Before 2010, Paris’s water service was provided by four entities:  two private companies, Suez and Veolia; SAGEP, a public/private company using public drinking water infrastructure, and a public laboratory in charge of water safety. This situation diluted responsibility and hiked the price of water for users. That is why the Paris municipality decided to fully remunicipalise and reintegrate water services, at the end of the current contracts EDP captures, produces and distributes 170 million cubic meters of drinking water a year for 3 million users.

EDP began operating Paris’s water systems in January 2010 with a fully integrated water management, from source to tap. From the first year, the structural savings of about 30 million euros per year made it possible to lower the price of water by 8%. Today, this price is still lower than it was before 2010. EDP also ensure a concrete right to water through free public fountains in public spaces, cooperation with associations supporting homeless people and refugees, and partnerships with social landlords.

EDP has adopted environmental management practices in all the natural spaces it manages and supports many farmers in setting up sustainable farming practices, that are useful for water quality.

“What EDP tells us is that a public company can be a pioneer in ecological transition, internal democracy (anti-discrimination, gender equality) for workers, with very high levels of transparency and accountability. This is not merely a case of remunicipalisation but an example of how a new generation of public companies can work.”

– Evaluator Satoko Kishimoto

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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See the shared notes from this session too.

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Denis Roio: This thesis describes a practice based research journey across various projects dealing with the design of algorithms, to highlight the governance implications in design choices made on them. The research provides answers and documents methodologies to address the urgent need for more awareness of decisions made by algorithms about the social and economical context in which we live. Algorithms constitute a foundational basis across different fields of studies: policy making, governance, art and technology. The ability to understand what is inscribed in such algorithms, what are the consequences of their execution and what is the agency left for the living world is crucial. Yet there is a lack of interdisciplinary and practice based literature, while specialised treatises are too narrow to relate to the broader context in which algorithms are enacted.

This thesis advances the awareness of algorithms and related aspects of sovereignty through a series of projects documented as participatory action research. One of the projects described, Devuan, leads to the realisation of a new, worldwide renown operating system. Another project, “sup”, consists of a minimalist approach to mission critical software and literate programming to enhance security and reliability of applications. Another project, D-CENT, consisted in a 3 year long path of cutting edge research funded by the EU commission on the emerging dynamics of participatory democracy connected to the technologies adopted by citizen organizations.

My original contribution to knowledge lies within the function that the research underpinning these projects has on the ability to gain a better understanding of sociopolitical aspects connected to the design and management of algorithms. It suggests that we can improve the design and regulation of future public, private and common spaces which are increasingly governed by algorithms by understanding not only economical and legal implications, but also the connections between design choices and the sociopolitical context for their development and execution.

Full text available for download here

Photo by cobalt123

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A session in progress at the CrowdLaw conference at the Rockefeller Foundation conference center in Bellagio, Italy

In this session on ‘Transparency and Participation’ at the Bellagio conference on Crowdlaw: People-Led Innovation in Urban Lawmaking (March 13–17, 2018), we discussed whether participation depended on more transparency and whether transparency could be counter-productive to more engagement. I had the pleasure of speaking and moderating a conversation with:

• Mukhelani Dimba, Open Government Partnership
• Julia Keutgen,Westminster Foundation for Democracy
• Hélène Landemore, Yale University
• Veronica Seguel, Chamber of Deputies Chile

Transparency is instrumental for participation and for accountability. But in order to delve into the linkages between transparency and participation with discernment, it is necessary to clarify the concept of ‘transparency’. Transparency is the immediate visibility for citizens of all policy related aspects. It is the contrary of opacity but is can be compatible with a certain closure. It is more demanding that publicity. It can help citizens to engage in policy, be instrumental to accountability and be educational and transformative for citizens. Transparency helps citizens to know and understand whether their government is protecting their rights and delivering on public services. It can range from total transparency to partial transparency. In some cases, partial transparency has been used by governments and parliaments to justify certain decisions. But when transparency is only partial, it cannot be expected to deliver good outcomes as citizens voice their opinion without having the full picture.

Transparency and participation should be regulated by law, including through Freedom of Information laws and the rules of procedure of parliament. In Brazil, for instance, the rules of procedure of parliament state the obligation for citizens to participate in committee hearings. That being said, there is not a single legal provision of transparency that could grant access to full access to information. Even when regulated by law, the utopian possibilities of transparency as a means to inclusiveness, universality and transformation, are simply not borne out in reality. For instance, today there is no evidence that Freedom of Information laws on their own have dramatically improved government transparency, responsiveness and accountability.

Transparency mostly operates in circumstances of high inequality. In these circumstances, having more transparency does not mean that there are better dialogues between government/parliaments and citizens. In this sense, transparency can lead to more inequality and elite capture because only those who have access to resources and the information are able to participate. Ultimately, participation rests on access to information. Where there are information asymmetries, only voices and interests of the resource rich are audible.

Transparency should be accompanied by civic education and procedural language of government and parliament should be translated meaningfully to citizen to enable meaningful their participation. Participation channels should be linked to citizen’s interest on a single issue rather than party politics. In Chile, for instance, the parliament has developed an online tool “Ley fácil” (easy law) to make the law understandable for ordinary citizens (https://www.bcn.cl/leyfacil).

Transparency is not always the most efficient way to improve a legitimate participatory process and can be very time consuming. Some scholars have even gone further and argued that it has a counterproductive effect on democracy. Even if relative transparency is achieved, there are questions regarding the quality of participation (who participates and how, with what degree of sincerity) and the quantity of participation (how many people participate). This is for instance the case in Chile, where public hearings organized by the parliament are mostly attended by men with a legal background and living in the capital and the voices of other stakeholders are not being heard.

Transparency makes compromises between representatives more difficult. When discussions are transparent and public, it can harden negotiating positions and make it difficult for elected officials to compromise. Citizens are mostly in favour or against a single issue, while legislation requires compromises and trade-offs between single issues. The more trade-offs are involved, the more trade-offs are required the more difficult it is to have full transparency of the negotiation that led to the compromise. Finally, too much transparency coupled with a lack of understanding of parliamentary/governmental processes, for instance disclosure of donations, can have a dampening effect on participation and lead to increased lack of trust in the institutions and its systems.

In the end, participants agreed that transparency is the ideal default principle, with instrumental value, but should be compatible with exceptions. It should not in itself represent a judgement of democracy.

Julia Keutgen is ‎a Technical Advisor at the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD)

Cross-posted from Govlab.org

Photo by sniggitysnags

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North America Regional Municipalist Summit

New York City July 27-29, 2018

A growing movement across the globe is seeking to democratize and feminize political institutions at the level closest to our day-to-day lives: the municipal level. Weaving together social movements, participatory tools, solidarity economy, concrete wins, and the confluence of diverse political forces into a more direct form of democracy.

Join us in New York City from July 27-29 for the Fearless Cities North America Regional Summit, the first ever municipalist summit in North America. This regional Fearless Cities will include comprehensive participation from Canada, the United States, Mexico, and the Greater Caribbean and will be rooted in the international network coalesced by last year’s Fearless Cities international summit.

Register Here

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21-23 November 2018

ISCTE-IUL, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

Organiser: CEI-IUL, Centre for International Studies

With the support of the Department of Political Economy (ISCTE-IUL) and Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (CE3C), Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon

In response to the current global social and environmental crisis, various social movements are developing alternatives to the socio-economic status quo by mobilizing endogenous practices, institutions and resources and networking among grassroots initiatives. Within these movements stands out Solidary Social Economy and the Commons. This international and interdisciplinary conference, guided by an action research strategy, aims to respond to challenges that have arisen from recent research on forms of shared governance between the state, the market and the third sector, promoted by movements and public policies for the Social Solidarity Economy, as well as criticisms made by authors such as Martin Deleixhe, David Harvey and Massimo de Angelis to the theory developed by Elinor Ostrom on the management of common property:

• How to promote a strong sense of community belonging, necessary to promote the cooperation between stakeholders that is necessary for the harmonious governance of Social Solidarity Economy and the Commons, while preventing the emergence of totalizing visions, ensuring pluralism and promoting democratic deepening?

• How to promote shared governance strategies between the state, the market and the third sector, aimed at supporting the development of Social Solidarity Economy networks as spaces of self-organization, in which participants can autonomously construct themselves as economic and political subjects?

• How to promote organizations based on the constitution and / or management of Common Goods (Integral Cooperatives, Ecovillages, associations of users and / or producers, etc.) based on fair, inclusive and participative forms of governance, and integrated into grassroots socioeconomic dynamics?

The purpose of this event is to promote an intersectoral dialogue on this topic at the international level. We invite researchers, activists, public officials, social entrepreneurs and other actors in these fields to present communications that explore possible configurations which the convergence between the approaches proposed by the Solidarity Economy and Common Goods movements can assume in the following fields:

– Production and distribution of food, water and energy;

– Infrastructures (management of territories, means of communication and transport, information technologies, housing and economic and cultural activity spaces);

– Health, Education and Culture

– Financial systems (ethical finance, social currencies, crypto-coins).

The objective is to develop theoretical and empirical materials that facilitate convergence and the establishment of common action plans for the promotion of socially and environmentally resilient communities, in particular through:

(a) adaptation to climate change, transition to the use of renewable energies and promotion of “environmental ethics”;

b) public policies and participatory democracy mechanisms to promote social justice through empowerment and a more effective exercise of social, economic and civic rights by vulnerable social groups;

c) the revitalization of local economies through “short circuits” of production and consumption that stimulate the creation of employment and the establishment of wealth at an autochthonous level.

Please email paper abstracts of no more than 300 words to  [email protected] by May 31 2018. Acceptance and rejection notices will be sent in mid-June 2018.

The organizing committee will subsequently selected papers presented at the conference to be published in the ISCTE-IUL Centre for International Studies (CEI) open source e-book collection. The authors and actors present at the thematic sessions will also be invited to contribute chapters on the topics discussed for publication.

Photo by pedrosimoes7

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Try: feminised politics, proximity, ecology and community. As we turn off ‘post-truth’ politics, face-to-face meeting, listening and community-building supported by safe technologies are some of the salves for human-scale democracy. While New Zealand is facing a national election, it’s worth considering other forms of democracy, namely engaged local politics, currently being called municipalism in Europe.

Jump to Barcelona in June — where 700 people from 180 countries converged in inaugural Fearless Cities summit on municipalism — organised by the current political movement, Barcelona En Comu.

If you’re not one for party politics, municipalism is attractive — it’s about designing a process of involving all citizens in the self-organising of their communities, towns or cities, not so much about creating new policies and group think from the top down. My interests: developing self-empowered societies, commons-building and in art processes that develop communities. After registering and paying 20 Euros online, I found myself connected to and hosted by the Corbella family who — mother, sister, son, father are all involved in the movement of people-driven democracy.

The summit was hugely powerful — not only connecting us to a major international network but giving visibility to residents, activists and councillors who have been elected from the ground up — from Europe and North America, Middle East and Africa, all encouraging us to continue work with people to eliminate fear that divides citizens. All the summit sessions can be found at You Tube here.

I attended sessions on non-state institutions, on sanctuary cities and on municipalism in towns and rural areas, thinking always, how might New Zealand might relate to this new movement?

Try these recurring themes from the summit:

1. Feminised politics. The new municipalisism is radicalising the process of representation and it is female-led. It will grow from those experienced in listening to their communities. Barcelona City Councillor, Laura Perez Castaño suggested that no matter how we look at it, women’s needs are different to men’s. Issues such as mobility and working hours are different for women and our political positions different. New Zealand knows about historic suffrage; and we should start to recognise the new community-driven leaders who are women.

2. Proximity is a key asset when it comes to municipalism. Having access to all the members of our small communities allows for genuine engagement. We talk about New Zealand’s ‘2 degrees’ social geography and this is powerful. The traditional elite have used proximity in recent times and it can be just as easily employed. Recommended reading: Joan Subirats on Proximity (included here the book Cities in the 21st Century).

3. Ecology and people are connected. Legendary Indian activist Vandana Shiva spoke about forests self-organising and that the natural state for people too is also to self-organise within their urban ecosystems. To quote US activist Debbie Bookchin, “We can’t address ecological problems without resolving our addiction to domination and hierarchy.” We know this in New Zealand: the mauri of the land is connected to the mauri of the people. That means the people and land stay well together.

4. As community organisers, don’t rely on the mainstream media to reach your people or reflect your community. Organising at community level is the way to connect where you are dealing with people at a personal level. It’s time consuming -get used to it. Barcelona En Comu was largely ignored by the TV and newspapers until the election. Trust your community networks and not the media.

Leading European examples

Barcelona En Comu started out as movement of self-organising groups and Barcelona’s Mayor Ada Colau is one of the more public faces of it. Back in 2014 she was part of organisation, Platform for Mortgage Victims, working to stop people being evicted from their homes by banks.

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau at #FearlessCities

Connecting with other groups, the Platform members became more politically active when they realised that it wasn’t just about tackling banks — that public institutions had to change too. Running for Barcelona Council, initially under the banner Guanyem Barcelona (We will win Barcelona) they didn’t meet in secret or in members’ sitting rooms. They held meetings in the squares, in the streets, and in all neighborhoods. For more history see this Guardian piece How to win back the city.

Although Barcelona en Comu evolved to become a political party, their connection between the people and political process continues fluidly. Oriol Corbella, one of my young hosts, sent me a message as he was attending a recent meeting in his neighborhood with the elected members of Barcelona En Comu, reporting back after two years in Council. He described how the room was separated into five circles (each circle a subject), with the respective politicians explaining “the goals we had accomplished, the difficulties and the future. There are many difficulties for the ones in government to communicate what they do to the people from the party.” But intention is there.

Participatory democracy is fast-shaping the operations of other local governments over Europe, and it may be that smaller towns are easier to manage than cities. At the session Municipalism in towns and rural areas I learned that in the UK, in Buckfastleigh, Devon, Pamela Barrett, Mayor of Buckfastleigh, was elected once her community collectively developed 8 new initiatives and Council raised rates by 1 pound a week (equating to an 100% rise) without backlash. Buckfastleigh runs its meetings in football clubs, in parks and the streets, and allows members of the public to contribute in a Roman-style ‘polis’.

In Torrelodones, Spain, Marina Vicen, Councilor for Youth and Education, spoke of how the Council has established a drop in centre to deal with issues immediately — same day if possible.

In Celrá, we heard from Mercè Amich Vidal, Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), Councilor for Youth and Equality at Celrà City Council where their constituency asked them to ring the elderly residents every morning to wish them good morning and will check-in on them personally if they don’t respond. They call this the Bon Dia service.

In Celrá, 10o% of local budget (outside of Council staffing) is allocated participatorily. The town has since been trialing an online app — Celrà participa — which will assist.

Municipalist Councillors from Spain and UK: Marina Vincen, Mercè Amich Vidal, Pamela Barrett

In London, the Right to the City campaign started before the UK general election and has similar principles to municipalism, with a certain pick up especially since the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. Yet it feels as if class and power issues could take a while to be fully shaken from the English psyche — see Caroline Molloy’s damning piece on UK local politics.

Surely it’s possible for those of us in NZ to leave behind the colonial psyche of ‘us’ and ‘them’?

New Zealand community-driven politics?

Our New Zealand local governments are generally approachable. I’ve found Councils responsive and Councillors increasingly open minded. In Wellington I often see our Councillors in community events, football games, coming readily to invited meetings through my varied involvement in several community-driven planning programmes. The organisation I co-direct, Letting Space, for example, has worked with Wellington City, as well as Dunedin City, Masterton District, and Porirua City on a platform for community voice — the Urban Dream Brokerage*, a place for all-comers to suggest good ideas for vacant city spaces.

And in terms of political advocacy the work of New Zealand organisation Action Station has begun to reveal the possibility of crowd-sourcing support for specific causes. It’s work is driven by what people want to see happen and has had huge effect in selected areas.

There are many groups who see themselves as legitimate voices of the land, and thousands of Friends’ groups who inadvertently become the main caretakers for the rivers, streams and wilder habitats of our country. Many of recent our environmental victories have been thanks to our nation of volunteers. Yet these groups are at arms length from politics. We’re just playing in the shallows with what is possible. We need to connect voice and ideas with real politics.

Perhaps we don’t perceive the need for radical transformation in New Zealand like those in bigger cities and countries. Perhaps we don’t perceive we have an issue with corruption or access to power.

And yet we still have major problems — hugely disempowered communities and those whose needs are not being met. We’ve seen the rate of homelessness at world-beating levels, of cities too expensive for average wage earners to live in, increased mental illness, youth suicide at record levels and huge disenfranchisement in society. Many of these problems lie in Central government policies. But some issues can be met in our local towns and cities.

With the majority of the New Zealand population saying they think that traditional parties and politicians don’t care about them, we need to find new ways for people to have a voice.

Political commentator Bryce Edwards suggests:

“The idea of participatory and decentralized ways of doing politics are particularly apt for contemporary New Zealand, because the political system has become the opposite of that — it’s currently very centralized and elite. Few people are involved in the political process, and power is highly concentrated. So, we desperately need to be talking about and trialing ideas like municipalism.

“Municipalism might well be a philosophy and practice tailor-made for contemporary politics in New Zealand…People are increasingly either disenchanted with how politics currently works, or at least highly suspicious about democracy and authorities in general. There is a backlash forming against the status quo of how decision-making occurs, and about who has the power. That means that people are particularly open to new ideas about running society — and so concepts like municipalism have a very good chance of resonating with a wide variety of people. It could indeed resonate with many of those on both left and right, with young and old, and with many different types of communities (rural, provincial, urban, etc).”

The movement toward municipalism in Europe tells us that it is at the local level that we can really address peoples’ needs. Cities and towns have more connection with our daily lives. It is not the direction that New Zealand has been heading with recent attempts at reforms.

What would full municipalism look like in New Zealand? Listening and working collectively requires open-mindedness. It would require people to put aside their cynicism and their egos. Would it be more Āotearoa hui-style politics that we adapt? It needs people who are disempowered being given the platform to speak openly and for those with more resource to listen and finding solutions together, from the ground up.

Could we imagine ourselves like Celrá, where our local Councils fund services that we ourselves have prioritised? Imagine — if it were not just our elderly but also the unwell and fearful being phoned every morning to see how they were. Could we imagine participatory budgeting at a large scale, to decide what we spent our money on?

Imagine regular, official Council meetings in our parks and squares (or vacant sites if the weather is bad) where our communities come to talk about their local needs for, say good local food, or cheaper activities or safer traffic and these were addressed directly by the neighborhood representative? Engaging Maori tikanga would be vital and important- hui are the ideal reference point for the practice of listening hearing each other.

Barcelona en Comu have a step by step guide about how to organise a municipalist driven culture. Is New Zealand is ripe for a truly people-led approach to politics?

For more writing on the Fearless Cities summit, I recommend fellow Wellingtonian Richard Bartlett’s snapshot How a Global Network of #FearlessCities is Making Racist Colonial Nation States Obsolete.

Author Sophie Jerram in Barcelona

*My experience has been in the transformation of space from private to public. We need more spaces to debate and meet in. We’ve witnessed first-hand the submission of hundreds of new ideas for public life. Often all is needed is space and encouragement.  has helped people launch ideas, taught new skills, redistributed resources, connected property owners with creative makers, and moreover given people the chance to practise their ideas in public space free of commercial pressure. I’ve been in Europe talking with the local city of Helsingør about how this ‘radical’ programme handing over spaces to people with ideas could be adapted to Danish life.

*

Photo by BarcelonaEnComu

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Ajuntament de Barcelona. Economia Cooperativa, Social y Solidaria y Consum, 2017

Download the original document here.

The Impetus Plan for the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona, is the result of a municipal initiative. Its aim is to offer a transformative socio-economic vision of the urban reality. It includes an action programme and aims to contribute towards reducing social and territorial inequalities, while promoting an economy at the service of people and of social justice.

The Impetus Plan comprises a diagnosis, the development process and the set of actions desired to be carried out in the city over the coming years. It is structured into the following parts:

•  The social and solidarity economy in Barcelona: analyses the reality of the transformative socio-economic fabric of the city and its roll-out across the territory
•  The Planning Process: explains the process involved in drafting the Plan and related co-production and co-responsibility dynamics.
•  Contents of the Plan: describes the general and specific objectives, lines of work, measures and actions to be implemented.
•  Development of the Plan: indicates the different agents involved in the Plan’s execution and spaces for joint and participatory work.
•  Budget, Monitoring and Evaluation: details the budgetary allocations, as well as the impact assessment criteria used.
•  Annex. Towards a New Socio-Economic Policy: offers an overview of the plural economy and of the proposal for the city’s socio-economic transformation.

Excerpts:

As explained below, this Impetus Plan is the product of dialogue between the SSE sector and the City Council, which gave rise to a shared diagnosis. The report The Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona developed a compilation of needs that are summarised in the following challenges tag cloud.

These challenges, detected by the SSE fabric itself, show those aspects that require input in order to consolidate and strengthen the social and solidarity economy movement. This Impetus Plan contains measures and actions related with these challenges, which often require internal work by the sector itself. In this sense, co-production and co-responsibility in achieving them are essential.

To highlight those that enjoy the greatest consensus, efforts need to be channelled towards improving the coordination of the sector in a global sense. This will make it possible to create a greater shared identity; increase communication outreach to disseminate the principles and values of the SSE among citizens; make spaces available to the SSE so that it can become the backbone of neighbourhoods and districts; improve inter-cooperation to strengthen social market construction; place emphasis on disseminating and training in democratic and participative governance as an eminently transformative element; and influence socially responsible public procurement, based on eco-social values, as a fundamental strategy.

Tag cloud of challenges, Impetus Plan for the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona

Commons collaborative economy sector

Meetings were held, along with the sharing of spaces for diagnosis, with BarCola, the collaborative economy hub that groups together 18 organisations. In March 2016, the city hosted the Commons Collaborative Economies: Policies, Technologies and City for the People (“Procomuns”) event whose sessions featured participation by over four hundred people and led to a declaration of 120 measures for public policies on commons collaborative economy matters, which were then put forward in the Municipal Action Plan (PAM).

The Planning Process for the Impetus Plan for the SSE in Barcelona

Statistics on the Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona

According to the study The Social and Solidarity Economy in Barcelona (2016), the city is home to 4,718 socio-economic initiatives that, according to their legal structures, form part of the social and solidarity economy.

Some of the most significant data are:

—— 2,400 third social sector organisations —— 1,197 worker-owned enterprises —— 861 cooperatives —— 260 community-economic initiatives

In total, they account for 53,000 people employed, over 100,000 volunteers, over 500,000 consumer cooperative members and approximately 113,000 mutualists.

SSE initiatives exist in all sectors of economic activity: from energy through culture to the food sector.

Barcelona is home to 861 cooperatives of all types, representing 20% of all the cooperatives in Catalonia. The large majority are worker cooperatives: these account for 77% of the total (numbering 667, of which 36 are social initiative cooperatives).
Furthermore, the city is home to 31 consumer and user cooperatives, which operate in a very wide range of activity fields: food, paper, energy, health, etc.
Since 1993, the city’s main housing cooperatives have built 2,093 homes in Barcelona, and today a new model is emerging known as housing cooperatives with assignment of use rights.
In the education area there are 19 education cooperatives, of which 80% are worker cooperatives, 10% consumer cooperatives and 10% mixed.

They concentrate around 2,500 members, over 5,600 students and they employ over 750 people.

There are also 13 free schools running plus various child-rearing and shared education initiatives for ages between 0 and 3 years.

Worker-owned enterprises enjoy a significant presence in the city: they represent 25.4 % of Barcelona’s SSE enterprise fabric, although a challenge in this sector’s articulation is detected. All local development projects must count on the strength of the third social sector because, with 2,400 organisations in the city, it represents over 50% of SSE initiatives: 48 of them correspond to special work centres and 20 are work integration social enterprises (WISE).

The seven ethical finance organisations operating in Catalonia are all based in Barcelona. Furthermore, in the insurance sector, the EthSI (Ethical and Solidarity Based Insurance) seal exists to certify insurance products, brokers and agents in line with SSE criteria. In Spain there are seven certified companies, four of them based in Barcelona. Community economies have emerged in the city as self-managed and innovative projects in the creation of new forms geared towards resolving people’s needs. In this respect, especially worthy of highlight are 23 citizen-managed facilities, 59 agro-ecological consumer groups, 13 exchange markets, 21 time banks and 20 community market gardens.

Read the entire document; download the PDF here.

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The Assembly seeks to unite citizens in trans-local and trans-european solidarity to overcome Europe’s current challenges and reinvigorate the political process for the 21st century. The commons can be understood as a bridging paradigm that stresses cooperation in management of resources, knowledge, tools, and spaces as diverse as water, Wikipedia, a crowdfund, or a community garden. Their Call describes commoning as:

…the network-based cooperation and localized bottom-up initiatives already sustained by millions of people around Europe and the world. These initiatives create self-managed systems that satisfy important needs, and often work outside of dominant markets and traditional state programmes while pioneering new hybrid structures.

The Assembly emerged in May from a diverse, gender balanced pilot community of 28 activists from 15 European countries, working in different domains of the commons. New people are joining the Assembly every week, and ECA is inclusive and open for others to join, so that a broad and resilient European movement can coalesce. It seeks to visibilize acts of commoning by citizens for citizens, while promoting interaction with policy and institutions at both the national and European levels.

Part of a broader movement

The rapid embrace of commons as an alternative holistic, sustainable and social worldview is in part an expression of unease with the unjust current economic system and democratic deficiencies. The commons movement has exploded in recent years, following the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom in 2009 for her work on managing common resources. It has also seen overlap with other movements, such as the Social and Solidarity and Sharing Economy movements, peer to peer production, and Degrowth.

Michel Bauwens, part of the ECA and a prominent figure in the peer-to-peer movement, explains:

“All over the world, a new social movement is emerging, which is challenging the ‘extractive’ premises of the mainstream political economy and which is co-constructing the seed forms of a sustainable and solidary society. Commoners are also getting a voice, for example through the Assemblies of the Commons that are emerging in French cities and elsewhere. The time is ripe for a shoutout to the political world, through a European Assembly of the Commons.”

The Call includes an open invitation to Brussels from November 15 to 17, 2016 for three days of activities and shared reflection on how to protect and promote the commons. It will include an official session in the European Parliament, hosted by the Intergroup on Common Goods and Public Services, on November 16 (limited capacity).

You can read and sign the full text of the Call, also available in French, Spanish, and soon other European languages, on the ECA website. There is an option to sign as an individual or an organization.

For more information, visit http://europeancommonsassembly.eu/ or follow @CommonsAssembly on Twitter for regular updates.

Media Contact: Nicole Leonard contact@europeancommonsassembly.eu

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