Strength in Solidarity

A group of young activists in Greene, Maine sacrifice personal wealth and privacy for what they see as a fulfilling and sustainable alternative—collective living.

In the face of debt, expensive healthcare, and uncertain employment, the economic challenges of living out one’s values can be daunting. The JED Collective (“Justice, Ecology, and Democracy”) has answered these challenges through an experiment in collective living. JED’s members (eight to twelve depending on the season) own thirty acres of land on Clark Mountain, including an orchard, gardens, chickens, and a shared house. The collective serves as a community for activists and organizers, mostly in their twenties and thirties, whose work on fair trade, migrant health care and environmental justice they could not otherwise afford. While individuals have to sacrifice for the good of the collective, the support that commitment lends enables its members to do the work they love regardless of income.

A tarnished old trombone sounds an indiscriminate array of tones, beckoning JED members to dinner. It’s seven o’clock, time for the weekly house meeting, and as members fill their plates with spaghetti and vegetables, they seat themselves around the long wooden table in the cozy but dimly lit kitchen. Daphne Loring, age 30 and two years out of college, consults the agenda and surveys the group with attentive eyes as she prepares to take minutes on a clipboard. Two-year-old Manis Herrmann stands in her chair twirling pasta, while her mother, Vanessa takes a seat at the head of the table and calls the meeting to order.

Tonight they must decide what to do about the sliding scale, which determines how much everyone contributes to the collective budget.

Before they began using the scale this year, all members paid an equal share of the budget, which covers group living expenses including food, electricity, and Internet, as well as long-term savings and the loans that helped purchase their land.

With the sliding scale, members pay based on income—the more a person makes, the more they contribute. The basic share is $280 a month, though some pay up to $770. The scale allows deductions for educational, medical, and family expenses, which JED views as social rather than individual issues.

Some members worry whether the system is fair for Daphne, who pays twice the minimum. She agrees it raises some questions: what if she lost—or wanted to quit—her job? She asks, “How do we deal with the fact that anyone’s choice could massively affect others’ sliding scale share?”

But Daphne isn’t deterred, saying, “We operate in the spirit of solidarity.” While she makes more money, she recognizes that others do not have similar access to earning power.“I love the fact that we’re developing these structures,” Daphne says, her voice growing animated.

“We can support each other in a community and make personal decisions about our work based on what that work is, rather than the income it provides…so basically, it’s about fairness.”

For now, fair trade organizing is Daphne’s passion, and her higher income enables others, like Vanessa’s husband, whose primary work is childcare, to do what they love. In this way, their economics stress the value of crucial domestic work not traditionally quantified.

Vanessa emphasizes that the day Daphne wants to make a change, she should. The beauty of living collectively is financial windfall can be absorbed and countered by the whole group. “One of the reasons why I got [a] second job was…to be able to contribute more… so we can live well, and maybe other people have less stress to work [outside JED].”

She is exhausted as she facilitates the meeting, negotiating schedules for an all-day meeting Saturday, where everyone will discuss problems with the system. “Anyone want to do facilitation?” she asks, “I really don’t know what to do…

After an hour of sitting, Manis climbs into Vanessa’s lap to nurse. Bottomless and wearing a purple fleece shirt, she acrobatically thrusts her leg into the air, pointing and flexing her tiny toes as Vanessa struggles to hold her.

Daphne addresses the next issue—the food budget. “We’re over on bulk ordering and interested in purchasing more,” she says. They’ve spent over triple the allotted amount.

Because it’s their first year using a detailed collective budget, they underestimated costs. They’ll have to move money from other parts of the budget to cover the deficit.

Additionally, JED’s harvest this year was disastrous. They lost their entire tomato crop of 180 plants to blight, in part due to their commitment to live their politics in everything. Copper sulfate, the organic product recommended to mitigate the blight, depends on copper mining and kills bacteria in the soil, which created concern at JED. Knowing they might lose their crop and have to purchase more food this winter, JED opted to experiment with sustainable techniques for preventing future blights rather than using the copper sulfate.

This winter, the shelves in JED’s pantry are lined with empty jars—no tomato sauce, no salsa, no canned tomatoes. They’ve purchased extra bulk food to make up for the loss. But because they made a conscious decision, nobody is angry.

Compared with her policy work, Daphne finds facing these personal challenges grounding and manageable with others’ support. She sees her financial contributions not just as rent, but “investment in a project I believe in”—creating a sustainable community.

Another collective member, Kate Boverman, gets up to entertain Manis in the nook next to the kitchen. They collapse on a pile of pillows and blankets next to hundreds of onions, laid out to dry on the floor by the wood stove. Kate quietly occupies Manis with a book for a while, but eventually Vanessa puts on an old Sesame Street video to get her through the meeting.

When the meeting finally ends at 9:30, Vanessa’s husband shouts in an announcer’s voice, “It’s time for name that condiment!”

Everyone leaps into action, happy to do something besides sitting. Kate grabs tape and a marker as Vanessa brings trays of condiments in mason jars to the table to be identified, turning cleaning the refrigerator into a game.

Kate reflects that the decisions they must make living collectively are not always easy. “It’s not idyllic by any means,” she says. Her hands, brown and a little worn, belie the youth of her bright, freckled face and ardent brown eyes as she speaks.

Conflicts between individuals and couples arise, especially since they are short on space, but immediate sacrifices of money and privacy allow JED to build better long-term living spaces and become more sustainable producers of food and energy.

“And of course, we can’t be pure,” Kate says. “But sometimes you have a choice, and I think the responsibility is to grapple with it, and think about it, and talk about it, and see what you’re willing to compromise.”

To learn more about JED, watch this multimedia piece featuring photographs by Anna Lundgren. Speaking is JED member, Kate Boverman.