So permaculture is a design system with three basic ethics, earth care, people care and
share the surplus, redistribute the surplus. So this fundamentally is like an amazing benchmark
for how do we measure our success, our quality of life.
Permaculture is great in that it's also scale-less. You know, this is a small permaculture system
that is sort of sized for this group, but this is also happening on a large scale within
the New York Harbor estuaries. You know, they're rebuilding oyster beds, they're planting
eelgrass, they're doing this filtering a thousand more times a quarter.
And I would say this is proof. Like, we're doing it. It's already happening. It's not
this idea of something that's happening in the future. We're moving. This is an alternative
to capitalism in this occupation. Like, there's free food. Everybody gets to eat. People are
taking care of one another. There's shelter. And so there's communication. Like, anybody's
empowered to stand up. Okay, so it's already, this is proof that it's already happening.
So the first part of the process is the bio-filter. And that is a 50-gallon drum filled with wood
chips. And what the bio-filter does is after they're done washing the dishes, all of the
food scraps and oils and soapy water gets poured into the bio-filter. And that separates
the food chunks and oils, which is just excess nutrients, from the actual soapy gray water.
And so then the soapy gray water continues down through two chambers that are planted
with water-loving plants. And so the water-loving plants take up all those nutrients, and that's
food for them to grow. And so we're really replicating patterns in nature. So this is
mimicking a wetland where a wetland's doing. Because nature's systems are really resilient
and diverse. And so we can learn from that and then apply those principles both socially
as well as ecologically to really have the steps and process to create a new world. Because
we don't want to just emulate the old patterns of privilege and power that we see in this
current system to the next one. We want to make sure that everybody has access to clean
water, clean soil, clean food, and it's not just for people that can afford it. That's
why permaculture design is so important because it's looking at that people care part as well
as the earth care and then the economic system. So it's looking at all three.
Living in New York City and being here down at Wall Street for the last couple of weeks,
we really wanted to work with people and to implement something that is experimental,
that is actually making the space better, that we're actually changing the space,
not just by occupying it, but we're looking around at the environment, looking at the trees,
at the vegetation. There was a request for a great water system and then Lisa
looked up the calls that she's coming down and said, let's do it. And there was just planning
over one night, over the train, I can have this, we have this, we had a friend who happened to run
into, I ran into here who had the tubs already planted. And so in a day and a half, we get it set up.
This is all about participation and just not watching it anymore, but just making that shift
of like turning into a producer and really taking an active part in building the world that we want
to see because that's what's going to take. The change is going to come from all of us getting
off of that couch or off the computer, like getting out here, interacting with people.
It's just really magical, like things are just really starting to come together.
Take risks and try things out in experiment. I mean we did this without any real plan and we,
this is free. And it's borrowed and we have these sort of friends, we came to small communities
to make this happen. You know, take a risk, take a day off of work, try something out.
Put your job. Put your job. Put your job. Come down to Los Angeles. Come down to Los Angeles.
Put your job. Put your job. Put your job. Don't make me cry today.
