[Sdpg] The LA Ecovillage Article/Listen Newstatesman by Jonathan Dawson # 22 February 2008

[Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

A weekly insight into life inside one of 
Britain's best known eco-villages – Findhorn – by resident Jonathan Dawson.



The LA Ecovillage

http://www.newstatesman.com/200802220001
    * Posted by Jonathan Dawson
    * 22 February 2008
    * <http://www.newstatesman.com/print%20this%20article>Print version
    * 
<http://asp.readspeaker.net/cgi-bin/newstatesmanrsone?customerid=1003373&lang=en&url=http://www.newstatesman.com/200802220001>Listen, 

    * 
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[]
  I want to devote my blog this week to an 
extraordinary development unfolding in a poor, 
multi-ethnic, working-class neighbourhood some 
6,000 miles from here – in inner-city Los Angeles.

Why on Earth would I do that is a column called 
Life At Findhorn?! Well, first because we are 
part of a much larger global family, one of whose 
members, the Los Angeles Ecovillage, is engaged 
in quite wonderfully distinctive and inspiring 
work. Second, because I have just returned after 
spending ten days there, participating in the 
annual board meeting of the Global Ecovillage Network.

In terms of the general flavour of LAEV, in 
retrospect the die can be seen to have been cast 
right at its inception. It was the early 1980s 
and the original idea of the founder, Lois Arkin, 
had been to create a new-build intentional community outside town.

Then the Watts riots happened and LA burned in 
the heat of racial conflict. Lois decided that 
the priority was to work within rather than 
without. So, she located herself in the small 
corner of Koreatown – today very multi-ethnic but 
with a strong Latino flavour – where she finds 
herself to this day. The intentional community of 
around 30 of which she is a member sees its 
mission in terms of helping bring back to life 
the entire neighbourhood in which they live.

The two large, Mediterranean-style houses in 
which most intentional community members live 
feel like nothing more than great beehives, with 
a continual traffic of people in and out. On my 
first morning in the community, a group of kids 
from a local community centre working on a video 
project were filming within the courtyard, asking 
us about GEN and its relevance to neighbourhoods like this.

Later, great boxes of locally-grown, organic 
vegetables were delivered and community members 
set to work dividing them into boxes to be 
collected by members of the food cooperative. 
More people coming in and out, most stopping to exchange news and chat.

Several of the evenings I was there, there were 
also public speakers in the community’s main 
lounge, with the events open to the general public.

Then, there is the traffic out. One community 
member is working installing PV solar panels on 
properties throughout the city. Another goes out 
regularly to man the phones for a fund-raising 
drive by the local, independent radio station.

Others are off to work at the Bicycle Kitchen (an 
initiative born in LAEV but that has now moved 
out into the neighbourhood due to a lack of 
space), a workshop in which young local people 
are taught how to repair bicycles.

Community members have been involved in creating 
mosaics that now decorate the street, planting 
trees, sculpting a playful and beautiful cob 
bench (in the shape of a dragon), installing 
permeable pavements that allow rain-water to run 
down to the water-table below, helping design a 
small local park along permaculture lines and, 
most spectacular, working with local children to 
create a colourful mandala in the middle of the street.

Community members seem to spend a lot of time in 
this mandala – community meals, meetings, 
workshops, discussions – while the traffic slows 
and gently wends its way around them. This is 
part of a conscious effort to ‘re-educate the 
traffic’, as Lois puts it. One poster within the 
community shows a road filled with cyclists on 
one of the periodic Reclaim The Streets days. The 
poster declares: ‘We are not blocking the traffic – We are the traffic’.

It is great, if all too rare, to see an 
ecovillage get stuck in in an urban context, 
really working in cooperation with their 
neighbours and helping transform and humanise an entire neighbourhood.

Now, however, the initiative is under threat – 
and this is where you, dear reader, may just be 
able to help. The LA school department is 
planning to locate yet another school in the 
neighbourhood – there are several there already. 
This would entail demolishing 35 affordable 
housing units (all to rare in the city) and even 
more bussing in of kids from other parts of town.

The ecovillagers are fighting it tooth and nail 
and have set up an online petition asking the 
authorities to find another site. If you feel 
inspired, visit 
<http://www.laecovillage.org/>http://www.laecovillage.org/ and sign up.


Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
(805) 962-2571
P.O. Box 92156, Santa Barbara, CA 93190
margie at sbpermaculture.org
www.sbpermaculture.org

"We are like trees, we must create new leaves, in 
new directions, in order to grow." - Anonymous

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