Things Are Happening in the Midwest
Thinking about my trip through the Midwest in 2023, solidarity networks, and Lifehouse, Adam Greenfield's new book
Hello again.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.
I think I got kind of burnt out a couple of years ago when I made a serious push to turn this newsletter into an income-producing side.
I’ve been meaning to start publishing here again but, well, life happens ya know.
In the past year, I’ve:
Moved from NYC to Western Mass
Ended a committed, monogamous relationship
Been on the job search
It’s been a period of adjustment.
I finally feel like I’m back on firm footing to start publishing here again – at least once per quarter, hopefully more often than that.
I actually have been doing a lot of catching up with friends this Winter. Mostly with friends from NYC that I haven’t seen or spoken to in a while, but also folks across the country and the world.
Shoutout to Josh, Stef, Blake, Max, Ivan, and J! 👋🏼
Things Are Happening in the Midwest
I have a friend named J, another friend with whom I recently reconnected this Winter.
J. lives in a college town in the Midwest and is active in a number of leftist, community-driven projects, mostly focused on “food autonomy”. I actually don’t know the full extent of all of the projects they are involved in.
I met J. through a Signal group I’m in, which consists mostly of anarchist-leaning folks who are growing their own food and stewarding land, or are interested in doing those things.
In January 2023, I drove from NYC to Austin to participate in a “Web 3” project called Cabin (Web 3 is just a fancy way of saying crypto).
I was excited about Cabin because it seemed like a nice group of people who were interested in network technology and building tiny houses, but when I reflect on that trip, I realize that far more interesting and intentional things were happening in Southern Indiana.
Here’s a few moments from my time there.
Leading up to my trip to Austin, I messaged the Signal group, saying that I have a newsletter about starting a land project among other things. If I recall, I asked if there might be anyone to host me along the way?
That’s how I met J. They were very kind to talk on the phone with me a few times and exchange text messages to tell me about all of the things that are happening in the area where they live. I was touched by their generosity. It also sounded like there were a bunch of neat projects happening in the region.
I never made it to J’s town, but J. did connect me with a generous and industrious couple who lived in an old tomato factory building, K. and A.
K. and A. were gracious enough to host me for a few days both on my way down to Austin, and on my way back up to NYC. One of the things I remember most vividly is that, we made some great meals together. A. is a renaissance man, and an excellent chef. Like me, he loves to cook, and especially for others.
A. took me around to meet some of the local townsfolk–farmers, anarchists, and some who were both.
Here’s a couple of video clips from one of the farms we visited.
I also remember helping to build a dry stone wall with A. when I visited on my way back up to NYC. A lot of work, especially because they live on a hillside, but I remember the day being warm and it being satisfying work.
Opportunity to Join a Land Project
As mentioned above, I also reconnected with my friend J. recently.
J. said he’d thought of me because of this blog/newsletter and that there were a couple of opportunities to “jump into land projects” in case I was interested.
Apparently, there was an elderly couple near where he lived that needed someone to provide on-site, daily care. In exchange, they could provide housing and land to farm, and perhaps an “intergenerational transfer” from them to a younger person or group of people to run their property as a land project.
J. said he’d read about my desire to start or join a land project, and would I be interested?
I said that I planned to be in Western Mass for another year, and then I was considering going to Texas for a year or two to spend more time with friends and family down there.
I offered to write about these opportunities for joining these two land projects here, in this blog, to see if anyone would be interested in an arrangement like that.
Admittedly, this is a small newsletter(~200 subscribers), but you never know!
In order to preserve the privacy of the folks involved, I can’t say more about these land projects. I believe the implication was that the farm could be passed down and held “in common” (i.e. among a group of people who interested in running it as a “land project”), but I would need to follow up and clarify to be sure.
If you would be interested to know more about these land projects, shoot me an email or send me a message via Substack.
What Is a Land Project?
As an aside, I should define what a “land project” is.
The term “land project” comes from the legal term for Entitled Land.
At some point, it was adopted by leftists and anarchists to describe a communal project that has to do with the stewarding of land, often as a place of building commons and collective power.
To make this a bit more real and tangible, here are some photos and video clips from when I lived at The Abode of the Message, which contained Abode Farm, which I would say definitely qualifies as a land project.
These photos are from May 2018, when I first visited The Abode. I moved there a couple of months later, on July 3rd, 2018.
Critiques of The Land Project As Equitable Project/Structure
There are critiques of land projects, namely that land projects reproduce the capitalist structures that they are trying to provide an alternative to (less charitably, that they are trying to escape from).
Here’s a critique of land projects by someone who identifies as a radical anarchist. It’s passionate and sometimes poetic writing, but I think the writer is kind of rigid in their thinking, saying that “land projects are utopian fantasy” and that leftist land projects reproduce the exploitative and commodifying structures of capitalism.
There’s an element of truth to these points but the reality is that land projects are imperfect and messy. You have to dream big and even fantasize a bit if you are going to do something audacious like starting(or even joining, for that matter) a land project.
And how different are fantasizing and dreaming, really?
Is fantasizing just ego-driven and frivolous dreaming, or are the terms essentially synonyms, with different connotations.
Speaking of fantasizing, you can think of the idea of the land project as more politically-informed and intentional response to that often-verbalized sentiment that seems so common nowadays, “I just want to run away and go live on a farm/in the woods/in the mountains”.
Life is expensive and hard right now, in both a material sense and in an emotional/spiritual sense. There is a lot to be anxious about. We cannot fault the average millennial, zoomer, or even Gen X’er their fantasies to escape day-in-day-out wage labor that essentially amounts to getting to survive another day, another month, another year.
Where I hear people expressing this wish to escape to the country, I always have the same feeling – ”you’re so close”.
I haven’t figured out how to help people understand that this desire is a feasible one to make real and it’s possible to band together with 3-10 other people to buy land together and not have to shoulder the cost and labor of moving to a piece of land by yourself/with your immediate family.
I know it’s possible, because I know other people who have done it.
Put another way, a land project is different from simply buying raw land, or a cabin, or a house in the country, because a land project involves other people.
I don’t think of my self as a cynic, but I’ve found that most people that I’ve talked to about “running away to the country” feel it would be harder to do this with a small group of people.
Honestly, this is probably true. It is harder to buy land with people, and run a land project.
It’s not for everyone. I find many people I talk to about this stuff have an impaired sense of what is possible. Mark Fisher’s book, Capitalist Realism, explains this well–how people have had their sense of what is possible truncated by living under capitalism.
That sounds vague but, as an example, in the USA, our government permits, aids, and abets massive corporate greed that has resulted in a housing crises, unaffordable and bankrupting medical care, lifelong student debt, and so on.
When people imagine moving to the country, it seems that they mostly think of it like a money problem, “if only I made [x] more money or had a remote job”. That’s a lot easier to comprehend than creating a working group to define the land project, and find and buy the land.
For instance, if you had the cash for a down payment, you could move to the country in the time it takes you to search for and find a house or a piece of raw land in, say, 6 months to a year.
Coordinating with a small group of people who are interested in living in the country in various capacities would probably take 2-3 years because consensus would be needed on the vision and plan for the land, how the land would be purchased, and which piece of land to buy.
Land projects are typically ideologically-driven, organized around ideas like building and hosting a commons, and/or food autonomy. These terms are defined more fully below.
Living in common: More literally, establishing certain sections of land as a “commons” for all to use, but the more all-encompassing definition is creating and maintaining shared resources for all to use. A garden or a farm pasture are the most obvious, but a swimming hole or a communal kitchen, or an art studio are all other things that can be held in common. Living in common is different than “co-living” because it’s rooted in ideas of solidarity, shared power, and shared care.
Food autonomy: Food autonomy means finding ways to grow and source one’s own food outside of normal market supply chains. As opposed to “self-sufficiency” which is a myth and actually relies on paid labor, massive CostCo runs, and regular deliveries from Amazon and other suppliers, food autonomy is about interdependence, working with your neighbors and community to share food, and to steward the land in an intentional and environmentally-conscious way.
From personal experience, when I lived at a religious retreat center in Upstate NY, there was a biodynamic farm on the property that I would say qualified as a land project.
Logistically, there was young “farm-punk” couple that leased the land from the retreat center. Both of these people benefited from having wealthy families. Because of intergenerational wealth, they had access to capital to buy animal feed and farm equipment, pay farm workers, and so on.
Sometimes that’s how land projects exist. Someone has rich parents or has made enough money from their career to buy a piece of land and open it up to others who want to live out these ideals.
Not always though. Sometimes there are people who own land (sometimes a working farm) who need help with running the farm, or taking care of loved ones. Sometimes they are amenable to passing down the farm to younger people who will take it over and keep it a working farm.
In my experience, land projects usually try to integrate into their local and regional communities, and connect with their neighbors, local farms, and other local and regional projects.
If I missed anything in this general description of the land project, let me know!
Dreaming Even Bigger
There was a book that J. told me about on our call, Lifehouse, by Adam Greenfield.
I’ve been reading it, I’m about 30% of the way through.
Greenfield’s message is clear. And I think it’s something most people are not ready to hear, and mostly, do not want to hear.
In the book, Greenfield defines something he calls The Long Emergency, which is the period in which our systems begin to collapse due to continual and cascading climate crises.
During this phase, the state divests itself from protecting or helping people deal with these crises.
It’s not just the actual climate crises–like the flood in Asheville, NC or the wildfires in Los Angeles–but rather the second and third-order effects of these climate crisis which include, rapid price increases in housing/goods/services/energy, increased militarization of the police/implementation of martial law, and environmental crisises related to air, water, and so on.
Greenfield argues we are already in The Long Emergency. We are already seeing the state renege on the social contract – it’s contract to act as a benefactor to the populace and to provide core services like water and energy delivery, public education, and public safety at a reasonable price.
In many post-disaster areas, states(whether it’s the Federal/state/local level) have simply stopped providing these services and give little or no notice as to when these services will be back.
As our energy grids, supply chains and water management systems are all interconnected, it’s not just post-disaster areas that are affected by The Long Emergency.
So if we are being abandoned by the state, in an unrelenting and continual rending of the social fabric we’ve come to take for granted, what do we do?
I haven’t gotten that far in the book, but from what I’ve read so far, it appears Greenfield says that we need to get off of our asses and do something.
That “something” is to build “Lifehouses” which are sort of community centers on steroids I believe? And more.
Basically, Lifehouses would be a network of places that provide food, shelter, and services to people where the government has abandoned them.
Greenfield advocates for a network of Lifehouses across the country, and maybe even the world.
If I’ve structured this post correctly, you might be thinking, “Hey, that sounds a lot like a network of land projects!”
The title of this newsletter still stands. I think a network of Lifehouses, some of which are hosted on land projects should definitely exist.
So what are we going to do about it?
Most people who read this will probably have the same reaction, which might be something like, “What do you want me to do? I’m already anxious and tired and busy.”
I think that this collapse is inevitable and it’s already happening. Greenfield writes about how our systems can appear to be working more or less fine in a day-to-day sense but they may actually be running in a “failure mode”, meaning they appear to be working correctly, but actually are experiencing continual stress and strain that will result in their complete failure in the near future.
It’s hard to say which systems exactly are running in failure modes without being able to peek under the hood. The USSR might be the most famous example. Current systems that seem to be in failure mode are: US democracy and electoral process, the public internet and social media, Texas energy grid, NYC’s subway system, and so on.
I strongly recommend buying a copy of Lifehouse and reading it.
The last 8-10 years have been such a bummer(to say the least), I understand why people don’t want to think about the future.
Maybe it’s preferable to bury your head in the sand if the future is going to be terrible.
For those that want to face the future head-on, and improve chances of survival for themselves and others, do read Lifehouse.
If I sound like Chicken Little here, I would say to take a moment to pause and listen to your gut.
What does your gut tell you about the future?
Do you have a feeling things may start to get a whole lot worse?
I do, and I am looking to connect with other people who are willing to confront this future we will inevitably face.