Pods: A Sweet Spot for Mutual Aid Organizing

“There is always a little bit of heaven in a disaster area.” - Wavy Gravy

I found my way into mutual aid and cooperative movement organizing via a fairly desperate inspection of the weak links in the permaculture movement, after I had been working for 13 years as a permaculture educator, consultant, experimental farmer and bioregional organizer. 

In 2016 I distributed a letter and questionnaire checking in with all of my past design clients. I learned that more than half of them didn’t even live anymore on the properties I had helped them design. Peoples’ personal lives were so chaotic and under-resourced that their well-intentioned biocultural aspirations just crumbled in the hot breath of the hungry beast of modernity.

Coming from a permaculture vision, “permanent culture” and all, I found this extreme fragility disheartening. Luckily, I got over my situational depression and started asking better questions about the social, relational and economic limitations inherent to the permaculture activities propagated in the U.S., which began with Bill Mollison’s first visit in 1980.   

Dan Palmer’s “Making Permaculture Stronger” work out of NZ/Australia helped me to start applying systems awareness to the permaculture movement itself, thinking of our “movement” (more like a loose affiliation of actors) in terms of biological and ecological patterns and processes.

I started reading books by Black, Latinx and indigenous authors about the histories of power, land, violence and how these communities have used, and continue to use, sophisticated cooperative strategies to survive. I learned more about how my own Jewish ancestors in eastern Europe and southern Spain did the same thing, over and over again through the centuries, culminating in resistance to the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and other instances, as well as their arrivals at Ellis Island and NYC, where upon disembarking they immediately continued their Old World practice of small mutual aid groups to help each other deal with health issues and financial emergencies, meet basic needs for food and shelter, mitigate anti-immigrant violence, establish dignified death and burial practices, start businesses, and develop strategic political and media power.  

I had always thought it was weird that “social permaculture” ever had to be named separately, given the People Care and Fair Share ethics. The way I teach the curriculum is that an agroecological system isn’t really permaculture unless it deeply and ethically integrates invisible structures. 

We teach sections on cooperative and alternative economics in PDC’s; nevertheless, permaculture enterprises in the U.S. are overwhelmingly sole proprietorships (from my anecdotal experience, I don’t have any data, this would be a good grad research project), and I’d say 90% of permaculture land projects I’ve encountered are owned by a single couple and/or nuclear family, creating power structure issues, relational fissures and confusing dynamics of intergenerational transfer from the beginning.  In general, I perceive in U.S. permaculture work a reliance on siloed activity and individualism when it comes down to money and decision-making, even if our events and celebratory culture adopt a collectivist flavor.  

I see this individualist pattern as an artifact of privilege, reflecting the predominant Whiteness of U.S. permaculture communities.  People used to being in control don’t want to give it up, even if doing so can offer a much more sustainable long-term approach. 

In “A Designer’s Manual”, Chapter 14, Mollison talks about bioregional scale strategies, and several different movements- bioregionalism, Transition Towns, and intentional communities and ecovillages, have attempted different angles on this work.  Indeed, I’ve personally learned the most about practical daily cooperation at my home of Earthaven Ecovillage, where we collectively manage agricultural and forest land, some energy and building systems, an alternative currency, finances, educational programming, conflict resolution, health and relationship challenges, and other systems.

But existing communities have limited space, and it takes an unfathomable amount of work and luck to create a successful ecovillage.  I’ve come to believe that there are some more organic cooperative organizing approaches that can help our atomized Permaculture communities come together into mid-scale mutual aid organisms at a scale both achievable in the near-term and still offering unique cooperative functions that we’re currently missing out on big time.

Unsurprisingly, this cultural scale is ubiquitous through traditional and land-based cultures, yet almost entirely missing in U.S. society. I’m calling this sweet spot of scale, a group of 15-25 adults who live in close geographic proximity and have deep trust, a “Pod”.

I believe that through adopting an adaptable cultural organizing strategy of permaculture Pods, we can transform some of the financial, relational, social support and life cycle challenges that have hampered permaculture’s impact in the world, take care of each other better and have more fun, deal more transformatively with issues of power and privilege and violence, and create an organic networking momentum to link ourselves into an effective eco-mimetic movement.

Our approach in Western North Carolina- nested scales of cooperative organizing

With our organization Cooperate WNC, we’re starting a regional-scale mutual aid network in 22 counties of western NC, a mountainous and ecologically diverse area about the size of Massachussetts. We got going in November 2018, starting with the creation of a 501c3 public charity non-profit to get it off the ground in the educational and startup phase, while knowing that the typical non-profit model is not the cultural or structural approach that we want long-term. 

Really, we need IRS categories like those used extensively in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, the “social coop” category enshrined in their national constitution, which provides for multi-stakeholder, tax-reduced cooperative enterprises that are owned by coop members,  provide necessary social services, and receive some municipal and state funding but also receive fees for goods and services.  In the absence of that kind of structure, we are left in the U.S. to piece together somewhat awkward amalgamations of legal entities to do the job. So, we have a 501c3 for Cooperate WNC’s educational and program development, an LLC with cooperative bylaws for our WNC Purchasing Alliance, and will probably start a 501c8 Mutual Benefit Society over time as we create healthcare benefits, a regional credit union, and other monetized member benefits.

This regional network is conceived at the scale that myself and mentors identified as another sweet spot: big enough to do the things we’ve collectively lacked capacity to do at a local level, but small enough to remain truly grassroots and accountable to its members in a relational, rather than transactional, manner.

Things we need to do that take a larger scale than farmstead/local communities include healthcare, credit unions and community-based financing, emergency and natural catastrophe responses, some types of conflict resolution, vocational training, food systems justice and sovereignty. See below for more detail on how we see the phasing of that in our case.

With Cooperate WNC, we’re taking the “tweezers” approach: supporting small grassroots community groups like Pods to organize and emerge via nested scales, while also approaching from the top-down program development direction to create “cultural mycorrhizae”- connective programs, culture and information/resource-sharing mechanisms- which allow nucleic groups of people with varying levels of trust to fuse together over time to create increasing levels of complexity, coordination and capacity.  

Some of these connective tissue programs we’ve created so far include: 

1) Learning Circles- a phrase borrowed from the civil rights movement, a Learning Circle is a group of people (15-25 people, Pod scale, works well) who get together frequently to share and discuss knowledge, with different people leading topics that they know more about and/or have researched. We’ve organized about 25 of these for different topics over the last 3 years. 

2) Community savings pool training and coaching- a savings pool is a group of 12-25 people (Pod scale) who each put savings into a shared account, generally once/month. Each person can take out most of their own savings if/when they need it. Members of the pool can bring loan proposals to the group, for a 0% interest loan to pay off debt or buy equipment for a business or for a down payment on land or a house, etc. The group also provides peer mentorship, feedback on ideas, development of financial literacy etc. We have a part-time staff person who has created a 6-9 month training and coaching program for savings pools and helped to get 3 of them started in different communities in WNC.

3) WNC Purchasing Alliance- a cooperative bulk purchasing program based loosely in the model of the Community Purchasing Alliance out of Washington, D.C. CPA is an alliance of 130 churches, charter schools and other organizations that purchase building materials, solar equipment, bulk electrical contracts, cleaning supplies and other things. They did $20 million in purchasing last year and directed 60% of that purchase revenue to Black, Brown and women-owned businesses. Members of our WNC Purchasing Alliance are organizations, businesses and informal community groups like Pods who have significant purchasing needs. Households and neighborhoods can order online and pick up their orders from locations of other Members who serve as Hubs. We completed a purchase of commercial-grade outdoor heaters in November 2020 and are currently organizing and researching purchases of bulk high quality foods, biodegradable cleaning supplies, solar energy equipment, farm and garden supplies, and materials for energy efficiency retrofits for buildings. The Purchasing Alliance is a major part of our strategy for the mutual aid network staff and operational budget to become financially self-reliant apart from grants and donations, and we think it could be a viable strategy for many communities and regions.

4) Cooperative Agroforestry Network- we’re working with a network of innovative regional farmers and landowners to use cooperative financing, work and equipment sharing, knowledge sharing and cooperative marketing/enterprise development to address barriers to widespread adoption of diversified silvopasture and riparian reforestation strategies and scale up these climate resilient agroforestry activities.

5) Exploring worker-owned coop support- we’re currently getting skilled up via a training with the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn, and working with several regional groups who want to convert existing businesses or to start businesses as worker coops. We are focusing on businesses that are designed to meet real community needs, not create frivolous luxury items. We envision these types of businesses then acting as major stakeholders in the long-term ownership of the mutual aid network and composing its economic heartbeat, like they do with Mondragon Coop in the Basque region of Spain.

Other programs that Cooperate WNC is currently considering for next steps include: 1) A cooperative investment fund; 2) Incubation of a holistic Home Healthcare Coop along the lines of Cooperative Home Care Associates in Bronx, NYC.; 3) Full-fledged cooperative business development; 4) In-depth Cooperative/Regenerative training Academy; 5) Regional emergency assistance fund supplied by higher-wealth sources and administered by low-wealth communities; 6) Conflict resolution/transformative justice system; 7) Originating and administering a regional alternative currency based in home healthcare and mutual support as origin of currency value (modeled after Earthaven Ecovillage’s Leap system). 8) Helping coordinate processes for farmland succession and re-creation of commons

Cooperate WNC’s long-term program ideas include: 1) Full service healthcare cooperative; 2) Regional mutual aid credit union; 3) State-level legislative and policy initiatives; 4) Community safety/police replacement initiatives; 5) Incubation of a research-based, think-and-do tank around agro-ecological methods, appropriate technology innovations, and advanced cooperative economic strategies

Now, for more on the grassroots approach

1) How we grow a regional mutual aid network through nested scales of organization Crews, Pods, Hubs and Watershed Networks 

At the grassroots level, a basic unit found across cultures seems to be groups of 15-25 people organizing into tight mutual aid groups, which in Japan are called “Han”, and we are calling “Pods”. 

Within Pods, Crews (as written about by Richard Bartlett from Enspiral in NZ) are groups of 4-7 adults (sometimes nuclear families, sometimes not, plus children) who see each other every day, have a very high level of trust and intimacy, and work tightly on everyday life and projects. The U.S. military, wilderness work crews and other tightly organized projects usually create squads/crews of 4-7 people, as any larger group starts to organically break into sub-groups. 

The Pod scale (15-25 people) is a sweet spot, not too big and not too little, which can be appropriate for many functions: community savings pools, healthcare support groups akin to the Japanese “Han”, cooperative farming and meal preparation, first-aid emergency response, peer mentorship. A more extensive list of potential functions is below.

As Pods in a local area get going and experience the benefits of mutual aid in their lives, they pool resources and co-ordinate (in our case with the help of the wider Cooperate WNC network and our staff acting as support- these could be permaculture professionals who get trained up in additional capacities) to establish a Hub- a multi-purpose physical community center location, probably on a property controlled by one of the Pods. Pods end up being an adaptive modern type of entity that invites each of us in our subdivided, individualistic default setting to get vulnerable and risk acting like a villager. A Hub has enough scale and resilience and diversity to do for each person what a village historically did for a person. A Hub probably involves 150-500 people. 

Our vision is that in each major river basin of WNC, there is then a Watershed Network of Hubs which provide nearby services for any member of the mutual aid network. Again, my closest concrete reference point for this is the Taylor Creek Watershed where Earthaven is located. Earthaven is a village and acts very much like a hub, and we have surrounding communities and land projects which are starting to emerge together as a watershed network. Cooperate WNC staff have helped Earthaveners to start a community savings pool focused on supporting small businesses here, and Earthaven is in the midst of figuring out how it will be a hub for the WNC Purchasing Alliance, Cooperate WNC’s cooperative bulk purchasing initiative.

All the Watershed Networks are linked together by the regional scale mutual aid network (Cooperate WNC) which continues to enable resource and knowledge sharing and coordination for larger-scale, long-term aspirations such as a healthcare co-op, credit union establishment and cooperative emergency response. 

Crews (4-7 adults)- Daily meal sharing and delineated food processing roles, 2-3 hr childcare trades, shared house or shared housing cluster with main kitchen and outdoor kitchen, zone 1/2 garden co-op, poultry co-op with chickens and/or ducks, peer mentorship group, Poshterity budgeting (see Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks, www.mutualaidnetworks.org), closest emotional intimacy and romantic partnership support

Pods (15-25 adults)- Learning Circles, savings pools, healthcare support groups like Japanese Han, cooperative staple crop and forest farming, renewable micro-grids, electric vehicle co-ops, first line emergency response, co-operative purchasing especially via a larger alliance, communal subsistence farming of annual staple crops, communal orcharding and agroforestry, larger Poultry coops including turkeys and geese, housing coops, communal bath house and laundry, light elder care, childcare coop, conflict resolution/transformation and community safety (certain kinds of conflict and violence require larger scale to deal with skillfully and effectively, depends on nature and severity of conflict)

Hubs (125-500 people)- multi-functional bustling physical community centers, major emergency response, credit union micro-branch, full-time healthcare clinic, educational and mid-size event venue, full-day childcare/education co-ops, cooperative business incubation, commercial kitchen, CSA food distribution center, burial and death services. 

Watershed hub network (5-15 hubs linked up)- share doctors and other healers between hubs, hub savings pools groups loan money to each other, share co-op biz developers between hubs, community land trusts owning multiple hub properties, incubate additional hubs, receive land donations from churches etc. for hub creation. 

Regional mutual aid network (in mature form, 10,000-30,000 members)- co-ordinates association of savings pools and/or chartered mutual aid credit union, and related loan vetting/community development processes; leadership development and training programs for hub organizers; incubates federally certified healthcare co-operative; co-ordinating equity-based approaches; provides 501c3 and 501c8 umbrella for watershed network activities; community land trust(s); digital timebanking system; mutual aid web portal and other web apps; regional carbon offset program; coordinates regional community-service based currency modeled after the Earthaven Leap system.

Guiding questions: 

a) Do I have a crew and if so who are they? Do I have a Pod and if so who are they? Am I part of a hub and if so how would I name it? 

b) In the nested systems of Crews, Pods, Hubs and Watershed Networks, what level is my community ready to commit to right now or that we might stretch to very soon? What are the first steps to engaging that commitment? 

c) How will we grow and design for succession so we engage all the nested layers as we grow? Are there any biological patterns that we might mimic in growing from where we’re at?

BONUS: Regarding biological patterns- consider that natural organisms and ecosystems have probably responded to the essence of every design challenge you will ever encounter. Find the right organisms and ecosystems to compare to your project, then carefully study not only which patterns they use, but why they use them, so you can replicate them in useful ways. Why does a tree branch? Why does a snail shell grow in a spiral? Why does fruit contain enzymes that begin its own decomposition process? Why do almost all ecosystems contain nitrogen fixing plants? 

2) Make our lives easier 

People are busy. We will keep showing up to meetings and events and work parties and so on, as volunteers, if those things meet core needs we’re really needing to meet. Otherwise, it will fall away. Those needs could be as simple as learning and meaning and connection, in which case make sure to do those things really well. Also though, mutual aid projects need to be getting around to (sooner rather than later) making our lives easier. Is this activity connecting me to meaningful livelihood? Childcare? Healthcare? Affordable good food access? Time management or help with my projects? Access to specific skill training or knowledge I need? Emotional and relational and mentoring needs? Explicitly design your activities and programs to make sure they are making your participants’ lives easier and/or better. 

Guiding questions: What resource sharing and mutual support might make daily life easier for people in my community? How might co-operative economic tools like savings pools and barter be used for this purpose? 

3) Apply our strengths to our weakest links 

Identify the most fundamental strengths and assets of your core group and community, praise and support those strengths, and work outwards from those “controlled fronts”, from successes and open doors. AND- use discipline to select next steps that truly address your “weakest links”, the most demanding unmet needs and places where your community/systems are losing the most energy and capacity. So, work from your strongest capacities to meet your deepest unmet needs.

Guiding questions: What are the strongest patterns of success in this community? What are the weakest links? How can the strengths be creatively used to address the weak links? 

4) Multi-functional gatherings 

Whenever going to the trouble to gather a group of people for a primary purpose, layer as many functions into that gathering as you reasonably can. Definitely a meal and tea/coffee. Also, work projects. Seed and plant exchanges. Barter circle. Gift circle. Learning circle/book club. Savings pool deposit. Peer mentorship group. Design team for someone’s project. Personal check-ins. 

Asset mapping interviews. 

Guiding questions: What gatherings already regularly occur in my community? Where are they, and how vital do each of them feel? Based in responses to patterns 1&2, which gatherings feel most alive so we want to support and add to them, and what additional functions could be layered into our regular gatherings so they can help apply our strengths to our weaknesses and make daily life easier? How can our gatherings be organized around one or more consciously created Hearth spaces? 

5) Clear stewardship roles 

Make sure that everyone in your crew or pod knows what they are responsible for, where they can be creative and expressive, which types of choices need group feedback and which can be made autonomously. This clarity provides the ground for accountability and to allow individuals to shine and take ownership of processes, without crowding others out. 

Guiding questions: What areas of stewardship are already being covered, informally or formally, by members of the community? What areas of stewardship are missing? How is appreciation expressed? Which areas take alot of work and don’t get alot of compensation or recognition? How is feedback delivered and digested? How are specialized knowledges and decisions shared between stewards? How do new stewards/organizers get into positions of trust and responsibility in the community?