Grassroots Solutions
From Mary Saunders
I would like to see 5-gallon bucket projects very present on first look. Many people have briefly appeared on this thread to say that it is only addressing elites, so they are out of here. From my perspective, who almost did this same thing, we need to address this off the starting blocks.
Elites are hurting everybody else with their propensity to see empowering and sharing as unimportant or something to do .... some day, perhaps when everything is ordered to their liking (which means hundreds of thousands of people are gone: mass suicides seem not to concern them much).
I see ordinary people to be in emergency situations. They must figure out how to connect locally, for kids like those of Michael Becker to write grants based on the 5-gallon bucket tomatoes in their classrooms until they have, from bottom up, aggregated their strengths beyond labels like ADHD, to have historic-appearing greenhouses where they are growing plants and fish.
When ordinary people do not do this, they are at risk of falling down a well, without connections to a fabric above ground who would notice they fell down a crevice and to call in help.
Understanding this current situation is important for grassroots, but equally important for the wealthy. As the wealthy figure out how to inoculate the grassroots with engineered genes, they are perhaps in danger of losing their heads, as Marie Antoinette did. I can tolerate a lot of messiness, but I don't like bloody messes. It would be better for us all if we can negotiate our ways out of bloody messes.
Both sides of this equation need to see that grassroots the world over are figuring out how to collaborate, as so interestingly articulated by Paul Hawken.
Eco-Mind, by Frances Moore Lappe, and Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawken, are two examples of books by persons of resources who write things designed to empower individuals to find their strengths.
Elites are busy with their expense accounts and talking to each other, which is what they do, but so many of them seem to have so little consciousness of how this comes across to people outside their closed circles.
We have the opportunity, here, to cross some silos, as you say it, Helene. I like the visual I get. Concrete broken up for other purposes is referred to as urbanite in permaculture circles. We can design nice new things with it.