A fully featured human settlement, with independent sources of initiative, in which human activities are integrated into the natural environment in a way that is sustainable into the indefinite future.
“What I’m talking about is Carbon-negative habitat. And eco-villages as vehicles for experimentation: food, buildings, energy, livelihoods that are branded carbon-negative. Let’s go beyond thinking of reducing 20 per cent this or five per cent that. Let’s think about 110, 120, 180 per cent changes in some of the things we do.” Albert Bates
Ecovillages are engaged in the transformation of values in four ways that may make the transition to sustainability easier and more graceful: delinking growth from well-being, reconnecting people with the places where they live, affirming indigenous patterns and practices, and offering a holistic and experiential vessel for social experiments, educational methodologies, and transition paths.
In Activists to Grassroots, Tony discusses how activists need to start working with grassroots and create a new hybrid radical activist-grassroots persona.
Laura Allen, Co-founder of Greywater Action, at a packed Greywater Info Session for the Community of Petaluma, mid-July 2010.Photo Credit: Ron and Laura Paul of Greywater Marin.
Progress in California Regulation and in Inspection Procedures
Laura Allen, on progress made in California Greywater regulation, on recent Greywater Action strategies and successes, and expectations for the future of greywater usage in California:
Laura Allen describes the remarkable curriculum and installation projects of their 5-day Greywater Installer’s Course, and outlines their 1- and 2-day Greywater Courses, as well:
Register for the upcoming 5-day Greywater Installer’s course, organized by Daily Acts, and to be held in Sebastapol Mon 13 Sept. – Fri 17 Sept.
Students who take the 5-day Greywater Installer’s Course, and who pass the certification exam, and complete the 5th day installation project which Laura describes in the video above, are listed as Level 1 Installers on Greywater Action’s Installer Directory. I took the 5-day course last month, in July 2010, and found it to be outstanding preparation to get out in the field, and have already been on my first consultation. Not bad for an atmospheric scientist who has logged untold hours programming computers, but has rarely picked up a drill! It’s entirely attributable to Greywater Action’s rigorous teaching methods.
Greywater Resources
Laura Allen describes resources that Greywater Action has developed for Greywater Installers and how to access them:
Many Greywater Action members take an active role in the Greywater Alliance, a wonderful resource to keep both the greywater curious and seasoned greywater installers updated on this rapidly progressing field.
Addressing the unique greywater installer’s needs to (1) merge components from disparate sources, and to (2) purchase single items that may typically only be available in bulk, Laura and her colleagues have created Clean Water Components, a for-profit website that sells pre-packaged, ready-to-use, greywater components. They also offer complete greywater system maps in PDF format, to be sure you install your greywater systems correctly, as well as other items ranging from ‘how-to’ books to modern indoor composting toilets.
Next up in Greywater: Branched-Drain Installation Footage/Stills and the most recent Bay Area Greywater Roundtable Footage.
Workers Development in the City of New York is a for-profit business aimed at the development of worker cooperative businesses in the New York City metropolitan area. Our business structure is also organized as a worker cooperative. Presently, we are at work on our first worker cooperative restaurant. Visit workersdiner.org for more information.
Creative Financing for Your Worker Cooperative Jenny Kassan, Katovich Law Group and Sustainable Economies Law Center; Chris Michael, Workers Development; Christina Jennings, NCDF; Mike Leung, Worker Cooperative Credit Union
This panel will cover the legal framework for the financing of worker cooperatives and provide examples of creative financing techniques including the creation of a credit union to help finance worker cooperatives and conducting a direct public stock offering to non-members.
June Agriculture Walkthrough at Factor e Farm by Sean
The bottom line is that resilience in food is not difficult to come by, but it presently requires more energy than we have with 2 full time people – engaged fully in open source equipment development. We are prioritizing technical development, such that appropriate-technology mechanized agriculture makes food provision effective. Our next priorities in terms of the type of generalists we’d like to have at Factor e Farm is 2 more flexible fabricators and the open source agroecologist. The flexible fabricators should generalize in power electronics and CNC controls, and the agroecologics should generalize in agricultural and processing equipment development.
This workshop outlines a vision for a democratic, worker-owned, advanced industrial ecology society. We seek pathways to provide the burgeoning food education/justice movement with the tools to become economically sustainable, and to link the emerging green industrial worker cooperatives with them into sovereign networks. Once active, such networks can become the basis for sustainable, socially just communities that revitalize locales via open source sustainable agriculture and manufacturing methods. Our panel — with academic, commercial, and school of hard knocks experience — will frame the demonstrated solutions, numerous pieces of the puzzle that we as a society need to put together.
Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks
Short Description
Worker Cooperative Networks for Sovereignty of Food, Commerce, & Community: Panel/Breakouts/Discussion to Envision & Chart Implementation Framework of Industrial Permaculture Ecology
The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is itself a cooperative made up of five member businesses: four cooperative bakeries and a development and support collective. Members share a common mission, share ongoing accounting, legal, educational and other support services, and support the development of new member cooperatives by the Association. http://arizmendi.coop
Mandela Market Place is a pioneer in development, application and assessment of community food systems. The organization evolved since 2001, first as a project of the Environmental Justice Institute – Tides Center, until incorporating in 2005 as a stand-alone 501c3 organization with a goal to strengthen community health, integrity and indentity by providing economic opportunity and empowerment for inner-city Oakland residents and businesses, and local family farms. Mandela MarketPlace works directly with community residents, local, state and federal agencies, non-profits, small business owners, and farmers to support strategies to meet food needs, expand economic opportunity and increase self-reliance of low-income and disenfranchised people. http://mandelamarketplace.org
Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. We are the first organization of our kind to combine ecological training and urban food production with a grassroots door-to-door organizing model that will vastly increase our educational community outreach, help us to recruit volunteers, decentralize our fundraising sources, and provide local jobs that also train young community organizers. http://www.plantingjustice.org
Mandela Foods Cooperative is a locally-owned and operated full-service grocery store and nutrition education center located in West Oakland, a community long underserved in grocery retail. The present undersupply of food retail in West Oakland represents an opportunity to leverage untapped local buying power into new business and employment opportunities and healthy eating options for West Oakland residents. The Cooperative will offer local goods, wholesome, fresh and affordable foods grown on family farms, nutrition education classes and a cooperative economic investment program that provides multi-level investment for community residents. http://www.mandelafoods.com
Abolish Human Rentals is dedicated to bringing an old idea into the public conscience, that the standard employment relationship, a contract for the rental of people, is invalid due to the inalienable rights of humans. It is based on the already widely held principle of the non-transferability of responsibility for one’s actions. That principle, taken to its logical conclusion, means the rental of humans have no more legitimacy than their sale. http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org
Language(s): English
Tracks:
Climate Justice: sustainability, resources and land
Democracy and Governance
Important pieces that will be presented here include the successful strategies employed in the worker cooperative networks/alliances of Mondragon, Ohio, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Permaculture design strategies implemented even in harsh climate zones, Denmark’s national industrial symbiosis program, non-parasitic capitalization of non-hierarchical enterprises, and regenerative urban food justice paradigms.
Participants will self-organize into groups to construct models that put some of the pieces together. Workshop participants will then seek to bolster viability of the proposed models, emphasizing possible pilot programs in Detroit, Oakland and in Brooklyn.
Panel members include Quinton Sankofa of Mandela Marketplace and James Berk of Mandela Foods Cooperative, Mike Leung of the embryonic Worker Cooperative Credit Union, and Gavin Raiders of Planting Justice. Facilitator: Kirstie Stramler of Permaculture Cooperative.
For updates leading up to USSF 2010, see the panel and workshop group pages on http://organize.ussf2010.org and videos on http://permaculture.tv/tag/ussf2010/ .
Alemany Farm is a 4 acre, fully functioning urban farm nestled between a major highway intersection, a newly gentrified neighborhood on a hill and a housing project- the perfect place to grow some food! We got a tour (and some amazing fruit) from Antonio Roman-Alcalá, Volunteer Coordinator and soon to be videoblogger/documentarian extraordinaire. The work being done at Alemany Farm proves the point that urban farming and local food production is totally possible and necessary for the health and well being of a city and its inhabitants. Local farming and gardening are great motivators for people to get acquainted, eat more healthily and become more connected with where their food comes from and what it actually is (olives grow on trees? broccoli is a flower?). If you live in the SF Bay area, you can visit or volunteer at Alemany Farm on the weekends- check out AlemanyFarm.org.
Edits to the map which seem to conflict with a map of points of interest for USSF participants will be edited away. Contact Mark, markwdilley@gmail.com for more info or to get editing rights.
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