Are you dreaming, planting, and tending visions of a queer ecological future? Are you looking to connect with kindred spirits in your region and across the country to share resources to support these visions of collective liberation? Join Queer Ecojustice Project for our first ONLINE reading community!
Most gatherings will be local in your region (we call these regional groups, “nodes”). Monthly online community gatherings will occur in June, July, August, and September.
Read on below for more information about the organizers, facilitators, QTPOC reading group nodes in Oakland and Seattle, and QTPOC community land projects that need your support.
It’s Tuesday, and we bet that you could use your daily dose of inspiration from people doing beautiful things in the spirit of hope and transformation. It’s another day, and we have another rad collective farm for you– and for this one, we are calling on the Greenhorns community to help amplify and support the voices and work of people of color who are doing incredible work in food justice, community building, and the resistance of oppression.
Introducing Earthseed Land Cooperative! A “transformational response to oppression and collective heartbreak: a model of community resilience through cooperative ownership of land and resources,” created by a visionary group of “black and brown parents, activists, artists, educators, business owners, farmers, and researchers, who came together to remember our relationships to land, to livelihood and to each other.”
The Cooperative is committed to centering the voices of people of color and other traditionally marginalized communities. They grow food with the intention of increasing access to fresh produce, offer classes and youth programs, and offer a retreat and sanctuary space for activists and artists. In their own words, “Our work is to support our members, our compañerxs in resistance, and our broader communities: to grow food, to grow jobs, to grow movements, to grow spirit and mind; to hold ceremony, to hold our differences, and to hold our common liberation.”
I’m sorry, I just can’t write any more without a firm and capitalized, HECK YES.
And now, to the point: Earthseed Land Cooperative has recently found a new home for their Tierra Negra Farms in 48 acres of pasture and woods in North Durham, NC., and they need help to get their programming and farming firmly rooted in this new ground.
Don’t have money to give, there are more ways to help!
AMPLIFY: Give them some love on Facebook, send out an email with our campaign info, tell your friends and family!
CONNECT: Build a bridge to people/organizations who should know about the work that we do? Share our project with your people who want to see Black and Brown folks in the South reclaiming land for our common liberation with the blessing of Indigenous community and our ancestors.
Disillusioned by a cultural story of consumption and alienation, a newly married couple are called to action. Carrying with them their unborn child, they embark on a year-long journey around the UK, searching for the seeds of an alternative culture and with it hope for the future.
we the uncivilized: A Life Storyresonates deeply with our sick and nagging sensation that our world of strip malls, fossil fuels, and convenience is not nourishing– in any sense of the word– to the people who live in it. The film is a “grassroots documentary project” that speaks to and with activists, artists, permaculturalists, and others seeking alternative ways of living with each other and within nature.
The film has just wrapped up a year-long tour, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a chance to see it! Organize a screening in your own community. We’d LOVE to see this come to the US.
Reinventing the Commons: Social Ecosystems for Local Stewardship & Planetary Survival
A Friday evening public talk and Saturday one-day workshop
With David Bollier and Dave Jacke
Montague Common Hall (“Grange”), 34 Main St., Montague, MA 01351
Friday, January 20, 2017, 7-9 PM, $10 @ door or in advance. Saturday, Jan 21, 2017, 8:30-5, $85-125, includes Friday evening and a soup lunch. Preregistration required.
Lesson #1: To promote systems change, foster community and cultivate networks.
Most of the qualities of a living system, notes Fritjof Capra, are aspects of a single fundamental network pattern: nature sustains life by creating and nurturing communities. Lasting change frequently requires a critical mass or density of interrelationships within a community. For instance, we’ve seen from research and our experience that curricular innovation at a school usually becomes sustainable only when at least a third of the faculty are engaged and committed.
“If nothing exists in isolation,” writes famed essayist Wendell Berry, “then all problems are circumstantial; no problem resides, or can be solved, in anybody’s department.” Even if problems defy solution by a single department, school districts are often structured so that responsibilities are assigned to isolated and unconnected divisions. Nutrition services may report to the business manager, while academic concerns lie within the domain of the director of curriculum. To achieve systems change, leaders must cross department boundaries and bring people addressing parts of the problem around the same table. For example, we’re currently coordinating a feasibility study with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). It requires looking simultaneously at ten aspects of school food operations (from teaching and learning to finance and facilities) identified in our Rethinking School Lunch framework.
In the push to make decisions and produce results quickly, it’s easy to bypass people — often the very people, such as food service staff and custodians, who will have the task of implementing changes and whose cooperation is key to success. It’s necessary to keep asking: “Who’s being left out?” and “Who should be in the room?”
Artists and farmers alike, we know it ain’t easy to maintain your art when you’ve got buns in and out of the oven. In fact, I’d say that between the sleepless nights of those early years to the struggle of raising kids on what are not famously-lucrative salaries, raising the next generation of beautiful, free-spirited, progressives is more like a downright herculean task. (Gosh, creative and farming parents, we just appreciate all the work you do!)
Luckily, there are some really smart people out there puzzling over the current societal barriers to maintaining one’s art while raising a family and choosing to have children while pursuing one’s art. Today’s case in point: the Temporary Art Review published this piece on parenting in the creative community. It’s short, makes a lot of practical sense, and is relevant not just for creative parents– but for those in their community interested in supporting them!
The Roots & Fruits Farm Business Incubator in Black Mountan, NC provides the tools and resources aspiring agricultural entrepreneurs need to develop and manage viable farm enterprises in Appalachia. The Incubator reduces the traditional barriers to success for new farm businesses by providing access to land, shared equipment, infrastructure, low-interest capital, business mentoring, and training in advanced practical skills. Launching farm-based businesses in the supportive, low-risk environment of the Incubator greatly increases the likelihood of business viability and success.
Once their businesses have matured to the point of self-sufficiency, we will assist Incubator graduates in transitioning to longer-term landholdings in the region, ensuring they will have a place to operate their businesses independently while also bringing more land into production. Through the Incubator, we will be ushering in a new generation of profitable, conservation-oriented farm entrepreneurs while bringing more preserved farmland into production and investing in farm communities across the region.
We are currently seeking proposals for the 2016-2018 seasons. The length of the lease period will be 2 years. All needed infrastructure is in place, including water supply, irrigation lines, chicken coop & run, hoop houses, greenhouse, wash facilities, cold storage, and a multi-purpose shed. All business infrastructures are in place, including direct selling through Roots & Fruits market & café.
Jump-start your farm business on the Front Porch of North Carolina! Are you looking for a low-risk entry point for your organic and biologically intensive farm practice? Join us in our campaign to re-imagine human-scale food systems. Together we will empower through education and build an inspiring community through food.
Have you been listening to Earth Matters?? This fabulous podcast series gives voice to indigenous activists, environmentalists, and people around the globe working for social justice. We cannot recommend it highly enough. Hailing from Australia’s community radio station 3CR AM, Radical Radio, you can stream episodes online or download straight form iTunes.
The link above will bring you to this past Sunday’s episode, “Creative Dissent: the pen (and voice is mightier),” which spans themes of deep connection to land, climate change, colonialism, “nationalism, nuclear disaster, direct action and love on the frontlines” in the voices of actives poets.
“Two families in our community are looking to jointly hire a person to work 30-40 hours a week during the summer, starting as early as June 1. Duties include childcare for two small children, driving and errands for an elderly couple, and light household chores.
Payment includes free room and some board in the household with children, plus cash payment of $1000/month to $1500/month, depending on hours worked for the household with the elderly couple.
We are part of a small intentional community called the Quaker Intentional Village-Canaan, dedicated to seeking a more spiritually focused lifestyle and living more simply and sustainably. Our ideal candidate would be interested in intentional community and/or the Quaker way of life. You would be invited to use our land for gardening or other land-based projects, and you would also be welcome to join community events including our weekly Friday night potluck dinners.”
“PhotosynQ is an open source software and sensor platform where communities can identify, research, and implement new methods to solve their local problems. Our initial focus is on agriculture, where we’re bringing together researchers, extension, crop consultants, and farmers to develop precision ag solutions in markets largely ignored by ‘big ag’ (small farms, niche crops, developing world markets, etc.). Examples include sensor-based methods for early identification of disease, mid-season prediction of yield, evaluating soil quality, and many others.
Our perspective is that sharing data simply isn’t enough – data quality is paramount to produce results that actually matter. Data must be collected using consistent methods, comparable devices, with strategies to identify outliers. Even with all that in place, the community has to have the skills to collect, analyze, and interpret the data correctly with minimal mistakes. At the same time, every project’s data needs are different – different methods, devices, methods of analysis, etc. While consistency and flexibility seem at odds, we’ve worked hard to make a platform in which they both exist, and scaling from new user to a developer is relatively easy. Unlike Xively or other streaming IoT data sites, we’re not trying to be the solution to every IoT problem. If you’re trying to track the temperature in your garage, we’re probably not what you’re looking for. If you’re trying to collaborate across a community, solve a complex problem, and develop a sensor-enabled solution… we’re worth checking out.
“We can get America back if we get ourselves back. You don’t need drugs; you don’t need gurus; you only need to believe in yourself. Remember it only takes a small circle of friends to get back to a life based on reality rather than escape.”
We’d like to add that you don’t need supermarkets, you don’t need cars; and you sure don’t need TV. You just need a small plot of dirt and a packet of seeds to get back in touch with the earth.
(Anyone who knows the story of Ochs’s life will undoubtedly find some irony in this song, but, gosh darmnit, Phil Ochs, we still love just you!)
Bay area, get ready for your ear drums to get rocked! Arann Harris and The Farm Band are described as one part dumpster fire, touch of summer camp, heap of Alt Gospel, served on a bed of bacon grease and git-down. His music is high-energy and highly entertaining. A mix of old time blues, mountain music, funk and angry Grampa.
The Group will be playing in two of November’s finest Bay Area shows – and you don’t want to miss them! On Saturday, November 21st, they’ll be opening for Sean Hayes at The Chapel in San Francisco and on November 27th, they’ll be joining the T Sisters and David Luning Band at The Mystic Theatre. Get your tickets HERE!
LAST Second Saturday HoeDown Hootenanny of the season! Featuring an eclectic mix of Gypsy, Jazz, Balkan, Blues, Americana, Acoustic, and Dark Carnival sounds for a wild evening of barn dancing!
-7PM: Doors Open
-7:30PM: Thee Hobo Gobbelins, “a wickedly catchy mixture of ancient pirate curses, orcish vaudeville, and eldritch hobo semaphore”
-9PM: The Resonant Rogues, “Gypsy jazz and Balkan music with American folk traditions like old-time and blues”
$10-$20 sliding scale at the door.
PLACE is “a public-serving, experiential learning center to showcase and foster sustainable living practices, urban homesteading, community resiliency & preparedness, social justice and artistic expression.”
the irresistible fleet of bicycles 