We need more Commons Sense

 When we moved into our home in Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District, Jim Oberstar represented the district in Congress. Minnesota had a long-standing reputation of being a liberal bastion with an acknowledged conservative element in the rural, farming areas. The current congressman, a Republican, has just been reelected. The district appears to be drifting toward the Right, or have the Democrats moved Left? In any case, Minnesota is a more purple state, and our Congressional District is more red than it was a quarter century ago.

do we really want all farmsteads abandoned?

Photo by J. Harrington

Fortunately, about the time the current occupant of the White House was inaugurated in 2017, we came across and read ‘What Do You Do if a Red State Moves to You?’ It's based in Pepin County Wisconsin, just across the Mississippi river from Minnesota and so is close enough to home to be helpful.

But Pepin County is one of those rural areas, and the resentment isn’t just directed at the coasts. It’s local. Here, the urban elite isn’t a faceless, distant other: It’s the enclave of liberal, mostly Twin Cities newcomers who have moved here over the past few decades—not just an abstract political imposition, but an actual physical presence. It has spawned anger and bitterness, a simmering undercurrent of alienation among many people locally born and raised. It has made “Democrat” mean something it didn’t mean a generation ago.

We have become more and more engaged in a neoliberal, global economy of commodities and transactions. Much of rural US was based on relationships, not transactions. What's left of rural US is still heavily dependent on relationships but is slowly being driven out of business by the economies of scale and governmental support provided by and to industrial agriculture, "Big Ag." For a number of reasons, including some economic ones, we can't afford monopolistic agriculture. We need an extended period of policy that supports a "Get Big? Get Out!" theme. As told in the Red State piece:

“When I was in the city, you could choose to ignore people,” Myklebust said. “Here, the person with whom you have strenuous political differences is also the person who drives the ambulance or the fire truck or teaches your kids at school. You have to engage with people with whom you disagree. We have to figure that out—if America is going to survive as a democracy. It sounds dramatic to say, but that’s really where we are.”

We've visited Pepin County several times. It's beautiful country. We're not sure if we actually live someplace that's really "Trump Country," although we know it's a possibility. What we are beginning to think is that politics, as it's been practiced for too long, has too many of US in each other's faces. We've become overly reliant on what's legal more than what's right, especially when what's right might well mean minding our own business.

Recently we've read several essays noting the inaccuracies and errors in Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons." In particular, we appreciate the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom as summarized by the following:

... groups are capable of avoiding the tragedy of the commons without requiring top-down regulation, at least if certain conditions are met (Ostrom 1990, 2010). She summarized the conditions in the form of eight core design principles: 1) Clearly defined boundaries; 2) Proportional equivalence between benefits and costs; 3) Collective choice arrangements; 4) Monitoring; 5) Graduated sanctions; 6) Fast and fair conflict resolution; 7) Local autonomy; 8) Appropriate relations with other tiers of rule-making authority (polycentric governance). This work was so groundbreaking that Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009.

It seems one of the major questions we're facing these days is how do we inject Ostrom's 8 principles into the political discourse necessary for US to once again become "We, the people..." 

I Commit

By Matthew Zapruder

I commit to vote because

I'm pretty sure I grab

whatever I need from the world

and place it in my mind

which is getting incrementally

like the commons

undeniably more toxic and sad

yes I too walk around

considering my intractable problems

complaining it's too late

for more sonatas

everything is already too beautiful

music and anger won't save us

yet I commit to talking

earnestly with Sarah

about the school board

it will be night and we will be sitting

shoulder to shoulder 

at the old table we love

each holding a pencil

like grade school children left alone at last

then in the morning

before our son wakes

I commit to holding

this tiny bit of quicksilver

(quick in the sense of living

in its very molecular nature

it wants to usefully combine with yours)

in my palm and to walking

up to the blue mailbox

I pass most mornings

in that familiar silence

under those nameless little trees

when all things that surround me wait

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May this be an election day we can celebrate later

It's almost 70℉ outside. As I stepped outside to empty some recycling my first thoughts were "we'll pay for this." That made me realize I'm almost a naturalized Minnesotan. Then it occurred to me, maybe we already have paid for this, with  the snow and the cold that's but recently moved on. Since I sincerely and deeply believe we'll see more snow before we reach next Spring, the morning was spent getting the snowblower running and changing its oil. Missions accomplished and with not a bit of frostbite. Keeping busy with time-consuming and irritating chores is a good way to keep from fretting about what's going on at the polls today.

we already paid for today's weather in late October

Photo by J. Harrington

I gave myself some early Christmas presents again this year. They both arrived yesterday, earlier than the package-tracking app had me anticipating. Over the years I've become a serious Joni Mitchell fan. Many of her songs are among my all-time favorites and she and I are about the same age so many of her songs are also included in the soundtrack of my life. I'm now the quite pleased owner of her book Morning Glory on the Vine, early songs and drawings and her recently released package of 5 CDs and a booklet, Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol.1: The Early Years (1963-1967). The early arrival is a more than fortuitous event since I've decided, if I don't like how the election turns out, to revert not to a second childhood but to a second (or third or fourth) young adulthood. Maybe I'd be happier if I decided to spend my remaining time as a folkie-hippie type. It's possible, even probable, that I drifted away prematurely form those threads as I aged. Come to think of it, becoming a grown up was never one of my major aspirations.

It's been a treat to listen to some of the earliest Joni, when she was still Anderson, singing traditional folk songs on the first CD. Tomorrow we'll listen to some of her initial recordings of some of her own work, like Urge for Going and Circle Game and several others I don't think I've ever heard. Her version of Molly Malone definitely triggered a flashback to my younger days and family gatherings on the Irish side of the family. My fingers are crossed that we have the luck o' the Irish at the polls and end up today with more to look forward to than back on.

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

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Please be kind to each other while you can.