"Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who make art, fish who navigate, plants who learn and remember. We are surrounded by intelligences other than our own, by feathered people and people with leaves. But we’ve forgotten. There are many forces arrayed to help us forget – even the language we speak….

"In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility.

Kimmerer informs us that the proper Anishinaabe word for beings of the living earth is Bemaadiziiaaki. Since that's a mouthful for we English speakers, she suggests shortening it to “ki” or “kin.” “Might the path to sustainability be marked by grammar?” asks Kimmerer.

Eco-co-operativess called Zoöp

In the same vein as a new pronoun for nature, a Dutch webpage called Zoöp is calling for a new type legal entity that recognizes collaboration between human organizations and multispecies ecological communities. The term “Zoöp” is short for “zoöperation,” which itself is a combination of the word “co-op” (short for “co-operation") and “zoë” (Greek for "life").

The zoöp concept is based on the idea that the profit-maximizing greed of capitalism is overriding most human and nonhuman lives, so a different organizational form is needed. The stated goal of Zoöp is to “strengthen the position of nonhumans within human societies,” to “contribute to ecological regeneration in a way that resists extractivist dynamics,” and to apply the Zoöp model “to a wide variety of organizations.” A Dutch law firm is “critically assessing the zoöp legal structure and developing the charters and documents required to establish actual zoöps,” the group’s website notes. I'm curious about how the self-imposed criteria are to be enforced.

The project explains that “its key methods were developed in a public research trajectory of Het Nieuwe Instituut that took place during the Terraforming Earth Labs (2018),  the Neuhaus academy for more-than-human knowledge (2019), and the Venice Exploratorium (2020).”

The Idt Suffix as an Alternative to Inc. or Ltd.

In yet another innovation along these lines, the Community Economics Research Network – an international group of activist-minded academics with new visions for economic life – has proposed a new suffix to identify an organization as committed to interdependence. Businesses often have “Inc.,” “Ltd.” or “LLC” at the end of their names.

A CERN project called “The Interdependence” proposes that organizations add an "idt" to the end of their name if they “cultivate economic principles and practices that recognize our universal responsibility of mutual care, and strive to bring that understanding into the practice of everyday life.” The acronym idt would signal that the organization intends “to explore, experiment, share and learn together how to create ethical relations of interdependence.”

Already there are a number of enterprises that use the idt tag: Company Drinks idt., a UK community space and social enterprise; Brave New Alps idt., a participatory research project in the Italian Alps; Cube Cola idt., an open source soft drink in Bristol, England; and Trajna idt., a design collective that explores sustainable production in Slovenia that “works towards supporting multispecies livelihoods.” More about idt. in an Idt Charta statement.

Assigning Legal Personhood to Nature

Years ago the impulse to affirm our kinship with nature has manifested in the “rights of nature” movement. The tactic here is to assign legal personhood to mountains, rivers, and forests, and other elements of the Earth so that they can be properly “represented” in courts and legislatures. The states of Ecuador, New Zealand, Colombia, and India have already enacted laws giving specific legal rights to nature.

But now this bold move in jurisprudence have found a footing in North American law. In February 2019, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, approved Lake Erie Bill of Rights Charter Amendment, which authorizes people to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie.

Self-Owning Trees

While nature’s rights as a legal doctrine is fairly new, the idea that nature is alive and sovereign has a long history, even in pockets of western culture. In Athens, Georgia, local lore celebrated the “Tree That Owns Itself for more than a century.

There is a huge white oak tree at the corner of South Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens that is said to have legal ownership of itself. A gentleman who lived across the street from the tree, William H. Jackson, bequeathed the eight-foot-wide tree to itself, circa 1832, with this legal statement: “For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides.”

As recounted by Wikipedia, “The original tree, thought to have started life between the mid-16th and late 18th century, fell in 1942, but a new tree was grown from one of its accords and planted in the same location. The current tree is sometimes referred to as the ‘Son of the Tree That Owns Itself.’” The tree is recognized by National Register of Historic Places 1975, but almost certainly not by any court of law. (More about the tree here.)

Did law scholar Christopher Stone have this tree in mind when he wrote his famous 1972 law review called “Should Trees Have Standing?” His point – written in the fevered early days of the modern environmental movement – was to suggest that courts should recognize the rights of nonhuman beings in western courtrooms.

The Embassy of the North Sea

Another creative idea is to give distinct elements of nature political representation. Some folks in The Hague, The Netherlands, founded “The Embassy of the North Sea” in 2018 as a way for the sea to own itself. As the “About” section on its website explains:

“Diversity is in the interest of all life. Therefore, direct political representation of the sea and the life within it is necessary. The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the principle that the North Sea owns itself. Here, the voices of plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the North Sea are listened to and involved….

“The Embassy researches how non-humans, from phytoplankton to ship wrecks and cod fish – can become full-fledged members of society. We have plotted a route through to 2030, firstly learning to listen to the sea before we learn to speak with it. Finally, we will negotiate on behalf of the North Sea and all the life that it encapsulates.”

The Self-Owning Forest (via Digital Technology)

Even techno-solutionists seem to be jumping on the idea of sovereign nature, albeit through the narrow lens of their own high-tech vision. A Silicon Valley-inspired project called terra0 is proposing that blockchain software, artificial intelligence, and remote sensors be used to enable a forest to self-govern itself. In the capitalist/libertarian mindset, this means that the forest should have the capacity to manage itself as a business. Using a high-tech system (devised by humans presumably), the forest could selectively choose which of its trees are suitable to cut for timber, and then self-authorize the sale of those trees, based on algorithms that some programmer would write.

The idea is that the forest’s selective monetization of itself would allow it to "self-own" itself as a “digital autonomous organization” (or DAO). This is an idealized but elusive organizational form that many self-styled tech visionaries are striving to create. The “forest as a DAO” would ostensibly give it sovereignty over its future and even (if terra0 gets its way) generate a universal basic income for everyone. Terra0 describes itself as

“a group of developers, theorists, and researchers exploring the creation of hybrid ecosystems in the technosphere. Driven by a keen interest in remote sensing, machine learning, and distributed ledger technology, we develop tools for the management of natural ecosystems and resources via the creation of meshes of interacting decentralized autonomous organisations. We believe that these key technologies give us the opportunity to rethink existing and ineffective governance and regulatory structures and that they will play a crucial role in creating a sustainable, resilient, and biodiverse future.” 

In more technical terms, terra0 describes the forest-as-DAO idea as “a scalable framework built on the Ethereum network that provides automated resilience systems for ecosystems.” For more, see also this TEDx Amstelveen video by Hilde Latourvideo by Hilde Latour (at 8 minute timemark).

Personally, I find the vision set forth by terra0 rather monstrous: a world “where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.”

How do machines confer loving grace on us? And who oversees the designers as they presume to re-program forests as business-like DAOs? There are surely many kinks to work out in humanity's laudable efforts to sync with the more-than-human world.

"Singing whales, talking trees, dancing bees, birds who make art, fish who navigate, plants who learn and remember. We are surrounded by intelligences other than our own, by feathered people and people with leaves. But we’ve forgotten. There are many forces arrayed to help us forget – even the language we speak….

"In indigenous ways of knowing, other species are recognized not only as persons, but also as teachers who can inspire how we might live. We can learn a new solar economy from plants, medicines from mycelia, and architecture from the ants. By learning from other species, we might even learn humility.

Kimmerer informs us that the proper Anishinaabe word for beings of the living earth is Bemaadiziiaaki. Since that's a mouthful for we English speakers, she suggests shortening it to “ki” or “kin.” “Might the path to sustainability be marked by grammar?” asks Kimmerer.

Eco-co-operativess called Zoöp

In the same vein as a new pronoun for nature, a Dutch webpage called Zoöp is calling for a new type legal entity that recognizes collaboration between human organizations and multispecies ecological communities. The term “Zoöp” is short for “zoöperation,” which itself is a combination of the word “co-op” (short for “co-operation") and “zoë” (Greek for "life").

The zoöp concept is based on the idea that the profit-maximizing greed of capitalism is overriding most human and nonhuman lives, so a different organizational form is needed. The stated goal of Zoöp is to “strengthen the position of nonhumans within human societies,” to “contribute to ecological regeneration in a way that resists extractivist dynamics,” and to apply the Zoöp model “to a wide variety of organizations.” A Dutch law firm is “critically assessing the zoöp legal structure and developing the charters and documents required to establish actual zoöps,” the group’s website notes. I'm curious about how the self-imposed criteria are to be enforced.

The project explains that “its key methods were developed in a public research trajectory of Het Nieuwe Instituut that took place during the Terraforming Earth Labs (2018),  the Neuhaus academy for more-than-human knowledge (2019), and the Venice Exploratorium (2020).”

The Idt Suffix as an Alternative to Inc. or Ltd.

In yet another innovation along these lines, the Community Economics Research Network – an international group of activist-minded academics with new visions for economic life – has proposed a new suffix to identify an organization as committed to interdependence. Businesses often have “Inc.,” “Ltd.” or “LLC” at the end of their names.

A CERN project called “The Interdependence” proposes that organizations add an "idt" to the end of their name if they “cultivate economic principles and practices that recognize our universal responsibility of mutual care, and strive to bring that understanding into the practice of everyday life.” The acronym idt would signal that the organization intends “to explore, experiment, share and learn together how to create ethical relations of interdependence.”

Already there are a number of enterprises that use the idt tag: Company Drinks idt., a UK community space and social enterprise; Brave New Alps idt., a participatory research project in the Italian Alps; Cube Cola idt., an open source soft drink in Bristol, England; and Trajna idt., a design collective that explores sustainable production in Slovenia that “works towards supporting multispecies livelihoods.” More about idt. in an Idt Charta statement.

Assigning Legal Personhood to Nature

Years ago the impulse to affirm our kinship with nature has manifested in the “rights of nature” movement. The tactic here is to assign legal personhood to mountains, rivers, and forests, and other elements of the Earth so that they can be properly “represented” in courts and legislatures. The states of Ecuador, New Zealand, Colombia, and India have already enacted laws giving specific legal rights to nature.

But now this bold move in jurisprudence have found a footing in North American law. In February 2019, the citizens of Toledo, Ohio, approved Lake Erie Bill of Rights Charter Amendment, which authorizes people to sue polluters on behalf of Lake Erie.

Self-Owning Trees

While nature’s rights as a legal doctrine is fairly new, the idea that nature is alive and sovereign has a long history, even in pockets of western culture. In Athens, Georgia, local lore celebrated the “Tree That Owns Itself for more than a century.

There is a huge white oak tree at the corner of South Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens that is said to have legal ownership of itself. A gentleman who lived across the street from the tree, William H. Jackson, bequeathed the eight-foot-wide tree to itself, circa 1832, with this legal statement: “For and in consideration of the great love I bear this tree and the great desire I have for its protection for all time, I convey entire possession of itself and all land within eight feet of the tree on all sides.”

As recounted by Wikipedia, “The original tree, thought to have started life between the mid-16th and late 18th century, fell in 1942, but a new tree was grown from one of its accords and planted in the same location. The current tree is sometimes referred to as the ‘Son of the Tree That Owns Itself.’” The tree is recognized by National Register of Historic Places 1975, but almost certainly not by any court of law. (More about the tree here.)

Did law scholar Christopher Stone have this tree in mind when he wrote his famous 1972 law review called “Should Trees Have Standing?” His point – written in the fevered early days of the modern environmental movement – was to suggest that courts should recognize the rights of nonhuman beings in western courtrooms.

The Embassy of the North Sea

Another creative idea is to give distinct elements of nature political representation. Some folks in The Hague, The Netherlands, founded “The Embassy of the North Sea” in 2018 as a way for the sea to own itself. As the “About” section on its website explains:

“Diversity is in the interest of all life. Therefore, direct political representation of the sea and the life within it is necessary. The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the principle that the North Sea owns itself. Here, the voices of plants, animals, microbes, and people in and around the North Sea are listened to and involved….

“The Embassy researches how non-humans, from phytoplankton to ship wrecks and cod fish – can become full-fledged members of society. We have plotted a route through to 2030, firstly learning to listen to the sea before we learn to speak with it. Finally, we will negotiate on behalf of the North Sea and all the life that it encapsulates.”

The Self-Owning Forest (via Digital Technology)

Even techno-solutionists seem to be jumping on the idea of sovereign nature, albeit through the narrow lens of their own high-tech vision. A Silicon Valley-inspired project called terra0 is proposing that blockchain software, artificial intelligence, and remote sensors be used to enable a forest to self-govern itself. In the capitalist/libertarian mindset, this means that the forest should have the capacity to manage itself as a business. Using a high-tech system (devised by humans presumably), the forest could selectively choose which of its trees are suitable to cut for timber, and then self-authorize the sale of those trees, based on algorithms that some programmer would write.

The idea is that the forest’s selective monetization of itself would allow it to "self-own" itself as a “digital autonomous organization” (or DAO). This is an idealized but elusive organizational form that many self-styled tech visionaries are striving to create. The “forest as a DAO” would ostensibly give it sovereignty over its future and even (if terra0 gets its way) generate a universal basic income for everyone. Terra0 describes itself as

“a group of developers, theorists, and researchers exploring the creation of hybrid ecosystems in the technosphere. Driven by a keen interest in remote sensing, machine learning, and distributed ledger technology, we develop tools for the management of natural ecosystems and resources via the creation of meshes of interacting decentralized autonomous organisations. We believe that these key technologies give us the opportunity to rethink existing and ineffective governance and regulatory structures and that they will play a crucial role in creating a sustainable, resilient, and biodiverse future.” 

In more technical terms, terra0 describes the forest-as-DAO idea as “a scalable framework built on the Ethereum network that provides automated resilience systems for ecosystems.” For more, see also this TEDx Amstelveen video by Hilde Latourvideo by Hilde Latour (at 8 minute timemark).

Personally, I find the vision set forth by terra0 rather monstrous: a world “where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.”

How do machines confer loving grace on us? And who oversees the designers as they presume to re-program forests as business-like DAOs? There are surely many kinks to work out in humanity's laudable efforts to sync with the more-than-human world.

For Weber, life and evolution cannot really be discussed without talking about the “subjectivity” and creative agency of all living organisms. That’s because life is not a collection of fighting machines; it’s a dynamic web of living organisms engaged in a creative drama of interdependency. The heart of the evolutionary drama, Weber insists, is the quest of all living systems to express what they feel and experience, and in so doing, adapt to the world and change it.

If I may crudely summarize Andreas’ thinking in a sentence or two:  relationality, aliveness, subjectivity, and wholeness are central to the functioning of healthy living systems. But western, modern Enlightenment thinking (including conventional science) and capitalism don't get it. They are determined to disassemble wholes into their component parts, regard causation in fairly simple, mechanical terms, and to objectify life and assign it essential traits.

Andreas argues that this mindset is far too parochial. It helps explain why modern societies have failed to deal effectively with the pandemic, climate change, and other ecological crises. In a recent lengthy essay, Sharing Life: The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity, https://in.boell.org/en/2020/09/10/sharing-life-ecopolitics-reciprocity Weber – taking a cue from indigenous cultures – explains how a “new animism” could help reorient our perspectives in constructive ways. We might begin to see that we need to enter into the relationality of the world as active participants, and not presume, as scientists do, that we can truly be neutral, “objective” observers.

Weber’s essay proposes animism as a strategy to readjust humanities’ relationship to earth – the shared life of human and nonhuman beings. He argues that “the insistence of western culture to rely only on a material science and to declare aliveness an illusion is a colonization of the living cosmos, which severs humans from their aliveness and destroys the lives of other beings – humans and non-humans alike.” Animistic cultures, then, can help guide us through a process of “western self-decolonization” and a realization of a new conceptualization of the Anthropocene, in which human and non-human agency working together contribute to “a fecund earth.”

Over the years, I’ve occasionally blogged about Weber’s books, such as Enlivenment: Toward a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics and Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science.

Check out this background to Weber's fresh approach to the study of life, or jump right into our provocative podcast conversation here.

For Weber, life and evolution cannot really be discussed without talking about the “subjectivity” and creative agency of all living organisms. That’s because life is not a collection of fighting machines; it’s a dynamic web of living organisms engaged in a creative drama of interdependency. The heart of the evolutionary drama, Weber insists, is the quest of all living systems to express what they feel and experience, and in so doing, adapt to the world and change it.

If I may crudely summarize Andreas’ thinking in a sentence or two:  relationality, aliveness, subjectivity, and wholeness are central to the functioning of healthy living systems. But western, modern Enlightenment thinking (including conventional science) and capitalism don't get it. They are determined to disassemble wholes into their component parts, regard causation in fairly simple, mechanical terms, and to objectify life and assign it essential traits.

Andreas argues that this mindset is far too parochial. It helps explain why modern societies have failed to deal effectively with the pandemic, climate change, and other ecological crises. In a recent lengthy essay, Sharing Life: The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity, https://in.boell.org/en/2020/09/10/sharing-life-ecopolitics-reciprocity Weber – taking a cue from indigenous cultures – explains how a “new animism” could help reorient our perspectives in constructive ways. We might begin to see that we need to enter into the relationality of the world as active participants, and not presume, as scientists do, that we can truly be neutral, “objective” observers.

Weber’s essay proposes animism as a strategy to readjust humanities’ relationship to earth – the shared life of human and nonhuman beings. He argues that “the insistence of western culture to rely only on a material science and to declare aliveness an illusion is a colonization of the living cosmos, which severs humans from their aliveness and destroys the lives of other beings – humans and non-humans alike.” Animistic cultures, then, can help guide us through a process of “western self-decolonization” and a realization of a new conceptualization of the Anthropocene, in which human and non-human agency working together contribute to “a fecund earth.”

Over the years, I’ve occasionally blogged about Weber’s books, such as Enlivenment: Toward a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics and Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science.

Check out this background to Weber's fresh approach to the study of life, or jump right into our provocative podcast conversation here.

For Weber, life and evolution cannot really be discussed without talking about the “subjectivity” and creative agency of all living organisms. That’s because life is not a collection of fighting machines; it’s a dynamic web of living organisms engaged in a creative drama of interdependency. The heart of the evolutionary drama, Weber insists, is the quest of all living systems to express what they feel and experience, and in so doing, adapt to the world and change it.

If I may crudely summarize Andreas’ thinking in a sentence or two:  relationality, aliveness, subjectivity, and wholeness are central to the functioning of healthy living systems. But western, modern Enlightenment thinking (including conventional science) and capitalism don't get it. They are determined to disassemble wholes into their component parts, regard causation in fairly simple, mechanical terms, and to objectify life and assign it essential traits.

Andreas argues that this mindset is far too parochial. It helps explain why modern societies have failed to deal effectively with the pandemic, climate change, and other ecological crises. In a recent lengthy essay, Sharing Life: The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity, https://in.boell.org/en/2020/09/10/sharing-life-ecopolitics-reciprocity Weber – taking a cue from indigenous cultures – explains how a “new animism” could help reorient our perspectives in constructive ways. We might begin to see that we need to enter into the relationality of the world as active participants, and not presume, as scientists do, that we can truly be neutral, “objective” observers.

Weber’s essay proposes animism as a strategy to readjust humanities’ relationship to earth – the shared life of human and nonhuman beings. He argues that “the insistence of western culture to rely only on a material science and to declare aliveness an illusion is a colonization of the living cosmos, which severs humans from their aliveness and destroys the lives of other beings – humans and non-humans alike.” Animistic cultures, then, can help guide us through a process of “western self-decolonization” and a realization of a new conceptualization of the Anthropocene, in which human and non-human agency working together contribute to “a fecund earth.”

Over the years, I’ve occasionally blogged about Weber’s books, such as Enlivenment: Toward a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics and Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling and the Metamorphosis of Science.

Check out this background to Weber's fresh approach to the study of life, or jump right into our provocative podcast conversation here.

“The starting point for this book,” writes the editors Speth and Courrier, “is the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges.” That’s why reading this book is so bracing – it squarely addresses the deep structural, political, economic, and cultural issues that must change. 

In sifting through the diverse perspectives of contributors, the editors identify a number of shared premises, which I paraphrase here:

• a shift of ownership and control to workers and the public
• the imperative to protect the planet and its climate
• democratically determined priorities in investment
• the abandonment of growth and GDP as the focus of national well-being
• equal justice and reparative justice to address systemic racism, and
• greater popular sovereignty and economic democracy

For those who may wish to study these essays with a reading group or class, there is a useful 24-page study guide that accompanies The New Systems Reader. It’s by Thad Williamson, for the Democracy Collaborative, and a free PDF of the guide can be downloaded here.

In a previous post, I noted my own offering in the small but growing oeuvre of system-change anthologies and treatises. Check out The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins, co-edited with Anna Grear, available under a Creative Commons license and available in print or free downloads.

In my next blog, another excellent anthology dealing with system-change strategies.

“The starting point for this book,” writes the editors Speth and Courrier, “is the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges.” That’s why reading this book is so bracing – it squarely addresses the deep structural, political, economic, and cultural issues that must change. 

In sifting through the diverse perspectives of contributors, the editors identify a number of shared premises, which I paraphrase here:

• a shift of ownership and control to workers and the public
• the imperative to protect the planet and its climate
• democratically determined priorities in investment
• the abandonment of growth and GDP as the focus of national well-being
• equal justice and reparative justice to address systemic racism, and
• greater popular sovereignty and economic democracy

For those who may wish to study these essays with a reading group or class, there is a useful 24-page study guide that accompanies The New Systems Reader. It’s by Thad Williamson, for the Democracy Collaborative, and a free PDF of the guide can be downloaded here.

In a previous post, I noted my own offering in the small but growing oeuvre of system-change anthologies and treatises. Check out The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins, co-edited with Anna Grear, available under a Creative Commons license and available in print or free downloads.

In my next blog, another excellent anthology dealing with system-change strategies.

“The starting point for this book,” writes the editors Speth and Courrier, “is the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges.” That’s why reading this book is so bracing – it squarely addresses the deep structural, political, economic, and cultural issues that must change. 

In sifting through the diverse perspectives of contributors, the editors identify a number of shared premises, which I paraphrase here:

• a shift of ownership and control to workers and the public
• the imperative to protect the planet and its climate
• democratically determined priorities in investment
• the abandonment of growth and GDP as the focus of national well-being
• equal justice and reparative justice to address systemic racism, and
• greater popular sovereignty and economic democracy

For those who may wish to study these essays with a reading group or class, there is a useful 24-page study guide that accompanies The New Systems Reader. It’s by Thad Williamson, for the Democracy Collaborative, and a free PDF of the guide can be downloaded here.

In a previous post, I noted my own offering in the small but growing oeuvre of system-change anthologies and treatises. Check out The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins, co-edited with Anna Grear, available under a Creative Commons license and available in print or free downloads.

In my next blog, another excellent anthology dealing with system-change strategies.

Most of WKNY’s shows are hosted by ordinary people, not radio professionals. And yet many of the show hosts are natural talents born to live in front of mics, Buff reports.

During the pandemic, Radio Kingston has given regular updates on the local Covid situation. It has also hosted virtual concerts by local musicians and a “show and tell” event for over 50 “marginalized creatives.” The station’s website hosts a number of podcasts dealing with the concerns of young farmers, politics, cosmic topics, and personality-driven topics.

In short: the good citizens of Kingston and environs have their own radio venue to reach and interact with each other, creating a new sort of community and cultural space that is often missing. The station has shown, also, that community radio doesn’t have to be stodgy and amateurish, and certainly not soulless and frenetic like commercial radio. It can be exciting, authentic, unexpected, and diverse.

It’s ironic that a small local AM station is pioneering this kind of programming. Under the legal charter for US broadcasters – the Communications Act of 1934 – commercial radio stations are supposed to act as trustees for the public interest. Historically, in return for getting free use of the public’s airwaves – a business infrastructure worth billions of dollars – radio stations agreed to meet certain standards of public service. Most were never terribly excited about airing educational programming, public affairs shows, the Fairness Doctrine (giving people the right to rebut controversial statements), and free airtime for political candidates – but it was part of their legal mandate.

But even these modest requirements were swept away with broadcast industry deregulation in 1996, in the Clinton presidency. This epochal shift threw open the door to the national consolidation of hundreds of local radio into ratings-obsessed mega-networks like iHeartMedia. This is why radio has gone so bland and corporate these days. There is a premium on standardized formats, national advertising, and a slick commercial tone – and very little interest in distinctive local voices, local news, local talent, experimental programming, and other things that don’t maximize profits.  

After only three years in its new guise, Kingston Radio is still a work-in-progress. But with the recent addition of a new antenna and legal authority to air its programming on the FM radio dial, WKNY is exploring some new frontiers in stewarding a local radio station as a commons.   

You can listen to my podcast interview with Jimmy Buff here.

Most of WKNY’s shows are hosted by ordinary people, not radio professionals. And yet many of the show hosts are natural talents born to live in front of mics, Buff reports.

During the pandemic, Radio Kingston has given regular updates on the local Covid situation. It has also hosted virtual concerts by local musicians and a “show and tell” event for over 50 “marginalized creatives.” The station’s website hosts a number of podcasts dealing with the concerns of young farmers, politics, cosmic topics, and personality-driven topics.

In short: the good citizens of Kingston and environs have their own radio venue to reach and interact with each other, creating a new sort of community and cultural space that is often missing. The station has shown, also, that community radio doesn’t have to be stodgy and amateurish, and certainly not soulless and frenetic like commercial radio. It can be exciting, authentic, unexpected, and diverse.

It’s ironic that a small local AM station is pioneering this kind of programming. Under the legal charter for US broadcasters – the Communications Act of 1934 – commercial radio stations are supposed to act as trustees for the public interest. Historically, in return for getting free use of the public’s airwaves – a business infrastructure worth billions of dollars – radio stations agreed to meet certain standards of public service. Most were never terribly excited about airing educational programming, public affairs shows, the Fairness Doctrine (giving people the right to rebut controversial statements), and free airtime for political candidates – but it was part of their legal mandate.

But even these modest requirements were swept away with broadcast industry deregulation in 1996, in the Clinton presidency. This epochal shift threw open the door to the national consolidation of hundreds of local radio into ratings-obsessed mega-networks like iHeartMedia. This is why radio has gone so bland and corporate these days. There is a premium on standardized formats, national advertising, and a slick commercial tone – and very little interest in distinctive local voices, local news, local talent, experimental programming, and other things that don’t maximize profits.  

After only three years in its new guise, Kingston Radio is still a work-in-progress. But with the recent addition of a new antenna and legal authority to air its programming on the FM radio dial, WKNY is exploring some new frontiers in stewarding a local radio station as a commons.   

You can listen to my podcast interview with Jimmy Buff here.