Atlantic City was a neighborhood first. Later it was a highway.
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Atlantic City was a neighborhood before it was a highway.
The book started there. It started at the crossing of Hampton and Brambleton. That crossing was built on top of a community. The community was torn down to build it. The people there were working class. People of different races lived together. The city had worked hard to stop that. In 1957 the city tore the neighborhood down. They built Norfolk General Hospital and the roads for it. The people there were not given new homes. The community was wiped out.
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The book started there — the crossing at Hampton and Brambleton, built on top of a community demolished to build it. The working-class neighborhood, racially integrated in a city that worked hard to prevent that, demolished in 1957 to build Norfolk General Hospital and the roads serving it. The community that was not relocated. The community that was erased.
When Atlantic City was taken, the thing that was taken was land.
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What was taken, when Atlantic City was taken, was land.
Below the houses and the people and the way they lived together was land. It was real land in a real city. The people who lived on it owned it. They used it and shared it in their own ways, built up over time. Then the city took the land. The city used eminent domain. That is a law that lets the city take land. The city also called the area a slum, but that was not really true. And the people there did not have enough power to fight back. When the land was taken, the base of their whole life was taken too.
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Underneath the houses and the neighborhood and the social fabric: specific parcels in a specific city, held by the people who lived on them, organized by use and relationship and history. When the city took that land — through eminent domain, through the manufactured slum designation, through the simple fact that the people living there lacked the political power to resist — it took the foundation.
Walk near the Eastern Virginia Medical School campus today. The neighborhood next to the hospital is Ghent. It is the old district along the Elizabeth River. It is now one of the most costly areas in Hampton Roads. There are art galleries. There are wine bars. Old craftsman houses sell for $600,000. The high value here was made, in large part, by what pushed the old community out. The hospital. The medical school. The roads. Years of public money built these big places. Being near them made the land worth more. The people of Atlantic City were forced out. That made the land near them worth more. Today no one sees that those people were pushed out. It is hidden inside the home prices of the people who came after them. This is enclosure happening right now. Marx called the first form of this primitive accumulation. Land used to be shared by all. Then it was taken from the people whose lives were built around it. It was turned into private property. Then it was used to make money. This always needs a frontier, a new place to take. The frontier never goes away. It just moves. Atlantic City was that frontier in 1957. The Narmada valley was that frontier in 1999. The Weelaunee forest is that frontier now. This was not old history when Marx wrote about it. In England, common lands had been taken not long before. Peasants were driven off the land and into factory towns. People still remembered it. And colonial powers were taking land at that time too. They took land from native peoples in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Marx called it primitive not because it was simple. He called it that because it came first. It had to happen before all the rest could happen. You cannot make people pay rent if they own the land they live on. You cannot force people to work for wages if they can feed themselves from their shared land. Enclosure is not an accident. It is a choice. People make this choice again and again. They keep it going by force.
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Walk the corridors around what is now the Eastern Virginia Medical School campus today. The neighborhood adjacent to the hospital — Ghent, the historic district along the Elizabeth River — is one of the most expensive zip codes in Hampton Roads. Art galleries. Wine bars. Renovated craftsman houses selling for $600,000. The value of this neighborhood was created, in significant part, by the institutional investment that displaced the community that had been there: the hospital, the medical school, the road infrastructure, the decades of public subsidy that built the anchor institutions whose presence made the surrounding land desirable. Atlantic City's residents were displaced to create the conditions that made their neighbors' land worth more. Their displacement is now invisible in the property values of the people who replaced them.
This is the enclosure running in real time.
Marx called the original version primitive accumulation — the foundational violence by which land held in common was separated from the people whose lives were organized around it, converted into private property, and made available for the extraction of value. The frontier this requires never disappears — it just moves. Atlantic City was that frontier in 1957. The Narmada valley was that frontier in 1999. The Weelaunee forest is that frontier now. It was not ancient history when Marx wrote about it. The English enclosures that drove peasants off common lands and into factory towns were living memory. The colonial land seizures dispossessing Indigenous peoples across the Americas, Africa, and Asia were ongoing. Marx named it primitive not because it was simple but because it was first: the precondition for everything that followed. You cannot extract rent from people who own the land they live on. You cannot compel wage labor from people who can feed themselves from their commons. Enclosure is not an accident of history. It is a political choice, made repeatedly, maintained by force.
In Burlington, Vermont, a couple had rented for seven years. In the early 2000s they bought a home from the Champlain Housing Trust. Bernie Sanders had helped start that trust in 1984. They could not have paid the normal market price in the neighborhood they loved. The trust made it possible to buy. Ten years later they needed to move. They sold the home back at a set price. They got their money back, plus a small part of the rise in value. They did not get the full big gain the open market would have given. So the next family also paid less than market price. The couple chose to do it this way on purpose. Brenda Torpy led the Champlain Housing Trust for twenty years. For years she bought land in Burlington neighborhoods where prices were going up. She took that land off the market for good. She said the trust's goal simply. The goal was not to make the market work better. The goal was to reject the idea that land is just a thing to buy and sell. The trust uses a rule in the home's deed. The rule keeps the land off the market forever. It is a legal rule. It stays in place no matter who is in office. It is written into every deed. It is a promise that links one generation to the next. The promise keeps the land from being taken and sold off in the future.
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In Burlington, Vermont, a couple who had been renting for seven years bought a Champlain Housing Trust home in the early 2000s — the trust Bernie Sanders had helped seed in 1984. They couldn't have bought at market rates in the neighborhood they loved; the trust made it possible. A decade later, when they needed to move, they sold back at a formula price: their investment returned, a share of appreciation, but not the full speculative gain the open market would have offered. The next family paid below-market. They chose this deliberately.
Brenda Torpy, who led the Champlain Housing Trust for two decades and spent years buying land in Burlington's gentrifying neighborhoods and taking it permanently off the market, described the trust's purpose plainly: not to make the market work better, but to refuse the market's premise that land is a commodity. The trust's resale covenant removes land from speculation permanently — structurally, through a legal structure that persists independent of whoever is in office, built into every deed. A pact across generations: the covenant binds the future to keep the land unenclosed.
Two hundred and sixty-three community land trusts work in the United States today. Here is the difference that matters. Some programs offer cheap homes. But they last only as long as the money lasts and leaders want them. Community land trusts are different. They take land off the market through how they are run. It is not help that ends. It is a way of running things that lasts.
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Two hundred and sixty-three community land trusts operate in the United States today. The distinction that matters: affordable housing programs provide below-market units as long as funding lasts and political will holds. Community land trusts remove land from the commodity market through governance. Not subsidy that ends. Governance that persists.
The economist and the land trust director and the policy analyst can not quite say this one thing. Taking land does more than take a resource. It also cuts off a way of thinking and feeling.
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What the economist and the land trust director and the policy analyst cannot quite say is this: the enclosure of land doesn't only take a resource. It severs a mode of consciousness.
E. Richard Sorenson spent many years among peoples who lived before conquest. He was with them in New Guinea, Micronesia, the Andaman Sea, and South America. He saw something hard to put in the words of Western science. These groups had not been enclosed. They lived on open land. They had no private property. They did not think in lines and owning. For them, the sense of space was different. People found their way by feeling, not by points on a map. A place meant something because of how they felt about it. There was the thrill of good hunting. There was the calm of one clearing. There was the joy of a stream. Borders were soft and they overlapped. People felt them more than drew them. Names for places were made up on the spot. There were many names, and people shared them in their own ways. There was no single map. Instead there was a living, shared, caring kind of knowing. It grew between people and land over many years. This is not a sweet daydream. Sorenson was an anthropologist. He was writing down a real way of thinking. And he watched it fall apart, right in front of him. It happened on an island in the eastern Andaman Sea when tourists came. He called it a kind of death of a culture. The soft, caring bond that held their minds together just went out, like a light, in one week. What came after it was the way of conquered places. That means property, fixed names for people, and space cut into bounds.
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E. Richard Sorenson spent decades in contact with preconquest peoples across New Guinea, Micronesia, the Andaman Sea, and South America, and documented something that defies easy summary in the language of Western social science. In communities that had not been enclosed — that still operated on open territory, without private property, without the cognitive apparatus of boundaries and ownership — sense of space itself was different. People navigated by affect, not by coordinates. A place had meaning through emotional relationship to it — the excitement of good hunting, the comfort of a particular clearing, the pleasure of a stream. Boundaries were hazy, overlapping, felt rather than drawn. Names for places were improvised, multiple, shared differently by different people. There was no single map. There was a living, distributed, relational intelligence woven between people and land over generations.
This is not romanticism. Sorenson was an anthropologist documenting a specific cognitive structure — one he watched collapse, in real time, on an island in the eastern Andaman Sea when tourism arrived. He described the collapse as a kind of cultural death: the subtle empathetic rapport that had organized consciousness simply went out, like a light, in the space of a week. What replaced it was the postconquest apparatus of property, formal identity, bounded space.
The people did not leave. The land did not leave. What was pushed down was the bond between people's minds and the place they lived in. Over many years, the land and the people had built a living know-how together. You cannot get that know-how back from the outside. You can only build it from the inside. It takes a close bond, kept up over time, in real places.
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The people didn't go anywhere. The land didn't go anywhere. What was suppressed was the relationship between consciousness and place — the living intelligence that the land and the people had built together over generations. That intelligence is not recoverable from outside. It is only built from inside, through sustained relationship, over time, in specific places.
I know a little of what Sorenson is talking about. I know it from the inside.
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I know a little of what Sorenson is describing from the inside.
For a season I lived and worked with a community. It sat at the edge of the wilderness in the Pacific Northwest. I was not a visitor. I was a teacher. I did not teach with facts. I taught through feeling. That is the only way this passes from one person to another. And it only works inside a group, never one on one. I taught honoring and blessing and singing. I taught watching, listening, and speaking to plants and trees. I taught the quiet, slow walk that the children fell into when a deer walked into camp. It was not just a skill. It was a doorway. This was Evocation, passed the only way it can pass. I learned from people who carried these ways. I also learned from very old trees, older than the tradition I was learning. I learned with my body and my soul, not just my mind. I remembered my ancestors.
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For a season I lived and worked with a community at the edge of wilderness in the Pacific Northwest. I was not a visitor. I was a teacher, and I taught not through information but through affect — the only way this transmission works, and only within a community, never one on one. I taught honoring and blessing and singing. I taught witnessing, listening, speaking to plants and trees. I taught the stalker's gait that the children dropped into when the deer walked into camp — not as a skill but as a doorway. Evocation, passed the only way it passes. I learned from people who carried these ways, and from ancient trees that were older than the tradition I was learning. I learned with my body and my soul as well as my mind. I remembered my ancestors.
I did not just watch people's bond with the land change. I became the land, asking them to come into a bond with it. There is no truer way to say it. That is what the tradition asks of you. And that is what it gives back.
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I didn't watch people's relationship to land shift. I became the land inviting them into relationship. There's no other way to say it that's accurate. That's what the tradition asks of you, and what it gives back.
I have studied with students of Bill Plotkin. He studies the mind and nature. For many years he has mapped the ground between the soul and the living world. He calls part of this the descent to soul. It is meeting the wild — which is not outside us but is us. It is fixing a bond that our world has been cutting for five thousand years. Plotkin explains it for both scientists and doers. I am a doer. I am new at it. I have learned a little from his students. They are all wizards. They taught me about shaping what is real with a word, a look, or being gone at just the right moment.
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I've studied with students of the ecopsychologist Bill Plotkin, who has spent decades mapping the terrain between the soul and the living world — charting what he calls the descent to soul, the encounter with wildness that is not outside us but is us, the restoration of a relationship that postconquest civilization has been busy severing for five thousand years. Plotkin lays it out for both scientists and practitioners. I am a practitioner. A novice. I've learned a little from his students — wizards all — about shaping reality with a word, a glance, your absence at the right moment.
Here is what I know. We can still form this bond. It was not killed, only pushed down. It comes back. It comes back in the quiet, slow walk. It comes back when you stop and listen to what the forest is saying. It comes back in the grief that rises when a place you love is paved over. That grief is not just a feeling. It is a kind of news. It is the awareness Sorenson wrote about, still alive in us. It knows a loss that the words of property and price cannot name.
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What I know is this: the capacity for this relationship is still in us. It has not been destroyed, only suppressed. It reasserts itself — in the stalker's gait, in the moment you stop and listen to what the forest is saying, in the grief that rises when a place you love is paved over. That grief is not sentiment. It is information. It is the consciousness Sorenson documented, still alive in us, recognizing a loss that the language of property and market price cannot name.
In his book Debt, Graeber made a point. He said it makes no sense to think we owe the earth a payment back. The earth gave us everything. To talk about our bond with the living world as a debt to be paid just spreads the logic of fencing things off into nature too. Graeber was reaching the same truth from a new side. The earth is not a lender. It is not even a commons in the usual way. It is what makes everything the commons gives us possible. The bond that peoples before the conquest kept with the land was not rule in our sense. It was kinship.
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When Graeber observed in Debt that the idea of owing the earth repayment is absurd — that the earth gave everything, that framing our relationship to the living world in terms of debt and repayment just extends the enclosure logic into nature itself — he was touching this same truth from a different angle. The earth is not a creditor. It is not even a commons in the usual sense. It is the condition of possibility for everything the commons produces. The relationship that preconquest peoples maintained with land was not governance in our sense. It was kinship.
Indigenous and community-run lands cover about 22 percent of the Earth's land. They hold about 80 percent of the world's wild plants and animals that are left. This is not luck. These communities had the practice long before anyone wrote down the theory. They have kept alive the very thing the theory is still trying to name.
The Kayapó people run about 11 million hectares in the southern Amazon. In the Bolsonaro years, the government stopped guarding the forest. But on Kayapó land, far less forest was cut than in nearby lands. Those nearby lands had no people guarding them. Illegal miners came onto the land. The people pushed them back out. Often they got no help from the government. The forest is still there because of how they run it. They have a set border. They have a group with real say. They have rules made to fit the place. The stakes are passed down for many lives. And the rules are made to stick. These are the rules Ostrom found in shared land systems all over the world. Here they have been lived out for a long time.
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Indigenous and community-managed territories cover roughly 22 percent of Earth's land surface. They contain approximately 80 percent of the world's remaining biodiversity. This is not a coincidence. The communities that had the practice before anyone wrote the theory have been maintaining what the theory is still trying to describe.
The Kayapó people govern roughly 11 million hectares in the southern Amazon. During the Bolsonaro years, when federal environmental enforcement collapsed, deforestation inside Kayapó territory remained dramatically lower than in surrounding areas without active Indigenous governance. When illegal miners entered the territory, community members enforced the boundary directly, often without federal support. The forest is there because of the institution: defined territory, governing authority, locally adapted rules, multigenerational stakes, real enforcement — the design principles Ostrom documented from commons governance systems around the world, instantiated here across generations.
The adivasi communities in the Narmada valley took care of their forest together. The dam project could not see that they were doing this. But they ran the same kind of system as the others in this book. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 did not start this care. The people already did it. The law just said it was real. The law did not do this well. And right away, people tried to weaken the law.
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The adivasi communities in the Narmada valley — whose forest governance the dam project couldn't see — were running the same kind of institution. The Forest Rights Act of 2006 didn't create that governance. It recognized it, imperfectly, and immediately came under pressure to be undermined.
The danger to these lands is enclosure. This is what it looks like in real life. Global Witness counted more than 200 land and earth defenders who were killed in 2020. Most of them were in Latin America. More than a third of them were Indigenous. These deaths are not a side effect of the earth crisis. They are the earth crisis itself, in action. They are the use of force to take land away from the people who care for it. That care is what holds the living world together.
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The threat to these territories is enclosure in its operational form. Global Witness documented over 200 killings of land and environmental defenders in 2020 — the majority in Latin America, over a third of them Indigenous. These deaths are not incidental to the ecological crisis. They are the ecological crisis at its operational level: the physical enforcement of enclosure against the governance holding ecosystems together.
The threat in its real form kills the people who guard the land. But the guarding also speaks. Davi Kopenawa is a Yanomami shaman. He was born around 1956, near the Rio Toototobi. For years he has worked to push illegal gold miners and rubber tappers off Yanomami land. He helped start the Hutukara Yanomami Association in 2004. He kept up the fight for years. Brazil marked the area as Yanomami land in 1992. He has faced death threats for it. What makes his case stand out is the way it comes to us. It comes in his own words. His book is called The Falling Sky. He told it to Bruce Albert, who studies such peoples, and they wrote it down together. It guards the forest. It also guards his right to speak for it. The miners take the land. The habit of studying people from outside takes the story of it. He says no to both. The title is his own. In Yanomami belief, the harm from the whites' mining could make the sky fall.
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The threat in its operational form kills the people who defend the land — but the defense also speaks. Davi Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman born around 1956 near the Rio Toototobi, has spent decades campaigning to expel illegal gold miners and rubber tappers from Yanomami land; he co-founded the Hutukara Yanomami Association in 2004; following his international campaigning, Brazil recognized Yanomami land in 1992; and he has faced death threats for it. What sets his case apart is that it reaches us in his own words. The Falling Sky, told to and composed with the anthropologist Bruce Albert, defends the forest and the standing to speak for it at once. The miners take the land; the habit of studying from outside takes the account of it. He refuses both. The title is his: in Yanomami cosmology, the whites' extraction threatens to bring the sky down.
When forests are cut down, a lot of carbon goes into the air. Forests get cut down when the people who care for them lose control of the land. Homes get too costly when land is used to make money fast. The housing crisis and the loss of plants and animals come from the same thing. Land is run to take from it. It is not run for the long-term good of the people who need it.
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Carbon is released at scale when forests are cleared. Forests are cleared at scale when communities governing them lose territorial control. Housing becomes unaffordable when land becomes a speculation vehicle. The housing crisis and the extinction crisis share a cause: land governed for extraction rather than for the long-term benefit of the communities that depend on it.
At Standing Rock in 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe stood up. So did thousands of water protectors from Indigenous nations all over the land. They stood in the way of the Dakota Access Pipeline. They did this to guard the Missouri River and treaty land. The state fought back. It used water cannons in freezing cold. It used rubber bullets. It arrested many people. I have friends who were there. They have scars. They can tell their own story. I point to them with love. Anyone reading this should look for their words. They are this work, lived out. The whole world watched Standing Rock. It showed us one thing. Caring for land as a living friend, not a thing to sell, is not just old history. It is going on right now. People keep it up at great cost to themselves. They know something about land that the people who build and pay for the pipeline do not.
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At Standing Rock in 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and thousands of water protectors from Indigenous nations across the continent stood in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline to defend the Missouri River and treaty land. The state's response was water cannons in freezing temperatures, rubber bullets, mass arrest. I have friends who were there. They have scars. They can speak for themselves — I gesture to them in love and solidarity. Anyone reading should seek their words. They are the work embodied. What Standing Rock demonstrated, at a scale the world watched, is that the defense of land as a living relationship rather than a commodity is not historical. It is ongoing, right now, maintained at enormous personal cost by people who understand something about land that the pipeline's engineers and investors do not.
In the Weelaunee forest in Atlanta, people came together to live in the old forest. The forest defenders call it Weelaunee. That is its Muscogee name. It is not the city's name for it. They stayed there to stop a police training base from being built. They called it Stop Cop City. The state fought back. It used domestic terrorism charges on forest defenders for the first time in American history. Tortuguita was a defender. Police killed Tortuguita in January 2023. The forest defense goes on. Here it is again. People put their own bodies between a living place and the people who want to wreck it. They know the forest is not a thing to manage. It is a community to guard. That way of knowing is the preconquest mind that Sorenson wrote about. It is still alive. It rises up again in an old forest outside Atlanta. This is abjuration, used for the commons. The body itself is the wall.
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In the Weelaunee forest in Atlanta — the forest defenders call it Weelaunee, its Muscogee name, not the city's name for it — a community of people occupied old-growth forest to prevent a police training facility from being built there. They called it Stop Cop City. The state's response included the first use of domestic terrorism charges against forest defenders in American history. Tortuguita, a defender, was killed by police in January 2023. The forest defense continues. Here again: people placing their bodies between a living ecosystem and its destruction, understanding that the forest is not a resource to be managed but a community to be defended. That understanding is the preconquest consciousness Sorenson documented, still alive, reasserting itself in an old-growth stand outside Atlanta. Abjuration, cast for the commons — the body itself the boundary.
Hampton Boulevard is still here. The crossing is still not safe. The neighborhood it was built on is still gone.
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Hampton Boulevard is still there. The crossing is still dangerous. The neighborhood it was built on is still gone.
The places built on the displaced community are now big, important places. They make the land around them cost a lot. The displacement did more than destroy a community. It made sure a community like that could never live there again. The people who might have lived in Atlantic City now cannot afford to live in Ghent. A woman grew up in the neighborhood that took the place of Atlantic City's people. In Chapter 2 she said it plain. They say it is for us. But they are just dropping a few of us in to make us feel welcome. She knew how this worked before this chapter was written. She was living inside the process and saw it end. The enclosure was clear to the people it shut out. They saw it long before anyone gave it a name.
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The institutions built on the displaced community are now the anchor institutions whose presence makes the surrounding land expensive. The displacement didn't just destroy a community. It created the conditions that made it impossible for a community like it to exist there again. The people who might have lived in Atlantic City now cannot afford to live in Ghent.
A woman who grew up in the neighborhood that replaced Atlantic City's residents said it plainly in Chapter 2: they're saying it's for us, but really they're just sprinkling us in there to make us feel welcome. She knew the structure before this chapter existed. She was describing the completion of a process she was living inside — the enclosure made visible to the people it enclosed, decades before any analyst named it.
The Champlain trust. The Kayapó territory. The Forest Rights Act. Standing Rock. Weelaunee. The season I spent becoming the land for a community learning to remember. These are all the same basic truth, seen in different places. Land is not a thing to sell. The bond between mind and place is not extra. It is needed. And the systems we build either honor that bond or break it.
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The Champlain trust. The Kayapó territory. The Forest Rights Act. Standing Rock. Weelaunee. The season I spent becoming the land for a community learning to remember. These are the same foundational recognition in different conditions: that land is not a commodity, that the relationship between consciousness and place is not a luxury but a necessity, that the governance structures we build either honor that relationship or destroy it.
To some people, land is a thing you own. A line on a money sheet. A way to make more money. To others, land is life itself. The ground under your feet is not raw stuff to use. It is the oldest commons. The whole rest of this book rests on it. It is the one we have been shut out from the longest. It is the one we most need to get back to.
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To some, land is an asset. A balance sheet entry. A speculation vehicle. To others, land is life itself. The ground under your feet is not raw material. It is the oldest commons, the one the whole of the rest of this book depends on, the one we have been enclosed from longest, the one we most need to find our way back to.
Land is the base. And the base is alive. Keeping it alive is care. The next chapter is about who does that work. And it is about why the system needs that work to stay hidden.
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Land is the foundation. And the foundation is alive.
Keeping it alive is care. The next chapter is who does that work, and why the system needs the work to stay invisible.