New forms of radical local action – Random Communications from an Evolutionary Edge

Dear friends,

The challenges of our times are leading to a number of very creative responses at local levels. The responses I’m sharing below involve increasing capacity for local people to support local people in ways that are both innovative and hundreds of years old. It is fascinating to watch – and compelling to become part of. Feel free to share your experiences in these realms in the comments section.

Coheartedly,

Tom

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“Soft Secession” and “Neighboring”

Excerpts from “Are America’s Mayors Leading a Soft Secession?”

“We know the federal government is broken. We watch it cover up the Epstein files, steal elections in plain sight, and send armed agents into American neighborhoods to shoot unarmed people…. Soft secession does not mean states and cities declaring independence or flying new flags. It means states, cities, and municipalities quietly building the capacity to govern without federal cooperation, so that when the federal government turns hostile, they already have the infrastructure to say no. A governor who expands Medicaid because people need healthcare is governing. A governor who creates a state-run public option so her residents still have healthcare the next time Republicans try to gut the Affordable Care Act is building independence. One is good management. The other shifts the balance of power between the federal government and the people who actually live in the places it claims to serve. Soft secession operates at every level of government below the federal one, and the capacity for it was built into the American system from the beginning…”

That’s the theory and vision. What follows in the original article are fascinating detailed examples… and then…

“These mayors saw what was happening and decided to act. They looked at the tools they already had, and they used them. That is what soft secession looks like when it stops being a theory and starts being a strategy, and every city in the country can do the same thing tomorrow morning. Every one of these tools already works somewhere. None of them require permission from Congress, cooperation from the White House, or a federal judge’s blessing. They require a mayor who decides to use them.” The implications of this are to talk to our neighbors and mayors….

More resources for this: Physical booklets including the “Introduction to Soft Secession”, “Oppositional Federalism”, and the “Educate, Activate, Recruit, Repeat” training manual are available at The Existentialist Republic. Digital copies are available free at Buy me a coffee.

And while you’re at it, read the great article by Thomas Friedman, “Why Minnesota Matters…”. Here’s an excerpt:

“One of the most courageous battles ever fought by American men and women not in uniform… was led by moms ready to donate their breast milk to strangers and dads ready to drive someone else’s kids to school because the parents, terrified of ICE agents, were too afraid to go out outdoors. It was neighbors ready to hit A.T.M.s to help out neighborhood restaurants and businesses deciding not to open — thus forgoing their income — for fear that masked ICE agents might drag away their cooks or dishwashers or desk clerks… They were all propelled by a verb I’d never heard before: “neighboring,” as in, Today I will be neighboring — going out to protect the good people next door or down the block. Not because I favor illegal immigration, but because I oppose the fundamental indecency of … evicting illegal immigrants by arresting my neighbors, most of whom work hard, pay taxes, go to church or mosque and help me dig out my car from the snow in winter.”

And perhaps check out these two articles on the behind-the-scenes details of this remarkable response and what it means for community organizing…

In the frozen streets of Minneapolis, something profound is happening.

and

What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting

Regenerative Responses and Responders

Excerpt from the NewStories website: “For 25 years, [the nonprofit] NewStories has been supporting communities that have faced the unimaginable, total loss from disaster—those who don’t want to rebuild the old normal, but are ready to co-create something that affirms life, reciprocity, and interdependence. We call this Re-Storying Disaster. True recovery is not simply the replacement of what was lost. It is an ongoing journey of collective healing that nourishes both people and place.”

NewStories did breakthrough work with the survivors of the Fukashima nuclear disaster – the triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear explosions on March 11, 2011 (chronicled in the book by NewStories founder Bob Stilger, AfterNow: When We Cannot See the Future, Where Do We Begin). This led to their work with communities like Paradise, California famously demolished by the most horrendous wildfire in California’s history on November 8, 2018, which has now resulted in the Northern California Fire-Affected Communities Collaboratory through which “survivors across six counties… refuse to simply rebuild what was broken” and instead “turn toward each other and create the infrastructure of [transformational] recovery themselves.”

On the NewStories site you’ll find “essential knowledge resources that support Re-Storying, including methodologies, frameworks, and emerging practices…. Through the process of discerning and naming their own specific guiding principles [evocative of NewStories own principles], people build shared understanding of what they value. Together, they become able to use their principles to guide action, decision-making, and evaluation. Ultimately, [such] principles are expressions of what ‘life’ is longing to become, within each place, community and system.” That is the essence of Re-Storying for Regenerative Futures.

New Stories recently invited all of us into their Regenerative Responders program. “As communities face increasing ecological, social, and systemic disruption, many people are stepping into roles of support, facilitation, organizing, caregiving, and community response. Yet few spaces exist to help people sustain themselves, learn together, and cultivate the deeper capacities needed to navigate such complexity over time. Regenerative Responders is a global learning community for people accompanying communities through disruption, recovery, and transition.”

I see NewStories initiatives as vital transformational developments which could complement the above-mentioned soft secession trend in fascinating ways. While the NewStories initiatives embody a vision relevant around the world, in the US I sense its special importance now, given federal disinvestment from disaster preparedness in the face of growing wildfire and extreme weather dangers exacerbated by the likelihood of an especially disruptive Super El Nino this year. We’re beginning to see climate disruption on speed, which provides urgent reason to deepen into our collective understanding and practice of Wise Democracy Pattern 88 Using Diversity and Disturbance Creatively.

Finally, along these lines, I highly recommend a book about the history and relationships between grassroots and official responses to disasters, Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster”.

May this be an inspiration to us all – and an opportunity for you if it matches your deep callings and capacities!

Coheartedly,

Tom

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Tom Atlee, The Co-Intelligence Institute, POB 493, Eugene, OR 97440

Appreciating, evoking and engaging the wisdom and resourcefulness of the whole on behalf of the whole

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