Page 9 - C.A.L.L. #42 - Spring 2017
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Perspectives on Inner




                    and Outer Peace from




                 Long-Term Members of



              Intentional Communities




                                         in the USA







             Professor Deborah Altus presents her version of the “12 step program” for
             sustaining successful peace-building intentional communities based on decades of
             research and personal experience.


             Editor’s note: This paper first appeared as the key-note address presented by Deborah Altus at the 2016 ICSA
             conference in Tamera, Portugal. Unfortunately due to limitations of space we have had to significantly condense the
             article. Some details, including about the interviewees themselves, have been removed



             Deborah Altus, Washburn University, Kansas

                                       A couple of weeks ago, I was in the Pacific Northwest of the United States,
                                       where I visited the town of Edison, Washington. Edison is near the site of the
                                       relatively short-lived cooperative colony, Equality, which formed about 120
                                       years ago, in 1897. The colony was named after Edward Bellamy’s utopian
                                       novel, Equality, which was published in 1897 as a sequel to Looking
                                       Backward, Bellamy’s well known 1889 utopian novel.

                                       The Equality colony was founded by the Brotherhood of the Co-operative
                                       Commonwealth, an organization started by social reformers from New
                                       England with three broad goals: First: “To educate the people in the
                                       principles of Socialism; Second: To unite all socialists in one fraternal
                                       association; Third: To establish co-operative colonies and industries in one
             Deborah Altus
                                       state until that state is socialized." The Brotherhood’s idea was that the
                                       socialist colonies “would be able to initiate the collective ownership of the
             means of production in the state by voting in a socialist government” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
             Equality_Colony).

             The Equality colony was beset with tension nearly from the beginning. The colonists, living in primitive
             conditions, resented having to contribute to the Brotherhood’s national organization, whose leaders
             didn’t reside at Equality but lived in fancier accommodations in nearby Edison. After much infighting and
             the eventual demise of the Brotherhood, the colony dissolved after 10 years (see LeWarne, 1995,


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