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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Can language be recycled?

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  • From: "Robert Waldrop" <rmwj@soonernet.com>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Can language be recycled?
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:18:17 -0500

I think one essential aspect of new structures and systems to replace
the old failing ones is that they grow organically from previous
forms. Because of this, they have a chance of sprouting and growing
some roots. for example, we are working in OKC on several different
projects relating to our local food system. Permaculture is one
aspect, but another is organizing a series of retail cooperatives that
will only sell local foods. To get enough folks together to make the
cooperatives a success, we are presently organizing a buying club with
about 100 people. Superficially, this could be considered a
capitalistic enterprise, and it is familiar enough to people that they
don't recoil in shock at the thought. But it represents a radical
departure from the present way of producing and delivering food to
people. Perhaps to use a medical analogy, we are an invading virus
that has disguised itself to confuse/defuse the body's immune system
so we can replicate.

It is also a radical departure from the way most "alternative"
structures work, in that the participants come from widely different
world views to get to this place. when I look at our organizing
committee, I see conservative Republicans, fundamentalist Christians,
New Age Pagans, descendents of settlers who took Indian lands
together, American Indians, conventional Democrats, radical leftist
sectarians, Catholics, atheists, and all points between. I am frankly
astonished that we have made it this far, having gone through an
extensive internet correspondence via a yahoogroup I started to
develop the concept, a series of regional meetings statewide, and most
recently an intensive series of meetings here in OKC to take all that
we have talked about and turn it into a working concept. Most of
these people wouldn't generally be talking to each other, or even in
the same room. Maybe it helps that we start all our meetings with a
potluck dinner.

In coming together to make this work, we have discovered a great
liberation. I have found this in my own life as I have, over the last
few years, taken back control of my food from the agribidness corpses.
I know the farmers that produce my food, personally, I know their
addresses and have been to several of them. plus each year I produce
more food from my former lawns.

Sorry to get mushy but the power of the oppressor is first of all a
power we give to it in our own minds. By "changing our minds,"
literally I think, we take away a lot of their power. All the way to
heaven is heaven, as they say, and its corrollary would also have to
be true, all the way to hell is hell.

Robert Waldrop, okc
http://www.oklahomafood.org


.
-----Original Message-----
>Rob wrote:
>> > How would the fair marketplaces defend themselves from
>> > the free market we currently have?
>






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