COMMONS MAGAZINE
A group of commoners who participated in Interdisciplinary political salons of the Heinrich B?ll Foundation in Germany in 2008 and 2009 have collectively authored a terrific new manifesto and statement about the commons.
If market culture sees us as a mass of disconnected individuals, each without a history or enduring affiliations, the commons sees us as interdependent social creatures. It is refreshing to see this perspective affirmed in such a rich, detailed way by a new book, Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter?But Really Do (W.W. Norton), by Melina Blau and Karen L. Fingerman.
Here in the United States, we’ve recently celebrated Thanksgiving and Hannukah and are looking forward to Christmas, all of which are times when families gather together (parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, close friends) for food, festivity and kinship. It’s the one time of the year when American domesticity expands beyond the narrow circle of the nuclear family of mom, dad and the kids??“when we take a step in the direction of commoning.
This review was originally published in “Vermont Commons: Voices of Independence” news journal at http://www.vtcommons.org.
It’s too late for anyone to pretend that the U.S. government, whether under President Barack Obama or anyone else, can divert our nation from long-term economic decline. The U.S. is increasingly in a state of political, economic, and moral paralysis, caught as it were between the “rock” of protracted recession and the “hard place” of terminal government debt.
As U.S. climate legislation creeps forward, Senators now have two frameworks to choose from. One is from Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); the other is from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). Both begin with descending carbon caps that, along with supplementary policies, promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at roughly the same rate, and both protect domestic industries by imposing fees on carbon-intensive imports from countries that don’t limit emissions.
The commons is a theme just below the surface of everything that happens at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen. Even if it’s not often mentioned.
And a key topic under discussion during the deliberations in Copenhagen— environmental service payment programs— will be important to the people living in the closest connection to a commons-based way of life: indigenous people and rural communities in the developing world. . What’s the fair way to compensate indigenous and rural communities for their important role in stabilizing the climate?
I recently learned of a remarkable speech that Alain Lipietz — a French engineer, economist, politician, and a member of the French Green Party — gave at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, on January 27, 2009.
By Tom O’Connell
I am a veteran of the 1960’s New Left. I helped organize demonstrations in Minnesota against the Indochinese war and participated in small-scale efforts to build a new society from the ground up: communal living, free schools, community controlled neighborhood development.
It’s still early on a cold March morning that threatens rain, yet Rome’s Piazza Navona teems with life. Young men deliver boxfuls of wine, vegetables, San Pellegrino and other provisions to cafes that ring this famous square, as groggy cooks throw back their first espresso of the day. Early-bird tourists, pointing cameras in every direction, document the square and its famous fountain for folks back home.
If commons are to take root and grow in our society, at the local, national and international levels, what might that mean for the future of the nation-state, multilateral institutions and public policy? These are big, complex questions that need to be asked. We need to re-imagine governance in profound ways, not just in terms of local or digital commons, but also with respect to new roles for nation-states and new types of multilateral governance systems.
Global warming is such an alarming subject — and so complicated as a political and policy issue — that many people just avoid it. Fortunately, Annie Leonard, who produced the celebrated educational video, The Story of Stuff, has come out with a brilliant new video, The Story of Cap & Trade. It’s a highly accessible account of how the “cap and trade” system for controlling carbon emissions is deeply flawed as a solution for global warming.
Do humans have a natural propensity to form commons? That is certainly one way to interpret recent findings by scientists studying the innate behaviors of babies. It turns out that very young children show a natural willingness to help other out and cooperate.
A sweeping international treaty to regulate how knowledge and creativity may flow on the Internet is now being negotiated. Haven’t heard of it? Funny thing, that’s exactly what the backers of the treaty want. The film, music, publishing and information industries don’t want a public debate about the issues or an open debate in Congress. So they have been working hand-in-glove with the U.S. Trade Representative to move U.S. policymaking offshore and throw a dark cloak of secrecy around everything.
It’s not so unusual to see water stories topping the news these days. Even when that news is very bad, that’s very good news indeed. The stories are frequently troubling; they should be. Climate change is increasing the ferocity of floods and droughts and water privatization is drowning our democracy. But it’s about time that the seamy details of how we manage our water commons see the light of day.
After seeing a famous painting by François Milet, Les Graneuses (“The Gleaners”), of a group of women stooped over picking up leftover stalks of wheat, French documentary film maker Agnès Varda began to wonder about modern-day gleaners — the people who scavenge their food from the scraps that our modern industrial society discards as waste. She wondered about trash in our modern times: “Who finds a use for it? How? Can one live on the leftovers of others?”
This time of year offers another example of how the commons is weaved into our collective imagination as a nation: Thanksgiving. I consider it one of America’s best ideas—a harvest feast celebrating the bounty of our land and indigenous food traditions, which evokes the rich communal culture of Native Americans as well as the community-centered life of New England settlers. (This acknowledgment of Native Americans, usually whitewashed out of U.S. history, might serve an opportunity for us to affirm their treaty rights and cultural self-determination. But I understand how Native Americans might feel less excited than me about the holiday.)
As the world attention converges on Copenhagen climate summit, a little-mentioned issue is the proper role of patents in encouraging the development of emissions-free energy technologies. Large tech companies like to claim that they need broad patents to encourage their investment in innovative new technologies. And they are poised to make a fortune off of selling patent licenses for new “green technologies” designed to abate carbon emissions.
Could Professor Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize for Economics betoken a shift in development policies used in Africa? Korir Sing’Oei, an international human rights lawyer with a focus on indigenous and minority rights law and policy, believes Ostrom’s Nobel could have a significant impact on Africa’s poor.
A huge international coalition has come together to campaign for respect for the civil rights of citizens and artists in the digital era. Yesterday, the Charter of the Culture Forum of Barcelona for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge was released by more than 100 representatives from 20 different countries who had met in Barcelona from October 30 to November 1. The Charter is a landmark statement about rights of commoners to freedom of expression, access to culture and knowledge, privacy, cyber-security and Net Neutrality, among other concerns.
A century ago, in 1905, there were more than 6,500 distinct varieties of apples to eat, reports Verlyn Klinkenborg in the New York Times. People had their own favorite apples when it came to cooking and eating. They would use different ones for making pies, cider and apple sauce. They could choose from an exotic array of apples with names like Scollop Gillyflower, Red Winter Pearmain, Kansas Keeper.