Magari

We are coming from the four corners of Europe. We started as a group of friends, then friends of friends meeting weekly to discuss our visions.

We are looking to build an intentional community that participates, exchanges and contributes to the local environment.

During the summer, a dozen of us were on a biketrip to get together and build the group, meet new people interested in joining. We are now in Moncalvo, in Piedmont where we will stay until March 2022 to begin with.

Over the next months our journey will focus on reinforcing the trust between each other, start different kinds of rural activities and enlarge the group.

We are looking for new people to get involved in this process, however they wish!

We believe communication is at the center. Trust between people, relationships, shared vision. So we started from community building. In a first moment online, since we were all scattered. But soon we’ll be out there discussing face to face and looking for places!

Currently we are a dozen persons aged from mid twenties to late thirties.

In the long run, we aim at creating a large community (>100 people - either at the same place or scattered in different sites at cycling reach) to guarantee a vibrant social ecology where everyone can find their place. We are also looking for diversity and intergenerationality.

We are conscious of power imbalances related to ownership so we are exploring ways for the place to be owned by the community, rather than by individuals.

At the moment, we are exploring regions of southern europe (France, Italy, Spain), but curious towards other regions and planets. 🌈

Ecology for us is a political process, not something to be achieved in isolation from the world. Here are some key points we agree on:

• Be a “real” community, not simply “families” living side-by-side (cohousing project). This will be reflected by our collective governance tools, our models of shared finances and in the arrangement of the living space.

• Build up a culture of communication that allows to deal with issues as they come rather than trying to anticipate hypothetical problems. In other words, prefer communication over rules.

• Create a living space that evolves with the people who composes it, as they come and go. Openness enables serendipity and the unexpected.

• Create a common, a space for everyone.

• Aim for self-sufficiency, care for the local and broader environment, live simply and rethink our needs. As we strive to reduce our inputs “from the market”, we are aware of the risk of an exclusively inner-looking focus. Pragmatic compromises will have to be made to actively protect our capacity for outward actions of solidarity and struggle.

• Have a diversity of activities: agriculture and food production, construction, social activities…

• Bringing back a local life to rather deserted regions (examples: schools, grow and share local food, cultural activities…) to engage with the needs of the local community.

• Being part of a networking of communities, resistances and activities at local and broader scale.

• Work on inclusiveness, build solidarity to marginalized groups.

• Apply permacultural ethics: care for the well-being of the environment, care for the well-being of the others and share the surplus, enabling us to be interdependent, to take responsibility for ourselves and our place in the world.

• Collective and individual learning, acquire, build and share knowledge.

The integration of individual visions into a shared one is a continuous process. The previous points are a beginning of a vision to be developed further, probably endlessly, and with YOU. 🧸

If you want to join the bike trip, the community or our discussions, feel free to contact us at magari ((at)) eauchat.org.
For more ways to get involved, see online tools section :)

Starting from an awareness that “societies” (with their social structures and power dynamics) co-evolve with the technological tools that they adopt, we strive to be mindful in our choice of communication tools.

We intentionally decided for Magari to use only open-source softwares and to host all our information on our own servers. Even if this may cause some difficulties at the beginning we invite new members not to discourage. Opensource programs may not be “magic” as Google, but they have evolved enormously in recent years, making it easy for anyone to take the necessary first steps in the journey of digital emancipation.

Here are the key reasons we avoid GAFAM:

• Surveillance and data abuse has become the core of their business model

  As actively involved people in the ecological and social movements, we fear that this growing surveillance is making any real dissent impossible. Even as common citizens “with nothing to hide” we feel stripped of our humanity, our agency, our individuality.

• Manipulative algorithms

  It is well known that all our interaction on proprietary softwares are mediated by algorithms that operate a distortion of the information. Those big companies use these algorithms not only to send us targeted advertisement, but also to operate social control.

• Concentration of capital

  GAFAM companies are now the biggest in the world, now exceeding the giants in the Oil and Gas sector. They represent the very essence of capital accumulation and allow the elites to control the rest of us. Even if today the situation may still seem acceptable to most people, what will happen in a not so distant future if these trends continue?

Magari’s communication tools

Core team (those actively involved in the community) members can have access to:

• Riot/Element magari channel: A chat tool where we discuss and take decisions, organize our collective calls
• Core mailing list: where we diffuse the key decisions/ information from the weekly calls. (To be included in this list a non-GAFAM email address is required)

Broader community (those interested in simply following us for the moment):

• Broad mailing list: where we will post only important updates (low email frequency) to keep people up to date on how our community building is evolving. (To be included in this email list a non-GAFAM email address is preferred, but not strictly required).
• Our website at magari.eauchat.org and our email address magari ((at)) eauchat.org for any questions

FAQ

How can I subscribe to one of the mailing lists?

To subscribe on one of our mailing lists, you can write an email to us at magari ((at)) eauchat.org with the email you want to subscribe.

What should I do to join you on riot/element?

1. Contact us and join one of our calls
2. Visit https://app.element.io/ and follow the instructions to create an account
3. Send us your username via email

How can I create a free email?

If you want to create a free email, you can sign up to one of the following, for example: protonmail, riseup, autistici, disroot.

Where can I find alternatives to all kinds of services?

For more information on the topic, find alternatives to all kinds of services… you can visit this page. You can also find a list of many types of alternatives proposed by framasoft here.