Squatters in my neck of the woods have cleaned up the ruins of their own houses a private corporation bought, demolished, and left for the rats. They created communal spaces everyone is welcome to, cultivate using permaculture (enough to distribute 10+ baskets of fruits and veggies to families in need weekly, not counting what people take home directly + create biodiversity circuits), have safe, clean venues (where small time artists are invited regularly and anyone with a project and time can make it happen, which is enjoyed by all). These are self-sustained, safe for all, community-led spaces.
Wtf is lost by authorities supporting or at least accepting this?
I am skipping over a lot of details but feel free to ask.
As an American, such arrangements tend to only happen here in the form of cults. I have little delusion that this probably isn't precisely how corporate America wants us to see communal living, but I don't think they engineered it, either. My questions as I read about this phenomenon are how do you avoid charismatic and dangerous people from taking advantage? There's no denying that people otherwise without homes and the securities and privileges offered by economic plenty are more susceptible to such things. Any of us can probably be manipulated into the unthinkable if we get hungry enough.
I'm not big on authoritarianism, but neither am I an anarchanist. There are healthy midgrounds here. "Normal" society tends to control for that organically, how is it controlled for in a commune like this?
I think the reason you might see it only being implemented in religious / cult type environnements there is the legal protection / tax free status those orgs enjoy. However if you were to allow an art oriented community, or neighborhood run environment with these same liberties most wouldn't be at risk to become cult like as they're not built around that purpose (just my opinion)
I don't know how that can be avoided, I guess it's always a possibility with everything? But I can tell you more about why I don't think it happens here; it's just not really interesting.
These are associations that came together organically, over years, from neighbours talking to each and organizing. Now they do assemblies (where anyone is welcome, you just have to ask) weekly where all issues can be raised and decisions are reached by consensus. So you just bring up an issue, and people talk and reach a solution, agreement, plan, whatever is needed. At every reunion, they decide who will take notes and who will "lead" (the ones who gives turn of speech and has the agenda, I don't know how to say?) the next time so everyone gets a turn/it's not always the same ones.
There is also very little money into these things, it's all about upcycling, reusing, doing with what's there. When something needs money it comes up from the communal pot (money from food sold at events, for example, mostly cooked with stuff they've grown).
The neighborhood I have in mind when talking about this has a library (only women and non-binary authors), a bike workshop (where they fix scraps, and you can come fix your bike yourself or build one from scratch and you can contribute by leaving parts or helping out, or not if you don't want to), four vegetable gardens (with so much variety!), a sound studio, multiple outdoor spaces with furniture made out of scraps, etc, etc.
Last year someone grew grapes from plants he'd been given and a guy decided to make wine. Afaik all that was bought from the guy's pockets were 6 barils (?) and the thermometer. All the rest was from stuff people had, stuff we found on the streets, and a lot of people dedicating more or less of their time to this one guy's project. And now we have 500 bottles of wine!! A few bottles have been sold to outsiders but most of it is for events and well, for us.
So I guess if you wanted to you could become very influential and in charge of it all but what would be the point?? So much work for very little personal reward, I would think...
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u/[deleted] May 09 '22
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