The Transition Team Cooperative Initial Plan

I have been working on a concept for quite some time. I finally have a concrete proposal to put forward. So far, this is what I have...

Step 1- Fundraising enough money to create the cooperative business structure. We will do this by making contacts with small business and soliciting donations. All finances will be kept completely transparent. If you would like to donate, please do so at either of these two links. https://www.wepay.com/donations/thetransitionteamcooperative or https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/help-me-form-a-workers-cooperative-to-help-communities-relocalize-production-and-end-corporatocracy
Step 2- Recruit the subject matter experts, and when we reach enough funding, have an Open Space Technology meeting to formalize the arrangement, by consensus.
Step 3- Recruit the ground team. These individuals will approach community organizations, local businesses, and lo cal municipal officials about how we can help their community.
Step 4- Find depositors in these communities and form the local credit union with the following features. It will have a dual currency system; US dollars and a local currency based on a composite of locally-produced goods, preferably the products of the next step. It will also be a not for profit entity, and preferably a cooperative. The dealings of this institution will be completely transparent, and any excess funds at the end of the fiscal year will be given to other not for profit entities in the following way. Depositors will get to choose 5 organizations meeting the not for profit criteria, and whatever percentage of the current holdings of the CU they own will be distributed to those 5 entities. For example, if someone owns 1% of the current holdings, the 5 entities they choose will get.2% of the excess funds each, totaling 1%.
Step 5- Local business and municipal officials will be approached and will be offered the opportunity to participate in the local currency program. If they accept, any purchases using the local currency will be exempt from sales tax, or at least a significant discount. The purpose of this will be to provide an incentive for the use of the local currency.
Step 6- When the credit union is formed, we will find members of the local community that want a stake in the ownership of the vertical farm, based on the toolkit being developed at http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Category:Holistic_Aquaponics_Greenhouse_Toolkit
The preferred format for this business will be a workers cooperative, but other structures may be allowed, dependent on what is decided in step 2. The construction of the vertical farm will also be accomplished using local resources and open source technology from the Global Village Construction Set being developed by Open Source Ecology, were possible. For more details about the GVCS, visit www.opensourceecology.org
Step 7- The goods produced by the vertical farms will be sold at farmer's markets and premium grocers in the 100 mile area surrounding the community first in order to reduce food miles. After that, it will be sold at 125, then 150, and so on miles out until all the products are sold.
Step 8- As the funds that were used for the loan for the vertical farm come back to the credit union, it will be added to a local microloan funding pool administered by the credit union, with the goal of increasing the funding the pool by 20% per year, adjusted for inflation. Local businesses in need of construction services will be given preference if they choose to use a builder that uses GVCS tools in the construction process.
Step 9- When the GVCS approaches completion, a loan will be made available for a local fabrication shop and a retail location for locally-made durable goods.
This is by no means formalized, but is a good starting point for the consensus that will occur at Step 2. Thanks for reading! Feedback is always welcome!
Here is the Facebook page to visit: https://www.facebook.com/TheTransitionTeamCooperative

Perry's Joint

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One of the first places that I visited on my endeavor to walk the Pacific Crest Trail in order to raise awareness for the need for an an organization to help small businesses compete and thrive in the world dominated by the corporatism cartel was Perry's Joint. Perry's Joint is a coffee shop in Atladena, California that has been in business for 8 years. Perry came from a family with a rich small business background; his parents were small business owners, and as he worked in his younger years, he saw the value of being in business for himself. Perry also knew that small business are the lifeblood of communities everywhere, and by starting a local business that keeps money in his local economy, he could improve the lives of his neighbors. So he set out to start his own business. However, starting a coffee shop was not easy. He has had to compete with businesses like Starbucks, huge tax burdens just to hire people, and the financial downturn of 2008 were serious problems that would put many other small business under. From dealing with these things, he has many insights to share.

Surviving economic downtowns is hard. When the Great Recession of 2008 occurred, the price of the things he needed for his business to function went up, while his sales went down; people just did not have the disposable income for his goods. This caused him to have to make choices he would rather not have had to make. He had to lay of workers, and could not do the normal things he needed to do to maintain his business. The worker's he had to lay off could not contribute to the local economy anymore, and so that affected other businesses. He himself could not afford to do the maintenance that his business required, and the local businesses that did those services felt the impact of that, too. This is the true price of financial collapses, and, as can be seen, it starts a viscous cycle.

Competition with larger entities like Starbuck's is hard. They have the benefit of economies of scale that small businesses do not have, and they have access to financial tools that small businesses do not have in order to weather economic downturns, although they too are affected. Additionally, with enormous advertising budgets, these entities get a huge portion of the market share.

So, for businesses like Perry's, just surviving is a challenge that requires an amazing amount of resiliency. So how does he do it, and what things would make it easier for him? Well, first he learned that he had to rely on other small businesses in his local economy. While I was speaking to him about what I was going to put in this entry, a mother and her daughter walked in carrying a cardboard box full of fruits and vegetables. They were bringing him his order of goods from the garden that is cultivated by the students at John Muir High School. He told me he wanted to support what they were doing, and by purchasing these goods from them, he could help them to continue what they were doing, and also make local salads and entrees for his customers. He also knows that his ability to interact with his local customer base through good service leads to repeat customers, and that tomorrow the money he spent on the produce might come back to him when the money that the local garden ends up in the hands of one of his customers. It was no surprise then when he said that he was very impressed as a child growing up in the Bernal Heights area of San Francisco at their local currency system, a system he thinks would be a huge boon today. Also, because of these things, he has some insights into common sense solutions that will make the life of local business owners easier and allow them to pump more wealth into local economies for the benefit of all.

So, I then asked him what type of things he would like to see that would make being a small business owner easier, so that more people could become entrepreneurs like himself. After some though, he said he wished there were local support organizations that could provide support in areas like collective bargaining and advertising, helping the community understand the vital role that small businesses play in the well-being of their own lives, help lower the tax burdens like payroll taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Worker's Compensation, property tax, and other things that make it hard for small business to hire workers, and to help provide financial advice and ideas for expansions. He feels that these type of things would help small businesses replace large corporate entities that take money out of local economies and leave it poorer, and instead concentrate wealth in communities. These things, if practiced everywhere would reduce our nation's deficit, as goods and services would be produced at home, and that would lead to prosperity for many, many people that are afflicted with poverty under the current global business system.

It is stories like this that illustrate why we need the services of the organization I am striving to create. These are real people, with real lives and needs that are not being met by the current system. So, if you would like to change this, and would like to hear more stories from other local business owners that I meet on my walk along the Pacific Crest Trail, please contribute at https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/help-me-form-a-workers-cooperative-to-help-communities-relocalize-production-and-end-corporatocracy

Thank you!

The Next 1000 Mile Journey

Every journey begins at the end of another, just as the mythological phoenix is reborn out of the ashes of the old. This is no different. Today, I am going to start something new. Today, I am going to start a new effort to help communities transform from an unsustainable path that benefits only a few, and leaves others destitute, without the means to have the life that they want and steals the source of life from future generations.

I will be walking the Pacific Crest Trail in order to raise awareness of this issue.
The PCT is a 2700 mile long trail from the US border in California to British Columbia. I will get tired, my feet and shoulders will burn as I carry all the equipment I need to survive this long trek. But this a labor of love, I want the next 7 generations to have the same benefits we have, and not have to concern themselves with how they, and countless other species, will survive a world changed by the darkness that is the greed and desire to dominate of the few that own the mortgage of our world's future. Pain is temporary, but our actions resonate in eternity.

I will be forming an elite team over the coming months to help create a plan and implement it in as many places as possible. This plan will be to create open-source, transparent, dual-currency (USD and a local currency based on a composite of local commodities), worker and depositor-owned community credit unions, vertical farms in distressed downtown buildings in small communities based on an open-source toolkit of greenhouse technologies to cultivate good, organic and ethically produced food for communities, and relocalize production, and provide work for those with disabilities. As the fine people at Open Source Ecology perfect more Global Village Construction Set technologies, we will use them for new economic development projects to demonstrate the true power of an open source enterprise economy, based on lifetime design and intelligent use of resource and innovation. We are the future, we need only demonstrate it. In fact, the vertical farms will feature and utilize some of the open-source technologies already created, the Lifetrak, dimensioning sawmill, compressed earth block press, soil pulverizer, Powercube, and others as they near completion.This team will not just be a think tank sitting in an ivory tower giving orders, it will be a consensus-based organization that will have boots on the ground helping build these communities and providing excellent customer service. It will be a not-for-profit worker's cooperative of consultants and developers that want to shift the world from a scarcity-based economy to one that benefits all of humanity. 

The initial funds will go to launching the Indiegogo campaign, with swag for donors, provide for my needs (which will be documented with transparency), equipment, and tools needed to make this a success. You, the donor, can choose which part of the campaign you wish to support, or just place it in the general fund. You can choose to give me a per mile walked donation (I am shooting for 40 miles a week). I will be visiting the communities that provide resupply points along the way, and will be interviewing and writing about local business owners, conservationists I meet, and other noteworthy people and endeavors to see what they want in an economy, and will be posting them here on this blog! Stay tuned!

After enough funds have been gathered, subject matter experts recruited, and intial gathering of information, we will have a meeting in California using Open Space Technology to develop the concrete plans about this. We will then go to small communites in progressive areas that want to revitalize their local economies to build consensus about plans for action there. We will maintain boots on the ground working with local people and business owners building frienships and good working relations with the communities that have turned to us for help, so that they can turn to us again in the future, and, perhaps, join us. A network of communities is a powerful thing, and we will demonstrate the ethic of thinking globally while acting locally by starting local offices where we have been doing projects.

So what does it take to do all this? I don't completely know yet, but it begins with you providing support to help me find out. Let's begin shall we? If you can donate, please do, and contact me at 972-533-8857 or visit the wepay provided below, until the Indiegogo campaign is set up. Thank you!

https://www.wepay.com/donations/ecophoenixcommunitydevelopment

A New Path

A normal self-reflective essay would begin with something poignant and ethereal, something to ponder and set the mood for the story to come, but I will not do that here. Instead, I will give a brief synopsis of where I came from, where I am. Every self-reflective story is unique (just like our rifles in the Marines) and this one is mine.
When I start to write, it is often directed to myself as much as anyone here. I do not start with an outline, nor do I really know what experiences and perspectives will fill these pages. Just as a maker does not know what he is creating when he starts, they can make an mental approximation based on past experiences, but it is just as much about his perspective, the distilled essense of their character, mood, and the kernels of truth that are garnered from all then knowledge and experiences have accrued over their lifetime. This, combined with the ego, and the core character traits tell a story that is  beautifully flawed in that is not of neutral point of view, but an intimate look at at who I really am, who I want to make myself into, and why I have arrived at the path before me, and that path is to help the poor, the disenfranchised, and the But in order to do that, you, the reader, need to understand some things about me.

I believe that to put the good of the whole over the good of the individual is paramount. I also believe that when you do good for others, other will reciprocate in kind. It is this drive to reciprocate that brought me here, to tell you about what I am doing.

I am giving. If you need something I have, I will give it to you. I do this because so many people, many of whom will read this, have given so much to me. It is for this reason that from this point forward, 20% of what i make will go to charities including, but not limited to, Corporate Accountability International, Veterans of Foreign Wars, USO, the New Beginning Center, a charity that gives victims of domestic violence, Broken Sidewalk Farm, some notable guys down in Austin that are helping the homeless to feed themselves in a very dynamic way,Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuroimmune Disease, a group of people that know just how serious Myalgic Encephalomyelitis can be, and are doing everything they can to help the millions of people around the wold that have this illness, and to Open Source Ecology, a transcendent group of individuals that want to see that the people can ultimately build the infrastructure to start a microcivilisation, that I feel is a great model for ultimate self-reliance, empowerment, and a more perfect form of democracy, free from the collective influences of the entrenched powers that put profits above any sort of societal value.   

I first would like to acknowledge my father, Don Clark who taught me so much, a lot of good practical skills and a strong work ethic and passion for one's own self-determined tasks, and equally for the lessons I garnered when working with him about how to overcome adversity and also what does not work in starting a business, what might work, and finally, what will work. My dad is a true maker, and while he may have some flaws, just like everyone reading (and writing!) this perspectus, it is our collective flaws that make us interesting and dynamic people.

I have been a man shipwrecked on an island, but I am building a boat with the pieces of driftwood that come my way. I have had Myalgic Encephalomyelitis for the last 3 and a half years. Anyone that does not believe that M.E. is a serious illness, I would, if I could, challenge them to endure it for a few days, to get a perspective about how tough it really is to deal with. My awesome roommates and friends, Lamont Dickson, Shane Turner, Martha Wyers, Kathryn Hemmrick, Keith Thokey, and many others that have been pivotal to helping me to recover and being there to support me when I am ill or doing well, they have been giving, have always looked out for me, and have spurred me into motion when I was at a standstill. I owe you guys my life, and will always consider you family, and I want you all to know that without each of you, coming this far in my recovery would have been nigh impossible. My time in the Locust House has been amazing, even though at times it was tough, but we all came out the better for it, and I for one can say it has been a transformative experience, and for this, I thank each of you with as much gratitude I can feel.
To my mom, I am forever in your debt. You have endured so much adversity and have overcome it and then were instrumental in your help to get me better. Without your patience, and gentle nudging and other support you have given me, I don't have any clue what would have happened to me. You have seen me at my worst and my best, and I want to continue to show you that I can overcome anything with enough time and will to do the work that is needed to be done.

To Jordan, who works as hard as she can and does everything she can to support her family, and sacrifices so much daily, working away from home that takes her away from her true loves, photography, being with her husband, and talking to Dad on the phone every morning. You are an example of self sacrifice, and you should always be proud of that. Your resolve, discipline, and perseverance are a credit to you.

To everyone one that is reading this, the above is a shining example of the fact that It is through collaboration that we can overcome our collective flaws and accomplish something truly extraordinary, and now I feel like I can make a mark on society, and overcome all the obstacles in my path, thanks to all of you. Thank you so very much. With all of you're support, each one of you, as well as others, have helped me see the the big picture, and with a bit more help, I know that I can persevere, like I always have, and build the boat that will bear me to my destination.

I am prepared. Having M.E. was a road I did not have a choice in taking, but like other unexpected events, if you can recover from it, you come out better than you were before. I started this journey while still in the ironclad grip of M.E., and only having a computer as access to the world at large, I began to chart my path in life. I knew that I wanted to do something sustainable, good for the world at large, and knowing how to build computers, I decided to start developing the most environmentally-friendly computers I could. Over time my ability to control my symptoms changed, as did the scope of my goals. It is during this time that I started developing plans for a carbon-neutral web hosting business, and a cooperative of sustainable businesses working together for the common good, not for the bottom line.

It was only a few weeks after I mentally developed this business concept that I came across Dr. Jakubowski’s TEDtalk about Open Source Ecology. I was instantly hooked. This was a group of people already doing what I had only been beginning to conceptualize. I knew within the hour that this was the work that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And here I am, at the foot of the trail that leads to the top of my personal mountain.

I started this journey by asking myself if was capable of contributing more than I am now to Society, and the answer is yes; and, I suspect, the answer is yes for all of you as well. I devoted all of my being to make this possible up until now, and now it is my turn to ask each of you can make me into an instrument for good again; not for my own gains, but for the betterment of Open Source Ecology and the world at large. Open Source Ecology has a karmic oath of three. What this oath  means is that what people have done to you, do thrice to others. I intend to meet this goal and exceed it...vastly. So now I ask everyone reading this, please help me with the tools I need for this journey, so that I may pay it forward many times over. I have accumulated a list of items that will allow me to  the the most productive I can be, and accomplish my mission of organizing OSE’s logistics, and conduct geological evaluations of the land, to ensure the utmost in safety for these pioneering individuals so that their needs are met so they can continue to do the good work that they are doing, and that work will someday help the starving masses in the 3rd and 4th world, and, I believe with all sincerity, change the entire world. So don’t help me, help me help these intrepid individuals that are doing the greatest work a human being can do, toiling long hours in tough conditions so that some nameless child, not even born yet, can bear the fruits of our labor and have the kind of life we all take for granted. It is only when we engage these disenfranchised people in a positive way, that we improve Humanity as a whole, and truly understand what it is to be human.

So, what is the Ecophoenix Roost anyway? Well, this is where I will be talking about what I am doing with OSE at Factor e Farm. After all, I don’t expect you to donate to this and have no idea what it is being used for or why. And even though what I’m doing might not be into what you want to do, I’m sure that in some of the insights I share here will be of value to you. So drop in, see what I am up to, and a few words of encouragement would never hurt. :) So, for now I bid you adieu, and invite you to make a contribution that will keep on giving. Thank you all.

Interested in learning more about OSE? Visit www.opensourceecology.org to watch videos, participate in the IRC chat, or contribute to the wiki with your ideas!

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