Penny U poses questions as springboards for conversation. Its principal
content comes from all who attend. Context was set for this evening’s
conversation by a statement circulated and posted here. We began by going around the room with quick responses to the question:
What first comes to mind when you hear the
phrase, "the commons"?
“Open-ended
possibilities – freedom within limits imposed by users”
• A frame of reference, communitarian spirit,
interdependency.
• Political spaces that can't be regulated.
The internet. Wilderness. A place where the rules are formed by the people who
occupy it.
• Shared social space, where ideas are
exchanged and resources are shared.
• A place, either concrete or abstract, with
open-ended possibilities. Freedom is important, within limits imposed by
users.
• The Commons at the UW came to mind first. A
central space that breathed. The term is very alive. The commons instituted
some things, and people who came through also instituted things. Food was
central.
• New England, a green lawn in the center
where animals were grazed together. Volunteer Park.
• A shared or created resource that can exist
at lots of scales (large and small). Examples might be: living in an
intentional community, a library, a city at its full potential.
• Many ideas provoked: questions of commons
vs. public vs. private. Enclosures of
the commons in 17th century England.
Communities of mind. A project of
his in the 1980s, "Invisible City," with multiple personas and the
exchange of ideas; trying to reconstitute it today on Facebook. A project with
Charles Mudede, "Reading Money." What are authentic commons
today?
• A place where people gravitate, like the
water cooler.
• The Boston Commons. Traffic circles with
gardens on them. Everyone benefits, though someone could snip the flowers.
• Every time I think about the idea, it gets
bigger. It's what we all share and benefit from – shared experience, human
rights.
• College. Where you went to intersect, see,
and share.
• Town Hall, its physical space and its
intellectual work, like its science programs, making ideas available to more
people.
• The ideas of Lawrence Lessig. A community sharing a resource. The scope of a
commons varies depending on where it is on a political spectrum. My communitarian neighbor and my libertarian
friends would approach the question in different ways.
• I want to help corporate developers
understand the commons. Seattle is about to allow the privatization of every
outdoor surface, with big digital billboards. Let's Keep Seattle Beautiful.
• Shared community. Concern for the greater
good. Pennsylvania is a “Commonwealth.”
Does that make it different from other states?
• I'm reminded of the Seattle Commons (a 1995
proposal for a huge development including public park lands in South Lake
Union). Was it a missed opportunity?
Background: The commons is our collective wealth
Short
introductions to the conversation from Penny U’s organizers followed.
Edward:
“The commons is a broad idea of political, social, and economic
organization. A ‘commons’ can be a physical place or s set of resources
(imagine national parks, watersheds, fisheries, grazing land). A commons can
also be abstract, referring to information or ideas (as in “creative commons”
and open source software). But the commons can also be a principle, a set of
values that inspires any work that seeks to collectively enrich a community
(think about public artists, nonprofits and civil society, organizations,
informal community gatherings, or Town Hall).
“The thread that runs through these meanings has ancient historical
roots in legal and social practice, but the commons has emerged again in
response to profoundly urgent contemporary concerns. Penny U has looked at many
dimensions of our economic life in its conversations this year – exploring our
changing relationship to work through the lenses of income inequality,
technological change, the environment, and climate change. All of these
concerns point to an urgent need for new models of collective responsibility.”
Anne:
Borrowing especially from David Bollier, a writer and thinker about the
commons, I offer a few definitions: The commons is collective wealth – it’s
what we own together. It is also a social system to manage resources while
maintaining values and building community. It is a resource, plus a defined
community, plus the protocols, values, and norms devised by the community to
manage its resources.
Each commons is different. One example is the acequias in New Mexico – an ancient system for managing and sharing
water that survives today. Wikipedia is another, more contemporary, example.
Questions
for conversation
Where are commons in your own life and community today? How do they work? Can they be expanded or strengthened?
We then divided into small groups of four or five to discuss this bundle
of questions. Following are notes from each of the five tables, taken by participants.
Table 1: The
Commons we use
• A buddhist meditation group ~ religion
- Incorporates
the concept of volunteerism
• Courtesy, no obvious center of authority
- Rules
are enforced by users
• The Gateway Project in Columbia City, a
space for human interaction
• A desire for intentional community. A
collective ethos of contemplation, not necessarily grounded physically,
although that’s possible
• Consensus: What is the role of consensus in
the context of a common space?
-
“Courtesy”
- Agreement
vs. acquiescence
-
Power – the violent potential of majority-based decisions.
-
We should strive toward consensus as much as possible.
• Motivational
interviewing
- is a means to identify “informal norms” and to
maintain cohesion
- relies on a spirit of volunteerism
• Other ideas that surfaced in the
conversation:
- A
recognition of the need for mutual aid.
-
A private school is implicitly a vehicle of segregation.
-
What is a safe place?
-
Loving those we were raised to despise.
-
Workers’ cooperatives – $15/hour and profit-sharing at Ivar’s restaurant
-
Energy
-
Safety
-
Appreciative Inquiry
Table
2: What commons do we participate in now?
• The internet is pervasive, like air or
water.
• Commons
have value. How is that value measured?
What’s the relationship between value and things that are free? Scarcity creates value. How are contributions
to the common good valued?
• Can economies also be commons? above ground? underground?
-
How about time banking, with hours as the basic currency?
-
Or, a barter economy.
-
It’s hard to see the value of a barter economy in the U.S. where
increasingly
everything has a dollar value and where people are so litigious.
• In California right now, the state is
trying to set up a new commons around water.
• The “village” concept – an organizing
system that aims to allow older people to age in their homes – is growing
around the country. Members participate in a shared system to get services they
need from volunteer or fee-based services, building a sense of community as
they go. There are 3 in the Seattle area so far.
• Generosity vs. immediate gratification.
“Paying it forward.” Earned value.
• Where are examples of evolving villages
that balance the economic side and the spiritual side? Maybe Buddhist practice
provides one and shows the imagined and real consequences of living a more
ethical life, a more intentional life of inquiry.
• How can other people be incorporated into
an existing community? How do people find their way into a commons? Access is a
big issue. On one hand, you can spend a lot of time looking for something and,
on another, something can just land in your lap.
• Do people come together and form a commons
in response to crisis? or in response to
success?
• Thinking of small associations, like a
small condo or co-op …
- Small size is ideal.
- What happens when you join into an ongoing
group or commons? Do commons need a
combination of stability and institutional memory, along with a influx of new
people?
- It’s different from individual ownership.
Accountability and shared responsibility is part of being in the group.
• Do you build on one experience of the
commons and have a successful force in your life? Or do you go out and seek other commons and
forms?
• Large scale challenges create difficulties
in joining together, challenges such as climate change and social equity.
• What’s the political efficacy of the
commons? How does the commons relate to:
political action, advocacy, and personal choices?
• Is there a tipping point where we
understand that a critical resource (like shared necessities) requires action by
a group or individually, requires that we care for the commons that emerges to
care for it, to support it and make changes as needed and necessary. It’s
important to connect with what resonates and draws people in, to establish
motivation and intention.
• Education plays a role in supporting action
and in a commons. It is a powerful source in shaping public opinion and shared
myth. Sharing stories and art making can also be valuable.
• “Patra Passage,” an art work by Lynda Lowe,
involved 108 vessels – beautiful objects that were not individually owned but
were given away as part of a giving economy. Each owner infused a story in the
vessel, which could go any where, but returned finally to the Museum of Glass.
A total of 480 people received and gave away the objects, which were sold,
along with the stories, and the proceeds donated to charities.
Table 3:
Many examples
• A land bank on Lopez Island
• Co-housing in Lynnwood with common gardens
• Esalen in Big Sur has commons buildings for
dancing, art, and workshops. Started in 1962, its fee structure allows you to
work to reduce the fees.
• European co-housing, building with shared
spaces, private space with a shared kitchen and open space.
• Parks that are open equally to all during
certain hours.
• Homeless camps are commons. No one claims
the poor as constituents.
• The Boston Commons have existed since the
beginning of the city. A microphone is set up in a building nearby that hosts
presentations.
• The hospital on the Blackfeet Reservation
has a cafe because many people used the hospital as a community space. The
hospital added space in order to allow for both uses.
• The High Line in New York City.
• Beaches in California are open access.
• Public libraries now, but what will they
look like in 20 or in 50 years?
About the commons
• Commons are political.
• The commons and commoner are related.
• Who’s responsible for the commons?
• Common space shouldn’t have a prohibitively
high entrance fee.
• It is a mark of privilege to be able to
choose not to have to see poverty around you.
Table 4:
Present commons
• Volunteering, at an organization. Doing
jobs that are not paid. A “trickle down” approach to participating in a
commons.
• The commons are a place between private and
public.
• Commons experiences from college days: a
veggie food co-of of 20 students; buying food together for all for dinner; lots
of sharing of information, grew exponentially. Gained practice being in a
co-op.
• A shared household of 5-8 people. I didn’t
feel like I participated, but I still did the obligated tasks.
• “The innovation of tradition” might apply
to the commons.
• People are yearning for connection. They’re
isolated. We have to start thinking of
the “extended family” vs. the “nuclear family.”
• How do the sharing economy and the gift economy
participate in the commons? Does the sharing economy co-opt the commons? The
gift economy is a non-monetized economy.
• The construction of the “we” is political.
• Society is based on one-to-one
communication.
Table 5: How do we decide what is common and
what is privatized?
• Where we find the commons: Westlake, Ferguson, where free speech is
possible
• The commons has protocols. It can’t be
turned it off because it’s Christmas, or whatever.
• Mancur Olson, an economist and social
scientist who wrote The Logic of
Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, dealt with scale
in organizations and in communities and trade unions. At a certain scale people are heard. As the
scale gets larger, communication breaks down and interests are controlled.
• The Pike Place Market began when onion
sellers got together to avoid the middle man and set the price themselves. People
bought directly from them because the price was cheaper.
• How do we decide what is common and what is
privatized? Society has a track record of working some things out through the
law to benefit both individuals and society. People have a right, for instance,
to own property privately, but that isn’t an unlimited right. Zoning, for
instance, qualifies the ownership of private property. The assumption has been
that “society” decides.
• Each individual and each generation decides
where along a set of axes between “reverence for the individual” and
“beneficial for community” they want to be. It’s never absolutely determined.
• Matthew Crawford (Town Hall’s speaker
following this Penny U) talks about how our “third places” – the commons where
we congregate outside of work or home, like coffee shops and sidewalks – are
being invaded. Our once-shared visual and audio space is being taken over by
private companies that pump them full of sound and video, and very often
advertising). Advertisers who project digital billboards on large outdoor walls
, didn’t pay for that right to our “captured eyeballs.” It’s ironic that even
the National Parks Foundation advertises this way in Times Square.
• Can and how do communities come together as
society gets more dense? Where do we feel safe? Where do we retain
opportunities to speak with each other?
• And 52% of the population that could vote
doesn’t even register, perhaps because they don’t think they can make a
difference.
• Perhaps eligible but disgruntled voters
could form a voting bloc and agree to vote identically, making their votes
count in a bigger way.
A few summary comments & questions
• One negative response to ideas around the
commons is the thought that they are being asked to pick up the ball that the
public (that is, government) dropped. A
big push for increased volunteering is one piece of this.
• Volunteering is giving without expecting a
return.
• In “constructing a we, there will always be people outside.
• What does “courtesy” mean? Is there a place
for it in a discussion of the commons?
• What’s the relationship between power and
consensus? I’d push for as much
consensus as possible.
