See, share and download this Commons Charter by clicking on the image.
Anishinaabemowin Commons Charter
See, share and download this Commons Charter by clicking on the image.
English Commons Charter
See, share and download this Commons Charter by clicking on the image.
Community Leadership and Organizing
Use this element of our Charter Toolkit and add your name and support to our transformative governance agreement -- the Great Lakes Commons Charter Declaration.
See, share, and download this Charter Toolkit invite by clicking on the image.
BECOME A WATER LEADER FOR YOUR COMMUNITY
When organizing around any issue, often the most challenging part is to know how to get started. Taking the time to start with some detailed planning and research will make your efforts more efficient and successful. Though there are many resources for community organizing out there, we are sharing the following collection -- hand picked for their focus on water and commons principles.
The Campaign Planning Handbook by Toronto & York Region Labour Council focuses on "understanding the power relationships that shape our world and learning how to better create our own power is at the heart of effective campaign planning." It "draws on the work of countless people and is meant to be shared and improved upon through experience. It was written for unions, but principles of campaign planning apply to all social movements."
The six principles for democratic organizing illustrate important guidance for water leadership. Practicing these principles will bring more people into your circle and strengthen your efforts.
Be Inclusive
Emphasis on Bottom-Up Organizing
Let People Speak for Themselves
Work Together In Solidarity and Mutuality
Build Just Relationships Among Ourselves
Commitment to Self-Transformation
"Re.imagining Activism provides practical advice and questions to ask ourselves when we want to change organizations, campaigns or become active on system change in a transformative way. What obstacles do we need to overcome and how can we achieve this? Inside, you will find examples and case studies of other activists who have interesting experiences to share."
Looking at others who have already demonstrated water leadership in their communities can inspire and provide examples to adopt to your efforts. Below, co-founder Alexa Bradley shares Milwaukee Water Commons story, lessons learned and successes organizing a community around water. MWC's effort to "create a community-defined vision for Milwaukee as a model water city" is proof that a community can coalesce around water care. Deeply rooted in a commons perspective, MWC embarked on "Water City 3.0 to...ensure that the community was at the center of envisioning and decision-making about our city’s water future" (access the report below her video).
Communities across the Great Lakes can take steps to show that water is a valued and protected part of the community. The Council of Canadians' Blue Communities Project offers a practical, guided path for communities to take action. "A 'blue community' is one that adopts a water commons framework by taking the three actions outlined in this guide. A water commons framework treats water as a common good that is shared by everyone and the responsibility of all."
Ask your community to become a Blue Community by adopting a water commons framework that:
- Recognizes water as a human right.
- Bans the sale of bottled water in public facilities and at municipal events.
- Promotes publicly financed, owned and operated water and waste water services.
These guides provides information and resources to help you achieve these goals.
Finally, showing leadership and organizing depends on understanding our cultural connections to water. Each culture has a unique relationship. Use this water meditation guide to harmonize perspectives and teachings across the community.
We welcome your feedback on how these resources can be adopted, improved, and expanded.
Body Commoning Curriculum
Use this element of our Charter Toolkit and add your name and support to our transformative governance agreement -- the Great Lakes Commons Charter Declaration.
See, share and download this Charter Toolkit invite by clicking on the image.
See, share and download this Body Commoning workshop by clicking on the image.
We welcome your feedback on how these resources can be adopted, improved, and expanded.
Take This Toolkit: Resources for the Commons Charter
Over the past year Great Lakes Commons has been working with partners to put together a Charter Toolkit to help communities and individuals protect water as a shared and sacred commons. The Commons Charter inspired the resources developed for the toolkit. The Charter’s themes of personal responsibility, commons governance, water protection, and Indigenous rights (just to name a few) are reflected in this collection of tools.
City Offerings: a poem
Great Lakes Stands With Standing Rock: unity in action
On December 8, Great Lakes Commons hosted another campfire discussion with supporters across the basin. For the past several weeks and months, everyone concerned about water protection, protecting the sacred, and Indigenous rights have been following this story -- a story pitting people against profits, water against oil, and ceremony and treaty law against state and military power. From the shores of Lakes Ontario, MIchigan, and Simcoe about 10 GLC supporters came together share experiences of visiting the Dakota Nation, the Standing Rock Tribe, and the water protector camps. You can listen to our discussion too.
Water Pedagogies Confluence in the Great Lakes
On November 29, 2016, 12 educators from around the Great Lakes started a conversation on the tools and methods to integrate a 'water curriculum' in shared classrooms and communities. This confluence was organized and hosted by Bonnie McElhinny (University of Toronto) and Paul Baines (Great Lakes Commons). Each participant was asked to talk about their experiences and background in water education and to consider the following questions:
- How do you engage students?
- What is one problem, question, or resource that remains unaddressed or unavailable for you?
- What opportunities do you see for educators and students connecting across the Great Lakes?
The Relevance of Irrelevance: A Dispatch From Minnesota
We might as well frame this stage of Western history as a time of fragedy. Fragedy, to buck the urban dictionary trend, is a drama so comical that its overwhelmingly ludicrous improbabilities trigger in its audience a pathos so fragile that the characters’ plight is no longer funny and enters the realm of the absurd. You know we are living in fragic times when Alec Baldwin and Larry David play the president-elect and the loser with a spookier believability than the Donald and Bernie who play these characters, respectively, in real life.
This is a story of inner growth in the midst of, what Lindsay Swan, our Dante, would call dire outer circumstance. Trigger warning: the following contains mention of botulism and Russian propaganda.
Bottled Water in the Great Lakes
There is a common concern around water privatization in the Great Lakes. Commercial bottled water is at the heart of this issue but is also involves looking at public water systems, water access and equity, and legal standards. There are also cultural and societal roles involved. It's a complicated matter that experts and advocates are trying to address. Great Lakes Commons helps connect communities around shared water issues like this. We recently hosted a conversation with experts and advocates from Michigan and Ontario. The goal of the meeting was to identify, learn and share key ideas and strategies on how to address bottled water and water privatizations in the Great Lakes region.
Ricardo Levins Morales
Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist by trade, a healer by temperament and a troublemaker by necessity. His art and writing both grow out of relationships with communities and movements in struggle for a more livable world. He also offers support and reflection for organizers and others facing the dilemmas of trying to create a future out of materials from the past.
Lindsay Swan
Lindsay Swan is a movement and theatre artist from Brooklyn, NY who has made a home in Western Massachusetts since 2012. She has studied Contact Improvisation and Authentic Movement since 2010, and Grotowski-inspired physical theatre since 2013. Lindsay developed a one-woman show Clocked while in residence at Earthdance Creative Living Project in Plainfield, MA. In 2014 she joined Children of the Wild Ensemble Theatre as a core ensemble member and has been performing, touring, and teaching theatre and movement techniques since.
Augustin Ganley
Augustin Ganley is a filmmaker and co-founder of traveling theatre ensemble Children of the Wild. He is from Minneapolis, MN and currently lives semi-nomadically between western Massachusetts and Minnesota in the Great Lakes region. Children of the Wild is an ensemble of North American artists making original works of theatre and film that further the rewilding of industrial spaces and the human spirit as part of a common struggle for social and environmental justice.
Danielle Boissoneau
Danielle Boissoneau is Anishnaabe kwe from Ketegaunseebee (Garden River, Ontario). As a mother of five children, Danielle enjoys her responsibility to protect the water. Following in the tradition of Grandmother Josephine Mandamin, Danielle likes to walk for the water whenever possible. Doing Water Walks around Hamilton Harbour, St. Clair River and the Grand River has been some of the most rewarding experiences of her life. Achieving unity in love and defence of water is one of Danielle's favourite goals.
Frank Ettawageshik
Frank Ettawageshik is the Executive Director of the United Tribes of Michigan in Harbor Springs, MI. Frank served fourteen years as the Tribal Chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in Harbor Springs. During his tenure as Tribal Chairman he was instrumental in the adoption of the Tribal and First Nations Great Lakes Water Accord in 2004. He is also the Chairman of the United League of Indigenous Nations Governing Board with 40 years of public service with many other organizations.
Moheb Soliman
Moheb Soliman is a poet and artist from Egypt and the Midwest who's presented work in US and Canadian cities in diverse contexts. His poetry practice has lead to text-based performance and installation work, commissions for public poetry projects and festivals, residency awards at such institutions as the Banff Centre and Vermont Studio Center. Recent fellowships from the Joyce Foundation and Pillsbury House spurred his interdisciplinary project HOMES, about nature, culture, modernity, belonging, and identity around the populous, wild Great Lakes region.
Susan Gateley
Susan Peterson Gateley has a MS in fisheries science, holds a Coast Guard license to 100 ton offers sailing instruction and writes on Lake Ontario. Most recent works - 'Saving The Beautiful Lake' and a documentary 'A Quest For Hope'.
Jen Pate
Jen Pate is a geographer and entrepreneur fascinated by human-environment interaction. She has been working on the issue of plastic in our waterways since late 2013 and was Filmmaker, Mission Coordinator and Mission Leader on three separate sailing voyages raising awareness of this issue in marine and freshwater environments. In August 2016, she led the world’s largest simultaneous sampling for microplastics in history across the Great Lakes.
Water Power: how our energy sources impact water
This week Canada announced it was phasing out coal use for making electricity by 2030 even though 4 Provinces still burn coal to boil water to turn a turbine to generate a current. Steam engine technology is 300 years old and it's at work everyday in the Great Lakes for coal (in all 8 U.S. states) and for nuclear power (7 U.S. states and Ontario).
The lifecycle and controlled explosions of coal and uranium on this planet are at the heart of our water dystopia.