The First Convergence of Intentional Communities

by Raven

I will have to admit that I did not attend much of the Convergence, other than the opening.  Two reasons:  first, I thought it was a one day, Monday event and had scheduled my departure for Tuesday.  More to what I needed, I realized that it was focused on national and global organizing and especially around ecovillages and larger communities, and right now my focus is on local organizing and, of course, income-sharing communities, especially small new ones.

The opening was impressive.  The three organizers of this event all spoke, one at a time, beginning with Paxus Calta who said that he thought this first meeting would be historic and compared it to the First International, where anarchists debated socialists, and many streams of radical organizing followed.  He said that one of his lovers said that he was egotistical to believe that, but then he heard Daniel Greenberg compare it to the first moonshot.

Paxus

Daniel Greenberg was, as you can imagine from that introduction, very enthusiastic about this Convergence, talking about his work with the Global Ecovillage Network and the Foundation for Intentional Community, and how the next step is to strengthen the networks and build, not just nationally, but internationally.

Daniel

Sky Blue said that they were the skeptic of the group.  They certainly wanted the things that Paxus and Daniel wanted, but they weren’t sure that it was achievable at this event.  They said that they told Paxus and Daniel that but Paxus and Daniel asked them to come and lead anyway, feeling that it would be good to have a skeptic in the group.

Sky

What followed was indeed an intensive two day program. As far as I could see, before I left early Tuesday afternoon, there was a lot of work being done–and flipcharts full of notes everywhere.

One of the many flipcharts

In some ways, I’m sorry that I missed most of the Convergence, but at this point I think my energies are better off going into helping to create communities, and helping to create local and regional community networks.  It’s not that I don’t think that there is a need for national and global networks, it’s just that it’s not where my passion is. So instead, I took care of myself and I also helped out a bunch behind the scenes, especially around the food.  (We had the same overworked cook as we did for the Communities Conference.)

I asked Sky what they thought was accomplished at the Convergence, and this is what they wrote: “I’m happy with how it went. I’m also aware of how much more we could have done if we had funding. But it was wonderful to see people from so many different communities connecting and building relationships. That was enough. And I’m sure this was an important learning experience for people in this movement about this kind of organizing. Beyond that, it’s all about the follow up. We’ll see what happens. Yes, I’m skeptical, because we’ve been here before. But this was a better organized and more ambitious effort, and no matter what, we have to keep trying. Giving up isn’t an option.“