Project Operation
Objectives and implementation
Phase One : Seeding
The Alma Project’s first years are spent largely in the efforts of coordination, information-gathering, resource acquisition, strategy-building and infrastructural groundwork. Phase completion: membership numbers in the thousands; revenue streams in place sufficient to support a small distributed paid workforce, several case study Landsites acquired and development plans in place; partnerships with sister organizations established; grant acquisition and donation programs verified; corporate and shareholder structures formalized; research datasets and informational management systems operational.
Phase two : growth
With the infrastructural framework and initial physical and financial resources in place, the Project will necessarily focus on expansion. Outreach will dominate. On the Landsites, development will proceed, opening additional revenue streams and generating further acquisition and larger workforces. Volunteer training operations will expand, and Landsites will dedicate greater resources to disaster relief and community partnerships. Alma materials will be translated and distributed internationally, member ambassadors will conduct movement-building and educational programs. Chapterhouse and leadership structures and Landsite communications networks will be formalized. Phase completion: a robust financial network of diversified income; research teams and Landsite projects pushing the frontiers of sustainable technologies and systems; Landsite resources and revenues sufficient to support staff salaries and volunteer habitation; membership numbers exceeding one million; ability to initiate large-scale coordinated community activism projects and deploy targeted financial and political weaponry.
seems possible, that growing the movement could be the easiest part. once the framework is set, and conditions correct, a matter of striking tinder in enough places. a banner hung from a grain silo in missouri; an underpass in arizona. tags on railcars and warehouses. coordinated, strategic, slow – better that these should be staged first in the land, in rural communities. only a fraction of the people who see it need follow up, or join or talk about it. none, really, so long as it gets a mention from the local media or a post on facebook, to be logged in the endless archive of the internet. by the time new york city wakes up to find the Alma banner flying from the brooklyn bridge, some winter morning or in the aftermath of some hurricane, it will already be a movement, or it will have the appearance of one, which will amount to the same thing. and then: ambassadors, seeding communities, different languages. scraps of paper handed out anonymously on subways, town halls, mountain trails, refugee camps, flood zones, pipeline protests. helping, talking, learning. after a certain point, maybe, people will be hanging banners and tagging billboards on their own.
Phase three : POWER and adaptation
When the Alma Project is large enough to wield substantial and coordinated political and financial influence across national borders, it is possible to conceive of a fundamental phase change in the nature of social power. Should global circumstances prove conducive – if natural disasters and social unrest and large scale health crises and infrastructural failures increase; if political and economic systems degenerate further in functionality and public faith – the principles on which the Alma Project is built will become over the next decades more and more self-evident, the necessity for the movement and movements like it will become by the year clearer and more urgent, and Alma and those other organizations best prepared will be positioned to experience sudden and massive growth and relevance, with a corresponding, snowballing expansion of influence. The realities of global conditions centuries in the future are impossible to fathom – but with an organizational framework in place to consistently grow and leverage resources across generations, a networked grassroots system of social coordination already active and proficient in the service of sustainability and stability, and a leadership structure focused on continuity, adaptation and long-term strategy, such an entity might stand an extremely good chance at influencing social development on a broad and meaningful basis. With millions of members and an ever-increasing pool of financial and physical tools – whatever shape those tools will have taken – will come the real and actionable ability to destabilize corporations, shape political parties, field strikes, protests, and volunteer projects at scales unheard of, and perhaps most importantly, shape the value structures and cultural momentum of our society, globally.
Priority AND Opportunity
Beyond the Alma Project’s core ambitions, as manifested through the Pledge and the continual growth of an ethically and sustainably networked community, our activities over the years will necessarily be in response to and dependent upon global conditions: adapting according to what transpires, and what responses are warranted or possible under the constraints and opportunities at hand. The Project mandate shall be to chart an increase over time in direct action, and creative and varied methods of activism in support of its principles of ecological stewardship and sustainability – but this will be a gradual transition; perhaps extremely so: for the decades in which the Project’s primary focus is on growth and resource development, it is likely that opportunities for direct action of consequence will remain minimal. Still, it will be important from the outset that the organization maintains a coherent value system, with an implicit and consistent set of tangible goals. Whether they are immediately achievable or not, these goals must be clearly understood and communicated – in order to consolidate support and clarify intent, and also to prepare for those moments to come, when the Project will, perhaps suddenly, find that it can do more. When resources and members can be mobilized with consequence; when aligned organizations can be supported or their causes amplified; when events transpire whose consequence is so dire that resistance or reaction may be morally mandatory, we must know, specifically, where we stand. To that end, a prioritization of evils is in order.
The Alma Charter
The Alma Project will endeavor to resist, to the greatest extent possible:
- Industrial or commercial destruction of humans or non-human species, and industrial or commercial degradation of human or non-human habitat.
- Industrial or commercial cruelty towards or exploitation of humans or non-human species, whether for human benefit or otherwise.
- The extraction or exploitation of natural resources, insofar as such extraction is destructive to human or non-human life and health, is irresponsibly undertaken, or results in unjustly distributed consequences.
- Any action or accord, governmental or otherwise, which seeks to de-legitimize human dignity or agency, including restricting the human right to freedom of speech, the human right to one’s own health, the human right to one’s own privacy and personal data, and the human right not to be pregnant.
- Any action or accord, governmental or otherwise, that attempts to elevate one portion of human society over another with lethal, violent or unjust consequences, or creates the conditions for such elevation to occur.
The Alma Project will endeavor to foster and support, wherever possible:
- The capacity of human communities to provide and be provided sustenance, shelter and comfort by sustainable and ecologically ethical methods and technologies.
- The collection and preservation of knowledge regarding our planet’s life forms and ecosystems, and the relationships and dependencies thereof.
- Methods of commerce, social networking, information sharing and resource management that seek to divest or function autonomously from structures of ecologically unsustainable or unjust systems, be they economic, governmental or corporate.