organizing totem

[Larry Campbell]

SOWING and FERTILIZING GRASSROOTS

By Larry Campbell

Consistent with our belief that involved, informed citizens are the key to reclaiming a healthy ecosystem and a healthy community Friends of the Bitterroot is active in cultivating grassroots organization locally and regionally. Our approach covers the gamut from encouraging individuals, local homeowner groups, special issue groups (e.g. Weed Team) and community focus groups to incubating forest watch groups in places where there is need across the region. Each situation is unique and requires a customized plan, but there are useful general guidelines and modes of operation. We see ourselves as facilitators helping to bring out the good energies already in place. We strive to promote open, independent, decentralized, egalitarian organization. We encourage principled action; (conservation groups not just conversation groups).

An appropriate, even if not glamorous, icon for our model of organizing would be the slime mold. This humble life form is both plant and animal; it is both individual and community. It is a single cell crawling across the forest floor for part of its life. Out of the hundreds seen-one-you’ve-seen-em-all amoebae-like cells one of them becomes ‘charismatic’, attracting hundreds of others. They congregate together, then organize into a body. Each cell evolves to a specialized function as a stalk rises and forms a fruiting structure that launches spores into the breeze to be scattered across the forest floor and become individual single cells.