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Communities

A Dazzlingly Precious Gift From The Future

October 4, 2022 Rob Hopkins, Resilience. , , ,
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. ,
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 ,
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 , ,
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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