The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking was born of a simple realization: The world we have inherited is no longer working.
The
future of the planet and civilization as we know it are threatened, and
the cries heard during the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests—“I
can’t breathe”—continue to echo. By giving us tools for navigating the
transitions ahead, this catalog helps us breathe more deeply.
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking
explains the transformational power of social collaboration by
showcasing dozens of pathbreaking projects, books, websites, and
activist initiatives. Commoners seek to prioritize people’s needs over
market extraction, steward the Earth, relocalize the economy, and build
new institutions of empowerment.
The emerging Commonsverse can be
seen in relocalized food systems and community land trusts…in racial
empowerment through collective action and mutual aid…and in free and
open source software, peer production, and platform cooperatives.
Commoning
is helping communities to managing scarce water supplies, farmers to
develop regenerative agriculture, and artists to reclaim control of
their creative lives. Ordinary people are becoming more self-reliant
through timebanking and collaborative finance, care collectives and gift
economies, and alternative local currencies.
The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking is an indispensable guide for understanding many profound social transformations now underway. In 25 thematic sections, The Commoner’s Catalog
offers a rare collection of tools for navigating the transitions ahead
and building a new world. It offers a portrait of the system-change
activism that is creating an economics of sufficiency, a politics of
fairness, and a culture of belonging.
