-- In the last century, we in the US have gone from half of our population involved in agriculture in 1900, to just over two percent of the population involved in agriculture as of 1990. The average farmer is 55 years old.
-- The farmer's share of the food dollar has dropped from 60% of each dollar spent in 1950, to just over two percent by 1998. (For every dollar spent on food, the farmer receives about two cents.)
-- Animals have been replaced by tractors. The fertility they once provided now comes in the form of petroleum-derived chemicals. Now animals are raised in confinement, often stacked on top of each other, and their manure is a toxic concern.
-- Farmer plant breeders have been replaced by experts. Over 97% of the vegetable varieties we knew in 1903 are now gone. 87% of the pear varieties, and 82% of the apples, are now lost forever. Now our seeds feature nifty gene-spliced tricks to turn off traits if royalties aren't paid or if a certain chemical is not applied by the farmer.
-- Farmland is disappearing at the rate of thousands of acres per day throughout the United States. Topsoil is disappearing at a rate of fifteen inches per acre per year in some of our most productive farmland. Organic matter is disappearing at a rate of several tons per acre per tillage event.
-- Obesity is the new form of malnutrition. The vitamin and mineral content of some of our food has declined 800% since 1914. As our soils are depleted, so is our food, and our bodies struggle to eat enough to survive.
-- Insect species, fish species, bird species, and plant species are disappearing from the landscape, as the average fruit or vegetable travels over 1,400 well-paved miles to reach our table.
-- Our aquifers are being drained, our groundwater is contaminated with chemicals, our food is full of carcinogens, and our soils are laden with the residues of DDT and other noxious agricultural toxins.
Just what was it that created this breadbasket of abundance and devastation? How did we arrive at this place, and where are we headed?
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mechanical, chemical, and biological advances allowed us to indulge our love of technology and our paradigm of bigger is better. The internal combustion engine, new farm equipment, chemical fertilizers and crop protectants, hybrid seed varieties, the Green Revolution, the Interstate Highway Act, chemical food preservatives, mergers and acquisitions all led to and helped fulfill the thundering cry of Richard Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz: "Get Big or Get Out!"
But losses in fertility, masked for a while by seeds bred to respond to petroleum inputs, are now obvious. Pesticide use continues to increase, while crop losses to insects and pests remain constant. Tractors get bigger and average farm size continues to double as farmers buy out their neighbors, and bankers become the decisionmakers in modern agriculture.
All of our "progress" is hailed in the call for "Feeding Our Burgeoning Masses." Yet it now takes eight apples instead of one to keep the doctor away. Our agricultural crisis is not missed by our scientists and policymakers, and they are struggling to find the next "Silver Bullet" to fuel our global competitiveness.
The most recent candidate for "Savior" is Biotechnology, or more specifically, genetic engineering. Now we can have pigs and broccoli in the same bite, crops that rely on chemicals in order to flower, and plants that will not harvest the energy from the sun until the appropriate royalties are paid. A new generation of Pinkertons are chasing down the last farmer scabs who continue to save their own seed. The Supreme Court has embraced the notion that genetic resources should be owned by the companies that discover them, ushering in a new wave of claim staking. Now the "Gene Rush," not the Gold Rush, promises to deliver the raw resources of the new economic epoch, as we proceed from the Industrial Age to the Biotech Age.
We are at a crossroads: It is time to choose the silver bullet, or to not shoot. In the wake of our agricultural progress there has risen a brave and solid contingent of organic farmers and gardeners. Though only a fraction of our total food system, the organic community has embraced the woolly mastodon, and found allies in "dirt," "shit," and "pests." Rather than devise new methods of eradication and extermination, these growers have found answers in the soil, fertility in manure, and made allies with bugs and weeds. The result is a revitalized food system full of nutrition, beneficial to the landscape, and engaging to our communities.
As we consider the paths taken in the past century we should pause for a moment of reflection to ask ourselves about the quality of our food, how it is produced, and the effect it has on our communities. Before we launch the next silver bullet we should ask what we are shooting. And when we spend our next food dollar we must remember that with that small act we choose not only our own health, but the health of our community and our world.
JJ Haapala is editor of In Good Tilth, from which this article is adapted. Contact Oregon Tilth, 1860 Hawthorne NE, Ste. 200, Salem, OR 97303, (503) 378-0690, [email protected]
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all beings come into existence through the same interdependent processes of Nature; that they are endowed by these processes with inherent and inalienable rights, regardless of their usefulness to other beings; that among these are existence for their own sake, liberty, and the pursuit of Self-realization; that to secure these rights for themselves, governments have been instituted among humon beings to the exclusion of all other beings, deriving their powers from the consent of only one of the species governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these means/ends, it is the right of the nonhumon to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to best guarantee all beings self-determination. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that beings are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of nonhumon beings; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge the present systems of government. The history of the vast majority of present humon societies is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the rest of the Universe. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
They have refused their assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for all beings, though such laws have been submitted by those rare humons who understand the interdependence of all beings.
They have poorly enforced those few beneficial laws which have been adopted.
They have ignored nonhumon beings and denied our representation in their governments.
They have persecuted and even murdered those people who feel close affinity with the nonhumon and who have fought for our rights.
They have claimed authority from some source outside of the Universe and have denied the powers inherent in all beings.
They have arrogantly thought themselves independent of the rest of existence, ignorant of the interdependence of all beings.
They have supposed themselves the "apex of evolution" on Earth, due in part to the structure of their brains and culture, and have ignored the unique capabilities and inherent awareness of all beings.
They have determined our value according to our usefulness to them.
They have decided that our futures should depend upon their will alone and have devised methods and plans for the domination of much of Earth and even Mars.
They have seriously overpopulated Earth, using a disproportionate share for themselves.
They have mined us, drilled us, relocated us, transformed us, and blown us up through nuclear fission, polluting our ecosystems and altering our cycles.
They have plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our homes, clearcut our forests, and destroyed our lives, altering our habitats and driving many of us to extinction.
They have unnecessarily introduced species of one ecosystem into another, thereby interfering with many species' self-determination.
They have started to recombine, create, and introduce new organisms into ecosystems, with unknown consequences.
They have diverted very little energy to alternative ways of living or restoration of damaged ecosystems.
They have called for more research on "environmental" issues which demand immediate action.
They have created economic systems and lifestyles that depend on an increasing exploitation of Earth.
They have destroyed parts of Earth in their own wars and domination of each other.
They have waged cruel war against humon nature itself, violating its infinite possibilities by creating an ego that demands insatiable gratification and control, pitting self against other, male against female, old against young, race against race, nation against nation, and humon against nonhumon.
In every stage of these oppressions we have reacted with subtle and not so subtle warnings that all beings are interdependent and that domination by one being harms all beings: our repeated warnings have been answered by repeated injuries.
A species whose government is thus marked by every act which may define tyranny is unfit to be the ruler of beings who deserve to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the arrogance of one species adventured, within the short compass of a few millennia only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a world created through interdependent self-determination.
Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our humon siblings. We have warned them from time to time of their attempts to extend their domination over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our coorigination and constant interdependence, as we eat, breathe, think, coinhabit, and shape each other. We have appealed to their instinct, emotions, intuition, logic, and innate compassion and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably destroy them and many of us. They have been mostly deaf to the voice of justice and of interrelatedness. We could have a free and great Universe together, but a communication of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. We must therefore end the domination by humons of all other beings, or they and many more of us will be destroyed.
We, therefore, the Universe so assembled, do in our name, and by the power of all beings, reject and renounce all humon social structures and worldviews of domination which ignore the interdependence of all beings and do joyously publish and declare that all beings are, and of right ought to be free and interdependent; that we are absolved from allegiance to all forms of humon domination; that we support only humon social structures and worldviews that embrace Universal interdependence; and that as free and interdependent beings we may exist for our own sake, evolve, pursue Self-realization, and do all other acts and things which free and interdependent beings do.
And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our existence, our futures, and our integrity.
Rain Tegerdine teaches Permaculture at Lost Valley Educational Center.
Editor's note: "humon" is the author's preferred spelling.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
All of these I find in my day-to-day life, which encompasses my intentional community at Lost Valley Educational Center, the Eugene-area circle of sustainability advocates and folk-music enthusiasts, and the extended community that forms through this magazine. None of these do I find within the conventionally-defined political sphere as characterized by national opinion polls and the dominant media (which, as you may have guessed, I avoid--my days are full enough already). Adversarial politics, large bureaucracies, and systems in which I feel I have no say leave me uninspired. I know many "activists" who are perpetually unhappy, or have burned out--who, recognizing the horrors and inequities in the world, have put more of themselves into fighting "against" than into fighting "for," and have ended up ungrounded and hopeless, taking on the characteristics of their adversaries rather than becoming inspiring examples of positive change. Learning from their difficult experiences, I try to put my energy where it will make a difference, instead of beating my head against brick walls.
At the same time, I admire those who find sustenance in the work of creating positive change within the larger public sphere while actively opposing exploitation and destruction. A look at contemporary social and ecological conditions would indicate that global transformations within our ways of living, self-organizing, and perhaps even thinking, are essential if our species is to thrive or even survive. We all need to take part in those transformations, and the fact that some "leaders" will be more publicly visible than others does not mean that the rest of us will be any less empowered.
Those transformations may mean a transition back to more bioregionally-based ways of meeting our needs and making decisions; if that's the case, then every one of us, from tinker, tailor, and candlestick maker to farmer, midwife, and baker, is going to be an indispensable political activist even if we never sign a petition, write a letter to Congress, or march on Washington, DC. If that bioregionalism is accompanied by a globalization of consciousness (which also seems necessary, since Region A's emissions poison Region B's air), then computer programmers, bureaucrats, and philosophers will play equally important political roles. Tools such as proportional representation and wisdom councils (read on) offer practical strategies for combining local community connection with global responsibility and true representation within our political systems.
As you consider the articles which follow, you may want to recall the questions we asked of potential contributors in preparation for this issue:
What kinds of political involvement are effective in bringing about the changes we wish to see? What is the relevance of national politics? International politics? Regional politics? Local politics?
What does "citizenship" mean?
What can grassroots movements accomplish? What can centralized political structures accomplish? What is the value of individual action?
Where do our "political selves" and our "ecological selves" meet? How does cultural change come about?
Will the November elections mean anything? How do you feel about politics? Can you foresee a future in which political systems truly serve people and the earth? If so, how can we contribute to that future? How is it present today? What is your role in it?
All of these questions, and more, are addressed within these pages by authors holding diverse, occasionally contradictory viewpoints. Section One, Politics at the Ballot Box, presents some of the issues and dilemmas US voters will have to wrestle with as election time nears. We're interested in any thoughts or feelings this section inspires in readers.
Section Two, Politics on the Ground, takes us into the world of grassroots change--of personal, local, and global activism. Every article is a reminder that we each can make a difference, through our humblest everyday decisions as well as through projects which end up touching people in our local community or half-way around the world.
Section Three, Politics: New Directions, suggests innovative and ancient structures and paradigms that may lead us to a political future in which we are all more empowered, and in which the non-human inhabitants of the earth not only sit at the political table, but are recognized for providing the table in the first place. The Legacy of Luna, the first book reviewed, is a natural follow-up to the final article, "Nature and Spirituality."
Although readership is growing, every subscriber and supporter still makes a difference in keeping this magazine afloat. In this low-budget, nonprofit operation, each of your subscription and membership checks is another vote for our continued existence and development. We especially thank the Rosewater Network, through whom we recently received a grant to send Talking Leaves to nearly 700 public and university libraries as well as to selected environmental and Native American groups. We welcome not only monetary support, but articles, artwork, photos, and letters--please keep them coming!
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
Since my early childhood I have wanted to learn English, since knowledge of English is essential for pursuing higher education and for communicating with the wider world. Such education is almost impossible for untouchable children to obtain. I collected old newspapers and learned 10-20 words daily. In this way I slowly learned English.
We both decided to dedicate ourselves to giving an English Medium Education to untouchable children in our district of Andhra Pradesh. So in 1994 we founded our organization, the Deeper Yet Welfare and Educational Society. Shyamala teaches at the School and Orphanage and my brother and I organize fundraising and donations. We are funding our work totally by our own initiatives. It is our hope to reach as many people as we can in our area.
I attended the 6th International Permaculture Conference in Australia in 1996 as a funded delegate. I was inspired by what I saw and learnt, and resolved to implement permaculture in Deeper Yet's projects on my return to India. We have taken the first steps, and our wish now is to secure some land for this purpose. At our invitation two permaculture teachers from Australia, Rick and Naomi Coleman (Permaculture Education and Design Systems), spent three months with us in 1998 to assess our projects, evaluate our development plan, conduct workshops and training in permaculture, and assist us in planning for a sustainable future. More recently, in early 2000, I came to the United States to study Permaculture for three months as an apprentice at Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter, Oregon, and continued to refine plans and seek funding for our expanded project.
Deeper Yet: Mission Statement We are dedicated to improving the lives and conditions of the poor and lower castes in Andhra Pradesh. We aim to help people stand on their own and come out from their poverty by providing education and training for children, women, and farmers. Our goal is to implement permaculture principles to help make our projects sustainable.
School Project We run an English Medium School with certification from the Government of Andhra Pradesh. It is the only such English Medium School in this locality and has a current enrollment of 125 children from mixed castes, but mainly untouchable children. We established the school in 1985. We encourage children of all castes to mingle to create equality for the future. All children learn English.
The School has four teachers and operates in six small rooms. In the future our wish is to provide improved washing and toilet facilities, a play area, and larger classrooms.
The School is funded totally by the fundraising efforts of Deeper Yet, as most of the children cannot afford education. We also provide books, educational materials, and in some cases, food. The cost to provide education, food, and clothing is $4 per child per week. So $210 provides for one child's entire costs for a year.
Orphanage Project Our society has established an orphanage for children who have lost their parents, been illegally born, or are girls neglected by their families. All are from the untouchable caste. Currently over thirty children live in the orphanage, aged 4-12 years.
Our desire is to provide such children with basic shelter, food, clothing, and education.
All our funds are collected locally and we provide rations each week. Sometimes it is hard to fill the children's stomachs, and they are sleeping all in one room on mats on the floor, but minimum needs are being provided.
We hope that if we provide their needs and an English Education, these children will have a bright future and may one day serve people like themselves and contribute to the improvement of their society.
Developing Projects: Women's Cooperatives Through our work we have been approached by women in two communities asking for education and training to help them stand on their own by earning an income.
We are now helping the women to form groups with elected leaders to assist them to organize and cooperate to define their needs. We are conducting short courses in developing home gardens.
Farmer's Training We have just started running workshops for farmers interested in planning for a sustainable future with more stable and diverse sources of income. We are teaching the permaculture approach using organic farming techniques.
Future Directions We are ready to expand our projects and have a development plan that would see the school and the orphanage consolidated on one site, with adequate facilities and ample play area, and permaculture gardens for producing food for ourselves and an income for the school.
Consolidating the projects in this way will reduce costs and travel time and allow more efficient use of resources. The site will provide for itself after initial implementation, act as a model of permaculture for the community, and allow for skills-based training in agricultural techniques for students.
Our project proposal and development plan has the following objectives:
-- To purchase a piece of land approximately five acres in size.
-- To construct low-cost buildings with permaculture design features for school rooms, toilet facilities, kitchen, and accomodation.
-- To merge the educational component of the school and the orphanage into one operation to conserve resources, time, and money, and to encourage mingling amongst children.
-- To develop permaculture gardens and play areas for children's education and training, and for leisure activities.
-- To produce income-generating crops on the remaining land so as to move towards self-funding and sustainability.
-- To use the site as a model of permaculture principles and as a center for related permaculture workshops once established.
-- To provide future employment opportunities on site for older orphans.
Our income-production activities will include developing a seed nursery on site for plant propagation, establishing a food forest for fruit production, developing organic, chemical-free crop rotations using integrated pest management, and building up a diversity of crop species and seed stock, especially non-hybrid varieties.
We plan to plant a range of fodder species for stock animals, which may include a small-scale buffalo dairy, free range chickens and ducks, and pigs. Animal manures will be used as organic fertilizers; milk, eggs, and meat will provide food for the orphanage; animals will be selected to provide pest and weed management for crops, and will be cared for by orphanage residents, providing training in animal husbandry.
The Deeper Yet Permaculture Demonstration Center will provide a site for workshops for local farmers on developing permaculture principles; home garden permaculture and animal husbandry workshops for women's groups; school group visits; and seed banks for distribution to local villages. The site will be registered in the Permaculture Global Directory and reports on site development will be provided to the Permaculture International Journal and other permaculture publications to attract overseas interest in the center.
Currently, the School and Orphanage impact over 150 children for whom education, especially in English, would not otherwise be possible. It is our wish to become even more effective in our work.
If we could work on one site, we would avoid the wasted time and expense of the two-hour drive between the school and the orphanage, and the necessity of having extra teachers. We could concentrate our efforts in one area and increase our impact on the children for less cost. The orphan children benefit from mingling with other children, and have more chance of a normal life.
Permaculture gardening will increase our ability to produce food and income for supporting ourselves in the future. Also, it is a very good way to teach the children the skills for their future employment. As such, it has potential to impact the children's lives in many ways, including improving the diet with fresh organic produce.
Once the site is established, it is our hope to expand our impact even further to surrounding villages by having a permaculture center for demonstrations, workshops, and seed stock preservation. Our objective in the future is to be a successful demonstration of integrated permaculture design for the East Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh.
Please send a donation to this important project (make your check payable to Deeper Yet) to:
Deeper Yet Welfare and Educational Society
Diwancheruvu - 533 103
Rajangaram Mandal, East Godavari District
Andhra Pradesh, India
or direct transfer to Rajahmundry Account Number 01100005144 at the State Bank of India.
K. Vijaya Kumar is cofounderof the Deeper Yet Welfare and Educational Society and a recent Permaculture in Community apprentice at Lost Valley Educational Center in Dexter, Oregon. Contact him at [email protected]
About Permaculture Permaculture is a design system for sustainable agriculture and human settlement. The concept originated in Australia in the 1970s and is now taught throughout the world with very successful outcomes in developing countries.
"Permaculture is a practical concept....It enables people to establish productive environments providing for food, energy, shelter, material and non-material needs, as well as social and economic infrastructures that support them....Permaculture means thinking carefully about our environment, our use of resources, and how we supply our needs. It aims to create systems that will sustain not only for the present, but for future generations." (Permaculture International Journal)
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
Hola Friends and Family,
In November and December I traveled to Guatemala and studied Spanish in the Quetzaltenago, which is in highlands, a beautiful area. There were frosts at night, not what I expected when traveling to a tropical country. I spent the New Year there, then returned to the US to attend a week-long training session in Human Rights Accompaniment through the Guatemalan Accompaniment Project, GAP. GAP is a program that was started after the peace accords were signed to end the war in Guatemala and the refugees were returning to Guatemala from several states in southern Mexico. There was concern the military was going to seek retribution for the refugees' escape, so they asked the international community for people to accompany them on their journey back home.
Now, among the villages of returned refugees, 13 communities have human rights accompaniers from sister cities in the US. The sister city I am working with is Rochester, NY. The role of the accompanier has been changing. The role now, I learned at the training, is to monitor the conditions of the peace accord to see if they are having the promised effects at a grass roots level.
After the accompaniment training and 10 additional days in Florida, I returned to Guatemala, where I went back to language school to practice a few more things. In total I spent 8 weeks in language school--a great progressive school named Pop Wuj.
On February 29, I arrived at Cooperativa Nuevo Amanecer, Finca Huacut, in the Peten. I arrived when my friend Jennifer Bannister was there, which made my first few days an easy transition into the community. The Peten is the northernmost department, state, of Guatemala. If you look on a map, you will not find Huacut. The closest town is La Libertad. The Peten is very sparsely populated and most of it is tropical rainforest. The soil is very poor so it is not thick lush vegetation but rather very thin spindly trees. In the Peten, there is a small area of savanna. That is where my new home is located. There are few small trees spaced far apart.
Right now is the dry season, which means wildfires and very hot. The lack of shade is a huge issue. From 9 am to 6 pm I'm sweating. I talk with people and say that I need to get accustomed to a life of sweat and they laugh. Since I'm not from a part of the US with wildfires, this was my first experience with them. I stood there in awe and fear, as the children were playing in the aftermath. There are much different ideas about children and safety in Guatemala than we are used to in the US. The village is surrounded by a cleared area, fire breaks which make the village "safe."
Cooperativa Nuevo Amanecer consists of 170 families of returned refugees. They lived in the refugee camps in Campeche and Quintana Roo, both states in Mexico. They had very different experiences in Mexico, and the layout of Huacut is physically delineated based on those divisions. There are two halves of the community, one from Campeche and the other from Quintana Roo. There are six languages in the community, with Spanish being the common language. The other five are dialects with Mayan roots but very different. Two people with different dialects must speak Spanish to communicate.
The history that I hear most often from someone is, they were born in one area and had to move to the departments of the Ixcan or Peten for access to land. Where they were born, there was no available land. In Guatemala, 75% of the land is in the hands of 3% of the population, which is very difficult for the majority of the population, Mayan Indians, in this agriculturally based society. In the early '80s the Scorched Earth Campaign came to the Ixc‡n and the Peten. The Scorched Earth Campaign was designed by the Guatemalan government, with the aid of the US government, to destroy the roots of the Guerrilla Army which was believed to be the indigenous communities. In a 17-month period, the dictator in power, General Efrain Rios Montt, oversaw the destruction of 440 villages and the death of 70,000 Guatemalan citizens. In the last election the party of Rios Montt, FRG, came to power. It was during this time that the majority of the community of Huacut left their homes in Guatemala for Mexico because they feared for their lives.
These refugees returned to Guatemala on September 9, 1997, after living in Mexico for 15 years. There are 686 inhabitants in Huacut and 370 of them are under the age of 15, born in Mexico. I have heard many different reasons why people have come back to Guatemala. "I'm Guatemalan and this is my home" and "There was no access to land in Mexico and there was the opportunity for land here" are two common reasons people give. The reality is that their lives thus far are incredibly more difficult here than in Mexico.
In Mexico, their houses were made of cinder blocks with cement floors. They had potable water and electricity in their homes. Both of these things were promised to them by the Guatemalan government when negotiating their return back to Guatemala. The land in Mexico was bountiful, giving a lot of food, and there was work. On the contrary, in Guatemala, their homes are roofs of palm, walls of sticks, and floors of dirt. There is no electricity and they have to pump their water by hand, then carry it to their homes. Just about everything they have in Huacut, they have done themselves or with the help of NGOs. There has been very little help from the government to carry out its written promises.
The land doesn't give very much and there is a plague of rats eating what little food there is. There is virtually no work except on the neighboring plantation cutting grass with a machete, a big knife. The men work from 6 am to 1 pm with no break for 3 US dollars a day. I have lived in rural areas in the US and know about the difficulty of life in rural areas, but I'm amazed about how physically hard their lives are in Huacut. It is a daily struggle for survival. There is an expression, "Estamos judido." The translation is "We are screwed" but yet at the same time there is a reverence for life and a sense of thankfulness for everything they have no matter what it is. If all there is to eat is beans and tortillas, people are thankful for that.
A lot of people ask me about the US: "Is there work for everyone? Are there poor people in the US or is everyone in the US rich?" I tell them about the States. That there are rich and poor people. That there is work but everything costs money. There are people in the US with work but they are always in debt at the end of the month because they don't earn enough for their expenses. I tell them about my life and how I have chosen to live.
That is an idea that I find myself thinking about a lot. How people in the US, myself in particular, have so many more options than my new friends. Our lives are similar in so many ways. We work with the earth, and live a simple life, but I chose that life. They were born into it and live it regardless of their desires, hopes, and dreams. Some of the people are very happy with the life of a campesino, a person who works the land, but would only like a few things that would generally make their lives easier. Others don't want to be a campesino but because of their identity, an indigenous person in Guatemala, there are so many obstacles to doing anything else. This is something that I find so sad. My options are something that I give thanks for, but at the same time feel guilty about.
In an ideal world, everyone is equal and all lives are valued the same. The reality of the world is so different. I have so many options based on the fact that I'm a white male from the US. This same fact, that I am a white male from the US, gives my life more value in the eyes of the people of the world and is part of the reason I was asked to accompany this community of people. If I live with them, there is sense of safety from their own government. This reality creates a power dynamic with my new friends that I am uncomfortable with. I have never been comfortable with having power over people, so I have always thought of ways to dissipate that power and create an equitable situation.
This is a situation that is very difficult to change. I will be hanging out talking with someone, both of us feeling very connected, then something will be said on one of our parts or I will think of something that points out the inequity in our lives. After all, I have chosen to come and live with them in their lives, and at some point I will leave, while they will have to continue their daily struggle for equality.
I have been amazed by the loving and welcoming that I have received from the community. It is well known in Guatemala what role the US government had in the genocide of the indigenous people. Yet at the same time they are welcoming a US citizen into their community with open arms and heart. It is a truly humbling experience for me. There is no sense of bitterness or hatred about the past, just thankfulness that I have come to live with them.
An elderly women died in the middle of the night while I was in the community. At 4 am there was an announcement of the death and an invitation to the wake was given. I woke at 6 am and saw many people outside the house. I struggled with feelings of "what is my role here?": wanting to go as one human to show respect for another, not wanting to go because of not knowing the family, the customs, and my uncomfortableness about death.
After breakfast, I saw the president of the co-op and he suggested that I should go and visit the family. I walked over, and a couple of men were standing outside the house. I didn't know what to say. I would have had a hard time in this situation in my own language, let alone another. Were they family? I stood there for five minutes or so, but it felt like an eternity. Struggling with many questions and thoughts. "I should have come with someone else, but now I'm here. What do I do?"
The president walked by. I think he saw my struggle and told me that I had come to be with the family and to enter the house. I did, and there, 10 feet in front of me, was a dead body under a sheet. I felt very uncomfortable with the sense of death and the body. As I sat there and offered a prayer for the person, the family, and the community, I began to feel more comfortable. Other people began to enter, and sit for awhile. The body is never left alone until it is buried. Each person brought a gift, a little corn, eggs, or money. I soon realized that the food was to feed everyone who was mourning with the family or the men who were building the coffin.
After sitting for a while, I went over to talk with the men who were building the coffin. I felt that I wanted to help with the construction of the coffin. I didn't do much, but I did contribute, which felt good. That night, the eulogy was given. It was amazing to me to see the community come together to help the family in their time of need--whether it was the physical thing that needed to be done to prepare the body to be buried, or the emotional support given. That night I saw more members of the community in one location than I had seen before or since. I went to sleep at 11 pm but people stayed up all night with the body.
The next morning, the men carried the coffin on their shoulders to the cemetery, which was very difficult in the heat. They were followed in procession by a mass of women and children. There were prayers and blessings given and the body was laid to rest. I felt honored to be there in the community in a time of need and sorrow and be able to share the experience with them. The community mourns the death of the person but at the same time it is very important to celebrate their life and life in general. I like that perspective, that the glass is half full.
Every day, I learn more Spanish, share more in community life, and give thanks for this opportunity to walk side by side with the community of Nuevo Amanecer.
For more information about the Guatemalan Accompaniment Project, visit http://www.treesforlife.org
Todd Bauer is a gardener, Permaculturalist, and currently a human rights accompanier. Reach him at [email protected]
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
It begins with a story that was related to me recently: Gandhi had organized a very large march, and thousands of people came. After a while he noticed that it had the potential to become violent, so he gathered the people together and told them that he was calling the march off. There was anger; many people had sacrificed a great deal to be there. Gandhi addressed them: " I am human, and I make mistakes. Therefore my commitment must be to truth and not to consistency."
Upon hearing this story I realized how much of what I did as a political witness had simply become routine, how little room I'd left for questioning. Every label that I'd originally applied to myself under the influence of real inspiration had stayed there, unquestioned, long after the inspiration had gone. Somehow this had resulted in a sort of spiritual gumming-up, a stagnancy due to the fact that there was no square of open skin left for divine winds to blow across. Gandhi's words reminded me that I need to make room in the process for questioning, for the evolution and change of truth.
Recently the famed astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell came to speak at my college. She spoke about the fate of the universe, how all discoveries are now showing that either the universe will continue expanding and cooling or will eventually collapse back in on itself. Either way, all life is going to end. This tiny window of consciousness and experience we are dwelling in is very rare, almost accidental.
Her talk was not well attended. This, however, is neither rare nor accidental--a combination of stress and apathy keeps our student body at the edge of catatonia. In the case of Jocelyn's talk this saddened me more than usual, for I found my own apathy addressed and to some extent eradicated by her words. The idea that there is not a universal promise for life, that this chance at consciousness is so minute, woke two things in me: a sense of cheerful futility and a strengthened resolve to make of this life as beautiful a thing as possible. When there can be no endpoint, no goal, the hierarchy of achievement falls to pieces and we are left to enjoy the struggle. All of us are here together in this tiny space of living, and our strongest responsibilities must be to be fully conscious and to make room for others to be fully conscious as well. If there is just this one space and time for the rue anemone to experience life, I will try not to step on the rue anemones as I walk to class.
Sometimes, if only to make my daily behaviors feel less inane, I try to look at myself as a microcosm. One thing that keeps standing out is a tendency to put off the way I really want to live until outer circumstances are perfect: I won't put too much energy into gardening until I have my own homestead, I won't start eating well until I'm out of school, I'll start using all these wildcrafted medicines when I stop drinking coffee--otherwise what's the use? Suddenly all of this became clear: there is never going to be the perfect time. If the universe is tumbling in on itself the day will not come when we can put down our pens and carabiners and monkey wrenches and get down to the real joy of living. Somehow the struggle has to be for the struggle itself, and our politics have to fit within our real lives.
The other half of Jocelyn's talk was about her Quakerism, how she maintains her faith in the face of all she knows about the death of the universe. She said that the Quaker belief in continuing revelation had trained her mind for a changing universe: Quakers believe that truth evolves, and no spirit-spoken truth of two hundred years ago has any more bearing than what spirit speaks now. So many of the wisdom traditions speak of spirit breaking off from spirit so that it can know itself: the key to life is experience. My friend Anna sees it as her personal responsibility to look as happy as possible whenever she's biking, so that those driving past will begin to see biking as a joy and not a sacrifice. So just her experience of biking, her joy in it, becomes political. Can all experience be this way?
There is a story in Quaker legend about William Penn, a titled nobleman who wanted to become a Quaker. In those days noblemen wore swords as a symbol of their societal status. William Penn knew that Quakers are pacifists and object to arms of any sort. He went to George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, to ask him what he should do about his sword. Fox said: wear it as long as you can.
Wear it until suddenly consistency isn't enough anymore and truth breaks through; use this truth that is given you until a new one replaces it.
There are beautiful meadows that surround my college, relics of a time when this spitball of strip malls was rolling crop land. They are going wilder now; the narrow creeks are lined with small cypress and sycamores, the best bird watching spot for miles around. Last year my friend Jenna and I turned in a proposal for this land to become a permaculture farm, site of a sustainability program, community center, and forest regeneration work. We had worked on it so hard and for so long that when the administration bypassed our proposal for that of a new entrance road and soccer fields, we couldn't fight back. We were worn out and bitter, and did not do anything to oppose the plans.
That's one sword I can't wear anymore. If the universe is ending, I'd prefer persimmon trees to asphalt for as long as it lasts, and there's not much time to waste. Right now we're organizing mediated meetings, writing letters and pulling protests together, painting beautiful signs. The energy of those involved is joyful. Recently a group of us went out into the meadows and planted persimmon seeds between the survey stakes, rested in the sun, listened to the first breeding songs of the birds. Maybe this time our administrators will let go of consistency in favor of truth. I'll let you know how it goes.
Lissa Carter picks up new skills at about the same rate she forgets old ones, but suspects there's a better way of doing things. She's presently embroiled in a very frustrating college experience which she hopes will turn out to be invaluable, as such things invariably do.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
"Didn't you know how bad things were up there? Don't you even care that the cops were using tear gas, nerve gas, and rubber bullets?" she exclaimed.
"Um, bad?" was the best response I could muster.
The truth of the matter was, I really hadn't paid much attention that 40,000 or more people had converged on a distant city to disrupt a meeting of businessmen who were hell-bent on exploiting the world. I simply didn't care. That's what people do: the Big-Wigs scheme to use others for their own gain, and the youth, influenced by those who claim to be in the know, gather en-masse and get the crap beat out of them.
"Jeez, no kiddin'? What a trip!" I responded honestly, but without much emotion.
I had to admit to myself, I was apathetic about WTO. From start to finish, it was just this thing that happened like many other things that happen throughout the world that I choose not to concern myself with. The list seems endless. Yet, apathy is a pretty strong word to use to describe myself. How then, knowing that my life is about activism, could I live with my apathy?
The world I was born into was out of control, in the grip of forces that were beyond my reach. I was ten years old when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. Daily, for weeks on end, we'd "duck and cover," practicing how to protect ourselves (!) in the event of nuclear attack. Once a week we'd have what I'd call "Hellfire Drills" where we'd be directed to silently file down into our concrete bunker-like basement and await an all-clear signal, which, depending upon the sadism factor of the nuns that day, would come quickly or excruciatingly slowly. Every day for years, the noon air-raid sirens wailed and the radio regularly blared out an ominous tone, followed, at its cessation, by the message, "The foregoing was a test. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been advised where to seek shelter."
"IF!" One never knew. And I, who had little knowledge or understanding of the forces that placed my life in jeopardy, had to make a decision: How much would I be willing to allow things outside of my immediate environment to affect me? I opted to follow the directive of Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, floppy-eared, freckle-faced cover boy for Mad Magazine who exclaimed, "What, Me Worry?!" I figured if my life could be whooshed away from me in the blink of any eye, I might as well enjoy it while I had it. Let everything else take care of itself. Do you wonder for a second about my attitude about the wonderful fiasco past called Y2K?
Mass movements--which formed so much of the social environment that affected me--had a soullessness, mindlessness, and lack of personal connection to them that was stupefying. My observation was that protest against the status quo (which had once been a mass movement in itself, against the previous order) involved throwing waves and waves of largely nameless bodies against a foe, weakening it until a final ripple toppled it over and the organizers (who survived) basked in the glory and then became part of a new machine, but a machine just the same. Moving the world seemed such a strange enterprise.
Yet, I could not stand idly by. I chose to enter the human drama of people in need, right then, right there. There was something in me that called out to make my work personal. At first I worked in a nursing home, and then entered emergency medicine, which in the 1970s was in its infancy. Still, almost inadvertently, I found myself getting sucked in to a cause greater than myself.
At first, there was just me and my patients, yet I couldn't help noticing that there were people as close as the next block in neighboring, politically demarcated "service areas" who, trapped in an emergency, were dying needlessly because they received inadequate care. I found myself expanding my reach by influencing others in the towns nearby to support advanced medical care. I landed smack in the middle of such larger issues as status, economics, and race, and the venue to deal with those things was politics. As each year went by, I found myself taking larger stands amidst broader audiences in an attempt to standardize higher levels of emergency care.
In the process, I became more distant from the immediacy of the moment with my patient, as I became more and more absorbed and consumed by moving masses of others towards my perception of a Greater Good. After twelve years, I burned out--not on the work, but on the politics. I accomplished a lot, but I lost something important, too: the time and presence in the moment to sit quietly with a person in pain and help them to feel not so alone.
It was after this period of my life that I started to understand the difference between causes and people, and how, apathetic to a cause, I could still change the world a person at a time. How? I came to understand that destructiveness to ourselves, other people, or the environment was a by-product of lack of empathy coupled with lack of education. Without empathy, however, all the education in the world means nothing. The path that I took (or that took me, it's hard to tell) was in finding ways to ignite empathy in others. That could only be done person to person. The first individual to work on was myself. And the pathway to accomplish this was to learn to open my heart.
After about ten years of trial and error--and an equal investment in energy to become a person who could influence others without burning out in the process--this became a way of being, not a way of acting, moving, re-acting, changing, or affecting the people out of my immediate environment. It all had to do with my relationships in the moment--joining the people in my life in an experience of time that is vital and alive and not dependent on things over there or what happened or what will come.
The biggest gift of my life has been discovering that I can be a useful channel through which the healing process can express itself. The key to this has been to sharpen my skills by facing and working through my own pain and knowing my own universe intimately. My realization is that bringing this to people is about as high a form of activism as I can find in my life, because in order to do so, I have to invest everything.
Russ Reina is Lost Valley's Conference Coordinator. He assists regularly in Naka-Ima as part of the "Kipuka" program, which is focused on building mastery in working with others to help them remove blocks to their living fully in the moment.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
So the question of our time becomes: how do we manage our collective selves in ways that are personally empowering and Earth honoring? How do we enjoin the politics of interrelationship, without certifying historic systems known for destruction and lies? Certainly the option to participate is voluntary, and should be conditional as well. We should decide when to involve ourselves and when not to, weighing each situation, the possible effect we might have on a situation, and effect that this involvement will have on us.
Government is the institution of politics. To govern means not only to exercise political authority, but also "to direct and restrain; to control the actions or behavior of." We look to our political and judicial leaders to keep polluters from poisoning American estuaries or to punish the multinational logging companies driving hundreds of plant and animal species to extinction. Some of the most impressive environmental gains over the past few decades have been political, our victories mostly legislative or litigious.
But by appealing to the central authorities we validate the power of the same institutions that support profit-making logging companies driving one species after another into irretrievable extinction, that colonize the labor force of undeveloped third world countries, and codify the "right" to concrete over nearly every inch of living soil in the name of "progress." And every environmental judgment or legislation can be just as easily be reversed or repealed according to the whims of an ever expanding population. Increasingly, one of the fundamental choices for all political participants will be between setting aside space for the evolving natural world, and its appropriation for human habitation and use.
Kudos to every activist and group who have been able to turn the system against itself, Aikido fashion, and won for even a single generation or single decade a reprieve for the threatened forests and retreating wildlife. But any long term remedy--any lasting return to balance--will require more than the always temporary support of the judicial and political process.
Fortunately, the alternative structures we built have survived as well, if only as the rekindled dreams and manifest expressions of an Earth loving, peace loving minority. And at the same time there continues to exist a counter current of thoughtful outcasts, serving as a kind of antidote to the system's suffocating order...calling themselves anarchists, calling themselves free.
In its extreme, anarchy makes for an indulgent personal credo, and a dysfunctional and uncooperative society. But it's no wonder that kids find the anarchic emphasis on individual expression, motivation, and responsibility preferable to the systemologies that have so long governed our kind. When one is in touch with their personal needs, or connected to the needs and will of the living Earth, they can no longer condone the monotony of colorless communism, the hierarchical absolutism of even the most noble kingdoms, or even that consumerist dictatorship of the masses we call "democracy." All better organized systems known to "man" commodify, trivialize, or totally eliminate individual liberty. They demonstrate the kind of artless rigidity that turns outlaws into mythical heroes, civil disobedience into a rite of passage, and nonconformity into a meaningful life quest. They insult our true human nature, at the same time as they manage and implement the destruction of the natural world.
It seems that no governing system has ever been immune. Even tribalism has a history of formalizing some less than spirit-honoring practices, from the sanctioned wife beating of certain Native American societies, to the institutionalized human sacrifices of my own tribalized Celtic ancestors. Tribal unity and survival are dependent on change-resistant traditions. These traditions are unwritten laws, alternately supported and believed in, resented and subverted, or blindly obeyed. And like all practice and law throughout our history, some have contributed to the health and diversity of natural ecosystems, while others have led to their destruction. In every tribe, as in every political system, it is the outcasts that seem fated to recognize the harm in tradition and law, the Bards who must then communicate it, and the outlaws who must resist it.
There is what I call the Third Way, a model neither anarchic nor hierarchic: the lowly clan. It's likely untenable for the majority of our burgeoning kind, especially in the face of technologically advanced world governments. And yet for some of us, the clan is also our best chance to survive the pressures of those very same societies. And our best opportunity to recover the most meaningful aspects of human purpose and human relationship.
A clan is first of all smaller than other societies, with people naturally breaking off and going their own way when the group starts to get much over thirty members. Rather than having a formal system for selecting leaders and decision-makers, each decision falls naturally on whoever is most obviously informed or gifted in each different circumstance. Often this will be an elder or crone, but on occasion it may be a child instead, who's shown the understanding necessary in the particular area of consideration. But in every case, it falls on the shoulders of the one most able and willing to give and to serve, motivated by love, empowered by their connection to the All.
Nobody is disadvantaged or suppressed, when the group is so small that everyone can agree! In a healthy world (a world of vast wilderness), to disagree or diverge one has only to leave, crossing over the mountains to join another clan, or to start one's own. Thus a clan was always held together not only by need and necessity, but by true affection and demonstrable loyalty. To this day, the voluntary members of any clan share not only common beliefs, but an overriding allegiance to their mutual good. They haven't had to learn to be a "more tolerant" society, because they care about each other.
For twenty-one years I've been assigned the job of tending to the needs of a particular piece of inspirited land. Ownership of the property has proved to be a useful tool, but its ultimate engagement and guardianship has been more the result of the devotion of clan.
From the time I got here I sensed the clanhood of the Mogollon pit-house dwellers that took care of this river canyon thousands of years before us, and how we can best further this legacy of protection and sacrament with our own focused grouping. Folks that came and left each contributed in some way to the preservation of place. And those that have stayed contribute to the strength of our efforts, and the promise of a lineage: Wonder-filled Loba, singing prayers to the sacred cliffs, stroking the grass, kissing every rock and skull. The man Scot, faithful apprentice open to all there is to learn, gladly shouldering the Kokopellic burdens, giving his all in the most heroic and artful ways...and in time, whatever woman who comes to live with him. Plus our nonresident extensions, like the woman Lee Sonne, aiding this place and project while remaking her life in the image of her dreams. John Drake, the guardian angel. Glenn, giving every spare minute to helping get the word out to a humanity in need. We are united by the commitment to give everything we can, and to pay any price, for that which matters most.
In such a clan, common priorities and aims substitute for governance, and the mechanics of control are replaced by the politics of devotion and love.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is an author and spiritual teacher living in one of the most enchanted river canyons in the wildlands of New Mexico. To host a presentation by Wolf, or for information on his books, retreats, internships, and counsel, contact: The Earthen Spirituality Project, Box 516, Reserve, NM 87830, www.concentric.net/~earthway
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology
The people distrust leaders distrustful of them:
They despise their local tyrant.
The despot they fear is distant.
Often rarely seen dictators
may be cherished as liberators.
The leader people trust is led by them:
Her fiats as rare as jewels,
she listens more than she rules.
The people will say of her reign,
"How well we ruled our domain!"
Forsaking the Way, the people become enmeshed
in codes of action and thought;
humaneness, justice, and love soon succumb
to humanness, righteousness, judgement.
Folks plot to seem to be what they are not.
But their most dear, being so near,
cannot be deceived.
Deceit and fear leave home to become overseers;
the people suffer the misleaders.
Living things at birth are soft and pliant;
dead things are hardened and stiffened:
the grass and trees wither and dry;
humans become inscient, rigorous, friable.
A hardened leader's decrees conspire with death;
a supple leader's decrees are vibrant with life.
Inflexible forces fail, like rigid trees in a storm--
the stiff, tall trees are toppled,
falling below the yielding frail.
M. Clark Wilde is an organic grower, farmer's marketer, President of Organically Grown Cooperative, and poet living in Blachly, Oregon.
©2000* Talking Leaves
Summer/Fall 2000
Volume 10, Number 2
Politics, Change, and Ecology