Is a community element a requirement? Does there have to be anticapitalist elements? Non exploitation/extractive?

The visual vibe is pretty strong and defined, there's colour, light, plants and life merged in with diverse communities, centered around common spaces.

I (personally) haven't seen as much work on defining the core ethos. (links to reading for me to do to correct that greatly appreciated)

So solarpunk is an artistic aesthetic, literary genre, and social activism.

The artistic aesthetic tends to focus on the elements of solarpunk (discussed later) in an uplifting, colorful, and hopeful presentation. While it has no set limitations, popular aesthetics are art nouveau and studio ghibli styles.

The literary genre is "protopia" in style. It shows a pragmatic utopia while addressing present day social concerns. Some of it shows the ideal within a hopepunk and/or cozycore plot. Others have higher conflict and show the current social concerns being addressed and remediated.

The social activism side seeks to bring about that protopia world in the present day. The focus is to bring about a post-scarcity world where everyone has the basics of life covered while emphasizing increasing time for rest, luxury, the arts, culture, and community.

While these themes are covered in other movements (many of which are not opposed and work well with solarpunk), the solarpunks themselves seek to use modern day (and near future) technology to assist in this post-scarcity world. Technologies such as automation, renewable energies, and economies of scale - currently utilized by various ruling classes - to instead be used by the working class. Further efforts are made within degrowth (removing technology for technologies sake, and consumption for consumption's sake).

While not solely limited to anarchic politics, many of the approaches are non-hierarchical in nature and when they are hierarchical, they often focus on local political structures, decentralized, and distributed, with cooperation between various local groups for a national and inter-national co-op structure.

Long and short, solarpunks were tired of being warned of the present dystopia of cyberpunk without solutions to overcome that dystopia. They yearned for positive stories and art that showed a direction to pursue. And they wanted to act in the now to bring about that change.

Solarpunk is not the only movement towards protopia and progressive social change. And it should not be the only movement. But it adds its take on how to approach remediating current social and environmental and material crises.

The areas of focus are (but not limited to):

Post-scarcity: Food, Water, Shelter, Healthcare, Education, Transportation, and Energy (energy is focused on renewables, efficiencies, and lower energy requirements)

Social and environmental justice, minority and worker rights, equitable distribution of resources

Arts, beauty, aesthetics, culture

Rest, leisure, community bonds, and protection for individual rights

Some good places to start are:

- What is Solarpunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u03hoO3QueM
- Mutual Aid by Dean Spade: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dean-spade-mutual-aid
- Solarpunk Manifesto (not the only one and by no means authoritative, but something to muse on): https://iandennismiller.github.io/solarpunk/manifesto/english.html
- Solarpunk Notes Toward a Manifesto (more voices are better than one): https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/
- Solarpunk: A Reference Guide: https://medium.com/solarpunks/solarpunk-a-reference-guide-8bcf18871965
- Solarpunk Lemmy Instance: https://slrpnk.net/
- Solarpunk Discord Server: https://discord.gg/C76x3bWXEA

Some sample solarpunk projects:
- Seed Libraries, Tool Libraries, Library Economy, Libraries in general
- Community Gardens, Community Farms & Ranches, Backyard / Apartment Gardens
- Community Free Fridges & Pantries, Peer-to-peer food exchanges, community kitchens and restaurants
- Maker Spaces, home fabrication - cnc machines, 3d printers, sewing and textiles, home welding, home carpentry
- Repair Cafes, Right-to-Repair, making higher quality items that last a long time and can be maintained
- Community and Peer to Peer support and mental healthcare, mutual aid groups, community support and protection groups
- Solar and wind and other renewable energy at a small scale, localized decentralized energy grids, community prep and resiliency
- Art and literature and music and dance.
- Tenant co-ops, removing shelter and homes as an asset class, "non-profit" housing development
- Community Health Insurance schemes, "Non-profit" insurance. Direct negotiation with local doctors, specialists, etc.
- Public Transit, Trains, Subways, Light Rail, Bicycles, Personal Electric Vehicles (PEVs), pedestrian access, city design and planning

Beware:
Green Washing - Just cause its pretty doesn't mean its sustainable or solarpunk or non-exploitative.
Beware Capitalist Co-option - They like to sell back everything, including the concept of tearing down Capitalism
- Compare this advertisement that looks like solarpunk: Dear Alice by Chiboni: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Ng5ZvrDm4
- To the "decommodified" version (pay attention to how they changed the name from "Donations" to "Commons" - moving away from capitalist propaganda of "charity" and into an actual mutual aid approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqJJktxCY9U

Solarpunk is a vibrant and living philosophy, style, and approach. It's not the end all be all and its not meant to be the end all be all. It has it's issues and legitimate criticism. But its an approach that generates hope and it committed to dealing with actual issues using actual pragmatic solutions within the constraint of actual ethics.

During a time when we're all beat down and exhausted and fearful - solarpunk pushes back and says Fuck That. I'm going to live. I'm going to be happy. And I'm going to work to ensure that everyone else lives and is happy.

#solarPunk#mutualAid

So if you have nodes tucked away in various places (valleys, rocky terrain etc) that aren't viable for good signal/reachable at all from your primary ground location, launch a drone straight up from the top of a mountain or a skyscraper or a rooftop, get your readings/data, send out messages, come back down.

#solarpunk

#solarpunk

#solarpunk

Intended outcomes: seeds for seed library, food for my community.

#solarpunk

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/adb7bd

This could be fixed. Bankrupting a golf course and then rescuing it with a community buyout for agrosolar sounds like a constructive #solarpunk project....

Tonight:
6pm - Local Food Not Bombs (folks are attempting to restart it. I'm not leading this effort but I might be able to help them as I work in food in my town as well)
7pm - Local NAACP (they have a food initiative that I might be able to work with - yay mutual aid efficiencies!)

Next Week:
- 1st monthly in person meeting of our Free Fridge & Food Rescue group

A lot of cool stuff going on in my town. This is just food (and not all of it... there's still the food bank / food pantries and the local hot food places). There are even more meetings and groups in other areas of mutual aid.

What community groups have you found in your area?

#solarPunk#mutualAid #community

It was the first meeting. We all introduced each other and got a feel for skills and experience.

I pegged one person as being an undercover cop.

(They had a very open disdain for police - insisting on saying ACAB when the conversation had nothing to do with police, etc. They used outdated terms or caricatures and stereotypes of how people who aren't leftist see leftists. They had no connections to the community or other similar projects and appeared to have "just materialized" into this movement. They tried real hard to ingrain themselves as likable without contributing much. Basically a try hard.)

(Edit to add based on responses: They were not socially awkward or a newbie or neurodivergent - We had plenty of those folks too and they were welcomed. The above behaviors are distinct to undercover cops - and distinctly different from your run of of the mill awkwardness or sociability issues or just being new to a group or movement)

Quick aside on this... Undercover cops join mutual aid groups generally just to monitor them. Generally after a while, they get bored and move on only to check in on time to time. Cool.

IF they decide to disrupt the group, they'll do it in one of two ways (or both):

1) They'll befriend, gain trust, and get people to commit illegal acts. They then arrest those that committed the acts and use those acts to smear the group as a whole.

2) They get people WORRIED about undercover cops and get everyone to become paranoid of each other, using the resultant attempts to lock down security to stifle action. After a while the entire group just breaks apart.

So, how to deal with this?

First, is to assume "compromise". Just accept that there's a couple undercover folks there. Neat. A fact of life.

Second, don't do anything grossly illegal with public groups. Misdemeanors will happen. Look at Food Not Bombs Houston when they were (are) targeted by the city and get little fines every time they serve homeless folks. Also INTENTIONAL civil disobedience is a thing - but the entire group (undercover cops and all) will openly acknowledge it, understand and prepare for the consequences, and you'll know what you're getting into. (See sit ins and other direct action protests). But don't go off and commit illegal acts. ESPECIALLY if someone asked you to do it.

Third, call out anyone publicly and openly who advocates illegal acts (even and especially if they approached you privately). Use it as a way to gentle-parent correct the undercover cop (or misguided sincere colleague) on what proper action is.

Lastly, get the suspected undercover cop to engage in your goals. Get them to feed people! Watch for sabotage and check their work a bit more closely of course, but hey! the more hands the better! 😂

Edit also to add: DON'T TRY TO DETECT OR ROOT OUT UNDERCOVER COPS! - Like... I have a suspicion on this guy... but I really don't care. If you try to find the myriad of bad, you'll start to think everyone is bad. Instead... just treat everyone the same - regardless of whether you suspect them or not. If someone wants you to do something illegal... don't do it. Even if you think they're a normal person. - See my entire section on how paranoia can also destroy a group.

(Okay, not a quick aside. I'll just conclude here, lol)

#solarPunk#mutualAid #community

#hope #hopepunk #solarpunk #fascism

#hopepunk #solarpunk

Seeds libraries are places you can go and "check out" seeds. Grow the seeds. Let one of the grown plants go to seed. Harvest the seeds. Then "return" the seeds back to the seed library!

Free seeds!!!!

Check and see if you have a seed library near you: https://www.communityseednetwork.org/map/

Or connect and share seeds with folks online:
https://exchange.seedsavers.org

#solarPunk#seedLibrary#libraryEconomy#urbanGardening

Went into the library and spoke with two amazing librarians.

We hashed out all the ideas and have a solid plan moving forward.

We're hoping to open the library in April and match it with hydroponics classes, gardening classes, and a city announcement.

I'm documenting how-to's and will write one up soon!

#solarPunk#seedLibrary
#hydroponics#indoorGardening #gardening#urbanGardening

They're interested in building out a seed library as well!!!

YAYAYAYAY!!!!!!

I'm developing some basic classes on how to do low-budget, simple, indoor (in any space) hydroponics. I'm also building out some starter kits to give away.

I'll see if the local library would like me to give these courses and kits when the seed library gets built as a way to promote it and get word out to the local community.

#solarPunk#seedLibrary#postScarcity#libraryEconomy#indoorGardening#urbanGardening

We've got official approval to start building it out!

We'll start the official planning, building, and then community awareness initiatives and concurrent programming and training!

Yay free seeds for the town!

Yay free classes on gardening and hydroponics!

Gardening is one thing. Community is another thing entirely.

Build community. Feed each other.

#solarPunk #hydroponics#indoorGardening #gardening#urbanGardening

My local library built the seed library!

The local Master Gardeners provided a lot of the intitial seeds (oh my gosh we are stocked!!!). They used an old card catalogue to store them. Today's the kickoff!

The idea is you "check out seeds" from the library, plant/grow/harvest, let some go to seed, then "return the seeds" back to the library!

Free seeds for everyone!

#solarPunk#postScarcity #gardening#mutualAid#seedLibrary#earthDay