Reclaiming the Commons

In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote an often cited paper for Science magazine, called “The Tragedy of the Commons”.  He claimed that any common property “remorselessly generates tragedy” since it’s to the advantage of each individual to use as much of this common thing that they share (called by those who deal with this stuff, “The Commons”) and thus deplete it to the point no one could use it.  While this might make some theoretical sense, many writers since (most notably Elinor Ostrum--who I talked about in my post on Original Virtue, 9/14/08) have pointed out that tribal societies have managed the commons without difficulty for generations and generations.

The book, Whose Common Future? by the staff of the magazine The Ecologist (subtitle “Reclaiming the Commons”), is an in depth look at the use and misuse of the commons.  They begin by citing several examples from around the world where local folks carefully manage their common assets.  They point out that tribes, neighborhoods, and societies have developed checks and balances so that no one takes a lot more than their share and resources are sustained rather than depleted.

Then they look at the enclosure movement, which was the end of common property and the beginning of almost all property being private. (For more on this see my post on Land, 5/28/09, where I reference Whose Common Future?)  The book goes into great detail about globalization and privatization, how power elites want to manage the commons and profit from it.

In their final chapter, called “Reclaiming the Commons”, the writers return to examples of how people can take back common resources and how they can collectively manage it.  They finish with “A Concluding Remark” where they are careful point out that they have no policy recommendations.  First, because policy recommendations assume that there’s some policy-makers that they want to appeal to, which is once again giving power to the elites.  And, most importantly, it implies that there are global, overall solutions where their point is that the commons need to be managed by local communities and in each case, the community itself will find a way that works for that specific community.  Local solutions are diverse solutions.

Quote of the Day:  “One cannot legislate the commons into existence; nor can the commons be reclaimed simply by adopting ‘green techniques’ such as organic agriculture, alternative energy strategies or better public transport--necessary and desirable though such strategies often are.  Rather, commons regimes emerge through ordinary people’s day-to-day resistance to enclosure, and their efforts to regain the mutual support, responsibility and trust that sustain the commons.” - The Ecologist

The New New Yorker

Well, I’ve settled down.  In New York City, of all places.

I was talking with my brother on the phone and he was wishing me the best with my new community life at Ganas in Staten Island.

“Just promise me one thing,” he said.  “You won’t start rooting for the Yankees.”  (I think he was kidding.  I think. It wasn’t hard to promise though--I can’t imagine rooting for a team that wears pinstripes.)

I’m having trouble believing that I’m now a permanent resident of the Big Apple--the city that never sleeps, the largest city in North America.  It wasn’t where I planned to be and a big part of me is still wondering what I’m doing here.

I was involved several years back with someone who grew up in Brooklyn and I listened to her stories which to me seemed a mixture of the exotic and the familiar all at once.  Familiar because so much literature, so many movies, so many TV shows reference New York geography.  Now many of those places are part of my life.

I’ve been traveling all over the city. A few weeks ago we were doing stuff in Long Island City (sometimes abbreviated LIC--and LIC is part of Queens).  Then a couple of weeks ago, I met with a woman in East Harlem that wanted to buy property in the South Bronx.  Last week I met with another woman over in Bushwick, which I now know is part of Brooklyn.  After that I visited a food co-op in the East Village in Manhattan.  And this week I’m planning to visit a co-op house in Bed Stuy, which is also part of Brooklyn.

Daily I walk up the hill here  on Staten Island and look down on St George/Tompkinsville and across the Upper New York Bay over to Brooklyn.  The night sky of Virginia has been replaced with the lovely lights of Staten Island, Brooklyn, and once in a while, Manhattan.

And I get to take the marvelous Staten Island Ferry, passing the Statue of Liberty and with views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Governors Island, Jersey City, Bayonne, and Staten Island.  The few times I’ve taken it at night is when I’ve gotten to see the the lights of all of these place reflected in the dark waters.

I’ve learned or figured out all sorts of strange things.  There are five boroughs here--most people know that--but only one of them, the Bronx, is part of the mainland.  Manhattan is an island, Brooklyn and Queens are part of an island, and, of course, Staten Island is an island.

One morning we were talking about a part of the Bronx even many folks here hadn’t heard of: Spuyten Duyvil, the place where the Hudson River meets the Harlem River.  Someone said it meant “Spitting Devil” in Dutch. (Wikipedia says, “Spouting Devil” or “Spewing Devil”.)  It’s strange things like that that make living in New York so interesting.

And now, one of the things I’m doing is that I’m busy figuring out how to establish a New York City residency.  It turns out I live here.  I really do.  Go figure.

Quote of the Day: “Other places may give you a sweet and soothing sense of level; but in New York there is always the feeling of ‘Something's going to happen.’ It isn't peace. But, you know, you do get used to peace, and so quickly. And you never get used to New York.” - Dorothy Parker

Interlude: Next Changes

I'm still reading my biology book but I'm not sure whether I'll continue this series, or when I will if I do.

Several things have been happening. The first is that I kept a copy of all the posts that I've written on a flashdrive that I kept in my pocket. Some of it was backed up, but there was much of it that wasn't. Then one day the flashdrive was missing. I still haven't found it and that's put a crimp in my desires to write lots of posts.

More importantly, about halfway through this first year of my latest community venture, I realized that it wasn't working. I'm not happy about this but I don't think that continuing on, as is, makes sense. Neither does starting over. I've done this several times and it hasn't worked. There comes a point where I need to pay attention and decide that it's time to go in a different direction.

In essence, instead of trying to create community (at least for now) I'm looking at trying to join an already functioning community. Part of the reason is to learn from what's working (as well as to perhaps help a community or two work even better) and part of it is to look for others with experience living in community. I will not (and this is a promise to myself) try again to start building a community alone or only with people who haven't done it before. I need to have others with experience to do this with--and, I think the way to find others with experience is to get active in the communities movement.

Unfortunately, this is a challenge, as I'm now sixty and starting over, especially since it will involve traveling and some short term community situations (a year or two, is what I'm thinking). It may involve more than one situation before I find the folks I'm looking for. This isn't exciting and it is risky, but I don't have any better ideas.

What I want to do is to build or live in community in New England, but the kind of community I want (simple, sustainable, communal, and egalitarian) doesn't exist here. What it looks like I'll be doing is leaving New England, hopefully not for too long and not going too, too far.

Meanwhile, my next post will be on what I see as one of the most hopeful developments in building this kind of community: communities of communities.


Quote of the Day: “Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself. If all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.” - Simone de Beauvoir

Doing it!

Sorry for the sudden change in plans, but it looks like I will be taking a break at this point. It could be permanent but probably not. I really do have a lot of stuff I still want to blog on, but there are things that are much better than blogging.

One of the best is to do a lot of the stuff that I've been blogging on. Out of the blue (almost) someone who had noticed all the workshops I'd been offering on intentional communities offered to rent her house to me to create an intentional community in. (She and her family are actually moving to a rural community in another state.) How could I turn that down?

So now I have the opportunity to do a lot of what I've been blogging on--starting with doing it with love and compassion. (I write this as a reminder for myself as much as anything.)

Yes, this will be about Simplicity, Equality, Community, and Sustainability. Yes, I will try to find ways of embracing Complexity, Diversity, Individuality, and Practicality. Yes, this will be about starting Small and Local. Of course, I will try to apply Permaculture and NonViolent Communication and anything else I can think of to our situation. Of course, I want us to be eating locally, growing food (at least sprouts), conserving energy and water, and most importantly, taking care of each other, learning from each other, and listening to each other.

This house comes with a host of quirky things and a big bunch of challenges. The location is very urban and there isn't a lot of space for a garden--or much of anything. But as I wrote in my post on Attitude (8/31/10), a Permaculture Principle is: "Every resource is either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on the use made of it. ... Disadvantages can be viewed as 'problems' and we can take an energy-expensive approach to 'get rid of the problem', or we can think of everything as being a positive resource: it is up to us to work out just how we can make use of it." The other Attitudinal Principle is "Permaculture is Information and Imagination-Intensive". We will need creativity and imagination (and some information as well) to deal with the challenges of this house, but if I can get a good mix of people for this community, we should be able to do it. Now I just need to find them.

Maybe my next post will be an update of how this is working out. Meanwhile, if anyone reading this is interested in being a part of this emerging community (or might know someone who is), please email me.

Wish me luck.


Quote of the Day: "How are you practicing what you preach--whatever you preach, and who exactly is listening? ... It is not going to be easy, but we have what we have learned and what we have been given that is useful. We have the power those who came before us have given us, to move beyond the place where they were standing. We have the trees, and water, and sun, and our children. ... We are making the future..." - Audre Lorde

Beyond Civilization

Now that we are into the new year, I want to head back to my Survival Resources thread, but first, I want to ask: why are we interested in surviving? As in, what are we working toward? What are we surviving for?

Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn is a fascinating, thought-provoking, infuriating book. I agree with the basic thrust of what the author is saying and disagree with many parts. It is definitely worth reading, particularly if you are thinking about where to go beyond this capitalist, hierarchical, industrial society. Quinn subtitles his book, 'Humanity's Next Great Adventure'.

He is particularly taken with Richard Dawkin's book, The Selfish Gene, and his idea of memes. A meme is a concept or belief which is a social/cultural building block that has a life of its own. Daniel Quinn believes that what keeps civilization going is a bunch of memes, which include "Civilization must continue at ANY cost and must not be abandoned under ANY circumstance.", "Ours is the one RIGHT way for people to live and everyone should live like us.", and "Civilization is humanity's ULTIMATE invention and can never be surpassed." To counter these, he proposes a different meme, "Something BETTER than civilization is waiting for us." (I like this--it reminds me of "Another world is possible.")

Although Quinn says clearly "There is no one right way for people to live", he also clearly advocates living tribally, saying that this is the way that human beings haved lived for millions of years and that this works better than our current 'civilization'. He claims that the Maya, the Olmec, the Hohokam, and the Anasazi all tried some version of civilization and then abandoned it. He sees tribalism as a 'social organization' which functions without hierarchy--which is something that I find very appealing. He also sees most circuses (especially the small ones) as an example of a tribal organization. His definition of a tribe is "A tribe is a coalition of people working together as equals to make a living." (I think this definition might surprise some hunter-gatherers who might not think that 'making a living' was their reason for working together--or living together.)

I like Daniel Quinn's unorthodox approach to homelessness: instead of rousting the homeless out of makeshift refuges and into 'shelters' that don't work for most of them, we should 'Let them house themselves'. (A great line: "Don't try to drive the homeless into places we find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable.") Quinn also sees allowing the homeless to flourish in an environment of their choosing as "the first great movement of people to that social and economic no man's land I call 'beyond civilization'."

One of the things that makes this book both easy to read and more than a bit disconcerting is the fact that it is divided into page long little sections, a lot of which gradually unfold ideas, a bit at a time and rather chaotically. But, as it unfolds, there is a lot of useful stuff in this book.

On the other hand, Daniel Quinn seems to have an antipathy for 'communes' (which is, as anyone who has read a bunch of this blog would know, a particular passion of mine). He claims that "Yes, a commune can definitely be a tribe; it's just a problematic way to begin." This is because Quinn's definition of 'a tribe' is about making a living. Using this definition he says "it will be luck rather than design if they actually have some occupational interests and skills in common." He also rejects the idea of the Amish as a tribe because "If you apply for membership, they'll be much more interested in your religious beliefs and your moral character than in your agricultural ambitions." It's not that I don't think that there can be tribal businesses such as circuses (I think that Mr. Quinn is on target there) but I don't think that's the only way to build a tribe, anymore than there's one right way to live.

Still, for those who want to build something new, 'a World that Works for Everyone', this is an important read. Now back to Survival Resources.

Quote of the Day: "Daniel Quinn teaches that no single person is going to save the world. Rather (if it's saved at all), it will be saved by millions (and ultimately billions) of us living a new way." - Daniel Quinn

Sprouts!

I recently helped lead a presentation on sprouting. I've been sprouting regularly for nearly two years now--fenugreek, alfalfa, and clover seeds, and adzuki beans. It's fun, it's easy, and it's a great way to get fresh, healthy food--especially in the winter time.

One of the things that got me started doing this was realizing that while it's easy to find fresh, local greens and other veggies at farmer's markets and the co-op in the summer and fall, here in New England it's tricky to find fresh and local in the winter and early spring. But sprouting is something that you can do year-round.

There is lots of information available online about sprouting. (Here are three different sites, all with basic information on sprouting.)

Some simple directions:

All you need are seeds, a container, air, and water.

Seeds: As I said, I have been doing fenugreek, alfalfa, clover, and adzuki. I've also done 'Green Channa' and chick peas/garbanzos. But you can do broccoli, radish, lentils, kamut, mung beans, etc, etc. You can even do things like buckwheat, sunflower seeds, and flax seed--but these are a lot harder. Learn the easy seeds first and then you can try the ones with the more complicated sprouting. You can also sprout mixes of seeds--for example, alfalfa, clover, broccoli, and radish. Again I would try simple, one type together sprouting first.

Containers: Glass jars are the best (canning jars are great) but I have done it in plastic containers and most sites suggest doing them in bags as well. It's also possible to sprout seeds in trays and some stores sell special sprouting trays. Of course, you can also raid your neighbor's recycling bin for any widemouth glass jars they might be tossing out and get a free source of sprouting containers that way.

Air: Sprouts need air (just like any other living thing) and will die in a closed container. There are special sprouting lids, but you can use a cut piece of fiberglass screen held over the mouth of the jar with an elastic band (which is mostly what I do). You can also punch holes in the lid of the container. (Just make sure that the holes are smaller than the size of the seeds.) The sprouting bags need to be able to let air and water in and out but hold in the seeds.

Water: Sprouts also need fresh, clean water. Right from your tap is fine. I wouldn't use rainwater unless it was sterilize or you absolutely knew it was clean, because any micro-organisms in the water could end up on the sprouts and make you sick.

The process:

1) Soak the seeds, for at least eight hours. I usually leave them overnight. Just fill the container with a good amount of seeds and add enough water so that the seeds are covered by about an inch of water. (Nothing is exact here, but you want enough water so that the seeds or whatever can't just soak it all up overnight.) Here is where the perforated top comes in handy--just turn over the covered jar after they have soaked long enough and drain out the water. Rinse the seeds. Do NOT use this water for plants. The reason for the soaking is to remove growth inhibitors from the seeds and using this water for your plants (for example) will inhibit the growth of the plants.

2) Let the container drain. It should basically be upside down at an angle (roughly 45 degrees). I stick the containers upside in a bowl to drain. You don't want them straight upside down or the top will be covered and won't let them drain--not to mention not letting air in or out.

3) Rinse a couple of times a day--more often in hot weather. I try to remember to rinse them in the morning when I get up and before I go to bed at night. But I find the sprouts very forgiving. I often forget and they turn out fine anyway. (Incidentally, you can water plants with the water from later rinses.)

4) They are ready to eat in anywhere from two to ten days. When the sprouts are obvious, you can try eating them. I just wait until my adzukis grow little tails. For my fenugreek, alfalfa, and clover, I wait until they are green. I like eating fresh grown green things in the winter.

In the summer, if they are grown and have been out a while you may want to refrigerate them the way you would any fresh food.

And that's it. An easy source of fresh food.


(Note: I am aware that I'm currently going all over the place with my posts. I post on what I am inspired to at the moment. There is always--as far as I'm concerned--some relation to social transformation, from changing ourselves, to growing our food, to weatherizing our houses, to looking at the big social change picture. As I say on the side there, 'It's all connected.')


Quote of the Day: "Sprouts are very inexpensive (even when organic), always fresh (they grow until you chew them) and have the potential to help solve hunger and malnutrition problems in our communities and in developing countries, because they are so rich in nutrients, affordable, and easy to transport before sprouting. Sprouts are precious in winter, when the quality of fresh fruits and vegetables is declining as their price increases.
"... sprouts nourish and strengthen the whole body..." - Lucie Desjarlais

Out of the Darkness

This is the time of Halloween, of Día de los Muertos, of All Saints and All Souls Days, the time the Pagans call Samhain. I blogged last year on Darkness in my post of 11/1/08--in it I talked about 'death, disorder, and decay', and entropy. Another aspect of darkness is fertility: the deep, dark earth where seeds germinate and the darkness of the womb where life is nurtured. Darkness allows us to see things (the lights of candles, holiday lights, and especially the stars) that we can't see during the day.

In that spirit, I want to talk about my month off from blogging. As I said in my post of 9/22/09, after five months of intensive posting every three days, I wanted some time off to do other things. So I didn't post anything during October.

Unfortunately, one of the main things I did during the month of October was to work on the second issue of my Zine, which was originally supposed to have come out at the autumn equinox. It is now at the printers and should be out next week. (The zine is called Bodhisattva Revolutionaries and Social Alchemists and issue is entitled 'What I Believe'--it is basically a republishing of my posts from last fall with a little new material. Check the link for more information.)

But I didn't spend all my time working on the zine. I helped work on a house in Boston (the JPGreenHouse) that is being rehabbed to be very low energy use (I will blog on this at some point); watched Michael Moore's Capitalism with my housemates and The Greening of Southie at the Somerville Library; took little classes on energy use, wormbins, seed saving, and insight meditation; and helped out with the Massachusetts Relocatization Conference and the Boston Under Water Festival that took place on October 24 as part of the International Day of Climate Change. Don't think that I was doing exciting things, however. I did cleaning and taking nails out of boards at the JPGreenHouse, sat at the registration table at the Relocalization Conference, and taped up some sagging signs and helped with the clean up at the Boston Under Water Festival. But I think the important thing is to support people who are doing things that move us in a more progressive direction.

And, as I said in my post of 9/22/09, my goal for the next little while is to do what most people do in their blogs--to post irregularly, on whatever strikes my fancy. I will probably pick another theme and explore it at some point (hopefully the series on education that I have been promising since the early days of this blog) but for now I want to focus on my own learning and doing. Winter is coming, a good time to turn inward, and I intend to spend it nuturing myself and my work on community building. Hopefully, the darkness of winter will be nourishing and spring will see me working on many things--among them, my garden, this blog, and building a community. And, of course, I will continue to try to support social change efforts in whatever little way that I can.


Quote of the Day: "... perhaps it is up to us all ... to reach into the dark and reshape it into a clear night sky where we can walk without fear, into a well of healing from which we can all drink, into the velvet skin of life, the newly fertile ground." - Starhawk

Weaving the Threads Together

I started this blog claiming that 'it's all connected'. For the last few months, I've been laying out my own theories of social change. Now let me show how they're all connected.

I began by explaining I was trying to get a clear sense of what my politics were. I came up with the realization that I want a world that supports Simplicity, Equality, Community & Cooperation, and Sustainability. But I also enjoy Complexity, Diversity, Individuality, and Practicality. I've spent a number of posts showing how this was not so much a contradiction, as a case of complementality: Complexity evolves from Simplicity--and can actually support Simplicity; Equality and Diversity are both needed--and, in small systems, we can have both; Community and Individuality are interrelated and enhance each other; and Sustainable has to be Practical just as Practical needs to be Sustainable.

I then talked about a strategy that I called SLoDBN--building Small and Local and evolving Decentralized Bioregional Networks. I've recently realized a better acronym might be SLoBiND--going from the Small and Local to the Bioregional by Networking in a Decentralized way. Something I like about this acronym is that it describes the process--slowly binding it all together.

While talking about SLoDBN, I pointed out its relation to SECS--Small and Simple, Local Communities, Decentralized Equally, Bioregionally Sustainable, and Networked Cooperatively. It's also interesting that as I laid out my SLoBiND strategy, I kept referring to earlier posts when I was talking about other people's theories. I think most of them support this way of thinking. Complexity theory, which I talked a lot about early on, particularly supports the bottom up nature of SLoBiNDing. Looking at my post of 9/20/08, where I wove together the theories I had covered, I pointed out: "Complexity theory... suggests small systems built from the bottom up, using cooperation and networking, and allowing solutions to emerge from our collective creativity, the way new behavior often emerges from living systems." I think this is one way of viewing the SLoBiND strategy.

Now let's see this in action.


Quote of the day: "Whenever we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." — John Muir
Word (or phrase) of the day: Earth-Crunchy Dyke
Hero(es) of the day: I.F. Stone

SLoDBN Resources

In reality, most of these catagories overlap. I will start with resources on Small and Local--and even there some of the resources also talk about Decentralization.

First of all is the book, Small is Beautiful, by E. F. Schumacher, with the wonderful subtitle, 'Economics as if People Mattered'.

There is also an E. F. Schumacher Society in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, that focuses on "Linking people, land, and community by building local economies".

In my Going Local post of 7/26/08, I reviewed three books that were all focused on local economic efforts: Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael Shuman, Making a Place for Community: Local Politics in a Global Era by Thad Williamson, Gar Alperovitz, and David Imbroscio, and America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy by Gar Alperovitz. (See that post for more.)

The term 'relocalization' has been popularized by the Post Carbon Institute, which sponsors the Relocalization Network, as well as a website focused on urban issues called Post Carbon Cities. Another group that sponsors websites with a small, local orientation is an organization called Community Service. One of the sites is called, in fact, Small, Local Community. They also have a site called Community Solutions.

The book The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, first mentioned in my 'Catalysts and Network Weavers' post of 8/31/08, is a good resource about Decentralization. A blog with a lot of information on decentralization, both for guerrilla warfare and resilient communities, is Global Guerrillas, which I have mentioned in a few posts back in August (8/13 and 8/31).

There are a bunch of websites with definitions of and information about Bioregionalism, including the Great River Earth Institute, The Digger Archives, Green Anarchy, The Co-Intelligence Institute, and bioregionalism.com (which is actually focused on the coast of Southern California). A couple of classic books on bioregionalism are Home! A Bioregional Reader edited by Van Andruss, Judith Plant, Christopher Plant and Eleanor Wright, and Dwellers on the Land by Kirkpatrick Sale.

As far as Networking goes, the paper "Building Smart Communities through Network Weaving" by Valdis Krebs and June Holley and their Network Weaving site are two of the more useful things I've found. Also check out my post on 'Clustering and Coping' (8/13/08).

I also want to point to several other blogs advocating what I think is a SLoDBN viewpoint. The Archdruid Report offers useful critiques of the process as well as some guideposts along the way. Albert Bates' site, The Great Change also offers ideas and perspectives in this vein. But, if I'm right, SLoDBN work is happening all over. Some blogs that support this approach include Murph and Freeacres' Trout Clan Campfire, RAS's My Flight From the Grid, and SoapBoxTech's blog, SoapBoxTech. They (along others trying to live in this fashion, such as undacova mutha) give me hope that there really is a SLoDBN movement.



Quote of the day: "The undeniable trend of these past forty years has not been toward larger and more consolidated arrangements but, everywhere in the world, toward smaller and more decentralized ones. ... What is so interesting in this amazing process is the clear expression of the bioregional idea." - Kirkpatrick Sale
Word (or phrase) of the day: Rising Tide
Hero(es) of the day: Elizabeth Margaret Chandler

Relocalization

Beginning Small means we look around ourselves and start Locally.

The quote "Think Globally, Act Locally" has been a major inspiration to me. We need to have the big picture in our minds, but we also need to do the work in our own neighborhood, town, village, district, community. Way back in July, I wrote a post on 'Going Local' (7/26/08), basically a review of three books with themes of local development. The books focused on local economic efforts, but we also need local food strategies, the local production of energy, in fact, thinking about how we can meet most of our needs from what is around us. I referred to this in my post on 'Convergence' (9/20/08), saying that "...we need to have many small, local groups each building something that makes sense in their community." (I've also talked about the local food movements in my post on 'Feeding Ourselves in the Future'--7/24/08.)

A term that is being used now for the return to local strategies is 'relocalization'. (In fact, 'Relocalization' was the first 'Word (or phrase) of the day' in my first post.) The Relocalization Network defines 'Relocalization' as "...a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy, and goods, and the local development of currency, governance, and culture." (Here's the full explanation.) For me 'relocalization' means we put the emphasis back on our local communities. What can we build there? What is already there that we can support? How can we connect the resources around us? Relocalization is about Community, the wider community around us.

If you want to create social change, start where you are.


Quote of the Day: "Relocalization may be a new term, but conceptually it has long roots. Some related recent precursors include ... the 'anti-globalization' movement, the 'slow food' movement, the 'voluntary simplicity' movement, the 'back to the land' movement, 'new urbanism,' and the 'environmental movement.' In general, common themes include decentralization of political and economic structures, less material consumption and pollution, a focus on the quality of relationships, culture and the environment as sources of fulfillment, and downscaling of infrastructural development." - Jason Bradford
Word (or phrase) of the day: Underwater Mortgage
Hero(es) of the day: Phil Ochs

SLoDBN

So how do we do it? How can we create what I call a SECSy world--a world where SECS balances out CDIP? (If you can't understand that, review my last dozen or so posts.)

If you read much of the posts I wrote prior to this SECS/CDIP sequence, the answer won't suprise you. I call it SLoDBN, and it's a strategy to build a better world from the ground up. SLoDBN (pronounced Slow-D-B-N) stands for Small, Local, Decentralized, Bioregional, and Networked. Once again, I will go over each of these pieces in their own post so I can adequately cover each one.


Quote of the day: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." — Henry David Thoreau
Word (or phrase) of the day: Husbear
Hero(es) of the day: Mala Zimetbaum

Convergence

So, where am I going with all this? Before I go on to my own theories, I want to review some of what I've covered and look for common threads.

I'm certainly not going to recap all 46 of my previous posts. But let me talk about a few of the theorists that I've covered, specifically: Michael Albert/Robin Hahnel, Bill Mollison/David Holmgren (the permaculture folks), Frijof Capra, Richard Heinberg, John Michael Greer, Frances Moore Lappé (and daughter Anna), and Starhawk. That's a bunch of folks who are coming at things from a few different angles. What are the commonalities?

First, none of these folks takes a simple, 'I've got the answer' approach to the problem. They are clear that we are dealing with a complex set of issues and need a multifaceted way toward solutions (definitely plural). Albert and Hahnel come close with their Parecon economic model, but emphasize that it is just a part of the change they want to see and we will need to look at family, governance, and cultural issues as part of creating a new society. Mollison and Holmgren also can seem to have a single solution, but they would be the first to say that permaculture is a flexible way of looking at things, and not an answer. Heinberg emphasizes Peak Oil (or, as he puts it, Peak Everything) but also looks at climate change and lack of community. Again, relocalization is a direction and not a solution. Greer tries to provide a broad perspective on all this and emphasizes that change is going to be a long term process and we need to have various ways of looking at things. It's probably not an accident that he and Starhawk come from branches of pagan (earth-centered spirituality) but are reaching out to people with much different beliefs to build new social structures. Starhawk, herself, looks at issues from patriarchal power to global capitalism, and is involved with everything from permaculture to direct action. The Lappés look at issues about food, fear, and democracy, focusing on what people can do and are doing. And Capra, who started off in new age physics, is trying to use an ecological framework to look at everything from economics to medicine--while pointing out a variety of alternatives.

These writers offer a variety of tools: political theory, participatory economics, permaculture, complexity theory, and a wide vision of history. What can we learn from it all?

Albert and Hahnel offer an analysis of the connections between various movements (Socialists, Feminists, Anarchist, 'Nationalists') as well as an economic model (Parecon) that creates an equitable distribution of labor and earnings. Mollison and Holmgren have created a framework for both sustainable agriculture and a sustainable society. Richard Heinberg has analyzed the depletion of oil, gas, and most minerals, and offers a possible future without them. John Michael Greer puts similar information in a long term historical context and plays with what history can tell us about creating a sustainable future. He also points out alternative ways of framing the current situation. Frijof Capra begins by looking at new scientific theories about evolution, ecology, and life and shows what they can tell us about our situation and possible options for the future. The Lappés look at movements worldwide in an effort to make it clear that we can challenge the system and it's mostly our own belief that stop us. Starhawk uses her feminist, earth-centered spiritual perspective to analyze not only the current system, but our reactions to it, to examine alternatives and possible directions.

If there is one point of agreement between these authors (and there actually may be several), it's that the present system isn't sustainable. They all offer alternatives and most of them agree that we need small, local solutions--as do other people such as Steven Johnson, John Robb, Rob Hopkins, Valdis Krebs and June Holley, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, and even Matt Ridley. (Albert and Hahnel are just about the only exception--they often challenge 'Decentralized Community Economics', mostly regarding allocation issues--but, as I mentioned, the economic system at the Twin Oaks community could be thought of as a similar to Parecon, only a unique, small-scale version of it. It will be important, at some point, to look at the allocation issues the Parecon people raise and examine what it means to network small groups. I think alternatives such as 'Fair Trade' may be useful here. It's a point many of the small systems people haven't thought through.)

I think of the slogan: "Think globally, act locally"; we need to have the big picture of what we are doing and why, but we need to have many small, local groups each building something that makes sense in their community. To use Starhawk's formulation: "...in a diverse world we may need a spectrum of systems to fully fit each unique set of circumstances." (She and Frances Moore Lappé remind us that there's no one right way. I am inspired by the Lappés' 'Liberating Idea': "Busting free from 'isms,' creating the path as we walk." As I said from the beginning, there just isn't a big, grand answer.) Complexity theory, which I allude to frequently and Capra builds on explicitly, suggests small systems built from the bottom up, using cooperation and networking, and allowing solutions to emerge from our collective creativity, the way new behavior often emerges from living systems. This is what Tom Atlee refers to as 'CoIntelligence', this is what John Robb's 'Catalysts' and Krebs and Holley's 'Network Weavers' do, this is Steven Johnson's 'Coping' groups, this is "creating the path as we walk". This is hard work.

It requires a lot of faith in people, which is difficult at times. Education, particularly in critical thinking, needs to be a piece of this--this is the "Think globally" part. I know that there are lots of folks out there working on building alternatives, but we need more. I wish I could get more people in the mainstream to read Albert, Hahnel, Heinberg, Capra, Greer, Starhawk, and the Lappés, and familiarize themselves with peak oil and permaculture and network weaving and resilient communities and complex adaptive systems. Probably we just need to get the ideas out there; they're a lot more important than the particular authors. But how to make people see that change is needed and make them aware of more of the alternatives?

I will talk about education and critical thinking at some point, but continuing with theory, I will spend some time on my vision of where we need to go.

Quote of the day: "...any future vision which can can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve." - Audre Lorde
Word (or phrase) of the day: Communitarianism
Hero(es) of the day: Sister Dianna Ortiz

Boycott Corporate America!

It's probably not possible now, but someday I'd like to see a massive boycott of all the big corporations. Corporate capitalism tears at the fabric of community.

A couple of years ago I discovered that Lightlife, a little company that I remembered as fondly as the TempehWorks from the days when I lived in Greenfield, MA, was now a division of ConAgra, which is one of the largest food companies in the US with a record of health code and worker safety violations. Before that, I was horrified when the major distributor to food coops in New England, Northeast Cooperatives, sold itself (with a lot of angst), to United Natural Foods, Inc, "the largest publicly traded wholesale distributor to the natural and organic foods industry". As someone who was involved in a buying club at the times, we soon learned that UNFI was more interested in supplying the major chains (Whole Foods and Wild Oats--which have since merged) than little co-ops.

What about all the save-the-planet businesses of the '80s and '90s? Most of those hip capitalist, change-the-world-by-buying-our-product, organic/all-natural, alternative businesses have been bought out by the big megacorporations (although they seldom advertise it): Ben & Jerry's is owned by Unilever, Tom's of Maine is owned by Colgate-Palmolive, The Body Shop is owned by L'Oréal, Stonyfield Farm is owned by Groupe Danone (who also make Dannon Yogurt), Cascadian Farm organic foods is owned by General Mills (which is probably why they have so much sugar in their products), and Kashi is owned by Kelloggs. Some of the 'alternatives' not taken over by the mainstream, such as the Hain-Celestial group and Whole Foods, act like very much like the other big corporations--and have to, in order to survive in the corporate world. And then there's Trader Joe's, owned by the family trust of a German merchant associated with the Aldi worldwide chain of stores.

Most of the medium size supermarket chains that once covered the US are gone--though some still keep the old names. When I look at the supermarket situation in New England (where I live) I find: Shaws and Star Market are owned by SuperValu, which owns over 2500 food (or food and drug) stores around the US and is primary distributor for another couple of thousand; Stop & Shop is owned by Ahold, a Dutch giant supermarket operator; and Hannaford is owned by the Belgium food group, Delhaize. I'm sure it's the same in most parts of the US--or the world.

But there are alternatives. My post on 'Feeding Ourselves in the Future' (7/24/08) talks about CSAs and farmer's markets and community gardens--not to mention producer co-ops such as Organic Valley and Cabot Creamery, and food co-ops and family run markets. These are some real alternatives (at least in the food industry--the Lappés also discuss these and more alternatives--see my last three posts).

Meanwhile, as much as possible I try to buy stuff from co-ops and little businesses--or make it myself. I make my own toothpaste from a recipe I got off the internet--basically baking soda, salt, and glycerin, with a little flavoring. (But I do use a commercial/new age toothpaste for my last brushing of the day, so I get a little flouride on my teeth.) I use a deodorant powder that I make from baking soda and corn starch (and little bits of coriander and other spices). (Yeah, I'm probably keeping Arm & Hammer in business, but at least they use cardboard packaging.)

I buy most of my food from the local food co-op. When I don't get it from there I try to buy from Mom-and-Pop stores--and I try to patronize our local farmer's market. (Plus, we are growing a teeny bit of our own food. I hope to have a bigger garden next year.)

(Outside of food stuff, I try to get things at thrift shops, so they are not newly manufactured. I particularly like thrift stores that support good causes.)

Above all, I try to think of how I can support small, local businesses. My little bit is hardly noticed by any major corporations, but it does support little companies that I think make a difference. And that is, I think, the best we can do right now. Everytime you buy something at a co-op, farmer's market, small business, etc, you keep real alternatives going--alternatives that may be quite useful when the global corporations encounter peak oil...


Quote of the day: "Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility." - Ambrose Bierce
Word (or phrase) of the day: Coevolution
Hero(es) of the day: Rachel Carson

Going Local

In this era of globalization, it's nice to see that some authors are focusing on local economic efforts. Three books in particular have caught my attention: Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael Shuman, Making a Place for Community: Local Politics in a Global Era by Thad Williamson, Gar Alperovitz, and David Imbroscio, and America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy by Gar Alperovitz. It's probably not an accident that all these authors are associated with the Institute for Policy Studies, and that Making a Place for Community frequently sites Going Local, and America Beyond Capitalism cites both of the previous books.

The theme of all three books is that local economic alternatives, including community- and municipally-owned corporations, help build stable communities and, as Alperovitz points out in America Beyond Capitalism, create more more democratic ownership of wealth. The books cover a lot of alternatives, including employee-ownership, worker-run businesses, cooperatives, community development corporations, and land trusts. Both Going Local and Making a Place for Community have extensive resource lists in their appendices: Shuman calls his 'Around the World Economy in 80 Ways'; the appendix in Making a Place for Community is more simply entitled 'Resources for Rebuilding'. The amount of information in these books is incredible and very useful.

But that may be the main problem with at least two of these books. While they each do some evaluating, in their attempts to be comprehensive, all three of them almost seem more like catalogs than well argued works. While having so much information is useful, reading these books is almost numbing at times, as they list one local economic enterprise after another. These books are wonderful resources, but I'd like to find some works that critically evaluate community-based economic experiments--what works, what doesn't, and what could be connected to build regional economic networks. Alperovitz does devote a couple of chapters in America Beyond Capitalism to 'The Regional Restructuring of the American Continent', but rather than just listing a few regional structures, he needs to flesh out what is possible if his 'Pluralistic Commonwealth' is going to be more than just another idea.

On the other hand, Going Local gets prescriptive in its last chapter. Michael Shuman ends his book with suggestions and ideas of where to go with all this. Among other things, he includes 'Ten Steps Toward Community Self-Reliance', starting with 'A Community Bill of Rights' and ending with 'Interlocalism' (and including things like 'Community Currency' and 'A Lobby for Localism'). While I think all of these books are worth reading, if only to learn how much local and cooperative organizing is going on, Going Local may be the most useful of the three. It may also be worth owning both Going Local and Making a Place for Community to have both of these comprehensive appendices on hand.


Quote of the day: "A new commitment to going local would mark a dramatic shift in the economic-development strategy of almost every city in America. It's a strategy that will unify people of many political stripes. Talk with the heads of Chambers of Commerce and the leaders of progressive social movements, and you will find that both are livid about being misled and sold out by the promises of disloyal corporations." - Michael Shuman
Word (or phrase) of the day: Libertarian Municipalism
Hero(es) of the day: Thomas Merton

Feeding Ourselves in the Future

In 1977, Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins published a book called Food First. One of the points of the title was that while there are many issues to consider, food is a priority. After air and water, food may be the next most important thing for our survival.

If the peakniks are right, if industrial civilization collapses, making sure that people will be fed will be a major issue. And, even if the peakniks are wrong, if we are going to try to create some sort of alternative system, we will still have to feed people.

Some parts of an alternative food system are actually in place now. Like farmers. We don't need agribusiness--megafarms and the Green Revolution aren't going to help us come the collapse or the revolution. What we want are small-scale farmers, family farmers.

So how can we support them now? And how can we get as many of them as possible to grow their food organically? Not because it's cool and groovy, but because it's better for us and because when oil gets too pricy, farmers won't be able to afford the pesticides and fertilizers.

One way to support small farms is farmer's markets. Most cities have them these days. The Local Harvest website has a farmer's market locator. One way to support your local farmers is to support your local farmer's market. Shop there.

Another way to support farmers is Community Supported Agriculture, also known as CSAs. CSAs are a European creation that came to the US in the 1980s. With CSAs, individuals and families can become "shareholders" in a farm, by paying a yearly membership fee, and in return receive an often weekly (during the growing season) share of what the farm is harvesting. The members get fresh food and help support the farm and the farmers can focus on growing the food and not have to worry about marketing and financial concerns. The USDA has a website devoted to CSAs with much more information and there is also a CSA locator on the Local Harvest website.

The farmers themselves can form producer co-operatives. While some agricultural cooperatives, such as Land O'Lakes, Ocean Spray, Sun-Maid, and Sunkist, have become agribusinesses unto themselves, often forgetting their local roots in an effort to gain a market share, others, such as Organic Valley and Cabot Creamery Cooperative, are proud of their 'farmer-owners' and co-operative structure.

The 'Eat Local' movement (aka locovores, locavores, localvores, or 'local heros') has been a strong supporter of small, local farms. These groups often advocate eating produce grown anywhere from 50 to 200 miles away. There is a 100 Mile Diet website that advocates their 'Diet' as a local-eating experiment. Noted author Barbara Kingsolver co-wrote a book with her husband and their daughter about their year of eating locally. Animal, Vegetable,
Miracle (website) has popularized the notion of eating locally, as has Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma (website) which looks at the food industry and the difference between organic food from Whole Foods (some originating in Argentina) and organic foods grown at a local farm.

Beyond supporting local farmer, it's worth supporting local vendors. If you go to the store, do you want to go to megafoods supermarket (and you may have no choice) or do you go to a little family run store--or your local food co-op? Megafoods is owned by a major corporation (possibly based on a different continent) and run by a corporate directorate. You can meet the owners of the family run market when you walk in the market. Or you can be one of the owners of the food co-op--most food co-ops are consumer co-operatives, owned and run by the people who shop there.

And then there's the possibility of growing some of your own food. There are literally hundreds of books on growing food from Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening to Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening--not to mention all the literature on permaculture (see my last post).

But what if you live in the city and don't have any land? There's always container gardening (Ohio State University , Texas A & M, and North Carolina State University all offer online resources). More importantly, there are community gardens where you can garden with your neighbors. In the US, the American Community Garden Association has a website where you can locate community gardens near you.

I'm fortunate to be living in Boston where there are lots of these types of resources, including one organization, the Food Project that teaches young people (often urban youth) to farm, helps local residents by providing raised beds for gardening and giving workshops on garden maintenance, has a CSA and contributes to Farmer's Markets, and has created a guide to local farms and farmer's markets. They see their mission as building a sustainable food system.

In essence, I think the long term goal is to build a sustainable food system. We need to find ways of networking small-scale farms, farmers markets, CSAs, producer co-ops, consumer co-ops, small family-run stores, community gardens, and the local food movement, to create lots of alternative food systems that are sustainable and can sustain us without agribusiness and when cheap fuel is not available.

Note: I was going to call this post 'Feeding the Future'--then I discovered that there is already a book by that name full of what looks like intriguing essays. (I know, I know, there was a 2006 Minnesota conference called 'Feeding Ourselves in the Future'--but I had to call this post something...)


Quote of the day: "Family farms are the engines for economic vitality, in both rural communities as well as urban areas that benefit from jobs created by vibrant local and regional food systems. ... The more we keep farming local, the stronger the community." -Willie Nelson
Word (or phrase) of the day: Pansexual
Hero(es) of the day: Starhawk