The Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival

I went to the seventh Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival yesterday. Apparently the seven events have all happened in the past three years. This one has several before it was housed at the Rudolf Steiner high school.

The reskilling movement is aimed at sharing skills and practices that are useful for a resilient transition to an anticipated low carbon future. The assumption behind this movement is that we face twin challenges of peak oil which is the time where global oil production will be exceeded by global oil demand, and carbon driven global climate change. Reskilling, or the great reskilling is an idea that was put forth by Rob Hopkins, the man who also started the transition town movement. The transition town movement is essentially people working together to prepare local communities for these twin challenges. The Reskilling Festival in Ann Arbor was launched by people involved in the transition town movement. The basic idea of reskilling is that in a low carbon world we will have to know older skills that have been lost or forgotten, we will also need new skills to help us with the transition to a “post-carbon” consuming world.

While transition town and reskilling are responses to what many people think of as the end of the industrial age, these movements remind me of some of the social responses to the brutality of life early in the industrial age. The Luddites were those workers who saw the devastating effects of industrial production, and took to destroying factories as an act of self-defense. Ned Ludd for whom these radical conservatives were named is said to have destroyed a couple of knitting machine apparently driven mad by the monotony that they require. The arts and crafts movement, often described as a design, was started by a man named William Morris, and inspired by the thinking of John Ruskin. (Ruskin by the way was a major influence on Mahatma Gandhi, who proposed the development of India through its villages rather than industrial centers). One of the notions of the arts and crafts movement was that industrialization was leading to an impoverishment of style, and a deskilling of craftsmen. In fact we see that there is a skills curve in the technological advancement of production. At first advances in tools require greater skills, then a point is reached where the machine takes over and less skills needed. The outdoor summer camps which started in the 1800s was also a protest against the progressive leaning urbanized and industrialized world. In various forms these movements ideas and ideals have carried forward throughout the industrial period. Certainly the back to the land movement of the 1960s picked up many of these threads.

On the surface transition towns, and reskilling are movements that respond more to the material effects of industrial society on our environment, while past movements perhaps responded more to its effects on our souls. But a closer look shows that reskilling does embrace the spiritual and social skills we need in forging ahead. The festival offered classes in four general areas, home, food and garden, skills and crafts, and heart and soul. I was at the festival, in part, because I was asked to facilitate a class on co-counseling. Later in the day I attended a workshop based on the thinking of Joanna Macy, the Buddhist who has worked with issues of hope and despair in this time of global transition. I think this embrace of “heart and soul” skills is important. We need eco-technique, and eco-knowledge, but we also need eco-wisdom.

You can find out more about the specific programs that were offered yesterday at the Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival website http://a2reskilling.com/. It was an eclectic, and to be honest, and incomplete collection of classes. I want to report on the meeting that happened at the end of the day. This meeting was called to discuss the future of the Reskilling Festival. First let me say that this festival with nearly 30 classes was free and open to the public, its organizers were all volunteers, the Steiner school shared their space for free. But the two main organizers of the event are both stepping back. So the essential question of the meeting “was who is going to step forward?” This is not such an easy question to ask, the job clearly comes with a large time commitment. At the end of the meeting I did see a couple of people sign up to help.

Instead of focusing only on this need, the meeting raised the question of what we might want from such an event in the future. Various ideas were suggested, some of which were considerable divergences from the present format. There is nothing wrong with change, and any effort to teach the skills that the Reskilling Festival aims at promoting is promising. My own take on what direction the festival, or the local reskilling movement should take is really through the lens of what builds this movement as a community. At the same time that I was teaching the basics of co-counseling, the architect who helped me design my super insulated addition, and the man who runs the summer camp where my children have gotten to learn things like starting fires with flint and steel were both offering classes. This type of overlap of people with common ground, and the in the hall conversations between workshops and classes is the warp and weft with which community is woven. This is part of why simply posting videos of workshops on YouTube is not enough

One of the more exciting things I heard spoken at this meeting was reference to related efforts and projects, such as the Ann Arbor free skool . A real movement is made up of many efforts. To change things, to prepare for the coming change, or to help midwife what Joanna Macy calls the great turning, our little bit of reskilling as represented by this festival is not enough. The task in front of us is huge. Fortunately the Reskilling Festival is also not alone. Whether or not the leadership is found to organize a next Reskilling Festival, and I very much hope it is found, Ann Arbor will continue to have those of us who are interested in creating a sustainable and vibrant culture. The Reskilling Festival is a node that can help that culture to emerge. If you have lots of time up on your hands and are inspired by this vision for a future culture, the Reskilling Festival could use you.

The Rainbow Gathering, the Fourth of July, A Memoir

Summer solstice has just passed. I started the morning today reading the letter from some friends of mine who always seek a spiritual message in the tradition of a particular band of the Ojibway people on the solstice. But a week and a half after the solstice, all of the first week of July, there is an eclectic gathering of the Rainbow “tribes”. Those peoples who emerged as latter-day tribes in a conscious way first in the 1960s. The extended families of choice that in their diversity of colors, inclination, and orientation make a rainbow.

The first gathering of the Rainbow Family of Living Light (as they call themselves) was in 1972, apparently against a fair amount of government resistance.  Around 20,000 people finally got past the roadblock. At one of the few gatherings I ever attended, I walked in on a circle of people, where one storyteller was recounting this event, only to hear the end of the story, about a group of people climbing up some plateau and being met by others with food and hugs.

In the 1980s I made my way to three Rainbow Gatherings. Michigan in ‘83, Missouri in ‘85, and Pennsylvania in ‘86. There are lots of things that I liked about the Gatherings I attended. The sharing, and communal spirit, the beauty of being in the wilderness, the dedication of the hard-core Rainbow crowd to a good event, the care for the environment, and the amazing fact that these events are non-monetary. On the Fourth there is a big community circle and a prayer for world peace. But on the Fourth of July, one thing I particularly enjoyed was that it was possible to be with thousands of people, and not hear a single firecracker, not a single skyrocket. I don't believe I even saw a sparkler, a local manifestation of peace.

As a young anarchist attending these gathering, what I saw was a demonstration of the principles of anarchism brought into being in a small and temporary wilderness city. All decisions for the community as a whole were made by consensus in a general assembly. Of course these were sparsely attended assemblies, as most people preferred other ways of enjoying their week in the wilderness, but the mechanism was there, and from my observation, careful deliberation clearly occurred. Beyond the decisions for the community as a whole, the Rainbow Gathering is a celebration of freedom of choice. 

But freedom of choice in no way is a descent into chaos. Several large kitchens emerge capable of feeding thousands of people. Labor, supplies, and financial resources are all freely given. At the end of each meal they pass the magic Hat. No doubt there must be some who give a lot, but many of the gatherings attendance are hippies who live what might be called a marginal existence in the capitalist world of “Babylon”. But it isn't cash donations alone that make the kitchens happen. I remember traveling to my first gathering in northern Michigan with Lee and Sally and a couple of others packed into a little car, somehow in addition to all our bags, Lee harvested a crate of lettuce from his community garden plot, and that also made its way into the trunk. For another gathering I believe we scavenged some granola, or flour in a 50 pound bag from a local dumpster.

Here I was among thousands of “my people” and yet I ran into the problem of only knowing a handful of them and feeling quite isolated at times. It was through this isolation that I learned the important lesson, that you want to make friends, or you're feeling lonely, it's a good idea to volunteer in the community kitchen. There are always onions to chop or potatoes to peel. My favorite kitchen experience, only because it was amazing to me to see it happening in the wilderness, was the soy kitchen. At the time I worked making tofu at a cooperative back in Ann Arbor. It is a process that requires some labor, grinding beans, cooking beans, extracting the liquid milk, curdling it and then pressing it. Cleanliness is also important. And here was a fine operation soybean slurry cooking in a large 55 gallon drum, instead of the press system I was used to, the slurry was poured into a sack that was hung from a tree and twisted to extract the milk. The final product, the tofu, was then given to other kitchens to turn into dinner. And dinners were served up free to anyone who had a plate. Each kitchen had its own name and identity. I particularly remember the good food that the Krishna kitchen made. Of course they always put a little sugar in the cream of wheat.

Other functions of the community were met by similar principles of voluntary association. Healthcare, childcare, water and sanitary services, people working to resolve conflicts in the community, I believe I even saw some emergency housing services, and the dedicated rainbow hard-core stay around for months after the gathering to re-seed trails and make it so you can't tell the gathering was there a year later.

Of course all is not perfect in paradise, there has been an ongoing struggle with the Park Service, over the use of the National Forests. The Park Service have wanted the gathering to apply for a permit.  The Gathering, describing itself as a non-organization of nonmembers lacks any entity to apply for a permit. Further, those from the Rainbow Family side of things will point out that the Constitution grants the right to peaceably assemble. But my impression is that at the end of the day, the “Rainbows” generally remain on good terms with local Park service folks, and their care for the land is appreciated.

Then there is the problem of drugs and alcohol. Of course, drugs are accepted at  gatherings.  In fact, for some they are a sacrament. I remember a peyote tea tent, where one man offered an all-night ceremony, the tea was not very strong, I had one cup and felt the faintest of effects. But I imagine that if someone stayed the whole night sipping a cup every hour or so, it would have become quite the peyote experience.  I remember seeing a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms that a man said he grew all year long just to be able to bring to the gathering. Alcohol is another issue. In general, alcohol is not favored at rainbow gatherings, but there are plenty of rainbow brothers and sisters who struggle with alcoholism. There is a camp on the edge of the encampment that is alcohol friendly. But alcohol elsewhere meets with antagonism. I remember a discussion where an “old timer” suggested if you see someone with the six pack, a group of you could descend on that person, and “help them” drink the beer. I don't know how useful this suggestion would be in practice, but it does suggest something about the direct action spirit of “Rainbows”. There is a group of people calling themselves Shanti-Sena after Gandhi's term for peace force. When conflicts, alcohol-related or otherwise, emerge the Shanti-Sena come out of the woodwork, or should I say come out of the woods and worked to defuse the conflict.

Although it's been over 20 years since I've been to a rainbow gathering proper, I still respect and honor the community that starts with the search by a site committee.  And then in June slowly grows as backwoods campers lay sticks and stones as guidelines for future trails. And then in late June kitchens began to grow, and numbers began to grow. And by July 4^th thousands of people inhabit this Temporary Autonomous Zone. And finally in late July and through August a hearty volunteer crew repair the land from the stress of millions of footsteps.

My partner's brother is there again this summer as he often is, helping to focalize the Turtle Soup kitchen (not to worry no turtles were harmed in the making of this kitchen or its vegan food). I wish him and the rest of the rainbow gathering a happy Fourth of July, and successful prayers for world peace.