CRiSis Of The California Commons. Conference THIS Weekend! FREE!

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.

When: April 27-29, 2007

Where: Berkeley City College
2050 Center Street
Berkeley, CA 94704

Directions:
http://www.communitywalk.com/crisis_of_the_california_commons_conference/map/99575

How Much: Nada!

Panels range from issues on:

California Water: Right or Commodity?
Cutbacks! The Evisceration of Public Services
Struggles for the Resource Commons: From Mono
Lake to the Redwood Forest
Information Commons: Rebirth or Siren Song?
Radio and the Broadcast Commons
The Right to the City: Urban Space as Commons
Seeds of the Future: Food Sovereignty
and
MORE

In other words just about everything you ever wanted to know about Not Getting Screwed and WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT !