A Break and Some Background

I am taking a people break.  I am in a motel in Rolla, MO, about 2 hours drive from my next egalitarian destination.  I stayed at Terra Nova last might, and had a wonderful conversation, but now need some time to process all of this and have some down time.  Particularly since I will be having riders with me to Virginia and will be staying in a dorm when I get there.  Even though I am studying community, I value my alone time.  I may not get any time until I get to Charlotte.

Skyhouse was beautiful.  It is a two story, six bedroom house made of timber and straw bales.  I loved the curved lines inside with little nooks formed from the clay plaster.  They are still doing some work on it, but I think that the bucket and sawdust toilet are there to stay.

I suppose I should give some background on some of these communities.  I wanted to go to the Communities Conference at Twin Oaks, not just because it was in Louisa, VA.  I also wanted to explore how people live in an egalitarian community.  Before I get to that, let me talk a bit about the Federation of Intentional Communities, which is a broad umbrella that the FEC (not the Federal Election Commission) works under.  Intentional Communities are, well, intentional.  People make a decision to form a household, a village, a cohousing or other planned living arrangement.  As opposed to an unplanned community, which much of urban and suburban housing are, as well as many families.  There are over 1700 of these intentional communities listed in the FIC directory, over 100 in Washington State.

http://fic.ic.org/

But my focus is on egalitarian communities, so I contacted the ones on the FEC site that were on my way to Virginia.

http://thefec.org/taxonomy/term/3

All the ones I found on the way are in Missouri.  Cheap land and no rural zoning.

So, what is an egalitarian community?  Here is what is on the website:

Principles of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities

Each of the FEC communities:

• Holds its land, labor, income
and other resources in common.
• Assumes responsibility for the needs of its members, receiving
the products of their labor and distributing these and all other
goods equally, or according to need.
• Practices non-violence.
• Uses a form of decision making in which members have an equal
opportunity to participate, either through consensus, direct vote,
or right of appeal or overrule.
• Actively works to establish the equality of all people and
does not permit discrimination on the basis of race, class, creed,
ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.
• Acts to conserve natural resources for present and future
generations while striving to continually improve ecological
awareness and practice.
• Creates processes for group communication and participation
and provides an environment which supports people's development.

I found it interesting that no one has used the term ‘commune’ for any of these communities.  Tony, at Skyhouse, talked to me about the living arrangements in their income-sharing community.  Any income you earn while there is put into the common treasury.  You can keep assets you had before, but can’t use any of them.  For example, if you wanted to buy a zippy new bike and had the money for it, the house would not let you buy it.  What they would do is to buy the bike, so that everyone would have access to that.  At first, you might think “Well, that’s MY bike,” but that is the beauty of this type of community.  There doesn’t need to be 6 bikes or 6 stereos or 6 mixers.  It cuts down on each person’s outlay by sharing these resources.  And that is just the beginning of the benefits to this kind of life.  More later…