David Bollier

A book tour is a dizzying, whirl-a-gig experience. It catapults an author into a blur of very different podcasts and webinars, classroom talks and conference panels, media interviews and in-person events. 

In my case, I also personally visited a number of cities with passionate commoners, including London, Amsterdam, Brussels, New York City, and hooray, Brattleboro, Vermont. By the end of my tour, mention of the word “commons” made me as talkative as a drunken magpie.

My visits and events were actually a kind of field research for me. I learned a lot about what people know and think about the commons, what initiatives they are already involved with, and what topics need more attention. I also made some new friends and acquaintances along the way.

Despite all this positive energy, I’m happy to report that my book tour has officially ended. It was a five-month sprint that began in mid-March, with the release of the significantly revised, second edition of my 2014 book, Think Like a Commoner. 

A big thanks to New Society Publishers for their confidence in releasing a second edition of the book after eleven years! My apologies if I didn’t make it to your town, but I’m still open to (a few) invitations.

One of the most singular and accomplished commons I’ve ever encountered is Cecosesola, a federation of Venezuelan cooperatives. The remarkable federation artfully manages multiple ventures as commons while deeply immersed within a system of capitalist markets. 

Founded in 1967 in the state of Lara in Venezuela, Cecosesola got its start when working-class people in poorest barrios of the region organized to set aside money every month to build their own cooperatives.

Nearly sixty years later, Cecosesola now coordinates a wide variety of enterprises. It works with farmers to supply 800 tons of vegetables to large urban produce markets serving 100,000 people a week. Its healthcare services treat 250,000 patients a year, including many specialties and surgeries. Its savings and loan cooperative, funerary enterprise, and dozens of other organizations serve low-income families at dramatically lower prices than conventional markets.

While the market performance of the coops is impressive, its most significant achievement is its internal work culture and grassroots support. Cecosesola hosts a radically nonhierarchical, egalitarian culture of trust and participation for its 1,500 associates. Its success is based on its deep commitment to building social trust, responsibility, and personal self-improvement. 

With the release of my significantly revised, new edition of Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons, I've had a chance to start some new conversations and engage with different communities of practice. Recently, the Garrison Institute, a retreat center for contemplation and social action in the Hudson Valley of New York State, invited me to write a short essay about the interconnectedness of all living beings and how commons can serve as vehicles for manifesting that idea. Below is my piece, "Crossing the Commons: From Inner Change to Systemic Change," which first appeared on the Garrison Institute website.

“Be the change you want to see in the world!” is the familiar counsel of great social movements. The advice echoes the lyric from the great African-American song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!” 

But how, exactly, might our inner epiphanies and transformations catalyze systemic change? We may individually develop new insights and values from wisdom traditions and contemplative practice, but how might they radiate out into something larger, collective, and consequential?

At this particular moment in modern civilization, as societies grapple with climate change, savage inequalities, and authoritarian rule, the pathways for bringing about change seem terribly murky. Our political life seems stuck at philosophical and practical impasses and paralyzed by failures of the imagination. It’s not clear what organizations, movements or cultural voices may actually have the capacities to fulfill our yearnings for a better world.  What strategies and approaches might be effective?

What are some of the distinctive ways that precarious arts collectives share resources, support each other, and make art? 

I recently learned a lot about this topic from a workshop of international artists convened in Amsterdam. Most of the artists are associated with the so-called Lumbung Practice collective, an interdisciplinary group experimenting with how to cultivate a commons-based art economy. 

The artists come from Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, transqueer-migrant disaporas, and other geographies and circumstances, so they have some very different experiences and talents. And yet they have a deeply shared interest in commoning. What has brought them together is the Lumbung Practice master’s program at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, directed by Gertrude Flentge. It's an arts program dedicated to commoning in the arts! 

Lumbung is an Indonesian term for a communal rice barn, which is a space in which farmers contribute their harvests, collaboratively manage its storage and distribution, and share a social space of interdependence. It’s a culturally resonant practice for describing a community based on trust, generosity, sufficiency, endurance, place-based work, ethical dealings, and humor. 

The term Lumbung got a huge burst of visibility a few years ago when an Indonesian artist collective, ruangrupa, was selected to curate documenta 15, a prestigious international art exhibition in Kassel, Germany. The group boldly decided to run the high-profile exhibition as an experiment in commoning, inviting dozens of artists from around the world to collectively curate the art. Suddenly there was a more recognized term for the contextually based, relational practices of artists.  Flentge joined the ruangrupa team to help develop the documenta 15 exhibition in 2022, so she learned a great deal about the ethic and practices of Lumbung during that time.