Levellers

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Description

David Bollier:

"Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1660) was an Protestant reformer during Oliver Cromwell’s rule who agitated for the commons and land redistribution through a group known as the True Levellers (or “Diggers”). To protest enclosures of land, Levellers occupied the land, knocked down hedges and filled in ditches meant to mark off private property boundaries, and grew crops that they distributed for free to other Levellers. Winstanley’s was a commons advocate who commanded a following through ringing declarations that are still quoted today, such as “The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children.” And: “In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, ... but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another.”


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