When designing the Communities Conference each year, we try to bring together content that is exciting for people who want to join or start an intentional community as well as for those already living in community. We generally try to avoid having workshops on “groovy” current topics not especially connected to communal living. This year, however, we are breaking this rule.
The reason we normally don’t want workshops on Permaculture, DIY renewable energy systems or polyamory is that there are lots of other conferences and gatherings which are covering these topics. We want to be spending the precious time we have at the Conference focusing on things which are especially applicable to people seeking or in communities. The reason we are breaking our own rule is that the world is changing in an important way and we want to be part of this change. The change is called Occupy.
What started as a encampment-based protest movement last Fall in NYC has morphed and grown into a worldwide, leaderless movement which is demanding fairness on virtually every issue under the sun: from tuition, to housing, to banking, to immigration.
The organizers of this year’s conference felt that we needed to examine how our event could ally with the Occupy movement. What lessons from community life translate well into support of this global call for justice? Could saying “no” to the system translate into cooperative behavior such as car sharing and worker-owned businesses, if not communal living? How can we show up in this change that we wish to see as well as help our friends in the streets? We hope to explore these sorts of questions this year at the Communities Conference.
Register now to be part of the conversation!
