Commons Sense Teach-Ins We all benefit from Commons Sense.

Most people have heard the phrase "tragedy of the commons" — the idea that when something is shared, it inevitably gets used up. What fewer people know is that this was an argument made about unmanaged open access, not about actual community-managed commons. And fewer still know that real commons have thrived for centuries.

Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics for documenting this. The Commons Teach-Ins exist because taking care of shared things together is one of the oldest, most successful human practices — and most of us have forgotten how to do it. Recovering that knowledge is preparation for the work ahead.

We move from a time when all peoples were indigenous to a place, through the centuries of fencing-off shared land into private property, through the cooperatives and movements that kept community-care alive, to the new local experiments emerging today.

We draw on Ostrom's research, Indigenous traditions of stewardship, the long European history of shared land, and the practical wisdom of the communities that never stopped doing this work.

Sessions run once a month and are open to everyone — neighbors, students, organizers, curious passersby. There are no prerequisites. We bring strong coffee, good chairs, and a willingness to think out loud together.

Each session leaves something behind: a reading list, a recording, notes you can take with you. Over time these add up to a free, public curriculum and an eventual book — built openly, by the people who actually showed up.

Not certainty. Not a doctrine. A vocabulary, a bit of history, and a sense of what's possible. The Commons is a practice you'll start to recognize once you have a name for it — in your neighborhood, in your watershed, in your workplace. We're trying to make that recognition easier.