Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
‘What on earth is a supper club?’ I hear you cry! Think of it as a cross between a restaurant and a dinner party. The venue is usually someone’s home, or a pop-up location, and you’re often seated at big tables with the other diners. The feel and set up varies, but expect multiple courses of delicious food and a BYO booze policy.
If we ever thought we had secure access to things like education or health care, housing or income support, that sense of security is seeping away. In the US and across Europe, the rise of populism signals new depths of anger among people who feel betrayed by the powerful and out of control of their lives.
Herbal medicines are, and always have been, a rhizomatic source of the equitable and lateral distribution of basic needs that seeks not to hoard, commercialise, and capitalise on healthcare or to dole it out only to those with access to the necessary currency.
Permanent Community Energy Cooperatives are an opportunity to start healing the planet and communities today through equitable energy development. They’re also “fun-work” that can bring people together, create results to celebrate, and build stronger bonds for more resilient, thriving communities.
Playing in the street, the “really good thing” Jo and her neighbours stumbled across, has many benefits. Children need to play, it’s vital for their physical and emotional development.
I want to share three similar examples of how citizens, when faced with a big challenge like we were, chose commoning and not only succeeded, but further developed their collaborative capacity ensuring they could better meet future challenges.
Jairo describes industrial agriculture as a ‘dishonest agriculture’ robbing us of our health and proposes an alternative productive approach harnessing the power of biological mineral ferments which will allow all of us to grow cheap organic food through enhanced photosynthesis – by Harvesting the Sun.
We need to build local resilience and to redesign our communities in order to be able to adapt to the changes we are already facing while reconnecting among ourselves and with the planet.
Solving the climate dilemma is not about flying halfway around the world to attend a conference, listening to presentations, drawing up mind maps on a white board, photographing that and writing a report. It is about growing biomass, building soil, and restoring healthy, healing ecosystems.
Neither glitzy, eloquent nor subtle, Brecher methodically lays out an interlocking vision of direct action within a constitutional legal framework to build the powerful nonviolent climate insurgency necessary to turn the ship around.
The commons is not just a battlefield between corporate predators and those who resist them – it is also a source of hope for those willing to imagine a world beyond capitalism. It represents a space between the private market and the political state in which humanity can control and democratically root our common wealth.
Our chapter explores the Transition Movement of grassroots responses to climate change, peak oil and economic contraction, and seeks to place it in the broader context of commons-based responses to climate capitalism.
