COMMONS MAGAZINE
“Every now and then in history, the human race takes a collective step forward in its evolution. Such a time is upon us now.”
A commons arises whenever a given community decides that it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability. It is a social form that has long lived in the shadows of our market culture, and now is on the rise.
The City of Chicago has cut bus service throughout the city, leaving many neighborhoods without accessible transit to other parts of the city. More than nine express routes and over 1,000 transit jobs have been slashed. So what do to about it? A resourceful group of Chicagoans is exploring the creation of a worker self-managed, community-controlled transit cooperative to provide bus service along the 31st Street corridor, one of the areas affected by city cutbacks.
The basic strategy of free-market champions is to discredit government and “starve the beast,” in the infamous phrase of Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform — and then to go in for the kill by privatizing the assets that remain. The spoils of our once-great public institutions can then be bought for a song, and private market exploitation can be cast as serving the public good, because desperate institutions will welcome any help that they can get.
It was fender-to-fender traffic recently in parts of Portland, Oregon. But this mass of vehicles did not contribute to global warming or boost America’s levels of obesity. That’s because Portland’s streets were filled with bicycles.
Hed: Bikes Take Over the Streets of Downtown Portland
By Jay Walljasper
It was fender-to-fender traffic last weekend in parts of Portland, Oregon. But this mass of vehicles did not contribute to global warming or boost America’s levels of obesity. That’s because Portland’s streets were filled with bicycles.
Around the globe, people are rediscovering the commons as a way of naming what we want—a vision that extends beyond any one issue, to describe the kinds of relationships between people, resources, and power that foster community resilience, ecological stewardship and democratized decision making. The commons comprise all the forms of wealth we share—social, natural, cultural—as well as the way we take care of them, use them, enhance them and pass them on to future generations.
One of the earliest voices to speak out about the importance of the commons was the Ecologist magazine. In 1993 they published a seminal book Whose Common Future: Reclaiming the Commons (New Society Publishers), which still makes powerful reading about why the commons is important.
Here is a provocative excerpt from the book. — Jay Walljasper
Bring a group of commons advocates together, and the conversation will soon hit on the topic of what is and what is not a commons. Everyone agrees that some things are not commons, but there’s no general consensus on what exactly is.
But one thing I know for sure: When you are in Berlin, potatoes are definitely part of the commons—a big part.
If one thing has become clear since the financial collapse of 2008, it is that some privileged players were abusing the system for their private, competitive advantage. They were, in the language of the commons, free riders. They could milk the system for unfair profits at the expense of everyone else.
The World Social Forum has announced plans to organize a World Commons Day on October 15, 2010. The idea is to encourage all sorts of social movements and organizations at different scales — local, regional, national, international — to host events that provoke reflection and visibility about the commons.
The Boston Common could be going corporate. Really. And with the mayor’s apparent blessing.
For centuries, the storied Boston Common has been at the center of the city’s life, a place where anyone could hang out and find a bit of relief from the bustling city in the park’s green expanses. The Common belongs to everyone. It has been a place for military drills, concerts, political rallies, religious revivals, picnics, Frisbee-throwing and much else.
Ludwig von Beethoven died 183 years ago. So why is his music still locked behind copyrights and not available for free to everyone? Because even if the music itself is in the public domain, the recordings of his music, or perhaps the sheet music (with special arrangements or notation) can be copyrighted by the orchestras that perform the music or the composers who notate it.
Barcelona—once dismissed as an industrial city in a backward country—is now mentioned in the same breath as Paris, London and Rome as a must-see destination for any visitor seeking to experience Europe at its best. What happened?
The city sports gorgeous architecture, both in its charming tangle of medieval streets and later masterpieces by Antonin Gaudi and other geniuses of the late 19th Century Modernisme architectural movement.
There’s a nagging misconception that all significant environmental progress begins in wealthy nations, which then shoulder the noble task of aiding and arm-twisting poor nations to do their share in taking care of the planet.
While it’s true that limited financial resources hinder environmental protection throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia, it’s not at all accurate to paint the developed nations as green and developing ones as a brown splotch of ecological ruination.
As more of daily life moves to the Internet, the political implications of software design become more apparent. A case is point: the Russian government’s practice of seizing computers from various citizen advocacy groups because they allegedly contain “pirated” Microsoft software.
One of the most dramatic seizures of the commons over the past century happened right in our streets. Public roads that once belonged to everyone— kids, old people, the poor— are now are the exclusive property of motorists. This is true even in countries where the majority of the population do not own cars. In a lot of places, crossing the street on foot qualifies as high-risk behavior.
In the early 1980s, Ralph Nader launched a new advocacy group called FANS, Fight to Advance the Nation’s Sports, which aspired to address many of the social ills associated with professional sports. While some of his ideas were arguably misguided, such as trying to ban junk food sales at the ballpark, others were incredibly prescient. One idea was to stop taxpayer subsidies to the mega-stadiums that were being built for big-league baseball and football teams.
I used to enjoy going to my small-town post office, here in Amherst, Massachusetts, because the clerks were so friendly. They would chat amiably with other townspeople, and laugh at small talk, and point with pride at photos of their grandchildren. I never knew any of them personally, but I always enjoyed the folksy tone that they set for the post office.