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.
Permaculture activism in Afghanistan, Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith says “As far from media sensationalism as you can get this documentary will take you on a journey that is absolutely real, raw, and powerful.”
Since the American invasion, massive reconstruction and aid efforts, and the homecoming of millions of refugees, Afghanistan is still experiencing widespread hunger, homelessness and lawlessness. In this 50 minute documentary we travel through this ancient and troubled land with Rosemary Morrow, an Australian aid worker who brings her considerable wisdom and expertise to the task of reconstruction.
By trade Rosemary is a horticulturalist who for many years has been an expert in the field of Permaculture, an agricultural technique that enables individuals and communities to feed themselves using environmentally sustainable methods. She’s spent the last thirty years working in Africa, Asia and Central Europe, pioneering the introduction of this technique to shattered communities struggling to rebuild their lives after the devastation of war.
Rosemary has always worked outside the mainstream in an unassuming, minimalist style. This has given her a freedom and a unique perspective that enables her to effect change in a way that is somewhat different from the large, state sponsored aid agencies. She doesn’t arrive with a convoy of trucks laden with flour, toothpaste and politics; she’s more likely to pull up in a battered taxi with nothing but a few dollars and her small suitcase. She’s a streetwise Mary Poppins of global war zones.
In the course of her many travels through the rubble of human conflict, Rosemary has become a seasoned observer of fractured communities and understands more than most the essential elements they need in order to rebuild and function. She invariably arrives at ground zero knowing that the degree of community fragmentation is such that before she can even begin to introduce Permaculture, she has to attend to its broken social structure. Tending and cultivating the re-growth of a community is vital for any chance of developing a peaceful, sustainable way of life. Rosemary calls this preliminary work, Social Permaculture.
In this documentary we are invited into the hearts and lives of the people of Afghanistan. We go with Rosemary into a newly established orphanage and spend time with the children now living there. As their stories unfold we explore the places they have come from: the dusty, rubble-strewn streets of Kabul and the remote battle weary villages high in the rugged mountains. We also meet war widows struggling in a patriarchal society to feed and shelter their children. We hear the stories of the street kids who are burdened with the responsibility for feeding their families. In the chilling finale we go into the basement of a derelict building, discovering graphic evidence of Afghanistan’s dark and terrible underworld. Most importantly we see the glimmers of hope as Rosemary and her companions slowly and carefully help the people lift themselves out of the rubble and dirt and begin to sow the seeds of peace.
The Garden at the End of the World will interest many community and advocacy groups, especially those involved with social justice, peace, sustainability, international relations, overseas aid, ethics and permaculture.
The film is also relevant to a range of senior secondary and introductory tertiary courses, including: Asian studies, child welfare, civics and citizenship, conflict and conflict resolution, feminist studies, health and human development (VCE), human rights, human society and its environment (NSW), international aid/law/politics, journalism, peace Journalism, media studies, modern history, permaculture, political science, psychology, religious studies, social work, society and culture, sociology, studies of society and environment (Victoria) and world history
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/ .
We are organizing a credit union that will serve worker cooperatives in the United States. This group is in the process of applying for a federal charter. We currently do not have an active charter and are not federally insured.
Worker cooperatives are businesses that are worker owned and democratically managed by their members. The credit union will help meet the following needs of worker cooperatives:
1) The worker co-op credit union will provide financial services for worker cooperatives and their members. Worker cooperatives often have difficulty attaining credit. This credit union will provide business lending exclusively to worker cooperatives. It will also provide personal loans for members’ capital contributions, as well as general consumer lending to its individual members. The credit union will provide a way for the members to support worker cooperatives through their use of its financial services.
2) The credit union will support technical assistance for its worker cooperative members. This may include financial, legal, or organizational assistance. It will also support efforts to develop new cooperatives and replicate existing ones.
3) The credit union will support education and awareness about worker cooperatives. It will help highlight the benefits of worker ownership and democratic management in the workplace.
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.
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