Excerpted from the Spring 2019 edition of Communities, “Community Land”—full issue available for download (by voluntary donation) here.
Community Land: Issue #182 ● Spring 2019
Letters
Readers reflect on intentional communities of the future, body language, and how community culture evolves.
Publisher’s Note: Land in a Sustainable and Just Society By Sky Blue
To value equally the needs of all life and all people, we need to shift our land-use approach away from control towards access and stewardship.
Notes from the Editor: Connecting Land and Community By Chris Roth
Through collective, organized efforts, groups that have lost access to land can regain it, while building community as well.
Black Land Matters: An Interview with Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm By Sky Blue; transcribed/edited by Dana Belanger and Chris Roth
Headquartered on a community farm, a nonprofit, people-of-color-led organization works to dismantle racism in the food system by increasing farmland stewardship by people of color, promoting equity in food access, and training the next generation of activist farmers.
- Review: Farming While Black By Ira Wallace
Land Speaking through the People: The Great Work of Our Times By Cassandra Ferrera
Through Community Land Trusts, we can reimagine and experience anew our relationship with the land as communities of place-based people.
The Dilemmas of Being a Benefactor: Creating a Community Land Trust By Carolyn North
CommonSpace CLT fulfills its founder’s dream of using her inheritance to create an affordable, not-for-profit example of diverse community on protected land in perpetuity.
Cross-Class Cooperation and Land Access By Yana Ludwig
It is important to not only talk about the role class privilege plays in our movement, but also celebrate the ways that cross-class cooperation can be a form of much-needed solidarity.
How We Came to Inherit a Salmon Stream By Kirsten Rohde
The residents of Sahale Learning Center and EcoVillage welcome the salmon who swim from the Hood Canal up the Tahuya River each year to spawn.
Growing Together through Trauma, with the Land By Tracy Matfin
When La’akea Community’s stability is disrupted and its existence threatened by the aftermath of an earthquake, members discover that their land is a much larger source of “glue” to keep them together than they had thought.
Community, Land, Self: We’re Part of the Same Elephant By Chris Roth
Escaping to an ecotopian or intact natural world proves neither possible nor effective as a way to avoid the realities of human and planetary suffering. Instead, a communitarian receives lessons in interconnectedness that he will never forget.
What Can We Learn from the Amish? By Michael McClellan
Touch the soil, live simply, and be satisfied with “enough”: it’s worked for the Amish for almost 300 years and it can work for us as well.
Dear Yurt, You’re Not in Mongolia Anymore: Our Journey toward Permitting an Ancient and Traditional Structure By Laura McLeod and Meredith Rush-Inglis
Adult children of a small rural cooperative community create a space to be away from their parents’ homes and develop their own relationships with the land, with the community, and with one another.
Community Land without Grants and Debt: Funding Ecovillage Neighborhoods with Community Shareholders By Olivia R. Williams, Ph.D.
As an alternative to Community Land Trusts, Community Land Cooperatives provide a model for collective land ownership based on equity, where all residents rent and own at the same time.
Preparing the Ground for an Innovative Farm Community—Orange County, New York By Jack Hornickel, Jim Oldham, and Johanna Rosen
A project to preserve a corridor of 214 acres of productive farmland, woods, and sensitive wetlands demonstrates how organizations can help communities create new ways to hold, protect, and care for land.
- How Shared Farm Ownership Works
- The Organizations Supporting This Effort
Collaborative Mapping in Felixstowe’s Community Nature Reserve By Dr. Adrian Cooper
A collaborative online mapping project does more than just chart local hedgehog sightings—it creates a real sense of personal and community involvement in the environment being mapped.
Recipe for a Fruitful Meal-Share By Rachel Lyons
Neighbors on 25 acres of farmland share the ingredients that have led their meal-share to nurture them emotionally and socially as well as physically.
Mental Health Lessons from the Garden By Craig Chalquist
In addition to lifting depression, releasing stress and anxiety, stimulating the senses, improving sleep, reducing pain, countering isolation, and a host of other benefits, gardening can also teach some invaluable psychological lessons.
On Community: Your Community and the Law By Diana Leafe Christian
Earthaven Ecovillage learns the hard way that it’s important for a community to choose its legal entities carefully, and to consult and listen to lawyers. A member shares some lessons from their ordeal.
- Why NOT to Use Joint Tenancy or Tenancy in Common
Review: Many Voices One Song: Shared Power with Sociocracy By Diana Leafe Christian
For those already practicing Sociocracy and Nonviolent Communication in their groups, this new book is a valuable resource.
Honoring Starhawk: 2019 Kozeny Communitarian Award Recipient By Laird Schaub
The thread of community is woven throughout the tapestry of Starhawk’s work, where she makes the case for community as a foundational building block of peace, social justice, and sustainability.
- Call for Nominations
ONLINE ONLY:
Seeking Brigadoon: A Community of Dance-Campers Finds a Permanent Homeplace By Paul Freundlich
After 40 years of summer camps and other gatherings with shifting locations, Dance New England finally lands on its own 417 acres.
(Article available at dev.ic.org/seekingbrigadoon.)
Excerpted from the Spring 2019 edition of Communities, “Community Land”—full issue available for download (by voluntary donation) here.
