Organize with other people

Share with neighbors

• Have a party.
• Invite neighbors over when they move in.
• Eat together as an initial way to start involvement.
• Meet and plan with neighbors.
• Start a neighborhood garden.
• Start up work parties to accomplish large projects.
• Develop regular meals together.
• Own expensive tools and equipment together.
• Have a garage sale or clothing swap.
• Share vehicles, costs, insurance, fees and maintenance.
• Share land for gardening, farming, animal husbandry, solar & water projects.
• Share your labor - like old time barn raising.
• Barter labor hours for return labor or things others need.

Support local businesses

• Learn about CSA - Community Supported Agriculture
• Buy at local food coops.
• Make a relationship with the people you buy from; appreciate them.
• Support local crafts and artisans.
• Encourage small businesses to stay in your neighborhood; get the neighbors help.
• Learn about the Sustainability Movement.

Plan with your family

• Meet with your family to plan.
• Have an intentional gathering to get organized.
• Start with what to do in a power outage; ie, outage in California; it’s a reasonable way to start.
• Make plans that assume no cell phone communications are possible.
• Know where to meet locally.
• Know where to meet, if an in-town meeting is impossible.
• Make a communication phone tree.
• Know whose house to go to and under what circumstances.
• Make financial plans as well.
• Talk about what to keep at home for emergencies.
• Develop your plans and supplies as far as you can with your family.
• This may take a long time to complete with your family; don’t push too hard.

Make community disaster plan

• Volunteer with Red Cross Disaster Relief
• Find out about the Disaster Planning in your city or county.
• Become a volunteer fire fighter.
• Join a local organization or steering committee
• Run for a position or the local water board.
• Join a political group or a political action committee.

Boycott unsustainable business

• First, what IS a sustainable business?

Answer:
1 - A business that people can still get to if gas is very expensive.
2 - A business that sells things that people must have to survive.
3 - A business that sells things made locally.

• Nearby buyer & seller, plus a basic inventory  =  more sustainable.
• Support these: the nearby shoe repair shop, feed store, and hardware store.
• Support CSA, farmers markets, local agriculture, community gardens.
• Stop supporting large impersonal retail chains.
• Boycott stores with mostly foreign made goods.
• Don’t support stores in large malls.
• Don’t buy things advertised on TV.
• Buy from the small local person nearest you, even if it costs more.