The Global Ecovillage Network – North America (GENNA) is producing a free online urban intentional communities discussion. The topic is the struggles and resilience of urban communities.
Urban communities often encounter challenges that rural ones do not, as how to create a rural community is more established. The panel consists of 5 seasoned leaders and experienced dwellers of urban intentional communities from San Francisco, New York City, and Washington DC.
The Ganas Community is co-producer, and Leon Tsao is the organizer and moderator. If you wish to submit questions, please send them to Leon, leontsao42@gmail.com.
Join here for the Zoom call that is taking place Sunday, April 11, 3PM EST/ 2PM CDT/ 1 PM MDT/ 12 PM PST.
https://us02web.zoom.us/s/4891987598
Panelists:
Dr. Zarinah Agnew lived in an intentional community in San Francisco for the last 9 years, and is a steward of Haight St Commons (HsC), which is a collective of around 75 communities in the Bay Area. It has a decentralized federation that shares resources, learnings, housemates, documents, a radical fund, a newsletter and more. She is part of a global federation called the Embassy Network. She is director of a non profit that supports the creation of experimental commons and autonomous spaces. On the ground, one of the projects that she stewarded is called the Second Life Project, which are autonomous spaces centered around the needs and wisdoms of formerly incarcerated individuals.
Darrell Duane is the founder of Glowhouse in Washington, DC, which existed since 2000. Glowhouse hosts a community of holistic practitioners, burners (people passionate about Burning Man), and also meditators. They do avid couch surfing, and enjoy healthy eating and authentic relating. Duane is working on a number of projects, such as the Crypto Universal Basic Income Foundation, DMV Ecovillages, Ranked Choice Voting Support Network, Lovers of Living Together DC, and Organic Groups
Raven Glomus has helped start a number of urban communities. In 1995 he founded Common Threads in Cambridge, Massachusetts which lasted 5 years and more recently Cotelydon in Queens. He had been a long-time member and compost manager at Ganas in New York City, and he manages the Commune Life blog. He has been concerned about how there is almost no more egalitarian income sharing communities in the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, and is passionate about how to start and maintain such communities.
Maddie Hana Fontaine is a lifelong urban communitarian. She was part of communal living since she was 10 years old, and as an only child, learned a lot growing up in an intentional community in Madison, Wisconsin from other children and adults. She was part of Madison Community Cooperative (MCC), an organization of multiple urban coops. She lived in Ambrosia and also Friends in Madison, both part of MCC, and then after college, she lived in Youtopia in Brooklyn. She learned much about conflict resolution, adaptability, leadership, interpersonal relationships, and how to share space with others in her experience.
Michael Johnson co-founded Ganas, a 65 member community in New York City in 1980, He regards it as an experiential research center in democratic culture where people live and work together. He had been immersed in the cooperative/solidarity economic movements since 2007 with the Valley Alliance of Worker Co-operatives (New England), SolidarityNYC, and Grassroots Economic Organizing Collective (GEO), which he is a regular contributor and editor. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Growing Democracy Project: A Cultural Strategy for Taking Our Love, Power, and Democracy to New Levels.
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