Do you see the need for systemic change to avert global ecological and social collapse? Do you feel an imperative to DO SOMETHING substantive to make the world better for all life, both human and nonhuman?

IMAGINE . . . applying your skills, creativity, and passion towards participating in or supporting effective activist work such as direct actions, grassroots education, documentary filmmaking, or other campaigns.

“We have an obligation to do our best to understand how the world works so that we can contribute to movements seeking a more just distribution of power and resources in order to promote human flourishing and a more sustainable human presence on the planet.”

— Robert Jensen, The End of Patriarchy

Simply put, we are people who see that the violent dominance/subordination structures humans impose on themselves and the natural world are the cause of vast and preventable suffering, destruction, and loss. Our compassion, sense of justice, and desire for a livable future compel us to work towards abolishing these structures.

BE THE CHANGE

We make change moment-by-moment, day-by-day, as we choose how to show up in our relationships, at our work, and on the earth beneath our feet.  In community—and on land—lies a golden opportunity to weave voluntary simplicity, food self-sufficiency, and loving co-operation into our lives.  From this foundation, we’ll reach out to learn, teach, serve and connect.

IMAGINATION

Material analysis and spiritual insight point us to a radical re-imagination of living communities based on justice, equality, carrying capacity, and Earth’s ecological principles. We suspect the solutions we discover will be “outside the box” of conventional activism.

EFFECTIVENESS

Our work is guided by the question “What do we need to create stable and decent human communities that can thrive in a sustainable relationship with the larger living world?”  Not all activist work is effective; in fact, much of the modern environmental movement has been co-opted through regulatory capture and greenwashing.  We will take the time to re-think activism, and will base our campaigns on solid strategies that offer acceptable odds of success.

THINK GLOBALLY

We acknowledge that systemic change which has any hope of averting the worst effects of human-caused climate catastrophe needs to be global in scope.  We will closely follow the development of larger-scale resistance movements such as Unist’ot’en Camp, Black Lives Matter, and Extinction Rebellion, and individually or as a community devote time, resources, and solidarity to movements that hold a hope of effectiveness.

ACT LOCALLY

Individuals and small groups of people have little influence on the policies of national governments and the international financial system.  Locally, we can have much more impact.  Here in Hawai`i, founders have been involved in campaigns such as open space preservation, coral reef protection, and free distribution of perennial food plants.  We were and are supportive of Ku Kia`i Mauna, a coalition of native Hawaiians who in 2018 successfully blockaded an illegal observatory construction which would have further desecrated their sacred Mauna Kea.

PASSION

We will bring our love of our living world, our personal stories of transformation, our determination, and our empathy to the work we choose.  We’ll express joy at the opportunity to be developing meaningful, collaborative solutions.  We will oppose with the ferocity of a female lion defending her cub.  We will also propose—with innovative and thought-provoking policies, programs, and campaigns.

rev. 5/2/21