Tapping the People's Passion

In this interview, Alexa Bradley, organizer, facilitator, and popular educator discusses the arc of the Great Lakes Commons: an ambitious and highly collaborative commons-based initiative.

Alexa calls this work a grassroots effort unlike any other she has previously been involved with: “I’ve done this kind of work for roughly 25 years, and the power of the Great Lakes to tap people’s passion is just amazing.” Led by a growing network of leaders throughout the region, the cross-border, grassroots effort aims to establish the Great Lakes as a commons and legally protected bioregion. Read more at Commons Magazine.

Blue Future

978-1-77089-406-8

The final book in Maude Barlow’s Blue trilogy, Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever is a powerful, penetrating, and timely look at the global water crisis — and what we can do to prevent it.

The global water crisis has dramatically deepened. The stage is being set for drought on an unprecedented scale, mass starvation, and the migration of millions of refugees leaving parched lands in search of water. The story does not need to end in tragedy.

In Blue Future, international bestselling author Maude Barlow offers solutions to the global water crisis based on four simple principles:

• Principle One:Water Is a Human Right chronicles the long fight to have the human right to water recognized and the powerful players still impeding this progress.
• Principle Two:Water Is a Common Heritage and Public Trust argues that water must not become a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market.
• Principle Three:Water Has Rights Too makes the case for the protection of source water and the need to make our human laws compatible with those of nature.
• Principle Four:Water Will Teach Us How to Live Together urges us to come together around a common threat — the end of water — and find a way to live more lightly on this planet.

The final installment in Barlow’s Blue trilogy, Blue Future includes inspiring stories of struggle and resistance from marginalized communities, as well as examples of government policies that work for people and the planet. A call to action to create a water-secure world, it is, in the end, a book of hope.

Information taken from Blue Future media release. See full release here: http://www.canadians.org/media/maude-barlow-launching-new-book-global-water-crisis-solutions-ottawa

Water Is Life: Especially If You Walk The Walk

Water Walkers

This post was written by 'noise of rain' on September 8, 2013. Read the original here.

As the Water Walkers spoke in hushed tones around the sacred fire, our Letter to Water was reflected in the lake before us. Across the lagoon were the gathering tribes, watching our messages, while hearing the water song. WATER, WE LOVE YOU. WE RESPECT YOU. WE THANK YOU.

It was pretty hectic, changing words out in real time, running to the van to get the next letters, and it didn't go without a hitch when the tail of the "R" wouldn't turn on and somehow PAY FOR WATER didn't seem an appropriate substitute for PRAY FOR WATER. And then, with a frustrated punch to the battery box, we were back in luck with PRAY. The little stagehand dramas of our funky alphabetic constraints are never seen from afar, and in spite of our struggles the view was stunning: Grandmother Mandamin and her sisters in a circle around the sacred fire, the large teepee gently lit and standing stable behind them, offering a focal point as the purple void of Lake Michigan whispered her way into the velvet night.

Untitled

Pray for Water

Making a New Message

We held our messages, and packed up the lights quickly. Hectic. We had only a few minutes before the fire canoes came across the lagoon, and the vans were waiting to take us back across the shoreline to the access road that reconnects the park to the mainland. We watched the impressive Indian Summer fireworks safely from the shoreline, thumping our chests like CPR and blossoming over the night sky. So much commotion! One of our Holders of the Light, Peg, came up to me in hushed tones, said to me that she was so honored to be in the company of a woman like Grandmother Mandamin. I suggested that she go tell the elder that, tell her that we all admired her tenacity and heart and that we were inspired by her walks down the St Lawrence Seaway, around the Great Lakes, exchanging waters, gathering waters, talking water as she went. I could see Peg talking to the Grandmother, and a beautiful thing happened: a blessing, a benediction, a gentle tickle of the breeze from a set of eagle feathers shaped an envelope of air around Peg, while at the same moment, as she told me afterwards, shivers went up and down her body.

Watching Indian Summer Fireworks

Grandmother Josephine Mandamin, a Water Walker, slows the world down around her, places her body on the line, each step saying "we are here, we are here, we are here." Grandmother Mandamin says, “Collecting consciousness is not easy to explain. But when we are walking with the water, we are also collecting thoughts with that water. And in the collecting of thoughts, we are also collecting consciousness of people’s minds. The minds, hopefully, will be of one, sometime.” [1]

The walk is spiritual, is actual, is political, is environmental. There is video of this lovely woman, this elder who is old enough to be enjoying a rocking chair and birds at the bird feeder, and in it she shuffles down the road, feet close to the ground, oddly reminiscent of indigenous dance that I see at the powwows. She carries a pail - water from the ocean, water to mix in the beautiful freshness of Lake Superior. Water from one basin to another, a gathering of molecules, of thoughts, of people, of tribes.

So when we were asked to be a part of this ceremony for water, we didn't hesitate. We didn't understand that we'd be standing by a woman who walks, but we knew that we are thirsty to stand for something meaningful, to light some messages reflected in water, to water, about water in the dryness of the oncoming night. I laughed at the irony of the broken tail of my letter "R," as I struggled at the site of the sacred fire to turn PAY FOR WATER into PRAY FOR WATER. We didn't quite have time to get the Water Song right, but nobody cared, it was still beautiful.

WATER WE LOVE YOU

WE RESPECT YOU

WE THANK YOU.

So tell me. Yes, you! Have you walked around any of the Great, or even lesser, Lakes recently? You know, you can start right outside of your door, and like water, move until you get somewhere deeper.

Water We Love You

What is a Commons? Building awareness and connections with the Great Lakes Commons Map

Into the Mud by Joyce Sidman

This blog post is written by Paul Baines, Founder and Coordinator of the Great Lakes Commons Map.

Since starting the Great Lakes Commons Map, (GLCM) I’ve had many conversations with people about what a commons is and what a water commons is.

The Commons Map is a collaborative map, a crowdsourced project connecting those who care about the lakes and articulating what a Great Lakes Commons would be like. People can use text, photos, and videos to share their data, story, and curiosity, and it’s all grounded by place—by where it nests in the bioregion.

While hundreds of communities, two provinces, eight states, and many First Nations make decisions that affect all 40 million residents of this basin, there is no cohesive protection plan nor guiding vision. The Commons Map unites upstream and downstream neighbors, reaches across political boundaries, and works in concert with the Great Lakes Commons community in this commons-approach.

The vision of the GLCM is to grow deeper connections between this bioregion and its inhabitants through information sharing, discussion, and story. Place-based awareness, sharing, and organizing are the best methods for defending and restoring these waters because place is where water issues intersect with home. Adopting a commons approach deepens this work.

For me, a commons is a shared agreement between people about gifts from the past and duties for the future. But how can we make this concept more accessible and grow this movement? Here is one example.

Poem, Paint, Park, Police, People and a Lost Creek

Organized by Lost Rivers, I was one of several folks who painted a poem by Joyce Sidman in Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods public park. You can see the painting in the accompanying photo, but what you can’t see is the constant stream of people we talked to about the city’s disconnection from its water reality (the park path is part of the buried but not forgotten Garrison Creek).

So how does this park painting illustrate commoning, the act of making and strengthening the commons?

The poem: The cultural commons shares the gifts of creativity, pleasure, tradition, education, memory, imagination, and relationship. Why do we have poetry? To express and share what our heart knows is true. Culture is how a community enlivens and understands itself. As a commons, culture is powerful because it is shared.

The park: The social commons creates special places for rejuvenation. They are open to all and made according to the needs of those who use them. A small sample includes baseball, picnics, tennis, dog walking, sun tanning, and reading. Even the drinking fountain is optional and available.

The city: Residents pool and redistribute their power and money to make decisions on land, laws, services, and transportation. Looking at transportation, we have the commons of public transit. There’s a flat fare, which is subsidized by commons taxes to offset the overuse of other prized commons (clean air, fossil fuels, and road use). Even our roads have a commons ethic. Traffic rules and infrastructure balance the diversity of public needs. They tell us what side of the road we should we drive on, how long and where we can park, where bikes get their own lanes, where we should stop at lights and intersections, and how fast we can drive. Commons need rules—otherwise they break down.

The creek: The ecological commons is a web of life, and it gives us life, too. The Great Lakes were formed 10,000 years ago after the last ice age, and we were given one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater. Continuously moving, this water cycle comes together as creeks, puddles, lakes, tears, oceans, springs, and clouds. No one owns it, but we need a collective agreement to ensure its integrity.

The police: The funny thing about this poem-painting is that we didn’t have a permit. Now, a commons is not a free-for-all; rules are needed, but overly tight restrictions and limits by the city and police may suggest that the commons belongs to them, rather than the people. Like all social services supported by taxes, the police are a commons agreement on who we want to enforce our rules.

The group: Lastly, through the mutualism of the internet commons (no one owns the internet, although like all the examples above, some groups think they do), citizens organized and acted to rejuvenate their commons. Known as commoning, this collective energy enriches all that we share. It often goes largely unnoticed or mislabeled on a daily basis as ‘special-interest’ rather than ‘public- or commons-interest.’

The Great Lakes Commons network needs your wisdom and passion for the commons. 200 year-old commercial and political institutions have failed our many commons. The issues facing the Great Lakes do not stop at quality and quantity. Let’s ask the radical question: What new institutions, practices, and ethics will guide a more bioregional, intergenerational, precautionary, inclusive, and sacred direction?

Explore the words and links on the Great Lakes Commons site and the examples on the Commons Map. Add your own when it feels right.

Paul Baines is the founder of the Great Lakes Commons Map, a participatory platform where people can explore the Great Lakes Commons.

Minnesota's chance to lead on Great Lakes cleanup

This article was posted in the Star Tribune on August 17, 2013. Read the original here.

Ronald Reagan was president and “The Cosby Show” reigned supreme on TV when the long list of polluted “areas of concern” in the Great Lakes was compiled in 1987. But so little progress has been made on environmental cleanup since then that the list reads essentially the same today as it did more than a quarter of a century ago.

Of the 43 sites identified in the northern United States and southern Canada, just five (three of them in Canada) have been restored to the point where they’ve been taken off the list. At 38 of these sites, the legacy of less-enlightened practices widespread before clean-water regulations — mostly, improper waste disposal and unchecked land use — continues to impair economic development and recreational use of the Great Lakes region’s rivers, estuaries and lakeshore.

The disheartening lack of progress is why the recent announcement about an aggressive new cleanup plan for one of the largest and most challenging of these polluted sites — the St. Louis River estuary and bay — is a historic moment and deserving of support by both the public and policy­makers.

If Minnesota and its project partners follow through on the “Roadmap to Delisting” released this summer, the restoration of an iconic river known as the headwaters of Lake Superior could be complete enough to be taken off the list in just 12 years. That would be a remarkable feat given that the St. Louis, which empties into Lake Superior between Superior, Wis., and Duluth, is still suffering from contaminated sediment and damaged habitat resulting from about a century of pre-regulatory-era industrialization, growth and ­dredging.

Among the sites targeted for action: a U.S. Steel Superfund site on a wide spot in the river known as Spirit Lake. Shipping companies, lumber operations and other companies that are part of the area’s industrial heritage also left a legacy of challenges for the river’s health.

If successful, the river’s restoration could become one of the most significant environmental cleanups in state history. Its success also could spur other areas across the region to renew their commitment to cleaning up remaining sites. The St. Louis watershed is the only Minnesota site on the list, but 31 other sites still dot the shorelines of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and New York, with the other locations in Canada.

Thanks to the 2008 Legacy Amendment, Minnesota has a competitive edge over other areas when it comes to Great Lakes restoration grants from the federal government, a key reason the aggressive 2025 delisting date is doable.

Part of the money generated by this self-imposed sales tax is dedicated to clean-water projects and habitat restoration, with the St. Louis effort exactly the big, farsighted effort that voters had in mind when they approved it. Having a reliable source of state funds to put on the table when applying for federal grants makes Minnesota requests stand out, enabling the state to garner many more millions, according to the state Pollution Control Agency.

The timing of the Legacy funds’ availability also couldn’t be better to maximize federal money available through the recent federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which may be the largest federal Great Lakes investment in 20 years. While the price tag for delisting — $300 million to $400 million — seems daunting, it’s manageable when broken down over 12 years and when federal matching funds can range from 50 percent or more for cleanup and habitat restoration, which will create regional jobs.

“It’s really a unique moment to get this done,’’ said the MPCA’s Nelson French. Key regional partners include the Minnesota and Wisconsin departments of natural resources, as well as the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation.

Congress also needs to do its part, however. A House subcommittee recently attempted to gut funding for the Great Lakes initiative. That effort has mostly been thwarted, for now at least, thanks to more sensible lawmakers who later reviewed this. Congress, however, needs to go further and formally authorize the project into law.

The Great Lakes contain about 21 percent of the world’s surface supply of freshwater and 84 percent of North America’s supply of it. Protecting these priceless natural resources, particularly in an age of climate change and population growth, isn’t pork-­barrel spending. Instead, it’s a “moral and economic imperative,” said former Minnesota congressman Jim Oberstar, whose district included the North Shore of Lake Superior.