(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Dying Commons -- Strike for the Planet week 112 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-23 You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference! This is the letter for week 112 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile… STRIKE FOR THE PLANET Why are you allowing thieves, colonizers, and biopirates to destroy our commons? This week’s topic: The Dying Commons Wait, what are the commons? They are resources, forms of wealth, or knowledge1 that belong to all, not to any one person or entity, and are accessible to all. They are community resources, natural or created, that cannot be owned. For example, the atmosphere is part of the commons; an individual is not.2 The hydrosphere is part of the commons; DNA is not.3 The plays of Aphra Behn are part of the commons4; the plays of Dominique Morisseau are not (yet).5 And the commons are being destroyed? Yup.6 Forest fires to sea snot, solid air to ecosystem rape, the commons are being ground up everywhere. Fighting for his home. SF under an orange sky It’s so common, it’s commonplace. Okay, but we aren’t in nature — we live in a city The commons are in cities, too, and not only in parks. In addition to the nature stuff, urban commons include things with use value and low maintenance costs, where the needs and desires of citizens drive the use (instead of public authorities, private markets, or technologies determining what is available and what is good.) Public spaces become urban commons when they are used in social actions, protests, and encampments. Public spaces become urban commons when they become community gardens, urban farms, cultural spaces, free stores, or little free lending libraries. Urban commons include share groups, co-op nursery schools, free stores, cruising spots, and much more.7, 8 In practice, this means parks that are actually used are urban commons, and so are homeless encampments. Air and water are clearly part of our urban commons, but so are the Emperor Norton, the night sky, the coasts, citizen-made trails, libraries, the Beat and hippy legacies, equitable policing, death and injury-free mobility for all, some murals, and more.9 How are SF’s urban commons being destroyed? Anytime something the people have created, value, and use is demolished, privatized, starved to death, sidelined, made illegal, or otherwise co-opted, the urban commons are being destroyed. How are SF’s commons being destroyed? Let us count the ways. A few examples include, but are by no means limited to: public schooling (defunding and extreme politicization have been doing damage for decades) the privatization of open spaces, especially downtown and for cars vanishing water fountains throughout SF vanishing public bathrooms (Rec and Parks have a chunk of responsibility for this, as under Gavin Newsom’s “reorganization” they de-unionized jobs and slashed the workforce, leading to the shutdown of park bathrooms) Slow Streets being non-enforced and left to unarmored citizens to maintain against speeding cars Lyft, Uber, Door Dash et al jamming up the roads, crashing into people, and jacking up our carbon footprint Rec and Park plasticizing natural spaces 10 , ripping out and not replacing large numbers of trees, and flooding the night sky with light 11 , ripping out and not replacing large numbers of trees, and flooding the night sky with light the devaluing of all but tech work leading unsurprisingly to massive housing cost increases and massive increases in homelessness the privatization of community (compare Next Door, for example, to the NAMES Project or the 504 Sit-in or the Sunrise Movement) the proliferation, at the city’s recommendation, of non-native species and there’s so much more like the above. Well… so what? When legislation requires a certain number of deaths before a stop sign or traffic light are put in, when freeways destroy neighborhoods, and dumpsites get zoned for low income housing, then it’s clear that some lives have value and others little to none, and that access to and “ownership” of the commons is given to the few even though the commons belong to us all. This is theft. This is valuing the White privileged minority over everyone and everything else. In your lifetimes, the U.S. has gone from a progressive to a regressive social order and, instead of fighting against this, you are aiding it, giving it credence and supremacy, and lending it legitimacy by your words, actions, and presence. This is stealing from the poor to give to the rich. This is stealing from the children to give to the people who already wield insane, unsafe amounts of power. Wait, you’re attacking capitalism! Killing the commons, by selling them to the few and ensuring their destructive abuse, is colonization in a nutshell. It is theft, pure and simple. Theft is illegal. Theft is wrong. The commons belong to all, not to any one person or entity. The commons are our inheritance, our home, our hope. Stop selling off our future. Stop taking actions to normalize the rape of the planet and the city. Fight for us for a change. Fight for the commons. The commons belong to all because we are all part of the Commons It’s not about politics anymore; it’s about survival.12 We’ve already shrunk the atmosphere13 and shifted the poles14, we’re pissing away the water while letting CO 2 spewing cars run riot throughout the city.15, 16 SF’s chances for survival are borderline at best, and require immediate action.17 You’ve taken oaths to act for the good of SF. You say you are bound by the Precautionary Principle. So act for us all — save the commons. FOOTNOTES 1. Knowledge meaning anything that contains and transmits information, like DNA. 2. See The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) or Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (1853) or The Meatrix (2006, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEkc70ztOrc ) for examples of what happens when you to make individuals into goods: how it fails society, demeans and degrades all involved, and is unsustainable. 3. Your DNA is held by you but you neither created it nor are the sole possessor of it. You could try to make an argument about individual mutations but, seeing as the mechanism that creates those mutations has developed over a billion years of evolution, even the creation of artificial DNA with more codons is only a variation on an existing technology. 4. For example, The Rover is readily available at Project Gutenberg ( https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21339/21339-h/21339-h.htm ) among loads of other places both online (StageAgent, PhilArtistsCollective, UOregon, etc.) and irl (any library worth the name will either have it or get it for you via interlibrary loan.) 5. Meghan Nugent. “Mickey Mouse, the Founding Fathers and Copyright Law”. Financial Poise. 12 February 2020. https://www.financialpoise.com/copyright-law/ . 6. Please see prior Strike letters, or ask for specifics. But it’s really glaringly obvious by now. 7. Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons . Sharing Cities. 2018. https://www.shareable.net/sharing-cities/ . 8. “About On the Commons”. On The Commons. Accessed 8 June 2021. http://www.onthecommons.org/about-commons . 9. Justin McGuirk. “Urban commons have radical potential — it’s not just ab out community gardens”. The Guardian. 15 June 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/15/urban-common-radical-community-gardens . 10. With acres and acres of astroturf. 11. See Strike letters for weeks 12, 23, 44, and 59. 12. Aiko Stevenson. “Can Human Beings Survive The Impending Climate Crisis?” Huffpost. 3 August 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-humans-beings-survive-the-impending-climate-crisis_b_59829712e4b0396a95c874c5 . 13. Damian Carrington. “Climate emissions shrinking the stratosphere, scientists reveal”. The Guardian. 12 May 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/12/emissions-shrinking-the-stratosphere-scientists-find . 14. Damian Carrington. “Climate crisis has shifted the Earth’s axis, study shows”. The Guardian. 23 April 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/23/climate-crisis-has-shifted-the-earths-axis-study-shows . 15. admin. “12-year-old boy struck and killed by car in San Francisco”. Speedlux. 11 February 2021. https://speedlux.com/12-year-old-boy-struck-and-killed-by-car-san-francisco/ . 16. Dan McMenamin. “Medical examiner identifies woman killed by hit-and-run driver near City Hall”. Bay City News. 19 May 2021. https://sfbayca.com/2021/05/19/medical-examiner-identifies-woman-killed-by-hit-and-run-driver-near-city-hall/ . [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/23/2200798/-The-Dying-Commons-Strike-for-the-Planet-week-112?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/