“Come on in, Barabara” says Myrtle Thompson-Curtis, the short, brown-skinned co-founder of Feedom Freedom Growers, an urban agricultural collective on Detroit’s east side during our interview for a short film. “I have some pizza and some eggs,” Barabara says, “Do you want me to put them in the refrigerator?” “Yeah,” says Myrtle, “that’s fine.” They thank each other and Barbara leaves. Myrtle then says to me, “She’ll go out and get her kale, bell peppers, garlic, and anything else she needs from the garden.” It’s clear that this exchange is a regular occurrence.
I just watched Barabara meet her need for fresh produce without money. She isn’t completely independent of the larger food economy; the pizza and eggs she gave Myrtle are both a part of it. But she knows that her need for food can be met without money or without growing it herself. Myrtle would have likely traded any number of things that were useful to her for FFG’s produce. Feedom Freedom Growers allows Barabara to be less dependent on the economy to meet her material needs for food because it makes money and grocery stores — and the mass-produced food they sell — less necessary for survival.
Community self-reliance is a community’s ability to meet its material and/or nonmaterial needs in ways that make it less dependent on the currently existing economy through collective efforts and sharing resources. Less dependence on the economy doesn’t mean that they don’t engage with it; less dependence means that people have an increased ability to meet their material needs for things like health care, food, housing, water, and electricity — as well as their nonmaterial needs for things like community, relationships, and identity — with less need for money.
CSR is all over Baltimore. The Station North Tool Library allows us to meet our needs for tools with less dependence on the economy. Whitelock Community Farm and a host of other community farms and gardens allow us to meet our need for food and be less dependent on grocery stores and the dominant food system. Bloom Collective allows women to meet their need for reproductive care in ways that make them less dependent on the economy and the current health care system. Emerging community solar projects are making Baltimore residents less dependent on BGE and the fossil fuel energy economy.
Imagine if more of these projects existed in neighborhoods throughout Baltimore. If a neighborhood had a tool library, a farm, community solar, and health care collective, that neighborhood would be able to meet its needs for food, health care, electricity and housing repair without grocery stores, BGE, Home Depot, or health insurance.
If a neighborhood is able to meet these needs through collective effort, the people in it can also be freed from relationships to money and work that lead us to neglect our nonmaterial needs in order to survive. Community self-reliance gives us room to follow our hearts, spend more time on relationships, and make our nonmaterial needs as important as our material needs. Community self-reliance literally allows us to exist differently.
This vision is possible. COVID, subsequent crises, and inflation have shown us that we can’t rely on the economy for survival. If we create more of these projects, increasing numbers of people will be exposed to new possibilities for meeting our needs, which can help us all imagine more possibilities. As these projects grow, they create small pockets throughout the city where getting food from a community garden can become more normal than the grocery store, and where borrowing from a tool library can become more normal than going to Home Depot.
Imagine what neighborhoods where CSR takes hold might feel and look like: People would not only know each other’s names, but would have grown food, sewn clothes, repaired homes, and installed solar panels together. These people would all have stronger relationships, an expanded sense of their capabilities, and be acutely aware of their power to shape reality. With less stress tied to their income, they would also have more space to dream, build stronger relationships, and prioritize other needs and desires.
The patterns created by the work of these people — if maintained and grown — can create a new culture and new economies. As this culture and economy attracts others it could grow, be taken to scale, and eventually be able to replace our current economy and culture.
An opportunity to explore how we might create this community self-reliant Baltimore is being provided by Impact Hub Baltimore, who is hosting a Community Self-Reliance School taught by Visionary Organizing Lab. Over four Saturdays in October, participants will develop and create a shared vision for a community self-reliant Baltimore, develop visions for projects that can move reality toward that vision, develop visions for how to grow already existing projects, and develop next steps toward creating a community self-reliant Baltimore. More info can be found at visionarylab.org.
To make sure that these projects don’t recreate the extractive and individualist nature of the current economy, participants will also receive instruction in Visionary Organizing. Visionary Organizing is an approach to change that shifts people’s thinking from “me first” to “we first” because it makes peoples nonmaterial needs for community, recognition, and love as important as our material needs for survival. By doing this work together, we can create a Baltimore that not only weathers the next inevitable storm but also shows other cities how to exist differently.
Matt Birkhold is co-director of Visionary Organizing Lab and a cultural worker who reconnects people with their creative capacity for transformation through writing, filmmaking, and facilitation-teaching.