As the Creek Rises: A Convivial Gathering of Flooded Fellowship

We would love for you to join us at Urban Orchard Cidery on December 30th at 6pm. There will be free food, a live performance from Bobby Frith, and convivial discussion about where we are headed.

EcoGather’s core team have had intimate experience with disasters like this. As a result, we are skillful in connecting those working within the cracks of the old system and convening conversation to mobilize our collective energies and assets to create livable futures. Nissa and Nicole are based in Vermont, which experiences frequent flooding – in the past two years, catastrophically. In the Vermont floods of 2023, Nissa was completely displaced from her home and lost many of her possessions. Exactly a year later, more Vermont communities were flooded, some for the second or even third time in a year. Just a few months later, Nissa watched as her hometown was destroyed by Hurricane Helene, and the entire EcoGather community waited on anxious edge for days to hear whether our community members, including EcoGather consulting scholar, Lauren, were safe and to figure out how we could help.

Those in our community who have witnessed and experienced instances of devastating disruptions react with a mix of deep empathy and a lack of surprise. We accepted that it was only a matter of time before disaster was at our doors. Some of us even have admitted to feeling a (complicated) sense of relief that we were mentally prepared and emotionally resilient in the face of unpredictability, uncertainty, and changes to the status quo. At the same time, we experience a queasy sense of horror that, despite our foresight, there was not more we could do to prepare for these types of events. We bristle at the hegemonic, reflexive desires to “get back to normal” as soon as possible. And we ache when we hear this from people who are hurting hard – but deep down know that more frequent, severe, and ubiquitous disruptions are on the way.

At the same time, we are so buoyed by the demonstrations of community care, unity, solidarity and effective action we have already seen time and time again and we want to be a part of maintaining this beautiful energy and supporting the continuation of altered effort. To this end, EcoGather recognized that our enduring, entwined relationships to two flood impacted communities at opposite ends of the Appalachians and our faith in cosmolocal collaboration gave us a distinct way to engage. While we’re always happy to welcome folks into our virtual spaces, we also crave a chance to share space and stories in person.

Please RSVP at the button above. We can’t wait to explore the possibilities for building in these cracks together.

Some related offerings from EcoGather:

Nissa Coit: Something That Happened
Nicole Civita: FLOW
Mackenzie Faber: Floods, Tumors, and the Cat
Upstream Podcast: Drinkable Rivers with Li An Phoa
Upstream Podcast: Prefigurative Politics and Workplace Democracy with Saio Gradin and Nicole Wires

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