TruthToTell June 13: ALL THAT WE SHARE: A Look at The Commons

One has to wonder why it’s at all necessary to explain “The Commons.”

Perhaps Jay Walljasper’s recent book title is more definitive than some convoluted dissertation. It is, simply, All That We Share. And that is what the Commons are all about.

That should be easy enough, except for one small item: the prevailing culture of the United States is and has been, increasingly over the last 60-65 years, focused on the concept of “self,” of looking out for number One, of individualism as the reigning value for our economic perspective, our environmental and political views. For at least three generations, we’ve been about dividing ourselves into tribal subsets – embracing values, policies, and politics that exclude others, rather than include all of our fellow citizens and that has, strangely enough, led a large percentage of Americans to vote against their own best interests, often swayed by rhetoric that makes so many of us feel that we have little in common with those people next door, or in that neighborhood or that town or region.

What we have increasingly seen, too, is the widest split in history between the haves and the have-nots, between wealth and poverty, and the middle class is actually disappearing – something the middle class refuses to believe but that all available data supports. The pressure builds to turn all of our public institutions into private enterprises, leaving our public sector in tatters, a public sector for which there is far greater support than we imagine, even with Tea Party Republicans dominating the dialogue. They only should really check out what has come of communities that switched their reliance on privatized education, corrections, public utilities and environmental institutions.

These divisions really date back to the founding of a country, despite our stated purpose and goal that all are created equal, actually rooted in enslavement of other humans for our economic gain and the continuance of that enslavement of our fellows in so many arenas of life. Economic stability, environmental integrity, electoral equality have remained only selectively available – leaving in its wake an erosion of the only core principle that can lead to a sustainable people-of-the-whole – the belief in our commonalities our shared values and willingness to embrace rather than reject all.

Jay Walljasper, who has spent a lifetime documenting the role of neighborhoods and in writing, editing and publishing on behalf of The Commons, has assembled into his most recent book an amalgam of writings –his own and others, photos, anecdotes, data, profiles in courage, many from all over the US – into what he calls a “Field Guide to the Commons” – All That We Share. Jay is a journalist, after all, once serving as editor of the esteemed Utne Reader and now serving as a fellow and editor for On the Commons.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI will talk with Walljasper and Prof. Tom O’Connell about Walljasper’s book, his premises and the what it all means in the larger scheme of American political life.