Commons

From “New Economy” To Cooperative Commonwealth

August 10, 2014 John De Graaf, www.truthout.org Create! Commons, Cooperatives, Finance and the Economy

At the same time, the term commonwealth is as American as Massachusetts, Kentucky, Pennsylvania or Virginia, all of which call themselves commonwealths. It conveys the sense of things we hold in common, including our precious natural resources, offering a broader vision for ideas like Peter Barnes' guaranteed national income supplement from taxes on fossil fuels. Adding to its usefulness, the idea of the Cooperative Commonwealth fits nicely with the emphasis on building new producer and consumer cooperatives in the United States, an effort Gar Alperovitz and colleagues have been promoting in Cleveland and other cities, with the success and scope of the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain as an example.

The Internet As A Public Commons

July 22, 2014 Jay Walljasper, www.onthecommons.org Educate! Commons, Internet, Public ownership

For cities that persevere the rewards can be very great. Muni broadband in tiny Kutztown, Pennsylvania saved the community an estimated $2 million in its first few years, a result of lower rates by the muni network and reduced prices charged by the incumbent cable company in response to competitive pressure. In 2004 Governor Ed Rendell gave Kutztown an award for its network. Shortly thereafter, to his lasting shame, he signed a Verizon-sponsored bill ensuring that no other Pennsylvania community could follow in Kutztown’s footsteps. Bristol Virginia (population: 17,000) estimates its network has saved residents and businesses over $10 million. Lafayette, Louisiana estimates savings of over $90 million. The economic development and financial benefits of muni networks have been amply catalogued by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and its Community Broadband Initiative.

The Ecology Of Change

July 17, 2014 Helene Finidori, www.heathwoodpress.com Create! Commons, Ecology, Philosophy

We hear and talk a lot today about building new systems to replace our broken one. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This statement, attributed to the brilliant inventor Buckminster Fuller, is often invoked. Many tend to understand this passage as an invitation to place oneself outside of the reality or system they are set to transform, working on the idea or innovation that will change things ‘in one piece’: the killer innovation, model or system, whether technical or ideological – a controllable one preferably – that will save the world or at least a portion of it by providing a viable alternative to opt into, thus opting out of the previous. And so we find, as alternative to the ‘Grand Soir’, visions of the future where man will have domesticated the challenges of nature and society – or which will provide means for a few to physically flee the existing reality (to better protect their own commons?). Along with revolutionaries on barricades, or utopian designs of perfectly ordered societies, one can easily imagine hubristic heroes – billionaires on a mission – unilaterally deploying geo-engineering solutions, once climate change becomes ‘reality’ – or leaving on spaceships to reach less crowded and resource rich galaxies. Hollywood abounds with such anticipations. All are not science fiction. Projects such as colonizing Mars to conquest new resources, or setting up whole mobile cities on oceans outside of the perimeter of any sovereign jurisdiction, are being designed and funded. But how about the legions who don’t or won’t have the power and means (resources, skills, courage, opportunity, etc.) to opt into the new, or out of the old?

Movements Of 2011: From Occupation To Reconstruction

July 1, 2014 Nathan Schneider, www.america.aljazeera.com Create! Commons, Cooperatives, Mass Movement, Occupy, Organizing, Politics

Ever since I wrote a book about Occupy Wall Street, I’ve often found myself being asked, “What happened to Occupy, anyway?” Now, more than two years since the movement faded from the headlines and in the wake of French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling diagnosis of economic inequality, the urgency of the question is mounting, not diminishing. The answer is also becoming clearer: The networks of activists that formed in the midst of 2011’s worldwide wave of protest are developing into efforts to create durable economic and political experiments. Rather than focusing on opposing an unjust system, they’re testing ways to replace it with something new. The 2011 movements were always prefigurative in some respects. From Tahrir Square in Cairo to Zuccotti Park in New York, protesters eschewed formal leadership in order to practice direct democracy, a means of revealing just how false our societies’ claims to being democratic have become. They built little utopias that provided free food, libraries, music, religious services and classes, trying to put on display what they thought a good society should look like. The 2011 movements also reflected the emergence of a global community that spans borders as protesters in different countries borrowed strategies and slogans from one another.

Will Detroit’s Water Be Privatized Or Recognized As Commons?

June 30, 2014 Halima Cassells, www.shareable.net Educate! Commons, Detroit, Privatization, Water

When it comes to a person’s fundamental needs being met - nothing is more basic and human, than to share. Right now the people of Detroit are being attacked by an unelected regime that represents the interests of the banks and large corporations. Their latest campaign has been to turn residents’ water off. Approximately 300,000 people shut off from water, because this makes sense in their corporate model. Detroiters sharing with neighbors hits all-time high. Water is life. We are all 85% water. Water is a Human Right. Happening right now in Detroit, next to the Great Lakes (25% of the fresh water for the world), under the guise of bankruptcy; residents are being targeted and pushed out of their homes and subjected to unreasonable rate hikes, in a bid to ultimately privatize Detroit’s water. "We are not saying that the services of running water should be free, we are saying it should be affordable and accessible by all, and we have put forth the Water Affordability Plan to that end, which was approved by our city council," says Priscilla Dziubek, of the Peoples Water Board.

FCC Internet Proposal: The Contemporary Pillage Of The Commons

June 30, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.truth-out.org Educate! Commons, FCC, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

Seething below the surface of citizens' outrage at the FCC proposal to create a tiered, pay-to-play internet structure lays a story people know so well, it could be encoded in our DNA. The rich and powerful are stealing the commons of the people. Comcast, Verizon and other telecom giants are the new Lairds of the Highlands, the Marie Antoinettes, the Robber Barons of the 1890s. The Commons are no longer large tracks of land or public grazing grounds or local self-governance - those have already been stolen. The Commons under assault is the internet. As with every achievement of humanity, individual sectors of the populace try to take credit and ownership of the internet, saying, "I created this" or "I provide the infrastructure for your access." This is akin to saying, "I built the Empire State Building" instead of "thousands of hardworking, impoverished Americans poured the concrete and scaled the steel trusses; countless educators and inventors passed the knowledge of engineering to the designers; and the banks financed the construction with funds from war profiteering that was made on the bloodshed of millions."

We Need A New Kind Of Open Cooperative

June 17, 2014 Michael Bauwens, www.p2pfoundation.net Create! Commons, Cooperatives, P2P

“The cooperative movement and cooperative enterprises are in the midst of a revival, even as some of their long-standing entities are failing. This revival is part of an ebb and flow of cooperativism, that is strongly linked to the ebb and flow of the mainstream capitalist economy. After systemic crisis such as the one in 2008, many people look at alternatives. Yet, we can’t simply look at the older models and revive them, we have to take into account the new possibilities and requirements of our epoch, and especially of the affordances that digital networks are bringing to us. Here are a few ideas from the ‘peer to peer’ perspective, as we develop them in the context of the Peer to Peer Foundation. First, let’s start with a critique of the older cooperative models: Yes coops are more democratic than their capitalist counterparts based on wage-dependency and internal hierarchy. But cooperatives that work in the capitalist marketplace tend to gradually take over competitive mentalities, and even if they would not, they work for their own members, not the common good.

Overcoming The Shock Doctrine

June 14, 2014 Soy Publica, www.guerrillatranslation.com Strategize! Capitalism, Commons, Latin America, Privatization, Strategize

Lately, we’ve been talking about the techniques of manipulation used by the government and mass media, regarding the privatization of public education, and all public benefits. In these first months of legislature, the better part of this manipulation has been aimed at rendering us into a state of shock, after which, intimidated and paralyzed, we would not react against the losses of rights brutally imposed on us. The measures, announcements and declarations of the autonomic and central governments are meted out to us day by day, gradually, like a poisonous drip of constant anxiety. Relentlessly, the media – in some cases, better to say “propagandists” – continues their tireless preaching, like a disheartening echo of bad news from on high (from the council of ministers or the rating agencies). Naomi Klein explains in her book, “The Shock Doctrine”, how neo-liberalism, unable to convince people by means of argument (since these neo-liberal measures are essentially anti-people), has only been able to impose itself via coups d’etat, declarations of war, situations of catastrophic natural disaster, or other traumatic phenomena, leaving the public in the grip of anxiety and fear.

Let The Albany Bulb Be Free!

May 7, 2014 Tatiana Makovkin, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Arts, Commons, Creative Resistance, Homelessness

The Albany Bulb is an overgrown landfill on the Western edge of the East Bay, in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The Bulb” juts into the SF Bay, surrounded on 3 sides by water. It is a green growing wildland of naturalized plants, animals and people. And it’s an organically created citizens’ gallery of outsider art featuring giant sculptural forms and colorfully painted concrete and rocks. Friends of mine have lived there, in handmade huts built from recycled materials. They were Food Not Bombs activists, musicians, and people who sought an alternative to the inhumanity of capitalist society. Now the East Bay Regional Park district (EBRPD) is moving in to sanitize the area. Residents are being harassed and evicted, art is being removed and trees cut down. Many activists and artists have lived storied lives that embue us with appreciation for the fringe-places, the edge-dwellers, the communities that thrive among the ruins and the refuse, society’s throw-away treasures. We love to find these “diamonds in the rough”, and we work and polish until the beauty shines.

Cities Are Saving Internet By Making It A Public Utility

April 27, 2014 David Morris, www.alternet.org Create! Commons, Internet Freedom

With the announcement by the FCC that cable and telephone companies will be allowed to prioritize access to their customers, only one option remains that can guarantee an open Internet: owning the means of distribution. Thankfully an agency exists for this: local government. Owning the means of distribution is a traditional function of local government. We call our roads and bridges and water and sewer pipe networks public infrastructure for a reason. In the 19th century, local and state governments concluded that the transportation of people and goods was so essential to a modern economy that the key distribution system must be publicly owned. In the 21st century the transportation of information is equally essential.

Bundy Ranch Protest Consistent With Corporate Power

April 20, 2014 Jaisal Noor, www.therealnews.com Educate! Commons, Food and Agriculture

Cliven Bundy is a thief, a man who has stolen $1 million from you and from me, from the United States government, which, at the end of the day, is us. You know, he has been through the courts, going all the way back to '96. He has refused to pay any of these fees that every other rancher in America must pay. And so, you know, it's nothing but highway robbery. You know, so I think that's the bottom line. Bundy we certainly did not know before this standoff developed, but he has clearly adopted some very radical ideas from the extreme right in this country. He's made statements that essentially endorse the idea of county supremacy--the county rules, the federal government has no legitimate role whatsoever. And, you know, this is a doctrine that began with the Posse Comitatus, violent anti-Semitic and racist groups that really roiled the Midwest in the late '70s and 1980s. The people who are joining him are, as you mentioned in the introduction, militiamen. They are coming from radical right-wing groups all over the country, bringing their weapons, bringing their camouflage fatigues, and bringing their hatred of the government.

Internet Doesn’t Create Movements, Is A Tool

April 20, 2014 Sarah Jaffe, www.inthesetimes.com Strategize! Commons, Finance and the Economy, Internet Freedom

In her new book, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, out now from Metropolitan Books, Astra Taylor takes on both the techno-utopians and the techno-skeptics, reminding us that the Internet was created by the society we live in and thus is more likely to reflect its problems than transcend them. She delves into questions of labor, culture and, especially, money, reminding us who profits from our supposedly free products. She builds a strong case that in order to understand the problems and potentials of technology, we have to look critically at the market-based society that produced it. Old power dynamics don't just fade away, she points out—they have to be destroyed. That will require political action, struggle, and a vision of how we want the Internet (and the rest of our society) to be. I spoke with Taylor about culture, creativity, the possibility of nationalizing Facebook and more.

The Commons As A Rising Alternative To State And Market

April 14, 2014 David Bollier, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Capitalism, Commons

Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, brings welcome new attention to the commons just as it begins to explode in countless new directions. His book focuses on one of the most significant vectors of commons-based innovation -- the Internet and digital technologies -- and documents how the incremental costs of nearly everything is rapidly diminishing, often to zero. Rifkin explored the sweeping implications of this trend in an excerpt from his book and points to the "eclipse of capitalism" in the decades ahead. But it's worth noting that the commons is not just an Internet phenomenon or a matter of economics. The commons lies at the heart of a major cultural and social shift now underway. People's attitudes about corporate property rights and neoliberal capitalism are changing as cooperative endeavors -- on digital networks and elsewhere -- become more feasible and attractive. This can be seen in the proliferation of hackerspaces and Fablabs, in the growth of alternative currencies, in many land trusts and cooperatives, and in seed-sharing collectives and countless natural resource commons.

Time is Running Out To Save The Post Office

November 9, 2013 David Morris, www.commondreams.org Resist! Commons, Government, Post Office

In July 2011 the United States Postal Service (USPS) management announced it would rapidly close 3600 local post offices and eventually as many as 15,000. And shutter half the nation’s mail processing centers. A frenzy of grassroots activity erupted as citizens in hundreds of towns mobilized to save a treasured institution that plays a key and sometimes a defining role in their communities. Only when Congress appeared ready to impose a six month moratorium on closures and consolidations that December did USPS management agree to a voluntarily moratorium of the same length. That moratorium ended in May 2012. Rather than proceed with closings, management embraced a devilishly clever new strategy.

‘Defending Future Commons: The Gezi Experience’

October 21, 2013 Ozan Karaman, www.antipodefoundation.org Educate! Commons, Police abuse, Türkiye

The 2013 uprising in Turkey commenced with a call by a handful of activists to guard a park located adjacent to Taksim Square – the most centrally-located public square in Istanbul – from the Istanbul Municipality’s bulldozers. As a part of the redevelopment plan for the whole square, the PM Erdoğan and the Istanbul mayor had repeatedly informed the public of their decision to redevelop Gezi Park into a building complex, to contain a parking garage, museum, shopping mall, and high-end housing. The demolition team arrived on the night of May 27, but was not able to proceed thanks to the resistance of the activists on guard, some of whom lay in front of the bulldozers. The following day the bulldozers were accompanied by a substantial police force, which brutally quashed the protestors through extensive use of tear gas and brute force. A small portion of the Gezi Park was demolished that day.

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