Community

The Beauty, Challenges, And Potential Of Living In Ecocommunity

September 14, 2023 Erik Assadourian, Resilience. Create! Community, Ecocommunity, Environment, Sustainability

In 2007, while studying sustainable communities for a chapter on the subject for State of the World 2008, I had the chance to visit several ecovillages. But none stood out like the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Surrounded by car-centric city sprawl, it was a tiny little oasis of green—literally and figuratively, with it being populated by many environmental activists. It was inspiring to meet them and learn about their efforts, and I daydreamed about what would happen if there was a little urban ecovillage in every city incubating citywide change, catalyzing human-centric infrastructure changes, teaching permaculture techniques, and so on.

We Did Not Evolve To Be Selfish; We Can Choose How Our Cultures Evolve

August 24, 2023 April M. Short, ZNet. Educate! Community, culture, Evolution, History, livable future

Ours is a critical time in the cultural evolution of humanity that is likely to shape our long-term future, or lack thereof. As a species, we have been on a self-destructive trajectory that has led us to our current polycrisis of unlivable economic conditions, worsening climate disasters, and the potential of an unspeakably devastating war, as the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 puts it. The changes we all need to make, if we want subsequent generations to enjoy life, will most likely require big shifts toward improving connections with each other and the planet, and away from extraction and individualism.

Activating The Unrealised Potential Of Care Networks

August 12, 2023 Luke Tanner, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Community, Health Care, Pandemic, The Commons

Most care services use a ‘Deliveroo’ service model: Individual care workers deliver care as if it were a package to another individual's home. These care workers have no connection to that person's wider support network, their neighbourhood or community. They also have no freedom or control over their day-to-day work. This amounts to a service that provides care independently from the support networks embedded in people’s local communities; any collaboration with these support networks in service delivery is generally incidental to a services organisation rather than a direct consequence of it. This is OK if you really are delivering a package, as all you need is a postcode; it is not OK when you are providing care.

Housing Can Help Cultivate Connections

July 9, 2023 David Baker, Amanda Loper and Daniel Simons, Next City. Create! California, Community, Housing, Oakland, The Commons

Oakland, California - Shortly after the opening of Tassafaronga Village, a renewed 7.5-acre community in East Oakland, the Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project put down roots in the adjacent park. Founder Kelly Carlisle had been looking for a place to start a community farm and was inspired by the bright new neighborhood. After returning to East Oakland, where she’d spent some of her youth, as an adult, she was on the lookout for a place to make a local impact and seized on the opportunity presented by the new housing. Her nonprofit farm project – named after the Latin phrase for “actions, not words” – set out to invest in youth through urban agriculture, creating a secure and creative outdoor space for East Oakland’s youth and families.

The Neighborhood’s Communication Department

July 8, 2023 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. Create! Community, Media, Media Democracy, Minneapolis

Minneapolis, MN — “We’re trying to be the neighborhood’s communication department,” said Duaba, Confluence Studio’s co-founder, while standing inside a shipping container-turned print shop in South Minneapolis. “We worked with neighbors,” said Confluence’s other co-founder Sam, “to collaboratively construct this idea of what a newsroom for neighbors could be.” The container was initially gifted to Confluence Studio a few years ago. Duaba and Sam, who already had a print shop, worked with the community to build the Autonomous Mobile Media Unit, or the AMMU, inside the container.

‘Pop-Up Care Villages’ Bring Joy To Community-Led Homelessness Services

July 1, 2023 Kris Kepler, Next City. Create! California, Community, Homelessness, Mutual Aid

A celebration with guests, volunteers and partners sharing conversation, hugs, love and laughter isn’t what most people associate with programs for unhoused people. But joyous gatherings may be the secret to creating trusted relationships that restore dignity, rekindle optimism and fuel a sense of opportunity for community members experiencing homelessness. Local government agencies years ago recognized the need to bring services for unhoused people together in a central location. One solution in use across the country is periodic Homeless Connect events, like the Los Angeles County series organized by council members.

From Bayanihan To Talkoot

May 30, 2023 Jeffrey Andreoni, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Organize! Community, Food and Agriculture, Infrastructure, Mutual Aid

For all of human history, societies have depended on communal work to sustain themselves into the (often unpredictable) future. However, at a certain point, that all changed. Market forces took over, and communal projects ceased to have the same significance. The individual took precedence over the community, and large public works became the purview of burgeoning states. The classic North American example of such communal work projects is the Amish tradition of barn-raising, wherein the community gathers to help a neighbor erect their barn without remuneration or any expectation of reciprocity because, as we’ll see, these acts of generosity benefited everyone, not just the barn owner.

The London Transition Gathering: Four Days Of Transition Delights

May 24, 2023 Rob Hopkins, Resilience. Create! Community, London, Sustainability, Transition Town

Our four day immersion in London Transition activities started on Thursday evening at the Doreen Bazell Hall, a Tenants and Residents Association (TRA) Hall on the Goldington Estate in Camden, to visit one of the weekly meetings of Camden Think and Do, an initiative created between Camden Council and Transition Kentish Town. Think and Do happens here every Thursday, offering a free lunch as well as workshops on a range of things, from repairing clothes, to energy efficiency advice, to advice about the cost of living and benefits, and much more besides. We spent the afternoon with the community members there, meeting Maria and Tuli who coordinate the Think and Do sessions, and Halima who runs Sharing Space Eats from there, a social enterprise providing catering to local businesses.

Community Radio And Social Power

May 23, 2023 Victor M. Toledo, Resilience. Create! Community, Media Democracy, Mexico, Radio

If we are facing a crisis of civilization and therefore need a civilizational transformation, a total paradigm shift, then everything that decentralizes, localizes, makes society horizontal and empowers must be disseminated and celebrated. We are talking about amplifying social power in the face of economic (capital) and political (State) powers, since social power is the only way to overcome the tremendous social and environmental crisis that humanity is suffering today. Participatory communication is one of the phenomena that has grown exponentially not only in Mexico, but in much of the world. If the Internet has facilitated the spread of all kinds of social networks, then the appearance of community radio has meant the creation of an alternative means of communication against the monopoly of public and commercial radio.

Creating Trust Through Money

May 15, 2023 Tiziana Penna and Anna Rispoli, Resilience. Create! Community, Community Wallet, Finance and the Economy, Money, Solidarity

In January 2018, a group of artists and cultural workers based in Brussels—including us, Tiziana Penna and Anna Rispoli—committed to living from the same bank account. All income we receive through wages, unemployment, and other benefits is wired into this shared account. From there, we don’t withdraw the same amount we wired in, but whatever amount each one of us feels we need to live our life, including money for mortgage payments, rent, utilities, childcare, monthly savings, groceries, and clothes, but also for holidays, hobbies, going out, and all the unnecessary consumerism one is drawn to.

Worker Ownership Builds Community Wealth And A More Just Society

February 5, 2023 Pamela Haines, Waging Nonviolence. Create! Community, Cooperatives, Finance and the Economy, Worker Rights and Jobs

A recent help-wanted ad for a laundry worker in Cleveland contained some unusual language, asking prospective candidates: “Have you ever wanted to work for a company that is 90 percent employee-owned? What about a company that offers a program to help you become a homeowner?” The ad went on to identify Evergreen Cooperative Laundry as the only employee-owned commercial laundry firm in the country, citing a commitment to building the wealth and careers of its employees. Founded in Cleveland in 2009, Evergreen laundry lies at the heart of a movement that has now spread around the world. This attention to community wealth building is providing a 21st century model for Gandhi’s “constructive program,” which — along with nonviolent direct action — powered his overall campaign to overcome the political and economic oppression of colonialism.

Allied Community And Co-operative Shared Services (ACCESS)

January 14, 2023 Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Business, Community, Cooperatives, New Economy

So basically, ACCESS is a shared services platform and it provides a collective of professional services that are aligned with co-ops, nonprofits and other social purpose organizations. And we just have been working on this for the last year and a half. And the kind of the backstory to ACCESS — I was approached by the ED at ACCA, the Alberta Community Cooperative Association, and I was asked if I would be interested in writing a grant. And I think I was a month into the job there, and I wasn't quite sure what I knew about co-ops and, you know, even writing a grant application at that level. But once I saw what the grant was for, I was like, "You know what? I actually really like the whole heart behind this." Having worked in a nonprofit setting for many years, I think capacity — stretching employees beyond their capacity, expecting them to do maybe a little bit more than what they were trained for, or where their passions lie — that was always a piece that I always kind of argued about at the leadership table, or advocated for, like, "why is our bookkeeper writing a newsletter?

Creating Space For Community Imagination

January 14, 2023 Rob Hopkins, Resilience. Organize! climate crisis, Community, Transformation, United Kingdom

This is a time of year when we have space to reflect and to make resolutions for the coming twelve months, to stop, dream and reorient ourselves. Similarly, in all the work I’ve done over the last couple of years on the importance of imagination, I keep coming back to how vitally important it is to create space for the imagination, what I call ‘What If spaces’, whether in our own lives, our organisations or our communities. In this article, I want to share some examples of what this can unlock, and some thoughts from people doing this work on the ground on how to do it well. One great example of a successful What If space is the work of ‘Think and Do’ in Camden in London. Think and Do grew out of the work of Camden Council in organising one of the UK’s first Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change, in July 2019, the first output from their declaration of a climate emergency a few months earlier.

Queering The Family Farm

January 9, 2023 Bennet Goldstein, In These Times. Create! Community, Family Farms, Food and Agriculture, Iowa, LGBTQ

Shannon and Eve Mingalone avow that their farmers market booth is “very gay.” They hang strings of pride flags and sell rainbow stickers to help pay for gender-affirming care, like hormone replacement therapy, for Eve. Sometimes, when parents and their teenagers pass the booth, the adults glance, then speed ahead. The kids pause for a second look. Shannon, 34, hopes it means something for them to see LGBTQ professionals out and succeeding. People often share stories. The middle-aged woman who confided that her daughter is transgender. The teen who stood in the middle of the Mingalones’ booth and said, “This makes me feel safe.” “That means everything to me,” Shannon said.

Community Is Central To Building A Post-Neoliberal Future

December 26, 2022 Luke Gannon and Stacy Mitchell, Institute For Local Self-Reliance. Create! Community, Globalization, Neoliberalism

“What is it that people really want?” Stacy Mitchell, Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, posed at an event hosted by the Center for Political Economy, Columbia Law School, and the Financial Times. Humans have survived for millennia based on our ability to work together to serve each other’s needs. “Community,” Stacy posits, “is a deeply held biological and spiritual need.” The event, “Rethinking Globalization, Intermediation, and Efficiency,” gathered journalists, academics, and advocates to explore new paradigms for a post-neoliberal world. Stacy explained how neoliberalism has “actively demeaned and destroyed communities as self-conscious and self-governing places. It has stripped places of their economic and political power and it has rendered them subservient to distant entities,” namely powerful corporations.

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