On the Commons

The New Ecofeminism

jwalljasper — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 16:01:18 +0000

Like toxic waste, injustice accumulates over time – especially when we try to bury it.

Fulfilling our sacred responsibilities to future generations

The environmental movement is a microcosm of other realms of society in one troubling way: women are missing. In journalism, academia, politics – on climate change, agriculture, and the economy – men are the visible decision-makers and spokespeople.

We’ve been running a political experiment that excludes women. The result is a politics dominated by abstract notions of the economy that neglect the home and the commons. Governments assume their primary responsibility is to grow the economy and protect private property. They interpret the facts using old legal frames, which permit exploitation of people and places. The onus of proof is on communities to prove that an activity is harmful, not on polluting companies to demonstrate it is safe. The ‘free market’ almost always wins.

The experience of communities’ worldwide is that their water, air, soil, and children’s health are disposable for profit. Oil spills, childhood cancers, polluted water systems are not accidents. They are expected outcomes.

Like toxic waste, injustice accumulates over time – especially when we try to bury it. The irrevocable damage is hidden in the futures of our children.

And so we are stuck; aware of the urgency and complexity of the issues we face, and paralyzed or too disillusioned to act. We are stuck because we have been looking for solutions without all of the stakeholders at the table, including women. This affects how we perceive and define the problems, and limits the kinds of solutions that are available.

Our own complicity in the unfolding environmental tragedy can haunt us, leading to what some have called “moral wounds”. These moral wounds, where we know that our transportation, energy, agriculture and medical systems are environmentally bankrupt, and also that we are integrally involved in those same systems, lead to what some call pre-traumatic stress disorder: we see what is coming, we are part of the problem and we have no way to make more ethical choices.

Women know they have been excluded. Exclusion makes it more difficult to take meaningful action, compounding the moral wound. The underlying message to women about helping solve any environmental problem has been to shop responsibly. Use your dollars. Change to energy saving light bulbs. Be the de facto gatekeeper of every purchase for toxic chemicals. But shopping doesn’t work as the sole solution. We tried it. There were too many warning signs, too much evidence of decline and danger.

Women can see the mounting costs to their communities from climate change and environmental degradation. In caring for the aged and sick, women become keenly aware of the increase in disease and disability in children. Women, who gather the water and are responsible for their family’s nutrition, can see the damage to the water and to the land that we share. They see the environmental threats to their children wherever they turn. The evidence is overwhelming: future generations are in danger.

At the same time, women are recognizing that they have unique wisdom to offer; their roles as caretakers bring them close to natural cycles – to birth, death, and resilience, they have stories of survival and different visions for the future. Women’s bodies are the first environments for future generations; our bodies reflect and transmit the toxic state of our collective environment. Women’s bodies bring life into the world and so we have a responsibility to make sure the environment is healthy and whole.

Women also share a collective history – as property, second-class citizens, underpaid employees, and as bearers of age-old violence. And so women have always been disproportionately burdened by structural injustice and environmental degradation. The first phases of feminism were a response to these realities.

Borne out of this history, and given what we now know about the complex environmental issues we face, a new wave of feminism is emerging, predicated not just on claiming rights but on claiming responsibility. This is the crucial difference in this new phase of feminism: a responsibility to act. This responsibility is larger than shopping choices and making small changes in our homes and families. The fierce responsibility is to create the paths to a habitable and healthy Earth. This sacred obligation can only be fully met by making systemic changes, which compels us to do two things: block threatening, damaging policies and technologies, and create new commons-based solutions.

A community that unites and stands together to block an oil pipeline or fracking is far more likely to succeed than an individual working alone. The same goes for creating the commons infrastructure needed for a healthy world—the parks, sidewalks, public transit, clean energy systems. We can’t create a public transit system that reduces greenhouse gas emissions alone, but we can do so together.

And so, women are coming together—around kitchen tables, on porches, in women-led organizing campaigns, in large gatherings—and withdrawing their consent to a toxic legacy, an unstable climate, the loss of birds, fish, pollinators. They are naming the moral wounds and stepping up to address them. Governance of the people and by the people is dependent on the consent of the governed. Women are no longer consenting to being excluded. They are no longer consenting to decisions that amount to a theft of the future from generations to come. In these gatherings they are saying that band-aids on the wounds of the Earth and the body politic are insufficient. The wounds need to be healed. They are asking how can we live in ways that restore the commons and allow us to hand them to future generations in better shape than we got them?

Together, women are sourcing new definitions of problems and seeking smart solutions. Women are recognizing that their participation (or lack thereof) is more than a personal demand for individual justice. Our inequality affects not just our lives but those of children and our great grandchildren of all species. And so women are rising up to claim their responsibility and act on behalf of the earth, the commons, and future generations.

Since 2012 there have been three large gatherings of women that have met to forge new tools and open new paths for this work on behalf of Mother Earth and future generations.

In 2012 the first Women’s Congress for Future Generations met in Moab Utah and drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Future Generations and the Responsibilities of Present Generations. In 2013, the International Women’s Earth and Climate Summit met in New York and released a Declaration that announced that the women of the world were calling for urgent action on climate change. Then in 2014 we convened the second Women’s Congress for Future Generations in Minneapolis Minnesota where we issued the Declaration of the Rights of All Waters. There is more evidence of this movement: numerous women’s environmental organizations such as the Women’s Earth Alliance, Women’s Voices for the Earth and the Women’s Environmental Institute are doing remarkable work on behalf of the Earth and future generations.

Men have a role in this too. In this new phase of feminism everyone shares responsibility for the commons: the moral wound is not women’s alone. We’ve tried some new experiments and new roles for women and men. At the 2012 Women’s Congress for Future Generations, men participated as Sacred Witnesses both to the damage of the Earth and then witnessing the work of the women present. At the second Women’s Congress in 2014, men did not have differentiated roles, but women organized the event, ran the panels, and were the keynote speakers. We are experimenting not only with how to work together but how to take care of what we share in new and creative ways. This is not exclusionary work; this is allowing those who have been excluded for a long time to fulfill their rightful role and to claim responsibility.

Indeed, we know there are cycles and times of change. A woman’s unique authority to be at the decision-making table is not sourced simply by the ability to give birth. Women who are taking care of children will have a unique role in protecting the commons for future generations of all species, which will be different from those who are young and untethered, which will be different from those who are wise elders. There is a place for each of us. And that place may change. But the common thread that ties us is our responsibility.

We honor our foremothers who are the backbone of the feminist movement. Feminist leaders have shown us how to claim our place at the table. This new phase of feminism focused on ensuring a healthy commons for future generations can only come from a new understanding of essential rights. Recognizing the rights of both present and future generations confers on us this responsibility to pass on clean water, clean air, biodiversity, and a stable climate.

Fulfilling our responsibilities to future generations is hard work. We cannot do the work alone; the moral injury of watching in isolation as the devastation grows is too great. There is power in joining together and withdrawing our consent to the things that threaten life on this planet. There is power in women’s unique skills, vision, and responsibility. There is power and healing in communion.

What you can do: You can:

join the Women’s Congress for Future Generations
support this work financially
follow some of the women’s environmental organizations through social media
organize in your own community around some of the ideas in the forthcoming Women’s Companion for Political Change

kaitlin butler & Carolyn Raffensperger

(By Herald Post under a Creative Commons license)

Magazine

Environment

Politics and Government

Does Capitalism Need Fine-Tuning or an Overhaul?

David Morris — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 00:04:09 +0000

The very rich invest in politicians' campaigns to change the rules in their favor. They expect, and often receive, a remarkably high return on their investment.

Today we have one set of rules for the super rich, and another for everyone else.

David Morris

The catalyst for a recent column by David Brooks was a speech delivered by his New York Times colleague Anand Giridharadas at the Aspen Action Forum. Giridharadas (who writes the Letter From America column for the Times' global edition) questioned the “Aspen Consensus” that the wealthy and powerful, the benefactors of the Aspen Institute, could be asked to “do more good” but not to “do less harm”. He challenged his well-to-do, well-intentioned audience not to settle for making “an unjust and unpalatable system a little more digestible” and confront the “underlying system” that has created massive inequality and injustice. In short, he bluntly urged his audience to be “traitors to our class.”

Giridharadas received a standing ovation.

Brooks was collegially horrified, particularly by what he saw as Giridharadas’ inevitable embrace of government being “more heavily involved.”

“The coming debate about capitalism will be between those who want to restructure the underlying system and those who want to help people take advantage of its rough intensity,” Brooks insists. “It will be between people who think you need strong government to defeat oligarchy and those who think you need open competition.”

I prefer the word “savagery” to “rough intensity” but congratulate Brooks for conceding that we do have an oligarchy. And I prefer to use the verb governing rather than the noun government. Brooks description of government conjures up a stifling, bumbling bureaucracy whose interventions usually do far more harm than good. But the debate is not about how to grow a bureaucracy but how to exercise collective authority to change rules that enable and encourage a system that, in Giridharadas’ words, generates “extreme winners and extreme losers.”

Brooks’ refusal to support government as a key tool in restraining and eventually eliminating an oligarchy is disingenuous. For he knows that government has been the key tool enabling and encouraging the massive concentration of wealth and power.

The modern corporation, for example, may be the most enduring and extensive of all government interventions. In the 17th century, governments created a fictitious creature: the limited liability corporation. Investors could amass unlimited personal wealth but if the business failed or was engaged in criminal acts the investors were liable for no more than the amount they had invested. In the 19th century governments endowed corporations with unlimited life and charters so broad they could engage in all forms of commerce. In the 20th century courts bestowed on corporations personhood and in the 21st century allowed these artificial persons to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.

To my knowledge David Brooks has yet to rail against this most enduring and heavy-handed of all interventions by government.

Or consider another government intervention: ever-longer patents. Economist Dean Baker has repeatedly pointed out how drug companies as particularly benefiting from patents. In a 2004 report he estimated the higher profits and prices resulting from these patents costs consumers over $100 billion a year. In 2011 prescription drugs accounted for 17 percent of all health care spending, and in 2014 continued to increase faster than overall medical spending. A central issue in new trade agreements is the U.S. government’s insistence that the world adopt our costly drug patent system.

Adding insult to injury, the government also handsomely subsidizes drug research. Baker notes, “At present, the quantity of publicly supported or subsidized research in the United States is approximately equal to the amount of research supported through the patent system.” Moreover the public money underwrites the first and riskiest research stages, leaving the companies to invest in the less risky testing stages. Baker reviews four strategies that would eliminate the need for patenting most drugs and would spur innovation while dramatically reducing the cost of drugs.

In 2010 and again in 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the clear will of the people and allowed obscenely wealthy individuals and giant corporations to contribute unlimited sums to influence elections and referenda, that is, to influence the design of the rules under which they will operate. David Brooks did not oppose these decisions. Indeed he railed against the “political mythology of the political class” that tries to convince us that money matters. Please. The New York Times reports that 400 families have made 50 percent of all contributions to this point in the election cycle. A significantly higher percentage of Republican contributions come from the super rich.

I recommend we stop using the term “contributions” to describe the campaign spending of oligarchs and start using the term they themselves often use: “investments”. The very rich invest to change the rules in their favor. And they expect, and often receive, a remarkably high return on their investment.

We make the rules and the rules make us. The father of capitalism, Adam Smith, was concerned about the impact of an unrestrained capitalism on our moral compass. “This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition (is)…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Today we have established one set of rules for the rich and powerful and another set for those of poor and mean condition.

Consider the mundane but ubiquitous way we treat traffic offenses. In the United States rich and poor alike pay the same fine for the same violation. For the wealthy, the fine is a trivial inconvenience, which may be one reason why the wealthy tend to disregard traffic laws more than the rest of us. For the poor, however, a traffic ticket can constitute a significant financial burden, resulting in escalating debt, jail time and as we have discovered, if one is African American, loss of life.

European and especially Nordic countries approach the design of penalties differently. They believe all traffic offenders should feel similar financial pain. That has led Finland, for example, to determine traffic fines (as well as fines for shoplifting and violating securities-exchange laws) based on earnings. Finns estimate the amount of after tax money an offender earns in a day and then divide that in half. The resulting number becomes the basis for the fine. The severity of the offense determines the number of days of income the offender loses. Go about 15 mph over the speed limit and you lose 12 days; go 25 mph over and you lose 22-days. One Nokia executive was fined the equivalent of $103,000 for going 45 in a 30 mile per hour speed zone.

Or consider U.S. bankruptcy laws. Corporations can declare bankruptcy, reduce their debts and stay in business. But let an American student try to reduce a stifling college debt or a foreclosed homeowner his or her mortgage through bankruptcy and they will find themselves thwarted by acts of Congress written by the rich and powerful.

Brooks does appear supportive of exercising collective authority to sand down the rough edges of capitalism. He favors “a little redistribution to fund things like early childhood education, child and family leave, better community colleges.” But he fears that “the next wave of thinking implies that it is not enough to simply give people access to capitalism and provide them with a safety net. The underlying system has to be reconfigured. This is a bigger debate.”

The operative word here is “limited”. What Brooks considers a safety net is laughable. The United States lacks what most civilized countries view as key components of a genuine safety net: universal health care; universal preschool; unemployment insurance that offers a long term livable income; mandatory paid maternity leave and sick leave; four to six weeks of mandatory paid vacations.

Building a genuinely safe safety net would require government to tackle the issue of inequality head on. Corporations and wealthy individuals should be prevented from avoiding hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes by parking their money in tax havens abroad. Investment income should not be taxed at lower rates than wage income. And government should vigorously enforce anti-trust laws with an eye toward breaking up concentrations of corporate power that corrupt and upend the political process. And no candidate for the Supreme Court who supports its recent decisions on campaign spending should pass muster.

More than half a century ago President John F. Kennedy warned the rich and powerful in Latin America, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The rich and powerful in the United States would do well to heed his admonition.

Despite David Brooks’ entreaties, we have moved beyond the stage in which we continue to debate whether to soften the blows of capitalism or tackle the underlying system. The question now is whether we can peacefully change the system given that in the last 40 years the game has been rigged in favor of those who handsomely benefit from it.

For at least the last generation government has been a true friend of the oligarchs. Can we make it a friend of the people?

(By Robert Huffstutter under a Creative Commons license)

Magazine

Economy and Markets

Politics and Government

Putting the Good Back in Common Good

jwalljasper — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:15:16 +0000

New project strengthens the commons we experience as citizens, workers and everyday people.

The Good Project defines “good” by the three Es: excellence, ethics, and engagement.

About Ruth Wilson

Dr. Ruth Wilson worked as an educator for over 30 years and now devotes her time to writing and consulting. The focus of her work is on education, the environment, and spirituality. A regular contributor to On the Commons, Wilson's most recent book, Nature and Young Children, integrates these themes with ideas on how to promote the holistic development of young children. She can be contacted at wilson.rutha@gmail.com.

Our society has no trouble promoting competence. In the workforce, we reward productivity and efficiency with promotions and higher pay. In schools, we promote competence by designing curricula around academic standards and evaluating teachers on how well their students do on standardized tests. We use the terms “good job” and “nice work” to recognize something we consider well done. But there’s another term and concept we might like to consider in promoting a better society. I’m referring to the term “good work,” which is defined by psychologist and writer Howard Gardner and his colleagues as work that is simultaneously excellent in quality, carried out ethically, and personally engaging.

Along with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, Howard Gardner is one of the founders of the Good Work Project and co-author of the book Good Work. While work is sometimes described as something we have to do to make a living and as an obstacle to a life lived with more leisure and enjoyment, a point made in the Good Work book is that, as a species, humans have actually “developed a taste for work.” We feel good when we’re productive.

Our taste for productivity, however, can lead to unhealthy compromises. We may choose being productive over being ethical. We may choose to devote our time and energy to work that holds little value in terms of personal or social enhancement but offers rich rewards in terms of money and/or fame. The “good work” challenge is to make excellence, engagement, and ethics hallmarks of our work. As Gardner says, if one of these components is compromised, either the individual or the community – or both – will suffer.

The Good Work Project has become one of the components of a larger project referred to as the “Good Project.” As described on its website, the Good Project is “an ensemble of research projects designed to understand the nature of various ‘goods’ and, importantly, to promote their realization in our time.” “Goods,” in this context, doesn’t refer to a commodity or resource but rather to elements which contribute to the wellbeing of society.

The Good Project defines “good” by the three Es previously mentioned in relation to Good Work: excellence, ethics, and engagement. These elements are a part of the other initiatives of the Good Project, with focus areas that include play (digital media use among young people), citizenship and civics, and life (the Family Dinner Project, as well as a study of the meaning of quality). All the sub-projects and initiatives of the Good Project relate in some way to the commons and the common good. They also relate to what we do and how we live as persons, workers, and citizens. It’s understood that we each fulfill different roles as citizens of workplaces, institutions, countries, and various communities.

For some, using the descriptor “good” may seem a bit weak, as it could suggest something less than great. A “good place to live,” for example, may not sound as enticing as a “great place to live.” But as used in reference to the Good Project, the term “good” is used differently than in the good – better – best hierarchy. It’s much more akin to what we mean when we refer to the “common good” and “goodness” as it relates to morality, ethics, and our relationships with others. An assessment of what is “good” in this context is based on how we act toward one another, locally and globally.

In his book Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed, Gardner writes about two dimensions of good relations with others. He uses the term “neighborly morality” in reference to our relations with those in our “neighborhood” – which may go beyond those who live on our street. Good neighborly morality, he says, includes concern for the common good and fairness in society. The focus of neighborly morality is on oneself as an individual in relation to others. Unfortunately, though, as Gardner says, “Our morality can be frighteningly, parochially local.” As humans have, until recently in our history, lived in smaller communities, we have adapted to be moral towards those in our groups but to be less altruistic to those outside of our groups.

The other dimension of good relations, says Gardner, is “the ethics of roles.” In this dimension, one moves from considering oneself as an individual to a consideration of one’s role in society (teacher, doctor, farmer, social worker, etc.). The focus of this dimension is on oneself as a worker and a citizen. To do good in this dimension requires thoughtful consideration of responsibilities and implications within one’s role.

We’re all responsible in some way for the common good and the quality of life in the commons. The common good is that which is good for all people, not just one person or a group of people. As aptly described in the essay “The Tragedy of the Commons” in 1968, Garrett Hardin describes the way in which taking more than our fair share of resources from the commons can lead to the eventual destruction of the commons. A related idea to keep in mind is that living as good persons, good workers, and good citizens can enhance our experience of the commons as individuals and as a society. For the commons to be the best that it can be, we need to put forth our best in making it so. The Good Project is one resource we can look to for ideas and resources on how to do this.

Ruth Wilson

(By RJ under a Creative Commons license)

Magazine

The Essential Consumer Guide to Buying American & Fair Trade

jwalljasper — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 15:04:31 +0000

http://www.alternet.org/

David Morris uncovers handy tools to know where your money goes

Swiss Miss is based in Wisconsin) and Carnation Milk is owned by the Swiss.

David Morris

“Every person ought to have the awareness that purchasing is always a moral – and not simply an economic – act,” Pope Francis announced early this year.

How can we spend our money as if our values matter?

In some sectors and for some values this is fairly easy. Food is an obvious example. Those who want to protect the environment and human and animal health will find abundant labels guiding them to the appropriate product: USDA Organic, free range, hormone free, grass fed. For those who want to strengthen community, shrink the distance between producer and consumer and support family farmers a growing number of grocery stores label locally grown or raised.

For those who want to support farmworkers as well as farmers, however, little guidance is available. The recently launched Equitable Food Initiative and Food Justice Certified labels hope to fill this gap. The former identifies food that has been harvested by workers paid a fair wage and laboring under safe and fair conditions. The latter offers three tiers of certification covering farm, processor and vendor/retailer. Only farms have been certified.

As for grocery stores, we can easily identify those cooperatively or locally owned. Going one step further along the supply chain we can use the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC)’s Diners Guide to Ethical Eating downloadable app to identify restaurants that treat their workers well. Extra credit is given to non-chain businesses. To earn a favorable rating the restaurant must pay its non-tipped workers at least $10 an hour and tipped staff at least $7 an hour, grant all employees paid sick days and enable internal promotion.

The ethical consumer who wants to patronize a locally owned retail store in general can visit Independent We Stand and download its mobile app. Or go to AMIBA and BALLE to find a list of independent business alliances in over 100 cities many of which have hundreds and even thousands of individual member businesses.

There are few guides to locally rooted manufacturers. But 3-year-old San Francisco Made offers an excellent model, interconnecting and nurturing its 325 member manufacturers located in that city.

The vast majority of products we purchase will come from regional and national firms. One can easily check to see if the company is American and sometimes that will be necessary even when we think we know from the product’s name what nationality the company is. As Roger Simmermaker, author of How Americans Can Buy American and My Country ‘Tis of Thee points out, "Swiss Miss is American (based in Menomonie, Wisconsin) and Carnation is owned by the Swiss."

For those who want to go beyond where a company is headquartered to who owns it, a list of companies owned by their employees is available from the National Center for Employee Ownership.

Finding American made products as opposed to those made by American corporations requires more legwork. Almost 8 in 10 American consumers say they prefer to buy American made products according to Consumer Reports. (Another survey found that for Americans ages 18-34 the percentage drops to 4 in 10.) Patriotic buying has gained considerable cache in the last few years and is beginning to change corporate behavior.

Consider this story of Florida orange juice. In 2007 Pepsi and then Coke began to mix oranges from other countries with Florida oranges. Florida’s Natural, an agricultural cooperative owned by 1100 growers, whose motto is "we own the land, we own the trees, we own the company" added a logo to its packages sporting an American flag and the words “Product of U.S.A.” For a few years Pepsi and Coke thought price would trump homegrown but in early 2012 the Tropicana Products division of PepsiCo began to proclaim in print ads, “Grown, picked and squeezed in Florida,” (Florida’s Natural responded with its own new tag line: “All Florida. Never imported. Who can say that?”)

A 2013 survey of more than 200 U.S.-based investors interested in the luxury sector, found 80 percent of them concerned that the reputational risk associated with offshore manufacturing is beginning to offset the cost savings for luxury goods manufacturers. After Ralph Lauren proudly unveiled its new uniforms for the U.S. team for the 2012 summer Olympics it was discovered that every piece of the uniform was made overseas. A considerable public backlash led the company to promise to make the U.S. uniforms for the 2014 Winter Games from USA components.

Mitch Cahn, the CEO of Unionwear, a Newark, New Jersey clothing manufacturer told John Oliver about why both Democratic and Republican candidates buy his company’s hats. “Both want to demonstrate their commitment to made in USA. Plus, whenever one of their vendors messes up and sources something from overseas or switches. When they get caught, which they invariably will, it’s going to cost them so much more money to fix the problem, backpedal, apologize, change their message, that it’s easier and cheaper to just patronize clean shops.”

Finding out if a product is made in the United States is easy. All imports must carry country of origin information on the outside of the package. Finding domestic products that are largely made of domestic components, however, may be more challenging.

How American Is That American Product?

Even if we buy American made how much of the value of the product is actually made in America? For automobiles, textiles, wool and fur products the law requires disclosure of the percentage of a product's domestically produced content.

The 1994 American Automobile Labeling Act (AALA) requires all automobiles and trucks to prominently display a sticker showing the percentage of its value made in the United States. The AALA has several shortcomings. For one, it does not distinguish between Canadian and U.S. production. It does not take into account where the profits go (e.g. is the company foreign owned). Finally, it allows the “content percentages to be calculated on a "carline" basis rather than for each individual vehicle and may be rounded to the nearest 5 percent.”

The more sophisticated Kogod Made in America Auto Index, released annually by American University incorporates the (AALA) but adds seven further criteria: site of body, chassis, and electrical parts manufacturing (50 percent); site of engine production (14 percent); site of inventory and capital expense allocation (11 percent); site of transmission production (7 percent); site of assembly labor (6 percent); site of research and development (6 percent); and finally, where the profits in each aspect of the transaction go (6 percent).

In 2014 the Ford F-150 truck, the best selling vehicle in America topped the Kogod charts with 87.5 points out of 100.

As a general rule, automakers are more likely to build larger vehicles with higher profit margins in the U.S. and smaller ones overseas. The Kogod index seems to bear this out. The F-150 and Chevy Silverado score in the 80’s while the Chevy Spark and Ford Fiesta have scores of 15.5 and 19.5 respectively.

Aside from cars and textiles and furs, no U.S. supplier needs to identify where the product is made or its components. But if the company boasts that a product is “Made in the USA” or “Made in America” it must “contain no - or negligible - foreign content" according to regulations issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the product's final assembly or processing must take place in the United States.

Nevertheless, the buyer who sees a Made in America sticker must still beware. The FTC investigates several complaints a year, almost all submitted by manufacturing competitors and the vast majority end in a settlement with no civil penalty. The civil penalties themselves are modest. California has its own higher and more rigidly enforced standard. No component of a product advertised as Made in the USA can be imported. In 2011 California’s Supreme Court ruled that the company Kwikset could be sued for using the label on one of its locks because the screws in it were manufactured in Mexico.

Americans don’t like to be misled by faux patriotic corporate advertising. As Consumer Reports notes, “Readers who have sent us complaints seem most irritated by foreign-made products whose makers have patriotic names (American Mills, Americana Olives, Great American Seafood, United States Sweaters, the U.S. Lock company) or whose packages have flag-waving slogans (“true American quality”) or symbols (pictures of the flag, eagle, Statue of Liberty).”

Over 90 percent of shoes and clothing sold in the United States is imported. One will almost always pay more to purchase Made in the USA but often their quality is far superior. If you buy a Brooks Brothers suit, 70% of which are made in Massachusetts, or tie, 100% of which are made in New York, or shirt, 15% of which are made in North Carolina the quality is first rate and the clothes last considerably longer than cheaper imported items.

More than 97 percent of American denim jeans are made abroad but you can still find American made denim. In the 1990s Lawson Nickol was working for a U.S. jeans manufacturer who like almost all other jean manufacturers decided to move production to China. He resigned and in 2002 with his son BJ Nickol founded the All American Clothing Co. They started manufacturing their own clothing in 2007. Unique among jeans manufacturers, their customers can enter a code and trace their jeans back to the farm that grew the cotton.

One of the new firm’s biggest challenges was finding suppliers. "The apparel industry has lost 85 percent of cut and sew people in the USA since 2002 when China became king”, Nickol notes. He’s had to pay more for their materials and labor which makes their clothes more expensive which Lawson concedes but proudly adds, “…I buy a lot of higher cost products that are made in the USA in order to support tax base, jobs, SSN, police, firemen, hospitals, infrastructure, military, freedom, etc, etc. I don’t buy foreign jeans and help to support labor atrocities, child labor, poor manufacturing quality, give money to the foreign governments…”

Despite higher input costs his jeans prices are still competitive with denim giants like Levis. Why? “One of the things we don’t do a lot of is marketing and advertising,” says Nickol. American Clothing sells 95 percent of its products online. Nickol adds, “We don’t have as big of margins.”

Sluggish wages in the United States and soaring labor costs in countries like China, coupled with the growing realization of the costs inherent in the rigidity of long supply chains and the potential for product piracy, has made it increasingly possible to buy American in many sectors. Whirlpool already makes 80 percent of the products it sells in the U.S in its U.S. plants and it prices them competitively. In 2000, it manufactured most of its front-loading washers in Germany. Now the company is moving that production back to its Ohio-based facilities. “On the one hand, U.S. labor costs are often higher than in other countries,” says Whirlpool’s Casey Tubman. “But when you look at the higher productivity for American workers and consider the fact that it’s very expensive to ship something as big as a refrigerator or washer, we can quickly make up those costs.”

There are several useful web sites that identify American made products. (Look here, here, here, here, and here.)

Going Beyond Buy America

The same Consumer Reports 2013 survey that found that 78 percent of us prefer to buy American products also found that other values were equally or more important to us. Ninety-two percent preferred products from companies that give back to the local community; 90 percent preferred companies that treat their workers well; 82 percent prefer firms that express public support for causes we believe; 79 percent prefer a company that engages in environmentally friendly practices.

If you are one of the 90 percent who care how companies you want to buy from treat their workers one good indicator is whether the product is made with union labor. For clothing you can look for the UNITE label (the union created from the merger of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). Those seeking to buy a specific car made by union members can find a list here. Those seeking web sites that offer extensive links to union made products can go here and here.

Those wanting to know more generally about the character of the company with whom they are doing business can check out whether it is a Benefit Corporation. This new type of corporation is required to consider its impact not only on shareholders but also on workers, community, and the environment. Benefit corporations are required to make available to the public an annual benefit report that assesses their overall social and environmental performance against a third party standard. Twenty-eight states currently permit a corporation to become a Benefit Corporation. A list of Benefit Corporations by state is available here.

Certified B corporations are Benefit Corporations which must achieve a minimum verified score on an Assessment by B Lab, a 501C(3) organization. Recertification every two years is required against an evolving standard. A list of Certified B Corporations can be found here. About 60 percent are American corporations. Each year B Lab publishes a list of its top Certified Benefit Corporations by size and category. Companies are broken out by midsized, small, micro enterprises and sole proprietorships and are graded based on their environmental, worker and community impact.

For example, in 2014 King Arthur Flour and New Belgium Brewery were among the top rated B Corporations on labor issues. The 200 year old King Arthur, a company of 388 workers at the busiest times of the year, has a minimum hourly starting wage for full-time workers of $11.25 an hour. New Belgium's lowest wage for non-temporary workers is $12 an hour. King Arthur Flour and New Belgium are 100 percent employee-owned companies. Both have profit sharing plans. At King Arthur Flour low income employees receive a heavily subsidized Community Supported Agriculture shares.

As Stephen Lurie at Vox observes, despite its high rating, King Arthur Flour puts its USDA organic label on the front of its packages and its B Logo on the back.

Assessing the character of a company is complicated, and by its nature incomplete. Some might want to know how willing companies are to pay their fair share of taxes to sustain our public schools and roads and colleges. In 2015 Bloomberg compiled a directory of 299 companies detailing how much of their total profits they’ve stashed abroad to avoid taxes. Bizvizz has an ambitious but spotty downloadable app allows you to use your phone to take a picture of a brand and discover what tax rate the corporation that makes the product pays and in many cases, where its political contributions go.

Often those who want to make ethical purchases will have to assess which of the values they embrace are more important. For example, what do we buy when the organic farm treats its workers poorly? Would you choose a conventional tomato picked by well-treated workers than a local heirloom variety harvested by oppressed workers as the food writer and activist Eric Schlosser declared he would? Or would you choose the tomato that stresses the environment? A Toyota Camry is among those vehicles with the highest percentage of its components coming from the United States. But its plants are not unionized and the company’s profits do not stay in the United States.

With much fanfare Walmart has launched a new Buy America initiative. Would you now shop there given that Walmart’s policies may have single-handedly resulted in the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs and the erosion of U.S. workers wages? Or that more than 20 years ago it launched a similar campaign and began hanging “Made in America” signs in its 750 stores until NBC’s Dateline offered significant evidence the initiative was “more an advertising gimmick than a substantial plan.” At the beginning of its current initiative Walmart publicized a contract with 1888 Mills, a Georgia towel maker to produce American-made towels for the company’s stores. But 1888 Mills, which has an overseas workforce of some 14,000, will be adding only 35 jobs low paid jobs at its U.S. factory to meet Walmart’s multi-year purchase agreement.

Sometimes different values can lead customers to the same supplier. As I noted above, both Democrats and Republicans buy their caps from Unionwear in election years to demonstrate their support for domestic jobs. John Oliver calls it “electoral jingoism”. But CEO Mitch Cahn points out one key difference between the political parties on their values beyond domestic sourcing, “Democrats brag about their products being union made and the republican don’t want anyone to find out about it.”

Sometimes an ethical purchasing decision is easy. Sometimes it is hard, challenging us to do the homework necessary to put our money where our values are. Sometimes it requires us to choose which values are primary. You pays your money and you makes your choice.

(By colorblind Picaso under a Creative Commons license)

Magazine

Buy American

Economy and Markets

This investigative report was commissioned by Alternet.org, a leading source of alternative news and information.

Alternet.org

An American in Rome

jwalljasper — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 19:27:36 +0000

http://www.brooklynrail.org/

Artist Kristin Jones Launches Art Projects to Restore Tiber River

"My intention was to celebrate the river and draw attention to a possible river commons."

About Kristin Jones

Kristin Jones is both a studio artist and public artist, "working across disciplines to create site-specific, time-based projects that frame natural phenomena against the built environment." Her installations, works and photography have been exhibited at Blue Mountain Center, the Venice Architectural Biennale, Rome's Museo Capitolina and Manhattan's River to River Festival. As founder of Tevereterno, Jones has partnered with the City of Rome and other artists to promote the potential of the Tiber River, facilitating projects for its protection and revitalization.

Kristin Jones came by the Brooklyn Rail to discuss her collaborative project TEVERETERNO for the revival of Rome’s Tiber River with Ann McCoy. The artist has been working to adopt an 1,800-foot long stretch of the river, and turn it into a site for contemporary art, a first for Rome. Past participants have included an array of national and international artists including Kiki Smith and Jenny Holzer, and composers such as Walter Branchi and David Monacchi. Upcoming is a project entitled Triumphs and Laments, by William Kentridge—a procession of more than 80 large-scale figures. It will open with a one-time only, site-specific program, featuring shadow play, projections, and a live musical performance of an original composition with Kentridge’s longtime collaborator, Philip Miller. Jones has spent 10 years on this project, producing a wide variety of artistic performances and installations. Jones also had a solo drawing exhibition at ART 101 at 101 Grand Street in Brooklyn last April.

Ann McCoy (Rail): You have spent a lot of your life in Europe, because you father was in the diplomatic service. You are someone who can bridge cultures. How did you come to form such a strong attachment to Rome and to the Tiber?

Kristin Jones: I won a Fulbright Fellowship to Rome in 1983, a gift to explore the city for an entire year. Rome became the major source of inspiration. I have a very long-term relationship with the city. In Rome today, there is very little support for contemporary art and architecture; the glory of the past seems to eclipse the present.

Rail: I’m fascinated by your interest in the Tiber. The Tiber was a deity anthropomorphized, like that huge statue in the Louvre of the god with his ore and cornucopia. Here you are an American suddenly resurrecting this neglected deity as a venue for contemporary art—awakening the old god for a new incarnation.

Jones: Rome is called the Eternal City, so I call the project TEVERETERNO: “Eternal Tiber.” The project is about time, about the present moment within the past. The central urban corridor of the Tiber, although neglected today, provides a wonderful opportunity in the heart of historic Rome for a contemporary cultural project that celebrates the living city. If you think about rivers metaphorically, in mythology and in literature, the river is not only the present tense, it is also a great source of life and a font for memory.

Rail: Your first project was in 2005, and you made tennis court-size stencils and power-washed 12 she-wolves from the accumulated soot on the 30-foot embankment walls along the river. In 2009 you silver leafed a parade of 200 silver she-wolves drawn from 2,500 years of art history, on the walls opposite the 2,005 figures. You also exhibited your she-wolf prints in an exhibition called “Trilogy: the She-Wolf as Shape of Time” at the Capitoline Museum. Why were you magnetized to this she-wolf image?

Jones: My intention was to celebrate the river and draw attention to a possible river commons that could become a “river theatre,” a stage for contemporary art. I was drawn to the mythology of the origins of the city and its river. The she-wolf is the icon of the city but also of nature and of wildness. The wolf is part of a trinity: of Man, God, and Nature. I wanted to symbolize the beginning of a project and to thank the city of Rome for the inspiration it offers to visitors from the entire world. The project is an homage to the city.

Rail: The she-wolf is a complex symbol, a nurturing but fierce form of the feminine. She suckles two warring brothers; and Romulus, who commits fratricide, became the first king of Rome. The she-wolf is a dual symbol, both light and dark a symbol of the ancient brothels, and also a Fascist symbol, used by Mussolini. I find it interesting that you come and resurrect the she-wolf with her many forms, power-washed and stenciled 30-feet high on the embankment walls along this straight stretch of the Tiber.

Jones: What’s really fascinating is to watch how a myth evolves and how the form of the she-wolf changes as different artists reinvent the story and her image across time. Also, how the story is retold depending on the storyteller. I was very fortunate to have been able to work with a brilliant scholar—

Rail: A scholar whose name was?

Jones: Claudio Parisi Presicce. He’s the ultimate scholar of the she-wolf. There’s been this debate going on about whether or not the bronze sculpture that became the symbol of the city is Etruscan, or whether she’s medieval. She has only recently been proven to be medieval. I had a wonderful opportunity, because Presicce had been working at the American Academy in Rome, where I was a fellow. When I went back to Rome on a second Fulbright in 2001 after the 2000 Jubilee, I thought it was the right time to bring attention to the Tiber and help to create a place for contemporary art. At the time, there was an exhibition at the Capitoline Museum by Presicce, proving that the bronze casting was Etruscan. The catalogue contained many images of the she-wolf, and I thought it would be fantastic to somehow build an animation that traced the evolution of the figure, drawing from three-dimensional sculptures, tapestries, coins, ivory amulets—from all the images of she-wolves across art history. I love the way things change in time. The idea originally was to create an animation that was the chronological parade of all she-wolves.

Rail: You were, I believe, the first and only living artist to show in the Capitoline Museum where you exhibited 12 she-wolf prints in the room where the “She Wolf” is on permanent display.

Jones: I put myself in the mind of an Etruscan vase-painter, or the painter of Corinthian black figure style vases—I love the grace and the processional qualities, the animation of the celebratory parades of people and legends. I thought it’d be really beautiful to make a parade of all the she-wolf images on the river, parallel to the river, a procession of wolves with the river, a grand parade of time. I was advised by the scholar Presicce, and created the vectorial brush work with the help of a Roman graphic artist named Francesca Fini. We worked for three years, focused on images of she-wolves from museums all over the world.

Rail: The first project that you did in 2005 had 12 large wolves, power-washed from the soot on the walls using stencils. The she-wolf reappears over the life ofTEVERETERNO: in the 2009 Capitoline Museum print project and with the stenciled wolves in silver foil, and again when you had a group of artists, including Kiki Smith, bring she-wolf images from Rome’s Tiber in 2006 to New York City’s River to River Festival on the Hudson in 2008. I love your revival of outdoor pageantry in a way not used since antiquity, like the Panathenaic, for instance. We don’t have lustra, or outdoor festivals, the only outdoor festivals we have are things like the Macy’s Parade.

Jones: I’m very invested in the concept of commons, in ceremony, and in public gathering places where ideas can be freely exchanged and where collaborative cross-disciplinary works enter into unknown realms. My own projects would not otherwise exist if it weren’t for the combination of talents and minds and knowledge. TEVERETERNO is a collaboration with the City of Rome. The she-wolf is the symbolic beginning of a project, and yes I have had to be fierce to make things happen. The project is about the city of Rome and how we are part of history, but at the same time today the major emphasis is on the NEW.

Rail: It’s become really a much bigger venue for other artists like Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, and William Kentridge, musicians, composers, and even Robert Hammond, executive director of friends of the High Line. Your role is more of the catalyst.

Jones: The work that I do has never been about me. I am the spirit of the project. It’s always been about the place, about the people, the resources, and the context and history. Especially as an American abroad, it’s important that the project be both Rome-based and international. I know the archaeologist who’s responsible for what’s in the mud that flows beneath the Tiber, the eel catchers, the canoe club people, the environmental groups, the various bureaucratic offices that manage, maintain, and also paralyze the management of the river.

Rail: Your work has a dimensionality. For example, Flussi Correnti (2007), where you had an enormous snake of 1,000 burning candles floating along the surface of the river. I was thinking of the snakes brought from Epidaurus when the plague broke out in Rome. The snakes supposedly escaped from the boat and swam up onto the Tiber Island, which became the Asklepieion, formed in the shape of a boat. You made this enormous snake of light going up the river, unleashing a numinous, archetypal element.

Jones: The Tiber is a fantastic serpentine meander; it’s all curves. And yet in one section, it’s straight. I stopped in my tracks when I first saw this site on the Tiber. It seemed so unnatural, so planned, and so full of potential.

It was 1983, and I was on my first Fulbright to Rome. I was working at the time for an architectural model-maker, and I was looking at the form of the city. When I saw the site, I thought, “Oh my goodness! This looks just like a New York City block.” I discovered that in fact the section that I was looking at is 1,800 feet long; it is essentially the same length as two New York City avenue blocks. It’s GRAND.It’s more than four times longer than London’s Turbine Hall.

Rail: Also the same size as the Circus Maximus! I remember WaterFire Romawith thirty bonfires and torches on floating vessels.

Jones: The project began in 2005 with 12 majestic 30-foot high she-wolves, power-washed on the walls, and 2,758 burning torches (one for each year since Rome’s symbolic birth) along the riverbanks. We had hundreds of volunteers to light these torches, and live music. Roberto Laneri, who does harmonic overtone singing, brought together five different choirs, including one fromFAO. The opening program took place under a full moon on June 21st with these phenomenally beautiful torches that burned from sunset to dawn. The harmonies of the choirs were very primal. So that was the beginning of the project.

Rail: What a beginning! Wasn’t it also linked to the Solstice?

Jones: Well, we had applied for permits to produce that program for Rome’s birthday on April 21st, but it was not until June 21st that we got our permits. It seemed auspicious that there was a full moon on the Solstice. I believe that alignment happens only every 19 years. There was a clear sky and a beautiful full moon.

Rail: I think it’s amazing that you have been able to survive; you’re always working on a shoestring. You also deal with the bureaucracy, and all in Italian. I’m impressed.

Jones: We are a 99 percent volunteer team. If we had a larger staff, we could do so much more and more easily navigate the difficult bureaucracies of Italy. I wish we could just afford to pay an Italian curator and public relations staff person. Fundraising is difficult for me. I hate to ask; I would rather give. I wish there was an existing “Friends of Rome,” that somehow all the foreign Academies, university programs and international organizations (none of whom pay taxes in Rome), could pool together their resources to support a staff, which would support our shared efforts..

Rail: I’m interested in the upcoming project by William Kentridge, calledTriumphs and Laments. My students know Kentridge from The Nose and from his amazing Norton Lectures at Harvard. Kentridge is now working withTEVERETERNO on a multidisciplinary project on the history of Rome, the triumphs and the laments—you have an image of triumphant Cybele together with an image of a dead Pasolini lying on the pavement.

Jones: William and I have had a long dialogue across time. I met him in 2002, but I first met his work at Documenta in 1998. When I began drawing the She-Wolves in 2002, I knew that I wanted to bring them to life, using animation. I was haunted by a beautiful image of a black panther circling in a cage, by an artist whose work I didn’t really know. Then William came to Rome. He was performing Confessions of Zeno at the Teatro Valle, and he gave a talk at the future Museum nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (or MAXXI). I realized that it was he who had drawn the black panther in the cage that I remembered from Documenta. I decided that it was William who was meant to take all these she-wolves and turn them into a parade. He wasn’t interested in doing the she-wolf animation [laughs]. I said, “Fine then tell me what you would like to do on this public site on the river.” I was convinced he was the right artist to address the intersection of past and present that is Rome.

In 2005 after the triumph of working with Rome’s department of sanitation to clean the 30-foot high she-wolves along the Piazza Tevere, the Romaeuropa Festival presented a whole series of William’s animated films. I was at a very difficult time in my personal life. I had even contemplated throwing myself in the Tiber. But I delayed my return to New York just to see the films. I was sitting in the audience, mesmerized by them, and words appeared on the screen that literally saved my life. The handwritten word “GIVE” appeared again and again and again, slowly vanishing, and reappearing. Then the word “FOR” appeared. Then “GIVE” and then “FOR” and then the words came together: “FORGIVE.” “GIVE” and “FORGIVE,” “GIVE” and “FORGIVE.” I was in tears. crying in the theater, understanding how powerful how important such words are for the world and for me personally. I was thrilled by the scale of the meaning and sobbing both for the world and for myself. The words changed my life.

I have continued to follow William’s work, to show up at conferences, talks, and exhibitions and to remind him of Rome’s grand open air arena. I offered him the support of our whole team of believers, who would help realize whatever project he decided on. TEVERETERNO is now a great team of believers, but we are not yet an institution, we don’t have the supporters of the great opera houses in the world, or museums. Yes it thrills me to dream of William Kentridge’s greatest drawing ever—an ephemeral drawing for the Eternal City. A drawing that will have taken more than 15 years to make happen and will vanish in time. The Triumphs and Lamentsfrieze will be as impermanent as my own she-wolves that vanished after less than five years.

Rail: How many images has he drawn so far for this project?

Jones: William has completed 60 drawings, and there are at least 20 more to go. He still has to figure out the whole sequence.

Rail: Kentridge is adding more dimensions, like shadow play, more subjects, figures ancient and modern. It reminds me of Trajan’s column, a ribbon with multiple figures and stories winding up the column.

Jones: He’s been thinking about this project for more than 12 years. Finally, on the day of the last 2012 Norton Lecture, he said to me, “if not now, when?” And so we started working. We’ve been working now for almost three years. William has always worked with the extreme tensions of the world, the drama, the political, the tension between opposites, so it’s appropriate. This past summer at the magical workshop event we created with William, composer Philip Miller, and a great array of popular Italian and immigrant musicians, the audience was laughing and crying. There is power in the work, much emotion and humor.

Rail: Kentridge shows power and its opposite. Lament is not something addressed so readily today, especially in America.

Jones: Under the leadership of scholar Dr. Lila Yawn, we have conducted this monumental research project, which has provided William with a fantastic history of art full of images of Rome’s triumphs and tragedies. Of course, many of the tragedies have to be edited out, in a way, or moderated, because to this day, Mussolini (for example) is a very hot button in Italy. But because somebody is always losing and somebody is always winning, it all depends on one’s perspective. We know that it is the victors who write the histories.

Rail: America today is like the end of the Roman Empire, fading with an over extended military abroad. With decay comes a creative energy.

Jones: Rome has always been, until recent time, the greatest stage for art and architecture. Today there’s very little opportunity, because there are no emperors and no popes that have as much power as in the past, so very few things can be built. [Laughs.]

Rail: Where are the Medicis when we need them? [Laughs] You’ve been a participant periodically, but the project has turned into something much larger.

Jones: So many people have contributed to TEVERETERNO and collaborated on it over the last decade. I consider myself to be a catalyst—the spark. I’m the muse, the agitator, the animator. I am also the artist—I have produced projects for the site in the past and have drawn up 12 proposals for new work there, but I also want it to be more than that. My work plays a role in the realization of a much larger initiative, which is our long-term vision for the site and its role in the contemporary life and culture of Rome.

I love to see what other people have done and will do. I would love for contemporary Rome to become a destination in the way that ancient Rome is for so much of the world, and I believe that contemporary art can help make this a reality. An internationally-recognized arts festival offers the world yet another reason to come to Rome, the eternal renewal of the Eternal City.

Rail: You did a project for the Venice Biennale in 2010, I believe.

Jones: It was part of the Architecture Biennial; it wasn’t the Art Biennial. Luca Molinari, the curator of the Italian Pavilion, presented TEVERETERNO as a valid, futuristic, optimistic place-making project. We imagine the Tiber as a grand-scale, public park running the length of the city of Rome, part of the parks system. It is an enormous expanse and it is almost empty. So much can happen there.

Rail: I can’t think of any other places where the artists come and do a project that really relates to the history of the place the way your project does.

Jones: It depends on the artist. Many artists just don’t do site-specific work.
We have applied for a 19-year long permit for the use of the site. If we can get that, it would be wonderful to invite different curators. Inspired especially by Creative Time and the Public Art Fund in New York City, TEVERETERNO is aimed at helping artists to realize new work that is site-specific in every sense: looking at the history, the environment (constructed and natural), the local community and tourists that shape the city, the institutions that shape its culture, etc. It’s meant to be a meeting place and a laboratory for new ideas—ideas that don’t fit within the traditional confines of a museum, gallery, or concert hall.

Rail: It’s a delicate balance in a funny way. With a Biennial model, you’re bringing in foreign curators who may not share your relationship with the Tiber. Theinternationale style, can be anonymous, uprooted, and sort of plopped anywhere.

Jones: I am the Artistic Director for Triumphs and Laments, and I have served as Artistic Director of TEVERETERNO since its founding. I work with a small, fluid, but very dedicated Artistic Committee. We have articulated a set of shared guidelines regarding the work that we present, but it is also very important to us—especially those of us who are artists in our own right—that those guidelines don’t inhibit creativity but ensure the quality and site-specificity of the work.

William is totally committed—there is no larger canvas, in a more public space in a more magnificent city than the 1,800-foot long by 30-foot high travertine wall he is creating the pan historical frieze for. William’s commitment has galvanized a dedicated and hard working team, including Lia Rumma Gallery in Italy. I am happy to be working with our new Italian president Luca Zevi and director Tom Rankin. Both Vice President Valeria Sassanelli and Project Manager Damiana Leoni are fierce believers and serious strategists; there is much hope for the future.

Rail: Kentridge has an amazing relationship to history. This is very different in spirit from Claes Oldenburg’s Thames proposal, where you have an enormous toilet tank float bobbing in the river, or the recent giant rubber duck on the Nanming River that got swept away.

Jones: The fact that William understands the potential of the site is exhilarating. He also understands that we are not a commercial project; our site is a public space that’s pretty fraught with issues. It’s a river, which is everybody’s and nobody’s, and so the management of the site is complicated. There is no single river authority in Rome and the permitting process is very complex. But the Tiber is the only site in the historic center of Rome that is not, in a certain way, precious—in that sense, it contains an unequalled potential, what architects call terrain vague.

Rail: I know you are very self-effacing and think of yourself as the muse and facilitator. But, I think of you as the wolf mother of this project and identified with the she-wolf in a positive way, a nurturer of the rough and tumble.

Jones: [Laughs.] It just takes a certain amount of absolute tenacity and fierceness to bring anything like this to the foreground, on an urban scale. It’s very challenging. But I am an optimist, and I don’t understand the word “no.”

Rail: As artists, when we are working with an image, it becomes part of us. I’m curious about your inner she-wolf.

Jones: That’s the problem [McCoy laughs]. I have invested a huge amount of the last 12 years of my life to this dream. It has been a sacrifice, but it has also been a great experience. I have been very fortunate to work with an extraordinary group of artists, architects, composers, and city planners. I have sunk my “wolf” teeth into a very idealistic project.

Rail: Rome was the first republic but also a huge militaristic body, with thousands of legions going out all the way to Hadrian’s Wall. Yet, you have the she-wolf and all these female deities. When the going gets really rough, they bring the meteor-headed great goddess Cybele from Asia Minor to save Rome.

Jones: [Laughs.] I think that the whole question of our awareness and respect for nature is really part of the issue here. It’s not just homage to the city of Rome. Humanity still has not recognized that we’re part of nature.

Rail: In the ancient world, every aspect of nature had a deity, from the wind to the sea. The river had a deity and one sacrificed to that deity to show respect. . Your project is making an offering to this river god, and that’s wonderful. Most Americans don’t realize how haunted Rome is. When you’re in Rome, the spirit of the place overtakes you. Pan is still dancing in the groves and maenads are running amuck beyond the old wall.

Jones: If you just stand there, by the river, and you watch it go by, you can’t help but think of all of the parades of soldiers, songs, and lives, of the rain and storms and blood and creatures that swim, and have come to drink. It’s so evocative. When you think of any river and why and how it flows, about cycles and gravity, and the planet as a whole and about what we are, about how we are the living evidence of thousands of generations; it’s exhilarating. I’m interested in creating work that would not exist if it weren’t for the conversations between people. I’ve happily worked in collaboration with many people. I am interested in the conversation itself and about addressing a situation with respect. I have an instinct for place; I work and dream collectively to create an “opera,” a work that I hope can resonate and bring new meaning that can magnify a place, and make one’s individual experience of a situation more vital—I am interested in work that awakens an emotional sense of our own present, tense existence.

Ann McCoy

Magazine

Reprinted from the website of the Brooklyn Rail, providing critical perspectives on art, politics and culture.

Brooklyn Rail

What I Learned About Life From a Howling Dog

jwalljasper — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 19:07:24 +0000

http://kimkleinandthecommons.blogspot.com/

The spirit of the commons works in mysterious ways

Remembering the rule I have for myself (not strictly enforced): “assume good intent,” I wrote a very nice letter.

About Kim Klein

Kim Klein is a trainer, author and speaker. She is co-founder of Oakland-based Klein and Roth consulting, which helps organizations build strong mission-driven fundraising programs. In her blog Kim Klein and the Commons, she explores the ways people’s lives connect in many ways from economic policy to social movements to everyday life.

When I have writing or very focused work to do, I work from a studio behind my house. Generally it is quiet and I have the added benefit of being able to take breaks and sit in my backyard.

Recently I started to hear a dog howling, as if in great psychological pain or loneliness. He would start with a low mournful howl and gradually progress up the scale to a full-throated cry of anxiety. This would give way to a few actual barks, then he would settle down to moan. This went on all day and sometimes into the evening. I began to not be able to concentrate because I was so upset for this poor dog.  

Back up: My partner and I had a dog for almost 17 years. Brooklyn would bark incessantly and mindlessly if left outside and we faced neighbor complaints more than once. I knew that Brooklyn was not being mistreated or neglected. She loved to bark and we tried many methods to get her to stop. Ultimately we left her inside when we were gone so at least her barking would be muffled by the walls of the house.  

So I have a lot of sympathy with dog owners and I like dogs. I also know that I tend to make up stories about what animals are feeling and thinking based on their behavior. “Your cat just wants to sit on the couch and look out the window.” Or “Your dog is so sad you are going on vacation and didn’t pick a place you could take her.” This drives people around me crazy and I do my best to keep my stories to myself. 

Coming back to the howling dog: I knew that I could be making up the story that the dog was lonely although all the neighbors who heard him came to the same conclusion. I also concluded he was neglected, which led me to conclude his owners were terrible people. Fortunately I live with someone who challenges me on my big leaps from one opinion to another.

“Maybe they work all day and don’t know that he howls,” she said. “Remember Brooklyn?”  

I knocked on their door a couple of times but never found them home. I thought of calling the authorities. I decided to write them a letter. Channeling my partner and remembering the rule I have for myself (not strictly enforced), “assume good intent,” I wrote a very nice letter and asked them to call or e-mail me with their response. 

An e-mail came very soon. “The dog belongs to our son and his wife, who is in the hospital. I am attaching a video to show that the dog moans and whines even when he is with us. He simply misses his owners and he has to stay with us until she is out of the hospital. I am so sorry he is bothering you.”  

I felt a wave of relief and shame. I had a made an entire movie starring a noble dog living with self-absorbed narcissistic creeps rescued by yours truly, the hero. I resolved (again) to follow a rule of a commons based life: “Do unto others…”

Kim Klein

(Photo by Toshihiro Gamo under a Creative Commons license.)

Magazine

Kim Klein and the Commons

Older Americans Rediscover Bikes

jwalljasper — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 18:41:34 +0000

http://www.aarp.org/livable-communities/

They pedal for fun, health, transportation and to enjoy a stronger sense of community

“Biking helps people age in place by expanding their mobility options, and lessening the isolation some older adults feel.”

Jay Walljasper

“Cycling is the new golf,” declare the New York Times, CNN Money and The Economist, describing how road rides are replacing tee times as a favorite pastime for business networking. And there’s growing evidence that the group most strongly associated with golf--older people--may be gripping handlebars as much as putters in the years to come.

“The biggest jump we are seeing in biking is among older people,” says Martha Roskowski, Vice President of the national organization PeopleForBikes.

Riders 50 and over pedaled an estimated 2.6 billion miles on 830 million rides in 2009 (the latest figures available), according the USDOT National Household Travel Survey. That’s way up from 1995 when people in that age group covered less than 400 million miles on 175 million rides.

This is good news for everyone, not just bike shop owners, since people on bikes enjoy better health and strengthen the sense of community where they live.

Why Bike?

Older Americans ride bicycles to boost their health, run errands, stay younger, spice up their social lives, save money on transportation and have fun, says Gil Penalosa, founder of 8 80 Cities, an international group helping communities better serve people of all ages. Penalosa, 58, who commutes year-round by bike in Toronto, explains, “Biking helps people age in place by expanding their mobility options, and lessening the isolation some older adults feel.”

“You see major differences between a 65-year-old or 75-year-old today and those of a genearation ago,” observes Phineas Baxandall, Senior Policy Analyst at the US Public Interest Group. “They are not just looking at their stamp collections. They are out and about more.”

After all, baby boomers kickstarted the bike boom back in the 1970s, and many of them kept on pedaling. In fact, yet-to-be-published AARP research found that boomers almost doubled their biking between 2001 and 2009-- although it still accounts for a small percent of total trips.

Louis Moore, 74, a retired congressional staffer in Minneapolis, took up biking 20 years ago when injuries forced him off the basketball court. “I had a knee injury and two bad ankles,” he remembers. “When I started cycling and the pains went away.”

Moore is president of the Major Taylor Bicycling Club (named for a world-champion bike racer of the early 20th Century), which promotes biking in the Twin Cities’ African-American community. “We show up at neighborhood events to encourage people to get active to curb some of the health problems in the community,” he says. They also take part in Orange, a program that offers training and loaner bikes to low-income people.

The club, a majority of whose members are over 50, rides Wednesday and Thursday nights from April to October. Moore also organizes spontaneous rides with his friends, and pedals to meetings and social events. “The rewards of biking are being physically healthy, being outdoors, and knowing that I can still ride 20 miles,” he says. “I always enjoy just the feeling of being on a bike.”

“My advice to everybody is get up off the couch, get a physical to see what your capabilities are and then find a bike. Take it slow. Go ride a mile your first night. Ride on trails until you feel ready for the streets. Find a friend in your class of fitness and ride once or a couple of times a week. Next thing you know, you’ll be having a great time.”

Positive Power of Pedaling

Evidence is mounting that moderate physical activity such as biking can prevent a host of ailments in people of all ages by at least 40 percent, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and colon cancer.

A lack of physical activity exposes people to a greater risk of death than smoking, obesity, high cholesterol or high blood pressure, according to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Active people in their 80s have a lower risk of death than inactive ones in their 60s, reports ACSM’s Exercise is Medicine initiative.

And it appears that biking actually keeps people younger. “Active older people resemble much younger people physiologically,” reports the New York Times about a recent English study of recreational bicyclists aged 55-79. “The findings suggest that many of our expectations about the inevitability of physical decline with advancing years may be incorrect and that how we age is, to a large degree, up to us…. As a group, even the oldest cyclists had younger people’s levels of balance, reflexes, metabolic health and memory ability.”

National Institute for Health research also found that regular physical activity was as effective in treating depression as Prozac. A study of nursing home residents found that those involved in a therapeutic biking program saw a significant decrease in depression compared to those who were not.

Simple Way to Make Streets Safer for Everyone

Since biking is so good for our health, how do we encourage more older Americans to ride again? The answer may be found in the Netherlands, where 25 percent of all trips taken by people 75 and older are on bicycle---compared to less than half of one percent for Americans over the age of 65. Indeed, Dutch people 55 and over bike at the same rate as the population as a whole. (Another study shows that Germans over the age of 65 are 25 times more likely to ride bikes than Americans of the same age.)

How do they do it? Sure the Netherlands is largely flat, with older compact cities and a long of tradition of bicycling, none of which is true for the US as a whole. But the biggest reason for the popularity of biking among Dutch people of all ages, according to international transportation experts, is something that we can do in the US: create safer streets for people who bike.

In Dutch towns (and many rural highways), bicyclists traveling on busy roads are physically separated from rushing traffic, usually by a curb or posts. These “protected bike lanes” make bicycling safer for people of all ages (an American bicyclist is seven times more likely to be killed than a Dutch rider)--but also more comfortable and enjoyable.

Bicycling across the Netherlands has nearly doubled since protected lanes began to be built in the 1980s. Many Dutch and German cities have also lowered speed limits and designed city streets with traffic calming measures to deter speeding drivers, according to an AARP report. This encourages people to travel more by bike or foot, which means they get physical activity as part of the daily rhythm rather than just at times set aside for exercise.

“Protected bike lanes provide an additional level of comfort for older riders,” agrees Kathryn Lawler, Director of the Atlanta Area Agency on Aging, which is promoting the concept throughout the region.

Over the past three years, more than 100 protected bike lanes have popped up from Cincinnati to Tucson to Honolulu. “Many cities are now listening to a spectrum of people, young and old, who are saying they want to bike but don’t want to fight the traffic,” says Roskowski of PeopleForBikes, which helps communities pioneer this next generation of bike lanes.

“We’ve found that protected bike lanes are particularly attractive to older Americans, some of whom feel more physically vulnerable biking in traffic,” says Jana Lynott, Senior Strategic Policy Advisor for AARP’s Public Policy Institute. Even older people who never ride a bike appreciate that protected bike lanes significantly decrease the number of bicyclists they must contend with walking on sidewalks or driving on streets.

More Ways to Get Older Americans Back in the (Bike) Saddle

Bike Buddies-- Biking can change your life through social activity as well as physical activity. Strong community connections have been shown to improve people’s overall health and happiness, and biking opens up many opportunities to meet fellow riders informally, or through bike clubs. In Minnesota alone, there are more than 50 registered clubs across the state, some of them specially focused on older riders.

Bike Share-- In many cities across the country, bikes can now be easily rented with the swipe of a credit card at convenient street corner stations. Bike sharing offers older people an affordable, accessible way to travel on sturdy bikes with wide tires. And it makes regular biking easier for folks who live in apartments, townhouses, senior buildings or other homes without garages by eliminating the necessity of lugging their bike up or down stairs. Washington DC’s Capital Bike Share system, one of the largest in the US, reports that 19 percent of its members are 45 years or older, and 24 percent of its casual users.

Pedal-Assist Bikes-- Older bicyclists daunted by hills, strong winds or long distances can get a boost when they need it--literally-- with a pedal-assist bike. You still pedal but a small electric engine provides a little extra oomph, which can be turned on or off depending on your needs. Already common in Europe, they are now becoming more popular in the US.

Three Wheelers-- Who says a cycle must only have two wheels? A number of older riders appreciate the greater stability of three wheels, and manufacturers are meeting this demand with a variety of styles. The Portland, Oregon, park district offers special cycling classes for older adults that start out on tricycles.

Just Do It-- Even if it’s been decades since you climbed on a bike--or never--it’s not too late. The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy learned to bike at age 67, reported Scientific American at the time, “much to the astonishment of the peasants on his estate”.

Reprinted with permission from AARP Livability.

In the Netherlands, older people bike at exactly the same rate as the rest of the population-- about 25 percent of all trips. (Photo by Amsterdamize under a Creative Commons license.)

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AARP Livability

Anchors a Way to Revive Struggling Cities

jwalljasper — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 17:04:46 +0000

Anchors as "institutions that consciously and strategically apply their long-term, place-based economic power, in combination with their human and intellectual resources, to better the welfare of the community in which they reside."

In Cleveland, Detroit, Syracuse and the Bronx, major institutions pitch in to help inner city residents

In urban development circles, strategies that leverage the staying power and scale of anchor institutions -- universities, hospitals and other place-based powerhouses -- are on the rise. Brimming with valuable intellectual property, and often rooted in struggling neighborhoods in desperate need of jobs, anchor institutions offer an alternative to the race-to-the-bottom development strategies favored by economic development officials for decades, in which struggling cities and towns sign over the farm to out-of-town corporations in return for modest job commitments, hoping that the recipients of taxpayer largess hang around for a few years.

But anchor institutions will only succeed in transforming communities and revolutionizing the way cities approach their developmental futures if they adopt high-road practices. This means creating decent-paying jobs accessible to a wide swathe of residents, promoting localism and community-based entrepreneurship and engaging residents in the process of planning for growth.

One central feature of anchor institutions is that they can't move, at least not easily, and that makes them special in a global economy built on capital mobility. They're often the last employers left standing in cities that have been abandoned by corporate America, and are thus a good place to start with rebuilding efforts. In Detroit, for example, city leaders and foundations have identified Midtown, anchored by Wayne State University and Henry Ford Hospital, as the focal point for an integrated set of investments in housing, commercial development and medical research. In a city as vast as Detroit, creating density and walkability, the holy grail for urban planners, must start somewhere, and Detroit's leaders have rightly settled on the district that shows signs of life and offers the prospect of employment growth.

Similar strategies are unfolding in Cleveland, where the Cleveland Clinic, Case Western, the Cleveland Foundation and other leading institutions have built an innovative partnership in the Greater University Circle district. One highly innovative feature of the Cleveland strategy began with a thorough-going analysis of the anchor institutions' procurement policies, which revealed that some services, such as laundry and food service, could be re-localized in a way that generated new entrepreneurial opportunities. With help from the Democracy Collaborative, the Cleveland project leaders took the unorthodox step of seeding the Evergreen Cooperatives, a network of worker-owned cooperatives that now grow produce and provide industrial laundry services.

In Syracuse, university leaders founded the Connective Corridor, which includes major investments in housing, public art and sustainable design, to break down barriers with the community. Bush Creek Community Partners in Kansas City, which includes universities, museums and neighborhood associations, has generated more than one billion in investment in housing, cultural amenities and infrastructure in its urban district.

The growing popularity of anchor development strategies is a welcome turn toward asset-based economic growth, rooted in the idea that cities and regions must develop human talent and cultural and commercial assets from within, rather than paying corporations to give them a chance.

But given the growing popularity of anchor strategies, and the large public investments flowing to anchors, now is the time to define them in ways that ensure maximum community benefit. Some institutions that we might categorize as anchors have not always acted as beneficent community partners. The history of town-gown relations is rife with conflict around real estate, employment practices and fair taxation. For example, both NYU and Columbia have been locked in long-term acrimonious disputes with their surrounding communities regarding displacement, affordable housing and community planning process. Labor conflicts over poverty wage rates have raged at many universities and hospitals in recent years, including the University of Miami and Georgetown. A recent analysis showed that more than 700,000 workers on college campuses are paid beneath the living wage standard.

Steve Dubb and Rita Axelroth Hodges, leading practitioners in the field, define anchors as "institutions that consciously and strategically apply their long-term, place-based economic power, in combination with their human and intellectual resources, to better the welfare of the community in which they reside."

The Democracy Collaborative has developed a useful anchor dashboard, which includes twenty indicators that help to clarify whether a particular anchor institution is having a positive impact on its surrounding community.

Many of the standards included in the dashboard are derived from the community benefits movement, led by groups like LAANE and other members of the Partnership for the Working Families network. Through decades of organizing, these organizations have won commitments from major developers to pay living wages, hire diverse residents from low-income census tracts and to use green building techniques in their construction.

One recent community benefits agreement signed by the developer of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Northwest Bronx, the largest such facility in the country, may be the gold standard. It stipulates a living wage policy for all employees, and local hiring for at least 50 percent of the workforce at the Armory, which will be transformed into one of the nation's largest ice skating facilities. The Bronx victory is also important for the 52,000 square feet of community-controlled space that will be incorporated into the development going forward.

The Bronx agreement is part of a new wave of community organizing campaigns, led by networks like National Peoples Action -- of which PUSH, the organization I direct, is an affiliate -- focused on gaining community control over resources needed to build wealth in low-income communities.

Distilling the CBAs down to their essence, it seems fair to expect any organization that seeks the mantle of anchor institution to pay a living wage (in the realm of $12/hr and above) to all workers on its campus, whether directly hired or outsourced; to create clear training and hiring pathways for low-income people and people of color; to build long-term careers, to ensure adequate housing for people of all incomes in its vicinity; to adopt sustainable building practices, including next-generation green infrastructure to manage storm water; to set clear and ambitious goals for MWBE contractor participation; and to ensure ongoing community input in planning decisions.

Without such standards, the idea that anchor institutions can be the linchpin of progressive economic development strategies will ring hollow. Creating a district of vitality and wealth for some while subjecting others to poverty wages is not a sustainable practice, or one that can lead cities devastated by histories of racism and labor exploitation forward.

The rise of the anchor-led development is the opening salvo in a long-term campaign to root economics in communities, rather than the priorities of multinationals bent on profit at any cost. At this early stage in the anchor institution movement, the time is right to adopt clear standards, such as those outlined in the anchor dashboard, for what it means to be a successful anchor developer.

Aaron Bartley

Universities and hospitals support local initiatives in Detroit's Midtown neighborhoods, such as the Summer in the City program held at Wayne State University. (Photo by Summer in the City under a Creative Commons license.)

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Community Life

Aaron Bartley is co-founder of People United for Sustainable Housing, "which mobilizes residents of Buffalo to create sustainable neighborhoods with quality affordable housing, green jobs and next-generation infrastructure". He grew up in Buffalo, and in 2011 was appointed by New York governor Andrew Cuomo to the WNY Regional Economic Council, which invests $1 billion in state funds in the Buffalo region. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and Huffington Post, where this article first appeared.

Capturing the Wild

jwalljasper — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 16:45:14 +0000

Painter Thomas Paquette commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act

Throughout American history, artists have helped fuel and popularize the conservation movement.

About Thomas Paquette

Thomas Paquette paints full-time and lives with his artist wife Ellen near the wilds of the Allegheny National Forest outside Warren, Pennsylvania. One of eleven children, he completed his formal art education with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting on a full graduate fellowship from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 1988, directly after earning his BFA degree in Painting at Bemidji State University in 1985.

Thomas draws inspiration from the natural world immediately surrounding him in the Allegheny National Forest, and just as frequently from more distant excursions. Hardly considering himself a plein air artist, he paints outdoors on-site only in preliminary stages. Even a watercolor begun outdoors is only finished after some reconsideration in his studio.

Can we truly know wilderness? The word itself defies constraint, and contains multiple meanings. “An uncultivated and uninhabited region,” “an empty or pathless area,” and “a confusing multitude” are but a few definitions of wilderness, all of which indicate humans’ complex and changeable relationship to nature.

The splendor and mystery of the American wilderness has inspired many generations of explorer-artists. In the nineteenth century, artists such as Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt captured the grandeur and awe of the American West and helped motivate the creation of the first national park, Yellowstone, in 1872. Early in the twentieth century, the paintings of Rudolph Ingerle were instrumental in establishing Great Smoky Mountains National Park. These artists are among many who helped fuel and popularize the conservation movement in America. Protection of the wilderness came to be seen as critical to preserve wildlife and topography not only for its own inherent value, but also for the spiritual, creative, and cultural health and sustainability of the citizenry.

Gifted with a keen eye and intellect, Thomas Paquette is a modern heir to these artistic forebears. His paintings present the natural world to us in varying shades, from the intimate to the majestic, and evoke the mood and feeling of a place. But Paquette’s paintings do not merely document; they stir our imagination and make us look at our environs anew.

In contemplating Paquette’s paintings and our friendship of nearly twenty-five years, I see strong parallels between his approach to painting and his approach to life, as well as between his methodology and the mysteriousness of nature. As his paintings develop, he approaches the subject almost indirectly. Out of an appearance of chaos arises a deliberate beauty.

Paquette’s paintings give an exuberant impression of being just barely contained by paper or canvas. Each painting is a journey in and of itself. He distills the landscape, sometimes to abstraction. Small fields of color abut each other, often in unexpected ways. His process appears to work in concert with nature.

Each of Paquette’s paintings evolves from initial sketches in sometimes wildly unnatural colors, such as pinks, bright blues and reds. Next, he layers and scrapes the paint in a process of building, destroying, and rebuilding. He carefully manipulates light and shadow, perhaps changing the time of day or even the entire composition. After many forays in various directions, the painting eventually arrives at its destination, which can sometimes be a surprise, given its journey.

Whether portraying the vast expanse of the Vermilion Cliffs of Arizona, the quiet solitude of the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, or the still, dark confines of the Okefenokee Swamp, Thomas Paquette’s work evokes the layered nuances and moods of a landscape. The color, light, composition, and even the surface of many of his paintings capture some secret, some clue to the natural world’s makeup. While standing before one of his large oil paintings or peering into the smallest of gouache paintings, the viewer has the sense of worlds within.

Paquette’s love of nature is superseded only by his drive to create and share with others all that he has observed. How lucky for us that he has chosen to convey his passion for the natural world through the conduit of his brushstrokes. Reviving us from complacency, Paquette’s work urges us to appreciate the American wilderness through an adventurer’s eyes and be humbled by our discoveries.

Annelies Mondi

"Headlands" 2015.

Magazine

Painter Thomas Paquette painted 30 wilderness areas in the US for his "On Nature's Terms" project commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964--- a great breakthrough in protecting the natural commons. This essay, written by Annalies Mondi from the Georgia Museum of Art, is from the catalogue of Paquette's traveling museum show of "On Nature's Terms."

Commons is Heart of Pope’s Economic Teachings

jwalljasper — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 20:31:17 +0000

That should be little surprise in a document drafted by an African cardinal and issued by a South American pope

http://americamagazine.org/

The primacy of the common good over private property is upheld from St. Augustine to modern Catholic social teaching.

About Nathan Schneider

Nathan Schneider writes widely about political resistance, religion and technology for a variety of publications includingHarper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, America, Killing the Buddha, Waging Nonviolence and The Catholic Worker. He is the author of Thank You Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse and God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet (both University of California Press). He blogs at TheRowBoat.com.

The subtitle of Pope Francis’ stunning new encyclical, “‘Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home,” belies the preference of some that a pontiff not venture into economic matters—Jeb Bush, for instance. Etymologically, after all, economics is the discipline of managing a home; the encyclical’s heading therefore presents it as an economics for the world we hold in common. But what kind of economics is it?

As the document’s most uncomfortable critics have pointed out, the pope has little faith in the capacity of the market mechanisms of global capitalism to smooth out our reckless abuse of creation on their own. He is less than sanguine also about the capacity of national governments to do the job, especially since many are in the thrall of the same multinational corporations that profit from doing the damage. With neither capitalism alone nor the strong arm of states to turn to, it is no surprise that critics—Catholic ones most venomously—have accused him of economic naïveté and incoherence.

There is, however, a different sort of economics that helps us see the sense in what Francis proposes—the economics of the commons. This is a tradition that includes the “all things in common” described in the New Testament Book of Acts and the primacy of the common good over private property, upheld from Augustine to modern social teaching. People throughout history have practiced the art of “commoning” to steward goods that states and markets are not equipped to handle. The late Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in economics for her research on how longstanding communities govern resources like fisheries and forests, and today the commons of information is undergoing a revival through practices like open-source software. Communities manage their commons in many different ways, using many of the same tools we use to manage our households—like relationship, custom, listening, ritual and love. Act like a greedy homo economicus at the dinner table, and don’t expect to be offered dessert.

The Italian economist Stefano Zamagni, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, has participated in the development of Catholic economic teaching before and during the present papacy. “From an economic point of view, the environment is a common good,” he told me. “It is not a private good or a public good, which means that we cannot cope with the problem of the environment using market mechanisms per se, or government intervention.” The ideas of Elinor Ostrom and other scholars of the commons have figured prominently in the academy’s proceedings. The Belgian open-source advocate Michel Bauwens and the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, have been invited speakers.

The kinds of remedies Francis proposes for our ecological sins often fit the logic of commoning. He calls for cooperative kinds of business that share wealth rather than accumulating it. He calls for prayer, for repentance and for dialogue—the kinds of things we do when something goes wrong in our household.

Especially controversial are the passages where Francis proposes “systems of governance for the whole range of so-called ‘global commons.’” Some have understood this as some kind of overreaching world government. But Zamagni insists that it is no such thing. Like the World Trade Organization, for instance, this might be something like the very agencies that capitalism relies on, though far more accountable than the W.T.O. to the world’s poorest, who are often the first to hear and suffer from the planet’s groanings.

Commoning is not a replacement for markets or states. Zamagni stresses that the consumerist capitalism that dismays Francis is not synonymous with markets as such. “The pope is not against the market economy,” he says; the problem is an idolatry that imagines markets can solve our moral crises for us. We can respect the usefulness of markets without needing to affirm their omnipotence.

This is the first third world encyclical—drafted by an African cardinal, Peter Turkson, and completed by a South American pope. Like Catholic social teaching in general, it declines to bow before the competing altars of Cold War economics. The commoning it calls for is the wisdom of the ancients, still hidden in plain sight among the “informal economies” at global capitalism’s margins. This is the art, at once, of keeping a loving home and of sharing a precious planet.

Nathan Schneider