Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Today, it doesn’t take a prophet to see the clouds on the horizon. There are many signs of the “coming flood.” The overall abuse of the earth by humanity is about to leave our ever growing population “flooded” with survival emergencies, on many levels. This will affect water, air, food, shelter, energy, etc. All factors of human survival, as we know it, are immediately threatened by the rapidly deteriorating condition of the planet Earth. The media is full of emergencies regarding polluted oceans, rivers and streams, vanishing wildlife, air quality, radioactive waste, garbage, homeless families, etc. The situation is escalating and in many cases irreparable damage (relative to human life span) is done…Most housing today would be totally nonfunctional in terms of comfort, water, toilets, electricity, etc. without massive inputs of energy from centralized sources. There is also food, another basic living need, which also comes mostly from centralized production systems. The quality of this food is, at best, questionable, and it requires energy consuming transportation systems for distribution. All of this is available only through money, which itself is another system between us and our sustenance. Due to the fact that these systems have evolved within a certain narrowness of vision, they have begun to reach points where they do more harm than good. They are literally destroying the planet as they precariously sustain our rather incomplete concept of human life. Our ability to evolve beyond these systems is becoming increasingly necessary, and has a twofold impetus.

One: If we learn to live without these systems, we could radically slow down destruction of the planet and possibly reverse certain aspects of the deterioration.

Two: If it is already too late, we will need, in the near future, living units to sustain us via direct contact with existing natural phenomena.

We need to evolve self-sufficient living units that are their own systems. These units must energize themselves, heat and cool themselves, grow food and deal with their own waste. The current concept of housing, in general, supported by massive centralized systems, is no longer appropriate, safe, or reliable. We are now in need of Earthships – independent vessels – to sail on the seas of tomorrow. (Michael E. Reynolds, Earthship: How to Build Your Own, Volume 1, 1990)

He wrote those words in the late eighties. I think it was 1995 when I heard him interviewed on KPFA.

Immediately his vision caught fire in my mind. A house built into the earth, in balance with the earth, facing south, maintaining a constant seventy degree temperature simply by its design, completely self-sustaining; a house that fried its’ human feces, distributed the resulting ashes on the plants growing within the house itself, generated its own energy, collected its own water! And this was not smoke in somebody’s pipe. They exist, all over the world now – with a base in Taos, New Mexico.

It glowed with essential truth, this model for what a house should be and do. I saw it as the solution. What it proved, unequivocally, was that want, scarcity, and misery were manufactured. Ousmane Sembene’s words swam through this truth, expanding it:

“Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty – and that is the way it is with us.”

I devoted literally years trying to figure out how my son and I could seize this lifeboat. I didn’t have a thought-out oppositional value-system then, I just knew I wanted out, a generalized ‘out,’ for more than just me. How could I get land? How could I get help? I was a single mother with no skills. I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.

After finding that years of thinking brought no result (the Peterkin Problem again), and growing ever more desperate, I wrote to biotecture@earthship.org:

Subject: Vision to end poverty.
Date: (If the date on my copy is correct) July 28, 2000.

What inspired me most about Michael Reynolds’ initial vision as I understood it was the power of the earthship in ending poverty. In Book One he talks a lot about keeping earthships affordable, even saying one could be built for $5,000. In a recent Solar Survival brochure it says that to build one costs about the same as conventional housing. How can a low income person afford that? I’m disappointed in this drift away from the initial concept.
Is this an issue that is still being looked at?

Some months later I was excited to receive a response from Michael Reynolds himself. He wrote:

Yes. But regulations and codes have made it difficult.
Thirty years of exploration into biology, physics and human nature have brought me to the realization that humanity has, itself, forged the sword that is potentially responsible for piercing its own heart.
We have corralled ourselves with laws and codes that, while written to protect us, are also keeping us from evolving at the pace necessary to keep up with global change and population explosion. This is much like a barn built to protect horses from the cold. By an act of fate it catches on fire and traps them inside to burn to death. Due to global change and increasing population, our barn is burning. Our laws and codes have become barriers that won’t let us escape the burning barn fast enough to survive. The future will bring humanity extreme hardship unless we can bypass certain laws and codes in designated areas in order to experiment with new and more logical ways of living in our physical environment.
In the 1940s, New Mexico designated several thousand acres of land for testing weapons of nuclear destruction. There, scientists dropped an atomic bomb. Many codes and environmental standards were put aside for this endeavor in the name of defense from our enemies. Can’t we now take this same bold step to designate both acreage and legislation in every state to explore methods of sustainable life on this planet? The evolution of sustainable living methods must be allowed a “test site,” free from the crippling restraints of laws, codes and basic human encumbrances, in the name of defense…
…from our own failing methods of living.

Thrilled, I tried to start up a correspondence.

That was not what he had in mind by writing to me. Despite being a very busy man, he’d reached out, had his say, and he was done holding hands. I kept the emails always, though, holding on to a belief that one day I would return to his initial vision.
I believe the time is now.

In Michael Reynolds’ response, I think we can see another example of the necessity of seeing reality, of keeping our oppositional values, our consciousness, in our pocket. The “we” that he talks about does not exist in this system. If it did, his argument – his belief that it will take conditions getting really, really bad before “humanity” wakes up and clears a path to the obvious – might make sense. It assumes a dull myopia, not a meanness of disposition, afflicting the so-called rulers.

And yet…youth, always more optimistic – a critically necessary corrective, always – rushes to his defense. My son hears Michael Reynolds’ response and leaps upon it. “But we can use his argument, and his authority, using the strategy of the Transition Movement, to pressure local governments to do just what he says, call this the emergency it is, and set aside land and codes to address it. We could form local non-profits just for that purpose.” (More on this idea later.)

With our consciousness in hand we will craft workable plans, plans that avoid the short circuits, stay off the ‘Power’ roads and build the NEW roads, plans that lead to a future without bosses.

Below I offer four “starting point” strategies that I consider critical. As you meet, however, many more strategies and tactics will occur to you:

Consumer boycott of big corporations;

Using the websites to build the movement, develop product and services exchanges, and strengthen our Crews’ mutual support systems;

Building ambassador bridges to the bulwarks of our mission: the architects of earthships, the natural educators, the Zapatista transistors who interface with the state, and the local organic farmers;

Claiming the commons: articulating communal needs like a Great Hall with a communal kitchen, laundry and bathrooms; a communal farm, woods, orchard and garden; free online access, domain name registration, and web page hosting; communal solar power generation and distribution; a charging station for our retrofitted bedroom-vehicles that have solar panels and AC power;

The General Strike.

The next section will examine the above-mentioned strategies and tactics.

Once we get rolling, I think we’ll find that renouncing the processed life is easier than we thought. The hardest part will be trust. But we shouldn’t wait for more tumors before deciding to change our diets.

Unless we do the planning first, unless we have our kenpo stance prepared, our bodies in a created-crisis will react by being scared, making it hard to have each other’s back, making it hard to help.

My just-arrived union newsletter tells the story of Liliana Robbins, one of the many unsung heroes we have among us who will be the cutting edge that carves our future.

This woman, as Tookie would say, has “heart.”

In May, 2007, Robbins, one of the most senior and respected workers at one of NG Jensen’s [“a custom brokerage firm in the state of Washington on the Canadian border”] customs stations in Blaine, Washington, contacted Seattle Local 77 asking for help for herself and her co-workers, who assign tariff numbers and clear lumber and other Canadian goods for entry in to the U.S. Organizer Chris Martin met with her.
Frustrated and angry, Robbins told Martin how a decent job…had gone downhill as managers snatched away holidays and vacation time, changed work schedules at will and engaged in blatant nepotism.
“There was huge support for the union at the beginning,” says Robbins, who met with some of her co-workers at a nearby gas station. They decided to put informational literature about the benefits of unions on cars in the parking lot. Immediately, supervisors went out and snatched the literature, so Robbins brought some pamphlets into work with her.
Overnight, Robbins’ relationship with her employer changed. She was written up for distributing pamphlets, even though co-workers routinely brought in catalogues to sell merchandise or distributed sign-up lists for fundraisers.
“I went full force at trying to find every avenue that would help my co-workers, with the same thoroughness that I applied to my job,” says Robbins, who set up a meeting at a nearby library for NG Jensen workers to meet with Local 77.
Only three workers showed up for the meeting. Several drove by, but were afraid to show their faces after a rumor circulated about a supervisor who had lined up a snitch to report back on attendance. But, even more persuasive was watching how Robbins, a model employee, was singled out for harassment because of her support for a union.
The union drive was stillborn. But the company was not finished with Robbins. She got a phone call late one night from Jensen telling her that she was terminated because of “business conditions,” despite the fact that more junior and far less-experienced workers remained on the job…
“I couldn’t blame my co-workers,” says Robbins. “It takes a strong person to go through what I did.” (The Electrical Worker, March, 2009)

It does.

She lost “her home in Birch Bay, overlooking the Pacific…After 20 years, she is moving into an apartment.”

Just typing those words…words fail, fury flames.

Podrunks can turn on a dime when “workers” try to claim their own lives because they’ve planned for decades, centuries, millennia, what to do when our backs start to get straight.

Rather than engage with podrunks on their own turf, it’s time we started constructing our own.

We need “our own things,” places, gatherings, music, goods, food, services, celebrations, and, most importantly…land – for farms, spiritual sustenance, gardens, trees… and earthships.

Recall: only an enormous amount of violence over centuries could pound us into the box labeled “commodity available for sale on the market.” Before that, we had our common lands and forests. We grew our own food, made our own homes and clothes.

We had time.

If we pry the lid open and climb out of that box now, the podrunks will have to risk a total de-legitimization of their claim to rule in order to force us en masse back into it. The official rhetoric put forward by most Western states is a democratic rhetoric, offering no purchase for repressive forces to grab a hold to.

Granted this never stopped America before when it wanted to set aside the Constitution and incarcerate whole groups. And it’s never stopped the mind-boggling increase in rates of incarceration inflicted on low-income people. But these outcomes are only possible because we do the system’s Division Work instead of our Culture Work. We are all complicit. It will take planning, preparation and a heap of consciousness to set Division Work aside.

One in every 31 U.S. adults is in the corrections system, which includes jail, prison, probation and supervision, more than double the rate of a quarter century ago, according to a report…by the Pew Center on the States…
The United States has the highest incarceration rate and biggest prison population of any country in the world, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Most of those in the U.S. corrections system – one in 45 – are already on probation or parole, with one in 100 in prison or jail, the Pew study found…
Penitentiary systems have been the fastest-growing spending area for states after Medicaid, the healthcare program for those with low income. (The Epoch Times, March 12-18, 2009)

No. Withdrawal from what is not worthy of us will not be a smooth road with coffee kiosks on the side. What podrunks have in mind for us is a, to their minds, ‘neat,’ in reality bloody, arrangement of us, we magnificent wind from below, into a small set of “knowledge workers” in one corner (drawn from the indebted children of the “middle class;”) a larger one of beaten down “manual workers,” including prison-slaves and farm-laborers (drawn from the indebted children of the “working class,”) who also fuel that indispensable blob of complicity-seeking “security workers” (guards, police, soldiers, and the like;) and then…a teeny-weeny speck of gloriously rich, unindebted, “Them.”

People deemed “superfluous” will be prisoned, dead, or tightly contained. That this way of thinking is completely loony, given the environmental crisis if nothing else, will not stop them. “The child is not well.”

I stress the issue of “indebtedness” because, in the present moment, we are living the realization of a key podrunk scheme to control us with debt-slavery.

This issue was featured on the March 26, 2009 Democracy Now! I reproduce here a lengthy excerpt because of the importance of this issue. (The Democracy Now! archives on their website include, amazingly enough, written transcripts. Awesome!)

INTRO: Lawmakers and public officials in California, Ohio, South Carolina, Missouri, Washington and other states are attempting to crack down on the controversial practice known as payday lending. Payday loans are short-term loans or cash advances secured by a post-dated check. The annual interest rate for these loans can be as high as 400 percent, ten times the highest credit card rates. Today, it’s a $40 billion industry with more than 22,000 stores. We speak with journalist Daniel Brook about his Harper’s Magazine article, “Usury Country," and with Ginna Green of the Center for Responsible Lending.

AMY GOODMAN: In the early ’90s, there were fewer than 200 payday lending stores in the country. Today it’s a $40 billion industry with more than 22,000 stores. There are more payday lending stores than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined. As more Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, the demand for payday loans is increasing.

We’re joined now by two guests who have been following this story: Journalist Daniel Brook joins us from Philadelphia. His article “Usury Country: Welcome to the Birthplace of Payday Lending” appears in the new issue [April, 2009] of Harper’s. He is also the author of the book The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America.

And we’re joined by Ginna Green of the Center for Responsible Lending. The group is releasing a report today that reveals payday lenders are significantly more concentrated in African American and Latino neighborhoods in California than in white neighborhoods.

GINNA GREEN: One of the key findings of our report that’s coming out today, “Predatory Profiling: The Role of Race and Ethnicity in the Location of Payday Lenders in California,” is that in this state, payday lenders are eight times more concentrated in African American and Latino neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods. And even after we account for factors like income, education, poverty rate, we find that they’re still 2.4 times more concentrated in African American and Latino neighborhoods. I think this research has borne out what many people have thought we’ve known intuitively, that payday loans appear to really cluster in black and brown neighborhoods.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Daniel Brook, especially these [payday lending] chains, I would assume that they would need some investors or some capital to be able to expand rapidly and provide this cash to the working poor. Did you look into what were the financial institutions that were investing or behind these chains?

DANIEL BROOK: Yes, I did. Check Into Cash itself is a privately held company controlled by Allan Jones. But they told me, when I went to company headquarters, that they had a large line of credit from Wells Fargo Bank. Some of the other chains, including Advance America, which is the largest of the payday lending chains, are publicly traded on the stock exchange and are funded—have lines of credit from all the major banks in the United States, including Citigroup, JP Morgan, etc.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Brook, in addition to writing your piece, “Usury Country,” in Harper’s, you’ve written a book, The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America. And I’d like you to talk about how this, how these payday loans fit in with the bigger story, especially a story we did last week with Reverend Jesse Jackson, and that is the story of student loans.

DANIEL BROOK: Yeah. In The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America, I look again at this rising economic inequality in the United States, this growing gap between rich and poor. The Trap focuses on a different group of people. If payday loans are for the lower middle class or working poor, we might say, The Trap is about college-educated professionals. But it argues that this increasing gap between rich and poor poses problems for this group, as well, which, of course, compared to the lower middle class is, of course, relatively well-off.

And the choice it imposes on the upper middle class is not whether or not to take out a payday loan, but whether or not to sell out, whether or not to do a job that will pay them a lot of money, but in which they don’t believe and which will both sort of hurt the country, in that they’re not doing something more service-oriented, but also make them feel like they’ve sold out. So student loans are a big part of the trap. As we’ve shifted towards a privatized system of higher education, relying more and more on debt and more and more specifically on bank-issued private debt, the debt loads of students who attend both public and private colleges, and particularly professional schools and graduate schools—and the University of California at Berkeley, which is ostensibly a public school, charges $25,000 tuition for its law school, so even students from public schools are emerging with large debt loads—end up—it ends up dictating career choice to a very disturbing extent.

I think it’s one of the things that drives a lot of the troubling trends in our society politically, including the revolving door in Washington, where people who had, say, worked in a congressman’s office on issues they believed in turn around and triple, quintuple their salary by going to K Street and lobbying.

The podrunks understand very well the “vulnerability” of all children and youth to the pull of nature – the pull to “service,” or “art” – in their bodies. It exerts a pull as relentless as gravity, and every so often one of their own is claimed by it.

As emphasized, and reemphasized, here, those who would be “kings” are very organized, and very determined to fight, tooth and nail, every effort we make to slip our chains and leashes.

But, we should hold in our minds, hearts, and hands, the truth that the obstacles to our freedom are not technological or practical. Peoples all over the globe have historically been self-sufficient. We know how to provide for ourselves. We’ve never needed the pretenders to ‘Power.’ But they’ve always needed us for Their Grand Pretense to have any pulse at all. They wear their head honcho illusions and their big kahuna dreams like an Edgar-suit. Everybody can see they’re the walking-dead but them. Time to send them the memo: “your fantasies will be chucked. We are waking up.”

The last section of this chapter assumes “a crew.” But what if nobody wants to work with you?

Never doubt the truth: freeing oneself psychically is not nothing.

If you have to wake up in bed alone, you can still:

Delve more deeply into your art;
Continue simplifying your life and reorienting your allegiance;
Journal your process;
Help build interest in the Nascence – put the issue of ending wage work on the table, and in people’s minds, e.g. by writing articles and “letters to the editor;”
Ask folks to discuss this book with you (especially youth);
Ask your local library to purchase the Earthship manuals, and to obtain this book;
Offer to arrange bulk purchases from local farmers of organic produce to help with your, and your neighbors, food bills, health and sanity;
Stanch the propaganda flow into your body by listening to a Pacific-network radio station and by patronizing the progressive news sites;
Write about your neighborhood experience and put it up on your own or the Berkeley Nascence website;
Learn how to use Ning social networking software so it will be available to your crew, once it forms;
Write your own local or community plan and post it on your Nascence website.

If it’s slow going, a real slog, then you’re in the right place, there’s work to be done. If there’s no one to help you design either a village (local) or micro-village (community) plan – you design one. Look around you. Where could solar panels be staged? Land made communal? Community food grown? Bulk food buys arranged? If no one wants to meet to plan the future maybe they’ll meet to plan a piece of it.

Within lower-income communities of color there is much speculation right now about the plans ‘Power’ has for us. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that the widespread phenomenon of “gentrification” is an effort to bring to America the “Paris-model” for “dealing with” the darker-skinned manual labor – we who clean the homes and offices, clip the shrubs, nanny the children, change the elders’ bedclothes, and service the sexual repression of the podrunks and “knowledge-workers.” These latter, mostly fair-skinned privileged, will, if all goes according to podrunk plans, remain in the city to hold down the fort of “civilization.”

You see, in Paris, the immigrant manual labor is consigned to the fringes of the city. “Out of sight, out of mind” being the general idea.

After all, the implications of peak oil, peak water, climate change, yada-yada-yada, mean that those huddled around the existing infrastructure will have an easier time weathering the storms of the podrunks’ intended coming chaos.

If we manual grunts are successfully pushed to the fringes of “civilization,” we will be easier to “manage,” if not eliminate altogether. Indeed, it will be so much easier to clip us from the story of “civilization” if the podrunks can bypass all the “tiresome” (to their minds) hand-wringing they fully expect from the good-hearted full-bellied-few left in the cities to “manage” “civilization.”

What if we interjected our own plans, our CoExiSts, in every urban area?

What if we started now, living our future, freeing our wholeness, refusing division work, doing our Culture Work…

Continue to "The Plan" - Part 8

Nascence to End Work

Waking up: freeing ourselves from work

Chapter V: The Plan (Part 7)

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work