We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Conservation and the Community Garden: One Suburban Model That Works

from the Energy Bulletin. This article contains information that community gardeners and others involved in similar locally organized community projects might find useful.
...the ONLY way out of the deadly and doomed industrial sewer we’ve dug ourselves is through refashioning the intricate web of local economic and social relations that can bind a local community together. And this doesn’t require money inputs from outside. And it doesn’t require organizational help from the state and federal governments.

it requires trust and familiarity between neighbors; it requires hard work and practical knowledge; it requires the conscious practice of kindness and cooperation. Basically, it requires people realizing that these social and economic connections within the community are worth far, far more than money or possessions or anything having to do with industrial consumption. That’s it.

Our garden needs to run, so to speak, on community and ecological power – not money.
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