My (Somewhat) Walkable, (Somewhat) Russian Neighborhood

I'd like to begin this post with a greeting: “Привет!” Or, for those who want something more formal, “Здравствуйте.” (I think I said that right...)

In the waning months of 2007, I relocated to Portland from Southern California. Guided by information I had gleaned from Jules Dervaes and the Path to Freedom Urban Homestead project,I looked for smaller, cheaper houses with large yards. I found such a house, a Korean War-era home in what seemed to be a very ordinary neighborhood, with a big back yard and a price low enough that I could easily and quickly pay it off.

During that winter, I also bought a copy of Reinventing Collapse, a book by Dmitry Orlov. For those who are not familiar with the book, Orlov was something of an eyewitness to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he postulated that similarities between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. meant that the U.S. is likely to experience its own collapse in the near future. However, key differences between the former Soviet Union and the United States meant that a collapse which was difficult but survivable for the Soviets would prove to be much harder on Americans. I found myself agreeing with most of what Mr. Orlov wrote, yet I found some of his suggestions for adaptation a bit hard to swallow. I resolved that if I ever met any Russians who had experienced the collapse, I would check their version of the story against Orlov's.

A few months later, I started noticing that when I was out doing yardwork at certain times on Saturdays, I could see large groups of well-dressed people walking down the streets near my home. Some of these groups were families, led by men wearing leather jackets if they were young, or suits if they were older, with wives wearing what I would call “Sunday” dresses and occasional scarves on their heads, and leading quiet, serious-faced children behind them. I guessed that they were foreigners, and occasionally I waved at them. I was pretty sure they were Slavic, and one day on a hunch, I said “Добрый день” to an older man as he was walking by. He burst into a broad grin and returned the greeting, then started talking excitedly to me. I very quickly ran out of words, and he saw that he had over-taxed me.

From that time I became intrigued by these people. Who exactly were they, I wondered, and where did they all walk to on Saturdays? Several Saturdays later, I was going somewhere on my bike and I ran across a young group of these walkers. I greeted them in Russian, and they returned the greeting, and then I asked them in English where they were all going. “To church,” an eleven or twelve-year-old boy said. “Do you want to come?” “Well,” I replied, “I've got an errand to run...” “You should come some time,” he said. “You're welcome to visit.” And with that he and his friends kept walking.

Eventually I did visit a few of their Saturday services, which were all conducted in Russian, and consisted of three or four Russian men from the congregation delivering sermons of short to medium length, interspersed with Psalm-singing, and ending with a time of prayer. I had to rely entirely on an interpreter in order to understand anything, and at first I wound up with a different interpreter every time I went. But eventually I befriended one of the volunteer translators, a young married man with a dry sense of humor.

I loaned him a copy of Reinventing Collapse, and as he slowly made his way through it, I asked him from time to time what he thought. He confessed that he probably wouldn't be much help in confirming any of the statements about the Soviet Union in the book, as he was very young when he came to the United States, and didn't remember much of Russia. But he had some very interesting observations about how his community fit into our local area, and the ways in which Russian young men and women come to terms with American culture. Through him I have made the acquaintance, and in some cases, the friendship, of a few Russian families and their children.

In talking to them all, certain things became evident. First, as to their church, they all believe in keeping a literal Sabbath once a week. For them, this Sabbath is Saturday. The devoted members among them believe that Sabbath-keeping means giving a rest not only to oneself but also to the gadgets one normally uses, including automobiles. Thus they don't drive on Saturdays, and they walk to church. Now I am not a member of their church, nor do I subscribe to everything they believe, but I do see that this view of theirs has led to the formation of geographically tight, closely connected sub-communities of people – communities such as the people I see walking to church every Saturday. Maintaining physical connectedness in a neighborhood of such people is not difficult.

Secondly, the culture of their church combines with the culture of their native lands to produce a definite separation from mainstream Americanism. There are at least some of their number who do not own a television set, and among the rest, there is a strong tendency to create opportunities for face-to-face, participatory activities like weeknight volleyball and soccer leagues that leave no time for passively sitting in front of a TV. A big contributor to the separation from Americanism is the fact that Russian is the primary language spoken in many of their households, and those who can afford it often send their children to a special Russian school after regular public school in order to learn to read and write in Russian.

Thirdly, there are those Russian customs which they maintain apart from religion, customs which are characteristic of a people who have had to make do for themselves to a much greater extent than most Americans have experienced. I remember talking to two Russian boys about summer vacation, and what they were doing with themselves while school was out. They began describing to me their adventures in building a chicken coop and getting baby chicks; then they told me about the cat, the dog and the pigeons they also have, as well as their very large food garden and the two dozen or so fruit trees in their yard. (It was enough to make any would-be urban homesteader drool...) A few days later, I questioned their mom about these things, and told her how her family's lifestyle wasn't quite the typical “American” experience, and she said, “I don't understand Americans. In my country, we don't throw anything away, and we don't buy special food for the dog. The dog eats the scraps that the people don't eat.”

Speaking of chickens, my neighborhood is not near the trendy downtown of Portland, with its base of yuppies who are “discovering” the joys of sustainable living, including chicken-keeping. In my neighborhood, most native-born Americans still think that chicken-keeping is something of an oddity. But they do know of certain families who keep chickens, and these families just happen to be...Russian! Within the church community I have been describing, there is also at least one very competent bee-keeper. And within that church community, the Russian heritage of self-sufficiency is somewhat amplified by a religiously motivated distrust of certain aspects of Americanism.

Now note this: most of these people have never heard of Peak Oil or the Transition Towns movement, nor are they familiar with the writings of some of the deep thinkers and heavyweights who write about our present economic collapse. Yet many of them have a common-sense awareness that these times will require us to live differently, and their common culture has led them quite independently to adopt a resilient living arrangement. Thus they have:

• a close-knit, walkable community

• a heritage of practices of self-sufficiency

• and a cultural identity which is their own, and which can't be commercially redefined away from them.

They already know things that so many in the English-speaking world are “discovering” (or more accurately, “re-discovering”). This is true also of other Slavic and Eastern European sub-communities in the United States. I think especially of the aspect of maintaining one's culture in the midst of a larger culture that seeks to dissolve everything else in order to extract maximal wealth from all that it dissolves, and I think of a Romanian man I know who has a large family, and who will not allow a television in his house. Instead, he has paid for instruments and music lessons for all his children, and they regularly get together on weekends for jam sessions. I have never visited his church, but I'd like to go some day and see how well it has resisted “Americanization.”

I also think of how, when gas prices were first starting to spike from 2005 to 2007, there were yuppie writers on “sustainability” fretting over whether mainstream America would “discover” alternatives to driving, like bicycle commuting. It seemed like they were waiting for the day when the streets would be full of pale-skinned Anglo people in lycra riding pannier-laden recumbents to work. But in 2007, it began to dawn on me that a large number of people had already discovered bicycle commuting (or more accurately, had never forgotten it). They were the Mexican laborers whom I saw at 5:30 in the morning riding the streets with me on their older Magna bicycles, yet they never made it onto the radar of the “sustainability” writers. (The Mexicans also knew about buses long before the mainstream began to "rediscover" mass transit in 2008.)

I don't wish to disparage the efforts of mainstream Americans to “discover” sustainable living and to create resilient communities. But I think as time passes, many of these people will find that they are “discovering” things that immigrant communities already knew long ago.

In my next post on this subject, I will discuss a particular group of people who are trying to break out from the American mainstream. There is no shortage of people who are trying to do this, but there are elements of the stories of the people I will write about that I think you all will find to be quite relevant. (And if you read the Energy Bulletin website this next week, you might find writers trying to second-guess what I will say... ;) Stay tuned, or to put it another way, Watch This Space.

The Polyculture of Resilient Neighborhoods

I've been “out-of-pocket” for the last several weeks. This has been mainly due to my part-time teaching position as an adjunct at a local college. But now that finals have been administered and grades have been given, I have a bit of time to breathe and think.

One of the themes that was in the back of my mind is the subject of people, families and communities whose choices have positioned them for maximum survivability in this present time of resource depletion and economic collapse – even though they made their choices for entirely different reasons at the time those choices were made. I've recently met or read about a few such people and families, and have noted those elements of survivability in their lives which they chose for cultural or religious reasons, without necessarily thinking beforehand of the application of those elements to hard times. One characteristic of all these people is their separateness from the prevailing American culture. Over the next few posts, I'd like to explore the cultural roots (both religious and secular) of that separation, how it has made these people resistant to assimilation in present American culture, and lessons we can learn from these people as we seek to form resilient neighborhoods and communities in the face of ongoing economic collapse.

I'll state at the outset my hypothesis that the most resilient neighborhoods in the United States will turn out to be composed of a number of heterogeneous cultures whose members maintain certain key cultural distinctions while learning from members of differing cultures. The members of the component cultures of such neighborhoods will engage in reaching out to members of differing cultures within their neighborhoods, forming a common, somewhat weakly binding meta-culture of common courtesy and customs within which the component cultures exist as distinct entities. Within the over-arching meta-culture, there will be opportunities for cross-pollination between the members of the component cultures, with results that are hopefully beneficial to all.

On the other hand, neighborhoods (and larger entities such as cities, counties and states) which are predominantly monocultural will probably tend to be less resilient. If the predominant monoculture is that of present-day commercial America, these neighborhoods will likely be far less resilient.

Why is a polyculture more resilient than a monoculture in the face of changing times and hardships? Examples of the answer to that question can be seen in the realms of biology, ecology and computational networks. Regarding computing, it's no secret that Microsoft Windows is at present the main operating system used by computers in the United States (although Linux distributions are chipping away at this dominance). It's also no secret that the vast majority of computers in the world use processor chips made by Intel. And it's no secret that, as stated in Wikipedia, “all [such] computers have the same vulnerabilities, and like agricultural monocultures, are subject to catastrophic failure in the event of a successful attack.” That's why antivirus companies like McAfee and Norton have a brisk business, and it is also why Windows can be such a royal pain to use. Polycultural computing is inherently more resistant to damage and attacks from viruses; thus it is more resilient.

When speaking of culture as applied to human communities, I am thinking of the dictionary definition: “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a...group...the set of shared attitudes, values, goals and practices that characterizes a company...” (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Ninth Edition). What can be said of present-day American culture? (By the way, this applies, more or less, to the entire English-speaking world.)

It is first of all a culture of consumption and consumerism. People are trained from an early age to base their identity on the quantities and types of things they own. The definition of who is “normal” and how much is “enough” is left up to advertisers, marketers and growth capitalists who are forever “moving the goal-posts” in order to promote ever-increasing consumption. Cultural norms are routinely redefined so that what was “cool” five minutes ago is no longer cool. This produces an ever-present restlessness, an ever-accelerating struggle to “keep up with the times,” and an ever-increasing outlay of cash for those things that will make a person fit in with those who are “with it.”

This culture acts as a “universal solvent” in that it puts pressure on those who don't fit in or who haven't been assimilated into it. Recent immigrants and their children are judged on whether they have been properly “Americanized”; if their children lag behind in this process, they are deemed to be somehow “unhealthy.” “What?! He doesn't have an i-Phone?? You're isolating him; that's not good for his socialization!” As a universal solvent, mass American culture gradually strips away all competing cultural identities and distinctions. (An example of this: I was riding the MAX a few weeks ago when I saw four Asian teens getting on at one of the stops. Their accents were unmistakable, and marked them clearly as foreign-born, yet they were each wearing baggy shorts at least three sizes too big for them, along with oversized T-shirts that hadn't been washed in a few days and bling jewelry and sideways baseball hats with flat brims, and they were all cussing and swearing like homeboys – even down to the rhythm of the cuss words. Mighty strange...)

It's no surprise that the mass-produced culture of American consumerism should be hostile to all other cultures, since the existence of these other entities poses a threat to the growth of the profits of the masters of American culture. But there are other maladaptive cultures which are distinctively American and which seek to make themselves a dominant monoculture to the exclusion of all other cultures in America. I am thinking specifically of certain tendencies and ways of thinking embodied in the Tea-baggers and the more hard-core members of the Republican Party, who seem to want to create a pure white-bread version of the United States centered on some sort of Southern Baptist/Pentecostal/Revived Confederate-Antebellum culture in which members of other races and non-English speaking members of any other culture are either wiped out or subjugated.

There are two ways in which this thinking is expressed. First, there are those who through political action are seeking to “take back America for God!!!” – at least, for the God of their own imaginations, who seems to have promised them everlasting material prosperity which they would never be required to share with anyone else. Second, there are those who correctly see that the prospects for “taking America back” don't look very good; therefore they have chosen to buy gold, guns, baked beans and land, and to form militias to combat the waiting hordes of savage zombies who will arrive when their version of the Apocalypse kicks off.

In my opinion, elements of this second kind of thinking can be seen in the Life After the Oil Crash website of Matt Savinar. When I was first learning about Peak Oil in 2007, I used to read his site a lot, but over the last year, I've lost my taste for the some of the adaptive strategies he seems to espouse, as I think they are actually maladptive from a social and moral standpoint. We can't all run off to the hills. If we all try, many of us will find that our mutually exclusive claims to the best mountain hideaways are being extinguished via 30-06 or 5.56 mm ball ammunition. For that matter, those who try to purge America's various neighborhoods and communities of all cultural inputs and presences which they deem to be “un-American” will only make a destroyed mess. After all, those who are being “purged” will rightly object to such treatment, and they may object quite effectively.

How then should we view the existence of multiple distinct cultures in our neighborhoods? First, we who have been thoroughly Americanized should recognize that we have many things to learn from those who haven't been. Those who come from countries where life was harder and poorer have much to teach us about adaptive strategies for our own upcoming times of hardship and poverty. The biggest thing we can learn from them is the cultivation of a healthy, realistic state of mind – something which is lacking among many people who are “Americanized.” I am thinking of my neighborhood, which not only contains native-born Americans, but which also has large Russian and Hispanic populations, along with Asians and people from various African nations. Over the next few posts I will explore some of the lessons I have discovered in talking with these people (many of whom refuse to “fit into” American culture entirely) as well as telling the stories of some Americans who have begun to withdraw themselves from some of the worst and most corrosive elements of American culture. I also have a technology-related interview I am trying to line up. Stay tuned...

For more on this subject, check out the following:

• Immigration in America: Becoming Americanized : NPR

• Becoming Americanized can be depressing | ZDNet

Place-Making For People of Small Means

Placemaking (or place-making) can be defined as, “the process of creating squares, plazas, parks, streets and waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable or interesting...Being in places involves social encounters, immersion in the sights, sounds, sun, wind and atmosphere of a locale, and curiosity about the traces of thought, imagination and investment that have guided their construction and use over time. ” (Wikipedia, Placemaking.)

Another definition is, “An integrated and transformative process that connects creative and cultural resources to build authentic, dynamic and resilient communities or place.” (Toronto Artscape, Glossary.) I like this definition much better.

One of the challenges of this present time of economic contraction is figuring out how to make the places where we live into places that sustain us on a number of levels. This involves not only trying to create places that provide some or all of the essentials we need, but also creating places that encourage and promote a sense of community.

Some writers and thinkers have addressed this challenge, notably architects and urban planners from the “New Urbanist” movement. Their assumption has been that placemaking is primarily an activity reserved for governments, developers and other large entities with lots of resources to create well-designed, resilient communities from the ground up, or to re-fashion defunct, poorly designed communities into the sorts of communities that could be called good places to live. Things like redevelopment, transit-oriented development and gentrification come to mind when discussing the re-fashioning process.

The problem is that the money and resources for such a refashioning have already been largely blown in the United States. It's as if the nation collectively went to a store with $5 in its pocket, and blew the money on candy and soda instead of beans, rice and vegetables. Some key writers and economic analysts believe that the industrialized world in general, and the United States in particular, are in the early stages of a massive deflationary depression which will destroy the ability of large-scale entities like governments to do anything on a large scale.

It will therefore be up to ordinary citizens to make good places out of the places where they live. But there's another challenge, namely, that not that many of us own our own living places outright, and even now, not many can afford to pay for a place in cash. A deflationary depression will cause a drop in prices of assets like real estate, yet it will depress wages even faster. Such a drop in wages will make it hard for people who own “on margin” (that is, who owe money on the houses they “own”) to continue making payments on their debt, and it will turn many other people into sojourners without definite roots, as many young people in college and recent college graduates are now.

How can these renters - young people in college or recently graduated, and working poor people - make sustainable places for themselves in the places they rent? How can they make their neighborhoods into sustainable places? How can they engage in good placemaking?

In an attempt to answer that question, I interviewed Neil and Naomi Montacre, proprietors of Naomi's Organic Farm Supply in inner southeast Portland, Oregon. I first met Neil and Naomi during a tour of homes with backyard chicken coops in 2008. Their house impressed me, with its large chicken coop, its varied gardens, its “Hens for Obama” sign and a poster with pictures giving a guided tour of the place and their efforts. I asked them several questions about their place, the plans and steps they had taken in altering the place, and its impact on the neighborhood. In 2009, they added a greenhouse and more garden plantings. This year, they moved to a leased property of about an acre where they set up their store, and they continued with the activities and philosophy they had developed while living in their former house. In all these things, they took bold steps with property they were renting, to make that property a place that could at least partially sustain them.

In this week's interview, Neil talks in more detail about their activities with rental properties, and his philosophy regarding making good places out of the places where people live. The interview can be found at the Internet Archive, under the title, “Place-making For People Of Small Means.” There's also a video on Vimeo which shows a partial tour of Naomi and Neil's new location, as well as an interview with another renter in inner southeast Portland. The video can be found at Place-Making for People of Small Means, or you can watch it by clicking on the link below. Note how prominently urban agriculture figures in both examples of placemaking.

Place-Making for People of Small Means from TH in SoC on Vimeo.

Post-Peak Finance for Vulnerable Neighborhoods

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I am pleased to present another interview this week. The themes of today's interview are banking and local neighborhoods during a time of economic contraction. This week's guests are Scott Bossom, Vice President/Credit Administrator for Albina Bank (Martin Luther King branch) and Teri L. Karren-Keith, Vice President/Branch Manager, Albina Bank (Martin Luther King branch). They both graciously gave me an hour of their time for today's talk. Albina Community Bank is a locally-owned bank in Portland with a reputation for strongly supporting the local community, and especially minority neighborhoods.

In arranging for this interview, I sent Mr. Bossom a note in which I outlined my questions thus:

“I have three general areas of interest. First, there's the subject of the general future of finance in an age of economic contraction caused by the depletion of natural resources. Others have written on this topic (for instance, there's Gail Tverberg's work at http://www.ourfiniteworld.com/finite_world_issues.html and http://gailtheactuary.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/our-world-is-finite-is-this-a-problem/), but I'd like to know how banks view this issue.

“Second, there's the subject of how economic contraction affects local communities. Specifically, what barriers are now appearing in front of people who want to finance projects? Especially, what existing hindrances faced by vulnerable communities are now being amplified by economic situation? How have big banks contributed to making vulnerable communities even more vulnerable?

“Third, what can local communities – especially working-class and poor communities – do now to finance necessary projects? How is Albina Bank helping these communities? And have locally-owned banks experimented with emerging approaches like establishing local currencies and microloans for small-scale businesses?”

These questions laid the groundwork for our discussion. During the interview, we talked about the current local economic picture, and whether that picture actually lines up with government and mainstream media reports of economic “recovery.” Scott and Teri told me of the weaknesses in the commercial real estate market, and the impact of resource shortages on the decisions of local banks. Terry voiced the opinion that our present crisis will not suddenly go away.

I asked point-blank, “What have big banks done to destabilize local neighborhoods?”, and we talked about the impact of predatory and discriminatory lending practices by big banks such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo. (For more on this subject, and on discriminatory pushing of subprime mortgages on minorities, see “Wells Fargo, Ghetto Loans, and 'Mud People',” “Race Discrimination Lawsuit Filed Against Bank of America, N.A.,” “Countrywide Sued For Discriminating Against Black And Latino Mortgage Buyers” and “Study Finds Disparities in Mortgages by Race”.) And we discussed the Fox News reports from several months ago, which blamed minorities and Federal anti-discrimination laws for the subprime crisis of 2008. Scott and Teri were genuinely surprised by this sort of reporting (both stated that they do not watch Fox), and wondered how Fox managed to create such a story.

(On a completely unrelated subject, it seems that Fox and spokespeople like Sarah Palin are now blaming the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf oil spill on environmentalists and left-leaning members of the Federal government. In both the subprime case and the case of offshore oil drilling, the right-wing message is the same: “Oh, here, look at this mess that we've made. Only, it's not our fault! The mess has actually been caused by people trying to pass some semblance of laws designed to keep us from making a mess!” If lying made people rich...but then again, these people are rich.)

Regarding subprime loans, we discussed the fact that lenders deliberately presented a picture to potential borrowers that was not clear or full. Scott tied this in to credit card policies that are also deliberately made unclear, in order to insure that borrowers are liable to be penalized.

We talked about what vulnerable communities can do to become resilient and self-sufficient. Teri stressed the value of localism and supporting local businesses. Scott mentioned microloans and organizations such as Mercy Corps who provide guidance to small businesses. Both Scott and Teri agreed that there is a swell of interest in entrepreneurship and starting one's own business among people in the Portland metro area. I mentioned the rise of local currencies, which seems to be a new concept to those who are involved in traditional banking.

Lastly, we tried peering into the future of banking in an age of general economic contraction and collapse, and Scott and Teri shared their perspectives of what such a future might look like. Teri returned to a simple prescription for the survival of local banks in such a time: to focus on community relationships and actions that build trust.

A podcast of the interview can be downloaded from the Internet Archive at this address: Post-Peak Finance For Vulnerable Neighborhoods.

Repost - "Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods"

I've got another interview coming up this weekend, God willing. In preparation for that interview, I thought it would be good to mention “Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods”, a post I wrote several months ago. That post talks about the challenges facing neighborhoods in the United States in this time of economic collapse, challenges made worse in many cases by institutional policies of economic persecution directed against minority communities. It is a good preparation for this next interview which will explore of some of these policies further, as well as general financial issues confronting urban neighborhoods. It's a bit late in the day to be talking about some of these issues – I don't know how much can be done at this stage of the game. Nevertheless, it can't hurt to talk about these things.

Post-Peak Education - A Grassroots Teaching Model

I am pleased to present another interview for this week's post. This past Friday, I had another opportunity to visit Holly Scholles, founder of Birthingway College of Midwifery in Portland, Oregon. We continued our discussion of what post-Peak health care might look like, and then we moved on to this week's main subject – a discussion of post-Peak education. Holly is uniquely qualified to discuss post-Peak education, due to her experiences in founding a college, and as a homeschooling parent.

We discussed both K-12 and post-secondary education and how traditional educational avenues, both public and private, are being imperiled by the shrinkage of revenues due to our ongoing economic collapse. A surprising fact surfaced, namely that Oregon public higher education tuition fees are now nearly equal to fees charged by some of the private colleges in Oregon. (For more on rising tuition fees, see FinAid | Saving for College | Tuition Inflation and College Tuition: Inflation or Hyperinflation?, for instance.) Why are college and university fees rising at such a rapid rate? Where is all that money going?

We didn't answer those questions in this interview, but we did discuss an alternative model: education that is relationship-based, small-scale, with reasonable fees charged by people who understand the concept of “enough.” Holly described an education system comprised of only four elements: motivated learners, able teachers (or coaches or facilitators), a good library and an environment conducive to learning. She stated that all these elements can be provided inexpensively.

She also described the organic process by which Birthingway started and by which it grew, and described how that process might happen for people in working-class neighborhoods who want to create local neighborhood classes and other learning opportunities for themselves and their children. We discussed a hypothetical example of a neighborhood whose members decide to start an urban farming class, and the process by which that class would grow – from gathering a library to attracting learners and other facilitators. From there we talked about the need for a revival of teaching of practical skills of the sort that have been lost due to reliance on technology and globalism.

We discussed many other things related to education, but these are the highlights. A recording of the interview can be downloaded from the Internet Archive at “Post-peak Education – A Grassroots Teaching Model.” As time permits, I hope to be able to post a transcript as well. (And I still owe you all a transcript of my last interview with Holly.) From the interview, it will be very obvious that a system that actually educates people is very different from what we have now, by and large, in the United States - a system whose purpose is mainly to institutionalize instead of educating.

I've got another interview coming up in the next few weeks. I can't say what it's about yet, but I think many of you will be very interested. Stay tuned...

Managing Trees, Stormwater and Hunger in the City

As I mentioned in a recent post, I recently participated in a community tree planting effort. The mass planting took place on the 13^th of March, and was hosted by Friends of Trees, a non-profit group that seeks to revitalize urban environments through planting trees in urban neighborhoods.

This mass planting was part of a larger effort by the City of Portland, known as the “Gray to Green Initiative,” an effort to reduce City stormwater runoff and associated sewage infrastructure costs by the use of natural, living methods. This is an important priority for the City government, which has faced both regulatory requirements and fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency because of inadequate treatment of sewage flows into the Willamette River. The regulatory requirements and lack of adequate treatment led to the “Big Pipe” project and other recent sewage infrastructure modernization efforts.

But the City's Bureau of Environmental Services realizes that technology-heavy infrastructure upgrades are expensive, and that sooner or later the capacity of even an upgraded sewage system can be exceeded through population growth, aging infrastructure and continued urban construction. Thus they have begun to promote living, natural methods of reducing stormwater runoff, and resulting sewage overflows. These living, natural methods include tree plantings and “eco-roofs” – living, literally green roofs whose plants intercept stormwater before it can flow into City gutters and storm drains. The promotion of natural, living methods of dealing with stormwater runoff and sewage will become increasingly important in the near future, as cities lose tax revenue and the ability to maintain expensive sewage treatment systems due to our ongoing economic collapse.

As far as the planting day went, I had a lot of fun. It was a good experience for neighbors to meet each other in the process of doing something that benefited the common good. Also, Friends of Trees were able to address not only stormwater issues, but the issue of local, community-based food production, as this year they began offering low-cost fruit and nut trees to interested homeowners. (I got my very own apple tree!) The fruit trees were so popular that most of them sold out long before the planting day.

For those who want to see what a planting day looks like, I also shot some video of the event, which can be found on Vimeo under this link. Or you can watch it here:

Managing Trees, Stormwater and Hunger in the City from TH in SoC on Vimeo.

Crime, The Informal Economy, And Dark-Skinned People

This week I read a post on Sharon Astyk's blog, Casaubon's Book. The title of the post was “The Recession is Dead, Long Live the Recession: Life Without Jobs”. Her post dealt with recent economic data and analysis that indicates that the job losses arising from this current recession will take a very long time to be recovered, if they are recovered at all. She also talked about the stresses that would likely be felt by families (particularly the men) as they struggled to deal with unemployment. Lastly, she mentioned the important role played by the unofficial, informal economy in providing for the needs of people worldwide.

All in all, it was a good post, with many points that are well taken (at least by me). However, I'd like to comment on this quote from her : “...I argue in Depletion and Abundance that the informal economy, the world outside of GDP statements that includes subsistence labor, household labor, under the table labor, barter, crime (note, I'm not suggesting crime as a career here, just including this for the sake of accuracy - at this point, crime is often the only segment of the informal economy available to people, as Peck points out in his sections on minority and urban unemployment - strengthening the non-criminal informal economy is obviously to everyone's advantage) and other work that exists outside conventional calculations can do something not only to mitigate the economic costs of unemployment, but also to mitigate the social costs...” (Emphasis added.)

I'm all in favor of strengthening the informal economy and getting government out of the way of the informal economy. But it's curious that so many writers who study Peak Oil, climate change and economic collapse naturally assume that many of us are bound to become criminals, and that there's nothing anyone can do about it. What's more troubling is the assumption that crime is or will be the only option available to many minorities.

This assumption arises from the belief that crime is at present a disproportionately minority problem (especially for black and Latino communities), a belief that arises from negative media portrayals of minority communities, coupled with selectively harsh enforcement/punishment of crimes committed by minorities. But as I pointed out in my post, “Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods,” black people are no more likely to act criminal than any other ethnic group in America. To repeat statistics on one form of crime, namely drug infractions, in 2006 black Americans made up an 15 percent of drug users, but accounted for 37 percent of those arrested on drug charges, 59 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.

Even the crime that does occur in minority communities is often instigated from outside. To the extent that outside commentators notice patterns of crime in minority neighborhoods, it behooves them to ask why – just as those media talking heads commenting on the poverty in Haiti ought to be asking why. The truthful answer to “Why?” would be quite shocking.

What would be really helpful is for those with the loudest voices and the biggest podiums to take a little time to describe some of the things members of minority communities are doing to make their neighborhoods and communities more resilient. We face a perception problem, and that problem can lead to powerful people justifying taking extreme measures against our communities where such measures are unjustified. It looks like we're going to have to work much harder at getting our own story out. (For an example of this, see “Vice Magazine's Liberia Documentary Comes Under Fire”.)

I myself will be working hard to get our story out. For the story of societal collapse and of the response of resilient communities is the story of us all. I want to make sure that my brethren are included in those resilient communities that survive. Toward that end, I have a few more weekend posts to write on the American mainstream media, and how to get out from under its corrupting influence. I also hope to post another very useful interview, God willing. Stay tuned...

City of Portland Fix-It Fair, 30 January 2010 - A Summary

Here's a follow-up post regarding the Fix-It Fair I attended last weekend. The Fairs are a series of workshops hosted each year by the City of Portland staff, volunteers and nonprofit groups. The City flyer announcing the fairs describes them thus: “The Fix-It Fair is a FREE City of Portland event where you can learn simple ways to save money and connect with resources. Join your neighbors and talk to the experts about how to spend less and stay healthy.”

The Fair I attended consisted of a hall filled with exhibits and booths whose staffers gave presentations on weatherization, health and nutrition, water and energy savings, recycling and composting, environmentally friendly home maintenance and cleaning, gardening, affordable housing and resources for people on limited budgets. In addition, there were formal classes on the following topics:

• household energy conservation (including weatherization, lighting, appliances and so forth)

• creating a safe home environment ( including dealing with mold and lead contamination)

• bicycle commuting

• household budgeting for debt reduction (including one very interesting class titled, “Community Resources for Living On A Limited Budget.” I made an audio recording of that class, and I hope to post it to the Internet soon.)

• composting and gardening (including gardening basics, raised-bed gardening and tree care)

• stormwater management (including downspout disconnection, rain gardens and ecoroofs. I made some videos of the ecoroof class. Unfortunately, they are rather large, even though they are not that long, and uploading them to Youtube has been problematic.)

• and disaster preparedness and crime prevention (including a class titled “Know Your Neighborhood” as well as another very interesting class titled, “Emergencies: Beyond 72 Hours.” The “Beyond 72 Hours” class covers many things that are of interest to people adapting to a low-energy future in a collapsing economy.)

And that brings me to an observation about resources like this – namely, that while the City probably had nothing more in mind than simply trying to be helpful when they created these Fairs and their classes, resources like these can yet have applications far beyond their original intent. The Fix-It Fairs and their associated classes function to foster a resilient city – a city that is more resistant to damage caused by economic downturns and resource scarcity.

That is the goal of post-Peak planners and “preppers” generally. Our trouble is that it is very “late in the day,” so to speak, and many opportunities and resources that could have been applied to adaptation to a post-Peak world have been squandered. Our remaining resources are limited, and are dwindling. What better way to use those remaining resources than by teaching people to take care of themselves and connect with each other? This is what the City of Portland is doing. (And I'll bet that many of them haven't even heard of the “Transition Towns” movement.)

But one note of caution. While it is true that Oregon in general and Portland in particular have some very bright, foresighted and altruistic people working hard to make our place more resilient, this by no means applies to everyone who lives here. There are still many voracious, compulsive, shopaholic consumatrons speeding around in their SUV's. And there are still people (including some very rich and well-connected individuals) who would like nothing better than to dismantle all community-based safety nets and alternative arrangements, so that they can more efficiently loot this state for their own profit. I think in particular of people like Kevin Mannix and Bill Sizemore, and their attempts to collect signatures to put anti-tax initiatives on the Oregon ballot. Ironically, they also are trying to pass extreme pro-punishment ballot measures in order to swell the Oregon prison population with people convicted of non-violent crimes. This is in order to grow the “prison industry” in Oregon. My question is, who is going to pay for this? Mannix and Sizemore are using a for-profit signature-gathering firm, “Vote Oregon,” to try to get their measures on the ballot (you can see some of these “Vote Oregon” people at work if you ride the MAX a lot).

Then there's the Oregonian newspaper, which recently voiced strong opposition to Measures 66 and 67, designed to raise the tax on the wealthy and corporations by a few percentage points in order to make up for budget shortfalls. The Oregonian later published articles attacking the City of Portland's plan to increase bicycle commuting to 25 percent of all commuting trips by 2030. Surprising for a paper that's supposed to be “progressive,” isn't it? I think I'll buy a Sunday edition of the Oregonian this weekend (I need more newspaper anyway, so I can sheet-mulch some more of my backyard), and I'll count the number of ads there are for auto dealers.

Anyway, on to more pleasant subjects. Below are links to videos I took while I was at the Fix-It Fair.

Videos

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 1 – A video of Keith Berkery from the Portland Office Of Emergency Management, describing the class he teaches, titled, “Emergencies – Beyond the First 72 Hours.” He taught this class at the most recent Fix-It Fair, and is available to give special presentations to neighborhood groups.

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 2 – Brett, a staffer with the City, explains a bit of the “Portland Plan,” the development of the City's strategic plan for the next 25 years. He also explains how City residents can provide input to the plan.

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 3 – A staffer from the City explains how homeowners can reduce stormwater runoff by disconnecting their downspouts and redirecting roof runoff to rain gardens and rain barrels.

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 4 – an explanation of consumer electronics recycling by a staffer from Free Geek, a local volunteer group that recycles consumer electronics, including computers, and donates them to poor and disadvantaged individuals.

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 5 – A staffer from the Portland Housing Bureau describes the “211 Program,” an initiative to provide affordable housing to low-income residents.

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 6 – Clay Veka from the Portland Bureau of Transportation describes the “Safe Routes to School” program, which focuses on providing schoolchildren with safe biking and walking routes from their homes to their schools. (She also talked about the bike tune-ups and repairs performed by volunteers at the Fix-It Fair.)

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 7 – Kate O'Donnell from the Josiah Hill III Clinic describes the free blood lead level tests offered by the Clinic. These tests are important for people living in older housing where walls may have been painted with lead-based paint.

• Portland Fix-It Fair Interviews, Part 8 – Nicole McKinney from the Multnomah County Commission on Children, Families and Community explains the County's free financial planning resources for households. (After I recorded this video, we got to talking about neighborhood resilience and threats, such as predatory lending, that are faced by minority neighborhoods. I told her that I had covered these topics before on this blog (for those of you who are interested, see “Our Least Resilient Neighborhoods”, “Breaking Neighborhoods For Fun And Profit” and “Homeboy Culture And The Solari Index.”).)

City of Portland Fix-It Fair - 30 January 2010, Introduction

I attended a one of the City of Portland's "Fix-It" Fairs today. The Fair was held in East Portland, and consisted of a variety of classes and exhibits hosted by City departments and volunteer groups. The Fix-It Fairs are designed to foster and encourage general neighborhood resilience in the face of disasters or economic distress.

I couldn't attend all the classes I wanted to visit (there were so many, and there was just one of me). However, I was able to get a friend to do audio recordings of some of the classes while I did video interviews and a video recording of a separate class. The classes we covered discussed resources for people with low incomes, rain gutter disconnection to reduce stormwater runoff, eco-roofs for homeowners, food gardening in the Pacific Northwest, and neighborhood preparedness and crime reduction. I also interviewed staff from the Portland Office Of Emergency Management, the Josiah Hill III Clinic, the Portland Master Planning Office, and many others.

I am hoping to soon have the audio and video clips up on the Web, and available for those with sufficient download speeds. (Unfortunately, uploading seems to take forever (and I mean, forever!) with my connection.) I also hope to post transcripts of some of the classes, as time permits. In addition, I will provide a bit of analysis of the material that was presented along with comments regarding applicability to differing communities. Stay tuned...

Community-Managed Safety Nets, Food Security and Zenger Farm

It should be fairly obvious by now that the last few decades have seen the tearing apart of government-backed social safety nets in much of the world, and especially in the United States. While it is true that America now has a Democratic president and a Congress controlled by Democrats, their actions to date have not inspired overwhelming confidence that these safety nets might be repaired. (Just look at the present health-care “reform” debate and how our politicians and mainstream media define this in terms of health “insurance” reform. Forcing all Americans to buy private health insurance is not the same as providing universal health care at a cost that our rapidly expanding poor class can afford.)

It is therefore necessary for communities to create their own safety nets. Volunteers must arise to begin building community connections for meeting community needs, often without expecting much help from large government or corporate institutions (though there are cases where communities are pleasantly surprised by offers of government help). A key safety net is the provision of community food security, defined by the World Health Organization as “existing when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” (Source: WHO | Food Security)

In the United States, as the standard of living of many people has been eroded over the years, community-based volunteer organizations have arisen to address the growing lack of access to adequate food, and to build systems of community food security. There are the usual food pantries and canned-goods collection drives. But in recent years there have also arisen many urban farming/gardening organizations that promote and teach the growing of food and raising of suitable livestock within urban communities.

I knew nothing about such organizations when I was living in Southern California. But over the last couple of years I have enjoyed getting to know a few of the several community-based, nonprofit urban agriculture organizations here in Portland, and watching some of their extraordinary staff. Many of these people are young, either college students or recent college graduates who have chosen to spend two or more years of their lives as full-time volunteers in these organizations. There is a touch of the otherworldly about them – their education and career paths clearly show that they didn't go to school to get big bucks and a BMW, but they are concerned about larger issues and social justice.

I've interviewed some of these staffers in the past. You can read the interviews here: A Safety Net Of Alternative Systems - Places To Live, in which the Portland Fruit Tree Project was mentioned; and Volunteer Groups And Community Food Security, which featured Growing Gardens. This week's post is another interview, this time featuring Zenger Farm in outer southeast Portland.

Zenger Farm (www.zengerfarm.org) is a century-old working farm that was once owned by Ulrich Zenger, a Swiss dairy farmer, and later by his son, Ulrich Zenger Jr, who protected the farmland from commercial development. In 1994, after the death of Ulrich Jr., the City of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services purchased the farm. In the years since then, the farm has been leased by concerned citizens who incorporated as Friends of Zenger Farm, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the farm as a public space and community resource for sustainable urban food production. Friends of Zenger Farm also works in partnership with the City to oversee a 10-acre wetland adjoining the farm.

On a pleasant, sunny October morning, I had the opportunity to meet with Prairie Hale, Community Involvement Coordinator for Zenger Farm. I was primarily interested in trying to quantify the impact of the farm in building local safety nets and contributing to a resilient community, although there were other things that I wanted to explore. Below are my questions (in bold type), and Prairie's answers.

Has anyone tried to measure or quantify the impact of Zenger Farm on the surrounding community? There has not been a lot of measurement. However, there are general observable impacts. Zenger Farm serves as a place for field trips and educational and volunteer opportunities to learn about the natural world and develop a connection to that world; and to learn about growing, cooking and preserving food, thus fostering self-sufficiency.

The farm is known as a positive place and a good neighbor in the community. The farm staff are aware of what is happening in the neighborhood and are contributing to neighborhood goals. Not only does the farm grow food for the neighborhood, but it forms partnerships with neighbors to run egg co-operatives and farmers markets with the goal of providing culturally appropriate, fresh affordable food for the community. (However, the egg co-op has not yet attracted many members from the surrounding neighborhoods.)

The farmers market is a joint venture with the Lents Food Group, and the market has an “international” flavor. The market has provisions for accepting WIC (Women, Infants and Children) coupons, food stamps and senior coupons, and has a food-stamp matching program.

Field trips to the farm are conducted by local schools and teachers from public, private and alternative schools in the Lents and Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhoods. The farm also serves as a gathering place to build a sense of community among residents.

The farm is part of a larger urban agriculture “community of knowledge,” both in the Portland metro area and worldwide.

On a related note, what contribution does Zenger Farm make toward building a “resilient community”? (A resilient community is able to survive economic shocks without its members being dislocated by those shocks.) The farm contributes toward increasing food security – that is, a stable supply of affordable healthy food in the neighborhood, as well as generating increasing numbers of people with skills to grow, cook and eat on a tight budget. The farm has offered a very popular class in local schools, named “How to Buy Food On A Budget.” This class has been taught in both English and Spanish, and has attracted both children and their parents.

What are the demographics of the neighborhoods surrounding Zenger Farm? The farm is adjoined by the Lents and Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhoods. Much of this area is poor, yet many of the residents are actively trying to better their neighborhoods. Twenty-five percent of the population can be classified as “food-insecure.” The area was ranked “last in livability” according to a recent survey. The poor population is also being squeezed by gentrification (the encroachment of wealthy buyers of real estate into the neighborhoods), resulting in rising rents and real estate prices.

For the majority of schoolchildren, English is a second language. Only 30 percent are native English speakers. Spanish is the first language for another thirty percent; then the remainder are from Russian, Vietnamese or Laotian backgrounds. Zenger Farm is actively seeking translators for its classes and workshops.

How would you rate the ability of non-profit groups to make up for the dismantling of social safety nets formerly provided by local governments? There is some uncertainty regarding that question. For residents under stress in a disadvantaged urban neighborhood, worries about personal and family needs might take away energy from community organizing. Also, there is a lot of anonymity in cities, whereas small rural communities tend to be much more tightly-knit, and much more willing to pull together in times of crisis.

However, there are good examples of urban and neighborhood groups meeting neighborhood needs. One example is “Generous Ventures” on southeast 111^th Street, a group that salvages food that might otherwise go to waste, and distributes it to the poor.

What sort of lifestyle adjustments are required of a member of a non-profit organization? (In other words, most of the people I've met from groups like Growing Gardens or the Portland Fruit Tree Project did not go to school in order to get rich!) If someone is going to commit himself or herself to this kind of service, what should their expectations be? Not surprisingly, don't expect to get rich. Seek to gain satisfaction from developing a strong social network so we can take care of one another and provide for our needs.

(At this point, Prairie told me more of the personal events that had led her down this path. She related her family's Quaker background and how she spent most of her life in a small rural Oregon farm community. But as a result of an injury of a family member and loss of income, she and her family found themselves in Ecuador for a year when she was around eleven. That experience, and seeing the drastic difference between American life and the standard of living of the Ecuadoran population, was the catalyst of her interest in social justice.

As a result of that experience, she went to Earlham College, a Quaker institution of higher learning, and obtained a degree in Peace and Global Studies, a field of study which teaches nonviolent ways of bringing peace and social justice where it is lacking. One lesson she remembers is summed up in this saying: “Create the change that the community is ready for.”)

Regarding “closing the loop”: farming tends to deplete soils unless all organic wastes are properly composted and returned to the soil. Zenger Farm does not do humanure composting at this time, but have you ever thought about it? If you tried it, would you do so as part of a larger study of the feasibilty of this sort of composting in an urban environment? Humanure composting is feasible, but it requires a level of expertise and management that Zenger Farm does not yet possess. It seems to be more feasible on the scale of individual homes. As far as composting in general, Zenger buys compost now, but is looking to cut expenses by recycling more of its own plant matter into compost.

Are there any other general research projects being undertaken by Zenger Farm? The farm has not traditionally been involved in research, although a new focus is starting this year, with two farmers who want to try experimental organic techniques. The farm would like to explore other areas of research, such as adding more rainwater catchment and measuring the decrease in use of City water for irrigation when stored rainwater is used. They also want to do more water testing and measurement of sedimentation in the adjacent wetland, and want to explore various furrow and plowing arrangements to limit sediment runoff and erosion.

Do you have any thoughts on remediating urban sites that have been contaminated by industrial pollutants, in order to prepare these sites for urban agriculture? Research has been done on the use of fungi and mushrooms to rehabilitate sites. One prominent worker in this field is Paul Stamitz, a mycologist.

That concluded my interview with Prairie. As I was leaving, I remarked that it was refreshing to see younger people looking for more than a life of materialism and creature comfort (as opposed to my generation, who went to school solely to acquire big houses and BMW's), and that maybe we were witnessing a revival of something that had not been seen in the U.S. since the 1960's. She agreed, and said that it's not just young people who are waking up. Many older people are seeing that the American dream doesn't work, and are starting to want something more meaningful. Maybe there's hope for us after all.