What are people doing that’s different or subversive already? I will very intentionally begin the more urban part of my journey in Detroit, a model for what happens when things fall apart. What fills that vacuum? When a city with little to no economic opportunity shuts off water, considered a basic right to access, communities organize and get their water back. When warehouses and blocks of houses lay fallow, creative and helpful projects reclaim the space in new ways. Gentrification looms. People live in new ways, but also among the models we know. In a place like Spokane that’s also had an exodus of industry, long term economic depression, what can we learn about ways people are using resources in creative ways and working together?
Beyond specific places and stories, I am excited to explore further the broad social narrative of cooperation and alternative social structures as I will mostly be staying with people I do not know. I will be using the Couchsurfers network, which I’ve largely been a host on previous to this trip, or staying with friends of friends. This doesn’t make me personally uncomfortable but is not widely accepted within the traditions of our culture (yet). The lack of trust that we have is problematic as is our level of fear. This is a broad experiment in the sense that I will go trust strangers, share stories with them, and depend upon them. I love to do this anyway, but I want to share those experiences publicly and open up an intimate space for discussing trust and vulnerability. We can trust each other and we should and we ought to find ways to live better by and with one another, but how? How do we break out of our bubble and make space for vulnerability and openness? There are examples in all kinds of co-ops and communities in varying degrees of resistance standing up against power in different ways. That defiance looks different everywhere, but to find out about what works we have to be exposed to discomfort and exercise trust.
I’d like to focus at least partially on positive stories like those that can be found in the movements quietly changing the way we live across the country. Utah is one example, where I’d like to see firsthand what it looks like to end homelessness entirely (which the state is on track to do within 2015). How can we integrate best practices and models from around the country and remember that another world is possible here in Spokane? Expressing our values and our belief in our and others’ ability is a very important part of making those tangible changes.
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