¨reclaiming the commons¨

These are two quotes from Naomi Klein that I like. The words in bold are my additions. This starts getting to the point, but has a ways to go...(Keep in mind, that is was written before the economic recession, as well.)

¨What is now the anti-globalization movement must turn into thousands of local movements, fighting the way neoliberal politics are playing out on the ground: homelessness, unaffordable medical bills, corporate dominated media, wage stagnation, foreclosure, rent escalation, massive layoffs, police violence, prison explosion, unaffordable education, criminalization of migrant workers, subsidization of unhealthy food, ¨colorblind¨ policies, impossible living expenses, surveillance and militarization, warfare , and on and on and on and on. These are also struggles about all kinds of prosaic issues: the right to decide where the local garbage goes, to have good public schools, to be supplied with clean water. At the same time, the local movements fighting privatization and deregulation on the ground need to link their campaigns into one large global movement, which can show where their particular issues fit into an international economic agenda being enforced around the world. If that connexion isn’t made, people will continue to be demoralized. What we need is to formulate a political framework that can both take on corporate power and control, and empower local organizing and self-determination. That has to be a framework that encourages, celebrates and fiercely protects the right to diversity: cultural diversity, ecological diversity, agricultural diversity—and yes, political diversity as well: different ways of doing politics. As well as recognize the political, economic, social, and cultural structural inequalities, such as those in regard to race, class, and gender. Communities must have the right to plan and manage their schools, their services, their natural settings, according to their own lights.¨
- naomi klein, reclaiming the commons


¨As our communal spaces—town squares, streets, schools, farms, plants—are displaced by the ballooning marketplace, a spirit of resistance is taking hold around the world. People are reclaiming bits of nature and of culture, and saying ‘this is going to be public space.¨
- naomi klein, reclaiming the commons