Rebuilding the Commons

How can we renew and rebuild our collaborative commons? Omega’s Where We Go From Here conference explores this age-old foundation of our society. But first, what exactly does “the commons” mean?

“The commons” is a phrase that generally refers to an asset that anyone can access and use without being stopped by someone else.

Jay Walljasper, author of All That We Share, explains that these assets belong to everyone. “Some are bestowed to us by nature. Others are the product of cooperative human creativity. Anyone can use the commons, so long as there is enough left for everyone else.”

Traditional examples of commons include grazing lands, fisheries, forests, traditional medicinal and agricultural knowledge and practices, plus traditional dance, songs, crafts and artistic motifs. Modern examples include open source software (like Linux and Mozilla Firefox), and licensing systems for creative works (like the one started by the nonprofit Creative Commons).

But the phrase “the commons” doesn’t just refer to a particular resource, explains David Bollier, cofounder of the Commons Strategy Group and a speaker at the Where We Go From Here conference. The commons “is a resource plus a defined community, and the protocols, values and norms devised by the community to manage its resources.”

In other words, the commons also includes the relationship that a group of people has with the resource, including how they manage it.

According to Bollier, “A commons arises whenever a given community decides that it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with a special regard for equitable access, use and sustainability.”

The Commons Are Inclusive

Classically, commons have been small-scale and focused on natural resources, says Bollier. “But the contemporary struggle of commoners [those trying to identify and create new commons] is to find new structures of law, institutional form, and social practice that can enable diverse sorts of commons to work at larger scales and to protect their resources from market enclosure.”

Market enclosure is when a resource is available only to those who have privileged access to it, often at a cost. A classic example of market enclosure is fencing off public land for grazing animals. More modern examples include patenting genes, excessive use of copyrights, privatizing water supplies, restricting access to the fastest Internet speeds and attempting to copyright yoga postures or patent traditional herbal remedies.

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“How can we renew and rebuild our collaborative commons?”

Issue equal non-negotiable shares in the commons to every citizen. Dividends from its proper uses will lift us all out of poverty. We the People Inc. can make all decisions in periodic shareholders meetings like any other corporation, direct democratically with one person one vote.
DaveMurphy4561

The Free Trade Deception Almost No One Understands

By:
Larry Greenley

09/24/2014

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The seventh round of U.S./EU (TTIP) negotiations begins September 29 in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

If you have heard about the two huge free trade agreements — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP) — being negotiated by the Obama administration, you probably
think they have something to do with an attempt to create more jobs by
lowering tariffs.

That’s the deception. While you’re being told that these “free trade”
agreements will bring prosperity, they are actually being used by
establishment elites to create economically and politically integrated blocs of nations that can be knit together into a New World Order. This means that the TPP and TTIP trade pacts are a direct threat to our national independence and personal freedoms.

For example, 28 formerly independent European nations have lost their national independence to the European Union (EU) based on a deceptive series of free trade agreements. Similarly, there has been a well-organized effort to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada to form a North American Union
(NAU) based on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA);
however, widespread grassroots opposition has greatly slowed down this
initiative.

Today, the TTIP agreement represents an attempt by European and
American establishment elites to merge the United States with the EU;
the TPP is an attempt to economically and politically integrate the
United States with eleven Pacific Rim nations.
DaveMurphy4561

The seventh round of TTIP negotiations starts on September 29. The TPP negotiations could be completed as soon as late this year.

If we are to preserve our national independence and personal
freedoms, we must create enough pressure on Congress to reject the TPP
and TTIP “free trade” deals.

We must also convince Congress to reject any legislation reauthorizing Trade Promotion Authority TPA (aka fast-track authority) that would be used to expedite passage of the TPP and TTIP agreements.

Please contact Congress in opposition to TPA, TPP, and TTIP. There are separate, prewritten, editable messages set up for all three issues.

But, you say, you’ve already contacted your representative and
senators and one or more of them say they support the TPP and TTIP. That
means you still have more work to do. Get others to contact
your representative and senators in opposition to these agreements and
re-contact those legislators who support the TPP and TTIP pacts with evidence for why they should be rejected. The best source for such evidence is the special report, “How the Free Trade Agenda Is Knocking Down America,” The New American issue for September 2, 2013.

Rebuilding the Commons

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