Moving toward a local economy

With all that has been happening in our economy in the few days, it is easy to become discouraged and frightened of what is yet to come and what to do next. I for one think that investing in the local economy might help things - esp. local food. Many communities have access to local farms and the opportunity for investing in Community Supported Agriculture, which provide locally grown fruits, vegetables, and sometimes even meat. It is a really great feeling to know where your food comes from, and also knowing that not a lot of resources were wasted in transporting the food. If we could move away from relying on big corporations to supply us with our basic necessities, and start supporting local craftsman, farmers, businesses, etc. then ground crew communities might start to form organically.

[whitecrow]

Your idea's a good one as long as the money is worth something. Most towns have some kind of farmer's market...these are wonderful resources. In some areas you may be able to glean or to pick your own for a small fee.

One of the projects my local crew is working on is installing edible landscaping.

Do try to patronize locally-owned businesses as much as possible. Why go to MalWart and give your money to the PTB, when you can help sustain someone in your community who is struggling just like you? Do your best to become as fully engaged as possible with your local economy.

Local economy means local community. Get to know your neighbors and local merchants. Prejudice is one of the biggest enemies of community. I buy my water from a Korean, my cigarettes from an Iraqi and my newspaper from a Pakistani. I'm quite sure all of these individuals have encountered prejudice here, yet they are a vital part of the community. Any one of them could be here with bad intent, but the odds are not big. I know a great mechanic; whenever I take Faded Glory in I grab a handful of his cards and pass them out. The guy I buy crystals and stones from gives me a discount because he knows me. This is community. When I make batches of soap I make sure all of these folks get at least a small sample of what I make. Pay it forward.

[Norval]

Now that deserves a thumbs up.

It also helps keep out the business scammers too.

Forest House

Whitecrow
i couldn't agree more
i have been doing edible landscaping for years and have actually
been copied by a few neighbors...
people are our best resource
community is where the real power is
not a place where the rich can go with silver and gold
but where we live and help each other daily

you are soooooooooooooooooo right

hugs


D

This is exactly what is advocated by Catherine Austin Fitz of the Solari
institute.

We took her to heart after reading her essay Where would Jesus Bank?
All of our money flowed through banks on her top ten list. We have taken
steps to remedy the situation. We moved from Bank of America to Timberland.
Talk about extremes! Big ticket items like mortgages require more care. We
continue to work a rational plan to dispense with the mortgage entirely. Once
that is accomplished it is bye bye tapeworm banks! You have two votes which
really hit home and cannot be ignored. You can vote with your dollars and you
can vote with your feet. We have reserved the right to emmigrate by hook or
by crook.

http://solari.com/

Take Action: Bank Intimate
The fastest way to kick-start the shift away from a centralized economy is to stop financing the big banks—and through them, the activities they are financing.


Coming Clean
What our money touches, we touch. Coming clean is a process that helps us gain mastery and take action–in our families, communities, and networks of trust.


Solari Audio Seminars
The Solari Store features audio seminars by Catherine Austin Fitts including our newest Positioning Your Assets for Growth in Uncertain Times and best seller The Complete Collection.


Beyond Tapeworm Economics
One of Hamilton Securities’ goals was to map out how the flows of money worked in the U.S. and create software tools that would make this information accessible to communities.


The Popsicle Index
The Popsicle Index is the percentage of people who believe a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or snack, and come home alone safely . . .


The Missing Money
Trillions of dollars are missing from the U.S. government. What's going on? Where is the money?

[Steven]

I'm glad to read your post. This step of getting involved into a local market can take many forms. It can be food, clear water, energy, wood, manual tools, remedy, sharing knowledge, books, etc...

Here, where I am actually, you can see people beginning to increasingly respond to this call. This is the way of community.

And remember, seeds are the basic of food. You can survive with knowledge of seeds.

Great thread, all my blessings, Steven

[JesterTerrestrial]

Originally Posted by Forest House

If we could move away from relying on big corporations to supply us with our basic necessities, and start supporting local craftsman, farmers, businesses, etc. then ground crew communities might start to form organically.

Right on brother!
Now your talking a language I can understand!

Start a market in your town today! All the other kids are doing it

Check out my market thread...there are some links to some information about starting a market. I still would like to get involved in getting a Galactic market network organized and developed. An advanced marketplace where there are some standard rules and regulations in order to become a member so that we can develop more local market networks. If you go on the move you will be able to sell your goods where ever you are and people can have a real-time display of where your storefront is located. Find your favorite vendors in and province/country/planet/galaxy/dimension/the universe is the no limit.

But then this comes to mind. If were going through a dimensional shift and we can manifest things...maybe we can just skip the market and just think/wish that the table is filled with food or will we even going to need to eat, because i sure hope so there's so many amazing foods im sure we would all miss. hmmmm i wonder

well reality check...at this time I am fairly sure that we should develop more markets. There is so much more at work at a market then just making money. It gives vendors a place to trade goods and market/network. It gives the people in the community a support network, a place to go, a chance to meet their neighbors. Check out my market thread (if u want) and vote, for markets not governments (government = control of mind)

THE POWER OF A FARMERS MARKET TO A COMMUNITY IS HUGE

I was so happy to read your replies. I hadn't heard of Solari. I checked out their website and found it so informative, esp. the "bank intimate" section. With WaMu failing this morning, this seems like a better time than ever to do this.
Whitecrow - I love the idea of edible landscaping - do you try to incorporate native plants with that as well? I live in an area that is trying to conserve water, so I've really been wanting to switch to native plants. Now if I could add edible native plants, that'd be the best of both worlds!
JesterTerrestrial - I checked out your market thread - really great and interesting! The internet has been so great to be able to buy things directly from the source, even if it's half way across the world. That along with interest in local community could totally eliminate the need for a middle man!

[peacelovinman]

Whilst I was watching Miriam Delicado last night, an idea popped into my head to leaflet 1000 houses in my immediate neighbourhood to see if I could drum up some interest in forming a community garden, to grow food.

I had this headline in mind: "What Will You Eat When The Oil Runs Out?"

What do you guys think?

[arcora]

Originally Posted by peacelovinman

Whilst I was watching Miriam Delicado last night, an idea popped into my head to leaflet 1000 houses in my immediate neighbourhood to see if I could drum up some interest in forming a community garden, to grow food.

I had this headline in mind: "What Will You Eat When The Oil Runs Out?"

What do you guys think?

That's a good start.

A community garden for 1000 households would have to be quite huge.

My heart goes out to everyone living in cities right now. We're blessed to be in a small town that has a strong spirit of community. Most of us have our own gardens and when difficulties come there is a long history of pitching in to help out those in need.

Case in point - a hurricane came through here years ago. Most people didn't have generators. The generators wound up being passed around for people to use (keeping refrigerators and freezers cold) for a day or so before passing them along to another neighbor.

The problem with big cities is that there are so many strangers who don't care about you and will do whatever is necessary to get what they need. So if your garden is in a more urban or suburban area make sure you plan security.

Originally Posted by peacelovinman

Whilst I was watching Miriam Delicado last night, an idea popped into my head to leaflet 1000 houses in my immediate neighbourhood to see if I could drum up some interest in forming a community garden, to grow food.

I had this headline in mind: "What Will You Eat When The Oil Runs Out?"

What do you guys think?

I think that is such an exciting idea that if you don't mind I'm going to quote you and start a new thread under "community gardens" !

I bought 6ac. just outside of Houston but am not using the land for now. I LOVE that land, it's trees, wildlife and all plants on it. I envision using it for food production when things get rough. It's too big for me to work it alone, but if some people are unemployed and willing to do some work for food or little money, I'll be more than happy to combine my land resource with their commitment to drill a water well, hook up a solar-powered pump and irrigation system, till the land and plant veggies and fruit trees.

Until they produce I got several books about edible wild plants and we could harvest dandelion to make a killer dish (prepare like spinach, layer in dish with onions, tomatoes, garlic and top with cheese. Bake for 10 min, DELICIOUS!), prepare yucca roots like mashed potatoes, or dig up cat tail roots for another tasty dish. Pick beechnuts for a fabulous desert.

I am converting an old 9' satellite dish into a solar collector to heat water, or even distill it for purification. My goal is to drive with it an ammonia absorption A/C system that will cool my home. I calculated I need about two of those dishes to cool a 2,000sqft home. Natural gas would bridge sunless days and nights.

Why not turn survival into surthrival?

Blissboy

here's some help on how to do a cumminty garden

good luck

http://www.communitygarden.org/

[777 The Great Work]

Originally Posted by Forest House

With all that has been happening in our economy in the few days, it is easy to become discouraged and frightened of what is yet to come and what to do next. I for one think that investing in the local economy might help things - esp. local food. Many communities have access to local farms and the opportunity for investing in Community Supported Agriculture, which provide locally grown fruits, vegetables, and sometimes even meat. It is a really great feeling to know where your food comes from, and also knowing that not a lot of resources were wasted in transporting the food. If we could move away from relying on big corporations to supply us with our basic necessities, and start supporting local craftsman, farmers, businesses, etc. then ground crew communities might start to form organically.

This is an age old plan. Here is protocol number 3 written down over 200 yrs ago about this upcomming event. We really need to wake up and stop resisting change.

PROTOCOL No. 3
1. To-day I may tell you that our goal is now only a few steps off. There remains a small space to cross and the whole long path we have trodden is ready now to close its cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolize our people. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe will be locked in its coil as in a powerful vice.

2. The constitution scales of these days will shortly break down, for we have established them with a certain lack of accurate balance in order that they may oscillate incessantly until they wear through the pivot on which they turn. The GOYIM are under the impression that they have welded them sufficiently strong and they have all along kept on expecting that the scales would come into equilibrium. But the pivots - the kings on their thrones - are hemmed in by their representatives, who play the fool, distraught with their own uncontrolled and irresponsible power. This power they owe to the terror which has been breathed into the palaces. As they have no means of getting at their people, into their very midst, the kings on their thrones are no longer able to come to terms with them and so strengthen themselves against seekers after power. We have made a gulf between the far-seeing Sovereign Power and the blind force of the people so that both have lost all meaning, for like the blind man and his stick, both are powerless apart.

3. In order to incite seekers after power to a misuse of power we have set all forces in opposition one to another, breaking up their liberal tendencies towards independence. To this end we have stirred up every form of enterprise, we have armed all parties, we have set up authority as a target for every ambition. Of States we have made gladiatorial arenas where a lot of confused issues contend .... A little more, and disorders and bankruptcy will be universal ....

4. Babblers, inexhaustible, have turned into oratorical contests the sittings of Parliament and Administrative Boards. Bold journalists and unscrupulous pamphleteers daily fall upon executive officials. Abuses of power will put the final touch in preparing all institutions for their overthrow and everything will fly skyward under the blows of the maddened mob.

POVERTY OUR WEAPON

5. All people are chained down to heavy toil by poverty more firmly than ever. They were chained by slavery and serfdom; from these, one way and another, they might free themselves. These could be settled with, but from want they will never get away. We have included in the constitution such rights as to the masses appear fictitious and not actual rights. All these so-called "Peoples Rights" can exist only in idea, an idea which can never be realized in practical life. What is it to the proletariat laborer, bowed double over his heavy toil, crushed by his lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get the right to scribble any nonsense side by side with good stuff, once the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save only those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from our table in return for their voting in favor of what we dictate, in favor of the men we place in power, the servants of our AGENTUR ... Republican rights for a poor man are no more than a bitter piece of irony, for the necessity he is under of toiling almost all day gives him no present use of them, but the other hand robs him of all guarantee of regular and certain earnings by making him dependent on strikes by his comrades or lockouts by his masters.

WE SUPPORT COMMUNISM

6. The people, under our guidance, have annihilated the aristocracy, who were their one and only defense and foster- mother for the sake of their own advantage which is inseparably bound up with the well-being of the people. Nowadays, with the destruction of the aristocracy, the people have fallen into the grips of merciless money-grinding scoundrels who have laid a pitiless and cruel yoke upon the necks of the workers.

7. We appear on the scene as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces - Socialists, Anarchists, Communists - to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our SOCIAL MASONRY. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy, and strong. We are interested in just the opposite - in the diminution, the KILLING OUT OF THE GOYIM. Our power is in the chronic shortness of food and physical weakness of the worker because by all that this implies he is made the slave of our will, and he will not find in his own authorities either strength or energy to set against our will. Hunger creates the right of capital to rule the worker more surely than it was given to the aristocracy by the legal authority of kings.

8. By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way.

9. WHEN THE HOUR STRIKES FOR OUR SOVEREIGN LORD OF ALL THE WORLD TO BE CROWNED IT IS THESE SAME HANDS WHICH WILL SWEEP AWAY EVERYTHING THAT MIGHT BE A HINDRANCE THERETO.

10. The GOYIM have lost the habit of thinking unless prompted by the suggestions of our specialists. Therefore they do not see the urgent necessity of what we, when our kingdom comes, shall adopt at once, namely this, that IT IS ESSENTIAL TO TEACH IN NATIONAL SCHOOLS ONE SIMPLE, TRUE PIECE OF KNOWLEDGE, THE BASIS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE - THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE STRUCTURE OF HUMAN LIFE, OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE, WHICH REQUIRES DIVISION OF LABOR, AND, CONSEQUENTLY, THE DIVISION OF MEN INTO CLASSES AND CONDITIONS. It is essential for all to know that OWING TO DIFFERENCE IN THE OBJECTS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY THERE CANNOT BE ANY EQUALITY, that he, who by any act of his compromises a whole class, cannot be equally responsible before the law with him who affects no one but only his own honor. The true knowledge of the structure of society, into the secrets of which we do not admit the GOYIM, would demonstrate to all men that the positions and work must be kept within a certain circle, that they may not become a source of human suffering, arising from an education which does not correspond with the work which individuals are called upon to do. After a thorough study of this knowledge, the peoples will voluntarily submit to authority and accept such position as is appointed them in the State. In the present state of knowledge and the direction we have given to its development of the people, blindly believing things in print - cherishes - thanks to promptings intended to mislead and to its own ignorance - a blind hatred towards all conditions which it considers above itself, for it has no understanding of the meaning of class and condition.

JEWS WILL BE SAFE

11. THIS HATRED WILL BE STILL FURTHER MAGNIFIED BY THE EFFECTS of an ECONOMIC CRISES, which will stop dealing on the exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall create by all the secret subterranean methods open to us and with the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, A UNIVERSAL ECONOMIC CRISES WHEREBY WE SHALL THROW UPON THE STREETS WHOLE MOBS OF WORKERS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ALL THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. These mobs will rush delightedly to shed the blood of those whom, in the simplicity of their ignorance, they have envied from their cradles, and whose property they will then be able to loot.

12. "OURS" THEY WILL NOT TOUCH, BECAUSE THE MOMENT OF ATTACK WILL BE KNOWN TO US AND WE SHALL TAKE MEASURES TO PROTECT OUR OWN.

13. We have demonstrated that progress will bring all the GOYIM to the sovereignty of reason. Our despotism will be precisely that; for it will know how, by wise severities, to pacificate all unrest, to cauterize liberalism out of all institutions.

14. When the populace has seen that all sorts of concessions and indulgences are yielded it, in the same name of freedom it has imagined itself to be sovereign lord and has stormed its way to power, but, naturally like every other blind man, it has come upon a host of stumbling blocks. IT HAS RUSHED TO FIND A GUIDE, IT HAS NEVER HAD THE SENSE TO RETURN TO THE FORMER STATE and it has laid down its plenipotentiary powers at OUR feet. Remember the French Revolution, to which it was we who gave the name of "Great": the secrets of its preparations are well known to us for it was wholly the work of our hands.

15 Ever since that time we have been leading the peoples from one disenchantment to another, so that in the end they should turn also from us in favor of that KING-DESPOT OF THE BLOOD OF ZION, WHOM WE ARE PREPARING FOR THE WORLD.

16. At the present day we are, as an international force, invincible, because if attacked by some we are supported by other States. It is the bottomless rascality of the GOYIM peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless towards weakness, unsparing to faults and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism - it is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the premier- dictators of the present day, the GOYIM peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuses as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings.

17. What is the explanation of this phenomenon, this curious inconsequence of the masses of the peoples in their attitude towards what would appear to be events of the same order?

18. It is explained by the fact that these dictators whisper to the peoples through their agents that through these abuses they are inflicting injury on the States with the highest purpose - to secure the welfare of the peoples, the international brotherhood of them all, their solidarity and equality of rights. Naturally they do not tell the peoples that this unification must be accomplished only under our sovereign rule.

19. And thus the people condemn the upright and acquit the guilty, persuaded ever more and more that it can do whatsoever it wishes. Thanks to this state of things, the people are destroying every kind of stability and creating disorders at every step.

20. The word "freedom" brings out the communities of men to fight against every kind of force, against every kind of authority even against God and the laws of nature. For this reason we, when we come into our kingdom, shall have to erase this word from the lexicon of life as implying a principle of brute force which turns mobs into bloodthirsty beasts.

21. These beasts, it is true, fall asleep again every time when they have drunk their fill of blood, and at such time can easily be riveted into their chains. But if they be not given blood they will not sleep and continue to strike.

These people have followed this plan to the letter. We need to flow with change.

[peacelovinman]

Originally Posted by Forest House

I think that is such an exciting idea that if you don't mind I'm going to quote you and start a new thread under "community gardens" !

Be my guest! I don't suppose all 1000 people leafletted will jump at the chance - I'm reckoning on receiving 10 replies but I'm open to being surprised!