EcoZoic Detroit

EcoZoic Era works with indigenous communities worldwide, marketing their art and music to new audiences in an effort to raise global awareness, increase economic opportunity, and offer resources to address self-identified needs.

The Water for Huicholes! campaign is an effort in partnership with the community of La Laguna to assist with the issue of water access for Huichol villages throughout the Sierra Madre Occidental. Proceeds from the online auctioning of Huichol art and jewelry will support educational opportunities in sustainable design for the Huicholes, with an emphasis on hydrological systems.

In the video below, Mara'kame Juan José describes the water access problem in his community, and shares a song of his vision from the sacred pilgrimage to Wirikuta.

Free screening of Food, Inc.at Detroit's Eastern Market
EcoZoic Detroit, in partnership with Detroit Evolution, Eastern Market Corporation, and Great Lakes Bioneers, will host a free screening of the documentary, "Food, Inc." on Wednesday, February 17 at Detroit's Eastern Market. The event kicks off Detroit’s participation in the Ingredients for Change Campaign, a nationwide initiative to address America’s alarming rates of obesity and other major health problems directly linked to our country’s food system.

EcoZoic Detroit was selected as one of 30 organizations around the country to participate in the Ingredients for Change Campaign, and will convene a range of related local projects to join a nationwide network of local, agricultural and public health groups working to increase the availability of nutritious food and improve their communities’ overall health. The Campaign is a collaboration of Active Voice and Participant Media.

In addition to the film screening, this event will feature healthy vegan food, catered by Detroit Evolution. Following the film, attendees will have a chance to converse with representatives from a variety of community initiatives currently working to address food-related issues in the city, with plenty of opportunities to get more involved.

The event’s organizers are encouraging neighborhood organizations and religious congregations to help spread the word amongst their communities, and to also consider organizing transportation for their constituents to the screening. Organizations working on food-related initiatives are invited to get in touch to arrange for on-site education and outreach opportunities.

Food, Inc., the critically acclaimed 2009 hit documentary from Participant Media, Magnolia Pictures and River Road Entertainment, gives audiences a vivid view of industrial food production, a system that in the last 50 years has drastically changed the American diet. Scrutinizing our national agriculture and food policies, the film examines why soda and fast food are now significantly cheaper and more accessible then fresh fruits and vegetables, and how this change has directly contributed to soaring rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other health problems.

For more information, visit www.foodincmovie.com.

Shifting our lifestyles to incorporate the use of our immediate surrounding natural systems in order to provide for our own basic needs and comforts is much more impactful to our long-term sustainability than worrying too much about smaller energy-saving gestures. If you pay attention to your landscape and begin discovering the value of the natural patterns around you, your energy usage will naturally decrease as a result of your learning to take control of meeting your own needs in a nondestructive manner. You will find that a natural extension of this work is an increased awareness of the nonrenewable resources you continue to consume, and you will find yourself turning down your thermostat and dimming the lights regardless.

So where do we get started in early November? Right now is a great time to gather leaves and other dead or dried out carbon matter from your own property--though avoid sticks or woody plants that have not been finely chipped/mulched--and from surrounding neighbors that intend to dispose of these materials, in order to grow excellent compost for planting your garden in the spring. Build circular piles of carbon matter, 1-2 meters in diameter and 3-4 feet high, adding thin horizontal layers of green/living materials (food scraps and weeds pulled directly from the soil you intend to feed your compost should do fine) to provide the nitrogen needed to attract the bacteria that will get a nice compost burn going (try a ratio of approx. 30 parts brown/carbon to each part green/nitrogen). You will want to add water to your piles as well, but just enough that if you were to squeeze a handful of your pile in your fist, you would release a drop or two of water. Adding weeds from the soil you plan to garden is great, as the weeds that are growing in your soil are naturally fixing the nutrients your soil needs for a healthy balance--part of their role in the forest succession process. However, if you do add weeds, it is important to make sure your pile burns hot enough to kill their seeds, so keep it active and moist.

Right now is the perfect time to initiate the process of healing the soil of your surrounding landscape through composting. Trucking in soil for your vegetable garden is not much more sustainable than trucking in food. We really need to be healing the organisms that sustain us, and composting is a great place to start. Eventually, you may choose to stack the functions of your compost and develop ways to utilize the heat that is a byproduct of your slowly burning compost. Start immediately to begin taking control over the production of one thing you use in your life that you know is not sustainable, and soon you will start to see how your solution can be leveraged to provide for more and more of your needs.

Ecozoicdetroit.net, Evolver.net and Disinfo.com present

2012 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dimensional Shift

Where will you be when the 5,125 year Long Count Calendar of the Classical Maya ends on December, 21, 2012? Will you be hiding in an underground cave from global cataclysm and magnetic polar reversal? Will you be entering a multidimensional realm of hyperspace triggered by mass activation of the pineal gland? Will you be picking up the pieces of a ruined world or dancing the night away at the party at the end of time?

Considering that nobody knows what’s going to happen in 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar functions as a tremendously intriguing meme upon which we can project our hopes and fears, dreams and desires. Hollywood has now offered up a massive collective shadow projection in the form of a $250 million disaster epic that takes the aesthetics of annihilation to a new pitch of perfection. Paradoxically, this doom-riddled blockbuster could create a great opening to offer an alternative vision of what 2012 could be for our planet. Potentially, 2012 could represent the coming-to-consciousness of the human species, in which we take responsibility for our role as agents of conscious evolution.

A rising grassroots movement now realizes we can no longer expect governments, corporations, or any outside authority to create the beautiful world we long to live in. We have to do it ourselves. This growing network of Evolvers, Burners, Bioneers, Transition Towners, and others are developing new cooperative networks that can help heal our planet while providing sustainable solutions to the disastrously unsustainable economic and political systems that disempower people, keeping them asleep.

For this month’s Spore, over thirty cities will host conversations on 2012 and the evolution of consciousness, including “counter-screenings” to Sony Pictures’ “2012” world-catastrophe film. Spores may preview a portion of Mangusta Productions upcoming feature-length documentary “2012: Time for Change,” directed by Joao Amorim and starring “2012” author Daniel Pinchbeck, along with a section of Disinfo’s DVD “2012: Science our Superstition,” produced by Gary Baddeley. Also, bestselling author John Major Jenkins will give a short video presentation for those participating in the Spores. Afterward, we will discuss indigenous prophecies and global transformation, and how to prepare ourselves and our communities for rapid changes to come.

6pm on Wednesday 11/11/09
@ Innate Healing Center, 18700 Woodward Ave

Join innovative businesspeople from the social and for-profit sector for a day-long summit on overcoming individual, organizational, and community barriers to innovation in social enterprise. This event will be co-sponsored by EcoZoic L3C and the Greater Detroit Network of Social Innovators. More info to come...

First off, I would like to welcome readers to our community. EcoZoic Detroit aims to provide a locally focused informational hub, and to facilitate community-building projects, in order to accelerate cultural transformations toward healthy and sustainable social systems. This is a complex task, and we strive to continually maintain open minds on what these systems might look like. As we explore, we invite you to join us in the conversation around the discovery of innovative long-term solutions to the limits we are currently facing as a society. We believe that such dialogue--informed by time-tested principles of sustainable ecological systems--will allow us to collaboratively design solutions that work for our unique communities.

As concepts and notions related to sustainability and "greening" continue to take root in popular culture, we run the risk of artificially diffusing what underlying truths fuel our societal concern for the ecological health of our planet. A slew of new "environmentalists" are embracing this trend, and jumping on the opportunity to exploit our collective fears for personal financial gain.

"Green-washing" is a serious concern to those of us who hope public awareness is the key to our collective salvation. Many long-time environmentalists and conservationists are overwhelmed by the barrage of rather unsustainable "green" products and services that seem to make others feel slightly more at ease with our collective consumptive habits, distracting from the true breadth and scope of the issue. At the same time, we cannot wait on the sidelines defeated. It is important that we continue to find ways to be a part of this dialogue, and work to direct this continuously expanding conversation towards the seeking of long-term solutions.

In recent months Detroit has seen a massive influx of outside journalists and photographers portraying the city as a picture of what happens when Capitalism reaches limits, or at the very least, shifts gears. The foreclosure crisis, the bankruptcy of General Motors, numerous scandals in city government, and high rates of unemployment and underemployment have provided the media with a seemingly perfect picture of America’s post-apocalyptic future.

Conveniently for the media, fifty years of economic decline along with racist and classist political positioning has created actual ruins, dilapidated structures, entire neighborhoods of burnt down homes, and the time for nature to begin reclaiming much of the land. But any Detroiter knows that this did not happen over night.

At the same time, journalists have begun capitalizing on many of the opportunities in the city with a particular focus on the now infamous “one-dollar home,” and especially, the urban gardening movement. Nevertheless, what seems to be lacking from the press is a clear picture of any cohesive vision for Detroit’s future.

It’s apparent that many Detroiters are now aware of issues of food security and are decidedly choosing to become pro-active by participating in the Garden Resource Program and by shopping at and organizing community farmers’ markets. The successes of this ‘movement’ are highly visible all over the city and its continuing evolution (from food delivery trucks, to permaculture study groups, to community potlucks) seems to be creating very real positive impacts for families and individuals. Moreover, as the “green” meme spreads it’s becoming apparent that government officials and business leaders such as John Hantz, CEO of Hantz Farms, who is buying up hundreds of acres of vacant Detroit land in order to create the “world’s largest urban farm,” are eager to take advantage of the triumphs of the movement. Without a cohesive vision for the city, however, its citizenry remains subject to the decisions of those in power, while the achievements of Detroit’s green movement lay vulnerable to corporate co-opting and unnecessary government regulation.

I believe we are living in a time of tremendous opportunity. We are becoming conscious of our own talents and abilities. We are aware of the limits of this unsustainable society and we have at this occasion the chance to reclaim our power as individuals and as a community to heal our direct environments.

Personally, I define a “path” as a process of envisioning my future-self, and then looking backwards to where I’m at now in my life, realizing all of the steps needed in order to get to where I want to be, and simply walking forward without hesitance. If we are able to create such a vision for our city and address the basic needs with a plan of action, we will be able to inadvertently define what we don’t want as a community, and walk forward together to create resilience, self-sufficiency, and abundance. Without a vision, however, we invite exploitation and bureaucracy. The choice really is ours to make.

EcoZoic invites the community to share its vision for Detroit. We encourage you to join the discussion and leave comments.