EDIT: PLANS HAVE CHANGED, IGNORE
Hello!
My wife and I are becoming increasingly aware of the anti-trans laws coming into effect around the US, and we fear for our safety.
We are hoping to settle with a cohousing community or commune for the next 2-5 years in Canada. We hate to leave our home, but we need to stay safe.
The reason I am posting here and not going directly to the ic.org listings is because I am disabled in multiple ways, so I can’t contribute as much as most can to physical labor. (I can still work office & organizational type roles). I find a lot of communities expect a fair chunk of labor from their members and that’s just not possible for me.
Are there any communities, preferably in B.C., open to disabled members? Please. My wife and I need somewhere safe to be.
I understand. I’m trans and disabled. Though California has progressive laws at face value, the doesn’t mean the general population isn’t anti-Black and anti-Trans. What worse is that there isn’t much in the way of Trans solidarity; except for naked self-interests, we are seemingly as divided by race, color, gender, and class competition as the rest of society.
There is an article just published in USA TODAY. “Across the world, criminal sentences for same-sex acts, for certain forms of sexual orientation and minority forms of gender expression can range from fines and several months in prison to life in jail, from whipping to the death penalty.”
None of those laws exist in Europe, the United States or Canada. 32 out of 52 nations in Africa have such laws. The same sort of repressive laws also exists in 20 countries in the Middle East and Asia. Please be careful where you migrate from and be careful where you move to. Where we live in the so called “Western World” is much safer in so many ways, than much of the rest of the non-western world.
Stay out of queer people’s business. I’m not going to sit and explain to you the stages of genocide or tally laws. Leave this conversation or I’m going to be a lot less polite in my response.
Please accept my apologies. All I have ever advocated is for people to try for understanding, and to uplift each other, and themselves, whenever possible. In this particular instance, I happened to come across an article that was germane to the topic of “seeking asylum”. I thought it might be helpful to folks migrating to other countries. Clearly the United States is one of the most favored countries to migrate to. Just look at the hundreds of thousands (actually millions) of folks moving this way from every corner of the world. I thought it was very interesting to find out that there are so many other countries that are so much less favorable. But, ok, if facts and realities are challenging to common (and polite) discussion, I suppose they can be forgone. Best of luck in your travels. We hope you eventually find a safe and loving home wherever you go.
P.S. When I looked up “tally laws”, I thought it was interesting that the very first sentence of the discussion concerning such was, -“As a result of a June 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, people in all states can seek recourse for employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity through the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and federal courts.” ~I didn’t think that sounded especially “genocidal”.
Your passive aggression continues to irritate me. You very obviously live in a place of privilege, and so you are blind to the nuance that we as BIPOC, queer, disabled, or otherwise marginalized people are aware of. The USA is sliding into the stages of genocide against trans people - and it’s people like you who will continue to stand aside and twiddle your thumbs as you provide UNWANTED advice about some vague sense of gratitude or perseverance or what have you.
GRATITUDE DOES NOTHING TO SAVE US WHEN OUR PEOPLE CONTINUE TO BE MURDERED IN THE STREETS.
Step off. You are not welcome in this conversation. No more responses are warranted.
Speaking as both a scientist and a person of faith, understanding begins with a priority of pursuing truth above that of comfort. Every comment you have made here has been as a contrarian invaliding the real world experiences of community members using mischaracterizations, misrepresentations, and to put it as kindly as possible, demonstrable falsehoods.
This latest effort at disinformation is just bizarre. Even the most casual examination of Central, Western, Northern Europe shows by their own reports a decline in democratic liberty, absolutely but nothing by comparison to that throughout the Americas.
In a majority of these cases it is an evidentiary fact that the majority of these Far-Right and some openly Fascist movements have been the generously funded and supported by Americans.
Except South African, the wave laws criminalizing homosexuality with the sentence of life imprisonment and execution, while the penality for speaking about the civil rights of LGBTQ people is on average 10 to 20-year sentences. All of this has been proven to be the culmination of well funded campaigns spanning many years by American ultra-conservative evangelicals.
The waves of refuges from the Caribbean, Central, and South America flooding US borders are the direct result of American foreign policies that treated the economic interests of corporations as justification for assignations, wars, and the overthrow and destabilization of these people’s countries.
Add those to your barefaced lies deny the abolishment and nullification of many civil rights gains of the late 1950s and the 1960s, the irrefutable facts that white supremacy and home grown physical, environmental, social, and economic terrorism continues to be the greatest threat to American democratic liberty and specifically the lives of Black people.
And last but not least, there are over 450 distinct laws passed or being passed across the US to re-criminalize American citizens who identify as LGBTQ+. There are several constitutionally illegal laws that have been passed that fund private, exclusively Christian schools with government funds. And we have elected officials who openly declare the intention of farthing the cause of Christian White Nationalism.
I have been involved with intentional communities since the early 1970s and except for a few token examples of BIPOC the movement has long been shaped and dominated by CisHet, Eurocentric cultural assumptions of normalcy.
I can’t speak for the other party you’ve gaslighted and antagonized, but you could not possibly be more wrong. You demonstrate no respect, open mind, and despite your platitudes, nothing you have been doing expresses empathy or compassion of an open heart.
I grew up in a tight-knit community in Ohio, served my community as a volunteer and when I moved to Cincinnati as an adult, I served my new community in public office by both appointment and election while supporting my family by working in the private sector as a Systems Analyst and Project Manager at Fifth Third Bank’s HQ.
Your smarmy, passive-aggressive, saccharine sweet prose does not hide the violence of your ideology. And unlike your pretence at “love and light”, I do have a very public history of loving, understanding, and serving real communities.
I am a part of a nonprofit third party which provides regular mutual aid across the US, I have also founded a community which currently has 40 participants involved, despite being without one cohesive location. I regularly engage with volunteer work and grow vegetables for my neighbors, though I can afford to just buy them. I have plenty of friends and chosen family.
None of this matters, though. Your aversion to “socialism” in the form of inclusive policy and person-first legislation makes you look like an awfully selfish person - I’m a communist btw, hope that isn’t too scandalous for you to handle.
Oh and because I know it will piss you off:
I use they/them pronouns. Try not to be a snowflake and get offended about it.
That’s interesting that you are willing to claim to be a communist. Perhaps a little history might help you. I was just reading an article about the communists of Kampuchea (formerly Cambodia). The Kymer Rouge took control of Cambodia in the mid-'70’s. They renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea (you know, like Bernie’s Democratic Socialism). In just four years the communists of Kampuchea killed upwards of 2 million people. They often used pickaxes to do the killing in order to save bullets. A favorite pastime of the communist rulers was to grab babies and young children by the ankles and swing them into trees or rocks to do the killing. By the time the communists were done, the country’s professional and intellectual classes were nearly all murdered. Of course, their efforts were minor compared to the estimated 60 million killed by the Chinese communists, or an estimated 40/50 million killed by the Soviet Union, or even the 12 million killed by the socialist National Socialist German Workers Party.
How do I know this is true? Well, in my younger days I spent years reading Gramna, the official newspaper of socialist Cuba. They sent it free to the commie house where I lived. And I read The Peking Review, also sent free to us commies. We spent many an evening “entertaining” Gus Hall, the perennial Communist Party Presidential candidate. -But they all became too “moderate” for us. So, in the late '70’s, folks like us gathered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to form The Revolutionary Communist Party. That party, led by its 40+ founders (myself included) was to eventually spaun antifa and blm. ~~So there isn’t a lot you can tell me about communism. But hey, if you want to stop by here sometime, you could brouse through my library of the complete works of Kim Il Sung, Mao, Lenin, Castro, and others of their ilk. Or we could talk about my time in communist East Germany. That was fun times.
Why do I tell you all this? Maybe partly to say that you being a commie doesn’t surprise me in the least. And it certainly does not “scandalize” me. I have delt with thousands of folks like you when I was a leader of people like you. And I can tell you now, that there is hope for you. You can pull yourself out of the 20th Century’s worst death cult. Communism’s leaders are just a very few awful men using and abusing and killing anyone who does not follow their strict orders.
But really, what does all this have to do with Intentional Communities? Well, if you can find your way out of what is little more than a cult, there is a much better way. Instead of all the angst and pain and upset and finger pointing and name calling that seems to be so usual for you (both), you can try reaching your hands (and minds) out to all those around you. It’s wonderful to live with other folks, and perhaps to even make them your family. That is what we do here. Welcome others from across America and many from around the world. We could care less about creed, color, nationality, or other such minor things. We have had Christians, Hindu’s, Jews, black and white lesbians, gay guys, and all kinds and types of other folks. Because really, we just like content of character. And learning and sharing new things. It’s pleasant for everyone.
So name call me “smarmy” if you wish. That’s ok. But just know that there is a better way than anger. Ultimately, we are all better than that. Or at least can be.
I suggest part of the remedy for your distorted perspective would be a study of history from reliable academicians, textbooks, and peer-review papers and articles from authoritative sources, all of which are accessible for free by the top institutions of higher learn.
Even a basic high school education would have clued you into the fact that the dysfunctions suffered by Cuba have less to do with any failure of communism and everything to do with the US government deliberately sabotaging the nation socio-economically. And North Korea, China, the former Soviet Union, and infamously the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (English: National Socialist German Workers’ Party) were demonstrably never at any time either socialist nor communist in anything but name.
If you bothered learning factual American history you’d know that until very recent history this hysteria about socialism and communism didn’t exist. Several of the most prosperous eras of American history saw widespread support of socialism and unions.
The irrefutable facts are that you cannot find a single respected university course or textbook on history, socio-economics that doesn’t make clear how you and your fanatical ilk are the outlier, the real threat to life and liberty of American citizens.
Were acolytes of Ayn Rand, your Free Market Fundamentalist truly convinced of the legitimacy of Neoliberal Capitalism, then they wouldn’t feel threatened by competing in the “free market” of socio-economic theory and praxis.
Instead of honest competition, you pretenders wraps yourselves in the flag while clutching your crosses just to move heaven and earth, lying, cheating, stealing, literally committing murder to establish and protect anti-free market business monopolies.
Your heroes spend millions of dollars a month in legalized bribes to coerce corrupt lawmakers and politicians, while accusing honest working class people who organize to stop them, from the very crimes they are committing.
And just like them, your every accusation on this forum has been a confession of your true values and motivation.
It is you who is pathologically dishonest, it is you masking violent, oppressive ideology behind a thin veil of civility and blatant disinformation.
I have wondered how you would reply to my post. I had a guess, but I didn’t quite expect even you to be so thoroughly predictable. Every single communist I have spoken with, over many decades, has said the same thing. With just slight variations they apologize, “Well, real communism just hasn’t been tried yet. All those other failures were just incorrectly applied ideology or practice.” Sometimes they add, “The United States” made them fail." It is actually rather amusing how weak or dysfunctional the commie leaders of all so many countries and parties have every single time failed to make good on their rhetoric or promises. All any of them have really accomplished is to ruin economies and kill millions. But, you know, it’s all somebody else’s fault. Every time.
So here you are, speaking with someone who actually lived it. Who was a leader of it. Who worked with and lived with the leaders of it. And the best you have is to again name call and cite agenda driven books and leftist elite professors (who all just talk and fantasize).
Once again, I remind you that this is an Intentional Community Forum. Intentional communities are gatherings of people who want to come together to share, learn, sometimes Pray, often sharing income or costs, and often living together. All of that takes a great deal of communication and talking and understanding, and quite often love.
I could have related to you so much real-world experience, starting with what I learned as an organizer of The Gay Liberation Front and Women’s Liberation Front. Or maybe I could talk with you about what it was like to be in The Black Panthers. Who knows, maybe we could have even talked about the days spent with Madeline Murrey O’Hare (you know, the founder of “American Atheists”, who filed the Supreme Court cases that led to the banning of mandatory prayer in schools).
But no, you seem to like what if’s and maybe that. There are all sorts of Intentional communities, and who knows, maybe even a collective for you. I hope so. For your own peace. But, having lived a community life for over 50 years, my experience is that people who try to live and learn and practice peaceful communication are more likely to be successful in community life. Those who live in anger and accuses, not so much.
I hope even little of what I have written has reached a few of the readers of this topic. Whether it did any good or harm, I don’t know. All I know is that to the best of my sometimes-poor abilities I have tried to suggest love, peace and co-operation. Particularly among and by those of us who believe so whole heartedly in the sharing of ~Intentional Community.
Nothing you’ve previously said suggests you had any “intention” of sharing anything except conspiracy theories and contempt for socialism and communism (as you misunderstand them).
Let me remind the audience you clearly think is hanging on your every word, that this started with your attacks on other forum members, and that after they repeatedly ask you to leave them alone, you persisted.
You are not the voice of reason or the adult in the room.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, proof you have not provided.
The FBI, State, County, and Local Law Enforcement spying, infiltrating, bribing, blackmailing, firebombing, assonating American political activists is fake history? The federal government’s covert campaigns to undermine and destabilize through murder and mayhem wage wars to primarily served the interests of American Oligarchs.
After the USS Maine sank after running into a mine, the yellow journalism of the Hearst family’s newspapers, with absolutely no evidence, unequivocally blaming the Spanish is all fake history, a conspiracy by the Marxist Liberal Elite Left. The Spanish-America War was about freedom, NOT the greed and ambition for empire by corrupt politicians and the wealthy lusting for control of Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii.
Oh, I understand anonymous Internet person. You and a small group of your friends know the truth, and it’s the rest of us are deluded. Better yet, you were a Black Panther marching into the state house with guns ready beside Bobby Seale? Maybe you bagged lunches for kids who would have gone to school hungry, or perhaps you organized and signed people up to vote. Doesn’t matter because that certainly isn’t you now, and it doesn’t make anything you’ve said or done here on this forum credible.
You claim that the authoritative consensus by anthropologists, historians, economists, research scientists worldwide is invalid because you and your cohorts “feel” there is some Leftist Elite conspiracy.
That makes you the outlier engaged in fantasy.
Regurgitating the words “intentional community” mixed with a few platitudes in no way means you understand the mission of the FIC or this Discourse software-based forum.
You can’t virtue-signal your way out of the bad faith arguments and bullying people you’ve written on this forum while also claiming to be the victim. You are not a harbinger of peace or unity, but precisely the opposite.
And conflating freedom of speech into a licence to say anything you want, while attempting to demonize the opinions of others does not make you seem reasonable.
You lack the conviction to present yourself openly and honestly, while I am open, honest, and accountable for all I say and do online and in real life.
In contrast to your hypocrisy, I’ve been actively engaged in the cooperative, free school, and intentional community movements since the early 1970s, helping found a half dozen socio-economically successful cooperative households in support of people recovering from addiction and abuse until 1991.
The demands of my obligations as a Franciscan Third Order, my marriage to a full-time UC Law student, and supporting my family made greater demands on my time. My job as a case manager working under Helen Francis at the FreeStore Foodbank did not have the income or health benefits needed for my wife’s disability and an officer at Fifth Third Bank, knowing my training and skill in IT, interviewed and hired me.
At about the same time the Cincinnati Archdiocese requested/ordered that I assist in coordinating the mergers of 7 parishes with very different, sometimes conflicting, cultures and traditions. Over the next decade I was appointed to the executive boards of Cincinnati Urban League, Friends of Findlay Market, Over-the-Rhine Community Council, while working full time as a Systems Analyst and Project Manager for the IT division of Fifth Third Bank HQ.
To be clear, neither the Cincinnati community nor any of these institutions have now or ever been known as a hotbed of Leftist politics or progressive thinking, and certainly neither am I nor my family.
What I propose in community building is neither Left nor Right, but based on evidentiary science that has been tested in real world socio-economic contexts.
The suggestion I’m hostile because facts make you uncomfortable is a “You Problem”.
That you “feel” what I and others here say is part of a Leftist Elite attack on America has no basis in reality on any level. Having often worked with old school Conservatives I have few memories of their denying basic historic facts, unlike the new breed of conservatives like Reagan literally stated dismantling and privatizing government, selling public resources to the highest bidder and tearing apart the work of generations.
You are dishonest, unaccountable, and anonymous.
I am honest, accountable, and open about who and what I am, with over a half century unimpeachable public record of never tolerating injustice or bigotry no matter how fair spoken, while also bringing very diverse, even adversarial communities together.
My roots
My maternal Grandmother Jesse Virginia (née Coles) Harper and Grand Aunt Bessie served as decorated officers of the Women’s Army Corp during WWII with my Grand Aunt continuing her service as a lifelong career. My Grandmother retired, returned to school, became a Senior Editor of US Government Publications, married Dr Alva Harper, MD.
Reber Simpkins Cann, my paternal Grandmother, the force of nature whose world view still inspires my actions.
You have so far never provided evidence supporting the claims you’ve made since hijacking this post by @KyraLavenderDove and others on the forum.
The states you’ve been blathering about are described as totalitarian, authoritarian and dictatorial regimes by ever major western government, every major institution of higher learning, as well as the clandestine organizations of those western nations such as America’s CIA and Secret Service.
Nobody who believes in socialism and or communist are dictators nor authoritarians, and socialists in particular are staunch believers in democracy, the more informed and direct the better.
I think it is a near certainty you lack the education and skill to describe socialists socio-economics, historic and the present, that exists in nations of the global north including the United States of America.
Nobody unfortunate enough to be following your bizarre, emotionally unhinged rants has to take my word because everything I’ve stated is supported by credible sources available to the public online.
You’ve been reported, and the administration has assured me we will not continue to suffer from your company much longer.
All, as a moderator here I owe you an apology. I’ve watched this discussion play out over the last weeks and been unable to decide on a course of action in alignment with the values we have been feeling out here. As such the conversation continued in a way that is directly toxic to the environment we hope to create, and I’m responsible for the neglect in stopping it earlier. As the saying goes, the price of inaction is sometimes far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
A core tenet of our moderation is visibility – when we take any moderation action, we expect to publicly say what we did and why. Nothing happens behind the curtain.
I have silenced user ohiofarmmuseum for 4 months (until Oct 1, 2023). At that time, they will be able to respond to posts and start topics again. If their means of conversation continues in this way, they may be silenced again, or removed entirely.
Again, I apologize for the delay in taking action here. I would also like to thank the users here who messaged our team on multiple platforms to push us, finally to action. I am grateful that you did that instead of abandoning the space, and I hope you will not have to do it again.
If you have any further questions or comments about this, you are welcome to DM me.
