For a species whose prime adaptation is cooperation, the Commons — lands and resources owned and shared by all — have always represented the ground on which society as a whole can rely. From our trajectory as hunter-gatherers to pastoralists, agriculturalists and finally to our modern “civilized” stages, the Commons have and will always be: water, air, land, and animals — what we now call “natural resources”. The Commons have progressively contracted over time relative to worldwide human population growth.
Europeans brought their own peculiar sense of Commons to the New World. Colonial policy, guided by the utilitarian philosophy of John Locke and the view that wilderness was wasted land, drove Native people into progressively isolated and remote territories, and ultimately converted the Commons into private property. Land was parceled into units and accumulated by the wealthy, following a process that had taken place earlier in England. Cities and towns further segmented territories, and it appeared that nearly all the land in North America would be subject to privatization.
John Muir and the Transcendentalists pushed back against such rational, utilitarian concepts of land and nature and hence land management philosophy in the U.S. split by two competing traditions, the “preserve and protect” National Park System promoted by preservationist John Muir and the “multiple use” Forest Service championed by conservationist/utilitarian Gifford Pinchot. Accordingly, we have two different types of Commons in the U.S., fulfilling both spiritual longings and practical desires.
Within cities, parcels like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park fulfilled the same range of human needs and desires. Similarly, Sonoma’s eight-acre Plaza Park and Maxwell Farms Park evolved to fulfill our community’s desire to maintain and have access to common public space for recreation and gathering as well as communion with nature.
Commons cost money to maintain but also pay the public back in the form of ecosystem “services,” a modern way that values the communal benefits derived from land and nature. At times the competition for space, time and access to the Commons is intense and the community fragments into factions striving to meet the various spiritual and practical desires represented by Muir and Pinchot.
The Commons has no single owner; government is not a single person who alone can appropriate the Commons as it chooses. Our government is the system put in place by citizens to act on behalf of the diverse common good, while also protecting the rights of individuals. Citizens have the freedom to shape land management policy as they see fit, and to change governments to reflect their vision.
In this day and age the Commons needs citizen champions. Government, challenged by tight budgets, powerful lobbyists and competing stakeholders, often cannot respond as the protector of the Commons, but sometimes finds itself acting as the tool of those who wish to bend the Commons to private purposes. Resisting such forces requires stamina, expertise, persistence, and fortitude, and only by joining together can citizens accomplish protection of the Commons. The task is too large for any single individual.
The lands at the Sonoma Developmental Center, for example, represent a unique opportunity to permanently establish Commons. Over 1,000 acres are most likely going to be sold by the State of California, and every effort should be made to have the land move into common ownership. We applaud the efforts of those who are fighting to preserve some facilities for the remaining disabled population and hope they succeed. Should the facility close, however, we also support its placement into public ownership and the restoration of its acreage to the Commons for all in the Valley to enjoy.
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