Experimental activism: building a community center, ~ two months in

Just a few days left before market

Another nailbiting weekend. We could do without these, but they remind us to return to the basics: garden, animals, each other, and not worry about too much.

The generator rental has clearly taken their business practices out of a bad dating manual: 'Don't make yourself too available. Keep things a little mysterious.' Friday they were suddenly not sure they could arrange the distribution board for our generator. (After at first claiming they didn't even have any distribution boards for rent, and then yes they did after all ... ) Monday we drove back to the generator rental, find another solution (several small generators?). To be told: 'after all, distribution board will arrive with generator on Friday'. Thanks, generator rental?

Which lead to practical problem 2: what do with generator after market? Not great to be out on the street, and worse, will be blocking the space of the usual bi-weekly farmer's market. Also, had to negotiate about some more infrastructure to use there. We met with more town hall people (this town is so small that everything is relatively uncomplicated and informal). One technical guy (of those who do actual work) quickly solved all our problems to our utmost satisfaction.

Throughout the organization I've lost most of my usual shyness. Just phone calls are still a bit of a struggle. I do answer most of them but still avoid making them and forget to note down people's names every time.

Few days missing, I've been out distributing flyers and posters. Should have printed more. We are counting with 40-50 stands, hope we fit everybody in, and sort out the last bits before market day.

Cooperative? Spent a lot of time talking with a small group of people wanting to create one, and also spoke to other community members to find out what are their needs, spent time trying to understand what is the difference between a cooperative and an association, and what would fit people's needs better, and found that by this slow way of inquiring informally I am getting a good picture. I feel that building a larger cooperative active in different sectors that could be truly democratic and benefit the larger community would take interested people quite a while to create. All would have to study how it functions, build a way of self-organizing, create a business plan together, define membership options based on that ...

For many people a coop is 'something like tool share, food and skill exchange and doing stuff together'. For what I see, creating a coop (a legal entity created for business activities) with this approach risks both self-exploitation ('we can totally run this coop shop based on voluntary work') and being accused of lack of transparency because the core group hasn't defined their setup well enough to communicate it well to others. For what I see if people want to create a legal entity for 'doing stuff together' an association might be the better option. Of course, I might be totally wrong.

I am back to considering a digital solution first because that will actually be a solution for many people - a database with frontend where people can connect and post their skills, stuff to give away, events .... but I will keep inquiring and talking about the coop. For example, I have not much from actual members of coops yet. At least one will be at the market and I'm excited to speak to them!

Happy with all the progress made so far and curious where my meanderings around people lead me next.