Communities

We Need A Culture-In-All-Policies Approach To Democracy

September 1, 2024 Jeremy Liu and John K. C. Liu, Next City. Strategize! Art, Communities, culture, Democracy

Culture, unlike democracy, is self-propelled and self-propagating: it is persistent, in ways that democracy strives to be; it is effusive in ways that democracy should be; it is practical, as democracy must always be; and it is critical, in ways democracy is too often not. In these ways, culture’s strength and importance to civic life is that it runs through everything; it is the warp to democracy’s weft. The growing recognition of Indigenous wisdom about place and its management are important to acknowledge in any discussion of place-based work. The “new” ideas of regenerative and permaculture agriculture can draw a lineage to Indigenous wisdom, for example.

Making Our Communities What They Need To Be

July 15, 2024 Steve Early, Resilience. Organize! Communities, Democracy, Infrastructure, Unions, Vermont, Water

The symbols of public-sector infrastructure are often associated with urban areas: major highways and subway systems, for instance; bridges and tunnels; large ports and airports; billions of gallons of fresh water to deliver and hundreds of tons of solid waste to cart away every day. Yet public works departments are no less important in rural areas, where municipal employees and their families, whether members of the National Education Association, the Firefighters union, or the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers (AFSCME), are dependent on the same community services they provide. In Middlebury, Vermont, the largest town in rural Addison County, 46-year-old Jeremy Rathbun is one of those public servants.

Social Currencies In Prosumer Communities And Networks

June 19, 2024 Roberto Spano, Resilience. Create! Anti-capitalism, Bartering, Communities, New Economy, Social Currencies

This practice consists of creating a community of prosumers who exchange products and services, creating a process of eco-social regeneration around the local economy, thanks to the exchange facilitator that is social currency. It serves to regenerate the local economy and local communities, to weave trust in the act of consumption, to weave the economy around local production and the real needs of communities and finally to support productive processes that are regenerative for the ecosystemic environment. In the communities and networks, different ways of exchange and social currencies are practised:

Democratizing Universities Would Supercharge Pro-Palestine Divestment

June 12, 2024 Akin Olla, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Communities, Democracy, Divestment, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Universities

The pro-Palestinian divestment movement has erupted across the country, after over a decade of bubbling and stirring under the guidance of organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. Students have built encampments, led walkouts and passed student government resolutions demanding that their universities cease investing their endowments in companies that uphold Israel’s genocidal apartheid system. Some student governments have even passed resolutions preventing their own budgets from being used to benefit Israel’s regime in any way. University of California Davis was the first to do so, blocking off its $20 million budget from genocide-supporting companies.

The Benefits Of Indivisible Reserves And Their Connection To Communities

May 28, 2024 Bruce J. Reynolds, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Capital, Communities, Cooperative Principles, Cooperatives

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) issued a restatement of cooperative principles in 1995 that included the idea of indivisible reserves in its third principle as a discretionary option for cooperatives. When cooperatives build financial reserves, they may specify a certain share or all of it as indivisible, in other words, not transferrable to members. For cooperatives with indivisible reserves, closures of these businesses or acquisitions by private investors, would result in transfers of these designated capital funds to other cooperatives or to organizations supporting their communities. The ICA’s inclusion of indivisible reserves has an implicit connection to its seventh principle, Concern for Community.

There’s A Better Way To Make Communities Safer

April 4, 2024 Mel Duncan, Waging Nonviolence. Create! Communities, Community Safety, Nonviolence, Peaceforce

Over the past 25 years, as co-creator of Nonviolent Peaceforce, I have seen unarmed civilian protection (also known as UCP or UCP/A to include the methodology of accompaniment) evolve to the point where our teams have worked alongside local communities using evidenced-based, civilian-led approaches to prevent violence and protect civilians in 15 countries. In helping to foster a community of practice, I have witnessed dozens of small and large organizations using active nonviolent methods to create community safety. Here are three examples I find to be particularly inspiring.

How Community Energy Initiatives Can Be An Effective Tool For Degrowth

October 23, 2023 Mariana Villegas-Mendoza, Resilience. Create! climate crisis, Communities, Degrowth, Energy

The consensus among scientists is resounding: climate change poses a grave threat to both human wellbeing and the overall health of our planet. We need to dramatically cut down on emissions across all sectors and industries, with bold actions in this decade. This process must be fair and prioritize equity, inclusion, climate and environmental justice, and social justice. At its heart, this process calls for a reevaluation of our approach to “development”. It is evident that ceaseless economic growth driven by capitalism is neither sustainable nor desirable in the long run. Instead, we should strive to downsize our patterns of production and consumption in a way that prioritizes human wellbeing, ensuring that everyone can thrive.

The US Moneyless Economy Is Booming

September 8, 2023 April M. Short, In These Times. Create! Communities, Consumerism, Free Stores, Recycling

Humans have a serious stuff problem. We keep making and buying new things when most of the time we could find those things in great condition, secondhand. Instead, we’re making trash at such a rate that an unfathomable 40 percent of the ocean’s surface is now covered in trash islands, and there is literally more than a ton of trash for each one of the 8 billion people on this planet (9 billion tons, and growing). If these heaps of waste (the lion’s share of which is produced by corporations rather than individual households) aren’t mortifying enough to drive people toward the free economy of reuse, maybe the lack of a price tag is — especially given the staggering wealth gap and cost-of-living crisis in the United States.

New Report: The Dollar Store Invasion

March 6, 2023 Stacy Mitchell, Kennedy Smith, and Susan Holmberg, Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Educate! Communities, Dollar Store, Finance and the Economy, Poverty

Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar are targeting vulnerable communities, opening stores at a breakneck pace in urban and rural areas alike. It’s tempting to assume that these chains simply fill a need in cash-strapped places. But the evidence suggests that dollar stores are not merely byproducts of economic distress; they are a cause of it. Through predatory tactics, the dollar chains are killing off grocery stores and other local businesses, leaving communities with fewer jobs, diminished access to basic goods, and dimmer prospects for overall well-being. As these losses mount, dollar stores are facing a rising tide of grassroots opposition.

Community Broadband’s Broad Appeal

December 19, 2022 Luke Gannon and Reggie Rucker, Institute For Local Self-Reliance. Create! Communities, Community Broadband, Internet, Internet Access

Fairlawn, Ohio - There is a recent story out of Fairlawn, Ohio that perfectly illustrates the future of Internet access in this country. For years, the small town was at the whims of large, incumbent Internet providers. The Internet was so slow and unreliable that businesses threatened to relocate, jeopardizing the economic vitality of the area. The mayor, alongside city leaders and council members, realized that the various incumbent providers were not going to cooperate, and to save their city, they would need to build their own city-wide fiber-to-the-home network. On this episode of Building Local Power, Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative, and Sean Gonsalves, Senior Reporter and Editor, explain how, in the 5-plus years since the deployment of its city-wide network, “Fairlawn is doing so well [that] they are now boosting speeds and slashing prices.”

A Dazzlingly Precious Gift From The Future

October 4, 2022 Rob Hopkins, Resilience. Create! Car-Free Community, Communities, Germany, Walkable Cities

The Vauban, Freiburg, Germany - During my talks, I often invite people to time travel in their imagination to a 2030 that’s not utopia, or dystopia, but rather is the result of our having done everything we could possibly have done in those intervening years. We do it because, as Walidah Imarisha puts it, “we can’t build what we can’t imagine”. Unless we cultivate longing for such a future, it will never happen. In spite of having done that exercise now over 100 times, the responses are pretty much always the same. “The birdsong is louder”. “There are far less cars”. “The air smells so much cleaner”. “The streets are full of kids playing”. “There is a strong sense of community”. It’s exciting then to be able to announce that this week I actually managed a spectacular feat of time travel to visit the future they dream of in that exercise, immersing myself in its magic and its deliciousness, with all my senses.

A Roadmap For High-Trust Communities

July 12, 2022 Richard D. Bartlett, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Communities, Trust

Fabian mentioned Enspiral. So that's where I wanted to start my story, is this really high-trust community. And that word community is really overused, maybe, or is overloaded with different definitions. So, for me, my experience of the Enspiral community is what I have in mind when I talk about community, it's within that group. I found people that I can call up and say, "Hey, I need to borrow $1,000 'cause my car has exploded." And they say, "Sure." You know, that sort of like instantaneous, no questions asked, "I'm here to support you in a practical way.". I also found people who were willing to go along with my weird ideas, and collaborate, and test out until we find out, "Yes, we do have a business here. Yes, we're going to have a startup and I've got my co-founders ready to roll."

The Challenge For Communities To Rise And Take Care Of Their Own

July 27, 2018 Chris Winters, Yesmagazine.org Strategize! Communities, New Economy

As the federal government abandons its responsibilities, it will be up to the states, the cities, the communities, and the people to rebuild a unified state. Amid all of the news coming out of the Trump administration in the past couple of weeks, one vision stands out: a disintegrating federal government. If that happens, what’s next? If the stakes weren’t so high, we could enjoy the opportunity to debate the limits of federalism all over again. How much power should the federal government have vis-à-vis the states? That debate is as old as the republic. But a series of events is making this an existential question. President Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon once spelled it out in plain language: Trump sought nothing less than the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

Change That Starts With Communities

February 4, 2017 Rob Hopkins and Cormac Russell, www.resilience.org Strategize! Change, Communities, Education

By Rob Hopkins and Cormac Russell for Resilience - After Hurricane Sandy, Noam Chomsky was critical of Occupy Sandy, who often reached communities before the first responders, saying this is a terrible idea because this is exactly what neo-liberals want, for us all to do everything so they can make the government even smaller. How do you view that tension? Chomsky’s version of reality is obviously highly respected but I’m going to have to part company with him. I think government, and even more evolved welfare states (I was in Denmark last week for three days), clearly at their best are an extension of us, not a replacement for us. It’s important to say that there are certain things that individuals, families and communities can do that are irreplaceable...

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