Commons

Barcelona’s Struggle To Create The City As A Commons

December 22, 2016 David Bollier, www.shareable.net Create!, Strategize! Barcelona, Commons, Spain

By David Bollier for Shareable - On a visit to Barcelona last week, I learned a great deal about the city’s pioneering role in developing "the city as a commons." I also learned that crystallizing a new commons paradigm -- even in a city committed to cooperatives and open digital networks -- comes with many gnarly complexities. The Barcelona city government is led by former housing activist Ada Colau, who was elected mayor in May 2015. She is a leader of the movement that became the political party Barcelona En Comú (“Barcelona in Common”). Once in office, Colau halted the expansion of new hotels, a brave effort to prevent “economic development” (i.e., tourism) from hollowing out the city’s lively, diverse neighborhoods.

Newsletter: Billionaires Fear Revolt As People Power Grows

June 14, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Arctic drilling, Austerity, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Commons, fast track, HIV/AIDS, indigenous, Inequality, Movement of Movements, Seattle, Solidarity, TISA, TPP

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. Last week there was a populist revolt from across the political spectrum. Congress received tens of thousands of phone calls every day from people who are clear which side they are on: they want people and planet before profits; they want an open, transparent democracy not a secretive oligarchy. The campaign to stop Fast Track for corporate trade agreements like the TPP is a clarifying moment. It is democracy vs. oligarchs making decisions for us. It is transparency vs. secret law. It is the people vs. big business. It is a mobilized people vs. big money. These are the issues that unite people into a movement of movements. These are conflicts that let us know who is on the side of the people.

Reimagining Our Collective Powers Against Austerity

June 7, 2015 Max Haiven, www.roarmag.org Create! Colonialism, Commons, Human Rights, Neoliberalism

By Max Haiven in Roarmag. You ask about the utility and power of claiming a “right to the commons,” and how that might inform the circuit of struggles we are today encountering in Canada, where I live. I think the answer here depends on how you imagine “rights.” Is a right something granted by a state or sovereign, or is it something that emerges more organically from communities as they struggle? I think the latter is true. And so then how can we speak of a “right” to the commons? I think we cannot imagine that this right will ever be “granted” to us by those in economic and political power. In the end, the ideal of the commons (horizontalist, grassroots democracy, sustainable reciprocity, community-level decision-making and radical autonomy) is completely antithetical to the state-form and the Eurocentric regime of sovereignty that has, to date, been the “container” of “rights” as we are accustomed to imagining them.

The Big Shift Needed To Protect Earth: Restore The Commons

April 23, 2015 Jay Walljasper, www.alternet.org Create! Commons, Earth, Environment

The focus for most people’s dreams would be the familiar places they love—neighborhoods, cities, suburbs, villages and countryside. Think what could happen if we declared these places commons, which belong to all of us and need to be improved for future generations. Citizens would stand up, lock arms with their neighbors and demand new political and economic directions for our society. They would open discussions with business leaders, government officials, scientists and design professionals on how to create resilient, equitable, greener communities. But the conversation wouldn’t stop there. We’d plan for less carbon and waste and poverty, but also for more fun and joy and conviviality—which are equally strategic goals.

For Earth Day, A Commons Dream

April 18, 2015 Jay Walljasper, www.alternet.org Organize! Climate Change, Commons, Environment, Inequality

At a time when ecological destruction is more dire than ever, the work of protecting the planet depends on dreamers just as much as of scientists, activists, public officials and business leaders. Earth Day, when millions of people voice support for environmental causes, is the perfect time to recognize this. While it’s critical to wrestle power away from those who believe that corporate profits are all that matter, we won’t achieve a sustainable, just future without serious attention to imagining a different kind of world. That’s why it’s great to see artists playing an increasingly active role in the climate justice movement today. What bold blueprints for a green planet will arise if we unleash the full power of our idealism and ingenuity?

Newsletter: Changing Our Story

March 28, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Austerity, Commons, militarism, Neoliberalism, Oil and Gas, TPP

Alnoor Ladha and Martin Kirk of The Rules write in "Capitalism is Just a Story and Other Dangerous Thoughts" that our system of neo-liberal capitalism is one story that is told about the way the world works. In this story, natural resources are turned into commodities so they can be monetized. As in the feudal age, the wealthy few are taking more and more, cutting the rest of us off from the treasures we once shared and expanding the wealth divide so that more of us become 'serfs'. 1neofeudalLadha and Kirk go on to say, "our only absolute limitation is our collective imagination, expressed through our will to change the mythologies that hold this house of cards together." For once we see neo-liberalism and its related "isms" of colonialism, imperialism and racism for what they are and what they do, we are closer to being free of their grip and creating a new story.

Uniting To Save Our Post Office

March 24, 2015 Staff, www.apwu.org Resist! Commons, Corporatism, Post Office, Privatization

In the face of aggressive attacks, a wide range of national organizations have come together to create A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service. These organizations are united in the demand that the public good must not be sacrificed for the sake of private investment and profit. A strong public Postal Service is our democratic right. The Alliance is fighting to protect and enhance vibrant public postal services now – and for many generations to come. The launch of A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service featured the debut of a 2-minute video, “Our Postal Service,” featuring actor-activist Danny Glover. For Glover, it’s personal. In the video, he recounts what the Postal Service has meant to his family and many others.

Justice Must Flow: Economic Democracy & The Water Commons

March 13, 2015 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com Educate! Commons, Economic Democracy, Water

A game you could play with this article would be to substitute the word “air” every time you read “water.” Commodification of water seems silly enough in the abstract. Now in the throes of artificial scarcity, U.S. cities, counties and states are running out of water even as they turn control over managing water supplies to private corporations. At the beginning of February, as chronicled by Victoria Collier, New Jersey authorized the fast-track sale and leasing of water utilities to private corporations “without public notice, comment, or approval.” As I write this, more communities in New Jersey are “studying water privatization, while the city council of Columbia, South Carolina is resisting business interests’ pressure to privatize water there as well.

Sour Grapes In ‘Wine Country’: Challenges To Wineries Erupt

March 5, 2015 Shepherd Bliss, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Commodification, Commons, Corporatism, Food and Agriculture

Fortunately, many grape-growers and smaller wineries continue to follow regulations and not over-build. They are a credit to agricultural and rural communities. On the other hand, a prominent banker, Chinese developer, and two large Napa County wineries are opposite examples that have generated mounting concerns, especially from Sonoma County’s rural residents who feel invaded. Retired Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill, of what has been the world’s largest bank, bought a winery and moved here part-time from New York City in 2012. He purchased a Sonoma State University (SSU) honorary doctorate by giving a $12 million dollar gift, with strings attached. Part of SSU’s elite Green Music Center was also re-named after him. This was the first time SSU gave an honorary degree in return for such financial benefits, rather than for academic achievement.

Changing The World Without Taking Power

October 26, 2014 David Bollier, www.blog.p2pfoundation.net Create! Capitalism, Commons, Neoliberalism, Revolution

John Holloway, a sociology professor in Mexico, recently gave an interview with Roar magazine suggesting how to introduce a new social and economic logic in the face of the mighty machine of neoliberal capitalism. Holloway’s idea, recapitulating themes from his previous book and 2002 thesis, is to build “cracks” in the system in which people can relate to each other and meet their needs in non-market ways: “We have to keep building cracks and finding ways of recognizing them, strengthening them, expanding them, connecting them; seeking confluence, or preferably, the commoning of cracks.” This strategic approach has immediate appeal to commoners, it seems to me — even though some engagement with state power is surely necessary at some point. Below, Holloway’s interview with by Amador Fernández-Savater. It was translated by Richard Mac Duinnsleibhe and edited by Arianne Sved of Guerrilla Translation.

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