Is It Time to Occupy the Commons?

From Yes Magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/is-it-time-to-occupy-the-commons?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=socmed&utm_content=BradleyA_TimeToOccupyTheCommons&utm_campaign=120302_Occupy

by Alexa Bradley

posted Mar 01, 2012

I am just back from Making Worlds, an Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Forum on the Commons consisting of workshops, presentations and discussions last Thursday through Sunday that explored the intersections of the Occupy movement and growing efforts around the world to reclaim and reinvent our commons.

If ever two emerging movements had synergy and much to offer each other, it is these two. Both the commons movement and Occupy spring from a shared sense of urgency about need for a different path toward the future, given the widespread human suffering and ecological destruction caused by the dominant economic system. The commons movement brings working models for shared resource governance. Occupy represents a highly energetic mass movement that is determined to redefine the politics and possibilities of our times.

As the Occupy movement considers how to expand the influence and energy of last fall’s uprising into the next wave of work, it is looking at strategies for social transformation that combine a commitment to deep democracy, equitable economics, life-sustaining interdependence with the natural world, and a liberatory remaking of social relationships. It is not surprising then that the commons, as both a worldview and practical approach for sharing resources, would provide fertile ground for strategies and solutions.

Some 100 people participated in the Forum—both longtime commons proponents and others new to the ideas, people from New York and around the world, all engaging in rich and thoughtful conversation. The group was hungry to look at how the commons might offer new ways of reclaiming or creating shared resources and deeper community links, allowing us to “embody the vision of the society we want to create,” as Sylvia Federici, an activist and teacher at Hofstra University, put it.

The conversation was wide ranging with the crowd engaging enthusiastically about open source and digital democracy, water and seeds, culture and education, community/solidarity economic models, alternative banking, public assets and public space, and issues related to families, sexuality and health. Throughout the discussion speakers noted that commons of all kinds are defined by a type of social relationship in which the users of a given shared resource are also the co-creators, producers, protectors, stewards and decision makers. As Marcela Olivera, a Bolivian activist on the staff of Food & Water Watch, stated, “the commons is a social construction, not a thing. The commons will come from the doing and living of them.”

Continue reading at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/is-it-time-to-occupy-the-commons?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=socmed&utm_content=BradleyA_TimeToOccupyTheCommons&utm_campaign=120302_Occupy