POLITICS OF COMMUNITY –

Challenges of COOPERTING TOGETHER

in Democratic groups of Respecting Equality,

Agreements & Sharing space & tasks

In the American climate culture of, war economy, hi tech & competition voluntary cooperating together is rare & wonderful trusting each other deeper to relax, open up, sharing to agree & create working on sharing projects for common good. Sounds good, so why are freely cooperating groups & bonding so rare in our families, schools, culture & economy? The dominate hierarchies of church, state & big science industry replaced natural cooperating in groups centuries ago. So most Americans don’t know what natural peaceful cooperation is in small groups or communities. Unless we do voluntary democratic community meetings & projects: gardening, recycling, eco-programs, co-op parenting, child-care, farmers market, etc. However Permaculture from 1980 include local free-trade doing bartering & sharing skills, needs & resources, like family farms have done for centuries,

I believe from 35 years of learning & cooper-ating in natural hippy culture & homes that real honest politics in cooperative, demo-cratic, natural & respectful, fair & loving. Like ‘NVC’ uses, promoting “Compassionate communication” pioneered by Marshal Rosenberg. Also Gestalt & marathon encounter groups, Moreno’s role-playing; Social equality & Cooperative parenting by Dreikurs in US, a disciple of neo-Freudian Alfred Adler ‘public family counseling’ genius. Dreikur’s began that program with Ray Lowe Phd in Eugene U,O in 1958. going for 30 years, a college course free to public, mostly parents needing help with cooperate in parenting.

In late ‘60s US many Women’s Lib ‘consciousness raising’ groups voluntarily sprouted from great need for social equality. They were meeting in circles, opening sharing & cooperating to release fears of deep feelings, abuse, beliefs & needs together. That’s similar to Chairman Mao’s open sharing of women “Speaking Bitterness” in groups in communist China. They helped them to feel admit, learn, trust & release the generations of trama suffered under male domination in traditions & UK imperialism. Democratic communes & meeting were essential to reorganizing China in cooperative communes. In the land , low tech & farming revolutions, after the capitalists fled to Taiwan.

I grew up in new cute suburb with squeaky clean parents hooding on sugar, over cooked everything: bread, pasta, pastry, meat, diary & veggies, making me sick many times, getting shot up with drugs to fix the now obvious hangover effects of indoorism, competitive everything in illusions of classy success. So I peaked & crashed teaching public school 2 years making me tense, fat & sick, & needing reorientation with deep awareness. So I began slowly & passionately searching for natural truth, peace, cooperation, love, spirit & meditating while married with 2 boys. In late ‘60s I attended several sensitivity training, Gestalt encounter groups, psychodrama & role-play-ing workshops ‘68-70, beginning to learn what real feelings, beliefs & fears are stuck in my/out subconscious. Still pop psychology misses real deep problem without cooperating, healing emotions of past-trama & trust-building together for total honesty to blossom.

I’ve lived in a dozen cooperative hippy families after getting MS degree in Dreikurs Family Counseling of Cooperative Parenting U.Ore. ‘71. Then I became a hippy seeking co-op groups of natural orientation since ’73, when 5 of us joined together forming a communal (Universing center) family lasted almost 3 years with deep spiritual, wholistic heath & healing commitment. We met 100s of newage hippies, not stoners, into natural everything & clearing up our fears of deep emotion, real strangers & raw nature, triggered by living so open & close. I’ve done 100s of Cooperative & Creative Parenting counseling sessions free groups, workshops & playshops at gathering for parents seeking more peaceful ways at home & with kids. I also lived with several hippy families with kids we cooperated in raising them up sharing feelings, toys, food, bed, clothes, etc; by making agreements on what’s fair, honest & democratic decisions we make openly respecting each ones needs & desires here now, to solve & prevent conflicts.

We had many agreements about being honest, digging into & expressing our fears, needs, beliefs, feelings & discoveries. Our 20ish hippy women guided many emotional clearing sessions. A many visitors f& few joiners in our Eugene, Portland & SF bay area colorful & intense spontaneous healing hippy homes. In early 70’s devoted hippy communes were rarely diving into varied meditation, cooperative parenting, Hatha yoga, psychedelics, poly-mating with radical therapy. We studied Bucky Fuller’s natural geodesic geometry, making lots of dome models, toys & structures. We loved practicing & promoting: recycling, bicycling, free storing, vegetarian, & co-op gatherings were very inspiring to 1000s of us west coast truth seekers attending the many gatherings we helped organize, lead groups & clean up cooperatively. Now more cooperating happens between children play-ing, doing social gatherings & political action on many fronts.

An ongoing common trend in our families & communities are social conflicts between members, students, peers & abuse of all kinds. So how can we cooperate to solve our emotional, political, property, school, sexual & family conflict problems? We don’ know how to solve 99% of our conflicts, so we have massive culture wars between ‘interest’ groups we call normal protests. conflicts, abuses & court-cases of law suits over money. Even damages are battled in courts negotiating over costs of liability, But emotions are missed. causing more PTSD in people with hangovers from past trama, denied by most authorities & abusers.

Giving the millions of social conflicts in US, few are communicating, agreeing & cooperating to prevent or solve them, before abuse, run-away, crime & police are called or people take drugs to avoid fighting or feeling past trama. There’s very few ‘cooperative parent-ing’ & democratic family meetings, teachers, counselors, books or groups in US now. Even mediation to solve conflicts is rare. They both happen more over divorce cases between parents to cooperate on shared custody then any other conflicts. How many US communities have local free or cheap mediating & cooperating groups to preventing or solving conflicts in normal social groups & families?

Hippy communes have less overt conflicts, if they cooperate together, but most of US members have normal PTSD from growing up in families with conflicts, abuse, neglect, divorce & drugs. That really begins with womb & birth trama, then broken maternal bonding, causes needy separation anxiety lifelong, unless its healed in variety of ways, by releasing fears of rejection, hate of author-ity, shyness, depression & hyperactivity. etc. Most of us forget the sources of our emotional & relationship problems within families, unless we meditate, get hypnotic regress back there or other soul returning or Rebirthing therapies. Then we can really open, trust others, share honestly & cooperate being responsible for our agreements, feedback & changing as needed. Our social expectations are rooted in childhood with parents relation-ships with each other we model for or against, the typical rebel hippy, punk, angry young man, etc.

About our community members working together on common causes we feel the same & agree on problems to solve, needs & goals, how to cooperate in a democratic meeting process deciding on tactics, timing & whose doing what. However reaching agreements needed for coherent meetings, clear focus & researching information, acting together & getting agreed on publicity take lots of skill & commitment to the campaign. Even with local networking, phone trees, meetings, protesting, law suits, demonstrations, gorilla theater & celebrations. In Eugene we are working on 100 different climate change & greening up our communities in dozens of natural ways with voluntary actions. But most big business plunges ahead in dreams of progress, growing progress & expanding. Even tho the multi crisis are growing threatening their security. But us greenies & Permies are ever more committed to cooperating & naturally & localizing life, reversing our hyper-dependency on importing everything from foreign sources.

Our challenge is to expose the corruptions of big business & governments waste, pollution & old boys clubs of tragic stupidity. We are learning how to green up our yards, business & schools gradually as parents, workers & volunteers gather to meet & decide priorities of essential needs we agree on & actions & education needed to fill our goals. These are some of dimensions of community politics I work with & help out when we agree on directions to benefit, help & naturalize our homes, space & daily needs doing more with less.