What is the Commons and Why Is It Important?

These Comments are from participants in the Reclaim the Commons convergence in Chicago this April 9-11, 2006.

John Peck, Family Farm Defenders, Madison, Wisconsin:
"Most of our our life is based on Commons. We're talking about water, the air, our food. Many believe that food should be a human right; not a commodity. If the Commons are taken away from us and privatized, commodified and corporatized, our freedoms as a people are diminished, our communities are vulnerable. We lose local control and we are at the mercy of corporations."

Sarah Alexander, White Earth Land Recovery Project
"The wild rice grows naturally in all the lakes and rivers [in Minnesota], it is not something that is owned by any one person. It's something that the Anishonabe have been given the directive to be the caretakers of. Regardless of reservation boundaries, the Anishonabe community looks at it as something that they have to take care of wherever it is. ... I guess in terms of Commons, it's the not the wild rice in particular that could be delivered in bags of grain every year to the reservation. It's the actual lakes and the eco-system, the essence of rice that's been protected and is sacred for the Anishonabe. This has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. "A lot of the land on the reservation is where their ricing areas are held in common by the tribe itself or held in trust by the Federal Government." The White Earth Land Recovery Project assists thousands of Native people in Minnesota, who use traditional methods to harvest over 60,000 acres of wild rice each year.

Alex Huntrods , Madison, Wisconsin:
"We live in 11 cooperatives, organized through Madison Community Cooperatives, which is a not-for profit. They are run collectively, through modified consensus. "Our main focus as far as Commons is the ability of our communities to actually exist. Right now I think in many places communities are at a real low point. When people live in separate apartments there's no real community...It's hard to develop community through sterile apartments, you don't have common areas where people can get together, community spaces. I think that to reclaim the Commons is to create a new community with community involvement. It's not necessarily a monoculture community, It's a gathering of different communities. "[At Madison Community Cooperatives,] people pay shares, although I think it's called rent in the official documents for legal purposes. The idea is we each share all our costs, we buy supplies collectively, we buy organic food, locally produced food, as much as possible. Doing that, just with the scales of economy, you can do it very efficiently."

Anuradha Mittal, The Oakland Institute:
"Food sovereignty can be best described as a country's or a community's right to grow food in ways which are ecologically, economically and socially appropriate for them. The basis of food sovereignty is the principle to prioritize food that is produced locally by local farmers, by indigenous people, by local fisher-folk. It basically prioritizes land reform. It recognizes farmers' rights to water seed and land. It's about creating a whole new farm economy that puts sustainable, agro-ecological agriculture in practice with small farmers at the heart of the country's policies."

How does the Commons fit into that? How does that fit into food sovereignty?
"Commons are not just about a right, they are also about a responsibility. So when we see food, or land, or water seen as commons, we recognize a responsibility as humanity to insure biodiversity, so that nature and the Earth can flourish. You cannot separate the concept of Commons from food sovereignty. When you start privatizing our bio-resources, our seeds, our land our water, you're taking it away from the public domain. So it is all very closely linked with the whole concept of sovereignty. As long as corporations are controlling our seeds we cannot have food sovereignty."

Jan Edwards, Alliance for Democracy:
"A lot of people have read The Tragedy of the Commons, which basically argues that the Commons will be destroyed if people are allowed to take from them freely. I'm not advocating that we just trash the Commons. I'm advocating that we think about the Commons, think about what the Commons means and how we can best support all life on the planet. "I do believe that the best way to protect the Commons is by giving rights to the Commons, rights for their own sake. We shouldn't continue to depend on human property rights to protect a non-property gift of nature, but that they have a right to exist on their own terms. "In this country, at this time, a legal right is what is needed if we're going to stop the destruction. If times change and we no longer need legal rights to protect it and we can protect it just by thinking about it and educating people, that would be fine, too, But right now, I think the Commons needs legal protection and quickly."