In a post on local resilience the other day, I mentioned The Freedom Cell Network. This is a grassroots effort to get people connected with each other to solve systemic problems. It involves everything from supporting peaceful non-compliance with bad policies to creating parallel institutions. That all sounded good to me, so I filled out a form on the website, found my local Telegram group, and introduced myself.
This intro excluded most of my relevant skills and experiences. I didn't mention gardening or foraging or renewable energy. I didn't mention traditional crafts or primitive skills. I didn't mention the years I'd spent in intentional communities and the rainbow family. Nor did I say anything about the various community efforts to build resilience that I'd been a part of.
"If they want to keep growing, they should focus first on replacement rates." - a disappointed Freedom Cell Singles Mingle event attendee
These omissions were partially due to expedience. Telegram isn't great for long lists. But I'm also not sure that I want to be known in this community for these things. When I was a kid, my dad taught me a valuable lesson about practical skills. He knew how to fix cars, but kept this skill hidden to avoid having to spend all of his time fixing other people's cars. In my case, I could just as easily design a solar pv system as hand sew a leather backpack. But I'm extremely selective about who I actually do these kinds of things for.
True, I'll happily share my knowledge with anyone who genuinely wants to know. I could see doing some kind of Freedom Cell skill share at some point. That could be good, but my primary interest lies elsewhere. My strongest interest is in barter networks and crypto.
The Minneapolis Freedom Cell description includes this sentence: "We are creating a community center and gearing up to develop a non-monetary currency." The community center is a physical space called CoCreating Community that I'll check out eventually. But I don't yet know what they mean by gearing up, or what they mean by non-monetary currency.
If they're talking about crypto, then I'd like to get involved in the conversation. For starters, if they're talking about creating a new token, I'm familiar with how that works. And maybe they'd even be interested in using Rstory instead of devising something new. That token is just sitting on a shelf, awaiting a purpose.
Of course, the fastest track to an alternative economy for dozens of people or more is to have them all set up Hive accounts. Hive is a turnkey solution for anyone wanting a functional alternative to USD. Plus, the censorship-proof nature of Hive blogs seems like it would be attractive to the Freedom Cell crowd. I'll bring it up after I've met more people and see what they say.
There are a little over 200 people in the Telegram group I just joined. I've only met 2 so far, with one being the disappointed Singles Mingles attendee quoted above. There isn't much going on in the crypto channel of the Telegram. The sense I get is that physical events are where Cell members speak freely and network. I look forward to meeting these people in real life.
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