· We are committed to building capacity to provide housing, storage space, work space, gathering space, and other necessities within our capacity and on a mutual aid (aka “solidarity not charity”) basis.
· We aim to organize horizontally rather than hierarchically—while individuals can be empowered to do specific tasks and make specific decisions by the group, we do not have any “leaders” with standing authority.
· Our goal is for people to be able to access basic goods and services and live in community without having to interact with law enforcement. We commit to build, maintain, and expand community-centered responses to harm and violence.
– One of these community-centered responses that we embrace is a transformative justice approach to sexual violence, domestic abuse, and other forms of interpersonal harm; transformative justice includes practices of violence prevention, survivor support, fostering change and accountability in people who have caused harm, and transformation of the broader culture of violence; as such, on the one hand, our community includes both survivors and people who have caused harm who are endeavoring to be accountable and change their behavior and, on the other, we have a hard boundary against any kind of interpersonal violence in our space; if you are a survivor who wants/needs support, someone who has caused harm who is trying to be accountable and change, or want more information about our stories and our approach to transformative justice, please talk to us!
– It is important for us to make it clear that, as a community, we include individuals who have been harmed and who have caused harm. Some of us have gone through formal accountability processes for that harm and we openly share information about those processes to anyone who wishes to know more. We believe in a restorative justice model that allows space for individuals who have caused harm to make amends and do the work required to remain a part of our community in a way that feels safe and healthy for all. With that being said, we have clear expectations and guidelines for harmful behaviors that are not acceptable here. It is important to us that we all feel safe here working together and that we share information openly.
· We do not have a religious litmus test for participating in this project, nor do we tie participation to any particular religious activity; at the same time, this project has its genesis within the Catholic Worker movement. Many of our community members’ participation is rooted in their spiritual life, and we seek to proactively make space for, and share in, a rich ecology of spiritual practice.
· We seek to live lightly on the land and to work with rather than against the grain of the natural world.
· We seek to operate internally on a model of “baseline communism,” so we have no dues or fees, but are self-supporting through our own (monetary or otherwise) contributions.