Punk Rock Permaculture E-zine

I’m reposting this post because I just learned that they may be facing eviction

There is a genuine non violent revolution going on around the globe.  One that crosses boundaries of race, creed, color, religion and subculture.  A revolution that heals the heart even as it dismantles the heartless systems of oppression.  It is of course the permaculture revolution; a revolution that is interconnected and diverse.

“…the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to
production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of
us do this, there is enough for everyone.

Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on
the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food
and shelter.” – Bill Mollison

I want to take sometime and give you a picture of some of these true revolutionaries….

The Swomp in Amsterdam is a collective squat that is guided by permaculture and its principals.  Besides providing for themselves with their garden production the Swomp does community outreach and education.  They are under constant threat of eviction and they may need some media attention soon.  Please take the time to read their declaration and the inspiring sustainable ethics by which the community abides.   Here is just a sampling of what they’ve accomplished:

• successfully squatted a unused urban lot and turned it into a permaculture demonstration site.
• built a strawbale home from mostly recycle materials
• organized with numerous other collectives on a wide range of important global issues
• provided free education to the community
• demonstrated that one can live in harmony with one’s conscience and with the earth

Please visit their awesome blog and if you are aware of other radical communities in the permaculture vein we would love to feature them here.

p.s.  We are always looking for more contributors so if you would like to write for PRP e-zine please contact thejulianeffect(at)gmail with the subject “gaia punks.”

photo credit: Mira Hunter

First, the Miss Rock Away Armada an now, the Waterpod, sustainable education and art barge design reaches new heights…

The water pod project is a retrofitted sustainable education barge full of art and enthusiasm for appropriate technology.  This collaborative and nomadic project traveled down the Hudson river doing education demos at stops along the way.   A new kind of out of box imaginative and artistic thinking related to permaculture, appropriate technology, new ways of living, is exactly what is need to get people inspired about transforming our civilization and the Waterpod fits the bill.  Check out the design and technology employed below.

Waterpod project image galleries: here

Founding member of punk band Rubella Ballet day shows of his new garden!

This is perhaps the best punk documentary ever made!

I just stayed up until six AM in the mornig watching a amazing documentary called Afropunk and I’m amazed I hadn’t seen it sooner .  This film is a documentary about black punk culture, but it also much more than that!  Every minute of this film is to me a beautiful and important revelation full of personal and societal insight.  It documents a piece of punk and cultural history that has never been mising, but has never until now really been given the true attention, respect, and reverence, it deserves up until now.  Watching this film made me happy once again to claim punk as a unique piece of my diverse individuality.  Embracing uniqueness and diversity is the spirit of film, the spirit of punk, and also the spirit of permacutlture.  So in that spirit it is with great joy that I present to you below strait from the excellent director James Spooner Afropunk.   This film deserves recognition so please help share the spirit of this film with your friends, organize showings, invite the director to your school or organization to talk,  help him fund his next film, or overall just be supportive by telling folks about it and how it made you think and feel!

For more info see the awesome new Afropunk (the music and culture festival phenomenon) page

So I decided to take a little break from the ole’ computer screen and it seems as though in a single week everything has gone wild…

For instance, NASA actually decided to bomb the moon, honestly, was this really necessary!  Is Iraq and Afghanistan not enough space for the US government to bomb that they need to waste 79 million dollars by crashing a useless probe into moon? Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize all the while considering how many troops to commit to two illegal and unnecessary wars!  I guess he got the award for promising to do work around nuclear non-proliferation.  If I promised to bring about everlasting world peace could I win a Nobel?  Most interestingly though, Geoff Lawton, permaculture expert of greening the desert fame was featured by CNN news in their “green section”.  Congrats to Geoff and big WTF!! to Obama.

Geoff Lawton is currently a key landscape consultant on Masdar city a futuristic supposedly zero waste carbon neutral city slated to be build in Abu Dhabi which is part of the UAE.  Interestingly, the per capita ecological ecological foot print of Abu Dhabi also happens to be one of the highest in the world and though now being called a hub of sustainability don’t expect the UAE to move away from oil extraction anytime soon.  Loads of companies have signed onto Masdar and the city will be a proving ground for some the the most intelligently designed and profitable green ideas and smart products to come in the next few years.  Masdar plans to feature the latest in renewable energy, high tech transportation, and pedestrian oriented streets. The main problem I have with big eco city developments like these is that instead of starting small and building up organically they try to master plan everything and the people most likely left out of the plan are the poor and disenfranchised.

Recently, the gulf states have been using their surplus oil money to go on a building spree so that they’ll be able to leverage the equity accumulated to continue to make investments when demand deflates.  Financing a massive project like this is another issue too, Masdar City is currently set to cost a mere 15-35 billion and right now their looking for 600 million in investment financing for the start of construction….good luck!  .  In order to finance they’ll have to sell a whole lot of real estate, especially ritzy real estate, like luxury eco condos, hotels, malls, and conference centers and this type of blatant eco classism will create multiple social divisions.   Let us all remember that conspicuous consumption labeled green is still conspicuous consumption.  This is the crucial paradox around building idealized eco utopias if you don’t address salient social issues then you’re just simply sowing the seeds of inequity wrapped up in a nice little green package.  Personally, I like ingenious projects that can be scalable to various sizes, create community resilience and reliance, use natural building, and don’t cost billions of dollars, but hey thats just me (see: Gaviotas, Columbia and Curitiba, Brazil).  I would be curious to know exactly what Geoff’s true opinion of the whole thing is and whether he see some true substance in the midst of all the hype .   Just like Obama’s Noble we shouldn’t be awarding accolades simple for promises yet to be fulfilled…

For some really great and well balanced ecocity guru discussions on Masdar City see this treehugger post.

This  years Hemp Fest in Seattle was the largest pro hemp gathering in history!  Everyone knows that the only reason we can’t grow hemp legally in the US is because of the heavily funded lobbying efforts of the cotton, timber, paper, oil, and of course pharmaceutical industry.  I live in Washington state and it pains me everytime I see a logging truck with huge timbers being carried down the road destined for the paper mills.  I just get sick and so I”m posting these to videos about hemp and it’s enviromental benefits as therapy.  Even if know quite a bit about hemp I think you’ll like these videos as much as I do.  Currently, there is a good chance a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for those 21 and over and tax the sales will pass in California.  This is the upside of California’s economic woes.  You can see the inspiring story here.

I just finished a little reading on the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen this December and you can see my opinion here.