An Introduction

This blog is a long time coming and I'm a bit overwhelmed with feeling the need to catch readers up in very short order. But begin, I must, so I'll jump right in in the middle. I've gained some unique perspectives and platforms in my last ten years of freedom fighting owing to my readiness - indeed eagerness - to cross America's divides and build alliances where most people would assume only enemies exist.

Thus it was that a young dreadlocked liberal worked for four years at a libertarian / free market think tank Cascade Policy Institute - achieving the position of director of publications. During this time I attended multiple training workshops within the free market movement. I didn't set out to be a mole, but even some colleagues recognized and joked about that possibility. As I learned more about the well-intentioned libertarians and their well-funded socially conservative (non libertarian) allies, I began warning of this libertarian-conservative relationship as an "unholy marriage forged in hell."

Indeed, when 9/11 happened and Americans needed defenders of civil liberties, these libertarians, who'd come to rely on training, funding and even policy solutions from conservatives, dropped the ball. I stuck with them for another year until it was clear they wouldn't budge even after the Twin Towers' dust had long since settled - they refused to launch a civil liberties project. Meanwhile the heightened state of alert in the city, coupled with the total absence of any meaningful preparations for survival in the event of a catastrophe, made it unsafe for me to stay there any longer.

To protect my family, prepare for the future, and build more effective alliances, I had to move to rural America. Thus it was that in late 2002 a dreadlocked, tattooed and self-professed anarchist found a home in one of the most remote places in America -- the conservative Wallowa Valley surrounded by the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area. My husband had family ties to the area, and family property here, which helped immensely. Still, we were outsiders and strange ones at that.

We spent nearly a year living in a one-room off-grid cabin, trying our hands at self-sufficiency skills like power and fuel production, conducting independent research (like reading John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education), and generally decompressing from the city. It was here that we started Freedom Solutions NW - the world's only anarchist think tank (that I know of). Now before anyone freaks out, anarchist simply means "without a ruler." Though the term has been redefined to describe those who only seek destruction, in truth it applies to the thousands of people who believe that families, churches, businesses, and other natural associations provide better social glue than the centralized power of government. Indeed, those healthy relationships atrophy when government is relied upon, while corruption is allowed to flourish under the protection of the government itself. By now, owing to decades of government schooling, specialized rights and liability protections for corporate supercitizens under the corporate personhood doctrine, and criminal monetary policy from the private Federal Reserve, our economy and political structure are crumbling. We'd like to build alternative healthy systems before the whole thing comes crashing down on us, so that we might see the bulk of society move toward mutual aid rather than devouring each other like rats in cages.

Our aim for Freedom Solutions was (and is) to develop non-political solutions to advance freedom, on the idea that the political system is too slow, corrupt and divisive to promote true freedom anymore. Among other things, we began teaching people small-scale fuel production skills; we amassed a lending library of freedom themed books, movies, and how-to manuals; and we began to develop a plan for a network of similar independently run freedom themed resource centers around the country and world.

I quickly learned the limits of nonprofit funding, however -- that nonprofits will always tend to serve the government and elite interests because they are funded as a tax offset for those with high taxable burdens. The folks who really appreciated and needed our help didn't have a great deal of money to donate, and we didn't want to ask that of them. Thus, we ultimately abandoned our pending 501(c)(3) status and continued Freedom Solutions unabated.

True freedom fighting isn't a lucrative endeavor, I'm afraid. With my parent's help in getting a bank loan, we bought a house on the main street of the tiny town of Lostine in March 2004, just after our first son Wolfgang was born (a successful out-of-hospital birth, thank you). I took a job working some shifts at the town's 100-year old general store, M. Crow and Company, where I enjoyed (and still do enjoy) Saturday morning coffee with some of the town elders as well as the chance to chat up dozens of Wallowa County locals each shift. We also tried to make ends meet through my strategically selected research and writing projects. In 2004 I conducted a series of case studies of highly effective private sector social service organizations for the American Institute for Full Employment (see http://www.fullemployment.org/BestPract.htm). That Fall I began writing a column on the small acreage page of the West's Ag weekly Capital Press. That column evolved into My Free Country, now a highly popular piece among freedom loving farm folk throughout the Western states and beyond (see http://www.capitalpress.com/main.asp?SectionID=84&SubSectionID=1037&TM=56635.86). I also became the general news reporter and opinion columnist for my local paper, the Wallowa County Chieftain.

In 2005, I left the Chieftain to return to work long-distance as director of publications for the think tank Cascade Policy Institute, on the hope that a leadership change there might open the possibility for a more balanced approach to advancing freedom, prioritizing civil liberties for example. Instead, I found that the Institute had grown more conservative in my absence. There was no hope for a civil liberties project and what's more, they were working toward a defense of predatory -- I mean, payday -- lenders. After a year of struggle, my contract was up and we parted ways again, with one last salvo from me - they published my report, Farm and Freedom Friendly Policies for Oregon, in which I advocated for a regulatory exemption on the local sale of farm products and an end to hemp prohibition among other things. See http://www.cascadepolicy.org/pdf/env/200702_farm_and_freedom_friendly_policies_for_oregon.pdf.

Today, our son Wolfgang (4) is joined by daughters Anastasia (2) and Liberty (9 months) - all successful homebirths, thank you. I'm again writing for the Chieftain, as a stringer now. I've syndicated My Free Country to reach a broader audience. And I am developing a food security implementation plan for our region. Though the five year plan is understandably the standard, this is a one growing season plan due to the fact that we may not have the luxury of more time and it's best not to push our luck.

It's now time for me to shift my day's efforts toward homeschooling the little ones. In the coming posts I'll go into many of the above topics in more detail. Please stay tuned.