Communes in the Age of Trump

by Raven

I imagine that most Commune Life readers are not happy with the election of our former president.  (If you are, I wonder what you expect.)

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Trump has been elected. In January of 2017, the Atlantic magazine published an article entitled “Seeking an Escape from Trump’s America”.  It featured a bunch of folks who talked about joining or being in an intentional community as a way of being protected from the chaos of the new administration.  One of the communities profiled was Living Energy Farm.

Picture from the Atlantic article

When Trump was elected in 2016 I was living in the Ganas community in New York City.  It’s not an income-sharing community per se (although the core group shares not only income, but assets) and it is not an egalitarian community (and they will tell you that) but it could be a very caring community and the morning after the election (when few folks had expected Trump and the Republican party to be swept into office) we had a regularly scheduled planning meeting.  We threw out the agenda and we were just there for each other.  I wondered how people outside of community were able to deal with this.  I was so glad to be a part of a community where we could support each other when something like this happened.

This time around I’m living in a very small income sharing community and, honestly, we have barely talked about the election.  Of course it wasn’t the surprise that his first election was.  But the community that I’m in focuses on interdependence and mutual aid, and I think that those are some of the most important things that we will need during the trying times ahead.

Community, as I pointed out above, means you don’t have to be alone with the trying times ahead.  Communities like Living Energy Farm (and ecovillages like Dancing Rabbit and Earthaven, not income-sharing but committed to ecological living) are developing the tools that we will need to live in the age of climate change, even as the Trump administration will probably slash most of the “Clean Energy” development funds.  Small communities like the Possibility Alliance, the Baltimore Free Farm, and Cambia are showing that living simply is not just possible but can be fun.  As MAGA Republicans attack immigrants, queer folks, trans folks, and folks of color, communities such as Serenity Solidarity and  the Tennessee queer communities offer places of refuge for those affected.  And larger communities, such as Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn are often looking for members.  The Foundation for Intentional Communities maintains a directory of intentional communities of all kinds.

Beyond the general benefits of community living, income-sharing in particular offers collective shelter from the economic winds ahead. In income-sharing communities, we are not only there for each other emotionally but provide a financial buffer for many folks who would otherwise be struggling.  

Perhaps people will begin to realize the need for community as the chaos spreads in 2025.  Maybe interest in communities and communes will rise. Hopefully we will be able to rise to the occasion and take folks in and create many more communities of all kinds to meet people’s needs.

I think communities and communes are very important anyway, for a number of reasons, but I think that they are especially important now.

Tree Hugger, River Ride, Ex-Prisoner, Piggies, and Networking

by Raven

This was a week on Facebook, toward the end of September, where we did very well over all, and posted (and reposted) a lot of interesting stuff, although I think one of the most interesting things didn’t do very well at all.

East Wind posted pictures of a member who really likes trees.

This post did okay, with four likes, a love, and a hundred and five views.

Twin Oaks had a guest that decided to make a video of his canoe ride down the river that flows through the community.

If you want to go along for the ride, the video is on YouTube.

I guess some folks did want to go since this post got five likes, three loves, a comment, and a hundred and forty-three views.

Ericka is an activist who I admire very much and really cares about people. I posted this from the Serenity Solidarity website.

I was very touched by this but apparently not very many people were. This post did the worst of the week, with one ‘care’ and only fifty-four views.

East Wind, like a lot of rural communities, raises animals. Here they are showing off their little piggies.

Lots of other folks must have thought they were cute as well because this post got four likes, four loves, a comment, and a hundred and thirty-four views.

Finally, I’ve learned that if I want to pull in viewers, there’s nothing like a good, perhaps controversial question. Here’s what I asked this time.

And, yes, folks had thoughts. Here’s the comments we got.

And, yes, it certainly brought in folks. It got fifteen likes, one love, seven comments (above), and two hundred and twenty-three views. As I said, a good question.

C-ville Article, Prison Abolition, and Watermelons

by Raven

We are now into early September articles on Facebook.

And we start off with yet another article about the Twin Oaks fire–but this one is from a local newspaper.

This did fairly well on Facebook, with six likes, a ‘care’, a ‘sad’, one share, and a hundred and sixty-seven views.

Serenity Solidarity posted about an “anti-prison” event.

This, unfortunately, did not do very well, with no likes (etc) and only sixty-seven views.

Finally, East Wind posted about their watermelons.

This post also did well, with thirteen likes, six loves, and a hundred and eighty-six views.

Scrappy Little Communities

by Raven

I said in my last blog post that I was planning to expand what we cover on Commune Life–just a little bit.  One of the places I want to explore is little communities that often have a big mission.

For example, while Twin Oaks and Acorn in Virginia get lots of coverage here, there are a whole bunch of little communities in Louisa County that are doing interesting things: Living Energy Farm, Cambia, Little Flower, the Magnolia Collective, etc.  Some of them are doing income sharing, some of them are doing variants of income sharing, and some of them aren’t income sharing at all but seem to be doing some worthwhile stuff.  And who’s income sharing and who’s not seems to change at times so it’s hard for me, many miles away, to know.  And there are still new communities popping up there.  I hope to have a piece about Bramble (perhaps the newest community in the county) in the not so distant future.

Another example is the Baltimore Free Farm.  They started off squatting and then created a housing unit which they originally called Horizontal Housing but have renamed it Green Eggs in Hampden.  I’m trying to find out what they are up to these days.

Meanwhile, up here in New England, I’m living in a very small income sharing community in western Massachusetts.  The reason that I haven’t written about it is that they don’t want publicity.  But I think what they are doing is very interesting.  The place has a focus on interdependence and mutual aid and I have learned a lot more about those things by living here.

I’m excited by all the things going on in the area around me. I’m finding small communities of all kinds around here–political collectives, farm focused communities, a co-op house built around New Culture–and I’ve been hearing about a bunch of anarchist collectives emerging in Worcester, an old city between here and Boston.

And now, Serenity Solidarity is not far from here, having moved from Louisa County to a place near Albany, NY. At the moment there is only one family there, but they are determined to make it a refuge for many people–especially for BIPOC folks, who have often had trouble fitting in communities created by white folks and based on white culture.

Ericka of Serenity Solidarity and Ethan of the Possibility Alliance (holding baby Kiwi)

Also, the Possibility Alliance, mostly Ethan and Sarah and children, is in New England now, having moved to Maine from Missouri some years back and they are attracting folks and working with indigenous tribes around there. They are the most low tech and yet very progressive group I know.

I’m currently exploring some stuff up in Vermont, including Earthseed Ecovillage which has a lot of land, a few people, and some very big ambitions.  I am in dialogue with them, hoping they will write a bit about what they are doing.  I’m also working with some folks in that area to create a small community to work on emotional and relational intelligence.  Maybe something will emerge from this that I can write about.

And I keep hearing about interesting communal projects.  One of the ones that I think is most intriguing is a new squat (an illegal home) created in a major city by some former communards that is trying to house immigrants and former prisoners that have nowhere to go.  I doubt that they would want publicity either, but it certainly sounds creative.

And while most of what I’m talking about is on the east coast of the US, I know there are a lot of little projects happening around this nation and around the world. It’s an exciting, if scary, time.

Unfortunately, most of these small communities are ephemeral.  It’s hard starting a community and even harder when you are doing something experimental and you don’t have very many people.  In my eight and a half years managing Commune Life, I have watched what seems like dozens of communities come and go.

Still, big communities like Twin Oaks and East Wind, etc, started off small.  It’s hard to tell what is going to work and what isn’t and it’s worth learning from the stuff that didn’t work.  I do want to report on some of these communities because I think they have a lot to offer and a lot to learn from.  I admire the ambitions of these scrappy little communities.

Serenity Solidarity Work Party, Part Three

A bunch of us went out to help Serenity Solidarity with work needed on their new place and, while a bunch of work needed to be done on the beams and kitchen indoors, some of us also helped with outside work, including spreading gravel on the driveway so tires wouldn’t get stuck in the mud. The first picture is of the house and the drive, the second is of Erin and Jess shoveling out the gravel, and the third is of an area that was patched with the gravel. There was also a small pond that needed work and a hoop house that had gotten overgrown (before and after). Finally, there’s a picture of Ethan from the Possibility Alliance in Maine with Ericka from Serenity Solidarity and baby Kiwi.

Serenity Solidarity Work Party, Part Two

by Raven

Last week I posted about the lovely work party we had at Serenity Solidarity, with folks coming from nearby (Albany, NY, region) as well as from places across New England (especially western Massachusetts and Maine). I put pictures of one of the projects working on their new house, replacing a structural beam. The other big house project was tearing out the kitchen floor, in preparation for putting down a new one. (This made cooking meals challenging, to say the least.)

In picture four, you can see Ethan and Eve trying to figure out how to remove a bench built into the wall. (Also seen in picture one.) Picture five is of the area after they successfully removed it. The final picture is of Dan, Serenity Solidarity member, Ericka’s husband, father to the kids, and the project manager for both the beam replacement work and the kitchen floor endeavor. I think of him as the major behind the scenes figure of Serenity Solidarity.

In next week’s final post, I’ll have pictures from some of the outdoor projects going on at the same time.

Serenity Solidarity Work Party, Part One

by Raven

In early August, I joined a delightful crew of folks to help with a bunch of the work that was needed to fix up Serenity Solidarity’s new home. There were a lot of projects that were needed to be done, including replacing a major support beam in the living room that had rotted and replacing the kitchen floor–plus a bunch of outdoor projects. I took lots of pictures. Here’s a bunch from the beam replacement work–the trickiest of the projects. Note in the second picture, they used a car jack to hoist one of the supports into position. The last three pictures show the completed beam.

Serenity Solidarity’s New Home

by Raven

After a couple of years searching around in Virginia, the folks creating Serenity Solidarity purchased land near Albany, New York. Here’s some pictures from it, including a couple of pictures of the house, a small pond in back, a hoophouse, two views of an old barn, a little shack, two views of the Posten Kill–a creek that runs on the edge of the property, and an amazing waterfall a three minute drive from the house (not on their property) with Ericka and Mason from Serenity Solidarity and yours truly in front of it.

September, 2024

And… We’re back.

If you are reading this on September first, we are probably at the Twin Oaks Communities Conference.  Hopefully, we will soon bring stuff here from the Conference as well as from the brand new Convergence of Intentional Communities that’s happening tomorrow.

Something else that happened in August was that I (Raven) attended a work party at the brand new home of Serenity Solidarity, and we will have photos from the new place as well as another photo essay on the work party.  Plus, I’m hoping to have an interview with Ericka from Serenity Solidarity here soon as well.  And, of course, lots of info from the other communes (Twin Oaks, Acorn, East Wind, Living Energy Farm, and more) as well as the usual think pieces and videos and more photo essays and maybe even another puzzle.  Who knows?

For all of you who read this regularly, thank you for being a faithful reader.  And if you are new to Commune Life (or even relatively new), welcome!  We try to be the best source of information and fun facts and pictures about income sharing communities (ie, communes) as well as communal living and radical sharing.

Onward into September…

August, 2024

by Raven

I operate Commune Life on an unusual schedule.  I post consistently on the blog three times a week and on Facebook everyday for ten months of the year–and I take two different months off.  I take December off to visit friends and family and to celebrate the winter holidays, and I take the month of August off, usually to travel.  This year I’m hoping to go several places in August; first to visit the new home of Serenity Solidarity, and then attend, as usual, the Twin Oaks Communities Conference, which this year will be followed by a new event, the first ever Convergence of Intentional Communities (CIC).  I hope to have reports on all of this when Commune Life returns in the fall.  See you in September, folks.