World Commons Day on October 15, 2010

[Michel Bauwens]

Via David Bollier:

The World Social Forum has announced plans to organize a World Commons Day on October 15, 2010. The idea is to encourage all sorts of social movements and organizations at different scales —
local, regional, national, international — to host events that provoke
reflection and visibility about the commons.

The idea had its origins in a manifesto, Reclaim the Commons, that was crafted in Belem, Brazil, by participants of the World Social Forum in January 2009. To help spread the commons concept and show its strategic value,
some WSF participants came up with the idea of a
designated day to showcase the commons. As announced on the French commons
website Biens Communs:

The World Commons Day will be a day of public real or virtual actions, presentations, debates, workshops, shows and meetings taking place around the world to share the visions and the practices of the Commons.

The World Commons Day aims to be a complement to and a mirror of thousands of initiatives worldwide, initiatives that defend our right to public services like water supply and health or the right to share knowledge and
education. The World Commons Day will focus on the creativity of people in
protecting their environment and the cornucopia of bio-diversity, in securing
their food-sovereignty and promoting radical decentralized energy production
based on renewables.

The World Commons Day will make clear, that talking about the commons is talking about our quality of life. It’s about the freedom to take our lives in our own hands and to reproduce our livelihoods in a self-determined
way.

The World Day of Commons will strengthen the diversity and the wisdom of traditional knowledge systems. It will show peoples needs for shared public space and urban commons. It will show the numerous initiatives for making the
commons work for people if people work in common.

The Day will be “an auto-managed and decentralized initiative,” according to Biens Communs. “Each person, organization, social or citizen movements can organize something and link its activity to the World Commons Day. All
suggestions and activities scheduled for that day will be announced on the
website of the manifesto, Reclaim the
Commons.