Washblog

Agrarianism
The Land Institute: "When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited."
The Agrarian Foundation: "Creation Stewardship, Humane Economy, and Sustainable Community"

Do you Love:    

Decentralisation and Downsizing

Small Independent Communities

Careful, Ecologically Sound Science

Small-scale, Healthful farming

Agrarian Husband/Gardener

W. Berry, T. Jefferson, R. Weaver

Do you Hate:

Global Fascism

Dependent Big-City Ghettos

Profit at the Expense of Environment

Aggressive, Giant Agri-Business

Industrial Rapist/Exploiter

Darwin, Clinton, Hoover, Gingrich

Appropriate Technology
National Center for Appropriate Technology: "Local solutions for a sustainable future".  NCAT defines appropriate technology as that which is "adapted to the specific environment and culture it is intended to support. It uses the simplest and most benign methods that can effectively achieve its intended purpose in a particular location."

The Commons Movement
On the Commons: " Citizens eager to promote local economic development often fail to see the hidden wealth of "hometown commons" -- an independent business sector, community supported agriculture, good parks and libraries, community festivals, farmers' markets, local currencies and robust voluntary sectors. Supporting the "social wealth" of hometown commons is an urgent priority for our times."

Conservation Economy and Natural Capitalism
Conservation Economy
In A Conservation Economy, Economic arrangements of all kinds are gradually redesigned so that they restore, rather than deplete, Natural Capital and Social Capital. This will create extraordinary opportunities for those who foresee and drive these changes. The Fundamental Needs of people - and the Ecosystem Services which sustain them - are the starting point for a different kind of economic prosperity that can endure generation after generation.

Decentralism
Schumacher Society: Transcending traditional categories of "right" and "left," decentralism has been the logical meeting place for those in many fields of endeavor who believe that preserving human scale and encouraging a spirit of community are essential for the human spirit to thrive. In a world afflicted with giantism in its social, economic, and political institutions, decentralism is often mistakenly identified as radical, but it is in fact based on many traditional values. Decentralists are a diverse group, but they share a common belief in restoring community self-reliance and bringing economic and social activities back to a more human scale.

Democratic Energy
New Rules Project: " Decentralizing Authority and Control, Decentralizing Capacity, Protecting the Environment, Protecting People."
Democratic energy means an energy system where the consumer can become a producer, where power plants are located near where the energy is consumed, and where the decisions about the structure of the energy system is made in large part by those who will feel the impact of those decisions."

Indigenous Movements
Indigenous Environmental Network
A network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions.

Localism and Local Economies

Books

This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence, Alan Thein Durning.

Community and the Politics of Place, Daniel Kemmis.

The Way of Ignorance, Wendell Berry.

Going Local, Michael Shuman.

Organizations

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies:
BALLE seeks to preserve the vitality of the independent business sector, to counteract the negative results of absentee ownership, and to foster successful community economies.

Local Food Economy Study - Sustainable Seattle

Sustainable Connections, Bellingham:
Welcome to our NW Washington business network network of nearly 500 members establishing and supporting a local living economy that sustains itself, our community and a healthy environment. We envision sustainable business practices that lead to Strong Community, Healthy Environment, Meaningful Employment, and Buying Local First as commonplace in our region and a model for the rest of the world.

Relocalization Network, a project of the Post Carbon Institute.

Interra Project
In the context of a growing dominance of large, centralized businesses, an eroding sense of community and connection, failing local economies, and environmental degradation, a group of over 100 visionaries have come together ... to enable systemic change. Interra empowers citizen consumers to wield a tool they use everyday-credit and debit cards-to influence how things are made and disposed of, how money circulates within their communities, and how businesses, in general, behave.

Midwifery, Gentle Birth, Attachment Parenting
Around the  beginning of the 20th century, control over birth was shifted from the family and community to the medical bureaucracy and government.   This was about the same time that the urban commons were outlawed in Seattle, as recounted in Fred Brown's Ph.D. thesis, which will be featured in the Back to the Roots program.  An unintended consequence of both actions were the deaths of children, as neither the obstetric care nor the milk sanitation methods were up to the task.

Seattle Midwifery School is a leader in Washington for the reestablishment of midwifery as a birth choice.
International Center for Traditional Childbearing connects the control over birth with health of the community.

New Urbanism
The Congress for the New Urbanism
The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society's built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.

Property Rights
Rural Majority:
We want to protect our rural quality of life and the safety and wellbeing of rural residents, as well as ensure that we are treated fairly by government and our neighbors.

I-933
This land use initiative sponsored by Washington State's Farm Bureau will probably appear on our ballots this November.   It is a response to the challenges that property owners are facing now, including out-of-control land development and globalization trends that have diminished the profits and independence of farmers.  The ballot description of I-933 characterizes  environmental and zoning protections as damage to private property.  The law would make many, perhaps most of them, functionally, unenforceable on private property in Washington state.   If it passes, we are likely to see increased sprawl, increased loss of farmland, and many adverse environmental impacts.

I-933 also expresses a desire to keep local, family, and community control: "The people also intend to recognize and promote the unique interests, knowledge, and abilities private property owners have to protect the environment and land."

Simplicity
The Web of Simplicity
Living simply means slowing down, working meaningfully, being engaged in relationships, family and community, and reducing wasteful consumption.

Slow Food
Slow Food USA
Taste, tradition, and the honest pleasures of slow food.

Small Government
Center for Small Government
This is advocacy for reducing the power of government without any corresponding reduction of the power of business.  And it asserts that big government has never accomplished anything of worth.

Small government is a night watchman. A skeleton crew. A tiny institution restricted to defending our lives, liberty, and property. Small government is thrifty and effective. Small government is accountable and responsible. Small government enables and encourages self-reliance and voluntary cooperation. Creativity and productivity. Progress and prosperity. It leaves us free to act from the love of our families, compassion for neighbors truly in need, and empathy for those unable to help themselves. Small government is beautiful.

Smart Growth
Smart Growth America is a coalition of "national, state and local organizations working to improve the ways we plan and build the towns, cities and metro areas we call home. Our state- and regional-level members are community-based organizations working to save treasured landscapes while making our towns and cities ever more livable and lovable."

Sustainability and Place
Sightline Institute (formerly Northwest Environment Watch) is a "not-for-profit research and communication center, a think tank based in Seattle. Founded in 1993, Sightline's mission is to bring about sustainability: a healthy, lasting prosperity grounded in place.  nonpartisan and wholly independent, Sightline's only ideology is commitment to the shared values of strong communities, fair markets, and responsible stewardship."

Sustainable Community Development
Organizations such as Institute for Washington's Future and NW Sustainable Energy for Economic Development focus on community development projects in alternative energy, value-added agriculture and other local products.

Take Back Your Time
Take Back your Time is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.

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