David Bollier

It is rare for a political activist and a poet to cohabit the same body. Rarer still for that strange hybrid to intersect with my life and share my journey.  Which is why I was so privileged to work with my friend Jonathan Rowe – and why I am going to miss him a great deal. 

On Saturday morning Jon went off to the gym, as he often did, and came home not feeling well.  By the evening he had a scorching fever and went to the hospital.  By Sunday morning, he was gone.  He was 65 and leaves behind his wife Mary Jean and young son Josh. 

Jon’s sudden, unexpected death underscores something that he understood well:  our fixation on the big abstractions – politics, economics, wealth – tends to blind us to the fragile and beautiful realities of human existence, whose intrinsic importance cannot be denied....must not be denied.

As someone blessed with a capacious mind and soul, Jon clearly recognized the brutal necessities of politics while honoring the immanent truths of the spiritual.  He also had the clarity of mind to realize that while the two realms may never be reconciled or integrated, neither can they ever be disconnected.  Jon’s life was to wrestle with this koan.

My former colleague at On the Commons, Jay Walljasper, has pulled together a rich array of stories, short essays, profiles and other found gems in a new book, All That We Share:  A Field Guide to the Commons (New Press, 2010).  It’s an especially useful introduction for newcomers to the commons, but it valuable to others as well.  The book explains the basics of what is the commons, why they matter now, and how they provide practical alternatives or complements to existing market systems.  All That We Share covers everything from the enclosures of urban spaces and information to water and nature, as well as a slew of inspiring models for the future.

There’s the story of Mark Lakeman’s work in reviving neighborhood squares in Portland, Oregon, and Jesús León Santos leadership in re-introducing indigenous farming techniques to Mexico, which is helping stop erosion and improve water flows.  There’s the story of North Dakota’s state-owned bank, which has made affordable credit available to its citizens; the Alaska Permanent Fund that channels dividends from oil drilling revenues to every citizen in Alaska; and the remarkable improvements to public transit and schools that Mayor Enrique Peñalosa brought to Bogotá, Colombia.

I confess I’m not the best reviewer of All That We Share because I have several excerpts of my own in it and because Jay’s a friend.  But let the volume speak for itself:  it features such illustrious contributors as Robert Reich, Jeremy Rifkin, Peter Barnes, Peter Linebaugh, Mark Dowie, Winona LaDuke, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Lewis Hyde, among others.  It puts a human face on the dozens of different realms in which commoners are making a difference, and tells their stories in an accessible way.  A wealth of commons-based innovations is reconstructing a battered world.  Read all about it.

A memorable Dilbert cartoon strip features Dogbert as a “creativity consultant” who is directed by his boss to come up with some hard quantitative data.  The boss barks:  “The only way to make decisions is to pull numbers of the air, call them ‘assumptions,’ and calculate the net present value.”  The punchline:  “Of course, you have to use the right discount rate, otherwise it’s meaningless.”

That encapsulates the faux-rigor of regulatory decisions for protecting health, safety and the environment.  Ascertaining the dollar value of human life using the most rigorous science possible is a politically useful charade. 

As the New York Times recently reported, the scientifically determined value of a life at the Environmental Protection Agency has gone up from $6.8 million in the Bush II years to $9.1 million at present.  Across town, the FDA decides whether to ban an unsafe drug based on a valuation of $7.9 million per life.  In deciding whether automakers will install new safety features, the Transportation Department figures $6 million.

A small group of innovative commoners in Phoenix is closing in on an innovative breakthrough:  a commons-based revenue model for photovoltaic solar energy development in cities.  It’s called the Solar Commons, which sports the tagline, "The sun shines for everyone." 

The idea is to use the public rights of way in cities and towns to collect solar energy, and then channel the revenue to a community trust.  The trust will manage the solar panels and electricity sales, and distribute the revenues to help the community.  In this case, the Solar Commons will support low-income housing and commons education efforts in Phoenix. 

It sounds simple enough, but the Solar Commons has taken considerable out-of-the-box thinking and operational innovation to get on track as a demonstration project.  Among the challenges:  the city-commons relationship, legal liability and project maintenance and management.  At this stage, the Solar Commons is on track to becoming a demonstration project.