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Tinker ☀️

@susankayequinn - That's awesome! I've pivoted from food banks into free fridges and community pantries as a distribution model. I'm also looking at expanding food production.

I'm trying to move from charity to mutual aid to post-scarcity food.

So Food Inputs (Production):
- Charity / Donation (eg Food Drives)
- Food Rescue from Restaurants, Grocery Stores, etc (relies on capitalistic initiatives though)
- Community Farms (Centralized Production)
- Community Gardens, Backyard Gardens, Indoor farming (Decentralized Production)

Food Outputs (Distribution)
- Centralized: Food Banks to Food Pantries
- Decentralized: Free Fridges / Community Pantries
- Peer-to-peer: Person to person exchange either through in person coordination or via apps like Olio

5 December at 3:28 | Open on infosec.exchange
12 comments
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker yes 100%

The solarpunk discord has some free fridges & food rescue. Grow Pittsburgh is a whole operation that trains people to do community gardens. One of the mods is building an exchange system for labor/goods in the community.

Pittsburgh has like #1 abandoned lots in the country or something so Grounded does work trying to reclaim those for food/greenspace. Still very capitalistic tho.

Buy Nothing has food exchanges.

People just don't know this stuff EXISTS. It's very early days.

5 December at 3:34 | Open on wandering.shop
Tinker ☀️

@susankayequinn - Well I'm just proper giddy reading this.

5 December at 3:38 | Open on infosec.exchange
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker so we had that solarpunk zoom yesterday (about setting up a new community discord) and I told them obliquely about your post, that there were people looking for community and how it was hard for them to find other likeminded folks.

I'm still mulling your post and the difference between charity/non-profits and mutual aid... 💚

6 December at 15:46 | Open on wandering.shop
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker
... and what my real purpose(s) are in being involved in various forms of that (with a couple focus areas: food, for sure, but also larger solarpunk values of resilience and connection and community in fighting and surviving the climate crisis, plus using climate+arts as activism). And I very much appreciate your notes bout finding the *people* not the *activity*.

I think what we're doing is working at a bunch of levels, some very unspoken and subversive.

@tinker
... and what my real purpose(s) are in being involved in various forms of that (with a couple focus areas: food, for sure, but also larger solarpunk values of resilience and connection and community in fighting and surviving the climate crisis, plus using climate+arts as activism). And I very much appreciate your notes bout finding the *people* not the *activity*.

6 December at 15:46 | Open on wandering.shop
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker
For my stories in particular, I'm doing what I call "deep work": engaging people who might be despairing or disengaged (in the climate crisis). Acting as a bard to rally the troops. Sparking new ideas and new longings. Deeply interrogating the status quo.

In the Discord, it's "sponsored" by a non-profit that's focused on green jobs, but it's really a subversive side project by the person running it to create a space to draw people in under the "solarpunk" umbrella...

6 December at 15:47 | Open on wandering.shop
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker
... activists, non-profit people, artists, normies. Some of those folks are focused on "growing" their volunteer ranks, basically recruitment, and I get that, but that's not really what I'm about (even though that's what I'm ostensibly facilitating). I'm focused on meeting the needs of the people already there; reaching people with subversive messaging; getting them to *engage* in any capacity...

6 December at 15:47 | Open on wandering.shop
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker
..., even if it's just imaginative space (which I think is not "just" anything--it's a critical step). I'm using arts in those capacities and *also* to drawn normies in, ones who are seeking community. It's like a speedrun through your method of hanging out around a bunch of non-profit/charity spaces to connect with the subversive elements. I'm one of those subversive elements. 😎

I still have some personal work to do ...

6 December at 15:48 | Open on wandering.shop
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker
...with figuring out how to "do community" as well, so it's also me sorting that out by engaging in this effort (on top of all the others: writing, publishing, podcasting, local activism, etc etc)

Anyway, I would LOVE to hear about your nascent local solarpunk group and keep in touch so we can share ideas.

6 December at 15:48 | Open on wandering.shop
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her) replied to Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@tinker
Like I hadn't heard of Olio and it looks interesting (but UK of course) and I immediately thought once the solarpunk discord is up, we could have a channel for our own version of Buy Nothing exchange (except we're spread out too much geographically so it might not really work). I'm a big believer in people working out things if they're creative and work together, and a key part of that is simply creating space for that to happen.

6 December at 15:48 | Open on wandering.shop
Jules replied to Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)
Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her) replied to Jules
Jules replied to Susan Kaye Quinn 🌱(she/her)

@susankayequinn @tinker I actually listened to a really interesting podcast interview with the founder of Olio, who said that the secret secondary mission of the app wasn't just to share food and reduce waste, it was to help people connect with their neighbours so eventually the app would become redundant because people would be connecting and sharing directly which I thought was rather lovely

6 December at 21:31 | Open on social.coop
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