Author: jennynazak

Since a lot of people in the permaculture community, and in Degrowth and Deep Adaptation circles, seem to be interested in forming intentional communities “from scratch” (as opposed to working within their existing neighborhood/community, which is always my first recommendation), I’m sharing this good article that might help people avoid some of the pitfalls.

This landed in my email inbox via the organization Shareable which has a steady stream of good content — articles, webinars, podcasts etc.

“Challenges and strategies for anti-capitalist community design (part 1)

“This is the first part in a three-part series on intentional communities and capitalism by Sky Blue.

“Capitalism isn’t just an economic system we live inside. It is a culture that lives inside of us. It influences our psychology, how we design our communities, how we relate to each other, the kind of culture we create, and what’s possible for us to do together.

“Capitalism is one of the most harmful aspects of mainstream society and is deeply entwined with white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and imperialism. Societies, including micro-societies like intentional communities (ICs), are a mixture of structures and culture, and economies are a key aspect with implications for both. Capitalism is a structure that encourages individual finances and embeds commodification and transaction into our relationships with each other and the world around us. This fosters and reinforces a culture of hyper-individualism, privacy, competition, objectification, and entitlement. It creates an experience of separation, isolation, loneliness, and fear, and normalizes inequality, oppression, exploitation, and violence.

“ICs are idealistic responses to the problems of society. We see and experience the harm caused by human civilization on people and ecosystems. We want to live in a way that is more healthy and satisfying, where we can have a different relationship to people and place. We want lifestyles that align with our values and help make the world better. But as much as we want something different, we are susceptible to recreating the problems we want to solve.”

Go here to read the rest of the article, and to read parts 2 and 3 of the series:

https://www.shareable.net/intentional-community-and-capitalism/

IC, intentional community, capitalism, hyperindividualism

The following might seem really over the top and too good to be true, but it fits in with everything I’ve learned about the water cycle and how we restore it. Something like 40% of rainfall comes from the local water cycle.

My friend and permie colleague Chris Searles in central TX has pioneered a technique called strategic watering. Basically, watering large trees in order to bring rain.

We need to spread this everywhere, please watch & share this 12-minute, no-filler video and subscribe to his channel.

https://youtu.be/DRCspDH-W8E?si=v6UezPBaXXE5xw2d

On a related note, it’s way too micro to be verifiable, but I have done this kind of watering in the mini, Miyawaki-inspired forest I’ve cultivated in my tiny urban yard, and watched plumelike clouds either seem to form or grow, almost always in the same patch of sky, and I’ve seen where rain happens within hours where either there was no chance or the chance was very low.

Correlation isn’t causation but it sure has happened a bunch of times.

But PLEASE watch Chris’s video (12 minutes, no fluff) and follow his YouTube channel, because he / his organization BioIntegrity has done it on a large scale and I believe witnessed successes about 75 times!

All of his videos are great. Here’s another one, about 1 minute and 17 seconds, showing hyper-localized rainfall happening after strategic watering.

BTW here’s BioIntegrity’s website for you: https://www.biointegrity.net

#strategicwatering #trees #watercycle

Someone in my circles was posting about wanting to buy an E350 van. Price 20 K.

My take: A 350 is too heavy and uses too much gas. Try to find a stripped-down E150 if you can. (They don’t seem to be very easy to find because people like to hang onto them, understandably.) And furnish it your own way with your own DIY lightweight modular furnishings. That’s what I would live in if I wanted to do van life.

Or if you wanted to go more compact; are able to fit your work tools and your life into a more compact footprint, then one of those little Ford Transit Connects. But it looks like even the old used ones are probably pretty expensive.

In recent times it has become apparent to me that many members of my social demographic (college-educated Boomer white women who think of themselves as liberal) are not as far left as they think they are.

Why does this matter?

Thinking of ourselves as progressives, as opposed to recognizing that we are more conservative than we realized, has led us to finger-pointing at the so-called 1% and billionaires. When in fact we and our wallets are having a lot more influence than we think, and not always for the good.

Also, we end up deceiving ourselves into thinking we actually even have a two party system in the USA still. We need more than two parties, but the two mainstream parties we do have are not enough, by far, to cover the full spectrum of political views.

If we think we’re at a far leading edge, it can lead to complacency. And it can also lead to discouragement — like, are we really as far left as it gets? No worries though, there are lots of very left lefties even in the senior age groups.

I actually never thought of myself as a leftist until maybe a couple years ago, when I took a test called the political quadrant test. I had always thought I was a libertarian, as in right of Republican. Sometimes when I’d be going to vote and I would pass by the Republican information table, I would tease them by saying “Oh, no thanks, you guys are too into big government for me.” And I would wink at them. And because I identified as a libertarian rather than a Democrat, they could at least sort of smile at me..

My reexamination of my political label started a few years back when a couple of Boomer, dyed-in-the-blue-wool Democrat women online were “mansplaining” me, telling me I am a Democrat, and I was trying to tell them no I am not a Democrat I am libertarian.

When I took the test, I found out that what I am in fact is an anarchist. And a rather far leftist one. In any case, not a Democrat.

I didn’t know it, but of course once I saw it laid out it made a lot of sense. There are right-wing anarchists (think Ayn Rand) and left-wing anarchists (Gandhi, Hanna Arendt, Emma Goldberg). We left-wing anarchists can find a fair amount of common ground with some Democrats, which is why we are sometimes mistaken for Democrats.

Also, a lot of us environmentalists get mistaken for Democrats. People automatically assume that no conservatives can be environmentalists, which is absolutely untrue.

I also found out from the political quadrant test that Biden and Trump are very close together in the upper right quadrant, the authoritarian / capitalist quadrant.

In other words, people who think they are progressive liberal just because they vote for Biden are actually just a slightly milder flavor of authoritarian conservative.

The other day, on the page of an account I follow via my deep green Facebook page, a boomer woman was defending some authoritarian attitudes regarding the protesters at Columbia and other campuses. This woman’s profile bore the description that she is a “raging crone” who is so far left that she even embarrasses her progressive liberal friends.

Several people jumped on and called her a bootlicker, to which she took great offense. I posted a comment in response to all that:

1) Well, in fairness, you are talking like a bootlicker in this moment. You are saying the kind of things bootlickers say.

2) Contrary to your profile, you don’t sound lefty at all, let alone so lefty that your extreme leftiness embarrasses your progressive friends.

I am in your same “crone” age group, and I know a lot of other white women our age who consider themselves really super left who are actually not very left at all. It seems to be a pretty widespread phenomenon.

It could be because a lot of us haven’t met that many actual leftists in the course of our daily lives, since we have tended to hang out in the “safety” of established power structures. A kind of blindness sets in, and we end up defending/upholding those structures instead of dismantling them, which actual leftists work to do.

This is a long comment, and I realize it’s risky to communicate sensitive ideas by text w strangers in a thread, because things can end up generating heat rather than light. But maybe some of this will hit a note of truth. Or maybe not.

Oh, I almost forgot
3) We shouldn’t ever go on Black women’s pages and expect them to “defend their stance.”

My words might sound harsh because we are part of a culture that is not used to speaking in a confrontational way unless it’s to fight. But I don’t mean to sound mean.

Peace to you, and may there actually be peace among all the nations someday sooner rather than later. And three cheers for the young people on the campuses!!!

If we “Woodstock Boomers” had stuck with it back in the 1960s and 70s and dismantled the toxic structures, instead of allowing ourselves to get derailed by shiny-shiny in the 1980s, we wouldn’t be dealing with what we’re dealing with today.

<emoticons: green heart, earth, blue butterfly, peace sign>

She didn’t reply to my comment but it got a few likes so at least it’s helping a few people if only to offer emotional validation, solidarity.

Regarding a lefty litmus test, I thought of a one-stop test. It’s from an ongoing issue in my neighborhood. A vacant four-plex keeps getting broken into by squatters. I am sympathetic with the squatters, secretly cheering them on, and frustrated with the absentee property owner.

Meanwhile most neighbors are more focused on getting the cops and code enforcement to keep out the squatters, than they are about getting the absentee owner to fix up the place and make it available to tenants. Or sell it to someone who will live there.

I would say that a person’s feeling on this matter could possibly constitute a quick “lefty litmus test.” Let me know your thoughts on that. And below, I’m posting the link to the political quadrant test. Hope you enjoy it!

OK, here it is. It’s actually called the Political Compass Test. By answering the questionnaire you can learn which political quadrant you fall into, and see some famous people from present and past who share your quadrant, and see some famous figures who fall into the other quadrants.

And finally, if you are adamantly anti-war and discouraged by the “pragmatic” stance of Democrats around you, check out Veterans for Peace. Lots of good company there. There’s even an organization within VFP called the Granny Peace Brigade.

Just building a loose collection of links on this topic. I believe that informal settlements are information-rich places and probably my ideal kind of place to live. We had some aspects of an informal settlement in the RV park in Austin, and I have created some aspects of informal settlements in my house and yard where I live now.

Unfortunately, despite the economic and social collapse that is in progress as we speak, the extractive institutions of industrial/capitalist culture always seems to reserve plenty of energy to meddle with the beautiful and community-building improvisations of informal settlements. The only leverage we really have against “them” (centralized PTB) is labor. They need our labor.

Still, at this juncture, the fact that it’s really hard for people to keep a roof over their head at today’s rents does not induce government to allow people to build their own simple structures on the margins and collect their own water and so on. This guy is a very real topic that we probably have not talked about enough in Degrowth and Deep Adaptation circles. Centralized institutions are failing to meet people’s basic needs, but when people try to route around them — build a parallel grassroots economy to meet their basic needs their own way (including many of the techniques we learned in Permaculture design class) — the boot of centralized authority (code enforcement, zoning, compulsively cop-calling neighbors etc.) comes down very quickly.

•Theresa Williamson: “Sustainable Favelas: The Key to Climate Justice and Thriving Cities?” (a keynote presentation at The Nature of Cities Festival 2024). Dr. Williamson is director of an organization called Catalytic Communities. My favorite takeaway from her presentation (and I had many! as her presentation, and informal settlements in general, are right up my alley) is, “An overly managed city is a dead city.” She talked about the sweet spot, where government is helping without quashing creativity and innovation. I believe the presentation recording is only available to people who attended the festival. However, you can find lots of Dr. Williamson’s work online.

• A quote from one of Dr. Williamson slides at TNOC 2024: “Could it be that those favelas that reach a ‘sweet spot’ of complexity and are then able to solidify their qualities without escalating into dysfunction hold a key to vibrant and sustainable urbanization?”

•Another of Dr. Williamson’s slides from her keynote from TNOC 2024 lists the qualities of Rio’s favelas that urban planners struggle to achieve. The list includes high use of bicycles & transit, pedestrian-centered “no cars, no strangers,” high rate of entrepreneurship, efficient & responsive architecture, affordable housing in central areas, low social isolation, strong mutual-support networks, mixed-use development, intense cultural incubators.

• YouTube video by Cities@Tufts: “Rethinking the future of housing worldwide: Favelas as a sustainable model, with Theresa Williamson”. BTW Cities@Tufts does a lot of good webinars.

• Searching on informal settlements reveals many good articles and videos. Here’s one from a past TNOC. “They are not ‘informal settlements.’ They are habitats made by people.” (Lorena Záwate, Ottawa; April 2016, on the TNOC website).

• Informal settlements, or decentralized habitats, are places of great cultural richness and living skills. But they tend to be criminalized, as Lorena Záwate explains in the article linked above: “In academic and government documents, “informal settlements” is the label typically applied to these areas. That those communities are not in compliance with building norms and property and urban planning regulations is often given as the main reason for qualifying them as “informal”. Also defined as “irregular”, they can easily be called “illegal”, and their inhabitants subsequently criminalized, displaced, and persecuted. From India to South Africa to Ecuador, legal and administrative changes have been made in recent years to give special/ad hoc inspection and demolition powers to local, provincial, and national governments to deal with these neighborhoods and, in theory, to prevent them from growing (in many cases, environmental laws and regulations or urban projects are used as excuses for destroying these settlements).”

• Festivals, such as the Kerrville Folk Music Festival and some small regional Burner events (I’m just naming ones I have directly experienced, although there are many more, such as Bonnaroo, Glastonbury, the main Burningman, and so on), have been joyful experiments in creating what I realized were temporary cities. There’s no reason why they couldn’t be permanent. There are many important caveats to help keep things from descending into the bad kind of chaos. But when it works, it really works. People build a wide array of regenerative skills both “hard” and “soft” at these festivals. Skills ranging from conflict resolution, NVC, acupuncture, counseling; to improvising shade structures, harvesting rainwater, gardening, arborculture, flood-control micro-earthworks, and generating electricity.

• Christiania Free Town in Copenhagen Denmark is a longtime famous informal settlement/anarchist community. I heard that in recent years, though, they found themselves overwhelmed with drug dealing and other violent crime, and they ended up calling in the police and other central authorities to try to manage things. This may have just been a reflection on the creeping authoritarianism in greater society. Fear drives us to seek central authority. I even feel the tendency in myself at times. On a personal note, when I was living in Tokyo in the early 1990s, I met a wonderful couple who had come from Christiania. They were so creative, open-hearted, and compassionate.

My response just now to someone in the Degrowth group who commented to the effect that we all have the right to speak sarcastically and rudely to people, in the name of having a productive sharing of ideas:

I understand the definition of “civil” as in civic. In this context here on this thread, I am using another common definition of civil, as in being basic polite and not rude to people.

I understand how the circumstances in the world can induce bitterness and sarcasm in any of us. But it’s best to not use it on each other. Not only for the reason of basic human decency, but also for the very pragmatic reason that it stifles the sharing of ideas. If people think they’re going to get their heads bitten off, fewer and fewer people are willing to share a thought.

I have witnessed this pattern in more groups than I can count, as I have co-adminned many groups and simply been a very active participant in many more.

When I start to write a comment to an internet stranger and realize my comment sounds harsh, I try to pretend I’m talking to a friend or sister. And I edit accordingly.

I strive to convey the same substance, but with the tone and wording that I would use on somebody I know and love. It takes a little extra effort but it seems to be working well so far.

Degrowth is not a cult. But we are a grassroots movement, a kind of in-group, and people need to be able to have civilized discussions with one another. If we can’t even talk with each other, there’s not much hope for us to communicate with “civilians.”

•It’s possible to express anger politely. It’s possible to express despair without taking it out on others.
•It’s possible to express intellectual disagreement without being rude or condescending.
•Same with expressing skepticism.

We are dealing with a lot of deep-seated emotions in this movement and in related movements. Our challenge is to avoid taking it out on each other as we move forward.

Self-explanatory emergency water-station in my front yard. People can keep the cups, or toss em in the basket to be washed and reused.

Beloved Coleman jug courtesy of my parents and the 1960s. Vintage stuff ftw!!!

At first I was thinking of this as an example of the second ethic of Permaculture design, care of people and all other living things. But then I realized that it has ALL THREE of the Permaculture ethics.

•Care of the earth: using durable everyday items that are still good, and refraining from purchasing new unnecessarily. (The plastic cups were on their way to landfill; a friend who gets boba tea every day gave them to me and I have tried to find a use for them.)

•Care of people and all other living things: trying to help do my part to make sure people stay hydrated, and also, any water that splashes onto the ground is helping other species.

•Limit consumption and share surplus: I’m sharing a resource that I have extra and can spare. And I am voluntarily self-limiting my consumption by not purchasing a separate thermos jug just for me. Instead, sharing my same old one with the community. Another surplus resource I’m sharing is time. Since I work mainly at home and in my immediate neighborhood, I have the luxury of time to be able to monitor this water station.

In addition to being a good example of all three ethics … This water station also embodies the permaculture design principle of “stacking functions.” One of my favorite of the 12 permaculture design principles. Everything in my yard not only serves its direct purpose, but also additionally serves as a demonstration site for my permaculture design & education services. I sometimes refer to my yard as my 3-D business card or design showroom.

Another function I’m stacking here is emotional/mental wellbeing. By being surrounded with many beloved everyday objects from our childhood that I find beautiful, I get a lot of joy and comfort. Also in the realm of emotional well-being, the various little micro-amenities in my yard help me keep an eye on the emotional and mental health of my neighborhood and community.

Notice how I get personal benefits and they don’t take away from any of the community benefits. And vice versa, the fact that there are multiple community benefits doesn’t take away from my personal benefits.

As I mention in the videos that I recently posted on my TikTok and YouTube channels, this is one of many low-stakes experiments in my front yard. What I call “porous property.” It includes things like the corner benches, and the little beach-toy lending library. Helping to raise the level of trust and compassion in our society, where it often seems like people’s willingness to trust is on the wane nowadays.

Doing things like this takes a little bit of leap of faith. You have to trust that most people won’t vandalize or steal. And also, you have to be willing to face the possibility that that is what might happen. But if we start with low stakes like this, it’s not as risky.

Wow, it’s amazing how much ended up coming out of just a little water-station. What we do makes a bigger difference than we think. Feel free to share your examples! And thank you so much for following my page.

You can see pictures of my super simple community hydration station setup right here. On my DEEP GREEN Facebook page.

#porousproperty #hydrationstation #peoplehelpingpeople #heatemergency #socialpermaculture #thistooispermaculture #peoplecareethic #water