Emerging Strategies to Re/Claim the Commons

Reclaim the Commons

– USSF Resolution-

People’s Movement Assembly

June 2010

Those gathered at the USSF for the Reclaiming Our Commons PMA affirm and build on the Reclaim the Commons Manifesto that was developed at the World Social Forum in 2009. Humankind is suffering from an unprecedented campaign of privatization and commodification of the most basic elements of life: nature, culture, human work and knowledge itself. In countless arenas, private interests are claiming our shared inheritance – sciences, creative works, water, the atmosphere, health, education, genetic diversity, even living creatures - as private property. A compulsive quest for short-term financial gain is sacrificing the prosperity of all and the stability of the Earth itself.

We recognize that resisting or lessening the impacts of extreme marketization—privatization, ecological depletion, radical inequities, etc—is important but insufficient. There needs to be a simultaneous imagining of a life-sustaining future and the creation of tangible ways to live towards that vision.

The commons is rising now as a way of thinking about our future because it connects a history of communal resource sharing, stewardship and direct democracy to the needs of today. At its core the commons asserts that communities have an equitable claim to many forms of natural and social resources and a critical role in the decisions about those resources. The term “commons” is a way of naming a desired relationship to resources, one another and power. Claiming and protecting our commons begins with seeing and naming the commons.

We need to free our minds from the lock hold of the dominant market culture that cuts us off from a relationship with the commons and even from remembering that they belong to all of us.

We need to see and establish that many resources - natural, social and cultural – are ours to share; and that we have an obligation to the earth, ourselves, other living beings and future generations to take care of them. It is not enough to believe that the commons belong to all.

To truly claim our commons we need strategies and governance structures that maximize the community’s power in regard to resource decisions, equitable benefit and stewardship.

Additionally, claiming the commons requires:

- Repairing and rebuilding community relationships damaged by injustice, inequity and disconnection.

- Teaching ourselves to become stewards rather than only consumers

- Creating the means, policies and rules that lead to equitable community resource sharing and ownership

- Developing resource governance that is participatory, transparent and collaborative as well as appropriate to that particular commons

We therefore urge the participants in the USSF and the social movements from which they come, to support the work to see, name and claim our commons as vital to the future of our communities and our goals of equity, stewardship and survival.