.
3. If you take time to appreciate and enjoy what the commons offers. (As the visionary Brazilian educator Paulo Freire once declared, “We are bigger than our schedules.”)
Recent headlines chronicle police busting up Occupy encampments in New York, Los Angeles and Oakland. But the movement has spread so far and wide that it can’t be shut down that easily. Two nights ago on a chilly night in Grand Rapids, with the wind howling off of nearby Lake Michigan, I sat down to talk with the young activists of Occupy Grand Rapids, camping out on the plaza of a downtown church.
The commons is an old value that’s resurfacing as a fresh approach to twenty-first-century crises such as escalating economic inequality, looming ecological disruption and worsening social alienation.
Since 2001, On the Commons has sparked collaborations, showcased commons-based solutions at the community and national level, developed approaches for how to share our commons equitably, and inspired commons activists to make a difference in their communities, and the world.
On the Commons is currently involved in a variety of efforts to advance the commons movement. Our work includes:
Organizing commons convergences and meetings with local commoners in communities across the country, as well as connecting commoners to one another to grow our movement.