The bountiful commons Californians once enjoyed are a gift of nature and the fruit of social decision and collective effort. Today they are under sustained assault – our natural resources degraded, our public services privatized and our public spaces increasingly pre-empted. The common wealth is now treated either as mere amenity and appendix to private lives or as raw material for the economy, rather than a social good that underpins the well-being of this and future generations, and remains the condition of possibility of an ample life together.

But what exactly are commons? What is their history? How do they work? How do they relate to the public realm? How can we protect them against neo-liberal enclosures and the extinction of democratic spaces? Join scholars, activists, scientists, artisans, poets, historians and artists, as well as other commoners from around the state, to examine the crisis of California’s commons, to help recover their history and to plot their possible futures.

Sponsored by: California Studies Association, The Commons Group, California Studies Center, and Heyday Books