https://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Hydro/FlowOfRiver/FlowOfRiver.htm
Just 12 days before the market event we find ourselves in funny mood between feeling quite simply exhausted, being a little stressed out because there's still so much to wrap up, and also satisfied because there's so much already in place.
Two weeks and two days before the event we went to rent cables because we were informed that the generator we rented does not come with any distribution, after fruitlessly negotiating for power at the new market location with the town. We followed some recommendation into a very difficult to find tiny hidden shop where three helpful guys (electric wizards?) spent an hour drawing diagrams and explaining us how our rented generator will burn if not connected to a proper distribution board (very expensive!) and how the whole thing will surely ruin us. They called quite a few people with different generators, mobile stages, ??? to try and help us out, but to no avail. We then spent a weekend biting nails and asking around for other solutions - as we have to notify the generator people two weeks in advance. Then found out Monday that generator after all can be rented with distribution board and cables, for a reasonable fee. Phew.
We went to create an non-profit association, in the hope of having an official and hopefully cheaper and easier way to deal with purchases, donations and other financial stuff for future market organization, but also to have a sort of playground to experiment with acting as a public organization and find out about the pros and cons. However, bureaucracy won't have us! Behold four different attempts:
I've sent some form to the central office of registries where you can complain about stuff (my council is not in the drop-down list when I'm asked to identify myself !?) I don't think it will do any good anyways. I will try to calm down my murderous heart and try in a different registry per phone and email (will be a 80km roundtrip). It is not easy to organize as a group of citizens, and I was so frustrated about this and the chewing-gum like email exchange asking stuff from town (with really no information given as to how they will actually follow through with the stuff they conceded, further nailbiting).
Other kafkaesk emails were exchanged with the copyright authority for a music license and elaborating further on it would be bad for my health at this point.
In resume, every interaction with the famous 'system' in its manifold manifestations makes me want to scream or punch someone or burn something down, even though I'm by nature the mildest, lamest and laziest granny bog creature you will find on this server. Instead both me and bf were throwing up all weekend forcing us into a well-needed rest and re-consideration as to whether this official kind of organizing is even worth it. (Not the event and community organizing, but the closeness to government/authorities/asking permission etc. vs hiding in the bushes and connecting informally.)
For sorting my own thoughts and to create a sort of presentation/survey for local online groups and market visitors and participants, I have started writing down a few considerations and thoughts about forming a cooperative vs association vs no organization at all. Hope to get a better overview about people's needs and ideas and resume it into something actionable towards the beginning of summer in the latest (leave some days per month for throwing up?). Note to self: my notes are taking overhand, what do?)
To not finish this somewhat tattered report with vomit and worries, here's a wholesome bit: I scored a few hours of babysitting last week! Interacting with a little one resets heart and mind towards the important things, to remember who we are doing this for.
On Monday, instead of getting the last bits of gear for the event organized, we suddenly found out we are in major trouble with the site owner. Early on, after he already had agreed verbally to our event, I had sent him a text message to inform him of the support of the council and our event date. He (as I found out now) didn't like the way I did this and decided to simply not respond, but I booked it under 'Didn't say no, will follow up later..' and forgot about it all while we were getting busy with other details.
I got yelled at on the phone about not having his final authorization, which is not a nice experience for someone who is already really phone-phobic on the best of days. I believe I could make out 'we still would like to help' and 'agreement still on' between 'THIS IS NOT DONE LIKE THIS' and 'AN EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL WAY OF HANDLING THINGS' and a lot I couldn't really understand. It reminds me that this project is to build a future where you don't have to beg to people who have more properties than they can care for. But as things are, I had to admit I should have followed up with him, had to write a very polite email describing our event and project in detail.
At the same time me and bf had to agree we don't really like the idea of having to make the site safe. It's a bit of a nightmare in more spots than we had initially realized. Also, the lack of tree shade and natural surroundings seems too off-putting for quite a few of the market people, and we also have had feedback that people would like to have regular markets.
So we've decided to take the market serious as its own thing. I composed another email to the council asking for a better spot (the prime recreational spot in the area). Said we would like to talk about regular markets, and could have an association in place tomorrow to more easily formalize any support from them. We've also, just for ourselves, lined up a few other alternative sites. Something will turn up. We had a talk about the anxiety that comes with all this, and concluded we still lighthearted enough about the whole thing, and will just stubbornly continue to organize, apart from Monday when my period doomsday coincided with the sudden site trouble and I spent the day crying about a range of different matters, as expected.
After a few anxiety-filled days with a market floating in empty space (while still receiving registrations for stands), we got answers from both the original site owner and the council. Council wants to meet us again and make us a proposal. Get the wedding party started. They did not tell us what the proposal is, so now we enjoy a few forced days off, slightly nervous, but we welcome the opportunity to imagine in more detail what we want to dream up here - markets, coop, a permanent space for both projects ... after talking to so many different people out there we now know more about what would be interesting and helpful for people, and what we would personally like to be involved in.
We went to a meeting of another group wanting to set up a cooperative. The question keeps floating in the room: start with one larger cooperative or several small ones? Knowing that it is difficult for most people to work together even in small groups (I explain it with the fact that we all are re-learning how to work self-organized in community) I tend to favour starting with smaller groups. For now, we all seem to be studying, learning and stretching out feelers in different directions to find out what each person wants from a coop, which doesn't always coincide. It's good to find this out before sitting in an already existing coop together, so I tend to prefer wanting to meet more people and different combinations of smaller groups during the next few months, to find out who vibes together, which isn't always obvious. Taking it slow but steady in this phase, learning together but not stubbornly insisting in walking towards one or many coops right now, we might end up with a reasonable number of stable coops with the right people working together. Imagine the positive boost for a region where more and more people work together democratically and self-organize.
The surprising success so far (nobody has stopped us, we did not get arrested yet, event keeps collecting registrations) and the sudden shift in our lives from hermits to socialites is taking its toll. And that is something I was less prepared for: when your plan is working and that you are creating something you are now co-responsible for this something. Before, while you are just spinning something out of nothing you do not carry the weight of the already existing.
As a person with a cycle I will have at least one PMS day of doom per moon. As my little monthly doomsday approaches, it leads to the above philosophizing, some agonizing and to me writing poems, and I start realizing how it starts to be more difficult to keep track of all the stuff I'm doing and that I urgently need a day off. Luckily a friend has invited to some adventure that involves walking lots of kilometers, so off I go for a half a day, which is usually a good recipe to get my feet back on the ground.
Next week will see us busy renting a generator, meet people about music, transport, other support, hopefully get stuff delivered to pre-assemble our compost toilets, keep collecting registrations and start cleaning the place - we don't really trust the council to do this well or in time so we decided to be prepared and pro-active. I'm trying to get the school involved, maybe have some art done by the kids during the market and bring more people in, and it looks like someone has arranged a meeting with the director next week. Back to school, ugh, but I'll happily make that sacrifice if we can fill the heads of kids with silly ideas.
Now with the market growing I start having ideas of exposing my shabby little machinery collection - the ram pumps, a solar oven, which adds another two days of work to the preparations. Probably won't have time for all that.
More people are coming out of the woodwork about creating cooperatives, which is excellent, and also leads to more, sometimes difficult to organize, meetings.
We've hired a bouncy castle (bf insists it's crucial for any event, I suspect he just wants to get a good bounce himself), went to the alternative fair and second hand market two towns away and distributed flyers (and got more good food, some chili plants and some good bits of talk in the process). We met the local organizer of that fair who recently came to local fame by chasing the police off the market grounds and tearing up their notes when they got too annoying taking people's identities. An approach to keep in mind.
I have set up a meeting with a small group of people who might create a special corner at the event where ideas, wishes, inspiration for a cooperative and community center can be gathered. Incidentally: as in my mind a gradual shift from community center to cooperative happened, someone dear and close has objected to anything too business-focused, and they have a point. Where on one hand the beast having some outside legal structure would make a lot of things more easy - on the other hand the inside form of support and solidarity must be remembered, and remain the inner core of this. Edit: the small group is growing larger. Looks like we are having a full on meeting about the community itself.
The small-ish group of people (or local witches' coven as bf preferred to call it) gathered (more tasty food) and a lot of positive energy towards the event was generated, messages sent out, support organized, it was also the first time I had occasion to present a somewhat coherent version of the whole project idea (not just the event) to a few people who all seem to be the competent, not easily offended, practically-minded types who could actually pull off something good. Whatever that might be. Someone asked me how I would feel if all that came out of the event were more regular events in the future, and no coop. I said I would consider it great, that I'd be happy with anything more than what we've got now.
Someone else reminded me of something important I must not forget: if I want people to join a cooperative I need to explain what a cooperative is. And that will force me to actually understand all the intricate details of how coop accounting and employment and decision taking works. The last person to arrive today turned out to know accounting for normal (non-cooperative) companies in the country and is really motivated to get involved, it will be super-helpful to have someone ELI5 me the terminology and concepts!
I had a lot of questions about the money today. I'm actually dumping some of my savings into this (as a somewhat unusual investment in the future). Not horrible amounts, but I don't really have an income right now and just set a sum aside and decided to make this event happen. I suspect some people might think I'm secretly rich, hope to be able to clear that up. I also hope that some paid work (or better, work within a coop setup) comes my way after the event, to stock up the savings again which are for buying our own small homestead. If we blow too much on parties it will be a really tiny homestead lol.
I've decided to create an instance of Agora to connect people interested in cooperative activities. It's the result of quite a few different self-hosting experiments around different collaboration online services and fediverse platforms. For the people I am trying to serve the Fediverse would be too much at this point I think, so a collaboration platform with a simple news board, file sharing, forum, chat (which I might remove as it will get mixed up with the forum) and neat email functions so send group emails.
After many painful attempts at conversations with people who go visibly dead inside when a technical term like 'server' is mentioned, I realized it needs to be very very simple. The somewhat retro look of Agora might actually help the users find their way around. Then again, someone just added me to yet another Whatsapp group around discussing sth sth cooperative, only that by the nature of Whatsapp I can't see what has been discussed already, so we might as well start at point zero, and that's where I go dead inside o_O
I hate big corpo social media with a passion, so I'm happy to start assembling a few people on this tiny Agora...
I only needed 9 users (incidentally the amount necessary to create a cooperative) to have the first disagreement. Anyway the platform will be more useful when an actual cooperative or other groups are formed that want to coordinate things. For networking to get new people to join it's not really useful, but I like to know that it works before it's needed.
In the background, some drama around a food buying group organized by another budding coop further away took place, and there always seems to be someone who ends up offended. Well. I've also been added to a messenger group of yet another currently offended party of the surroundings, and of course will try to make them un-offended and involved in the event. I'm curious if I meet anyone on this interesting adventure who manages to push my buttons, it's been a while since I've been offended. Being neurofunky seems to help, mostly I don't even notice when people are trying to be mean (and I might realize it weeks later but by then it's just funny).
All in all, a lot of good vibes are being generated. Yesterday I walked into the local builders shop, our potential neighbours, to drop some flyers, and they were positively enchanted, and will hopefully help out with some material. This evening, people were beaming, and thanking (?) me (??) schmorp, a simple bog creature (???), for creating this initiative!
If you are a lonely bog creature out there reading this: maybe you find it in you to try and build something for your community. Maybe they really enjoy it! What would you like to see thriving? Dream it up, and make it one step at a time! (DISCLAIMER: For some things, one step at a time can mean years. If you are a very young bog creature you might have to start small, or first learn a lot of things. But if you just proceed honestly and stubbornly, seeds will fall and grow!
If you have tried several self-hosting platforms like the above, please share your experience.
I have so far only tried Yunohost and I'm quite satisfied. It does help to read French, sometimes solutions can be hidden in French forum topics.
Coop Cloud seems to be docker-based, as far as I understand, and I just never managed to wrap my head around containers and why I should use them. Not sure though if Yunohost does container stuff in the background that I am not aware of?
I've just started to use my Yunohost installation for some small scale collaborative stuff so I really hope it scales (to probably not more than 100 users) and keeps running smoothly. Starting to host common stuff is a little more scary than just fucking up my own private files.
This week we have been starting to reach out to the local foreign community, both personally and on social media. As home butchers, punk rockers and fairly old farts we don't have that much overlap with many of the younger folks who are mostly into yoga, spiritual stuff and vegetarian food. But everybody loves to get together on markets, and everybody is affected by the overwhelm of general dystopia combined with trying to build something better in a foreign country. People do want to build some form of community.
So just by going out there and meeting people (involving food always helps to make things more enjoyable!) a lot of things are happening already. We are eating a lot of cake. We gave away quite a few of the many trees we left to sprout over winter. Hope people care for them and plant them out! We also were gifted seeds, plants and good advice. I met someone again who had kept Harold, a long-forgotten sourdough I once made, alive over 4 years - it brought me to tears to get some of that fucker back and bake good bread again! A solar oven, built during an earlier project attempt, might resurface at some time and a better follow-up model be built.
Why I now believe wholeheartedly that even the tiniest push towards better is always worth it, no matter how weak it seems to be? All this grows on seeds that were planted in the past, where somebody went to some effort to create a world with more kindness and more diversity. A welding workshop for girls I attended when I was 12, organized by some feminist youth worker group in my city. A non-religious temporary tea temple on a beach and the most simple spirituality being a freely offered cup. Human decency in places where I was told it couldn't exist. Seeing someone daring to be different, and taking courage from that. Making a sourdough, and giving it away to someone. Someone choosing to run a decidedly hopeful Lemmy instance.
Whatever you can do, even if its immediate impact seems too small to matter, will matter. Maybe it takes 40 years to reach a noticable size, but it's never lost.
Next steps: I expect a lot more cake in the next weeks, and have invited a few people to discuss cooperative ideas.
Now we need to take care of the practical things for the market. We didn't like the mega-corporation attitude of the toilet rental, so we decided to be cheeky and will set up compost toilets on top of IBCs. If somebody wants to cause a stink because some law let them bring it on. We are also planning a pre-party to clean the space and build the toilets.
@schmorpel
@slrpnk.net