Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Kaori Brand is a filmmaker who spent five years working here [Japan] at the United Nations University. One project that marked her especially was about the region deeply affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. In the following article she reflects on the experience of recording the recovery efforts of the fishing communities of Kesennuma and Omoe.
In practice, consensus-with-unanimity means essentially that anyone can block a proposal for any reason, and there’s no recourse—such as having criteria for a legitimate block, or requiring people who block proposals to co-create a new proposal with the advocates of the old one.
Localise West Midlands (LWM) has just completed some research which we wanted to share with those interested in the REconomy project. It is closely related to REconomy thinking, and we hope (have to hope) it has potential to increase how “reconomics” can be integrated into mainstream economic development.
Just over a year ago I was given a ‘community cake’. A cake tin full of all the ingredients needed to make white chocolate and blackberry cake. All the ingredients that is, except for one cup of sugar. It was a birthday cake and my challenge was to ask a neighbour I didn’t know for a cup of sugar. I have to say my initial reaction was one of fear. I thanked my friend, but I was also angry that she’d put me in the position of having to follow through – you can’t do a PhD on neighbourhood sharing and then chicken out of asking a neighbour for sugar!
Here’s what’s going on in Fukushima and across the region. Funds which were available for the “emergency phase” are almost gone. The clear focus and purposefulness of what needs to happen next that was present in the emergency phase is gone. The NPOs and others supporting communities during the emergency phase are cutting back — in part because they don’t have funding and in part because they are not sure what to do. Meanwhile, things are stabilized, but the “new now” has not come into form. Many, many small scale initiatives and projects and small businesses have been launched. The government is busy creating City Plans and other plans to which most people feel no connection. Climate of cooperation is decreasing.
How many of you have something electrical or electronic broken at home? Something that not only you don’t only know how to repair yourself, but also don’t know who could repair it for you? Or perhaps, the person who claims they could fix that printer or digital camera is quoting you a price higher than what you would pay for a new device.
Practitioners of urban agriculture have a lot to be proud of, including forming part of a “food movement,” which is increasing in size and influence. People are questioning food systems conventions and the dominant forms of food production (industrial farming) and distribution (globalized trade) are being opposed more and more by communities around the globe. Urban agriculturists—with their claim for a viable alternative to the broken food system—seem to have at this moment a certain cultural cachet.
People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.
~Wendell Berry~
Even Forbes is jumping on the bandwagon of the “sharing economy” with a recent article on AirBnB. This closely follows Van Jones’s CNN article about the “sharing economy,” but the push to transform our broken economy isn’t just about sharing, though; it isn’t even just about renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, and the other elements of the green economy movement. There is a “new economy movement” that’s pushing for a fundamental shift away from the neoliberal policies that have dominated our economy and society for decades.
Placemaking is a process, accessible to anyone, that allows peoples’ creativity to emerge. When it is open and inclusive, this process can be extraordinarily effective in making people feel attached to the places where they live. That, in turn, makes people more likely to get involved and build shared wealth in their communities.
But why might we have to consider alternatives to capitalism and what might an alternative look like?
•Connect The Dots: Rebuilding the Foodshed
•Urban gardener hopes to turn foreclosures into farms
•Permaculture Garden at UMass Documented on Video
