Planting the Seeds of Change

No matter your political leaning one thing in our society today that can’t be denied is the vast and growing gap between those who have and those who have less. The data is very clear that the crevasse of wealth inequality is widening into a canyon. This creates a squeezing feeling on the parts of the population who, up until recently, were feeling mostly comfortable in their lives, but who also could lose everything with a just a couple of missed paychecks.

In the US we are experiencing a high number of working homeless, people who are working full time jobs but can’t afford housing. At the end of January 2023, 653,104 people, or about 20 of every 10,000 people in the United States, experienced homelessness across the United States. Estimates show that 53% of people living in homeless shelters and 40% of unsheltered people are employed, either full or part-time.

We have a healthcare system that can bankrupt you even if you have health insurance coverage. There are billion dollar companies who would rather not pay for our medical coverage and so have poorly negotiated rates and then set up policies with excessive deductibles. What normal middle class family can pay $12,000 per person per year and an 80/20 split of the costs? May as well be paying out of pocket.

We see the gaps between what CEO’s earn and the median wage in the companies they control increasing. The current ratio data from 2022 shows that CEO’s make 344.3 times more than their average employee makes. In 1965 it was 20.4 to 1. Then we have the ultra rich, their ratios are even higher. Families with inherited wealth, who tend to be a bit quieter than the new wave of tech billionaires who have only gained gargantuan wealth through the boom of the tech industry, who seem to be untouchable. Some of the practices keeping them ultra wealthy are probably against the law, though no one will try to do anything about it.

We know how this ends. We’ve seen it play out before in history over and over and over. Most of the time it ends with violence; the people rising up to the inequality, fed up with the way they are being treated. Mostly it takes a very large population getting pushed into the discomfort of starvation, poor health, loss of loved ones, loss of property and loss of the rights of autonomy to get to the point of revolution. We aren’t there yet, but the signs point to that end if we don’t start to make changes now.

A few years ago on a whim, recommended by Amazon of all things, I bought a book called the Dandelion Insurrection (yes, I know, Insurrections are bad…but…). It’s the first book of a trilogy and I have since bought and read the other two. The story is cheesy but the messages sound loud and clear. I see so many parallels with what is happening in this fictional book series and what is happening now. It doesn’t take too much of a leap of imagination to take the context of the now, turn the inequality up two to five notches and write down what that looks like. I ask all my adult students to read at least the first book. The whole series is based on nonviolent actions to make change. Do we feel oppressed enough yet to make change? I’m not sure we do. But for some in the world we are thinking about what some scenarios look like. We feel the need to at least try.

So, what does trying look like? Well, with good mass organization corporations, governments and oppressive bodies make changes. We show them that they don’t have any choice but to be governed by the people, as it is supposed to be. This requires participation, as opposed to just going about our singular lives in a cloud of frenzied dust too thick to see through. Again, I’m not sure we are at that point…Yet. So, what’s my point?

Plant the seeds and see what grows.

There are some actions that can be taken now. Without much in the way of announcing anything we can:

-Stop participating. Whether it’s paying for things we’re not getting an actual benefit from, or it’s from companies that are using our data without permission, or it’s companies that will opt out of any liability for causing harm through their terms of service clauses, if we stop participating we cripple companies. Mostly this works when it is an organized effort, but it can have power if we as individuals just decide to quit on mass. For some of us this is super easy, we never started participating to begin with. For others this will be harder.

-Skill up. Learn how to do things. Basic things like cooking, mending, repairing things, home and car maintenance, growing a little bit of food. This is a subversive act that keeps money in your own pocket rather than that of someone else. Outsourcing our lives has never been easier and corporations especially have learned how to take advantage of that. There is in entire convenience industry that would collapse if we learned how to do things again. If we must outsource we should be utilizing people we know in our communities who have the skills we are seeking and compensating them for those skills. This keeps people working, keeps the dollars out of the money machine, and helps us know our community members better.

-Shop local. Have community conversations about where the money goes by not shopping local. When we make it a priority to shop local, paying people who also shop local, we keep the money local rather than having it disappear into the wealth machine never to be seen again. Pay with cash. The electronic processing fees are basically a tax that no one voted for and they are sucking our money away little by little every time we swipe a little plastic card. We can keep the same $100 circulating in a local economy for months or even years this way, creating a value that $100 paid to a corporation could never even come close to. This is the best way to make communities financially stable. There is even at least one case study that proves it from a small town in South America.

-Host things like Warm Data Labs where complex perspectives on subjects can be explored. Also consider Crisis Drills with a non-governmental perspective. I use the permaculture framework in my daily life so for me hosting a community crisis drill would look very different from what a church group or government agency would put together. Most disasters will be of a local nature. Every context is different, so every crises can have different flavors.

-Get vocal. Put pressure on local government first, then move up to the state level. Trying to push the federal government is like screaming into the void. We can overwhelm local levels to make change the fastest, they will in turn help us move our State governments into action. We know that there is a State tipping point required for the Federal government to make changes that are pushed, reform by the people doesn’t happen top down, it happens bottom up.

-Build community. Despite the narrative, we can’t do anything alone.

-Be an active community member. Once you’ve started to build the community you have to participate. For every individual this will look like something different. For me it means being a good permaculture educator, speaking my truth about the state of our society and the natural world. It is holding people where they are and leading them in their process through being a good mentor…

…and it’s making soup for you when you are sick or have surgery or need a short break from life, whether you want it or not.