Page 14 - C.A.L.L. #31 - Spring 2009
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KALEIDOSCOPE
In Communities #140 of Fall 2008, Nick Licata examines the symbiosis between Politicians
and Communes - how communal life can be a pertinent preparation and practical training
for entering politics:
Every Politician Should Live in a Commune by Nick Licata
Elected legislative bodies are un-intentional home pay was included in our monthly rent. The
communities, whereas housing collectives and co- word rent itself is slightly misleading. After a
ops are intentional communities. Joining an couple of years, the house's value began to rise
elective body is like joining a club or community and those who had provided the down payment
uninvited, and perhaps even unwanted - just the were moving on.
opposite of an intentional community, where As a collective, we faced a problem: what to do
people seek each other out and choose to live and with a valuable asset that was increasing in
support one another. value. No one wanted absentee owners; it was
Nevertheless, after living in a collective for 25 anathema to our values. We couldn't agree on
years, I recommend that anyone joining a city selling the house: how do you divide the amount
council, state legislature, or Congress strongly by over two dozen people who had lived in the
consider living in an intentional community house over various periods of time and who had
before entering the political fray. not all contributed equally to its operation? So we
Let me explain by way of example. I lived in the turned to the easiest solution: none of us would
PRAG House collective in Seattle along with about get the house and no one would ever get it. We
a dozen others while I was both a citizen activist placed it in a trust for perpetuity. In essence we
and an insurance broker. PRAG House was started rented the house from ourselves, since anyone
by close friends of mine who had come together living in the house helped operate the trust and
as graduate students in Sociology at the once you moved on, you were no longer part of
University of Washington to protest the Vietnam the trust.
War in the early '70s. And so the collective, PRAG House, which began
In the depth of a recession, when urban planners in the summer of '72, is still chugging along,
feared that inner city neighborhoods would albeit now with multiple TVs, computers, phones,
become slums, housing prices slumped. Taking and yes, even processed foods, although for the
advantage of capitalism's cyclical economic crash, most part they are still organic. But the core
my friends pooled their meager funds together principle of people choosing to live under one
and plunked down $4000 to buy a 37-room roof and to meet regularly to manage their
mansion in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. I joined collective environment remains the same.
them as soon as my girlfriend and I returned from This brings me back to politics, or more precisely
our $5-a-day year abroad. the formal political structure of legislative bodies.
In the beginning we were a political collective in Like PRAG House, they are a group of people
the fullest sense: we wanted to change the world living under the same roof for at least part of the
by changing our environment and our lives. No day, meeting regularly to manage the collective
processed foods entered the house, only one environment of themselves and others who have
phone was allowed but no TV, we shared a '54 elected them to this body. And while they do not
Ford Pickup for local trips and also to haul our 30- choose each other to live under this common
pound metal milk canisters in from some farm roof, they are forced, like those of us who lived in
over an hour's drive each way come Sunday PRAG House, to arrange a common budget,
evening. We broke bread together, at first every manage resources, and make laws governing our
day, then several days a week, and eventually social interactions.
once a week and so on. For years we ate only Managing a collective's many functions can be
home-baked, and at first we even tried to grind practical training for a legislator, but that is only
our own wheat. the beginning. At the core of living in a collective
And although we did not pool our incomes, we are interpersonal relations - these are also at the
did institute a limited income-sharing scheme core of practicing politics.
whereby a small percentage of each person's take-
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