Reflections on Community

Since joining the ECM community I have made a few observations which relate to some of the readings we’ve done in the class. First, let me say that I have never seen such an natural and bustling environmental community. Specifically, Mary Pipher’s value of a fun community came to life before me in a vivid way. As the people of ECM line up one-by-one for some Vegan food and sit down at the tables together, the place is bustling with conversation. After talking to some of the weekly attendees, I found that some knew each other outside of the weekly lunch while others only saw the others once per week. Nonetheless, the fun is palpable and seems to be the reason behind why ECM is so effective.

Though ECM itself is centered around following/discovering religious faith in general, I’ve observed that its community is knit together less based on its christian status and more on the grounds of being socially and politically aware. Again, this relates back to Rayner’s use of technology to use for people’s existing value systems rather than attempting to change the values of people themselves. “Christian values” as vague as that can be, in this case have been leveraged to creating a center of social awareness — from raising funds for solar panels on the center’s roof to the “Real Food Lunches” that use food from the center’s backdoor organic garden — that is in effect a very environmental community. This makes sense. There is no reason for “environmental community” and “Christian center” to be mutually exclusive, and yet I feel that, many times, this is what happens. There’s the fact that many conservative Christians deny the existence of climate change, of course, but what I’m talking about is more than that. I’m talking about how a group has a tendency to define itself by its values and stop there, rather than technology (in Rayner’s sense) being introduced to leverage those values, making the community more than its self-identified values. In this case, introducing technology (e.g. solar panel, weekly lunch, etc.) is a structuralchange, which doesn’t have to change any of the individuals. With this in mind, what other technologies can be added to ECM and other communities around campus?

Last week, I mentioned my interest in creating a food coop on campus, an idea given to me by a KSU student whom I met at ECM. On Monday, I’ll be presenting at K-State’s Food Security Symposium. It will be a large symposium featuring mostly professors and a few students (I think my co-presenter and I may be the only ones) and it will serve as a platform to launch the coop idea and introduce it to administration. Of course, this must be done with expertise; in fact, we wouldn’t even have to pitch it as a coop. For now, we’re content with extending Real Food Lunch to a more on campus location. According to the Berkeley student’s thesis that I shared last week, almost no university food coops started out as such. Due to the slow build-up of credibility, funding, and reputation, there is a slow transition period which, in many instances, starts with something similar to a food stand. In our case, we will attempt to use a food stand near the union/ the food trucks as an extension of the Real Food Lunch program at ECM. The future of the stand/coop is where wayfaring comes in. Simply having a place near the Union (with the University’s permission) with cheap prices and an already existing clientelle population will be enough to provide at least a small amount of initial success. Appealing to different departments on every level of the process is also key. It could act as another sales outlet for the bakery science club and local farmer’s market vendors — supporting local farmers is a priority and a way to promote interest in the ag community.