EcoGather

Peace
2025-05-22 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York)
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Just as modernity has shaped the narratives of progress, population, and prosperity to its own benefit, there is a story of peace that we’ve been told which deserves some critical analysis and questioning. In a culture where “peace deals” are synonymous with a temporary pause on genocidal bloodshed carried out by an incredibly unbalanced power dynamic, our very notion of what “peace” actually is has become warped by our conditioning to witness and increasingly tolerate unspeakable violence. The question of peace must hold an aspect of social spatiality… peace where? And for whom? A pervasive “Protect your peace” type of neo-spirituality has arisen in modernity’s hyper-individualized society. It requires its followers to ignore the very violences that their so-called peace depends on, as well as the conflict that inevitably arises from the unaddressed violences. But there is no peace in existing amongst the comforts of modernity when those comforts are dependent on the extraction and exploitation of other life.
How does our ignorant pursuit of modernity’s “peace” exacerbate the many conflicts of the polycrisis? How has our growing inability to address the inevitable conflict that arises, on both macro and micro scales, contributed to even more disruptions of the peace we claim to want for the world? In the last session of this cycle, we will break down the peace narrative we’ve been told, and make space to build out a new one which acknowledges the inevitability of conflict and our response-ability to address it with maturity and inclusivity.
Recommended resources for this gathering:

“The Duty of Repair”
Concluding excerpt from Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman

Recommended Quiz:
Which Conflict Archetype Are You?
Take this quiz to find out!

Recommended Listening:
Navigating Conflict with Kazu Haga
A conversation from Prentiss Hemphill’s podcast Becoming the People

EcoGather Team Open Hours
2025-05-22 18:00 - 19:00
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Reimagining the Family
2025-05-25 11:00 - 12:30
We’ve partnered with Upstream once again to host a discussion on their recent episode with Kristen Ghodsee, Post Capitalist Parenting Pt. 2: Reimagining the Family, which, expectedly, continues their mini series on post capitalist parenting (their first was another EcoGather collaboration with Toi Marie Smith). Join us as we share the difficulties we’ve experienced as parents, caretakers, or children under capitalism, and explore the alternative ways of being we can strive for (many of which Kristen mentions in the episode and her book!).
Recommended resources for this gathering:
Upstream Podcast: Reimagining the Family with Kristen Ghodsee

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Dystopia
2025-05-28 19:30 - 21:00
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Our realities are shaped by the physical world we inhabit; whether that’s the nature that surrounds us, the humans we interact with in community, the food made accessible to us, or the stories that reach us, filled with knowledge our own realities or those far away. But just as much as we absorb these inputs from the outside world to shape our understanding of it, we are also exerting our own inputs into the realities of others. We all contribute to a greater understanding of the physical world which surrounds us, the Topia we exist in. In this lunar cycle, we will examine the different Topias, from the more familiar types found in literature, Dystopia and Utopia, to the more generative and less well-known genre of Thrutopia and Ourtopia.
The dystopias we familiarize ourselves with in literature have long warned us of the dangerous potential of humanity to create worlds of incredible suffering. But where does the fiction end, and reality begin? At least 90% of oceanic fish populations are overexploited. There are microplastics in every human body, in every mother’s breast milk, as well as our hearts and in our brains. Only 4% of Earth’s remaining mammals by biomass are wild beings – 96% of mammals are humans and our livestock. The dominant culture has created a dystopia for every non-human being, and for most human beings too – yet our dystopias look different, and will continue to unfold differently. In this EcoGathering, we’ll discuss our dystopia, driven in large part by the human population-consumption dynamics in this dominant culture.
Recommended resources for this gathering:
“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel, Chapter 6
(It’s less than two pages long, and you’ve already gotten maybe half of it quoted above. But maybe give this another read, and imagine what would be on your own list.)
Slaughterbots – a short film by Dust
(This contains depictions of violence and blood – not too much, but this is a video about theoretical dystopian killing drones – so if that’s not for you, totally pass on this video.)
Worldmaking in the Dark with Octavia E. Butler, with Ayana Jamieson and Sophie Strand
(This touches on Dystopia and its opposite, Utopia, but like any good conversation with wonderful minds, it wanders about and doesn’t stay just on the topic of topias.)

Utopia
2025-06-03 13:00 - 14:30
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Broken down into a literal translation, Utopia means “no place.” This Topia is the territory that is often labeled ‘off-limits’ by an understanding of what is possible, based on what has been possible. It is where the imagination roams when left unbound and free from the limits of realism. Unlike the dystopic stories we question might be playing out in the real world we exist in right now, the utopia is inherently fictional. That being said, it can still serve a functional purpose in world-building. There is incredible power behind the unbound imaginative creative process that occurs when certain limits are removed. New pathways may be revealed for different ways of organizing ourselves into better forms of existence. If there’s any room for delusion in Topias, let it be a hopeful delusion which allows us to believe that there is always a better way of being. Join us this week as we wonder with unbound curiosity what utopian ideals we might be able to learn from, comparing lessons from history and literature with our current predicament.
Recommended resources for this gathering:
Hanzi Freinacht: What’s The Difference between Utopia, Eutopia and Protopia?
Upstream Podcast: Everyday Utopia and Radical Imagination with Kristen Ghodsee
David Fleming: Utopia from Lean Logic

In the Shell of the Old
2025-06-07 15:00 - 17:00 | Hard-Pressed Community Print Shop, 12 VT Rt. 15, West Danville, Vermont
The systems and institutions of society are not living up to their promises. That might be old news for you. Or it might be a recent revelation. Either way, after noticing the things aren’t as we were lead to believe, it’s worth taking a closer look. Are we dealing with surficial cracks in the paint that could be patched and restored? Or are we seeing the evidence of deep structural flaws? Put differently, do we need to confront the fact that honestly made and long-upheld principles and promises are suddenly being broken? Or is it time to reckon with the fact that those same principles and promises we always dishonestly proffered?
If we accept – or even strongly suspect – that human-made systems aren’t working well and are leading us somewhere we’d rather not go, we might be tempted to pursue significant, large scale, rapid and transformative reform of the system. But after so many decades of clamoring for action on an array of important issues, we also must admit that the massive shifts needed are unlikely, if not impossible, to bring about at the pace of worsening crisis or in the face of regression. This admission is not one of defeat. Rather, it is an invitation to stop trying to change, repair, or redeem “the system”) and, instead, build a new world in the shell of the old.
Taking matters into our own hands involves rebuilding cultures of commoning and cooperation. It also means not waiting for anyone to come save the day. We must take care of each other and get to work. As the old world crumbles and cracks, we can discard the parts that no longer serve us, we can take the pieces that work and start rebuilding the world we want to live in, here and now. This is a task of trusting that other worlds are possible – even if they straddle or hover just beyond the edges of our current imaginative capacity. It is also about committing to doing the work to build with who and what we have immediately around us. And it requires courageously accepting (perhaps even embracing, uncertainty – surrendering to the reality that we cannot know what our new world(s) will be or bring, recognizing that we are in the slipstream, doing the work of generations. It begins when we we show up, whether overwhelmed or undaunted and trust that “[w]e know what we need to do. We need to build the sequel, to draw inspiration which has lain dormant, like the seed beneath the snow.” (David Fleming)

Open Hours (Nissa)
2025-06-12 10:00

Thrutopia
2025-06-12 17:00 - 18:30
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We can benefit from imagining, ideating, and criticizing utopias and dystopias, but what about right now? Utopias are unachievable and dystopias are undesirable, so what worlds should we inhabit and build, especially now and in the near future? In the pursuit of utopia and in the rejection of dystopia, we encounter Thrutopia.
As philosopher and writer Rupert Read originally envisioned it, “What are desperately needed, but as yet barely exist, are what I term thrutopias. Thrutopias would be about how to get from here to there, where ‘there’ is far far away in time. How to live and love and vision and carve out a future, through pressed times that will endure. The climate crisis is going to be a long emergency, probably lasting hundreds of years. It is useless to fantasise a shining sheer escape from it to utopia. But it’s similarly useless, dangerously defeatist, to wallow around in dystopias. We need ways of seeing, understanding, inhabiting, creating what will be needed for the very long haul. Visioning the politics and ecology of getting through.”
Join us this week as we explore what thrutopia could look like and mean in this stage of modernity and its ongoing collapse.
Thrutopia newsletter
Recommended Resources
Thrutopian Dreams with Manda Scott on Sounds of SAND podcast
THRUTOPIA: Why Neither Dystopias Nor Utopias Are Enough To Get Us Through The Climate Crisis, And How A ‘Thrutopia’ Could Be by Rupert Read
Why building inspiring alternatives is necessary to counter authoritarianism by Barbara Peterson
The Way Out is Through: On Thrutopia with Manda Scott, a conversation by advaya

YINTAH Film Screening and Dialogue
2025-06-26 15:00 - 18:30
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Join us for a special screening of award-winning documentary film YINTAH (https://www.yintahfilm.com/) (2024), followed by a panel discussion with Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders Eve Saint and Jocey Alec. There will also be an update from a Gitxsan Land Defender about their resistance to the Prince Rupert pipeline project.
YINTAH follows the story of two Wet’suwet’en women, Howilhkat Freda Huson and Sleydo’ Molly Wickham, through over a decade of exercising unceded Indigenous sovereignty against colonial land seizure for oil pipeline projects in so-called British Columbia, Canada. The post-screening panel discussion will be moderated by EcoGather community member Frieda McAlear (Inupiaq).
As this offering is much longer than our typical gatherings, we will be starting the panel discussion and Q&A portion at 5:30PM EST, following a brief break after the screening. If timing is a constraint, anyone is more than welcome to watch the film on their own time and join in for the discussion portion of the event.

Recommended Resources:
For more information about the film, where to watch it, other upcoming screenings that may be local to where you are, and ways to support the land defenders you see on screen, check out their website.
To learn more about the Unist’ot’en Village and Camp that is actively practicing land defense, and for ways to support them, check out their website.

About the Panelists:
Eve Saint
Eve is a Wet’suwet’en Land Defender, Financial Divestment Campaigner and mother of two, and a leading organizer in the movement urging RBC to divest from Coastal GasLink and the fossil fuel industry. Eve is the daughter of Chief Woos, one of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs. In 2020, Eve was at Gidimt’en Checkpoint during the RCMP’s militarized invasion of unceded territory, where dozens of unarmed Indigenous people were arrested at gunpoint, including many elders and women. Eve has continued to resist Coastal GasLink since then, and in recent years has focused on financial pressure as a strategy to stop CGL Phase 2 and to force the financial system to respect Indigenous rights. Eve has organized an international delegation of Indigenous Land Defenders to RBC’s annual general meeting for the past three years, which has contributed to policy shifts at the bank related to respect for Indigenous rights and funding renewable and clean energy. Eve lives in Tkaronto, where she cares for two beautiful children.

Jocey Alec
Hadeeh’/Hello,
My name is Jocey Alec and I am a Wet’suwet’en land defender and the daughter of Chief Woos, the head chief of C’as Yikh (Grizzly) house on Gidimt’en territory. I have lived on the land for up to three years, continuing to oppose the industrial projects that have caused vast environmental damage without the consent of hereditary Wet’suwet’en leadership. Living on our land requires learning the refined skills and knowledge of my ancestors, and with the guidance of my father’s teachings, I have begun to hunt, trap and navigate in the ways of our people. This way of life is deeply meaningful because I protect the land and water not only for myself, I do it for everyone because we are all connected one way or another but most importantly for many future generations to come.

How to Fall in Love with the Future
2025-06-27 13:00 - 14:30
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In this final EcoGathering, we have partnered with Upstream for a conversation with Rob Hopkins discussing his forthcoming book, How to Fall in Love with the Future. The book comes out June 17th (available in the US on September 16th) and you can order at the link above through Chelsea Green Publishing (use discount code CGP35 for 35% off your purchase). This collaborative EcoGathering serendipitously falls at the end of our cycle on ‘Topias, during which we explored the many ways our stories of the future shape our actions and orientations now. Rob invites us to consider how vividly and sensually imagining the future we want, based on real examples of eutopias strengthens our efforts to bring about the rapid, radical change we need to create vivacious, beautiful communities – and it’s not that hard to build with who and what we have around us. Since this is our final gathering as EcoGather, we will also use Rob’s invitations and tools to dream about what comes next for us as otherWise.
Recommended resources for this gathering:
Upstream Podcast: How to Fall in Love with the Future with Rob Hopkins
