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I just sent the following message to MAHVI the moderator:
Hi! I am writing an article in which I am using Dignity Village as an example for some points I am making, but I want to make sure that the statements I make in the article about Dignity Village are correct. The DV homepage is down, the myspace page doesn't show any sign of activity since Aug 2007, and the contact info on the myspace page doesn't work either .... these are not good signs. Hm. But anyway, I thought you or someone you know could check on what I wrote. I could send either the entire draft or just the section that talks about Dignity Village, depending on how much reading time you have at the computer. Thanks.
In solidarity,
Gayle
PS Although I am a Portlander, a good part of the last few years have been spent in the jungles of Ecuador, so that is why I may have missed some significant Dignity Village news.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But after sending the message, I decided to post the section of the draft that talks about Dignity Village here on this tribe, so that others could read and comment. I may have written about DV a little too idealistically; I based what I wrote about on what I had read on the DV web page some time ago, but I know that creating a community, especially of wounded people, is not easy and I am sure there were many internal problems. Nevertheless, I think that what I wrote is valid in principle. But I would like to make sure that it doesn't sound too wacky/idealistic, and also doesn't distort the history of the relations between DV and the City of Portland.
[section of article follows:]
.... Here in Portland, known as one of the most liberal and sustainable-minded cities in the US, if not the world, there is a community called Dignity Village. It started out as a tent city of homeless people who banded together to form a community of mutual sharing, protection and support. They organized as a community, kept the place clean as best they could, and banned alcohol and drugs in the tent city and helped to protect each other from the dangers homeless people are subjected to, etc. The community kept being forced to move from place to place as residents all over the city did not want a homeless tent city by them. They proposed to the city that the city lease them some property in exchange for volunteer labor by the community members helping maintain the city. The city rejected this proposal. Finally, the city allowed them to move to an old parking lot out by the airport, in an effort to put them as far out of site in as yucky a site as possible, noisy and asphalted and full of fumes. Nevertheless, the community organized, cleaned up the site, started planting gardens and building a true community, and then started writing grants to foundations to help them to create a real ecological community, with cob houses (a small cob house or strawbale house can be built for a few hundred dollars if you have volunteer labor, and of course everyone was available to labor for everyone else), water catchment systems, bicycle generators so that people could generate their own power by their own labor together; fruit and nut trees and permacultured gardens -- basically looking to create a true community, self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-regulating, working on mutual support, mutual protection, mutual help, and offering volunteer labor to the city as rent for using this land.
The city of Portland, this famously liberal and sustainable city, has been unrelentingly hostile to Dignity Village and has refused to allow this kind of community to be built on city land. The phrase always repeated by the Portland city commissioners and the local daily has been that "Dignity Village is a failure." WHY is Dignity Village a "failure"? BECAUSE people have remained in Dignity Village for the long term. Homeless services are deemed "successful" only if they succeeded in transitioning homeless people back into the system, working a wage job, paying rent, buying stuff, turning on the TV every night as anesthesia. Dignity Village, on the other hand, was trying to create entirely new institutions. Long-term community. Real community.
Even here in liberal Portland, this is too revolutionary. It is absolutely unthinkable to allow people to live outside the money economy. Everyone MUST be dependent on money in order to live -- that is the first commandment of this economic system. People who live outside the money system cannot be tolerated. That is why self-sufficient indigenous people and subsistence farmers the world over cannot be tolerated. Self-sufficiency and independence from the money system cannot be tolerated. If you want land to live on and be self-sufficient, you have to subscribe to their commandment that land is "property," a "thing" to be bought and sold, and you must have money to legally acquire the land, to continue to pay property taxes, and to get all the stuff you need to create your self-sufficiency. You cannot do it unless you have acquired money somehow through the money system, and unless you have a continued source of money, however modest.
The system is meant to make it impossible to escape from dependence on money. It is one thing if money is used as a way to simplify barter so that people can more easily exchange surplus goods with one another. It is quite something else when you have to have money in order to live. You have to have money even to have a place to sleep and live. You have to have money in order to eat. You have to have money in order to have water to drink. You have to have money to keep yourself warm. Without money, you literally cannot survive.
So your life is regulated by the need for money, and money makes most of the decisions about where people live, how people spend their waking hours, what they choose to study in school, and how they interact with each other. In a tribal society, people's way of organizing their interactions is according to what kin relationship they have; in modern society, people's way of organizing their interaction is according to what money relationship they have -- employer/employee, vendor/customer, ... etc. You may be lucky enough to have a job you like, but whether or not you like your job really us irrelevant. In the landof the free, most people are forced take some meaningless job in some factory or office or store.
You cannot just move on to some unused spot of land, build a strawbale house for next to nothing, plant a garden and keep some chickens to feed yourself, catch rainwater to drink, make a low-tech sawdust composting toilet to poop in, and basically live, well, like "poor" people do throughout the Third World. (The word "poor," when used by the development folks, lumps together self-sufficient subsistence farmers with people who are starving and lack the necessities of life. If you make "a dollar a day" it's all the same.) Self-sufficient subsistence farmers and indigenous people are under attack the world over, their lands being taken and ripped apart by mining companies, lumber companies, etc., or taken over by corporations for mass monocropped global agribusiness plantations. Once people's lands are lost or destroyed, they must have money to live, and then they become part of the labor pool for agribusiness sweatshops. People work in these conditions because the only other choice is to starve, literally.
Watch this video:
www.youtube.com/watch
So the system absolutely depends on people being forced to depend on money. And that is life for homeless people is everywhere made hell. Because if you don't keep working at your job (no matter how much you hate it), don't keep paying your mortgage at the bank, etc, you could lose your home and be homeless. You would be living in hell. Just as, in Third World countries, the threat of starvation is necessary to force people to work in sweatshops (so all self-sufficiency must be destroyed) so, in countries like the US, the threat of homeless hell is necessary to force people to keep paying their mortgages on their overexpensive homes.
So this is why a community like Dignity Village was such a threat even to a supposedly liberal, sustainability-minded city like Portland. If people who are living outside the money economy (as homeless people do) were to establish communities where they live a decent life through helping each other rather than through the money economy -- then that would demonstrate that it is possible to live a decent life outside the money economy. It would demonstrate that you do not have to slave at that shit job at that cubicle, because there are other ways to live and have a decent life. In fact, you can have a rich and satisfying life without things -- without buying stuff all the time in an effort to fill the inner void. Making your own music in the evenings, rather than consuming some corporate-packaged canned entertainment. It can be deeply satisfying to work together with others in a common effort of creating a good life.
This cannot be tolerated. And that is why even in Portland, although the remnants of Dignity Village still camp by the airport, the project of the permanent self-sufficient community was opposed. Homeless people have to represent life in hell, not a living alternative way of life.
But -- right now, according to official statistics, about 1/3 of 1% of the US population is homeless. But what happens when it becomes five percent, ten percent of the population, or even more? The governments will have no choice but to step out of the way and allow people to band together and create their own alternatives, alternatives that don't require money.
The collapse is inevitable, for a number of reasons. But the collapse doesn't have to happen as one big crash. It can be a smooth downward glide, which is the best possible scenario. This is what in fact appears to be happening, because (according to what I get) the spirit guides of our species know that adding more trauma on top of trauma will just make it harder for our species to heal. They are trying to work together with us to help us to exit from the system gradually, building alternative institutions gradually, as we move into the Transformation....
...
Hi! I am writing an article in which I am using Dignity Village as an example for some points I am making, but I want to make sure that the statements I make in the article about Dignity Village are correct. The DV homepage is down, the myspace page doesn't show any sign of activity since Aug 2007, and the contact info on the myspace page doesn't work either .... these are not good signs. Hm. But anyway, I thought you or someone you know could check on what I wrote. I could send either the entire draft or just the section that talks about Dignity Village, depending on how much reading time you have at the computer. Thanks.
In solidarity,
Gayle
PS Although I am a Portlander, a good part of the last few years have been spent in the jungles of Ecuador, so that is why I may have missed some significant Dignity Village news.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But after sending the message, I decided to post the section of the draft that talks about Dignity Village here on this tribe, so that others could read and comment. I may have written about DV a little too idealistically; I based what I wrote about on what I had read on the DV web page some time ago, but I know that creating a community, especially of wounded people, is not easy and I am sure there were many internal problems. Nevertheless, I think that what I wrote is valid in principle. But I would like to make sure that it doesn't sound too wacky/idealistic, and also doesn't distort the history of the relations between DV and the City of Portland.
[section of article follows:]
.... Here in Portland, known as one of the most liberal and sustainable-minded cities in the US, if not the world, there is a community called Dignity Village. It started out as a tent city of homeless people who banded together to form a community of mutual sharing, protection and support. They organized as a community, kept the place clean as best they could, and banned alcohol and drugs in the tent city and helped to protect each other from the dangers homeless people are subjected to, etc. The community kept being forced to move from place to place as residents all over the city did not want a homeless tent city by them. They proposed to the city that the city lease them some property in exchange for volunteer labor by the community members helping maintain the city. The city rejected this proposal. Finally, the city allowed them to move to an old parking lot out by the airport, in an effort to put them as far out of site in as yucky a site as possible, noisy and asphalted and full of fumes. Nevertheless, the community organized, cleaned up the site, started planting gardens and building a true community, and then started writing grants to foundations to help them to create a real ecological community, with cob houses (a small cob house or strawbale house can be built for a few hundred dollars if you have volunteer labor, and of course everyone was available to labor for everyone else), water catchment systems, bicycle generators so that people could generate their own power by their own labor together; fruit and nut trees and permacultured gardens -- basically looking to create a true community, self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-regulating, working on mutual support, mutual protection, mutual help, and offering volunteer labor to the city as rent for using this land.
The city of Portland, this famously liberal and sustainable city, has been unrelentingly hostile to Dignity Village and has refused to allow this kind of community to be built on city land. The phrase always repeated by the Portland city commissioners and the local daily has been that "Dignity Village is a failure." WHY is Dignity Village a "failure"? BECAUSE people have remained in Dignity Village for the long term. Homeless services are deemed "successful" only if they succeeded in transitioning homeless people back into the system, working a wage job, paying rent, buying stuff, turning on the TV every night as anesthesia. Dignity Village, on the other hand, was trying to create entirely new institutions. Long-term community. Real community.
Even here in liberal Portland, this is too revolutionary. It is absolutely unthinkable to allow people to live outside the money economy. Everyone MUST be dependent on money in order to live -- that is the first commandment of this economic system. People who live outside the money system cannot be tolerated. That is why self-sufficient indigenous people and subsistence farmers the world over cannot be tolerated. Self-sufficiency and independence from the money system cannot be tolerated. If you want land to live on and be self-sufficient, you have to subscribe to their commandment that land is "property," a "thing" to be bought and sold, and you must have money to legally acquire the land, to continue to pay property taxes, and to get all the stuff you need to create your self-sufficiency. You cannot do it unless you have acquired money somehow through the money system, and unless you have a continued source of money, however modest.
The system is meant to make it impossible to escape from dependence on money. It is one thing if money is used as a way to simplify barter so that people can more easily exchange surplus goods with one another. It is quite something else when you have to have money in order to live. You have to have money even to have a place to sleep and live. You have to have money in order to eat. You have to have money in order to have water to drink. You have to have money to keep yourself warm. Without money, you literally cannot survive.
So your life is regulated by the need for money, and money makes most of the decisions about where people live, how people spend their waking hours, what they choose to study in school, and how they interact with each other. In a tribal society, people's way of organizing their interactions is according to what kin relationship they have; in modern society, people's way of organizing their interaction is according to what money relationship they have -- employer/employee, vendor/customer, ... etc. You may be lucky enough to have a job you like, but whether or not you like your job really us irrelevant. In the landof the free, most people are forced take some meaningless job in some factory or office or store.
You cannot just move on to some unused spot of land, build a strawbale house for next to nothing, plant a garden and keep some chickens to feed yourself, catch rainwater to drink, make a low-tech sawdust composting toilet to poop in, and basically live, well, like "poor" people do throughout the Third World. (The word "poor," when used by the development folks, lumps together self-sufficient subsistence farmers with people who are starving and lack the necessities of life. If you make "a dollar a day" it's all the same.) Self-sufficient subsistence farmers and indigenous people are under attack the world over, their lands being taken and ripped apart by mining companies, lumber companies, etc., or taken over by corporations for mass monocropped global agribusiness plantations. Once people's lands are lost or destroyed, they must have money to live, and then they become part of the labor pool for agribusiness sweatshops. People work in these conditions because the only other choice is to starve, literally.
Watch this video:
www.youtube.com/watch
So the system absolutely depends on people being forced to depend on money. And that is life for homeless people is everywhere made hell. Because if you don't keep working at your job (no matter how much you hate it), don't keep paying your mortgage at the bank, etc, you could lose your home and be homeless. You would be living in hell. Just as, in Third World countries, the threat of starvation is necessary to force people to work in sweatshops (so all self-sufficiency must be destroyed) so, in countries like the US, the threat of homeless hell is necessary to force people to keep paying their mortgages on their overexpensive homes.
So this is why a community like Dignity Village was such a threat even to a supposedly liberal, sustainability-minded city like Portland. If people who are living outside the money economy (as homeless people do) were to establish communities where they live a decent life through helping each other rather than through the money economy -- then that would demonstrate that it is possible to live a decent life outside the money economy. It would demonstrate that you do not have to slave at that shit job at that cubicle, because there are other ways to live and have a decent life. In fact, you can have a rich and satisfying life without things -- without buying stuff all the time in an effort to fill the inner void. Making your own music in the evenings, rather than consuming some corporate-packaged canned entertainment. It can be deeply satisfying to work together with others in a common effort of creating a good life.
This cannot be tolerated. And that is why even in Portland, although the remnants of Dignity Village still camp by the airport, the project of the permanent self-sufficient community was opposed. Homeless people have to represent life in hell, not a living alternative way of life.
But -- right now, according to official statistics, about 1/3 of 1% of the US population is homeless. But what happens when it becomes five percent, ten percent of the population, or even more? The governments will have no choice but to step out of the way and allow people to band together and create their own alternatives, alternatives that don't require money.
The collapse is inevitable, for a number of reasons. But the collapse doesn't have to happen as one big crash. It can be a smooth downward glide, which is the best possible scenario. This is what in fact appears to be happening, because (according to what I get) the spirit guides of our species know that adding more trauma on top of trauma will just make it harder for our species to heal. They are trying to work together with us to help us to exit from the system gradually, building alternative institutions gradually, as we move into the Transformation....
...
posted by:
|
Portland
|
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Re: Dignity Village and the future of the Earth
Thu, July 3, 2008 - 11:29 AMThank you so much Gayle!
[here is my reply to her e-mail]
Hi Gayle!
Thanks for writing to me! I just checked, and the website is back on: www.dignityvillage.org
BTW, I had never visited Dignity Village in person until March of this year!
(I was living out of my car in 2002, at NW 18th and Raleigh, near the I-405 site... and have followed their progress ever since...)
I was forced to move from my apt. in March, and was homeless for 2 months. I went to Dignity Village, and met with the Membership Committee. I was #5 on their waiting list, but never got to live there. I couch surfed with friends, and eventually got my new home in May. I definitely have a renewed sense of inspiration for the project, and never ending support for the residents... and their cause!
I would encourage you to find time to visit them yourself! I was also concerned that they were no longer there... and was so glad that they were.
(you can take the TriMet bus #10 to NE 33rd and Sunderland. It runs every 1/2 hour)
Good Luck with your article, and thanks again for writing to me.
With Kind regards,
MAHVi
p.s. I'm gonna have to update the tribe page with my recent story! Rite On. -
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Re: Dignity Village and the future of the Earth
Thu, July 3, 2008 - 2:11 PMYou don't see anything that needs to be corrected in the article? I have been gone from Portland during large chunks of the past few years, so I was concerned that I might be misinterpreting the relationship with the City of Portland in some way, what I wrote was just the impression I have gotten.
Interesting what you say about a waiting list -- that means that space/population at DV must be limited. And why? If it were allowed to flourish as a sustainable eco-community according to the dream, then it would probably keep expanding. Which would be subversive, because a flourishing community living outside the money system, as a cooperative community, would be a threat to the system. There is a reason why homeless people are treated like outlaws. Life for homeless people HAS to be made hell, in order to keep everyone else frightened of being homeless and locked into the system.
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