The Magnolia Collective is small but they have a great vision for their community.
Rachel from the Magnolia Collective wants to note “…that we are currently full/not actively seeking members at the moment, and that this is the grand vision we are working towards, but we definitely have a long ways to go.”
For more information about the Magnolia Collective, you can visit their website.
Earth Connection & Caretaking
Honoring those that lived on this land before us, learning from traditional ways this land was stewarded, and striving to support the healing of those displaced from and exploited on it. Some ways this may manifest: Learning more local history, collaborating with the Historical Society, and donating a portion of all proceeds from the land to the Monocan Nationand local BIPOC initiatives.
Offering opportunities for exploration, play, wonder, and connection with the natural world, as well as hands-on learning and joining in the labor of love of land care. Some ways this may manifest: Crafting, themed garden areas, natural/edible playgrounds, an Enchanted Forest festival, gardening and seed saving workshops, workparties and volunteer opportunities.
Caring for and co-creating with the land in a way that nourishes soil life and a thriving ecosystem. Recognizing, valuing, and designing for the needs of more than just the humans that reside here. Some ways this may manifest: Covercrops and mulching, crop rotation, seed saving, plantings for medicine and beneficial insects, composting, donating surplus, rechanneling local waste, rainwater catchment, mindfulness, and lots of mycelia!
Weaving Community United In Diversity
Creating an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming space and a range of offerings that bring together people from varied walks of life. Seeking common ground and cultivating respectful curiosity and openness towards our different beliefs, life experiences, needs and gifts. Some ways this may manifest: Access for individuals with special needs incorporated into the design of space and events as much as possible; sliding-scale donation based; building relationships with, and bridges between, the Louisa intentional communities and other neighbors and local organizations; intention settingaroundopenness to difference at the start of events, and encouraging opportunities for conversation and connection throughout; continuing our own process of recognizing and working on our biases and blind spots.
Spiritual Nourishment & Heart Connection
Coming together to contemplate and celebrate, stretch our boundaries, explore deeper questions of purpose, and support each other on our unique journeys. Some ways this may manifest: Interfaith Shabbat, study groups, sharing circles, song circles, ceremonies, sweats, meditative dance…
Seeding Creative Change
Sharing (and offering space for others to share) technologies and systems, skills, and resources that empower folk to move toward the change they want to see in the world. Some ways this may manifest: Tours, workshops, and online materialcentered around off-grid systems and land care; seed swaps and skill shares; redirecting surplus; networking and collaborating with other communities and organizations in the area.
Another week of Facebook postings. (I’m still in Virginia but no longer at Acorn.)
As usual, I am taking stuff off various communes’ Facebook sites and posting it on Commune Life. Here’s something that the Serenity Community for Justice and Peace posted that we reposted.
And, very unfortunately, this one didn’t do well, either. I’m sad because I think that it’s an important piece of news to give context to the county all these communities are forming in.
While I was still at Acorn, I was taken with these signs outside and inside the community dish room.
Th
This post did pretty well
I liked the comment from Zamin:
At East Wind, some daredevil communards did some work very high up in a tree.
This post did well enough.
Finally, I took this from a post by Southern Exposure. They have lots of good info for gardeners and farmers.
I’ve long believed that the only thing which stops us from a vegan revolution in the US is more dedication to cooking as well as training great cooks. Serenity Community for Peace And Justice is testing this proposition by hosting a Vegan Festival April 30th and May 1st. This event will serve vegan food, do workshops on compelling vegan cooking and examine the veganism through the lens of people of color. This event is BIPOC centric in both it’s organization team and it outreach and recruiting, white allies are most welcome and of course you need only be vegan curious to sample to food.
Twin Oaks has stepped up to help this festival in several big ways. First, the event will be hosted at the Twin Oaks Conference site, which has the necessary infrastructure to support this type of event. The second is over a dozen Oakers have already committed to all kinds of labor for supporting the Vegan Festival. Specifically, Twin Oaks has agreed to do social media promotion, site preparation, fundraising, workshop development, the child care program, vegan cooking, site breakdown and more. [This labor is being funded internally in the Twin Oaks labor economy by drawing to down movement support hours which are earmarked for racial justice work. This allows members to satisfy their labor obligations to the community while helping bring vegan cooking and BIPOC culture to the communes.]
I am honored to be an ally working on this event. I have a big birthday coming up, which is an arbitrary important number. I am hoping my friends and readers will donate to the fund which is providing travel assistance (via Facebook, via PayPal) to people of color who want to attend this event but it is financially inaccessible.
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.
This post and the next will be difficult to write (and probably read) because I intend to air as much of the dirty laundry of community living as I can think of. This can be seen as a follow up to my post called Lower Your Expectations. While I am all about communal living, I want to be honest here. I don’t want folks getting into communal living with illusions of how wonderful it’s going to be. Communes and communities are far from perfect—and sometimes very far from perfect.
In these two posts, I intend to point out all the nasty things that I know about communal living, all the things I (and many other folks) wish were different, where communities fall down and where they are making some headway on all this. I have to say that with everything that’s bad about communities, I still think that they are an improvement on mainstream life—and many of these problems are things that some communities are really trying to work on. So I will also report on improvement attempts and where I see successes.
In this first part I am going to focus on what we used to call, oppression issues or “isms”.
Let’s start with the most commonly commented on problem in communal life: racism. Yes, there is a lot of racism in the communities and it’s something that is being talked about and worked on. While there is definitely some overt racism in some of the communities, the more common problems have to do with what I would refer to as structural (or institutional) racism: things like microaggressions, cultural blindnesses, and, above all, communities that are structured to accommodate middle class white folks. This is racism that well meaning white folks practice, usually unintentionally. The result is that most communities are uncomfortable for many BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and the communities are left wondering why they are so white.
I do have to say that this is a problem that is actively being addressed by the communities movement. Right now, the Foundation for Intentional Communities is running trainings and panels actively talking about how to take on this issue. Unfortunately, you need to do more than simply take the training and thus movement on really dealing with racism is still very slow. My hope is that BIPOC led communities such as the Serenity Community for Justice and Peace will make a difference in changing this dynamic.
Similar to racism, but much less currently addressed, is classism. Most of the communes and communities are filled with middle class and upper middle class folks and this often makes it uncomfortable for people who grew up working class or poor. I think that an exception to this is the East Wind Community which has a lot of working class folks and more of a working class flavor to it. Unfortunately, instead of this being celebrated, East Wind often gets a bad reputation. This has been particularly true around racism—and there have been more incidents of overt racism there but, as several people I know have pointed out, most of the problems at East Wind are the same problems that have been found at all the communities and folks of color have had the same difficulties at Twin Oaks and Acorn, but because they aren’t as articulate, East Wind has often been singled out. Something that really bothered me at the 2018 FEC Assembly was watching upper middle class white folks lecturing East Winders on racism using jargon and academic terms. It felt quite condescending. Of course, the difficult intersections of race and class are rampant in the society at large and are not being dealt with well at all (look at Trump’s appeal to white working class folks), but I would need a whole piece to talk about this and it would take us far from communal living.
Going down the oppressions, I want to look at sexism and misogyny next. Here’s a place that I think the communes are doing quite a bit better. It’s not as if sexism has been banished or there’s no misogyny in the communities, but there seems to be a lot more freedom for women, a lot more respect for women, and a lot more female leadership in the communes than in mainstream society. In fact I know of several communities that are practically matriarchies—and Twin Oaks views itself as having a “feminist culture”. Again, there’s still quite a few pockets of sexism in the communes but I think that it’s being dealt with a lot better than in society at large. (Note: I am not talking about the awful problems of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault here. I will deal with these things later, in Part Two.)
On sexual orientation issues and homophobia, I also think that the communes are doing better than the mainstream world. Again, it’s not that you can’t run into homophobia in the communes; it’s just a lot less prevalent. I know at least one small commune that’s probably two thirds queer folks—and that’s not to mention the Tennessee queer communities. Twin Oaks also sponsors a Queer Gathering that is a lovely place for GLBTQ(etc) folks in community or wanting to be in community to gather.
Unfortunately, on trans and nonbinary issues, the communities don’t do quite as well. I think overall they are a lot safer and welcoming place than the mainstream, but there is still a lot more transphobia than I wish there was. Some of this is generational, with older lesbians and feminists being uncomfortable with transwomen declaring themselves women. Again, this is a difficulty being played out in the society at large and it seems somewhat less prevalent in the communes, but it’s far from being fully dealt with.
Finally, looking at the “isms”, comes ableism. This, too, is a place where the communes don’t do nearly enough. Most of the rural communes have few accessibility accommodations and are not particularly welcoming to the disabled. The one place that communes do provide accommodations is when someone who is already a member becomes disabled.
This brings me to something that is true of many situations within the communes and many other communities. Once you are there and have become an important part of the place, they will do whatever they can to help it work better for you, but they are not as willing to accommodate someone that they don’t already know. This applies to handicap accessibility, but also explains many racial issues and the problems the communes have with families (more on this in Part Two). It also explains why the communes do better on some gender and sexuality issues.
There have been women as part of most of the communes since the beginning. To the degree they were able to advocate for themselves (and, since a lot of the men were heterosexual, they didn’t want communities that would be all or mostly men), they got the changes that they wanted and needed. In fact, Twin Oaks made it policy to that they needed to have at least a 60:40 ratio between the genders (this was a time when folks only thought of two genders), so they actively recruited women and those women pushed for the leadership of women. Likewise, once there were a number of queer folks in a community, they worked to create an environment which would be welcoming to LGBTQ folks. I am convinced that the only way racial issues can really be dealt with in the communities is when there is a significant BIPOC presence. Twin Oaks did talk about trying to become as much as 40% folks of color, but that hasn’t gone anywhere. As I said, I think that the Serenity Community, as BIPOC led and majority BIPOC, has a better chance of making a difference.
In the next part (next week) I will look at a bunch of other problems in the communes. Again, with all their problems, I think that they’re better than mainstream living. But they’re sure not perfect.
The Serenity Community for Justice and Peace is one of the newest, most ambitious, and, I think, most exciting of the Louisa communities. (I’ve written about them in terms of the Louisa Community Cluster and Paxus has written about them as being “the Right Allies”.)
Last week, I posted on Facebook pictures from a potluck they had last summer (which I got from their Facebook page).
As you can see, it reached 174 people. More importantly, fourteen people liked or loved it and it had 65 engagements. I’m happy with this because I would like them to be better known. As I said in my summary of them on the Louisa Community Cluster post, I am hoping to become more involved with them. I think that they are a very important resource in the communities movement. Here’s the rest of the pictures from the potluck:
Today, on Facebook, I am posting another Serenity picture from their Facebook page, with the caption: “Here’s part of the team creating the Serenity Community for Justice and Peace. I love Paxus’ comment–I think they truly are heroes.”
Someone joining a commune for the first time will quickly notice that income sharing communities have a somewhat different culture than mainstream society (which some people in the communes refer to as “Babylon”). The differences are both more obvious and more subtle than you might expect.
One way that the differences are more subtle is that almost everything that we will explore and that stands out from mainstream society are beliefs and behavior that are only held by a minority of folks (although often a significant minority) in the communes and almost all of it can be found in mainstream society if you look hard enough.
There is a lot of variety in the beliefs and behavior of the people living in the communes. About the only thing that most folks have in common is a strong belief in sharing stuff. (After all, that’s what income sharing communities are all about.) However, there is also a very strong cultural norm of tolerance and even acceptance of these unusual beliefs and behaviors. What makes it communal culture is not that the majority of folks in the communes believe or practice any of the following and, as I said, it’s not that you can’t find these things out in the mainstream, it’s that you won’t find the tolerance and acceptance of this stuff out in “Babylon” (this term is controversial in the communities) that you will in the communes.
Let me start with sexuality and gender.
I think that the majority of folks, in at least the bigger communes, are often heterosexual, cisgendered, and monogamous, as they are in the mainstream world. And every variation that you can find in the communes, I’m sure that you can find in the mainstream. But queer folks (gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, just plain queer, etc) and gender variant folks (trans men and women, nonbinary folks, genderfluid, etc) as well as polyamorous people are much more visible and accepted in the communes. You will learn quickly at the communes to pay attention to people’s pronouns and you will see a variety of relationships if you pay any attention at all. Differences are celebrated in community rather than put up with or sometimes actively disparaged as they often are outside the communes. What is discouraged in the communes is any sort of slighting or elevation of one type over another.
Spirituality is in some ways very similar. Probably the majority of folks in the communes identify as Christian, Jewish, or atheist/agnostic/skeptic/humanist as do most folks in the mainstream, although I suspect that there are less Christians and more atheist (etc) folks in the communes, and most of the Christians are probably from more tolerant denominations, like Quakers, Unitarians, UCC folks, and nondenominational, than the mainstream. You will find very few fundamentalist folks in the communes–mostly because they are less accepting of differences. Likewise, the Jews in the communes are often from what I call the three Rs (Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal) or secular Jews. It would probably be difficult to maintain an Orthodox Jewish identity in the communes.
But beyond this there is a great variety of other beliefs including Pagan/Witch (popular in some of the communes), Buddhist, Taoist, Animist, Sufi, some types of Hinduism/Yogic practice, and general New Age. Again, this isn’t the majority of folks in the larger communes, but it is generally accepted. For example, Pagan rituals are often held on seasonal occasions and anyone who wants to can attend. The community doesn’t sponsor these rituals (the communes are very clear that they don’t take any stand of individuals beliefs, except to support the tolerance and diversity of them) but they are open to them happening.
One thing that will become obvious to anyone who spends a good deal of time at any of the communes is that nudity is more acceptable at the communes than in mainstream society. Not that any of the communes are anything like a nudist colony. Most of the time folks are clothed in at least the amount that mainstream culture approves of (although some of the outfits are more unusual than you would normally see outside of the communes) but there are also occasions when folks are naked and this is generally accepted–for example, hot tubs and saunas. Swimming in private places in the communes is almost always clothing optional. (I heard someone talking about people using the term ‘skinny dipping’ and said, “At the commune, we just call it swimming.”) At East Wind they have a recently built group shower that is used by various groupings and Twin Oaks has a ‘nudity policy’ that is four pages, single spaced, outlining where you can be naked (and when) and where you must be clothed, as well as where you can be topless–and any place that a man can walk around shirtless, a woman can walk around shirtless, and anywhere a woman is required to wear a shirt, men should also wear shirts. (This is part of being an egalitarian community.) And, again, there are many people in the communes that you will never see naked and that may even avoid areas where they know that nudity may occur.
And finally, there is a great variety of political views at the communes. I would say that here the communes are in fact, a bit different overall than in “Babylon”, in that the communes definitely shade to the left. That isn’t to say that there aren’t any centrists or even the occasional libertarian, but there are lots of liberals and progressives, as well as socialists, anarchists, communists, ecofeminists, and a large number of apolitical people. What you won’t find in the communes are almost any right wing folks and few conservatives. What the communes are intolerant of is intolerance. Bigots are not welcome in the communes.
And that is the single biggest thing that creates communal culture. We like our diversity of expression and even the most mainstream looking folks in the communes will defend it.
It’s Martin Luther King day in the US and I don’t want this to be lost amidst the pandemic, the storming of the Capitol, the inauguration, etc. Racial injustice is still a major problem in the US (and world) and most communities (especially the communes) are overwhelmingly white.
The Foundation for Intentional Communities decided that something needed to be done about it and this past summer decided to put money into creating change. In November they sent out this email:
None of these links work because these are photocopies of the letter, but if you are interested in exploring this more, here is a link that does work and you can find out more info and ways to donate.
If you believe that communal living has something to offer the world (as I do) then here is a way to make it more accessible to the people who are usually left out of the process.
There have also been several attempts to support the creation of income-sharing communities led by folks of color, but as of the moment, I don’t know that any of these has actually started. It’s very hard to start communes in general and when there’s folks from a less privileged group trying to start it, it seems nearly impossible. Still, I want to credit the FIC for forming a fund to at least remove some of the financial barriers, both to starting communities and to joining communities. I truly hope that this results in more alternatives opening up in the communities movement for Black and Indigenous folks and other People of Color.
Welcome to 2021! The year 2020 is officially over. One of my commune mates pointed out that nothing really changes as the calendar year rolls over, but there’s a lot of symbolism, especially this past year when so many (mostly not good things) happened all at once.
I will try to focus on commune related things in listing my hopes, but the coronavirus has had a major impact on the communes, and will need to be dealt with. My first and biggest hope for this year is that, with folks getting vaccinated, we may be able to move somewhat beyond having to deal with the repercussions of the pandemic. In terms of this happening, I’ve heard everything from late spring, to the summer, to sometime in the fall. This will mean a lot for the communes.
The only good thing out of all this is that I think that the pandemic has increased interest in communal living. It’s also made it hard to join communities. So when some of the pandemic restrictions are lifted, I am very hopeful that many of the communes, which are at low populations now, will be able to bring in some good folks and increase their membership.
I also hope that this encourages some folks to decide to actually create communities. There’s certainly enough interest in it–maybe with restrictions being lifted, some folks will decide to just do it. I know that I am often discouraging of people simply starting communities, but if someone is really willing to begin the work (and a lot of this work is outlined on the blog) and reaches out and knows others who are also interested–and especially if they have some communal living experience, goodness knows we need more communes. And I believe that if 90% of new communes fail, and we want to get at least ten new communes up and running, we’re going to need to start a hundred communes to get there, so I am actually in favor of folks starting communes, particularly if they are willing to do the research and networking they will need to do.
A big, pandemic related, hope for this year is that if the restrictions can be eased on time, there can be the usual August gatherings at Twin Oaks this summer. I have never been to the Queer Gathering and I was planning to go last year but TO canceled all three gatherings. My hope for this summer is that the Queer Gathering and the Women’s Gathering and the Communities Conference can all happen again. I mentioned networking earlier and these are all great networking events. If they happen (I hope, I hope, I hope they do) I would strongly encourage anyone interested in communal living to attend at least the Communities Conference, and if you identify as queer, the Queer Gathering, and if you identify as a woman, the Women’s Gathering.
Another hope for this year is that the communes continue to look at and figure out how to embrace racial justice, whether that’s by figuring out how to become more diverse or by figuring out how to support communities of color. For horrible reasons, there was a large upswelling of interest in this over the course of 2020. My hope is that this wasn’t another political phase but the beginning of some sustained work in all of our communities.
And my final hope for this new year is that folks find fun in all of this. A lot of 2020 was grim and we have a lot of work to do, building back community membership, creating new communities, and continuing to work on racism (and classism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and creating access for people with disabilities and…) and that we find a way to be joyful and even playful in all this because we will never attract anyone if we are all too damn serious.
Crystal Bird Farmer has not actually “lived in community” but she serves as a board member for the Foundation for Intentional Community and an Editorial Review Board member for Communities Magazine. She begins her book, The Token, with a story about visiting Twin Oaks and attending the Communities Conference. She then announces that she’s your “new Black friend”. She’s here because you claim that you want diversity–and this book is all about how to actually work for diversity.
The program she recommends is divided into three parts: first, preparing your community; second, doing The Work; and third, creating culture conscious spaces. The Work (those are her capitals) is anti-racism/anti-oppression work, which is not easy work. The first step is preparation and that includes figuring who the team is that is going to lead this work and figuring out how to deal with the resistance that will inevitably come up.The Work includes looking at identity and privilege, implicit bias, microaggressions, and majority culture and there are mini ‘workbooks’ at the end of each section devoted to one of these topics that give the format for a group discussion on the topic. The book then focuses on “creating culture conscious meetings” in ways that make them feel more inclusive. Crystal Bird Farmer ends the book by exploring what she calls “limits to inclusion”–creating separate space when needed and “how not to recruit leaders”. There is a very useful section on “tools and resources” that includes many powerful books on racism and anti-racist work for those who want to go deeper.
By now, you may be thinking that this is probably a very thick book and wondering where you will get the time to read all this. Well, I have some good news for you–this is a very short book (86 pages, 96 if you include the resources and index) and is a very easy read. Crystal Bird Farmer writes in a friendly and engaging style. This is a book that needs to be read by anyone who wants to figure out how to make their community more diverse and more inclusive and a great introduction to dealing with all the baggage that makes it impossible to achieve inclusion and diversity. I would highly recommend it–and you can buy it directly from the author. I love that she also suggests that you can get it from a local bookstore and does not mention a large internet book (and everything else) seller. I hope that it becomes widely read and makes a difference in our communities.
commune life 