Community Ownership Quotes

The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights.

In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.

What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody.

A baseball franchise belongs to the people of the city.

If you give me Times Square, I want to give it back to the people.

Why shouldn't public housing be run by the tenants?

There is a lack of emphasis and detail on self-government of business enterprises and community government. There is too much emphasis on the part that the Project Director and his staff play. Governmental officials should not impose their will on the residents, but the government should be formulated by the residents. It is absolutely essential that the personnel understand and sympathize with the policy of self-government.

A community belongs to those who take ownership of it.

Socialism is the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create a system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling and action. Socialism is the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men.

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain

We agree with the statement contained in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, written by Pope Leo XIII, that "anything which dominates the life of the community should be owned by the community." That is the basis upon which we believe there should be government ownership of monopolistic enterprises.

The heart of a grass-roots campaign is the ownership.

The only difference between Compton and other cities is the ZIP Code, you know, and the mindset - it's just really about challenging people to take ownership of our community.

Part of the issue around communal land, which became a matter of controversy, is that we are saying that this land must go back to communities. Not chiefs and traditional leaders.

All of Africa's resources should be declared resources of the state and managed by the nation. Our experience in Bolivia shows that when you take control of natural resources for the people of the town and village, major world change is possible.

It isn't just a village. The houses aren't just places to live. Everything belongs to everybody. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Even a single person can make a difference.

The notion - and I tell you this one even worries me that it extends into New Urbanism - the notion of the shopping center [as] a valid kind of downtown. That's taken over. It's very hard for architects of this generation even to think in terms of a downtown or a center that is owned by all different people, with different ideas.

Everyone belongs to everyone else.

Inasmuch as the Socialists seek to transfer the goods of private persons to the community at large, they make the lot of all wage earners worse, because in abolishing the freedom to dispose of wages, they take away from them by this very act the hope and the opportunity of increasing their property and of securing advantages for themselves.

One-man-one-vote combined with "free entry" into government-democracy--implies that every person and his personal property comes within reach of-and is up for grabs by-everyone else: a "tragedy of the commons" is created.

Because the 1979 strike against U.S. Steel in Youngstown, Ohio was an occupation - and actually, that's a model that really should be pursued now.They went on from striking to trying to have the workforce and the communities take over the abandoned factories that U.S. Steel was dismantling.

Why communitarian socialism? Now not only do we have the pursuit of happiness for man, as a government, as a program or as our principles. But as well to live in harmony with Mother Earth.

It is the local community that needs to own the commitment to education.

In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.

Anything which dominates the life of the community should be owned by the community.