How do we juggle parenting our children with the work we know we must do to facilitate a livable world for them when they are grown?

In Part I of this three-part post, I considered things from a Transition Initiative’s point of view – what we could include in our programming to welcome kids into our circle. In this segment, I’ll discuss issues specific to parents of young children – children below school age. This falls into two general categories: at T.I. meetings, and in the home environment.

At Transition Initiative meetings

Despite all that I wrote in part I of this post, it’s likely the members of your steering group who don’t have young kids won’t spend much time thinking about how to involve kids in T.I. activities. That will be up to you, the one who is in the parenting life-phase.  As you design it for your own needs, you will open your T.I. to other families.

How do we juggle parenting our children with the work we know we must do to facilitate a livable world for them when they are grown?

In this first of a three-part post, I’ll discuss what Transition Initiatives can do to be more welcoming to parents and children.

This past weekend I had a telephone conversation with one of the board members at Transition United States. As moms, we naturally swapped stories about our offspring. I realized that we have a void within the Transition movement as far as stories about parenting.

Here in the U.S., when we think about the term "diversity," perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is race.  A second thought might be ethnic culture.  Thus it came as a surprise to me to see that a UK-based post seeking diversity projects included "faith groups." 

Maybe it's like "petrol" versus "gasoline" ... another one of those UK/US differences.

If you asked our core team here at Transition Los Angeles whether we're a diverse group, our answer instantly and unanimously would be "we have quite a ways to go."  Like many other initiatives within the Transition Network, we're still grappling with that crowd-of-white-faces issue. 

But when I started to think about the UK diversity project's definition, I realized that Transition Los Angeles already has quite a bit of diversity to celebrate and experiences to share.

For Winter Solstice, I attended a warm and wonderful fireside ceremony lead by a Native American healer at the site of one of our Los Angeles local Transition pods. As part of this ceremony, we were invited to release the year passing, and to presence dreams for the year ahead.

I thought back over the whirlwind year of setting up Transition initiatives here in Los Angeles. In Dec. 2008, we were hosting Los Angeles' first Transition training; in Jan 2009 we held the first core team meetings of the group that became the Transition Los Angeles City Hub.  We had yet to meet many of the people who are vital and active today.

Within the circles of Transition initiators and steering groups across the country, a question recently circulated: How have you avoided the pitfall of merely creating an organization, and what has been successful in the goal of creating a movement?

At first, I laughed, because here in Los Angeles it has always felt more like a small circle that is representative of a movement, and we seem to have our greatest difficulties when we try to get people together for "organization" topics!

NOT AN ORGANIZATION

Certainly, I've personally railed against the idea of creating traditional-style not-for-profit organizations to do this Transition work. In this time of economic contraction, traditional style not-for-profit organizations don't work very well. The format seems doomed. One Transition initiative (sorry, I've lost track of which one!) wrote on their materials:

For the people, by the people -- no members of this Transition initiative are funded or paid for the work they do for their community. We rely on the power of the people, inspiration, time, skills, and donations.

If we're truly aiming for a movement --rather than an organization-- this is what it will look like. Roll up your sleeves, get down to work, neighbor shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbor.

Solidarity

1. union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests, as between members of a group or between classes, peoples, etc.: to promote solidarity among union members.
2. community of feelings, purposes, etc.

It's so foreign to our American experience that I had to look it up in the dictionary to get it right.  In a session from Copenhagen's Klimaforum, May East (of Findhorn, Scotland and Sao Paulo, Brazil) asserts that lack of solidarity is precisely what is missing in our communities in the developed nations of the northern hemisphere.

We use the word "community" a lot, and we readilly agree that we don't have tight-knit "communities."  But when we boil it down, what does lack of community mean?  May East identifies it: lack of solidarity.

Our local Transition initiative in Los Angeles hosted a vigil this past weekend as part of the worldwide actions organized by 350.org   These actions were coordinated to take place during the weekend midway through the Copenhagen climate talks. As a 350 organizer, I have been watching the news services and the 350.org site for mention of progress.

The photos from the weekend were breathtakingly beautiful.

One of the most brilliant, well-written pieces I have read about the economy is "The Wrong Tree" (as in "Barking up the ..."). Written by Jerry Mander of the International Forum on Globalization, it is found as part of the introduction to the the latest publication of peak oil sage Richard Heinberg.

First, about Heinberg: Richard Heinberg 's Searching for a Miracle: 'Net Energy' Limits and the Fate of Industrialized Society is a serious analysis of just about every form of alternative energy and its potential (read: lack of potential) to fulfill our energy demands as we devour the declining second half of our planetary oil supply.

Murders, political scandals, celebrity escapades ... mainstream media feeds a willing public a steady diet of it.  The American public spends hours on the stuff, immersed in the horror tales and vapid sagas all played out on bigger-bigger-still-bigger plasma screens. 

But in the early 1990s I figured it out:  you don't have to read the news.  You don't have to watch the TV, you don't have to listen to the radio, you don't have to take the "news" as media dishes it out.  You can turn it off.  You can step aside. 

Climate change says we should change
whereas peak oil says we will be forced to change.

-- Rob Hopkins

Here in the U.S., the film "An Inconvenient Truth" made awesome strides in informing the general public about the reality of global warming.  The April 2007 Step It Up campaign got people in 1,400 U.S. sites involved in activism.  This month's 350.org campaign  will advance public awareness in two ways:  Firstly, the Oct 2009 350.org Day of Action is unfolding internationally, so it is an opportunity for citizens in non-U.S. countries to get involved, and secondly, it informs the general public about the target, the end goal.