A new zine on Tinkers Bubble, an off-grid community that lives off the land without the use of fossil fuels. After the debacle of COP26 it is more clear than ever that capitalism is on the highway to ecological collapse. The historical responsibility lies with the capitalist classes of the more ‘highly’ developed capitalist countries. Did COP26 offer any urgent clarity demanded in this stage of ecological disaster? Not a bit! It will depend on the massive organising of social movements to change the course of history.
A community like Tinkers Bubble can act like a beacon for others. A small light in the dark where one becomes aware what it means to be connected to the land. All the vegetables are grown self-sufficiently, building materials come from the woods and is processed using a no fossil-fuel sawmill, no fossil fuels are used on the land. Apart from humans there are chickens, cows, beehives, pheasants, lot’s of vegetables,…
Living in these woods for a couple of months now it becomes stranger to go to the supermarket, to use cars, to be a consumer instead of a producer, so dependent on a capitalist economy that is suicidal to its core.
Or rather: capital is killing our humanity.
I am sceptical about the practical Utopia’s that we can build under the reign of capital, but!
…ultimately we need to build strong social movements. What is shared at the Bubble is definitely strengthening social movements.
Normally we would have taken a picture of all the participants of the social of the Landworkers’ Alliance (beginning of december) in solidarity with the Indian farmers who are protesting against the three laws that would liberalise the agricultural market in India. The protests have been going on for over a year now and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the laws will be withdrawn later when the parliament comes together. In a broadcast he called upon the farmers to demobilize. But they didn’t in the first instance and they were right.
They wanted guarantees and they are counting on their own strength, not the weakness of Modi. The fact that Modi announced that the laws will be withdrawn is a victory due to the continued year-long mobilization of the peasants. Modi was fearing local elections and a campaign that was started by the peasants against his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
It shows that the class-struggle is raging and that you have to count on your own strength and class-consciousness. Not being reactive towards the opponent but rather become a self-conscious social movement that is able to change institutions and ultimately the direction of history.
Now the peasants finally have had guarantees that the laws will be withdrawn, the peasants are demobilizing but warning: “We will resume our protests if the government moves away from the assurances,” said Gurnam Singh Charuni to Al Jazeera.
In a book i recently read, and that is recommended reading for those who want to better understand the link between extractive agri-business and pandemics, Rob Wallace described La Via Campesina as ‘as close as you can get to a fifth international’. I never looked at it that way, but yes, La Via Campesina, of which the Landworkers’ Alliance is a member, unites 200 hundred million farmers. It is grassroots. It is radical. Farmers produce the food we eat. We are what we eat. If what we eat is radically produced it changes the world in deed.
“We, the peasants, the indigenous peoples, the rural women, the agricultural workers, the youth of our rural areas, produce while reviving biodiversity and emitting very few greenhouse gases: mixed farming and livestock farming, like pastoralism or traditional agro-forestry, are models of energy saving, carbon capture and maintenance of environments rich in wild and cultivated diversity. Thus, with our know-how and skills, peasant agriculture feeds over 70% of world’s population [1] with less than 30% of the productive resources.”
taken over from here.
(1) Who will feed us?, ETC group, 2017
The zine on Tinkers Bubble can be found here: https://withdrawn.noblogs.org/projects/
Beacon fire
Over the once Green Land
sits an empire of concrete and tarmac
Poisons in the Water, Earth and Air
Madness everywhere
These are dark days
Gather
at the springs by the Woodlands
Build shelters and beacon fires
When the dark times come
we can sing together
Gathered in the light of the beacon
we are stronger
we can sing to ease our fearful hearts
quiet our panicked minds
distract from our tumbling stomachs
As our bodies begin to fade
our passing can be soothed
by the beacon fire song
So gather
find the springs by the woodlands
and build beacon fires
a thousand beacons can burn
across the length of Albion
As one world ends
and another begins
(by Jacub)