Building Community

As local as it gets: The Town of Ithaca Agricultural Protection Plan

by

There was some good news on the local food security front this fall. One recent critical success was the election of antifracking candidates in several Tompkins County towns, which for the moment at least has challenged the claimed right of area landowners to extract short-term profits at the expense of the long-term health and agricultural productivity of local farmland. The other development was the November 2011 approval of the Town of Ithaca Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan (AFPP) by the Ithaca Town Board and the preparation of similar plans for the Towns of Lansing and Ulysses.

The shared patterns of indigenous culture, permaculture and digital commons

by

If there is a common challenge in creating a commons in diverse contexts – indigenous culture, permaculture, cyberspace – it is about how to build enduring trust. Trust is needed as a prerequisite for mutual commitments, experimentation and innovation beyond those enabled by markets. Trust is needed whether it is an open source software commons or a water commons.

The liberation of civil society through p2p working – Creating Commons in our life

by

Freed up creativity enabled by open source technology is the chance to liberate us from the chains of an outdated economic model based on market pricing. Will it enable us to co-create a commons orientated contributory culture? Our challenge is how to make the new prototype which cannot fully socially reproduce itself at present into a full mode of production for a sustainable society.

Why Jane, you look lovely! Review: AUSTENtatious Crochet

by

With so many books on our shelves we have a trove of tips and techniques to draw on far into the future as we re-skill our way forward. And, providing we make the preservation of the Internet a priority, our Web hubs will allow us to exchange information and ideas to help us adapt in place most delightfully.

eCOOLnomics

by

“The drivers of climate change are embedded in our global culture. No amount of haggling will address these real problems without deep and dramatic cultural change. That change can be positive, however, and eCOOLnomics explores the potential transition paths and modalities.”

Brewing better local economies with American craft beer

by

And this change in American beer starts at home, or nearly so, as craft beer really is a “local beer” phenomenon. This shift in consumer preferences and support for local craft beer is perfectly representing in a nanobrewery start-up called Community Beer Works (CBW) in Buffalo, NY. The CBW founders are using Kickstarter, social media and other fund raising techniques to make their brewery “an integral part of our city and the neighborhood our brewery is located in. We are planning partnerships with local urban farmers and gardeners to create a network of hop gardens that can be used in specialty beers as well as to dispose of our grain in ecologically friendly, mutually beneficial manner. Our goal is to foster a sense of community and place, enriching our hometown through the production of damn good beer.”

Gangsters and Banksters

by

The Occupy movement has focused public attention on the vast and growing disparity of wealth and power in the US, and increasingly in other affluent nations. You’ve all seen the statistics — essentially all of the increase in real wealth and income over the last 40 years has accrued to less than 1% of citizens, and for the other 99% real wealth and income have declined, in some cases precipitously. As a result, nearly half of all Americans, and well more than half of American children, now live in poverty or near-poverty. There is essentially no social or economic mobility left in US society — if you’re born rich, you will surely grow richer, and if you’re born poor, you will surely grow poorer. The American Dream, and the American middle class, are dead.

To build community, an economy of gifts

by

In former times, people depended for all of life’s necessities and pleasures on people they knew personally. If you alienated the local blacksmith, brewer, or doctor, there was no replacement. Your quality of life would be much lower. If you alienated your neighbors then you might not have help if you sprained your ankle during harvest season, or if your barn burnt down. Community was not an add-on to life, it was a way of life. Today, with only slight exaggeration, we could say we don’t need anyone….They are replaceable and, by the same token, so am I.

Occupy: rediscovering the general will in hard times

by

“Democracy,” wrote John Dewey, “is more than a form of government.” The image we are given of democracy is often reduced to administration, the implementation and management of the necessary, but the legitimacy of the state in democracies is inseparable from some notion of the general will. Democracy, as Rousseau argued, requires some process for the formation of the “general will,” by reference to which decision-making can be measured.