[permaculture] Answers from Starhawk
rafter t. sass
liberationecology at gmail.com
Tue Dec 25 06:54:49 EST 2007
Hey Starhawk (and Pc world)
It sounds like you are doing great work.
The information about New Orleans is helpful - I love to see people
in the permaculture movement (and plain ol' folks too) responding to
a call put out by people in need.
The harder part comes when there is no explicit, accessible call to
respond to. What do we do then? How do we relate our work to the
larger society?
I propose that - if want to make a movement that is socially
regenerative, as well as ecologically - then we need to
systematically seek out leadership, accountability, influence, and
direction, from other communities. Not just any other communities,
but (1) those with which we are interconnected in concrete ways -
which actually, at this point in history, means everyone, and (2)
that are marked by having less power and freedom than our home
community. And then, *in the context of that leadership,* to channel
resources to that community.
I'm not so concerned with process within groups, and within
communities. There is plenty of great work being done on that front,
and I'm glad for it. I'm concerned with this larger notion of process
- that between, rather than within, communities.
If we accept the ideas here...
> let me just say that for me, now, the ideal is not always ‘flat’
> power, but
> rather, power that is fairly earned and accountable—earned by
> commitment and
> by taking on and fulfilling responsibilities, earned by making
> mistakes,
> admitting them and learning from them, and at times, earned in the
> more
> traditional ways by study, acquiring skills and experience. That’s
> the kind
> of power we attempt to embody, model and teach in our EAT courses.
...and we also acknowledge that our communities are all part of a
larger system, that we participate in, that allocates resources
disproportionately to some groups, and away from others, for reasons
that have NOTHING to do with "fairly earned and acceptable," (and we
do all acknowledge this, permies, don't we?)...
...then I propose that - if we are looking to regenerate our social
system as well as ecosystems - then we need start *practicing
democracy.* In a democracy (the way I think of it) folks who have
more power, have it because they've been empowered to act in the
interest of - and more importantly - BY the folks with less.
We have all been subject to some very profound socialization to seek
leadership from those who already have power - often meaning
ourselves - and to do everything BUT seek out leadership from folks
who have less power than us. But this is just exactly what it will
take to reverse the terrible trajectory of our global system - that
of an ever-increasing gap between the most and the least powerful,
grinding away for 1000s of years. Since our relative power and wealth
depends directly on the relative powerlessness and poverty of other
communities, asking those communities how we should be using all
these resources would be a great way to practice "Fair Share."
We can have a permaculture movement that does this. We already do it,
when we can, when we aren't too distracted, when we are particularly
inspired, or when there is a call to respond to. What we by and large
DON'T do is make it a regular part of the practice and teaching of
permaculture. Let's make it part of how we do things. This, more than
anything, is the permaculture movement I want to be a part of.
Unashamed plug: If anyone wants me, or a collaborator, to come and
teach a unit on this, particularly in a Pc course, or to train a
trainer, that can almost certainly be arranged.
Happy Year's End to All,
rafter t. sass
The Liberation Ecology Project
liberationecology.org
518-567-7407
On Dec 15, 2007, at 12:21 AM, Starhawk wrote:
> HI Rafter, your questions were forwarded to me, and I’m delighted
> to have
> this opportunity to sound off on one of my favorite subjects—
> power! I’m not
> on the listserve where this came up, although perhaps I should be,
> so I’d
> appreciate your forwarding this answer to the list. And thanks,
> Keith, for
> forwarding our appeal.
>
>
>
> Just to clarify, Earth Activist Training is an educational
> program. We
> teach permaculture design certificate courses with a special
> emphasis on
> organizing and activism, and a grounding in earth based
> spirituality. The
> projects and programs listed below are examples of things our
> graduates have
> done or are doing—they are not all sponsored by us nor controlled
> by us.
> And there’s a wide variety of ways those projects came about. For
> example,
> in New Orleans, a local resident named Malik Rahim, a former Black
> Panther,
> who lives in an area of the city that didn’t flood, put out a call for
> activists to come down and help organize after the hurricane, and
> quite a
> number of EAT graduates did. Four or five of them remained for a
> year or
> more, lending help in many areas from general organizing to
> bioremediation
> to trauma support, as needed. Their direction came from the larger
> community that was there, the needs of returning residents, and the
> collective process of the activists with Common Ground Relief, the
> organization that formed.
>
>
>
> Other graduates have gone back to their home communities, in
> Brazil, South
> India, the Phillipines, etc. to work on projects there. Their
> accountability is to their own communities and goals, and that’s where
> direction and leadership comes from.
>
>
>
> As far as EAT itself is concerned, myself and our coordinator,
> Eileen Rose,
> make many of the overall organizational decisions after consulting
> with the
> other core teachers. But she and I are the only ongoing staff, and
> the
> other teachers, frankly, don’t want to be bothered with questions
> like,
> “Should the website background be green or blue?”
>
>
>
> We feel accountable, first, to our communities, the people we live
> with and
> near, the activist communities and the global and local permaculture
> communities. We have good relations and strong connections with
> the other
> major teachers and groups in our area, and coteach with many of
> them or
> guest teach at each others’ courses. We also feel accountable to our
> students—to share with them tools and knowledge in an empowering,
> clear, and
> useful way, to help them further their own goals and become more
> effective
> earth healers and organizers, and to give them the grounding in
> permaculture
> that the international community expects from those who earn a design
> certificate.
>
>
>
> Beyond that, we have a commitment to make these tools available to
> those who
> have the least access to money and power in the larger society.
> It’s easy
> to say that, but not always easy to do. We attempt to keep our
> courses
> accessible to those without money by offering scholarships and work
> trade,
> for example. In practice, the scholarships mostly go to activists who
> generally come from more privileged backgrounds but have chosen to
> devote
> themselves to service and social change rather than jobs and
> money. The
> kids from the inner city, like Bayview Hunters Point, are not going
> to come
> take a two week course in Cazadero, even with a scholarship. It’s
> just too
> far out of their zone of familiarity, and many of them have kids of
> their
> own and can’t take two weeks away from work or families. It’s
> taken us
> time, but we have found many ways to support that community in
> their green
> aspirations—by providing knowledge and contacts to key people, by
> sharing
> skills and teaching workshops in the community garden, by developing a
> course in a different format, on weekends, oriented to working
> people and
> bringing it into the neighborhood, and most of all, by years of
> relationship
> building, which in my experience is ultimately the only way it can
> be done.
>
>
>
> I also have many years of experience working in groups and
> organizations
> with ideals of what I prefer to call shared power. They range from
> feminist
> collectives going back to the sixties and seventies to groups that
> define
> themselves as anarchists, to spiritual groups and living
> collectives. I’ve
> thought a lot about this issue, and written two books, Dreaming the
> Dark and
> Truth or Dare, Encounters with Power, Authority and Mystery that
> reflect
> different stages of my journey with power.
>
>
>
> There’s a model of shared power we drew from those early feminist
> days and
> from direct action groups, where all decisions are made by
> consensus, in
> small groups, affinity groups or working groups, and then by
> representatives
> in spokescouncils, and where the ideal was no top-down leadership
> at all.
> I’ve seen that model work phenomenally well to empower people in
> situations
> where everyone was taking equal or comparable risks together.
>
>
>
> But I’ve also experienced the difficulties groups get into when
> they attempt
> to transpose that model into other situations, where real
> differentials of
> skill or experience of commitment exist, or where groups continue
> over long
> periods of time. I could write a book about the issues that
> develop in
> those situations—I may well write a book about it, but in order to
> avoid
> writing that book at this moment in this post which is already
> overly long,
> let me just say that for me, now, the ideal is not always ‘flat’
> power, but
> rather, power that is fairly earned and accountable—earned by
> commitment and
> by taking on and fulfilling responsibilities, earned by making
> mistakes,
> admitting them and learning from them, and at times, earned in the
> more
> traditional ways by study, acquiring skills and experience. That’s
> the kind
> of power we attempt to embody, model and teach in our EAT courses.
>
>
>
> I hope this answers your questions, and thanks for opening up this
> always
> fascinating topic, Do cc me if this discussion carries on, or let
> me know
> how to get on the listserve if that makes sense,
> Starhawk>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: rafter t. sass <liberationecology at gmail.com>
>> Date: Dec 12, 2007 7:40 AM
>> Subject: Open response to fundraising appeal
>> To: info at earthactivisttraining.org, earthactivisttraining at gmail.com
>>
>>
>> Dear Eaters,
>>
>> Keith Johnson recently forwarded your fundraising letter to the
>> international permaculture listserve at ibiblio. It's a good letter,
>> and it looks like you are doing some great work. I posted a response
>> to that appeal on the listserve, with some questions for you, and for
>> us as a movement. I realized that it would be worthwhile to share
>> that
>> posting with y'all more directly. It's copied in below, with a couple
>> edits and additions for clarity.
>>
>> Hope this finds you well,
>>
>> rafter t. sass
>> The Liberation Ecology Project
>> liberationecology.org
>> 518-567-7407
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---------
>> -------------------
>> Because there is an appeal for support here, I'll ask of Starhawk,
>> and her projects, the same question I try and teach all of my
>> students to ask, of any project that they consider supporting, or
>> creating, or identifying with...
>>
>> Where is the leadership for these projects coming from?
>>
>> The question isn't about internal democratic process (though that is
>> a worthwhile question) it's about external relationships, between the
>> project and larger communities. Who initiates? Who decides? Who
>> shapes the objectives of the project?
>>
>> We live in a social system where resources flow in one direction,
>> from the many to the few, and control flows in the opposite
>> direction, cascading outwards from the few onto the many. In such a
>> system, inequality will always increase over the long duration -
>> even if
>> the folks with power are doing progressive, sustainable,
>> humanitarian work.
>>
>> To reverse that pattern and begin to flatten power differences,
>> projects and communities can systematically seek out control from
>> those groups with *less* power and freedom than they. And I mean here
>> all those aspects of "control" that are worth seeking:
>> leadership, influence, direction, and accountability.
>>
>> This isn't easy to do. It goes against some very deep implicit and
>> explicit
>> social norms all around. It takes time and energy. So it is only
>> worth doing
>> if you are actually interested in flattening power differences, i.e.
>> with fostering social
>> health. I do find myself sometimes supporting projects that don't do
>> this - but I
>> don't consider those projects directly relevant for the *social*
>> well-being
>> of our society.
>>
>> What I do hope is that we can begin to ask this question of all the
>> projects that we encounter - where is the leadership coming from? I
>> hope that in this way, by learning to look for the flow of control in
>> the same way that we look for the flow of energy, we can create a
>> permaculture movement that is, on balance, relevant for creating a
>> truly healthy, democratic society. I don't think we are there yet,
>> particularly not in Europe and the US.
>>
>> So to Starhawk and Penny and the others at EAT, and to all of us who
>> seek to use
>> permaculture to transform our world: where are we looking for
>> leadership? To whom are we accountable?
>>
>> This is not a rhetorical or trick question. I really don't
>> imagine I know what Starhawk's answer would be - or will be, if she
>> reads this, if she answers. If it seems like I'm singling EAT out for
>> special attention, it's because I'm responding to an appeal for
>> support
>> that makes no mention of what - for me - is becoming the primary
>> question.
>>
>> all the best,
>> rafter t. sass
>> The Liberation Ecology Project
>> liberationecology.org
>> 518-567-7407
>>
>>
>>
>> My friend and colleague Starhawk recently sent out this appeal for
>> support that I think you will find worth reading.
>> Keith
>>
>> Dear friends,
>>
>> Many years ago, I wrote a book called /The Fifth Sacred Thing,/ that
>> envisioned a transformed, diverse and green San Francisco in a world
>> divided by war and ecological collapse. I go back to that story a
>> lot,
>> these days, as both the worst and some of the best aspects of it
>> seem to
>> be coming true.
>>
>> That San Francisco of the future is a place where streams flow freely
>> through garden streets lined with fruit trees, where celebrations and
>> rituals honor a multiplicity of cultures, where humans have
>> learned to
>> heal and live in harmony with nature.
>>
>> Now, I spend a lot of my time not just writing about that vision, but
>> trying to make it a reality by teaching the skills of ecological
>> design.
>> In 2002, together with Penny Livingston-Stark, I began teaching Earth
>> Activist Trainings, because I saw so many enthusiastic, deeply
>> committed
>> people on fire with the desire to change the world, but often
>> without a
>> clear sense of what the solutions are.
>>
>> Over the last six years, Earth Activist Trainings have loosed
>> hundreds
>> of fired-up permie potentizers onto the world, seeding communities
>> across the globe with the skills and knowledge of regenerative
>> design.
>> Here's just a few of the things they've done:
>>
>> Disaster Relief and Bioremediation:
>>
>> In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, EAT alumni became core
>> organizers of the grassroots Common Ground Relief efforts, ran the
>> trauma support and counseling program at the clinic, and started a
>> bioremediaiton project to clean toxins from soil using
>> microorganisms,
>> plants and fungi.
>>
>> Sustainable Development in the Third World:
>>
>> Rainwater catchment in Bolivia, a model permaculture farm in Brazil,
>> community development and tsunami relief in south Indian fishing
>> villages, sustainability programs in the rural Phillipines, women's
>> programs in a permaculture institute in the West Bank of Palestine.
>>
>> Urban Permaculture;
>>
>> Rejuvenating a community garden in the Bayview, the poorest area
>> of San
>> Francisco; living and working in the L.A. Ecohouse, growing food
>> in the
>> projects of Miami, transforming intersections into gathering
>> places in
>> Portland; model backyard gardens and community power-down programs in
>> Iowa City; youth programs in poverty stricken downtown Detroit.
>>
>> And much, much more than we can fit on this page. You know as well
>> as I
>> do that the world is at a crucial turning point right now.
>> Finally, the
>> general public gets it that climate change is happening and the
>> waters
>> are rising around us. But we still haven't begun to make changes
>> on the
>> scale and with the speed that's needed. The media is full of green
>> news
>> and the stores are full of green products, but we can't buy our
>> way out
>> of looming ecological collapse. No one technology or technique can
>> save us.
>>
>> That's where we come in. There's a pressing need to train people
>> in the
>> art of designing flows, links and connections, creating systems that
>> meet human needs while healing and regenerating the environment
>> around
>> us. And that's just what we do.
>>
>> Please help us continue this work. We have three residential courses
>> planned for 2008, an Urban Permaculture course over a series of six
>> weekends, a new Youth Course, and a Sustainable Skills Tour with our
>> newly built EAT bus.
>>
>> To do all this, we need your help. EAT has had generous funding which
>> has allowed us, in turn, to be generous with financial aid. For
>> each of
>> our courses we've provided ten to twenty thousand dollars of work
>> trade
>> and scholarships, which in turn makes it possible for activists and
>> low-income students to attend. But that funding is now at the end
>> of its
>> cycle, and we need help from new sources to continue being able to
>> say
>> 'yes', not 'no', to those who want this training.
>>
>> Many of you are out there, right now, doing your regenerative
>> activism
>> on a daily basis. (Thanks!) And you may not have a lot of financial
>> wealth to share. But, please, think about the value of Earth Activist
>> Training. And think about how desperately we need more activists
>> of this
>> caliber. Then, give whatever you can. The results of even a small
>> pledge
>> of $10/month will be exponentially effective in the big picture.
>> Because
>> every dollar you donate will help train more passionate, intelligent
>> people to cleanse the soil, heal the water, share their skills, and
>> restore the balance – in countless and priceless ways.
>>
>> Please consider a donation right now of:
>>
>> $1700 (provides one full scholarship for a two week course.)
>>
>> $800 (subsidizes one work trader)
>>
>> $100 - $250 (provides some hands-on supplies for a course)
>>
>> Just to be clear, we welcome donations of every size and kind. Large.
>> Small. One-time. Quarterly. Annual. Sporadic. We gratefully accept it
>> all. *Make a monthly pledge for exponential impact. Join the EAT
>> Mycelium Fund Monthly Giving Circle.
>> *
>> And now we invite you to choose the way you will contribute to
>> this most
>> necessary educational endeavor.
>>
>> Donate online at http://earthactivisttraining.org/donate.html
>> <http://earthactivisttraining.org/donate.html>
>>
>> or send checks to
>>
>> Earth Activist Training
>> POB 251
>> Sierraville CA 96126
>>
>> Thanks! Your generosity is a crucial part of the solution.
>>
>> Starhawk
>>
>> Earth Actiist Trainings
>>
>> www.earthactivisttraining.org
>> www.starhawk.org
>>
>> P.S. Don't worry—I haven't stopped writing. In fact, my holiday
>> gift to
>> you is an expanded, updated vision of San Francisco of /The Fifth
>> Sacred
>> Thing/. It's too long to send, but you can find it at
>> www.starhawk.org/
>> <http://www.starhawk.org/> . Look on the left sidebar for "Latest
>> Essay".
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
rafter t. sass
The Liberation Ecology Project
liberationecology.org
518-567-7407
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