A sure sign of spring on the Cumberland Plateau are the cherry blossoms and daffodils starting to brighten up the landscape after the cool gray winter.

There is hustle and bustle here on The Farm, with people putting in their gardens, starting to work on buildings now that it (hopefully) wont be dropping back below freezing.

And the busy work of organizing a Continental Bioregional Congress is also in full swing keeping up with the spring surge of energy. The Cumberland Green, as it is locally known, is the highland plateau stretching west from the southern end of the Appalachian mountains. The Green is wealthy in musical tradition as well as regenerative bioregional potential.

The Core organizing Committee currently consists of Eric Lewis, Administrator of the Cumberland Greens Biocouncil; Greg Landua, Program Coordinator of the Ecovillage Training Center; Ali Rosenblat, Secretary of Ecovillage Network of the Americas, Jennifer D. English, Director of the Center for Holistic Ecology and Jessi Ortiz, Office Coordinator of the Ecovillage Training Center. We are also blessed with the help of the Continental Bioregional Council as well as a group of elders from the Farm Community including Albert Bates, Doug Stevenson, and Mary Ellen Bowen.

Our hope is to synchronize our efforts in bioregional organizing with the wave on interest in alternative lifestyles, green living and localization to empower the bioregional movement on the Cumberland Plateau and The North American Continint. WE are hoping to catalyze a year and a half long discussion culminating with the Bioregional Congress and continuing on from there with clarity and purpose.

In service to the Earth.

Greg Landua

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The incoming US Federal administration of 2009 will have an important opportunity to launch a New Green Deal that promotes locally directed efforts to solve many of our urgent problems. This is a time of economic and environmental crisis, and we need to demonstrate authentic leadership in pursuit of a vibrant, healthy society that is sustainable and equitable. A New Green Deal can address domestic economic, social and ecological problems in a way that also has a positive impact on foreign policy and relations.

The New Green Deal focuses on developing basic requirements for moving towards sustainability such as green collar jobs, regional ecological restoration, and inclusion of under-represented communities. Its mission is to enable comprehensive long-lasting social, economic and natural resource policies. The New Green Deal can become the foundation for healthy, productive domestic programs that reduce our nation’s oil dependence and provide proactive responses to global warming.

The New Green Deal’s founding principle is there needs to be regional improvements to local conditions and carried out by local people, businesses, and communities. This means the overall approach to accomplishing programs will vary according to the places where applied: New York City will have a different emphasis than Los Angeles, and Puget Sound from Chesapeake Bay. The New Green Deal should then be applied in five general directions:

1) Survey, inventory and evaluation of local/regional renewable and non-renewable assets. These include but are not limited to food, water, energy sources, building materials and methods, open space, and transportation alternatives with an emphasis on a North American, inter-regional railway system.

2) Public participation in designating and implementing priorities for projects and activities.

3) “True cost” analysis to evaluate and select the most sustainable alternatives.

4) Green Collar employment programs in the following areas:

a) Ecosystem restoration,

b) Remanufacturing that maximizes use of recyclable and/or post-consumer materials,

c) Renewable energy production and use,

d) Regionally-based sustainable agriculture,

e) Converting all wastes into resources,

f) Water conservation and reuse,

g) Energy efficiency,

h) Green building, living roofs, and landscaping,

i) Ecology and conservation education,

j) And special Green Collar job training programs in vulnerable communities.

*A genuine “stimulus package”, on the scale of the 1930’s New Deal, for the present day. The New Green Deal promotes positive programs to replace catastrophic activities that underlie climate change, economic inequities, water and food shortages, habitat destruction, and species extinction.

COMMITTEE FOR A NEW GREEN DEAL: Email: [email protected], Postal address: Committee for a New Green Deal, P.O. Box 31251, San Francisco, CA 94131

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Please view some photos & a recent Spanish write-up of some of Planet Drum Foundation's activities in Ecuador from local El Nuevo Globo newspaper. The children are 12-14 year-olds who attend our "Bioregionalismo" after-school class (also the title of the textbook we developed for them). They are holding a poster of activities during the term. Course teacher Ramon Cedeno is wearing white cap.Peter Berg

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