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In RECOMMONING, we are searching out a more open, collectively held world where, once again, land is held in common. A collaborative series with Dark Properties.
Land is a life-giving force. To hold land is to hold power—the power to work with the seasons, and with the Earth, to grow food. And food is literally what keeps us alive.
What might change if we all had access to arable land? How are we empowered when we’re able to sow seeds into rich soil, and grow food to share with our communities? How might our world transform if Earth’s gifts were equitably shared and collectively stewarded by all? Can you even imagine?
As people born into a privatized, monetized, post-industrialized and late-stage-capitalized world, our connection to the land—and to ancestral traditions of farming, seed saving, hunting, and foraging—has been systematically broken. For many of us, there is no tie left: The entire natural world has been fully “othered.” Perhaps this is because there is virtually no land left to hold in common. Rather than understanding the soil beneath our feet as an innate gift to be shared by all, land is now bought up, hoarded, and exploited as an asset with increasing scarcity. (And it is becoming ever scarcer, with as much as 75% of the Earth’s land now contaminated or substantially degraded.) Even America’s treasured national parks are owned by our ever-more-horrendous government, putting them at tremendous risk of being sold off and sold out. But this has not always been the case, and it need not be forever.
In a new series titled RECOMMONING, we are searching out a more open, collectively held world where, once again, land is held in common—both for the purpose of developing community-centered food sovereignty, but also for the purposes of righting unjust histories.
In this series we will speak with farmers, seed stewards, and community organizers who are looking to past models while designing entirely new models for community-centered flourishing—all by way of collective access to land. We will also explore models for growing food and building resilience via reciprocal economies, and in other anti-capitalist ways. As one example: In front-yard gardens, where turf lawns, a symbol of European colonialism, can be reclaimed into food-producing havens for people and pollinators alike. By reclaiming these small parcels of land (and larger swaths, too), we are empowered to imagine what else can be reclaimed; what other systems can be upended and reinvented.
Perhaps the abstract notion of the future is the last space we collectively hold in common. Along these lines, what if we didn’t see land as private at all, but as an infinite series of interconnected, sovereign ecosystems? This series sees gardening, foraging, and farming as reminders that we must envision the future as something that grows abundantly and interconnectedly out of the small, unassuming seeds we plant today. If we see our stories and actions as seeds, what might grow out of them? With land and food at the center of our movement, can we reclaim the future as a space for collective flourishing? The people featured in this series think so, and in their visions, we may all find a sense of hope to hold in common.
Read more on the history of the enclosure of the Commons on Dark Properties, an ecologically-focused newsletter which you can subscribe to here.
