#community networks

[acesolaris]

To build a sustinable community

Are you looking for Community or Friends? You can look for both, it's not an either or, but its important to know. Attemps of creating a community can be stalled and/or fall flat by mixed expectaions. Friends are part of our community, but not every comunity member needs to be or is a friend.

What are your personal values and needs? A lot of people complain they're not able to form friendships once out of school. School or work based comunity/friends are based on mandatory spaces. If you are aware of your values and needs, you can actively search out people with the same ones outside of these spaces. Establish a list of non-negotiables for you to be able to set boundaries and leave the space if they are not met.

What's your capacity for meeting new people? Seeking community, means seeking comfort, security and saefty. This comes with expectations. Be aware how much you can and will give in terms of eg. time, resources, emotional intimacy etc. and communicate these.

Whats your preferred method of interacting? A sustainable community requires communication and time spent together. Think about your preferences of being more online or in person. Ifyou are more online, do you actively paricipate in a mutual gathering or are you part of a parasocial relationship.

What are your relationship managment skills? Being part of a community means being in alingment with other people. That also means, knowing how you personally handle conflict, and if you are able to negtiate and commmunicate your needs. Are you reliable and in what way? Can you probem solve in group dynamics? There is nothing wrong with having weaknesses in these areas, but it will influence the groups dynamic.

What are your interests and hobbies? Mapp out your interests, hobbies and things you want to do but have neve tried before. Try to focus on things not relying on consumerism, as these are open to a more wider range of people. Connect to others with the same values and needs by seeking out these hobbies and interests.

Now seek out your people. Be awkward. Be brave. And if your answers to all the questions above revealed that you just can't, thats fine, too. Building a community takes time and sometimes one or two false starts that help refining your list of values and wants. But if you are able to, and want to, you need to actively search out others, now that you have identifed who they suposed to be.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Small Linkspam on topic:

@luulapants gives advice on what do you do if the mutual aid groups/communitys around you seem to have dissolved or don't have consistent recurring meetings.

@alotofnot talks about being a passive envireonmetalist as an example of a person not having reosuces to be politically active in the way they are told to.

@victoryofthecommonse talks about how to build solidarity with social anxiety

This video by @andrew-ism explains the concept of mutual aid

A few years ago I wrote a list of things to research in your local community that also might help finding you people

This post talks about burnout in activism, which is something everyone needs be able to recogise in themselves as well as other members of their community

I insist you feel free to add to the discussion or resources.

Turn anger into kindness. ~ @acesolaris

Version 07.11.2024

[solarpunkwitchcraft]

Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid & How to Organize in the Age of Coronavirus

As lockdowns and layoffs sweep the U.S., mutual aid groups are forming to protect and provide for the vulnerable, including the elderly, incarcerated, undocumented and unhoused. We look at the incredible community networks across the country that are coming together to protect their neighbors during the coronavirus pandemic — and how you can get involved.

[weirdo-with-a-nametag]

So I have an idea that I think might work? It's not original but

Making clothes is an involved process. I want to make my own, fabric and all, and I have some room to grow hemp which seems to be the best option

But you've got to process the plant, spin the fibers, weave or knit it into fabric and sew/dye the clothes.

So does anyone have any advice for getting in contact with people who want to work together on this? Like how can I find someone who's up for taking roving from hemp I can grow, spinning it, and then like anyone who has a loom to weave it or can knit/crochet and wants to be a part of this effort - the intention being that we work together to get everyone clothes (or yarn/fabric for textile crafts/projects, whatever people are looking for) since it's not practical to have all of the equipment necessary for going from dirt to clothes. And we know this

So like.. I don't know. Is that even an achievable goal, to get a network like that together, it join an existing one? I have no idea where to look, is the thing. So if anyone has ideas?

[apocalyptic-mailman]

Trump Survival Tip No. 14: Save Net Neutrality, DIY the Internet

So if you’ve been on the internet at all in the last few weeks, you know that the Trump administration is trying to deep-six net neutrality for good. Hardly surprising, from the fascist dictatorship that rules our cyberpunk dystopia. The usual responses have been screeched from the heights of the internet--call your senators, sign this or that petition, all boiling down to representative problem-solving--delegating the actual solving of the problem, and thus the power over our lives, to someone else.

As an anarchist, an engineer, a punk, and a proponent of the free software and DIY movements, this doesn’t sit very well with me. I don’t like leaving my fate to the whims of the state or the capitalist. I prefer direct action--solving problems my damn self, with other people who also want a problem solved. People are hungry and food is thrown out? Dumpster it, and start a Food Not Bombs chapter. People are homeless and buildings are abandoned? Squat them. Kids need education on their real history? Start a free school.

With regards to the internet and saving net neutrality, the best way to attack the problem lies in removing power from its current seat--the internet service provider--and putting it back in our hands. No need to pray for regulation or goodwill on the part of the government or cable company. And the way to do this is to create a community network.

Community networks are essentially as described in this article (link). They use the basic architecture of WiFi. You’ve got the WiFi router for your home or apartment building, which bounces your signal to the omnidirectional antenna covering your block, which connects via aimed antenna to the next block, and so on. It’s the same basic principle as any network, up to the entire Internet. These community networks are owned and maintained by their users, making them decentralized, autonomous, resilient, and answering only to the userbase, down to the individual consumer.

Community networks already connect millions of people across the globe, in both developed and colonized nations; this is proven technology. And the best part is that it’s all based on cheap, off-the-shelf hardware that you and your friends can buy and operate yourselves. We don’t need to wait for any level of government, down even to municipal, for public telecom. We can go out and do it today, ourselves; get your neighbors together and you can start a community network this weekend.

And if you want to save net neutrality, that’s the way to do it--by permanently removing the cable company’s power over you.

Remember, when we fight, we win, so know how to fight!

[apocalyptic-mailman]

im not sure i fully understand the whole DIY decentralized internet thing, if i were to set all of that up, would i still have access to the broader internet (reddit, youtube, steam, etc.) or would it just be things directly linked to the network?

You’d have direct access to servers hosted on the network; to get to the wider internet, you’d still need a regular broadband connection at some point. However, even bearing that in mind, the community network still has advantages. As with all things, buying bulk is the most efficient and cost-effective use of money; easier and probably cheaper for one apartment building to get a single 50mbps connection than for the ten people to each individually get a 5mpbs connection (plus, off peak hours, you get way faster connection than you’d ever get individually).

As these networks grow, and especially when they connect onto servers for major web services, the ISPs control less and less of the share of access, giving us more and more leverage, and eventually they could be large enough to completely supplant commercial ISPs. They’re already well developed in Central and Southern Europe, as well as in hard-to-reach areas like rural Africa and South America; the development of community networks there would be a good model to work from.

[apocalyptic-mailman]

How viable is the diy your own isp thing for really dirt poor neighborhoods/towns? I brought it up to a friend of mine and they said they wouldn't be able to do it because everyone's struggling to get by as it is, and that they don't believe they could do that

It’s pretty cheap. Community networks use off-the-shelf parts and tech, and only require pretty rudimentary skills to establish; a network in Detroit has been getting some media attention, and it’s how large portions of the Global South have gotten connected in the last decade. The article linked in my post mentions a few companies.

[apocalyptic-mailman]

Hmm okay. Tho how would we handle stuff like this: arstechnica(.)com/tech-policy/2014/02/isp-lobby-has-already-won-limits-on-public-broadband-in-20-states/

Because it’s not technically public internet. That lobbying affects governmental (i.e. public sector) internet service providing; this would be from an autonomous collective. The whole point of the post was that we don’t need to wait on the government to save us.