GAIA Workshops

The Ecovillage Five, headed for CD in DC

It all started several weeks ago at my intentional community, Columbia Ecovillage, here in Portland. Oregon. We are a 37 household cohousing community and urban permaculture farm in the northeast part of the city, and have lived together for 2 ½ years now, growing food, creating community bonds, and trying to live our values of deep democracy, sustainability, and friendship.

We share meals a few times a week, but that Friday I decided to organize an impromptu happy hour. It was one of the first sunny evenings we had had after a dreary spring and early summer. I shot out an email on our community listserv, announcing that I was making up a pitcher of margaritas and would be out at the patio around five o’clock. Typically, folks who get word arrive with glasses, wine, and snacks, and this was no exception. By the time we had all gathered, we had about 15 folks sitting around, licking the salt off their glasses and chatting.

Pam brought up the message she had received online from Bill McKibben about the planning of a massive civil disobedience action in Washington D.C. scheduled for later in the summer, including plans for two solid weeks of mass arrests at the White House. The issue was the Keystone XL Pipeline, a transcontinental, north to south underground pipeline proposed for approval by the president in November. I had received the same email, and we discussed the environmental effects of the tar sands and the pipeline: pipeline breaks that could poison the waters of millions of people,;heavy metals already causing cancers; songbird deaths; and, the biggest issue, a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere that would make any efforts to mitigate or reverse climate crisis impossible. NASA climatologist James Hansen stated that if the tar sands are unearthed and refined it is essentially “game over” in attempts to stabilize the climate.

Needless to say, despite the margaritas, the conversation grew somber as we sat with this information together. Pam then stated, “I want to go get arrested. This is so important.” I said, “I’m in!”,  and another neighbor, Peg, also said she would go. We started thinking about others we might ask from the community. Pam and I had both had some experience in environmental and social justice activism. Peg had none.  We got excited about the idea of traveling across the country together as a community to enact our values in another, more public way than our intentional community provided.

Over the next few days, we recruited two more neighbors. Pam calculated the carbon footprint for travel, and we decided to take a three day cross-country trip via Amtrak to Washington D.C. We found housing with the cousin of another community member, and I discovered through some of my connections in the faith community that the day we had selected- August 29^th- was designated as an interfaith day of action. We are researching the arrest process and legal implications as well, and are talking about how we will coordinate and support each other through the legal process. There have been many jokes about mailing cakes (organic, gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.) to the jailhouse.

We worked to get word out about the issue, sending out a press release, being interviewed on community radio, and preparing for the journey.  Other neighbors offered assistance to the effort; Heather would take care of my cat, Joe took the photo for our press release, a special send-off dinner planned, letters sent out to friends and family telling about our efforts and the issue.

Every day, as departure day approaches (August 24^th), I am filled with gratitude for the synergy of energy and support offered within the ecovillage and the larger community. Indeed, as a climate activist I had been contemplating civil disobedience for the past five years, but may not have made the choice to go across the country by myself.  It reinforces the whole “it takes a village…” idea to new heights of meaning in my heart. It takes a village to live together with care and intention, to dream, to share, to raise children, to sing and play, and, apparently, to go get a criminal record on behalf of the future of our planet home.

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In the past several months I’ve been working, dreaming, collaborating and creating with a group of activists, teachers, and healers as we co-create a new collective with the intention of serving the activist community here in Portland, and perhaps elsewhere. The Cascadia Center (based out of Tryon Life Farm), is starting to offer sharing circles for folks involved with non-profits, activist groups, social entrepreneurs- anyone working in groups and/or coalitions who need some support and assistance in working effectively and joyfully. We plan to offer workshops in many spheres of support, covering theoretical, creative, and personal/spiritual issues. Here’s an introduction to our work:

“Ever been part of a group that foundered because of interpersonal conflict? Burn-out? Misunderstandings? Power dynamics? Ever felt like your work ends up supporting the system you are trying to change?

You’re not alone. Join us for a close look at how grassroots, socially entrepreneurial, horizontal organizations can interrupt irritating patterns to create a thriving human ecosystem of change. We’ll look at the deep stories we tell ourselves about social transformation, share practical tools we’ve used in various contexts, and respond to real-life experiences from participants to show how we work.
There’s a reason corporate America invests heavily in developing organizational patterns that keep people “productive”. For those of us working to create deep shifts in culture, economy, and politics, we see people as more than just efficient machines. Our metaphors, our meta-narratives, and our connectedness can shift everything . . . if only we can break out of the dominant story. It’s largely a matter of re-connecting our hearts and minds, relating to each other in new ways.

Brought to you by the Cascadia Center, a nine person collective that melds practical lessons learned over years of community organizing with principles of whole systems thinking, permaculture, critical theory, anti-oppression work, evolutionary and spiritual activism, and social ecology to address the difficulties of organizing head-on.”

I’m honored and thrilled to be collaborating with a group that honors systems theory AND art, facilitation AND ritual, anti-oppression AND permaculture. Look for Cascadia Center offerings on my workshop calendar soon.
For more information:
See cascadiacenter.tumblr.com and tryonfarm.org – For more info, write to cc@tryonfarm.org

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At twenty-one I moved to Portland, and ended up living in a collective household of anti-nuclear activists. It was instant community for me- I met and befriended scores of people who worked, organized, and played together.  We went to rallies and marches against nuclear power, visited friends in jail for civil disobedience, leafleted and wrote and partied. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened  in 1979, and I leafleted the nuclear disaster movie The China Syndrome, which ironically was out at the time.

In the picture above I am at a rally at Portland’s Waterfront Park. I am 22 or 23. I am wearing a black t-shirt with a skull and atomic graphic, instead of crossbones, and the large letters say “Plutonium=Slow Death”. I’m smiling and pointing at my head, which has a bright yellow beanie cap on it with a solar-powered propeller. It’s an odd juxtaposition of somber messaging and hopeful goofiness.

As my life filled with school, parenting, work, and life, my activism subsided, or moved to other areas, including feminism and gay rights. Still my concerns about nuclear energy and weapons were a waxing and waning part of my consciousness.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened in 1986. This April 26^th will be the 25^th anniversary of that event. I learned, with the rest of the world, about the horrors of nuclear meltdown, and information from previous activism only served to deepen my fear and hasten my denial.

It wasn’t until the last decade that I decided to reconnect to my activist self. After 9/11 I resolved to return to work on environmental issues. I had heard of and long admired the writing of deep ecologist Joanna Macy, and had read her book “Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age” years before. Along with my organizing around issues of climate change and environmental justice, I took the opportunity to read, to go to workshops, and ultimately to offer workshops on spirituality and activism, particularly addressing the issue of how to stay present to pain and injustice in the world without going into denial, immobilizing depression, or cynicism.

It was from Joanna that I heard more details about Chernobyl. She had visited villages in some of the worst hit areas in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, offering her work. What isn’t commonly known is that when the radioactive clouds from the plant were rising and winds started blowing them toward Moscow, the government decided to take action. They seeded the clouds, causing poison rain to fall on forests and villages throughout the area. Essentially, these communities were sacrificed for the good of the larger populace of Moscow.

People got sick, many died. Now, twenty-five years later, in the village of Nobozybkov in the Ukraine, they must use Geiger counters regularly to choose where the safest places are for children to play, or to make gardens. The radiation moves with dust, and wind, and rain, and they never have a permanent safe zone. People continue to sicken and die. The generation born after the accident has heartbreaking levels of infertility and stillbirths. The forest areas around their homes are off limits, because the wood in the trees holds the radiation. They called themselves “people of the forest”, and a vital part of their connection to the land and culture has been destroyed.

And now, we are in the midst of the ongoing disaster in Fukushima, Japan. There are ongoing heroic efforts of workers risking their lives, short and long-term, to contain and mitigate a nuclear event that experts admit may take months to get under control, with unknown long-term effects. The radiation levels inside the affected plant are so high, it is no longer measurable by their instruments.

I have a rich, joyful, and rewarding life, but there is not one day that goes by right now when I don’t weep for all affected, and for all who will be affected…untold generations. I know that if I shut down around the grief of this, I will end up feeling my joy as a blunted, diminished experience as well.  So, I try to remain faithful to my connections with spirit and the world, despite the desire, sometimes, for escape and numbing.

But then, I heard this last week- there is a nonprofit group, Viola, from the affected areas of Chernobyl that connects local school kids wanting to reach out to kids in Japan, launching a “Children of Chernobyl” program to connect with Japanese schoolchildren. The group is also sharing their hard-won best practices on food safety, public health, mental health and PTSD, and voluminous data gleaned from their decades of living and working in one of the world’s most toxic irradiated zones. They are translating their grassroots education materials into Japanese, and connecting with Japanese activists via Skype and online communications.

The beauty and poignancy of the children and adults of Chernobyl reaching out to Japan to offer solace and information is both humbling and inspiring.  It reminds me that hearts that have been broken are often the strongest in the long run. And, it makes me think that any healing in store will only come in and through community- reaching out, offering hearts and hard-won grace. In this unsettling spring of grief, fear, and global unraveling, knowing this offers an odd sort of hope in the midst of the tears, like that solar propeller spinning crazily on my head, trying to balance the words of doom written below.

For more information and to donate to Viola and their Children of Chernobyl project, go to http://livingearthgatherings.org/japan-chernobyl-children/.

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