What's good for the land is good for the people.
We are a group of folks who have come to realise that we have common dreams.
The past year or so has seen us embark on a journey of group discovery. Not content with the 9 to 5's and scattered lives of the system - we've discussed, chanted, dreamed, drummed, worked, campaigned,celebrated and played together on a quest to find a just and sustainable shared future. All of which has brought us to this present incarnation - Earthrites.
The following puts fire in the belly of Earthrites..........
.................. 'Affordable' housing and land rights.
In Scotland land and house prices are ever on the increase, reflecting it seems the gulf between the people and the land. Seen as a lucrative asset, our land is divided up and exploited for maximum profit: holiday homes, supermarkets, motorways. Even in rural areas where the market effects are not so easily seen, our countryside is fenced in and areas once rich in mixed woodland have become deserts of heath and heather where wealthy, often absentee, landowners increase their personal profit through country 'sports'. Earthrites is a registered housing co-operative which is a form of social housing that returns the land to collective responsibility. It is a legal structure whereby 'ownership' is held by the co-operative and homes are individually leased to the tenants, who are all equal members of said co-operative, therefore have equal say in the running.
...................Defending the last remnants of Scotlands wild places.
Only small pockets have survived the onslaught of monoculture and single minded business ventures that leaves deforestation, nutrient depletion and poisoning of the land, loss of diversity in the plant and animal kingdom and fragmented human communities in their wake. We would love to see the land reclaimed, Scotland reforested, biodiversity allowed to return and the right for people within their communities to rebuild damaged relationships with their environment.
....................Climate chaos
Earthrites has experienced that entering into mindful relationships with family, friends, neighbours and our environment makes it impossible to disregard the interconnectedness of all things, makes us sensitive to any damage to the ecosystems that we are a part of, makes it clear that we must seek balance. The formidable affects of human escalated climate change is testament to our lack of understanding of interdependance in nature. Again, taking it back to the land, Earthrites housing co-op is about much more than putting an affordable roof over our heads. It's about seeking the autonomy needed to reclaim our lives from an unsustainable system. We dream of renewable energies, organic gardening, waste recycling, being too busy creating and celebrating our lives to want to buy things and much more. Using renewable resources to build our homes and organic, permaculture principles to work the land we hope to feed ourselves and reduce our carbon footprint to the size of a faeries!
......................Disconnection from our environment
Earthrites has a strong desire to reconnect with our environment, demonstrated by a committment to ethical practices in our way of life and in our contributions to campaigns intended to halt the destruction of modern industrial culture. Being disconnected from the land has brought us much dis-ease. For example, having little or no control over food sources leaves us vulnerable to market forces that encourage the use of toxins for better crop yield, putting profit before people. Spiritually too, this disconnection has manifested itself as 'mental' illness, depression, isolation, loss of community. To feel whole again we need to reconcile with the land, take responsibility to make sure that our needs are met in a sustainable way, work together to make it so.
But times, they are a-changin' - the industrial revolution has had it's moment of glory, now is the time of the ecological revolution when people return to the land and the delicate webs of life for guidance on how to navigate such issues as climate chaos,diminishing resources, wasteful consumerism, wage slavery, oil wars. It's happening now. Through such do-it-yourself groups as housing and worker's co-operatives, common ownership, community woodlands and gardens, food co-ops, credit unions, letts exchange schemes, allotments, freecycle recycling, smallholdings, intentional communities, social centres and direct action people are reclaiming their lives and the land.
We would like to see communities in Scotland thriving as ecologically sustainable webs of life with environmental and human rights respected. Where a sense of equality dictates positive, creative relationships between people, other animals and our environment.
Let's make that journey together, please do contact us with your views. We're keen to hear from folks doing, or wanting to do similar, for inspiration and practical experience.
Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realise we cannot eat money.
(Cree Indian saying)
