Oct./Nov. 1983 RAIN Page 23 networking tabloid. Raise the Stakes. It seems reasonable to conclude, as Siskiyou Country editor G. Pedro Tama has, “that the underground press of the sixties and seventies is rapidly becoming the bioregional press of the 1980s." In addition, numerous bioregional study groups are active in such diverse places as Los Angeles, San Antonio, Kansas, New York, and British Columbia. Besides involvement in transformative work, much of our energy has gone toward resisting the still dominant inertia of runaway industrialism and the short-term covetous attitudes that it depends upon and fosters. Too many of us are still little more than transplanted migrants, corporate waifs, waiting for our next paycheck. WhUe many have settled into rural areas and begun forming land-based communities, everyone feels the economic knot tightening around them. Finding good work to do, that pays the rent, remains both our greatest failure and greatest continuing opportunity. Rather than accepting a monocultural definition of career, many people are discovering that they are richer for doing two or three different kinds of work, trading with neighbors, and keeping an eye out for what needs to be done. It is continually surprising how one thing leads to another. Beyond subsistence, people are discovering a new definition of wealth. How large, and what the limits of this underground economy are, can't be gauged by the GNP. Politically the story for most of us is a mixed bag. Here, in northern California, for example, 92 percent of the electorate voted No and helped stop the Peripheral Canal with its intended theft of the Sacramento Tver's water for use by King Cotton in the desert lands near Bakersfield. But we also got malathion sprayed at tree- top level by midnight helicopters in Oakland during the Agribusiness war against the Medfly. The latter operation was a graphic reminder that what is routinely visited upon rural areas can come home to roost in urban ones. Everywhere in America this kind of pattern is repeated. What one is reminded of daily is that bioregional transformation can only be ensured through a widespread understanding by local people of their own longterm self-interest. Learning our facts, getting the information out, and making new allies are all part of the evolving art of community self-regulation. Finding friends in the corporate and governmental structure who want to be on the transforming side is also part of the challenge. The danger of political burnout and disillusionment is always present. Many of us have wisely come to a sense of our limits. We have learned to choose an area of bioregional importance and stick with it. I have chosen to become a water guardian. Others have chosen to resist nuclear power, defend a forest, champion a plant dr animal species, or monitor toxic wastes. The emerging principle here seems to be to pledge ourselves for a certain amount of time and labor to a watershed issue or presence that interests us without feeling remiss that we aren't actively involved in 37 other ones. The deeper we understand one aspect of a watershed, the more we come to appreciate its interdependence with all others. In the process we learn from each other. What I am cautioning against here is the 24hour-a-day grind of the politico. That kind of fanatical commitment denies the diversity within ourselves that is essential to psychic stability. In terms of future directions, people are beginning to talk about the formation of ad hoc watershed shadow governments. Their function would be to serve as moral stewards for specific watersheds and bioregions and to help inhabitants learn the true cost of any proposed development. Such shadow governments could suggest "green" platforms and economic activity that would be consonant with maintaining and restoring local watersheds and from which political candidates could be judged. Watershed governance of this kind has considerable potential to irtEluence events. Notions of bioregional worth are already being used by rural land management consultants like Leonard Charles and Associates out of Cazadero here in northern California. Their rule of thumb is "maintain diversity, save all the parts." They advise their clients, ranchers and developers, how their land can be multiply used without destroying its balance and complexity. The future appeal of bioregional notions is likely, in my opinion, to be enhanced by rising energy costs. The principle of regional production for regional use is likely to become an econonuc necessity as distant markets collapse. Growing lettuce, for example, in the Imperial Valley and then harvesting, packaging, cooling, storing, and transporting it to New York dinner tables is going to become prohibitively expensive. We are going to see the re-emergence of local truck farms producing for nearby urban centers. The rfecycling of urban "waste," especially valuable metals, paper, plastics, and lumber, is going to make decentralized industry, producing for local use, economically more attractive. In fact, as Urban Ore in Berkeley is discovering, recycling urban waste has the potential to become one of the most profitable urban bioregional activities. I think that as regional agriculture and industry become more attractive again, an economic base for watershed politics is going to develop. We are already beginning to see this with natural foods producers. How soon local groups and communities will become stable enough to begin thinking about a federal bioregional congress is difficult to say. But the seeds for such a venture are already being planted by Planet Drum and other bioregionally oriented groups. If we want to take the vision far enough, someday we may see a bioregionally reconstituted America that lives within its ecologic means and relinquishes its current imperial role of world policeman. We may, of course, fail. The destructive capacity of the existing institutional and cultural structure is enormous. Still, I think we can find sustenance in the struggle itself, becoming more alive with each new connection that we make. To paraphrase what the poet Gary Snyder once said, our challenge is to develop a transforming vision so attractive that those on the limiting side won't find their lives worth living. Michael Helm is a contributing editor to Raise the Stakes, the journal of the Planet Drum Foundation (P.O. Box 31251, San Francisco, CA 94131). He also works with City Miner Books (P.O. Box 176, Berkeley, CA 94701).
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