Anthropology 110 response paper

Introduction

The Commons Offers a New Story for the Future

IT WAS TWO YEARS BEFORE THE FIRST

Earth Day in 1970 when Garrett Hardin

penned the famous essay "The Tragedy of

the Commons," and it fit a certain bleak

and despairing mood of the time. Paul Ehr-

lich had just published The Population

Bomb, a Malthusian account of a world

overwhelmed by sheer numbers of people.

Against the backdrop of that gloom, Har-

din's theory came as another dose of bad

news, "proving" that we also had no hope

of controlling our appetite for natural re-

sources. Because no one owned the oceans

or the atmosphere, we would inevitably fish

and pollute them into oblivion. Hardin of-

fered a few suggestions, but his title summed

it up: we were witnessing a tragedy whose

script could not be revised.

Oddly, a decade later, his argument fit just

as easily the exuberant, privatizing mood of

the Reagan years. No one owns the sky or

the sea? Well, then, let's sell them! The race

was on to privatize everything, from fishing

rights to kids' playgrounds, on the theory

that this was the only way to manage them

well. Society was the problem, the individ-

ual was the solution.

xviii Introduction

The only thing that Hardin's argument

didn't fit was the facts, at least not all of

them. For eons communities had managed

to protect all kinds of resources without pri-

vate ownership. In America and in England,

it's true, a couple of centuries of enclosure

and corporatization made this harder to

recall. But around the world, most of the

pasture lands, forests, and streams had long

been controlled by communities, drawing

on deep traditions of custom and collective

wisdom. Even in the United States, we had

classic examples-the acequia irrigation

systems of New Mexico, which may be the

only sustainable water systems in the Amer-

ican West, or the lobster fishery of Maine,

protected from overfishing less by law than

by long custom.

And in the years since "The Tragedy

of the Commons" appeared, even a cur-

sory glance around the landscape reveals

that Hardin's gloom has been disproven a

thousand times. For example, I'm willing

to bet that many of the people reading this

book turned on their local public radio sta-

tion this morning. Here's how public radio

works: give away your product for free

with no advertising, and then twice a year

wheedle people to make a donation to pay

for it. Turn that in as your business plan

at some bank and they'll

The most crucial commons, perhaps,

is the one now under greatest siege, and it

poses a test of whether we can pull together

to solve our deepest prob-

lems or succumb to disas-laugh you out the door, but

public radio has been the

fastest-growing sector of

the broadcast industry for

years. And now we have

low-power FM and com-

munity radio, not to men-

tion the explosion of free

content on the Internet.

The commons ter. Our atmosphere has

is a crucial part of

been de facto privatized for

a long time now-we've

allowed coal, oil, and gas

interests to own the sky,

filling it with the carbon

that is the inevitable by-

product of their business.

For a couple of centuries,

this seemed mostly harm-

less-CO2 didn't seem to

be causing much trouble.

But two decades ago, we

started to understand the

effects of global warm-

ing, and now each month

the human story that must be recovered if

I've spent most of my

life as a writer-and one

of the sweetest parts of

that job is knowing that

whatever I produce ends

up in a library, an institu-

tion dedicated to the idea

we are to deal with

the problems now crowding

. m on us.

that we can share things

easily. There are innumer-

-Bill McKibben

able other examples-and

they are the parts of our lives that we

usually care most about. They don't show

up on balance sheets because they're not

producing profit, but they are producing

satisfaction.

These things we share are called com-

mons, which simply means they belong

to all of us. Commons can be gifts of

nature-such as fresh water, wilderness,

and the airwaves-or the products of social

ingenuity, like the Internet, parks, artistic

traditions, or the public health service. But

today much of our common wealth is under

threat from those hungry to ruin it or take

it over for selfish, private purposes.

the big scientific journals

bring us new proof of just

how vast the damage is: the Arctic is melt-

ing, Australia is on fire, the pH of the ocean

is dropping fast.

If we are to somehow ward off the coming catastrophes, we have to reclaim this atmo-

spheric commons. We have to figure out

how to cooperatively own and protect the

single most important feature of the planet

we inhabit-the thin envelope of atmo-

sphere that makes our lives possible. Wres-

tling this key prize away from Exxon Mobil

and other corporations is the great political

issue of our time, and some of the solutions

proposed have been ingenious-most nota-

bly the idea put forth by commons theorist

Introduction xix

Peter Barnes and others that we should own

the sky jointly and share in the profits real-

ized by leasing its storage space to the fossil

fuel industry. For that to work, of course,

we would have to reduce that storage space

quickly and dramatically. Barnes's cap-and-

dividend plan (see "A Commons Solution to

Climate Change" in chapter 8) offers one

way to make that economically and politi-

cally feasible.

But for this and other necessary projects

to succeed, we need first to break the intel-

lectual spell under which we live. The last

few decades have been dominated by the

premise that privatizing all economic re-

sources will produce endless riches. Which

was kind of true, except that the riches

went to only a few people. And in the pro-

xx Introduction

cess they melted the Arctic, as well as dra-

matically increasing inequality around the

world. Jay Walljasper performs the great-

est of services with this book. It is-choose

your metaphor-a bracing slap across the

face or the kiss that breaks an enchantment.

In either case, after reading it, you will be

much more alive to the world as it actually

is, not as it exists in the sweaty dreams of

ideologues and economics professors. The

commons is a crucial part of the human

story that must be recovered if we are to

deal with the problems now crowding in on

us. This story is equal parts enlightening

and encouraging, and it is entirely neces-

sary for us to hear it.

-Bill McKibben

What Is the

Commons?

What, Really, Is the Commons?

What we own together, and how we cooperate to make things happen

WELCOME TO THE COMMONS.

The term may be unfamiliar, but the idea

has been around for centuries. The com-

mons is a new use of an old word, meaning

"what we share"-and it offers fresh hope

for a saner, safer, more enjoyable future.

The commons refers to a wealth of valu-

able assets that belong to everyone. These

range from clean . air to wildlife preserves;

from the judicial system to the Internet.

Some are bestowed to us by nature; others

are the product of cooperative human cre-

ativity. Certain elements of the commons are

entirely new-think of Wikipedia. Others

are centuries old-like colorful words and

phrases from all the world's languages.

Anyone can use the commons, so long

as there is enough left for everyone else.

This is ~hy finite commons, such as natural

resources, must be sustainably and equitably

managed. But many other forms of the com-

mons can be freely tapped. Today's hip-hop

and rock stars, for instance, "appropriate"

the work of soul singers, jazz swingers, blues

wailers, gospel shouters, hillbilly pickers,

and balladeers going back a long time-and

we are all richer for it. That's the greatest

2 All That We Share

strength of the commons. It's an inheritance

shared by all humans, which increases in

value as people draw upon its riches.

At least that's how the commons has

worked throughout history, fostering demo-

cratic, cultural, technological, medical, eco-

nomic, and humanitarian advances. But this

natural cycle of sharing is now under assault.

As the market economy becomes the yard-

stick for measuring the worth of everything,

more people are grabbing portions of the

commons as their private property. Many

essential elements of society-from ecosys-

tems to scientific knowledge to public ser-

vices-are slipping through our hands and

into the pockets of the rich and powerful.

The Wealth We Lost

One example of what we're losing comes

right out of today's headlines about spiral-

ing health care costs. The creation of many

widely prescribed drugs, which millions of

people depend upon, was funded in large

part by government grants. But the exclusive

right to sell pharmaceuticals developed with

public money was handed over to drug com-

panies with almost nothing asked in return.

That means we pay exorbitant prices for

medicine developed with our tax dollars,

and many poor people are denied access to

treatments that might save their lives.

Another even more absurd example con-

cerns a subject that you would think stirs

no controversy-yoga. Through centuries

of evolution as a spiritual practice, any

new yoga poses or techniques were auto-

matically incorporated into the tradition

for everyone to use. But beginning in 1978

an Indian named Bikram Choudhury, now

based in Beverly Hills, copyrighted certain

long-used hatha yoga poses and sequences

as his own invention, Bikram Yoga, and he

now threatens other yoga studios teaching

these techniques with lawsuits.

The good news is that people all around

us are beginning to take back the commons.

Neighbors rising up to keep their library

open, improve their park, or find new fund-

ing for public schools. Greens fighting the

draining of wetlands and the dumping of

toxic waste in inner-city neighborhoods.

Digital activists providing access to the

Internet in poor communities and chal-

lenging corporate plans to limit our right

to information. Indigenous people instilling

their children with a sense of tradition and

hope. Young social entrepreneurs and soft-

ware engineers seeking new mechanisms for

people to share ideas.

Not all of these people think of them-

selves as commons activists. Some may not

even be familiar with the term. Ve! Wiley,

the longtime director of Milwaukee's public

access TV channels, stood up at a commons

event and declared, "When I was asked to be

a part of this conference, I thought the com-

mons was for people like Greenpeace, an

environmental cause. But I understand now

that I have been advocating for the commons

What Is the Commons? 3

over the last twenty years. I realize we're not

just a small group advocating that the people

have a voice in the broadcasting media. We're

all a part of something so much bigger, and

that helps me to keep going."

It's not necessary that everyone adopt

the word commons. What matters is that

people understand that what we share

together (and how we share it) is as impor-

tant as what we possess individually.

Parallels to the Origins of Environmentalism

Growing interest iµ the commons today

resembles the origins of the environmen-

tal movement in the 1960s. At that time,

there was little talk about ecology or the

greening of anything. There was, however,

a lot of concern about air pollution, pesti-

cides, litter, the loss of wilderness, declin-

ing wildlife populations, the death of Lake

Erie, toxic substances oozing into rivers, oil

spills fouling the oceans, lead paint poison-

ing inner-city kids, suburbia swallowing up

the countryside, mountains of trash piling

up in landfills, and unsustainable farming

practices ravaging the land. Yet the word

environmentalism did not become a house-

hold word until the first Earth Day-April

22, 1970. Bringing an assortment of issues

together under the banner of environmen-

talism highlighted the connections between

what until then had been seen as separate

causes and fueled the unexpected growth of

the environmental movement over the next

few years.

4 All That We Share

The commons offers the same prom-

ise of uniting people concerned about the

common good in many forms into a new

kind of movement that reshapes how people

think about the nature of ownership and

the importance of collaboration in modern

society.

A New Way of Thinking and Living

More than just a philosophical and political

framework for understanding what's gone

wrong, the commons furnishes us a toolkit

for fixing problems. Local activists eager to

revitalize their community and protect open

space are setting up land trusts-a form of

community ownership distinct from both

private property and government manage-

ment. Savvy Web users use the coopera-

tive properties of the Internet to challenge

corporations who want to undermine this

shared resource by fencing it off for private

gain. Villagers and city dwellers around the

world assert that water is a commons, which

cannot be sold, depleted, or controlled by

anyone.

These kinds of efforts extend the mean-

ing of the commons beyond something you

own to a bigger idea: how we live together.

Peter Linebaugh, a preeminent historian of

the commons, has coined the word "com-

moning" to describe the growing efforts he

sees to protect and strengthen the things

we share. "I want to stress the point that

the commons is an activity rather than

just a material resource," he says. "That

COMMONS S£ ~

What Is a Commons-Based Society? A way of life that values what we share as much as what we own

A commons-based society refers to a shift in

policies and values away from the market-based

system that has dominated modern society for

the past two hundred years , with a particular

vengeance in the past thirty. A commons-based

society would place as much emphasis on social

justice, democratic participation, and environ-

brings in the essential social element of

the commons."

David Bollier, one of the leading theorists

of the commons on the international stage,

has defined the term as a social dynamic. "A

commons arises whenever a given commu-

nity decides it wishes to manage a resource

in a collective manner, with special regard

for equitable access, use and sustainability.

It is a social form that has long lived in the

shadows of our market culture, and now is

on the rise," he wrote in the British political

journal Renewal.

Julie Ristau and Alexa Bradley, commu-

nity organizers with extensive experience,

find that many people have internalized the

competitive ethos of the market mentality so

fully that they believe any cooperative action

is doomed to fail. They're losing the ability

to even think of working together. Yet at

the same time, Ristau and Bradley detect in

mental protection as on economic competi-

tiveness and private property. Market-based

solutions would be valuable tools in a commons-

based society, as long as they do not undermine

the workings of the commons itself.

-Jay Walljasper

others "a broad yearning for hope, connec-

tion, and restoration. We see a remarkable

array of efforts to reconstitute community,

to relocalize food, to move toward coop-

erative economics, to better harmonize our

lives with the health of our planet. These

efforts spring from a deep human need and

desire for different ways of interacting and

organizing resources that will help us recon-

stitute our capacity for shared ownership,

collaboration, and stewardship."

Growing numbers of people are taking

steps that move us, gradually, in the direc-

tion of a commons-based society-a world

in which the fundamental focus on compe-

tition that characterizes life today would

be balanced with new attitudes and social

structures that foster cooperation. This

vision is emerging at precisely the point we

need it most. Deeply held myths of the last

thirty years about the magic of the market

What Is the Commons? 5

have been shattered by the implosion of

the global financial bubble, creating both

an opening and an acute need for different

ways of living.

To deliver us from current economic and

ecological calamities will require more than

administering a few tweaks to the operat-

ing system that runs our society. A complete

retooling is needed-a paradigm shift that

revises the core principles that guide our

culture top to bottom. At this historical

moment, the commons vision of a society

where "we" matters as much as "me" shines

as a beacon of hope for a better world.

-Jay Walljasper

Why Should We Care About the Commons Today? Yes, it's history-but also our best hope for the future

Both the idea and the reality of the commons

have been declining since at least the eigh-

teenth century. Why now, at the beginning of

the twenty-first century, should we struggle to

revive them?

The simple answer is that we have to .

Despite the many benefits it brings us, the

economic market operates like a runaway truck.

It has no internal mechanism telling it when to

stop-to stop depleting the commons that sus-

tain it. To put it another way, we've been living

6 All That We Share

off a fat commons bank account for centuries,

and now it's running low. We must start making

some deposits so we'll have something for

tomorrow .

If our old Manifest Destiny was to carve up

the commons, our new task is to rebuild it. We

must do this to protect the planet, enhance our

quality of life, reduce inequality, and leave a

better world for our children .

-Peter Barnes

Where to Find the Commons

From open source to dance steps, it's all around

('.) Air & water

('.) The Internet

('.) Parks, libraries, streets & sidewalks

0 OurDNA ('.) Blood banks, soup kitchens, twelve-step groups,

museums, nonprofit organizations

('.) Dance steps & fashion trends

('.) Social Security, the National Weather Service,

police protection & other essential services

('.) Fishing & hunting

('.) The airwaves (radio, television, cell phone)

('.) Christmas, Halloween, Passover, Ramadan,

Mardi Gras & all holiday traditions

What Is the Commons? 7

() Poker, hopscotch & soccer

() Biodiversity

() Taxpayer-funded medical & scientific research

0 Wikipedia

() Robin Hood, Athena & the Little Mermaid

() Sushi, pizza, tamales & family recipes

() The jump shot, kimonos, bookkeeping systems

& the Heimlich maneuver

() Public education, public transportation & other

public services

() Open-source software

() Jokes, fairy tales, slang & anecdotes

() The oceans, Antarctica & outer space

-On the Commons

8 All That We Share

Is This a New Version of Communism?

No, it's a tradition of cooperation with deep roots in American life

MANY AMERICANS HAVE TROUBLE TALK-

ing about the commons because we lack a

proper vocabulary for discussing collectiv-

ist endeavors . Any talk of sharing, coopera-

tion, or collectively managed resources can

conjure the ghosts of Marx, Lenin, Mao,

and Stalin.

The first thing to understand about the

commons is that it is generally distinct

from government. Government can provide

useful assistance-laws, information, fa-

cilitation-but the commons is more about

people doing things for themselves, taking

responsibility for their own resources di-

rectly as a community.

This practice has a long tradition in

American life. Yet on many occasions it

is also true that "we the people" ask our

government to be stewards of all sorts of

commons, such as national parks, Social

Security, land-grant colleges, the National

Today's commoners follow Groucho more than Karl.

Weather Service, the U.S. Public Health

Service, and much more.

The contemporary commons movement

is not an attempt to rehabilitate commu-

nism. Communism is an archaic, impracti-

cal system that favors the state and capital

over the commons (as evidenced, for exam-

What Is the Commons? 11

COMMONS SOLUTIONS

Big League Action See the commons at work in the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball

Do the ideas associated with the commons,

especially regarding wealth and economics,

sound exotic or unworkable to you? Well, con-

sider that some of America's beloved national

institutions are run along similar lines: the

National Football League, the National Basket-

ball Association, and Major League Baseball.

Each league shifts money from the rich-

est teams to the poorest in order to keep the

game fair and interesting to fans . And the

draft process used in all three sports gives

ple, by the former Soviet Union's decades-

long environmental degradations). This

system is also indifferent to the importance

of subsidiarity in governance (control at

the lowest possible levels) and to the actual

diversity of humanity in its local contexts.

Communism and even socialism today are

not truly commons based, because they rely

upon centralized, hierarchical bureaucracies

to achieve state-directed economic goals.

Archetypal commons, by contrast, tend

to function at scales that enable decentral-

ized participation and decision making.

They are generally structured to protect

transparency, social equity, and other ex-

tramarket values and generally do not vest

12 All That We Share

losing teams an advantage at signing the best

young players.

Even George Will, the Republican columnist

and devoted baseball fan, sees the logic in this .

"The aim is not to guarantee teams equal rev-

enues, but revenues sufficient to give each team

periodic chances of winning if each uses its rev-

enues intelligently."

Welcome to the commons. Now let's play ball.

-Jonathan Rowe

authority in centralized bureaucracies and

credentialed expertise that may or may not

be responsive. Archetypal commons gener-

ally disperse governance as broadly as pos-

sible as a means to leverage participants'

local knowledge, personal commitment,

and the ability to enforce community norms

in protecting the shared resource.

New Language for a New Era

If we look beyond the past thirty years of extreme capitalism and its ethic of out-of-

control individualism, we can begin to see

that there is a long and successful history of

managing the commons without squelch-

ing freedom. Indeed, evolutionary scientists

make it clear that the human species has

survived and evolved only because it has

had great capacities to cooperate and col-

laborate and to build stable communities

based on trust and reciprocity.

The newly emerging commons move-

ment is recovering this past. The goal is not

to romanticize it but to apply the coopera-

tive instinct that is perhaps literally in our

genes to the realities of contemporary so-

ciety. We need to rediscover and reinvent

the commons-an idea that is quite distinct

from communism and other large-scale bu-

reaucratic and authoritarian failures of the

twentieth century.

-David Bollier

What Is the Commons? 13

Our Home on Earth

Winona LaDuke outlines lessons from indigenous cultures for restoring balance

GIIWEDINONG MEANS "GOING HOME" IN

the Anishinaabeg language. It also means

north, "the place from which we come."

The word denotes something that is lack-

ing in modern industrial society today. We

cannot restore our relationship with the

earth until we find our place in the world.

This is our challenge today: where is home?

I returned to the White Earth Reserva-

tion in Minnesota about thirty years ago

after being raised off-reservation, which

is a common circumstance for our people.

White Earth is my place in the universe. It's

where the headwaters of the Mississippi and

Red rivers are.

People of the Land

Anishinaabeg is our name for ourselves

in our own language; it means "people."

We are called Ojibwe, or Writers, derived

from ojibige ("to write"), on our birch-bark scrolls. Our aboriginal territory and where

we live today is in the northern parts of five

U.S. states and the southern parts of four

Canadian provinces. We are people of lakes,

rivers, deep woods, and lush prairies.

Now, if you look at the United States,

about 4 percent of the land is held by Indian

people. But if you go to Canada, about 85

percent of the population north of the fif-

tieth parallel is native. If you look at the whole of North America, you'll find that the

majority of the population is native in about

a third of the continent. Within these areas,

indigenous people maintain their own ways

of living and their cultural practices.

There are a number of countries in the

Western Hemisphere in which native peo-

ples are the majority of the population:

Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. In

some South American countries, we con-

trol as much as 22 to 40 percent of the land.

Overall, the Western Hemisphere is not

predominantly white. Indigenous people

continue their ways of living based on gen-

erations and generations of knowledge and

practice on the land.

On a worldwide scale, there are about

five thousand indigenous nations. Nations

are groups of indigenous peoples who share

common language, culture, history, terri-

tory, and government institutions. It is said

that there are currently about five hundred

million of us in the world today, depend-

All That Endures 81

ing on how you define the term indigenous.

I define it as referring to peoples who have

continued their way of living for thousands

of years. In 2007 the United Nations finally

passed the UN Declaration of the Rights of

Indigenous Peoples, recognizing our unique

status in the world. Four countries opposed

this: the United States, Canada, New Zea-

land, and Australia. However, New Zea-

land recently signed the declaration.

Indigenous peoples believe fundamen-

tally in a state of balance. We believe that

all societies and cultural practices must

exist in accordance with the laws of nature

in order to be sustainable. We also believe

that cultural diversity is as essential as bio-

logical diversity in maintaining sustainable

societies. Indigenous people have lived on

earth sustainably for thousands of years,

and I suggest to you that indigenous ways

of living are the only sustainable ways of

living. Most indigenous ceremonies, if you

look to their essence, are about the restora-

tion of balance-they are a reaffirmation

of our relationship to creation. That is our

intent : to restore and then to retain balance

and honor our part in creation.

Therefore, when I harvest wild rice on

our reservation, I always offer asemaa (to-

bacco) because when you take something,

you must always give thanks to its spirit

for giving itself to you. We are very careful

when we harvest. Anthropologists call this

reciprocity. This means that when you take,

you always give. We also say that you must

take only what you need and leave the rest.

Because if you take more than you need,

you have brought about imbalance, you

82 All That We Share

have been selfish. To do this in our commu-

nity is a very big disgrace. It is a violation of natural law, and it leaves you with no

guarantee that you will be able to continue

harvesting.

We have a word in our language that de-

notes the practice of living in harmony with

natural law: minocimaatisiiwin. This word

points to the way you behave as an individ-

ual in a relationship with other individuals

and in relationship with the land and all

things. We have tried to retain this way of

living and this way of thinking in spite of all

that has happened to us over the centuries. I

believe we do retain most of these practices

in our community, even if they are over-

shadowed at times by individualism.

How Indigenous and Industrial Cultures Clash

I would like to contrast indigenous thinking

with what I call industrial thinking, which

is characterized by five key ideas that run

counter to what we native people believe.

• First, instead of believing that natural

law is preeminent, industrial society

believes that humans are entitled to

full dominion over nature. It believes

that man-and it is usually man, of

course-has some God -given right to

all that is around him. Industrial soci-

ety puts its faith in man's laws, in the

idea that pollution regulations, fishing

and hunting regulations, et cetera, are

sustainable.

• Second, industrial society strives to

continually move in one direction de-

fined by things like technology and eco-

nomic growth. In indigenous societies,

we notice that much in nature is cycli-

cal: the movement of moons, the tides,

the seasons, and our bodies. Time itself

is cyclical. Instead of modeling itself

on the cyclical structure of nature, in-

dustrial society is patterned on linear

thinking.

• Third, industrial society holds a dif-

ferent attitude toward what is wild as

opposed to what is cultivated or

"tame." In our language, we have

the word indinawayuuganitoog

( "all our relations"). That is what

we believe-that our relatives may

have wings, fins, roots, or hooves.

Industrial society believes wilder-

ness must be tamed. This is also the

idea behind colonialism, that some

people have the right to civilize

other people.

• Fourth, industrial society speaks

in a language of inanimate nouns.

Things of all kinds are not spoken

of as being alive and having spirit;

they are described as mere objects,

commodities. When things are in-

animate, "man" can take them, buy

Indigenous people from around the world gathered in New York to protest the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil, which would destroy traditional communities living along the Xingu River.

and sell them, or destroy them. Some

scholars refer to this as the commodifi-

cation of the sacred.

• A fifth aspect of industrial thinking is

the idea of capitalism itself, which is

always unpopular to question in Amer-

ica. The capitalist goal is to use the least

labor, capital, and resources to make

the most profit. The intent of capital-

ism is accumulation. So the capitalist's

method is always to take more than is

needed. With accumulation as its core,

industrial society practices conspicuous

All That Endures 83

consumption. Indigenous societies, on

the other hand, practice what I would

call conspicuous distribution. We focus

on the potlatch-the act of giving away.

In fact, the more you give away, the

greater your honor.

Modern industrial societies must begin

to see the interlocking interests between

their own ability to survive and the survival

of indigenous peoples' culture. Indigenous

peoples have lived sustainably on the land

for thousands of years. I am absolutely sure

that our societies could live without yours,

but I'm not so sure that your society can

continue to live without ours.

Sustainability in Action

All across the continent, there are small

groups of native peoples who are trying to

regain control of and restore their commu-

nities.

I'll use my own people as an example.

The White Earth Reservation is thirty-six

by thirty-six miles square, which is about

837,000 acres. A treaty reserved it for our

people in 1867 in return for relinquishing

a much larger area of northern Minnesota.

Out of all our territory, we chose this land

for its richness and diversity. There are

forty-seven lakes on the reservation. There's

maple sugar, there are hardwoods, and

there are all the different medicine plants

my people use. We have wild rice, we have

deer, we have beaver, we have fish-we have

every food we need. On the eastern part of

84 All That We Share

the reservation, there are stands of white

pine; to the west is prairie land where the

buffalo once roamed. Our word for prairie

is mashkode ("place of burned medicine"),

referring to native practices of burning as a

form of nurturing the soil and plants.

Our traditional forms of land use and

ownership are similar to those found in

community land trusts being established

today. The land is owned collectively, and

each family has traditional areas where it

fishes and hunts. We call our concept of

land ownership anishinaabeg akiing, "the

land of the people," which doesn't imply

that we own our land but that we belong

on it. Unfortunately, our definition doesn't

stand up well in court, because this coun-

try's legal system upholds the concept of

private property.

We have maintained our land by means

of careful management. For example, we

traditionally have "hunting bosses" and

"rice chiefs," who make sure that resources

are used sustainably in each region. Hunt-

ing bosses oversee rotation of trap lines, a

system by which people trap in an area for

two years and then move to a different area

to let the land rest. Rice chiefs coordinate

wild rice harvesting. The rice on each lake

has its own unique taste and ripens at its

own time. Traditionally, we have a "tal-

lyman," who makes sure there are enough

animals for each family in a given area. If a family can't sustain itself, the tallyman

moves them to a new place where animals

are more plentiful. These practices are es-

sential to sustainability and to maintaining

what some now call the commons.

COMMONS SOLUTIONS

An Indigenous Bill of Rights The United States and Canada were among only four nations opposing the historic UN declaration

After twenty-two years of negotiations, the

United Nations in 2007 voted 143-4 to endorse

the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous

Peoples. While not a legally binding document,

the declaration affirms two key rights for tribal

peoples : ownership of their traditional lands

and the opportunity to continue their traditional

way of life.

The United States, Canada, Australia, and

New Zealand stood alone in objecting to the

declaration. (New Zealand has since endorsed

the measure.) All four nations have substan-

tial populations of native peoples who seek to

reclaim some of their stolen lands . The ground-

breaking document got virtually no attention in

the U.S. media.

How We Plan to Get White Earth Back

Our reservation was reserved by treaty in

1867. In 1887 the Nelson Act and subse-

quently the General Allotment Act were

passed to teach Indians the concept of pri-

vate property, but also to facilitate the re-

moval of more land from Indian nations.

The federal government divided our reser-

vation into eighty-acre parcels of land and

The document declares, "Indigenous peoples

have the right to self-determination. By virtue

of that right they freely determine their political

status and freely pursue their economic, social

and cultural development. Indigenous people,

in exercising their right to self -determination,

have the right to autonomy or self-government

in matters relating to their internal affairs and

local affairs."

The document continues, "Indigenous people

have the right to maintain and strengthen their

distinct political, legal, economic, social and cul-

tural institutions, while retaining the right to par-

ticipate fully, if they so choose, in the political,

economic, social and cultural life of the state ."

-Jay Walljasper

allotted each parcel to an individual Indian,

hoping that this would somehow force us

to become farmers and adopt the notion of

progress-in short, to be civilized.

The allotment system was alien to our

traditional concepts of land. In our society a

person harvested rice in one place, trapped

in another place, gathered medicines in a

third place, and picked berries in a fourth.

These locations depended on the ecosystem;

they were not necessarily contiguous. But

All That Endures 85

the government said to each Indian, "Here

are your eighty acres; this is where you'll

live." Then, after each Indian had received

an allotment, the rest of the land was de-

clared "surplus" and given to white people

to homestead or "develop." What happened

to my reservation happened to reservations

all across the country.

The state of Minnesota took our pine

forests away and sold them to timber com-

panies, and then taxed us

for the land that was left.

you keep that money. I bought your land

from you." He had purchased her eighty

acres on Many-Point Lake for fifty bucks.

Today that location is a Boy Scout camp.

The White Earth Reservation lost

250,000 acres to the state of Minnesota

because of unpaid taxes. By 1920, at least

99 percent of the original White Earth

Reservation land was in non-Indian hands.

This was done to native peoples across the

country.

We have exhausted all

When the Indians couldn't

pay the taxes, the state

confiscated the land. But

how could these people

pay taxes? In 1910, they

could not even read or

write English.

Tribal elders legal recourse for getting

back our land. The Federal

Circuit Court ruled that to

regain their land, Indian

people had to file a law-

suit within seven years of

the original time of taking.

Still, we believe that we

must get our land back.

We really do not have any

in New Mexico call the

commons "mine-ours."

I'll tell you a story about

how my great-grandma

was cheated by a loan

shark. She lived on Many-

-Paula Garcia, community activist

Point Lake, where she was

allotted land. She had run up a bill at the

local store because she was waiting until fall

when she could get some money from wild

rice harvesting and a payment coming from

a treaty annuity. So she went to a land spec-

ulator named Lucky Waller, and she said, "I

need to pay this bill." She asked to borrow

fifty bucks from him until the fall, and he

said: "OK, you can do that. Just sign here

and I'll loan you that fifty bucks." So she

signed with a thumbprint and went back to

her house on Many-Point Lake. About three

months later she was ready to repay him the

fifty bucks, and the loan shark said, "No,

86 All That We Share

other place to go. That's

why we started the White

Earth Land Recovery Project. Our project is

like several other projects in Indian commu-

nities. We are not trying to displace people

who have settled there. A third of our land

is held by federal, state, and county govern-

ments. That land should just be returned to

us. It certainly would not displace anyone.

Some of the privately held land on our res-

ervation is held by absentee landholders,

many of whom have never seen that land;

they do not even know where it is. It is a

commodity to them, not home. We hope to

persuade them to return it to us.

Our project also works to reacquire our

land by purchase. We bought some land as a

site for a roundhouse, a building that holds

one of our ceremonial drums. We bought

back our burial grounds, which were on pri-

vate land, because we believe that we should

hold the land where our ancestors rest. We

purchased a former elementary school,

which is now the home of our new radio sta-

tion and a wind turbine. In 2009, which is

the twentieth anniversary of our project, we

acquired 1,400 acres. We use some of this

land to grow and gather sustainable prod-

ucts that we sell: wild rice, maple syrup and

candy, berry jams, and birch-bark crafts.

Sustainable Communities, Not Sustainable Development

In conclusion, I want to say there is no such

thing as sustainable development. Commu-

nity is the only thing in my experience that

is sustainable. We all need to be involved in

building communities, not focused solely on

developing things. We can all do that in our

own way, whether it is European American

88 All That We Share

communities or indigenous communmes,

by restoring a way of life that is based on

the land.

The only way you can manage a com-

mons is if you share enough cultural expe-

riences and values so that what you take

out of nature doesn't upset the natural bal-

ance-minobimaatisiiwin, as we call it.

The reason native cultures have remained

sustainable for all these centuries is that we

are cohesive communities. A common set of

values is needed to live together on the land.

Finally, I believe industrial societies con-

tinue to consume too much of the world's

resources. When you need that many re-

sources, it means constant intervention in

other peoples' land and other peoples' coun-

tries. It is meaningless to talk about human

rights unless you talk about consumption.

In order for native communities to live and

teach the world about sustainability, the

dominant society must change. If modern society continues in the direction it is going,

indigenous people's way of life will continue

to bear the consequences.

-Winona LaDuke

The Commons Moment Is Now

How a small, dedicated group of people can transform the world-really

SOCIAL CHANGE IS NOT SOMETHING

easily diagrammed on a chart. Sweeping

transformations that rearrange the work-

ings of an entire culture begin impercepti-

bly, quietly but steadily entering people's

minds until one day it seems the ideas were

there all along. Even in our age of instanta-

neous information-when a scrap of infor-

mation can zoom around the globe in mere

seconds, people's worldviews still evolve

quite gradually.

Learning from the Right

This is exactly how the paradigm of corpo-

rate power came to rule the world. First ar-

ticulated in large part by an obscure circle

of Austrian economists, it surfaced in the

United States during the 1950s as a curious

political sideshow promoted by figures such

as novelist Ayn Rand and her protege Alan

Greenspan.

The notion of the market as the bed-

rock of all social policy entered mainstream

debate during the Goldwater campaign in

1964, which appeared to mark both its debut

108 All That We Share

and its demise. Despite Republicans' spec-

tacular defeat in elections that fall-which

extended from the White House all the way

to local races-small bands of pro-market

partisans refused to accept the unpopular-

ity of their theories. Instead, they boldly

launched a new movement that would even-

tually turn American life upside down.

Bankrolled by wealthy backers who un-

derstood that modern politics is a battle of

ideas, market champions shed their image

as fusty reactionaries swimming against the

tide of progress and gradually refashioned

themselves as visionaries charting a bold

course for the future.

Their ranks swelled throughout the late

1970s as an unlikely combination of liber-

tarian dreamers, big-business opportunists,

and anxious defenders of traditional values

signed up for the cause. The successive

elections of Margaret Thatcher in Britain,

Ronald Reagan in the United States, and

Franc;:ois Mitterrand in France confirmed

market fundamentalists' global ascendancy.

Thatcher and Reagan, each in her and his

own distinct way, became effective advo-

cates for the idea that the market should be

the chief organizing principle of

human endeavor. Mitterrand, on

the other hand, was a dedicated

socialist but soon discovered that

the growing influence of interna-

tional capital rendered him pow-

erless to carry out promises of his

1981 election campaign. This was

final confirmation that we had

entered a new age of corporate

domination.

PRIVATIZATION oFTHE FIRE DEPT. PUT YOUR CREDIT CARD THROUGH THE FIRE HYDRANT SO WE CAN GET WATER!

Ever since then, our world has

been shaped by these forces. Alan

Greenspan became the most in-

fluential economic policy maker

in recent history during eighteen

years as chairman of the U.S.

Federal Reserve. And the market

paradigm is now seen by many-

a lot of whom did not begin as

right-wingers-as an indisput-

able truth on the same level as the

Ten Commandments or the laws

of physics.

Today, it feels as though everything is for

sale to the highest bidder-from the names

of sports stadiums to DNA sequences that

make human life possible. Since the 1980s,

reform movements of the left and center

successfully resisted certain extreme el-

ements of the radical right agenda, but

many Americans still believe a free-market

blueprint for the future is inevitable. Prog-

ress, once viewed as the gradual expansion

of social equity and opportunity, is now

widely viewed as the continual expansion of

economic privatization and unchecked cor-

porate power.

Introducing the Commons Paradigm

Andy Singer

There are emerging signs that market fun-

damentalism has passed its peak as the de-

fining idea of our era. In the United States,

the first glimmer of hope was when the Bush

administration's plan to partially privatize

Social Security funds in the stock market

gained little traction in Congress and public

opinion. Painful financial upheavals around

the globe revealed the glaring weaknesses

of the current economic model for all to see,

leaving some market true believers scram-

Reinventing Politics 109

bling to embrace new policies. Yet old ide-

ologies don't quietly fade, especially when

they enjoy sizable support in the corporate

world. We've seen a fierce backlash against

Barack Obama's admittedly modest depar-

tures from rigid market thinking.

At the same time, a group of activists,

thinkers, and concerned citizens around

the world who are rallying support for the

idea of a commons-based society. At this

point, they're a scrappy bunch-many with

backgrounds in various social movements,

community causes , and Internet initia-

tives-not so different from the dedicated

market advocates of the 1950s, except in

where they place their hopes. These com-

moners, as they call themselves, see pos-

sibilities for large numbers of people of

diverse ideological stripes coming together

to chart a new, more cooperative direction

for modern society.

The volatile political mood of our era

bears some resemblance to the late 1970s

when liberalism was losing its footing and

conservative policy makers refashioned

their old political rhetoric, based on social

exclusion and apologies for capitalism, into

a shiny new philosophy: "the market." Pre-

viously the thrust of right-wing thought had

been focused on what they were against

(civil rights, labor unions, social programs,

et cetera), but by claiming the "market as

their mission, they were able to emphasize

instead what they were for. The success of

that rebranding has led to many of the prob-

lems we now grapple with today.

• • •

110 All That We Share

A New Political Dawn?

In the same way, commons-based thinking

could eventually shift the balance of poli-

tics in the United States and the world. Yet

unlike market fundamentalism, the com-

mons is not just old wine in new bottles; it

marks a substantive new dimension in po -

litical and social thinking.

A commons-based society holds consid-

erable appeal for progressives after a long

period in which the bulk of their political

work has been in reaction to initiatives

from the right. Activists across many social

movements, now aware that an expansive

political agenda will succeed better than

narrow identity politics and single-issue

crusades, are starting to experiment with

the language and ideas of the commons.

This line of thinking also makes sense to

some traditional conservatives who regret

the wanton destruction of our social and

environmental assets carried out in the

name of a free-market revolution. In the

truest sense of the word, the commons is

a conservative as well as progressive virtue

because it aims to conserve and nurture

all those things necessary for sustaining a

healthy society.

Growing numbers of citizens-includ-

ing many who never before questioned the

status quo-now seem willing to explore

new ideas that once would have seemed rad-

ical. Millions of Americans are now making

shifts in their personal lives such as buying

organic foods, using alternative medicine,

collaborating online, and searching for

something beyond consumerism that offers

a sense of meaning in their lives. They may

not yet be sprinkling their conversations

with the word commons, but they are look-

ing for changes in their lives.

Now is the time to introduce a decisive

shift in worldview. People everywhere are

yearning for a world that is safer, saner,

more sustainable and satisfying. There's

a rising sense of possibility that even with

our daunting economic and environmental

problems, there are opportunities to make

some fundamental improvements. Every-

one deserves decent health care. The health

of the planet should take precedence over

the profits of a few. Clean water, adequate

food, education, access to information, and

economic opportunity ought to be available

to all people. In other words, a commons-

based society. Let's transform that hope

into constructive action.

-Jay Walljasper

Reinventing Politics 111

Water for All Activists around the planet proclaim

H 2 0 as our common property

A FIERCE RESISTANCE TO THE ABUSE OF

water and watersheds as well as to the cor-

porate takeover of public water utilities is

growing in all corners of the globe, giving

rise to a new global movement. "Water for

all" is the rallying cry of local groups in

hundreds of communities around the world

fighting to protect their water resources

from pollution, destruction by dams, and

outright theft from corporations.

These struggles for the basic right to

water have galvanized a water justice move-

ment that draws on the principles of the

commons to articulate a new vision for the

future. To the question, Who owns water?

they answer, No one-it belongs to the

earth, all species, and future generations.

The goals of the movement (also known as

the water commons movement) are simple

but powerful: keep water public; keep it

clean; keep it accessible to all.

This movement has already had an

impact on global politics, forcing global

institutions such as the World Bank and the

United Nations to address the inadequacies

of their water policies and helping formulate

new policies in dozens of countries. New

160 All That We Share

debates are now under way about control of

water resources.

All over the world, the water commons is

used as a dump site for our wastes. Ninety

percent of the wastewater produced in the'

global South is discharged untreated into

rivers, streams, and coastal waters. Seventy-

five percent of India's and Russia's surface

waters should not be used for drinking or

bathing. The UN has reported unprece-

dented water quality deterioration in all of

Africa's 677 major lakes and every one of its

major rivers. Only about 2 percent of Latin

America's wastewater receives any treat-

ment at all.

The situation in the global North is

better but not good. Twenty percent of all

surface water in Europe is "seriously threat-

ened," and 40 percent of U.S. rivers and

streams are too degraded for swimming,

fishing, or drinking, as are 46 percent of

all lakes, due to massive toxic runoff from

industrial farms. This unparalleled environ-

mental crisis can be reversed only through

the realization that water is a commons that

belongs to everyone, and therefore harm to

any water is harm to the whole-earth and

humans alike. All over the world, commu-

nities are confronting the twin engines of

water pollution: industrial agriculture and

industrial production.

The move to local, sustainable agri-

culture is growing as people question the

wisdom of dousing our vegetables and

grains with chemicals and our meat animals

with drugs, then shipping food thousands

of miles to our dinner tables.

Groups are forming to fight the power

of agribusiness and the water-guzzling

practices of factory farms. Beyond Factory

Farming, a Canadian network devoted to

sustainable and humane farming, is work-

ing with local municipalities to establish

regulations that would limit the amount

of water available to large livestock opera-

tions.

Mining companies are also major cul-

prits in the contamination of groundwater

in the global South, but an emerging North-

South network is challenging these compa-

Water is a life-giving resource to share-not a commodity to sell.

nies. Activists in Canada and Chile teamed

up to force Canadian mining company Bar-

rick Gold to abandon a plan to remove the

top of three glaciers on the Chile-Argentina

border in order to get at the gold deposits

underneath them. Massive amounts of gla-

cier water that serves as the only source for

seventy thousand farmers would have been

destroyed.

From all over the world come stories of

reclamation of polluted water. Europe's

Lake Constance, once almost lost to phos-

phorus and other pollutants, has now

recovered and provides drinking water to 4

million people. The recovery of Lake Con-

stance was begun in 1954 by the three coun-

tries that surround the lake-Germany,

Austria, and Switzerland-in a joint effort

to save the third largest lake in Europe.

Only by seeing the lake as common prop-

erty, belonging to all, were the countries,

local municipalities, and residents able to

bring it back from ecological ruin.

Our Planet, Ourselves 161

Waterkeepers, an alliance of 177 groups

that began in North America, empowers

local communities to protect their shared

ecosystems. In the last several years, the

Hudson Riverkeepers went to court to

require power plants and industrial facilities

to use closed-cycle cooling systems, stopping

the disruption of aquatic species by ther-

mal pollution. The Delaware Riverkeepers

stopped army plans to dump by-products of

deadly chemical weapons in the river. And

the San Francisco Baykeepers forced the

state of California to adopt a tough plan to

slash mercury pollution in the bay.

While there is less money for pollution

cleanups in the global South, success sto-

ries can still be found. In Colombia, sixteen

large wetlands along the Bogota River have

been restored to pristine condition. This is

the first step in cleaning up the contami-

nated river that supplies water for the 8 mil-

lion people of Bogota. True to principles of

the commons, the indigenous peoples living

on the wetland sites were not removed, but

rather have become caretakers of these pro-

tected and sacred places.

Citizens (especially students) of many

countries of the global South have become

involved in the annual Clean Up the World

Campaign. Held on the third weekend of

September, it was started in 1993 by an Aus-

tralian sailor upset about water pollution. It

now involves more than 35 million people

in 120 countries in an annual ritual of com-

mons protection. The United Nations Envi-

ronment Program has adopted Clean Up

the World Day and now promotes it around

the world.

162 All That We Share

Protecting Watersheds and Ecosystems

As a result of destroying so much of our water

commons, we are quite literally running out

of water. Right now, humans use more than

half of the earth's accessible runoff water,

leaving little for nature and other species.

In the United States, industrial agriculture

guzzles four fifths of the nation's total water

use and is the leading source of pollutants in

the country's rivers and lakes. In the global

South, irrigation consumes more than 85 per-

cent of total water use and is draining many

rivers. As our demand for water grows, the

strain on the earth and other living creatures

accelerates. Humans have always assumed

that we would never run out of water. But

the truth is that less than one half of one per-

cent of the world's water is available for our

use without drawing down the water stock

needed to replenish this cycle. We are deplet-

ing our water commons in six crucial ways:

Aquifer and Groundwater Mining. Sophis-

ticated technology pumps groundwater far

faster than it can be replenished by nature.

Virtual Water Exports. Export-oriented

agricultural and trade policies mean that

a large share of water is sent abroad in the

form of food and other products.

Pipeline Diversions. We shift water from

where nature provides it (and where it is

needed for ecosystem health) to where we

want it to grow food in deserts or serve

massive urban areas.

COMMONS CHAMPION

Jesus Leon Santos Transforming barren lands into green fields and forests

Mexico's food supply is undergoing a dramatic

transformation : 40 percent of the nation's

corn-a stap le at dinner tables-is now being

imported from the United States . The Mex ican

government meanwhile is pursuing agricultural

policies designed to discourage small farmers

in favor of large, industrialized operations . This

holds huge repercussions for the environmental

and economic balance of North America.

According to Octavio Rosas Landa, an eco-

nomics professor at the Autonomous University

of Mexico, current policies will drive 22 million

of Mexico's 25 million peasants (40 percent of

whom are indigenous people) off the land in the

next few years, pushing many of them unwill -

ingly to Mexican cities and the United States .

When families who have farmed parcels of land

for centur ies depart the countryside, Mexico will

lose irreplaceable local knowledge that could

help solve its agricultural and environmental

challenges .

You get a sense of what is being lost in Oaxaca

province , where Jesus Leon Santos, a forty-four-

year- old farmer of Mixtec Indian heritage , is

leading efforts to transform barren landscapes

into green fields and forests . (A UN study found

83 percent of the region is severely eroded.)

His secret : reviving traditional Mi xtec farming

methods in order to restore local ecosystems .

Working with an organization he founded called

CEDICAM (in English, the Center for Integral

Small Farmer Development in the Mi xteca),

Leon Santos is fighting rampant erosion by rein -

troduc ing trees, rainwater collection pract ices,

contour drainage ditches, and stone terraces on

hillside plots .

CEDICAM has worked with more than 1,500

small farmers , who have planted more than 1

million trees across 2,500 acres and reclaimed

2,000 acres of farmland . The trees help retain

rainwater , which can be used to revive unpro -

ductive fields. Leon Santos encourages fa r m -

ers to use organic compost instead of chemi -

cal fertilizer , which has doubled in price over

(continued on page 164)

Jesus Leon Santos, a Mexican farmer, introduces indigenous farming techniques to reverse erosion.

Our Planet, Ourselves 163

Jesus Leon Santos (continued from page 163) recent years. He teaches them to plant crops

in traditional mi/pa-an indigenous practice in

which small plots of corn, beans, and squash

are planted together to return nutrients to the

soil and provide a natural defense against pests.

He also counsels farmers to use oxen rather

than tractors, which compact the soil, making it

unable to absorb rainfall.

These traditional agricultural methods are

becoming increasingly attractive to small farm-

ers today as they struggle with the rocketing

Deforestation. Clear-cut forests disrupt

natural hydrological cycles, eventually lead-

ing to a reduction in the amount of rain in

an ecosystem.

Urban Heat Islands. Impermeable pave-

ments raise temperatures, thus reducing the

ability of ecosystems to retain water, creat-

ing desertification.

Climate Change. Global warming is caus-

ing greater evaporation of surface waters.

Slovak hydrologist and Goldman Envi-

ronmental Prize winner Michal Kravcik's

groundbreaking research shows that when

water cannot return to fields, meadows,

wetlands, and streams because of urban

sprawl and the removal of water-retentive

landscapes, the actual amount of water in

the hydrologic cycle decreases, leading to

164 All That We Share

cost of artificial fertilizer, pesticides, machinery,

and gasoline . "The Green Revolution displaced

our local resources," he told the New York Times,

using a phrase once coined to describe chemi-

cal, industrialized agriculture. "Our dependence

on the outside-that led to our ruin."

In 2008, Leon Santos was awarded the pres-

tigious Goldman Environmental Prize for his

imaginative grassroots activism.

-Jay Walljasper

desertification of once green land. Kravcik

is spearheading a movement to view water

in the hydrologic cycle as a commons even

before it has fallen from the clouds. He

believes restoring ecosystems and water-

sheds by collecting and storing rainwater is

key to the restoration of the hydrologic cycle

upon which we all depend for life.

This kind of rainwater harvesting is a

natural, as opposed to an expensive high-

tech, solution to the water crisis that could

employ millions of people in what Kravcik

calls "community sustainable development

programs." This kind of harvesting has

been done in arid areas for millennia, but

now is being done in other areas running

out of clean water. China and Brazil have

extensive rooftop rainwater harvesting pro-

grams, and Bermuda has a law that requires

all new construction to include rainwater-

gathering facilities. The Centre for Science

and Environment in Delhi, India, runs sev-

eral do·zen such programs around the city

and has trained thousands of practitioners

from all over India to renew this ancient

technique.

Water bottling facilities, which pay noth-

ing to take millions of tons of water yearly

from a community, are also a focus for

the growing water commons movement.

Brazil's Citizens for Water Movement trav-

eled all the way to Nestle's headquarters in

Vevey, Switzerland, to protest the damage

the company is causing to the ancient min-

eral springs of Sao Loureni;:o. Friends of the

Earth Indonesia is fighting government con-

cessions to several bottled water companies

in central Java.

In Michigan, the Sweetwater Alliance

and others have taken Nestle to court

for diminishing their local water supplies

through the bottling of the Ice Mountain

water brand. They won an important court

victory, but the company is appealing the

ruling. The action was inspired by a simi-

lar case in Wisconsin, where local residents

stopped plans for a Nestle bottling works.

Residents of Fryeburg, Maine, are fighting

to save their aquifer from Nestle subsid-

iary Poland Springs, and local communi-

ties are adopting ordinances to assert their

control over local water sources. A citizen's

group in McLeod, California, successfully

stopped Nestle from a major water taking

from Mount Shasta.

International Rivers is a powerful net-

work on five continents working to pro-

tect rivers from the destruction of big

dams. It offers legal advice, training, and

technical assistance and helps in dealing

with governments. One sign of success is

that the number of big dams being built

around the world has steadily declined

since International Rivers was set up two

decades ago.

Fighting for Water Justice

One of the definitions of a commons is that

it is accessible to all without discrimina-

tion. The greatest indictment of current

water policies is the water apartheid now

imposed on people throughout the global

South. Almost 2 billion people live in water-

stressed regions of the planet; of those,

1.4 billion have little or no access to clean

drinking water every day. Two fifths of the

world's people lack access to basic sanita-

tion, leading to a return of communicable

diseases such as cholera. The World Health

Organization reports that contaminated

water is implicated in 80 percent of all sick-

ness and disease worldwide.

The average North American uses

almost 600 liters (150 gallons) of water a

day. The average African uses just 6 liters

(1.5 gallons). However, poverty and water

apartheid are not relegated to the South.

Water cutoffs have spread to the United

States, where the Detroit Sewage and Water

Department cut off water to thousands of

residences unable to pay their (rising) water

bills. To make matters worse, the city's

Social Services Department removed many

children from homes because they now had

no access to clean water.

Our Planet, Ourselves 165

The Commons Solution

Water apartheid will not end until we de-

clare water to be a public commons acces-

sible to all. The global water justice move-

ment declares that water must be seen as a

basic human right and must not be denied

to anyone because of the inability to pay.

In communities all around the world,

local groups have resisted the privatization of

their water services and won. In response to

intense public pressure under the leadership

of a grassroots group called FEJUVE, the

Bolivian government of Evo Morales ousted

the private water company Suez from the

capital, La Paz, after a disastrous ten-year

contract to manage the city's water. Suez was

also forced out of Buenos Aires and Santa

Fe, Argentina. Local groups celebrated when

the municipality of Adelaide, Australia, took

back its water from a private consortium

after years of being engulfed in a "big pong"

(stench) caused by leaking sewers. Recently,

a powerful mobilization led by Food and

Water Watch has successfully fought or

reversed water privatization in Atlanta,

Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana; Laredo,

Texas; and Stockton, California.

Citizens are not waiting for their govern-

ments to take the lead in asserting water as

a human right. In 2004, the citizens of Uru-

guay became the first in the world to declare

that everyone has a right to water. Led

by Friends of the Earth Uruguay and the

National Commission in Defense of Water

and Life, the groups first had to obtain

almost 300,000 signatures (which they

166 All That We Share

delivered to Parliament as a "human river")

in order to get a referendum placed on the

ballot calling for a constitutional amend-

ment on the right to water. It won and is

now enshrined in the country's constitution.

The Indian Supreme Court recently ruled

that protection of natural lakes and ponds

is akin to honoring the right to life-the

most fundamental right of all, according

to the court. Activists in Nepal are going

before their Supreme Court arguing that

hiring a private firm to manage the drink-

ing water system in Kathmandu violates the

right to health guaranteed in the country's

constitution. The Coalition Against Water

Privatization in South Africa is challeng-

ing the practice of water metering before

the Johannesburg High Court on the basis

that it violates the human rights of Soweto's

poor. Bolivian president Evo Morales has

called for a "South American convention

for human rights and access for all living

beings to water" that would reject the priva-

tized market model on water distribution

imposed in many global trade agreements.

The water commons movement has

forced open debate over the control of water

and challenged the corporations and priva-

tization advocates who set themselves up as

the lords of this dwindling resource. The

growth of this global water-justice move-

ment is critical in bringing accountability,

transparency, and public oversight to the

mounting water crisis as conflicts over water

loom on the horizon.

-Maude Barlow

COMMONS SOLUTIONS

Winning One for the Commons in Akron Voters reject privatization of their sewer system

In February 2008, the mayor of Akron, Ohio, pro-

posed leasing the maintenance and operation of

the city's sewer system to a private company for

ninety-nine years. Local activists from North-

east Ohio American Friends Service Committee

and AFSCME Ohio Council 8 contacted the D.C.-

based organization Food & Water Watch about

the proposed privatization and asked for help

with research and strategy development .

The two local organizations brought together

two different constituencies to form a broad

coalition of labor, religious, and community

organizations known as Citizens to Save Our

Sewers and Water (Citizens SOS).

Part of the success was their quick response.

They were on the street before the mayor had

produced any details about leasing the sewers .

To raise awareness and educate their own con-

stituencies , they organized screenings of the

film Thirst, a 2004 documentary about prob-

lems resulting from privatization of a public

water utility in Stockton, California.

In addition, they informed residents that

86 percent of U.S. water systems are publicly

owned , and these are rated as more efficient

and 13- 50 percent less expensive than priva-

tized systems .

L __

Citizens SOS decided that the best way to

counter the mayor's proposal was to require

voter approval before the privatization of any

public utility, which would mean passing a

ballot referendum. By mid-July 2008, Citizens

SOS had collected nearly four thousand valid

signatures, more than enough to get their

issue on the ballot. The mayor meanwhile cre-

ated his own ballot proposal favoring privati -

zation.

The local media favored the privatization

plan, so Citizens SOS had to use alternative

means to get their message out : door-to-door

canvassing, phone calls, billboards, ads, let-

ters to the editor, literature drops, parades,

and political forums . The group also brought an

activist from Stockton, California, where priva-

tization of the local water utility had recently

been overturned, to speak about the negative

experience of privatization.

When Election Day 2008 finally came, resi-

dents overwhelmingly rejected the mayor's

privatization plan and approved the measure

requiring a vote on any municipal privatization

by a margin of two to one .

-Wenonah Hauter

Our Planet, Ourselves 167

The Rise and Fall of Two Key Information Commons

The government backs away from its traditional role of fostering a wide range of viewpoints

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE POST

office. Before the Internet, before cable,

before TV, before radio, mail delivery was

our major means of mass communication.

The founders of the United States under-

stood its importance and deemed that it

must be a public institution. Article I, sec-

tion 8, clause 7, of the U.S. Constitution

states, "Congress shall have Power to estab-

lish Post Offices and Post Roads."

Congress wanted the U.S. Post Office to

be a monopoly. In 1792, it prohibited the

private transmission of any letter or packet

"on any established post-road," as well as

the establishment of any competing postal

service by foot, horse, vessel, boat, or "any

conveyance whatever, whereby the revenue

of the general post-office may be injured."

But the Post Office still had to deal with

private companies that found loopholes in

these rules. In 1845, in response to private

post companies cherry-picking the most

profitable big-city routes, Congress closed

loopholes and increased penalties for the

private delivery of certain types of mail.

This was justified because the Post Office

had a broader mission than simply deliver-

ing letters-it was dedicated to spreading

information as widely as possible. Indeed,

the way the Post Office historically set

postage rates exhibited its qualities as a

commons.

Information in the Public Interest

From the very first, Congress decided that

political news was crucial to an informed

electorate and a unified nation. The 1792

postal law allowed newspaper printers to

send each other newspapers for free, which

was important to the flow of information

from national and international sources to

rural villages. Throughout the early 1800s,

the content of local newspapers consisted

largely of national and foreign news sto-

ries clipped from other publications. The

1792 law also provided for the mail delivery

of newspapers to subscribers at the rela-

tively low rate of 1 cent for up to a hundred

miles or 1.5 cents for more than a hundred

miles. This policy led Alexis de Tocqueville

to observe on his 1830s tour of the United

Liberating Information and Culture 201

States that "nothing is easier than to set up

a newspaper, as a small number of subscrib-

ers suffices to defray the expenses. In Amer-

ica there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its

newspaper."

This special rule for newspapers slowly

grew into the broader discounted rate

classification of second-class mail, which

expanded to cover other types of materials

that the Post Office recognized as having

educational and cultural benefits. Eventu-

ally, periodical pamphlets, magazines, non-

profit publications, library materials, and

books were included.

The Post Office's goal was not only

to inform and unite the nation, but to

strengthen local communities. In 1845,

Congress granted free delivery for weekly

newspapers within thirty miles of the place

of publication. In 1852, Congress allowed

small newspapers and magazines circulat-

ing in the state of publication to be mailed

for half the regular rates.

From the very start, the Post Office

charged more for advertising mailings. In

the early twentieth century, when maga-

zines and newspapers were turning into

advertising vehicles, Congress devised a

creative solution. Periodicals paid a low

postage on their reading content and higher

rates on their advertising pages.

The rise of Rush Limbaugh, along with right-wing talk radio and Fox News, can be traced to the repeal of the fairness doctrine in the broadcasting industry.

202 All That We Share

Privatizing the Post Office

The Post Office's role as an information

commons was prone to the problems expe-

rienced by many public institutions, from

schools to mass transit: a deterioration of

service over time due to budget reductions,

bureaucratic inertia, and fierce attacks from

those favoring privatized services. The

crisis came in October 1966 when the Chi-

cago Post Office ground to a virtual halt

under a mountain of mail. That stimulated

congressional hearings and a presidential

commission, which concluded that "today

the Post Office is a business. Like all eco-

nomic functions it should be supported by

revenues from its users. The market should

decide what resources are to be allocated

to the postal service." The report added

that the Post Office should not be "allowed

to discriminate unduly among its users in

the pricing of its services." The idea that

it should be allowed to discriminate at all

defied the mission of the Post Office as a

commons.

In 1970, Congress transformed the Cabinet-

level Post Office Department into the

independent United States Postal Service

(USPS). Nine of the eleven members of the

board of governors (BOG) are appointed

by the president and confirmed by the U.S.

Senate. Rates are set by another body, the

Postal Rates Commission, with approval

from the BOG.

The Post Office's role as a commons has

been slowly eliminated. In 1979, the U.S.

Postal Service allowed for the private deliv-

ery of "extremely urgent" letters. This helped

launch Federal Express and other private cou-

rier services. In 1986 private delivery of inter-

national mail was permitted. But attempts

by Congress to privatize the Postal Service or

eliminate its monopoly were thwarted.

Since the 1970 reorganization, the USPS

has been expected to be self-supporting.

Mail classifications are no longer designed

to reflect the value of the mail to its recipi-

ent and boost the flow of information. In

2007 the USPS dramatically increased the

rates on nonprofit periodicals while giving

substantial savings to larger media corpo-

rations that could install in-house technol-

ogy to better prepare their publications for

mailing.

From 1913 to 1955, the rate for the first

ounce of first-class mail stayed at 3 cents,

even though if the price had kept pace with

inflation it would have been 8 cents. From

1955 to 2009, the rate has increased to 44

cents. If it had kept pace with inflation, a first-class postage stamp would now cost 24

cents.

Recent USPS "deficits"-caused in large

part by a 2006 congressional requirement

that it contribute $5 billion a year for ten

years to fund future retirees' health ben-

efits, a requirement that had less to do

with actuarial necessity than with a politi-

cal desire to make the national debt appear

smaller-have spurred renewed calls to

slash its information mission by closing post

offices, eliminating one day of mail delivery,

eliminating its monopoly on first-class mail

and mailboxes, or privatizing its operations

altogether. Throughout this debate, the

public service nature of the post office has

been largely ignored.

The USPS's information commons func-

tion is still important and should be sup-

ported, as it traditionally has, by general

taxes. The vast majority of Americans still

depend on the mail, especially those with-

out the means to purchase home Internet

connections or use expensive courier ser-

vices. And contrary to all the jokes, the

USPS is remarkably efficient and has wide-

spread support. In 2007, a Gallup survey

found that 92 percent of residential custom-

Liberating Information and Culture 203

ers rated their postal service as excellent,

very good, or good.

Airwave America

After newspapers and the mail, radio

became the primary means of mass commu-

nication. It's easy to forget that the broad-

casting airwaves are, and once were treated

as, a commons, owned by citizens, not pow-

erful media companies.

At the dawn of the broadcasting era, the

free market prevailed. The government set

no rules. The 1912 Radio Act authorized the

federal Commerce and Labor Department

to issue radio station licenses to U.S. citi-

zens upon request. Which it did, resulting

in chaos-564 broadcasting stations were

operating by 1922, and their signals were

often interfering with one another, which

threatened to kill the budding industry in

the cradle. Radio station owners asked the

government to step in and fix the mess.

The question was how to do it. Several

options were on the table. The U.S. Navy

might have controlled all broadcasting, as it

wanted to do. Frequencies could have been

auctioned off to the highest bidders.

Or the United States could have created

the equivalent of the British Broadcasting

Company.

The original British Broadcasting Com-

pany was founded in 1922 by a group of

six private telecommunications compa-

nies. In late 1926, the British Broadcasting

Company became the British Broadcasting

Corporation, with exclusive control of the

204 All That We Share

airwaves under the terms of a Royal Char-

ter. The charter outlined the BBC's public

services: sustaining citizenship and civil

society, promoting education and learn-

ing, and stimulating creativity and cultural

excellence.

The BBC is required by its charter to be

free from both political and commercial

influence and to answer only to its viewers

and listeners. The Royal Charter also pro -

hibits the BBC from showing commercial

advertising on any services in the United

Kingdom (television, radio, or Internet ).

It is funded from a license fee imposed on

radio and TV sets sold in Great Britain. In

order to justify the license fee, the BBC is

expected to maintain a large share of the

viewing audience in addition to producing

programs that commercial broadcasters

would not normally present.

The United States chose not to emulate

Britain and went instead for commercial

broadcasting on privately owned stations,

but not privately owned frequencies. The

Radio Act of 1927 declared the airwaves a

public resource. Broadcasters paid no money

for their station licenses, but in return

they received no property rights to the fre-

quency. The short-term license's renewal

was supposed to depend on whether the sta-

tion served the public interest. Broadcasters

were deemed "public trustees." As the Fed-

eral Radio Commission (FRC), forerunner

of the Federal Communications Commis-

sion (FCC), explained, "The station must

be operated as if owned by the public .... It

is as if people of a community should own

a station and turn it over to the best man

I The Gre~t Facebook Rebellion COMMONS SENSE

Commoners fought back when the Web site tried to grab ownership of what users post

When Facebook quietly tried to claim owner-

ship in any content that users put on the site, it

incited a revolt . It all started in February 2009

when Face book changed the legal "terms of ser-

vice" that users must agree to when they sign

up. The TOS is that dense legal language that no

one really reads but which everyone nominally

consents to by clicking the button "I agree ."

Essentially, the new TOS said that anything

you upload to Facebook becomes the property

of Facebook, even if you close your account .

So your photos, your writings, your music, your

blog (if reposted to your Facebook page) would

belong to Facebook. Facebook could even choose

to sublicense your content if it so desired. It pre-

sumably thought that it might make money by

selling a viral hit or letting advertisers use ama-

teur content or people's photos for commercial

purposes .

While Facebook didn't call attention to this

content grab , the Consumerist, a blog associ-

ated with Consumers Union, did. Soon Julius

Harper, a Los Angeles video-game producer,

in sight with this injunction: 'Manage this

station in our interest.'" The commission

made it clear that there was no room for

"propaganda stations" as opposed to "gen-

eral public-service stations."

joined others in organizing a Facebook group

called People Against the New Terms of Service,

which quickly attracted 136,000 people. After

a New York Times article publicized the con-

troversy, the Facebook rebellion exploded . On

February 18, Facebook decided to restore the

former terms of service.

The new TOS was a "mistake," Face book later

claimed. More likely, Facebook thought it could

grab broader legal rights over a massive collec-

tion of user-generated content without attract-

ing attention .

Once the controversy flared out of control ,

however, Facebook wisely beat a hasty retreat .

It invited Facebook users to help formulate a

"bill of rights" for users that would cover their

"freedom to share and connect." But the compa -

ny's enlightened response does not fully resolve

the question of who shall ultimately control

user-generated content . It is still Facebook's

Web site .

-David Bollier

In 1930, the FRC made clear the mean-

ing of public interest by denying a license

renewal to a Los Angeles station used pri-

marily to broadcast sermons that attacked

Jews, Roman Catholic church officials, and

Liberating Information and Culture 205

law enforcement agencies. In 1949, the FCC

again defined what it meant by the public

interest when it introduced what later

became known as the fairness doctrine.

Broadcasters had to devote "a reasonable

percentage of time to cov-

erage of public issues; and

Information Commons Dismantled

With the ascension of Ronald Reagan to

the presidency in 1981, the rules for broad-

casting licenses suddenly

changed. The FCC elimi-

I want nated the requirement that [the] coverage of these issues must be fair in the sense that

it provides an opportunity

for the presentation of con-

trasting points of view."

politicians to know what

licensees provide detailed

program information as the

basis for license renewal.

In 1959, Congress reaf-

firmed that the fairness doc-

trine had statutory authority

by amending the Com-

munications Act of 1934.

In 1969 the U.S. Supreme

Court upheld the applica-

tion of that doctrine, noting,

they are giving away when they

take away our

In 1984, the FCC elimi-

nated programming guide-

lines that set minimums

for news and public affairs

programming and also dis-

continued enforcing the

fairness doctrine. When

citizens groups sued to rein-

commons.

- Ve/ Wiley, public access broadcaster

"Congress need not stand

idly by and permit those with licenses to

... exclude from the airwaves anything but

their own views of fundamental questions."

In 1974 the FCC called the fairness doctrine

"the single most important requirement of

operation in the public interest."

In filing their applications for license

renewal, stations had to provide detailed

information on their efforts to seek out and

address issues of concern to the commu-

nity. The program listings became the basis

for determining whether licenses should be

renewed.

• • •

206 All That We Share

state the doctrine, Appeals

Court judges Robert Bork

and Antonin Scalia, two Reagan appoin-

tees, concluded that the fairness doctrine

itself, despite its congressional reaffirmation

in 1959, was not a law but a guideline. In

August 1987 the FCC unanimously decided

that the fairness doctrine was contrary to

the public interest.

This put the ball in Congress's court.

The House, by an overwhelming three-to-

one margin, and the Senate by a margin of

almost two to one, passed a bill clearly reit-

erating that the fairness doctrine was indeed

the law. Among those voting in favor of the

fairness doctrine were leading conservatives

such as Representative Newt Gingrich and

Senator Jesse Helms. But Ronald Reagan

COMMONS CHAMPION

Vel Wiley Helping everyday people broadcast their ideas

For twenty -seven years Vel Wiley, executive

director of MATA Community Media in Milwau-

kee, Wisconsin, has been committed to the idea

that everyday people should not simply be pas-

sive consumers of media, but creators of it too .

MATA Community Media (formerly Milwaukee

Access Telecommunications Authority) has a

fully equipped television studio and two local

channels on the cable dial, which offers people

the chance to create their own video program-

ming and see it play in thousands of Milwaukee

living rooms. "It's a community resource," Wiley

says. "Everybody owns it. Everybody can use it.

It's a commons."

MATA Community Media has helped the

region's Spanish speakers, community organiza-

tions, church groups, youth groups, schoolchil-

dren, deaf people, blind people, social justice

advocates, Boy Scouts, nonprofit organizations,

and YWCA members to tell their stories and hone

their video skills. One kid who cut his teeth at

the MATA studio was George Tillman Jr., now one

of Hollywood's leading African American movie-

makers, director of Soul Food, Men of Honor, Bar-

bershop, and Notorious, as well as producer of the

Soul Food television series . Other MATA alums

have gone on to careers as newscasters , produc-

ers , and engineers for commercial TV stations .

MATA Community Media, like public access

channels all across America, was created out

Wiley fights for people's right to express themselves.

of a strong sense of the commons . Private cable

TV operators depend upon publ ic infrastructure

to spread cable lines to customers ' residences,

and federal communications policy along with

• local legislation has long required them to offer

people a way to create their own telev ision pro -

gramming .

In return for a lucrative cable contract for the

Milwaukee market, Time-Warner Cable agreed

to provide video production facilities and cable

channels for the public at large. That's how

MATA was born . But cable corporat ions came

to resist the idea that they owe the publ ic any-

th ing in return for making heaps of money on a

publicly guaranteed monopoly, and they have

vigorously attacked public access policies. First ,

swarms of cable and telecom lobbyists pres -

( continued on page 208)

Liberating Information and Culture 207

Vel Wiley (contin ued from page 207)

sured Congress to repeal a federal law that

ensured public access broadcasting in all fifty

states, and then they hit state capitols to slash

support for local public access programs .

"Our funding was cut 57 percent in 1999,

and we went from training six hundred people

to training a hundred," Wiley remembers. By

2012, all public funding for public access will

be eliminated. Yet Wiley and MATA refuse to

fold up. They now keep public access going in

Milwaukee with the help of foundation grants

vetoed the bill, and there were insufficient

votes in the Senate to override the veto.

The failure of that effort transformed

radio (and then television) into a potent and

one-sided political voice. Until then, call-in

talk radio had complied with FCC com-

munity service requirements by focusing

on public-interest issues and presenting all

viewpoints.

A few months after the FCC dropped

the fairness doctrine, Rush Limbaugh's

program, with its in-your-face attitude

and one-sided perspective, was syndicated.

Limbaugh marketed his show in unprec-

edented fashion, offering it free of charge

to stations across the nation. Within weeks,

fifty-six stations had picked up the show;

within four years, over six hundred sta-

tions were carrying it-the fastest spread of

any talk show in history. Others imitated

Limbaugh's format. The number of radio

208 All That We Share

and on-air appeals for financial support from

viewers.

The cutbacks have not deterred Wiley in her

ambitions for what public access can accom-

plish. She's now exploring a regular program

that would be directly focused on issues of the

commons. "I want people to understand the

commons. I want politicians to know what they

are giving away when they take away our com-

mons ."

-Jay Walljasper

talk stations more than doubled from 1987

to 1993.

In 1993, the nation discovered the politi-

cal power of this new entity. The Democratic

Congress and newly elected Democratic

White House revived the effort to make

the fairness doctrine law. Rush mobilized

his listeners. The bill never came up for a

vote. According to National Public Radio,

"privately, top aides in both the House and

Senate admit that efforts to reimpose the

doctrine have been put on hold in large part

due to the talk show hosts."

In 1994, talk radio made itself felt in

national elections. When the Republicans

stunningly captured the House of Represen-

tatives that year, for the first time in almost

forty years, Newt Gingrich called it "the

first talk radio election." In early 1995, the

Republican Party held a special ceremony

for Limbaugh, naming him an honorary

member of Congress. They dubbed him the

majority maker.

The new conservative majority approved

waves of giveaways to powerful media cor-

porations, the outright sale of frequencies,

and the reversal of the foundational rules

of the airwaves, nearly wiping out any

acknowledgment that the airwaves belong

to the people and should be managed as a

public trust.

Fifteen years later, talk radio has

changed the nature of political discourse.

Some persuasively argue it has changed our

very culture. Media scholar Henry Giroux

describes a "culture of cruelty" increasingly

marked by racism, hostility, and disdain for

others, coupled with a simmering threat

toward any political figure who comes into

the crosshairs of what many now call hate

radio.

Seventy-five years after the Federal Radio

Commission declared there was no room

on the public airwaves for "propaganda

stations" and denied a license renewal to a

station that attacked Jews and law enforce-

ment agencies, the airwaves are filled with

both propaganda and venom. Today the

airwaves, stripped of commons rules, feed

hatred.

-David Morris

Liberating Information and Culture 209

How to Save Newspapers The first step is seeing t hem as an information commons

According to almost everyone , including report-

ers and editors in most newsrooms, the era of

the daily newspaper is over. They simply cannot

compete with the Internet, which is scooping

them on breaking news and rustling most of

their advertisers .

But this obituary gets the facts wrong . Actu-

ally, the readership and reach of quality newspa-

pers is stronger than ever because of the Web.

Even as home deliveries and newsstand sales

slide, the Internet is bringing huge numbers of

new readers seeking the in-depth reporting that

newspapers offer . It's not newspapers them-

selves that are outdated (presuming you still

call them newspapers when "printed" online),

but rather the business model that carried them

through the twentieth century-slender prof-

its from circulation on top of fat money from

advertising .

To conceive a different business model

for newspapers to survive , we must start by

thinking differently about newspapers them -

selves-not as a business at all but as a public

service, a part of the information commons.

If we view daily newspapers as an essential

public service that we cannot afford to lose,

how do we keep them publishing? There's

probably more than one answer but, in look-

ing at how other important but not necessarily

profitable institutions survive, here are some

commons-based solutions .

210 All That We Share

Taxpayer Support Through an Indepen-

dent Agency. Search no further than N PR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broad-

casting for successful examples of Ameri-

cans receiving high-quality news and cul-

ture in return for a tiny portion of their ta x

dollars .

Reader Support and Sponsorships. Public radio and television offer other practical

ways for paying the high costs of providing

information. Readers, foundations, civic

organizations, and even private individuals

could underwrite quality reporting .

Community Ownership. No one owns the Green Bay Packers . Shares of the team are

widely spread out among people of the

community . Why not the Los Angeles Times

or Boston Globe?

Nonprofit Status. One of America's most respected newspapers, the St. Petersburg

Times, has been owned for many years by

the nonprofit Poynter Institute . A number

of other nonprofit experiments are under

way, including MinnPost, a new online daily

in Minneapolis-St. Paul that boasts that it

is the only news organization to open -

rather than close-a Washington bureau

recently .

-Jay Wallja s per