The Nashoba Experiment

   by Raven

When we talk about communes and intentional communities, people often seem to think that this was something that only dates back to the 1960s, but in the first part of the 19th century, over a hundred thousand folks in the United States were involved in forming what has been called “utopian communities”.   I have written about this before in an article published by Communities magazine, where I focused on the Oneida community.

I’d like to talk here about what I think was one of the most interesting of the utopian experiments.  Nashoba was a short-lived community founded in 1826 by Frances (Fanny) Wright, an abolitionist from the United Kingdom.  She  wanted to show that there was an alternative to the slave-based economy of southern United States. She decided to create a utopian community for slaves in the south, which she would free.  It was a nice idea.  Unfortunately, it was poorly done. 

From her travels around the United States, Fanny Wright had seen how much the southern states depended on slavery and how much it contributed to the overall economy of the United States. From what she saw, she began to believe that a slavery-based society could be replaced with something better for everyone.  She decided to create a model community.  Fanny Wright’s hopes were for a place where former slaves could be emancipated and a place that would welcome anyone who was willing to work together for their common future.  Her plan was to create a self-sustaining multi-racial community would be composed of former slaves, free black folks, and white folks.  

In the summer of 1825, Fanny Wright put out a proposal to buy a small number of slaves and set up a community where they would live free and collectively. She hoped this could be an example that would lead others to do similar things. She was able to find a tract of land on the Wolf River east of Memphis, Tennessee, and decided to buy it and name it Nashoba, the word for “wolf” in the Chickasaw language.

When the ground was broken for the community, Fanny Wright was just 29.  In its first year there were about a hundred acres cleared on the grounds and simple huts were built on the land to shelter the community.  Fanny Wright recruited folks and tried to raise funds for Nashoba but, although she was quite good at recruitment, she was not as good at raising funds.  Instead, she ended up using her own money to buy the land and free the slaves.  She also wrote ads for stonemasons, carpenters, and teachers in various abolitionist newspapers, but she never got a response.

Fanny Wright had no experience in rough living, but at first she did well with it.  She slept in open cabins, endured all kinds of weather,  and claimed that she never felt better in her life.  But the labor at Nashoba took a toll on her health. She contracted malaria and left the community to go to Ohio in 1827.  Later she returned to Europe to raise funds and recruit more assistance for Nashoba.

The community did not prosper while she was away.

When Fanny Wright returned in 1829, she found the community was pretty much gone and there was little pretense of collectivity left. Soon all the remaining white members deserted the place, leaving just the freed slaves who were trying to stick it out.  Fanny Wright, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, offered to take them to Haiti, where they could live free in a black-ruled country. If they did well, they were told that they would be given land grants. Most of the thirty-one folks who had remained at Nashoba decided to take her up on this and in 1830 they sailed with Fanny Wright from New Orleans to Haiti. The story pretty much ends there and the sources I looked at said there is little documentation of how well the former Nashoba residents did in Haiti.  As I said, a nice idea that wasn’t done well.

At Twin Oaks, most of the buildings are named for former communities and the building housing many of the oldest and/or more vulnerable members, is named Nashoba.  I think communal history is important and, as with most of the nineteenth century communities, my hope is that we can learn from this experiment.

Fires, Goats, Seeds, and New Year’s Eve

by Raven

Here it is almost the end of January and I’m still posting on stuff from almost a month ago. And that starts with New Year’s Eve at Twin Oaks:

Our posting of this did fairly well on Facebook:

Serenity Community also posted about their workshop on New Years Day at Twin Oaks on the Serenity webpage and we put that up on our Facebook feed as well:

This did very well:

Acorn posted this little video about how some folks there begin their morning:

(Unfortunately, I couldn’t copy the actual video but you can look at it on their Instagram site at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYEX0RFKXv5/ )

This post didn’t do nearly as well as others have recently:

And, now that it’s January, here’s a common enough question with an unusual answer:

As you can see, this post didn’t do too badly.

Finally, Serenity Community also posted this piece focusing on a worthy business to support:

This also did okay:

Communal Sacrifices

Here’s Theresa from Glomus Commune talking very candidly about the sacrifices and benefits of living communally.

@teiresiaskadish

Reply to @lesbwitches I am more, and less, than who I could be alone #sacrifice #community #communelife #lifelessons

♬ LULLABY WALTZ – Marcel Coulomb

Communard Interview #2: Robert Dove

Robert Dove-McClellan (also known as Brother Robert Julian, nOC) has been an activist, an administrator, and a cook.  He lived in a communal house in Philadelphia as part of Movement for a New Society before moving to the Boston area where he and I built three communities together–including Common Threads which became a community in dialogue with the FEC.  He is currently involved with the Fresh Pond Friends Meeting and the Ecumenical Order of Charity and writes poetry.  He is also a singer and a religious historian.

Raven: When did you first hear of income sharing and when did you first practice it?

Robert: Actually, the practice came first; we didn’t have a name for it at the time. This was with a small community of people in West Philadelphia, a fairly dense and multi-racial neighborhood in the 70’s. Some of the people in our fledgling community had shared expenses with others for particular items or events, but this was on an entirely different level. And it was motivated by simple justice. One of the adults in our community had three children, ages, 14, 11 and 7. She worked a full time job as a public health nurse, and gave over rent money for 4 people. The rest of us were single and didn’t need to work full time. The sharing started out by simply sharing responsibility for the children, just in very practical ways – lunches for school, being there when the kids came home, homework, bed time – stuff like that. Then we moved to sharing the expenses of the rent. From there we just took a big leap and pooled our income and treated our income and expenses as one unit. We had meetings to decide about budgets and unexpected expenses like any family would. The thing is, this was in late 70’s; we didn’t have computers, we didn’t have credit cards or ATM cards or any of the mechanics we have today to make it easy to track income and expenses. The Petty Cash box was very active and a total bear to balance out at the end of the month. But we did it and it worked.

Robert Dove

Raven: When I first met you, you were looking for folks to build community with.  Can you tell me about that?

Robert: I had moved to New England and was hoping to help create something akin to what I had experienced in Philadelphia. I was living at the Friends Meeting in Cambridge and you and I got together because we had both been told that the other was interested in community and we should definitely meet and talk. I remember being in the living room of the apartment I was sharing with others; it was a Sunday afternoon and we had the place to ourselves. In no time at all, we had covered the walls with flip chart paper, outlining the things we felt were most important, the quality of life we hoped for and even a time line of sorts. The one thing we were certain of was that we would have to “risk it” in order to find out what worked and what didn’t.

Raven: What did you learn from our three attempts at community building?

Robert: Each time it lasted longer, but the first two didn’t have children and it felt like it was more an economic thing and didn’t, from the start, feel long term. I think it matters that the first two were rented properties. In the third community, income sharing was one of the most radical things we did and one of the easiest parts of living together. Our disagreements about money when we had any were easily negotiated and solved. It didn’t hurt that we had a joint bank account, a credit cards we all used, and many ways to track what we were doing. What was hard was combining raising children, with income paying jobs, with care of a house we actually owned, while engaged in social change activities and finding the time for personal growth as well. Maybe if we had lived a bit more rurally, it might have been easier, but I’m not sure of that. I think finally what became clear over time was that each of us had somewhat different ideas of what living in community would be like. Despite having talked a lot, it turned out our definitions of or at least our feelings about community were different.

Common Threads ~ 1995

Raven: What were the best things about communal living and what were the hardest?

Robert: The best things for me were the interaction with the children, the communal meals, the celebratory events to which we invited many of our friends and the discoveries of group and even one on one dynamics which happened over time. We involved our children in almost every aspect of our lives to the extent they were able. And I think they really grew emotionally because of it. They loved participating in activities and decision-making with the adults.

I guess I’ve named the hardest already, except to add that personalities seemed to have changed in the environment of community. We didn’t know how to deal with anxiety or depression very well and the constant attention needed to live and work in an urban environment with all our interests, took its toll sometimes in ways of which we were unaware. We had people who were struggling with finding meaningful income, people who had long commutes, people with aging parents ─ there was a lot going on. But that was who we were; I’m not sure how we could have managed it better.

Common Threads ~ 1998

Raven: What do you see as the role of spirituality in secular communities?

Robert: Well, we didn’t have a single-track version of spirituality and I think that to the extent a group of people can support the spiritual quest of each of its members, in all the variety of their expressions, a community can find itself enriched. I remember the first Christmas time we spent together and the discussion of Christmas trees. It turned out that the people who had been raised Christian had the biggest problems with the Tree. Other people saw it as a lovely winter holiday and enjoyed decorating the house. Of course, in our community, we celebrated Hanukkah, the Solstice, Christmas and Kwanzaa. So candles and calendars were everywhere. And we made sure to have a working fire extinguisher. Lots of small take-aways: I still remember a chant that one person, who was Jewish and had been raised in South Africa, taught us.

Brother Robert Julian

Raven: Anything else that you’d like to share with the Commune Life readers?

Robert: People venturing into community often have had difficult lives dealing with our so-called modern world. We arrive somewhat wounded, even if we’re not aware of it. Face it, our Western culture is a set up for loneliness and pessimism. So, just like a large, extended family, people in community have to be prepared to be flexible and discern the difference between what they want and what they need, because they won’t get everything they want. But in the process, sometimes you find out something which is really wonderful and fulfilling which you never thought of before and it turns out better than you imagined it would. The other thing is, don’t let stuff fester; if you can’t talk to someone you’re having a problem with, get another person to join in to help the process. Do everything you can to nip resentment in the bud. And don’t exaggerate. And don’t catastrophize.

Snow, Trees, Tofu, and LLCs

by Raven

Again, here’s a recap of the week’s posts on Facebook. I’m still playing catchup on old posts on other commune sites.

At Twin Oaks, they were dealing with a relatively recent snow storm that knocked out their power.

This post did very well on Facebook:

The comments were cool, too.

Here’s a couple of posts about what I am calling Solstice Trees. The first is from Glomus, the community I live in right now, showing the lovely tree we had.

This post did okay on Facebook:

Acorn posted about their tree as well–but theirs had a multi-seasonal twist.

This post didn’t do as well. I’m not sure why.

I also republished an old post from Living Energy Farm, about them cooking up Twin Oaks tofu:

As you can see, it did very well. Some of the comments explain some of it–people definitely like Twin Oaks tofu.

Finally, in an important step for the development of the Serenity Community, they are now a legal corporation (an LLC, a Limited Liability Company).

This did well–although I wish it did better. I’m hoping more folks will know and support this emerging community.

Finley the Vampire Slayer

by Paxus

from Your Passport to Complaining

The joke is that there are as many opinions as there are members at Twin Oaks on most topics. But one thing we are in general agreement about is that we co-create pretty amazing children, reliably. Finley is one of these kids: imaginative, daring, curious and creative. I have primaried Finley a couple times, and it is not uncommon if you are distracted that when turn around you will find Finley on top of the roof of the building you are beside.

Christian has the enviable and challenging job of bringing out the best from our kids with video. Below is the joint effort of these two community artists. All the actors are Oakers.

Dealing with Racism in the Communes

by Raven

Racism is an endemic problem in both the communes and in society at large.  Nearly all of the communes have had accusations of racism raised against them.  Although this occasionally involves cases of overt racism, more often it’s because of an environment which ranges from difficult to outright hostile for folks of color.

The problem, as I see it, is that the communities were started by and contain mostly white folks and, as a result, are built in such a way as to create and sustain a white culture.  This is not going to be changed by well-meaning white folks or by having one or two BIPOC communards in the community.  In August, 2020, as the US grappled with the Black Lives Matter movement, the REAL team at Twin Oaks put out a statement talking about trying to create true diversity at Twin Oaks.  At one point, I heard folks talking about recruiting in a way that TO would become as much as 40% BIPOC. I think that this could have made a real difference.

Twin Oaks O&I Board, June 2020

I wondered where the idea of 40% came from–then I looked at the demographics.  The town of Louisa is about 67% white and a little under 30% African American.  Louisa County is just about 51% white and nearly 46% African American.  (For comparison, Ozark County, where East Wind is located, is 97% white and Delaware County, where Glomus Commune is located, is 96% white.)

Unfortunately, the changes being pushed for at Twin Oaks didn’t happen and most of the members of the REAL team have left for other places.  

RIght now, I think the best hope for movement on racism in the communes is the Serenity Community for Justice and Peace being formed in Louisa County. I was particularly taken by an interview with Britiah Walker, one of founders of Serenity, who said that in spite of how the BIPOC founders, most ex-communards, have experienced discomfort and a lack of support from majority white communities, they want to maintain positive and progressive relationships with the other Louisa County communities, saying “…we all truly need each other to create positive change.”  She also made the point that “Serenity would be contributing to more diversity in the other communities.” Britiah added, “If there is a safer and more comfortable landing ground for BIPOCs coming from outside the area, as well as a greater draw for BIPOCs to Louisa County communities, they might feel more comfortable exploring other communities.”

Serenity founders

I think that the biggest thing that the communes can do to address racism right now is to support efforts like this.  Acorn Community has given the Serenity Community a year lease on the former Mimosa property and gave them work to do to earn income.  I was pleased that the Federation of Egalitarian Communities offered Serenity a $5000 grant and a $5000 no interest loan, once they become a Community in Dialogue with the FEC.  They still need more money, and land, and labor, and probably quite a few more things.  If the communes are serious about addressing racism, I think that supporting the Serenity Community is probably their best opportunity to begin the process of change.

Ducks, Parties, and Forestry

by Raven

This week Commune Life featured a forestry crew at East Wind, a party at Twin Oaks, and some very cute ducks at Acorn.

Here’s the East Wind crew:

This post did very well on Facebook:

Meanwhile, Twin Oaks was celebrating one of their visitor parties.

This also did well, though not nearly as well as the EW Forestry crew.

Finally, Acorn posted a cute little video about their ducks.

This is a still from the video but it’s worth going over to Instagram to watch the real thing: https://www.instagram.com/p/CXgTQ5IgsbJ/

Here’s what Acorn has to say:

And this one did okay–but I expected more love for those cute, cute ducks.

Jules on Personal Money and Real Freedom

Is it better to have your own money or to have the freedom to work when you want? Jules at Twin Oaks plays both roles in this little income sharing drama:

https://www.tiktok.com/@jules.amanita/video/7007499866695879942

Communard Interview #1: Rachael Kadish

Rachael is a long time member of Glomus Commune in Walton, New York.  We talked in December.

Raven: My first question is, what is your relationship with Glomus? What do you do here?

Rachael: Okay, well, I’ve lived here for almost five years, and have been an income-sharing member for most of that time. I am a worker-owner of East Brook Community Farm, which is the farm business run at the community. That’s the main work that I do in terms of hours per week, but I also do other community-specific things like figuring out various legal and financial stuff for the community and business, since we’re still getting those systems in place. And then there’s work associated with running a household.  I don’t do as much domestic work some other folks do, but I do make yogurt and other ferments and that sort of stuff. I do more domestic work in the winter when I’m not farming as much.

Raven: What do you like about living here?

Rachael:  I originally moved here because I was looking for a place that was both a community and a farm.  I had lived in cooperative living situations and I had worked on farms, but I hadn’t lived in a  place that was supposed to be both at once, so that was what brought me here and that is one of the reasons that I’m still here. The land is beautiful, the location is beautiful, and the people are good.  It’s a big enough community for me in certain ways, but it’s also small enough in that we rely on relationships to do work rather than rely on bureaucracies or more impersonal types of policies.  I like that.

Raven: Is there stuff you don’t like about living in a communal setting?

Rachael: Yeah, sometimes I might just want to be alone and that’s only possible in certain spaces. You can’t expect to wake up in the morning and come downstairs and have solo time in the kitchen. It’s not really a big problem, though. Also, when you live in community, a lot of things become conversations that just wouldn’t be as complex if you lived with, like, one other person or if you lived alone. Integrating the opinions, feelings, wants, and needs of several people takes a lot of time and energy. Sometimes it’s amazing and wonderful, and sometimes it’s super hard and frustrating, but I think that is what it is to live in community. Overall, the positives outweigh any downsides for me.

Raven: Is there anything in particular you like or don’t like about the income sharing aspect?

Rachael:  Even though income sharing on the outside might seem like an objective thing, I still think that people have their own ideas and attitudes about it. That’s not really a thing that I like or don’t like, it’s just a thing that I’ve observed. I see people feel more or less empowered to spend money, or to advocate around financial decisions. It’s something we’re learning to be more upfront about in our financial discussions. I really like the income sharing because it allows us to do more with less.  We don’t have a lot of superfluous expenses because we pool our resources. We have a high standard of living given our income. It just makes a lot of sense to me. I appreciate Glomus’ budgeting process. I think it ultimately serves our members really well. There may be more that we could do to help members, especially new members, understand Glomus’ financial systems more quickly and easily. But at the same time, at least for me, shifting from an individual to a collective mindset around money really does take personal time and effort. Before I lived here, and I first started thinking about income sharing, I was concerned that I might feel limited – that my ability to make financial decisions would be encumbered by community process, or my own feelings about spending community money. But I really feel the opposite. I feel supported and encouraged. I like dealing with money on a collective scale. In some ways it’s more complicated – did you know that most institutions here find it really strange that a bunch of unrelated individuals want to share their income and own stuff in common? But I’m also mostly enjoying the challenge of figuring things out.

Raven: Are there any other things you’d like to share about communal living? Final thoughts?

Rachael: Don’t underestimate the human relationships aspect of community. Lots of people who aspire to start or join a community overlook how difficult it can be to share your life so intimately with multiple people. It’s also incredibly beautiful and rewarding, but man it’s tough sometimes. Still, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. For me, a great thing about living in community is that it normalizes conflict. I was more conflict avoidant before coming to community, and less comfortable with the level of realness that is necessary for community to work. Conflict at its best is growthful and deepens connection. So lean into that stuff when you can, while also taking care of yourself and others.

Raven: Thank you. Those are some great insights.