The people who compose the Alliance of Commons are not, neither seek to become, a uniform community. We come from different starting points, paths and worldviews. We approach the commons from different perspectives, experiences and practices, such as those of our personal mood for sharing and co-operation; personal and collective creativity; equal opportunities; social justice and equality; political participation and democracy; rejection of all arbitrary power; opposition to exploitation; ecology; anti-racism; feminism and critique of patriarchy. We value this diversity of ours as a fundamental feature and empowering element of the Alliance.
We are united however by the desire for joint activation. So, some of us have organized meetings, festivals such as the Commonsfest, conferences and workshops on cooperation, production, the environment, innovation, networking of social initiatives. Others are engaged in struggles against the fencing of goods such as water, energy, public spaces and knowledge. Many of us are giving life to self-organized solidarity structures for health, food, shelter, education. That is goods to which everyone is entitled. Some have done whatever we could to influence politics in the direction of empowering projects with a positive social impact. Several have a long history within movements and political action from the grassroots. Others again do not. Some represent specific productive and social groups, organizations, perceptions. Others again represent simply our common need for creation and way out of the imposed social catastrophe. More specifically, a way out of the failure of the binary: ‘state and market’, as we are currently experiencing it in Greece of the crisis, just as many other people on the planet, and are seeking more sustainable alternatives.
All of us however seek a way out of the logic of outsourcing our economy, politics and our lives to specialists, middlemen, professional politicians. Instead, we seek answers and solutions to our everyday problems through active participation, collective knowledge and support for the anthropocentric economy of the commons.
Finally, we perceive our action and the Alliance of the Commons as part of a wider movement that is activated locally but is coordinated and strengthened globally for the good of humanity. We are in solidarity with contemporary movements to defend and spread the commons in every corner of the globe. We desire the co-ordination, networking and community-based production, together with any other community that is contributing to the production of common goods, aiming at the open and without space-time restrictions on circulation and accumulation of value for the commons.