On the Commons:
“How we got here is how we get out of here.” —Reclaiming the Commons conference, July 2023
A newsletter about ownership, private property, and what we lose in the privatization of the commons, by essayist and author of A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom—One Step at a Time Antonia Malchik. I have written essays for Aeon, The Atlantic, Orion, High Country News, and many other publications (most published essays are on my website). On the Commons comes from, and is often about, where I live in the Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana.
On the Commons explores ownership and its inevitable injustices. It looks at the losses of physical commons—land, water, air, knowledge—in tandem with human rights throughout history, and the stories of people working right now to reclaim stolen commons.
This newsletter is about deep structures and systemic forces, no hot takes, political commentary, recipes, or current events. An essay on making huckleberry jam might be about wild food and the theft of the commons; or one on a particular injustice about historical oppressions and the stories that perpetuate them.
“How can freedom truly be felt without land?” —The Land Is Not Empty, Sarah Augustine
A paid subscription supports this work, along with my book-in-progress, No Trespassing: How the Ancient Struggle for Ownership, Private Property, and the Rights of the Commons Will Shape Our Future. My writing on the commons, privatization, and commodification comes from extensive reading, years of professional writing, and a trove of ongoing research.
This project grew out of my first book, A Walking Life, about how walking makes us human, and how we lost it through a century of car-centric infrastructure—the theft of public rights of way and access in service of the automobile.
My research on private property discards centuries of philosophical and legal arguments made in its defense for a much simpler explanation: theft. Or, as I put it, “I took it; now it’s mine.” A proposition I’m exploring here through ownership of land, water, seeds, people, data, labor, and more.
Paid subscribers receive a free copy of A Walking Life (hard copy with a handwritten letter—I’ll need an address!—unless an ebook or audio book is requested) while I still have copies.
Paid and free subscribers have access to the same writing and ability to comment. More paid subscriptions translates into more writing and deeper research shared with everyone—no gated community or enclosure.
On the Commons donates 5% of revenue each quarter to a not-for-profit in or near Montana, usually Indigenous-led, such as FAST Blackfeet, All Nations Health Center, the People’s Food Sovereignty Program, and the Montana Two-Spirit Society. Receipts of funds from these organizations are on this page in the Research & Resources section.
Please consider supporting sovereignty wherever you are.
A little about me: I was born and raised in Montana, where my great-great-grandparents (from Denmark-ruled Prussia) homesteaded in the early 1900s. A lot of what I grapple with comes from being a descendant of homesteaders I respect while knowing that that land was stolen, and I don’t want to sugarcoat that reality. I didn’t inherit that land and don’t have any power to return it, but do advocate for Land Back.
My father grew up under Stalin in the Soviet Union. I lived in Soviet Moscow in my early teens and my father has been running a small business there since 1991. Much of my approach to politics and discourse comes from that perspective and his experience, along with the fact that I live in a very conservative county in northwest Montana, where I advocate for more political and social engagement at local and regional levels, and for public lands and walkable communities.
Feel free to browse around my first big project here, an extensive list of readings and essays related to private land ownership throughout history, including the original 15th-century papal bulls comprising the Doctrine of Discovery that Europeans used to colonize as much of the world as they could; the messy nature of modern private property law; or the first installment of No Trespassing.
I cross-post every newsletter to my WordPress site, where you can also find contact details and other published writing.
THANK YOU for being here!
