Jonathan Rowe

Jonathan Rowe was a writer who wrote about the commons, diseconomy, economics, economic indicators, corporations, and many other subjects. He was a 1998 resident at the Mesa Refuge.

Jonathan was an editor at the Washington Monthly magazine and a staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor. He contributed to Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, American Prospect, Adbusters, and a host of other publications.  He was a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly and YES! magazines; and he served on the boards of WhoWhatWhy, Take Back Your Time, and the Marin Media Foundation.

Jonathan co-founded the organization On The Commons, which promotes commons-based solutions to problems. He was a founder and co-director of the West Marin Commons, which works to create spaces for spontaneous sociability, and also an infrastructure for the sharing of knowledge and resources, on the western edge of Marin County, California. In the early 1970’s, he worked for Ralph Nader and was one of the early “Nader’s Raiders.”

Jonathan also served on staffs in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. For several years, he worked for U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan. He worked on the staff of the Washington, D.C., city council.

He hosted a weekly radio show on KWMR-FM in Point Reyes Station, California, and contributed to the local papers there–the West Marin Citizen and Point Reyes Light.

Jonathan authored the books Time Dollars (with Edgar Cahn), about the non-market economy and the emergence of service barter networks; and Tax Politics (with Robert M. Brandon and Thomas H. Stanton).

He died on March 20th, 2011.