Building Community

From Foreclosure to Occupation

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A group of low-income San Franciscans has come up with a positive, long term solution to the housing crisis that is causing millions of Americans to be evicted and some to embrace the “Occupy Homes” movement: buy the buildings. In October 2011, residents of the Columbus United Cooperative (CUC) in San Francisco celebrated final approval of the ownership of their building as a permanently affordable, resident-owned limited-equity housing cooperative. The residents can now purchase “shares” in the co-op for only $10,000 in the heart of San Francisco (where housing starts at $500,000) to become cooperative homeowners, though most earn less than 50 percent of area median income.

Edible Landscapes London

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It’s a brisk Autumnal Monday morning. I’m at Edible Landscapes London, an offshoot of Transition Finsbury Park. This is the cutting edge of no-dig, agroforestry, predominantly perennial and definitely low-maintenance gardening and our practice challenges conventional gardening wisdom. I’m talking about deeply ingrained habits of digging and tidiness. Tell a trad gardener that they’re working too hard, that they don’;t need to dig every year or remove every weed to the compost heap and it’s like whipping the (strictly manicured) lawn from under their feet. They wince and clutch onto the spade handle more tightly.

A mindful path to a steady state economy

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The Occupy Wall Street movement has struck a chord with its protests against growing inequality in the United States. Suddenly, it is conceivable that policies may be enacted in the next Congress that would raise taxes on the rich and make the American dream more affordable. But if all the Occupy movement does is to restore middle-class demand for large homes and late-model automobiles, it will have been a failure.

How to eat cheap

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Not everyone can eat cheaply in the ways I am proposing. Single parents with multiple jobs, homeless folks, those living in shelters or in motels with limited cooking facilities and those with no cooking skills at all have more limited choices. Still, many of us can do this – it isn’t terrifically time consuming or that expensive. Moreover, eating cheap means mostly eating lower on the food chain and focusing on what’s available with a minimum of packaging or processing and in season. Cheap eating can be a gift for all of us if we have the good fortunate to have a home or a place we can cook and store food – at the same time, let us recall that we are blessed, because not everyone does..

Monday Mayhem: Occupy Wall Street on Common Sense and Equal Time Radio

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It’s another edition of Monday Mayhem, where talk radio hosts Rob Roper and Carl Etnier are guests on each others’ shows. Roper hosts Common Sense Radio on WDEV, Waterbury, Vermont, and the show’s focus is “improving the economic well being (sic) of Vermonters through reliance on free markets, limited government, and fiscal responsibility.” Etnier hosts the Monday edition of Equal Time Radio, focusing on energy, food, and the local economy at the end of the age of oil. The theme this Monday Mayhem is Occupy Wall Street.

The seven ages of Transition

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While there has been much discussion in terms of Transition and diversity over the past few years, little has been said about the issue of age. It’s not something we’ve explored here at Transition Culture in the past. Sometimes it is suggested that Transition only appeals to older people, whereas Occupy, for example, tends to attract more younger people. But is that the case? Is it that straightforward? How might Transition best serve people at the different stages in their lives, and what might they, in turn, bring to it? What are the things that attract people of different ages and what do they hope to get out of their engagement?

Don’t Panic!

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Talk about stockpiling food brings home the seriousness of the situation, the potential for disorder to descend on our society with terrifying speed. The threat of chaos and awareness of how close it is, triggers panic, an instinct to flee, to jump around, lose all sense of place and direction. Oooft. Stop and breathe. The scary thing about Transition is that so many well-informed, intelligent individuals share the conviction we’re on extremely dangerous ground. It would be such a relief to be able to dismiss it as a paranoid delusion.

Toilet paper preparedness vs. true resilience

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A back-up propane stove and an outhouse are not testimonials to resilience. They are merely some extra tools to draw upon if your home is blessed by a massive stroke of good fortune that leaves it standing while those around you are destroyed. No amount of toilet paper, backyard vegetable plots, or canned tomato sauce could help a household suddenly flooded with eight feet of water. That is not to say these things aren’t extremely important. Our “toilet paper preparedness” kept us safe and comfortable so that resources could go to help those who were not. It empowered us to help folks around us. But canned produce, outhouses, and a backyard garden are merely surface-level survival tools. Surviving a true community disaster requires resilience at a far more profound depth.

A Transition participant’s response to Luane Todd

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It has been interesting to observe so many commentators dispensing advice to the participants of the Occupy movement, telling them what they should or should not be doing. I have also seen this happening with Transition: activist pundits, one after another, issuing proclamations about how the Transition movement is too much this, or not enough that. The latest of these critiques can be found in Luane Todd’s recently published article on Energy Bulletin on November 23, titled, Why Occupy has Taken Off.