How do we bring the skills and tools of ecological design and permaculture into the communities that most need them? That’s the question we ask ourselves at Earth Activist Training—then we do two basic things. First, we support organizations within those communities that are already working on issues of social, environmental and food justice, sharing resources and building relationships. Then, we go out and fundraise like hell to offer scholarships to our residential trainings to people from those communities. […]
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Cuba—in late November and early December I spent two weeks there to attend the International Permaculture Conference and Convergence and participate in the related tours…Some of the highlights: hearing from the Cubans how they survived the ‘Special Period” after the Soviet Union fell by growing food in and around their cities and shifting to organic agriculture. […] The olives are flowering on my land in California right now, just as they are in the olive groves of Palestine. In a few weeks I’ll be heading there to coteach a permaculture course at the Marda Permaculture Farm on the West Bank, together with Klaudia van Gool from England and Murad Al-Khufash, who runs the demonstration farm and who is bringing the tools and insights of permaculture to Palestine…we need to raise five thousand dollars to support the costs of the course and to make it available for Palestinians who suffer many economic privations under the Occupation. Donate online here: http://www.thefarm.org/etc. […] During Obama’s State of the Union message, I was scheduled to give a talk at Northern Arizona University on “Women Taking Action: Using the Insights of the Feminist Movement.” As part of it, I decided to write the State of the Union as if Obama were suddenly possessed by the spirit of the nurturing, caring, […] Organizing after an Obama victory is like bicycling with the wind at your back, instead of peddling into a stiff head wind. I’ve lived and organized through the victories of Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush, and believe me, this is better! And we have a lot of organizing to do. […] But even more than troubles with the cops and city authorities, the biggest challenges the Occupy movement faces seem to be internal. How do we make decisions together? How do we resolve our own conflicts within our groups? Once we’ve said “We are the 99%”, how do we set standards of behavior and say what is okay and what is not? Once we’ve renounced force and coercion, how do we enforce those standards when we do set them? […] |
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