| This was the original description of the Azania Alliance. Please check back for a more up-to-date description giving a better idea of where things are at and where we're headed...
We are a people of colour driven, matriarchal, intergenerational, mixed-class, queer dominated, polyfidelitous, co-operative, grassroots coalition of womyn and willingly conscientizing patriarchs grounded in the principles of anti-oppression and collectivity.
Our formation has been heavily influenced and informed by the dystopic writings of notable Black science fiction author Octavia Butler and her books "The Parable of The Sower" and "The Parable of The Talents" and by Starhawk's "The Fifth Sacred Thing".
We are an intentionally and rigorously built community grounded in a shared belief that combines political consciousness, radical truth telling, creating home and maintaining food security and abundance. This is a powerful gathering of differently located community members who are involved in creative, spiritually and emotionally grounded, activism-oriented, politicized, intentional community building.
This cooperative rose directly out of various extended and chosen family/ community/ professional negotiations that continue to take place between various alliance members. These negotiations in turn emerged out of a need for our personal lives, our political value systems and our professional lives to become more realistically aligned with the continued work of creating spaces of social change beyond justice and questioning.
In an increasingly oppressive community organizing climate predicated on scarcity, competition, ambition and deskilling, our alliance functions as an ad-hoc association of anti-oppression based, popular educators/ facilitators/ counsellors/ artists/ speakers bent on collective survival and radical societal transformation.
As people of colour who very often find it difficult to have our issues addressed in any meaningful way through available community services, the Azania Alliance is also significant in that it's members are developing emotional/ psychological/ social supports through a web of community/peer support that will sustain us and our families, our intimate relationships, our children [present and future], our animal companions, our allies and our friends as we continue to pursue meaningful activism-based cooperative work.
There is a living, organic commitment to working effectively with each other that incorporates communication, openness, critiques of competition and capitalist-driven ambition which forms part of the root of the Azania Alliance.
We seek to maintain consistent day-to-day connections that involve sharing resources, work, emotion, dreams, visions and ideas about life, love and learning.
We are presently interested in developing networks of alliance and support with other people of colour/ queer/ feminist activist/ intentional cooperatives/ collectives/ communities/ radical action groups groups in Canada and around the world.
As part of our solidarity with others doing similar kinds of activist organizing and alternative community building, the Azania Alliance foregrounds critiques of [internalized] sexism and patriarchy, racism, anti-semitism and white supremacy, heterosexism and homophobia, gender oppression and transphobia, [academic] elitism, classism and conservatism, linguistic oppression, imperialism and colonialism, globalization, capitalism, consumerism, ableism, ageism, fatphobia and lookism in our communities of resistance and in the dominant society.
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Have said goodbye to two adult members with the remainder moving into the main community home, we number four adults and one child, with another on the way. Presently, we are clarifying our goals as individuals commited to building community with each other and redifining our individual/personal and collective goals. | |
Population Members(adults and children): 5 | Government Decision Making: By majority rule Leadership Core Group: No | Labor and Money Financial Style: 100% income sharing (As part of our five year formation process we are exploring ways of deprioritizing our relationships to money as we articulate the full spectrum of our individual and collective resources.) Labor Contribution: Expected (As an interdependent collective, we depend on the equitable sharing of labour and energy. To this end, we use a time/energy grid; a matrix of intentions, activities, tasks, future agendas and projects.) Regular Fees: Yes (We survive by pooling our resources and monies) | Land and Buildings Urban Area: 0 acres (0.0 hectares) Land Owned By: An absentee landlord | Food, etc. Percentage of Food Grown: none Share Community Meals: 2-5 times/week Dietary Choice or Restrictions: We all share a common diet Dietary Practice: Omnivorous Alcohol Use: Used occasionally | Social Factors Common Spiritual Practices: No (There is no common spiritual path, but we are on complementary, and mutually supported paths of trance-formation.) Which Spiritual Traditions(s): Other (Our paths include Catholicism recovery, African traditional practice and ancestral-reverance, matriarchal & eclectic knowing and ritual, Igbo Goddess worship, wombknowing, pagan, sacred sexuality, spirited creative expression, bodywork, and soulknowing.) Educational Style(s): Home schooling (We are creating a community-based curricum for our current child, and future children, in combination with alternative schools.) | |
