NEARLY TWO HUNDRED PEOPLE blended hearts, minds and voices together in a participatory conference on "Building a Planetary Village" May 10-15, 1983 at Chinook Learning Community, Whidbey Island, Washington. In a multi-faceted approach that covered everything from the legal and institutional to the sacred and the cosmic, the group made the connections between a variety of personal and institutional approaches to social change that have sometimes found themselves in conflict in the past. The connections included: reshaping the way we relate to land through creating a sustainable agriculture and putting the land into trust to protect it from the private speculative market; re-shaping our economy through creating an Earth Bank for our personal funds and for those of the institutions we influence in order to make capital available to life/earth- enhancing enterprises; re-shaping our built environment through participatory processes that conserve non- renewable and develop renewable energy; and re-shaping the ways we relate to each other through spiritual attunement, consensus decision-making processes, and developing commitment, trust and vision. If you want to receive information on the ongoing activities stimulated by the conference, write Chinook Learning Community, P.O. Box 57, Clinton, WA. 98236 or call (206) 321-1884.
Mary Vogel is a member of Aprovecho Institute in Cottage Grove, OR.
