Community, Sustainability, Feminism: 3 topics from IA
Feminism and Ecology: A Matter of Survival
Individual vs Community Self-Sufficiency
A Community Garden on Town Land
These three recent stories at IA all hinge on sustainability, bio-ethics, and community. In essence they all suggest — from different angles — that the “macho solo survivalist” tradition is a mere boyish fantasy, and that practical survival across the event horizon of Peak Oil and climate change depends largely on challenging those fantasies and preferring the option of building egalitarian communities.
So we’re opening a thread for critique/discussion of the articles — but also for talking about community and autarky, food security and the value of women’s work, sustainability vs adventurism, what is going on in your local area in the way of urban gardening, Food Not Bombs (or Food Not Lawns), local-food-in-school projects, etc.
Related reading: Food Not Lawns by H Flores, Wild Fermentation by S Katz, Full Moon Feast by J Prentice, Counting for Nothing by M Waring, Tools for Conviviality by I Illich, The Age of Missing Information by B McKibben… Related videos: The Power of Community, The Future of Food…
Legume Sam:
I would imagine that the survivalist tradition, at least here in the US, is a privilege of those who own, or who can afford to buy, real estate. In case of some traumatic national disaster, and with the support of the coming dictatorship, that portion of the gentry who dreams this fantasy will simply evict all of their tenants so as to use the newly-vacant buildings to house their relatives (or to grow subsistence crops), and the tenants, having nowhere to go, will be rounded up and shot unless they submit to being good slaves. Survivalists imagine that, in case of dramatic social retrogression, they will come out on top because they have private property (and guns to defend it).
22 May 2007, 1:17 pmStan:
Survivalism is a male fantasy.
Any smart politician of the future left will neutralize the fascist base by nationalizing the banks and forgiving the mortgage debts of everyone in a house with a price tag below $300,000.
Malclom X said that Revolution is based on land.
He was right.
Rounding folks up to be shot in the US could be problematic. Most of us are armed.
I would suggest that the feminist food praxis De alludes to here has tremendous political potential. Rather than predict how it will all end up; we do it, see what happens, then figure out the next steps. Right now, what the vast majority of the orthodox left knows about food in this country is how to read a menu.
We need to get smart, and fast, not just on issues, but on acquiring, developing, and distributing practical skills. Issues are superstructure.
I hope folks respond to De by posting links to those activities. On that note, I’ll cite the Brazilian MST (Landess People’s Movement) that has successfully taken millions of acres for thousands of families, and put that acreage under local, small-scale cultivation.
23 May 2007, 7:31 pmAudrey:
Appealing to people’s cheap side is working for me better than reason alone.
We have a small group of students planning to redo some of the landscaping at our school. All my pleas and arguments about native plants are falling on deaf ears; the kids are not understanding why nonnative species hurt ecosystems. It’s hard to move them beyond “Plants are good, they help the environment – oooh, this one’s pretty.” I’m having way better luck with “there’s a ton of phlox in my yard, how about you stop by and dig some up for free?”
When I was younger, it was a trend in our area for women to spread African violets and spider plants everywhere, to any house that would take them, because they were so easy to propagate. There’s nothing stopping us from giving away plants that are native to our region, or giving away vegetable plants or fruit trees by simply propagating those, and offering them up for free at work, or on Craigslist or Freecycle.
If you see an ad for something free, it starts a thought process – people question whether that’s something they could use. There’s a house on my way to work that has a table out front that says “free stuff” – and I guess it was left over yard sale items, or they decided not to bother with the yard sale. Bit by bit the pile on the table is getting smaller. Sometimes when I drive by, I look over and think, hmm, a thermos, could I use that? What about this other item? Sometimes I wonder if I could sneak additional items I don’t need onto their table. When things are offered, we imagine how they would fit into our lives, and we imagine ourselves offering things up as well. Even if nobody takes excess plants we offer up, I think there’s value in the thought process itself, in planting the idea in a person’s head that they could be growing these things.
A package of tomato seeds creates more plants than the average homeowner can use – why not plant them all, then give away the plants we thin to people that didn’t know they wanted them until they were offered? Each phlox plant I give away might prevent a nonnative useless plant from being purchased. If I can lure people to my yard to dig them out, that’s even better, because then they will see them as a field, not as specimen plants, and that’s one more idea that will be in their heads. This is the first season that I will have enough pawpaws to seriously consider trying to multiply those from seed (if I can beat the possums to them this year). That’s a long term project – they take a few years to bear fruit, but it’s one of the native edible plants that nurseries here refuse to sell, so there’s extra value in offering them up to folks here. I can’t compete with the Brazilian MST; I don’t have millions of acres to give away – just some things that I’ve grown. But sometimes I daydream about my pawpaws running the Japanese Maples out of town.
26 May 2007, 12:17 amCharles:
Radical feminist forum. Andrea Lavigne is a fan of Stan’s blog and an outspoken radical feminist in the Detroit Million Workers March and Detroit Social Forum
CB
________________________________________
From: Andrea Lavigne
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 10:27 PM
Subject: [detroitsocialforum]
FILM: Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity 6-17-07@ 12:30noon
Date: 6/17/07, Sun 12:30 pm
Where: Atom’s Java & Juice
15104 Kercheval Ave
G.P.P., MI 48230
Pull Back Today’s Curtain of OZ Series Each talk reveals today’s most insidious, remarkable deceptions. See and discuss art, film, philosophy, politics, media, gender issues; a legal criticism of our current leadership and system, by a 20-year-lawyer , licensed in 3 States, a Doctorate in International Law. This Iraq invasion is illegal and a reflection of the masculinity crisis in our leadership.
Thomas Lavigne, JD, Orator
Documentary Film Showing: Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity
About the film: The dominant role of masculinity has remained largely invisible for too long. Tough Guise examines the relationship between cultural imagery and the social construction of masculine identities. While highly pertinent to us all, especially if you have sons, come learn of an invisible deception they struggle with, to better help them succeed.
31 May 2007, 12:58 pm