Waking the Phoenix Gathering

Summary of Process & Content

Montesuenos | Vilcabamba, Ecuador

June 8 – 14, 2008

Waking the Phoenix Gathering Summary

Main Conclusions

• We are in partnership with the earth and all life.

• Our species’ presence on the earth is hurting it, us, and all other life.

• There is great urgency to act and complex choices to be made if we are to survive as a species – we need both short-term and long-term strategies

• The current system (economic, political, elite rule, education, food production, etc.) isn’t working we need to totally change our infrastructure in terms of how we survive and thrive together.

• We can transform our current system from the grassroots up by localizing our communities and weaving them together in a global self-organized, decision-making network. This means things like:

  • making out communities self-sufficient within the realities of our bioregion,

  • innovating free energy solutions that make our communities independent from oil,

  • getting together to work on community issues and resolving them at the local level, choosing our own forms of self-governance, and linking these forms of self-governance across regions to the global level

  • re-designing our monetary/exchange mechanisms so they ensure sustainable resiliency

acknowledging and connecting in community with each other, other life, and the biosphere