Bioneers Conference

A Raeven’s View of the 15th Annual Bioneers Conference at the Marin Center in Santa Rosa, California
October 15-17, 2004

The Bioneers conference opened with the declaration that the current battle is not between the West and Islam or the developed and developing countries, but is between a disposable and a sustainable world. In this respect, we need immediate disarmament.
Opening comments also included founder Kenny Ausubel’s statement that the current administration and its delusional faith-based politics seem to make the statement, “Let us pray… let us prey on the public, that is!” Both Kenny and his wife and co-founder of Bioneers, Nina Simons, emphasized that life creates conditions conducive to life; our destiny is inextricably tied to the web of life; our interconnectedness must guide our opposition to rationalist, corporate agendas that drive us away from precautionary principles. Indeed, this sentiment was best described by the quote on the cover of the Bioneers conference program, accredited to David Suzuki: “We are the environment. There is no distinction.”

What we need now, the Bioneers spirit stresses, is a renewed culture of restoration, reconciliation, and healing, with the understanding that the environment is a trans-national issue, one which sees no borders, and with the idea that our constitutional rights should protect against “extermination without representation.” The idea that we are a connected species, that we are one web of life, this is what family values should be about.
Bioneers heroically balanced responsible recognition of the grave problems that we are facing today with fierce optimism, following Tom Robin’s premise that we must “refuse to lift our gaze from the dark misery, but celebrate nonetheless.” Kenny stated, “We need to show the world that there is another America. A progressive America. And most importantly we need to get connected globally and honor the work that’s going on all over; we need to connect the dots.” Kenny ended his opening with a story about a midwife who said that when a woman in labor draws her last harrowing breath and knows she cannot draw another with equal force and survive, she, as the midwife, knows that the baby is on its way. “The baby is on its way,” Kenny said, “and this is a birthday.”

I will highlight some of the speaker’s presentations below:

Jay Harman spoke about biomimecry, which is technology that, rather than working against nature as most industrial revolution-based tech does, mimics nature’s designs. He spoke about the golden spiral shape common to sea shells, tornadoes, fire updrafts, water columns, etc. He stated that streamline tech works with linear designs which counter this natural spiral shape. By working with nature’s designs, Jay has developed better tech for energy efficiency. Jay stated, “It’s not just okay to feel optimistic, it’s essential. We have the resources; we need the will.”

LaDonna Redmond, a passionate community activist, African-American priestess, mother of two, and wife from Chicago spoke about her work with nutrition and environmental justice issues in her urban homeland. She emphasized that “If we stand strong, it is because we stand on the strong shoulders of those who have gone before us.” Drawing on her ancestral wisdom for guidance, she has tirelessly crusaded for healthy food options for her community. Prompted by her son’s birth and subsequent repeated sickness due to food allergies, LaDonna began a fierce education in nutrition. She asked, “What can I do to protect the potential of my son?” She didn’t find answers in the medical community, of which she stated, “Doctors are not always the smartest people; they are the people who stay in school the longest.” She has explored the broken relationship between African-Americans and land stewardship and has addressed food access issues in urban low-income areas on both the local and state levels in Illinois. She stressed that everyone must be included in sustainable community endeavors, that cultural diversity is necessary in these endeavors. She is creating a return to the ancestral kitchen through her work in setting up urban farms, produce stands, and young child health education. She is working with community economic development rather than social services.
Later, in a private press conference, LaDonna discussed the idea of “listening to the land,” and how African-Americans have become distant from the land because of the violent relationship with the land, viewing land as enemy, as opportunity for oppression, that slavery precluded. LaDonna stated, “The land has a story, a song, a rhythm, and getting in touch with that is part of engaging with the land, touching, walking, and being with the land.” I asked LaDonna a question about a comment she made in her presentation about the difference between feminism and “womanism.” She said that for her, the personal is political, and that she feels that feminism is a word coming from the dominant culture, and she prefers womanism, which allows her to be “sassy or charming,” “flexible for a woman of color,” and emphasizes a “rainbow of opportunity to become a woman.”

Satish Kumar had a small press meeting which I attended with much excitement as I have been trying to meet with him for the past year. Satish and his friend—after seeing Bertrand Russell get arrested for protesting nuclear warfare at the age of 90 years old in 1961, and asking themselves what they were doing, in Delhi, sitting at a café—made a global walk for peace in the early 1970s, visiting each major city in countries with nuclear weapons: from Gandhi’s grave in Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., ending at JFK’s grave. He told the story of how he was walking with his companion through the Himalayas and a car passed them, then stopped 100 ft. ahead, and came back to ask if they wanted a ride. “No,” they replied, “We are walking.” “Where are you going? I can take you anywhere you are going,” the man replied. “We are walking to America,” Satish said, to which the man, who was American, balked and gave them his business card, telling them to call when they reached the States. Two years later, in Philadelphia, they called the man, and asked if he remembered meeting two boys in the mountains in India who were going to the USA. “Yes,” he replied, “What ever happened to those boys?” “We are those boys, and we are in your city right now!” Satish replied, and they all got together to celebrate. Satish and his friend traveled for two years without a cent, carrying only trust and love for the universe and humanity.
Satish talked about the creation and distribution of Resurgence magazine and his work with E. F. Schumacher, whose college he now teaches at. Schumacher advocated that “small is beautiful,” but Satish stated that “small” is not enough; smallness is a framework from which to strive to keep life on a human scale. Rules and regulations should serve human beings, not the other way around. Bigger isn’t better, but is more impersonal and less human. Satish repeated a quote which says, “Our work is to light a candle rather than curse the dark.” His vision of activism is to use the imagination, aesthetic qualities, and celebration to bring ecologic and economic wholeness, not just intellectual aspects.
Satish answered a question about terrorism, stating that terrorism is not a new phenomenon, as we could see pre-9/11 the terrorist violence in the work of Lenin, Mao, and Nelson Mandela. “Terrorists always have a political reason,” Satish stated, “and you must meet their reasons to kill the cause of terrorism. We must ask why the nineteen people [on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center] were so angry that they were able to kill themselves.” This is in accordance with the second noble truth of Buddhism, which says that after identifying the problem and the suffering, one must understand the cause. Satish emphasized the importance of communicating with the terrorists.
I asked Satish about how to teach nonviolence to young people, and he stated that we must teach by example, that nonviolence is not a technique, but is a way of life, a paradigm, a strategy to resolve conflict that should come out of life experiences. We must teach by example, and sow the seeds of nonviolence. He went on to state that schools are very violent places, where rules and regulations are translated into discipline. Schools should instead be places of caring, where respect for the children teaches them to be nonviolent. He stated that it is a subtle form of violence to view kids as mini-adults who must be imposed with rules, that this is a very arrogant perspective.
Satish also talked about the fast pace of modern life, and stated, “G-d made no shortage of time,” so we should not hurry our building and have patience for long-term results. In his school, The Small School, Satish emphasizes the need for young people to learn experientially about food, sewing, and building, through cooking, craft-making, gardening, etc. He said that in the modern education we have forgotten to teach how to make three things: food (to grow, prepare, serve, and eat); clothes (to design, sew, mend, and even spin and weave); and houses (to build, design, foundation, plumbing, insulation, etc.). I asked Satish to comment on how home economics programs and shop classes have been phased out of education as a partial result of the former sexism associated with these courses, and the feminist movement. Satish stated that he is a feminist, and that he believes that these skills should not be restricted to gender, that “everybody should do all the jobs, not just women.” And then he talked about how much he enjoys cooking with his wife.
Satish has a new book to be released soon, entitled The Buddha and the Terrorist. In the book, by calling the terrorist a friend, Buddha disarms him. Satish’s message is that the “world has seen many, many wars and we have seen that none of them have succeeded. War as a method to solve any problem is not a right technique. The US failed to win the hearts and minds of people in Vietnam, as they are continuing to fail today. What works is negotiation!” Moreover, we are to “be nonviolent. Be peace.”

Amory Lovins spoke about the oil endgame and emphasized how better automobile technology, making the physics of cars lighter by using carbon-composites, would save gasoline, allowing for better fuel efficiency, and would make cars safer. He presented his plan, which requires a $180 billion dollar investment and returns $150 billion dollars a year in saving oil costs, not including the unknown benefits of not preferentially treating countries with oil (and leading ourselves into wars and strife). His plan would make the USA free from mass oil consumption in the next 10 years using supply-side substitutions in design, biofuel, natural gas, and government-induced incentives.

Jason Clay talked about agricultural transformations and used specific case studies (shrimp trolling vs. aquaculture; rice on the Yangtze River; and sugarcane cultivation) to show how when farmers work with nature, rather than fighting against it, better practices reveal more competitive output and healthier systems.

Martha Arguello spoke about environmental justice and reciprocity, highlighting the precautionary principle and asking, “How much do we really need to compromise?” She stated that we should not have to trade health for economic gain, and that health is not a privilege, but a right. She said that through her work she has discovered that the combination of theory and practice to envision a different future doesn’t just belong to technocrats, but belongs to the community.

T. Allan Comp gave an afternoon workshop talking about his restoration work from both an aesthetic and ecologic perspective. He talked about his project in Vintondale, Pennsylvania, a rural town with a population fewer than 600. The town’s main livelihood used to be coal mining, and, since coal was unregulated before 1977, large deposits of acid mine drainage (AMD) occur in the main river going through the area, creating yellow-orange deposits along the bank. 75% of the population lives below the poverty line and over 50% of the population is over 60 years old. This typical coal town became the site for Allan’s AMD and ART project because it had the “visual humor and engagement” that Allan finds “interesting.” Whereas standard passive water treatment projects would have simply created several water cleaning pools, which are neither attractive nor conspicuous to the passing observer, Allan wanted to create a project that was both artistic and educational.
The result was the creation of a natural drainage system: six pools of water, each surrounded by different clusters of trees which changed their colors in the fall, ranging from red leaves (at the most contaminated pool), to yellows, to greens at the bottom. This meaningful forest, called the “Litmus Garden,” was used as an educational tool. Allan also identified what the community wanted and based on his findings built a baseball field, play area, riparian area nature trail, and added signs about the wetlands and project strategically throughout the existing miner’s trail, open to public access. After removing layers of coal deposits, the foundations of the old mining houses were visible and used as a historical restoration site, where a mosaic with a map of the community and the original blue prints will be built. The mosaic will include the word “hope” written in the 22 original native languages of the miners that worked in Vintondale. Life-sized slate tablets etched with sketches of miners going in and out of the mines were installed at the entrance to one of the old shafts by the Americorps and VISTA staff members who facilitated the project. Americorps workers also implemented a project created by the winner of a Penn. State landscape architecture competition for the AMD and ART project called “A Clean Slate,” which included a slate for people to write on (like a chalkboard, using slate indigenous to the region), and carbon plants prehistorically native to the area, showing the life-cycle of coal.
Allan said that often in restoration projects people are looking for a plan that is “good, cheap, and fast.” He said that you can pick two of those three, but all three are never possible. Allan stated, “Good science won’t work in a vacuum,” and stated that the relationships between ecology, art, and community are essential in any restoration project. He also talked about how much newfound pride and hope in their cultural heritage and land. Regarding the interaction between artists and engineers in this project, Allan stated that, “Art gives people permission to talk about emotions and aspects of life that they may not be able to discuss in their professional settings.”
Sources pertaining to artistic restoration work: www.greenmuseum.org, www.amdandart.org, www.ecoartnetwork.org, the women’s environmental artist directory (book), and the Earthworks Institute.

Today, I registered one voter, made two new friends, met countless others, witnessed inexplicably inspiring talks, and ended the day with a shamanic healing session, which conveyed the idea that from now until the election, we need to spend time each day visualizing November 2nd as perfect and ideal, and sending this positive energy out into the universe.

On Saturday, October 16, 2004:

I woke up under an overcast sky visible through the broad oak trees overhead and left China Basin campsite just in time to get to the Bioneers tent to hear the first keynote speaker of the day begin her talk: Amy Goodman.

Amy Goodman gave a phenomenal talk based on her book, Exception to the Rulers. In introducing Amy, Kenny Ausubel said, “Like a surfer catching the perfect wave, she’s right where she needs to be.” Amy said, “It is our responsibility in the media to go where the silence is.” She talked about how the media is supposed to be a check and balance to the government, hence it holds specific rights as specified in the Constitution, but that it has been saturated by corporate control and has gone virtually unchecked by the millions of mass-media consumers. She talked about how the overwhelming number of people who die in a war are innocent civilians, but we don’t see this footage on television. She state that war is not a civilized answer to conflict in the 21st century. “Dissent,” Amy stated, “is what makes this country safe.”
She talked about 9/11 and the unnoticed deaths of those who weren’t recorded because their families were afraid to come forward for fear of deportation, or those who were impoverished or unknown. She talked about the similarity between the “missing person” signs pasted everywhere in Manhattan and the desaparecidos signs carried by women in Argentina’s Plaza de Mayo. She also talked about the many historic terrorist events that have occurred on September 11, including Pinochet, about whom she was giving a special radio show on the morning of 9/11. This knowledge was bone-chilling to me: Amy Goodman, hosting a radio show blocks from the twin towers, talking about terrorism, as it happened on our own soil. “To kill or be killed,” Amy stated, “I don’t know which is worse.” “These are critical times,” Amy stated regarding the Patriot Act, “when the librarian has to be a freedom fighter.” On the media, Amy said: “I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the continent, which we all sit around and discuss the major issues of the day—life and death, war and peace—and anything less than this is a disservice to the men and women of this country.”
In her later press conference, Amy talked about the influence of her Orthodox Jewish grandfather and of spirituality in her work. She said that her family history dates back to the Baal Shem Tov and that her background has shaped her values on the Middle East and her deep values of social justice that necessitate working towards solutions. She talked about defining terrorism, and how abortion clinic bombings are terrorist activities which are not given much attention by the current administration, which prides itself on being anti-choice. She said that when someone tells her that s/he wants to make a difference and asks what s/he should do, she replies that one should do what one loves to do and go far with that. Regarding objectivity in today’s media, she stated, “If you share the establishment consensus, then you’re objective. If you step outside of it, then you’re opinionated.” When I asked Amy what she would say to a woman (in the South) who says that she’s not political, isn’t voting, or is voting whatever her husband tells her to vote, Amy responded, “It’s our responsibility and privilege to participate and to vote.” She said that single young women are the largest nonvoting block, and said that she suspects this could be for one of two reasons. Either young women don’t feel like they have an effect, don’t feel that they count or have a voice, or women don’t identify with the rich, male candidates. To a woman who votes what her husband tells her, Amy said she would say, “Would you like your daughter to participate? Well then it’s how you act that will make her do so.” She talked about the recent incident in which young college women at the U of A in Tucson were registering students to vote, and Fox TV pulled up and told the students that they were committing a felony by registering the students, who in their faulty understanding of the voting system had to vote in their home states. They put this misinformation and story on the news. Imagine the effects of such an atrocity. And this is happening in many places in the country.

John Mowhawk shared his worldview about the evolution of people and plants and the egregious wrongdoings of Monsanto and other genetically-modified seed companies and laboratories.

Candace Pert, a pioneer female biologist gave a presentation on the “molecules of emotion” and on her work to “cure AIDS now!” She has found and named Peptide T, which binds to the cellular receptor CCR5, the same one that the common AIDS virus uses. With proper clinical testing, and positive intentions, this could be the missing agent to cure AIDS non-toxically. Regarding her training of a man who would become the head of the CDC, she said, “One of the great things that happens to women—the people you train will one day be in very high places.” (See The Institute for New Medicine online at www.tinm.org)

Danielle Drake performed a spoken word piece about African-American issues and world conditions.

Michael Lerner spoke on personal and planetary healing and the emerging environmental health movement. “This annual gathering of our tribe is such a powerful experience.” “On a political level, the United States is acting in a way that is classic of a hegemonic power in its twilight hours. As powers decline, they begin to act more and more selfishly, not representing the consensus of the people who brought them together.”
Michael diagnosed the patient, planet earth, and emerged with a great deal of hope. “You can understand the impact of humanity on earth by multiplying population by consumption and technology.” We need then to give women power, love children, return to frugality, and use green technology and chemicals. But how? We need to reexamine our relationship with the earth and connect to healing initiatives.

Thomas Linzey works in rural Pennsylvania with a predominately municipal, Republican working-class population and examines the divide between corporations and democracy through his work as a lawyer. He asked, “What happens when people become disobedient? When they begin to build the types of communities they need?” Thomas has been working since 1991 with an unfolding revolt led rural citizens rebelling against a corporate agricultural company imposing an unsustainable factory farm proposal on the area. He stated that death by suicide has become the leading unnatural cause of death for farmers. Regarding policy creation and public engagement, he stated, “We’re so used to asking ‘What can we get?’ rather than ‘What do we want?’” The abolitionists didn’t ask for a slavery protection agency; they drove an amendment into the constitution. Similarly, we should not only be getting the EPA, but a constitutional right for ecosystems—rivers, plants, animals, etc.—and the human rights to litigate for these entities, which should cease to be viewed as property, just as slaves ceased to be property with the abolition movement.

John DeGraff and his wife Vickie I., authors and producers of the documentary and book Affluenza, and leaders of the Take Back Your Time campaign had a press conference in which I was initially the only reporter present. One other reporter, Rachel, showed up halfway through their slotted time. I was so elated to be able to spend so much basically one-on-one (or two-on-two in this case) time with both of them, who are long-time heroes of mine, and whose book formed the basis of a big part of my independent study project on the intersection between happiness, non-violence, and environmental sustainability. John spoke about the time famine people are currently suffering from and Vickie talked about how some time for reflection on how she spends her day, minute by minute, what makes her happy and what she values is essential to understanding how to change quality of life. She talked about how often what we love, what we dream, what we desire, is not reflected in the way we are currently living our lives, due to the consumer culture we find ourselves embroiled in. Under this time famine, we can never do enough, have enough, be enough to keep pace with the constantly expanding distractions. John and Vicki have proposed a six-point legislative program which calls for paid leave for childbearing, more paid leave overall, part time equality (no hourly wage change or benefit loss), and election day to be declared as a national holiday, to recognize the importance of civic participation. They emphasize that freedom is not the ability to do whatever one wants, whenever one wants to do it. “If we had more time,” John stated, “we might not have been so quick to rush into war against Iraq.” They defended children’s rights to school recess and talked about a recent U. of Michigan study that found that, contrary to the popular belief in high school over-scheduled overachievers, the single most important long-term factor indicating whether a kid would be successful in college was whether she had dinner with her family on a regular basis. John described the beginnings of the lack of time and overconsumption-based society that we find creating the dis-ease of “affluenza.” Vickie has created Conversation Cafes around the country to try to bring together people to spend an hour a week discussion topics that matter to them. She also believes that people need to hear more stories about the pioneer individuals who are choosing to slow down and are just as (if not more) successful in the world. “After college,” Vickie said, “I chose to learn about the skills of resistance, to slow down, to live close to the land, and I still wrote a best-selling book!” In a recent study, John and Vickie found out that individual consumption went down 25% after one read their book, Your Money or Your Life. They talked about the “time footprint” on our environment- the way that our economy cannot support the number of people living on this planet, so if we cut hours and shared the work, we would all be better off. They emphasized that we each must create for ourselves “an awareness of what is enough.”

On Women: Nina Simons spoke about the co-founding of Codepink by Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin at the Unreasonable Women for the Environment conference put on by Bioneers. Lateefah Simon, director of the Center for Young Women’s Development, said, “The poor are the most politicized people on earth,” and talked about how our work must be soul filled, must come from the gut. Rha Goddess talked about how at a recent conference she attended she and a group of women created a red tent in a room, for women to gather and nurture one another. She said that in this age we must be “courageous enough to be both vulnerable and strong.” A woman asked how we take down the master’s house (the power structure which puts rich, white men at the top), without using the master’s tools. To this, Lateefah and Rha answered that we must know the tools intimately and be able to reclaim them as separate from the master, while also making our own new tools. The problem is not always the master’s tools, but is the master, just as the issue is not often with the Bible, but with the interpretation. “The revolution of women,” Rha said, “is to be well.” In response to a question about how to deal in situations where women in groups turn on each other, Rha said that we must face our demons and ask why women hate each other. We must understand how generations of misogynistic rule have fermented ideas of competition, of not wanting to see our sisters do well in situations of business and love.

I attended a workshop entitled “Coming down from the mountain: Spirituality and social action,” which featured phenomenal key panelists. Satish Kumar talked about how his experience of walking really taught him the unity of life. In explaining his decision to take no money with him on his peace walk, he said, “fear is the root cause of war.” He talked about how we must bring joy (ananda) into our work, our protests, our activism. “Do not just demonstrate for peace,” he stated, “Demonstrate peace.” Satish advocates for a change from our constitutional declaration for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” to a new trinity consisting of “soil, soul, and society,” a model which includes spiritual and ecologic dimensions. He said that in monastic traditions, poverty was defined as a “voluntary acceptance of limits,” and said that rather than having poverty alleviation programs, we should have wealth alleviation programs!
Belvie Rooks spoke about the dark night of her soul, during which she grew angry at how much media attention was given to Columbine and the shooting of white suburban kids, and how little attention was given to south central LA inner city gang shootings. She went into a deep depression and felt disconnected from the suffering children, from her home in Mendocino and her environmental activist work. Her downward spiral led her into suicidal thoughts and in a moment of desperation she picked up the phone and called Alice Walker, who said, “Belvie, stay with the darkness. There’s a gift in the darkness.” This appreciation of her dark space, rather than taking the new age approach to only searching for the light, was what began to pull Belvie out of her depression. It became clear to Belvie that she needed to develop a curriculum to teach self-worth in the contest of family, ancestry, community, and the planet.
Lewis Mehi-Madrona, psychiatrist and Native American healer and author of Coyote Medicine, talked about creating healing circles and how everything we need to know is already inside of us, so each of us are capable of forming a healing circle/gathering. “Stop looking for teachers,” Lewis stated, “and start taking action.” Lewis described how one circle, which included a smelly homeless schizophrenic man showed him how a whole group can work to overcome feelings that the mentally ill are annoying or a nuisance.
Then, it was LaDonna Redmond’s turn to present. She began to lead an African dance and chant from her Onisha tradition. She called up members of the audience to help her with the dance and we all stood to participate from our seats as well. As she began, two homeless men, one apparently intoxicated, came to the front and began shouting, and trying to get involved. They were instantly escorted out by a Bioneers security person. All this right after Lewis had just finished talking about inclusiveness in healing circles, and here we were doing a healing chant and dance together. Immediately after the dance, the Q and A session began. A man in the audience asked a question pertaining to the irony of the situation we had just witnessed. Each of the panelists in turn voiced their acceptance of the two men’s participation, and as they did so, somehow the men were back in the conference tent, and even allowed to speak. Then, some people made “approving” comments about the homeless man present, which, while genuine, seemed a bit off-color to me. At the end, LaDonna repeated a line from the story of Queen Esther, about our need to be activists for change: “But for such a time as this, you were born.”

On Sunday, I worked at the Codepink table for a few hours and then saw Terry Tempest Williams speak in the plenary. She quoted from her work “The Artic,” “When one hungers for the light, it is only because one knows the depths of the darkness.” She told the story of how she was raised with a very conservative, Republican father, how she was recently turned away from a speaking engagement at a college in Florida because Bush was speaking there, and how her brother is suffering from terminal cancer and was denied a stem cell transplant. The combination of the latter two events were what it took to change her father’s mind from being an absolute Bush supporter to becoming an undecided voter. The students at the college in Florida rallied and she will be speaking about open speech and rights there next week. Her brother said, “We are all terminal. How do you want to spend your one beautiful life?” Terry emphasized engagement, action, and transformation through love, and posed the question, “How close does it [the relationship between politics and personal life] have to get before we make the changes required for a full transformation?” “The human heart,” Terry stated, “is the first home of democracy.”

Throughout the weekend, I was tempted to feel alone, having come solitarily, initially not knowing anyone. But I did not feel lonely at all. I discovered many people who I knew, or with whom I have mutual connections, and I connected with the phenomenal Codepink women. But more than that, I met so many incredible individuals. And even more than that, I knew that I was not here alone, that all the people in my global family of friendships, particularly you with whom I am sharing these notes (and especially if you’ve read this far!) were with me bearing witness to the growing movement for a just, positive, ecologically-sound planet.