Sowing the Seeds of Sustainability

Thursday afternoon i walked from the Independent Media Center in downtown Cancun, and headed to the Casa de la Cultura. i reached a Giant Wall-Mart and slowly crossed the four lane street. From there, i stepped into a large dirt filled field, home to the pending Eco-Village, the brainchild and vision of the Sonoma County, California-based Green Bloc. After successful actions against the WTO in Sacramento, CA, the group now seeks to pioneer the first ever Eco-Village to be built and melded with the protests themselves.

Come September 9th, this space will be filled with some 5,000 campesinos and 2,000 students, as well as various permaculture-based projects such as a greywater system, and container garden. With shovels and seeds in hand, the Green Bloc aims to plant possibility within the globalization movement. Staring down Wal-Mart, the Green Bloc will work with individuals and organizations such as Mexican based Tierra Verde to demonstrate that another world is possible.

During the afternoon of September 4th, the Green Bloc held their first press conference, and began constructing infrastructure for the soon to be erected tent city. Using sustainable systems within this space, the group will use the tent city as a place for skill sharing and practical education. For example, collected rainwater will travel from canopies to a hand-pump. From there, participants can use this water to wash their hands and dishes. Simultaneously, the village will be collecting the roof water and filtering it through charcoal and gravel to be used for showers and drinking water.

Ultimately, these projects demonstrate the ways that we can remove ourselves from privatization and integrate more life-affirming practices into our daily lives. As Green Block member Erik Ohlsen pointed out, rainwater is most often the cleanest water to drink. And yet somehow, many of us have surrendered this knowledge in leiu of plastic bottles.

The theory of permaculture teaches us to design and work with nature, ultimately to build relationships that reflect individual locations and patterns of nature. Erik hopes these design principles are used as a mechanism for looking at other systems as well, ultimately extending into a metaphor for the movement itself. "We are the next succession of culture," he said, and by working with the tools of nature and implementing them into our own lives, we can begin to dismantle corporate control.

In discussing their presence at the WTO conference, Riverwind, a Green Bloc member said, "What will we do when the Empire falls? How will we do these things for ourselves, like feed ourselves? Ultimately, we need a working model to put into place." And this is exactly why the Green Bloc answered the call to action. In coming to Cancun, the Green Bloc wants to counter the WTO representation of a 'profits at all cost' framework.

Organizations such as the WTO hold us hostage to a world void of self-sufficiency. Through trade laws and privatization they enable corporate control of seed supplies, water, and information, ultimately attempting to appropriate centuries of community held knowledge that work in tandem with nature. Ever so carefully, the WTO tries to usurp our power to provide for ourselves, crafting a world that makes us dependent upon corporate technologies and insecure of our own capabilities.

According to a local taxi driver, the people of Cancun had always collected their own water, drank the life source that fell from the sky. With the development of the tourist industry came an influx of beach seekers and bottled water. Over time, the individuals who live here were exposed to a disposable lifestyle wrapped in both real and advertised images of wealth and leisure. Slowly, the locals themselves started purchasing their water, exposing yet another example of how the corporate sector manipulates our own long-held knowledge.

Direct Action can take many forms. For the participants of the Green Bloc, it's demonstrating the ways in which we can reclaim power within our own lifestyle. As Birthday, another member explained, "The corporations have the power because we buy from them, but we don't have to. We all have this indigenous knowledge within us, we just need to relearn from each other."

Perhaps this is a turning point for the movement.

Compost and worm bins line the welcome station of the Convergence Center. Rain catchment material lines the roof of the building. And slowly the tent city moves from vision to reality. In uniting against the WTO and corporate control of our lives, the movement shifts from opposition to offering viable alternatives to a world that's for sale.

So often the media paints the globalization movement in black and white, rife with negativity, absent of any color of possibility. Sitting here, i still picture the giant Wal-Mart in my mind. And then the irony settles and i have to smile. Joined in the solidarity of sweat, folks are building another world in Cacun.