 So I'm Jodi Evans and I'm one of the co-founders of Code Pink. And I'm Emily Franco. Hello to you all, manager of the local peace economy project at Code Pink. And I've worked for the last eight months to develop the ecosystem that you'll be able to discover and be inspired by and see how the local peace economy communities are already robust and growing. And you'll hear a bit more about that a bit later in the call. So first, I want to thank you all for what you do for peace and your curiosity and interest in cultivating a future for life. So culture, we are our cultures. So in the spirit of the local peace economy, we want to start with a poem. So I'll turn it back to Emily. Thanks, Jodi. So this is a poem called Summons. You may know it, you might not, by Aurora Levins Morales. And I chose it today with the violence and genocide in Palestine, on my mind and in my heart, with the grief that we're collectively carrying, and also the call to self-responsibility that's core to local peace economy. And we'll send this poem in our follow-up email as well, but I'll read it now. Last night, I dreamed 10,000 grandmothers from the 1200 corners of the earth walked out into the gap, one breath deep between the bullet and the flesh, between the bomb and the family. They told me we cannot wait for governments. There are no peacekeepers boarding planes. There are no leaders who dare to say every life is precious. So it will have to be us. They said we will cup our hands around each heart. We will sing the earth's song, the song of water, a song so beautiful that vengeance will turn to weeping. The mourners will embrace and grief replace every impulse toward harm. 10,000 is not enough, they said. So we have sent this dream, like a flock of doves, into the sleep of the world. Wake up, put on your shoes. You who are reading this, I am bringing bandages and a bag of scented guavas from my trees. I think I remember the tune. Meet me at the corner. Let's go. So here we are. Let's go. If you're just joining or if you haven't added who you are, where you're from and why you decided to be with us today, could you please do that in the chat, which we will include in our follow-up email. So we want to start with an overview of the local peace economy and how to use the workbook. And then later we'll break into small groups to share our reflections and come back to address them together. So war serves the war economy. We cannot end war until we end the war economy. The war economy needs war. The violence of the war economy and the toxic culture it has created is what we live inside of. And it has created a tsunami of violence that is coming at us and the globe. And those especially who have no defense. So I kind of look at this like a flood that we must build arcs for and a culture of peace for a future that creates conditions for life. The peace economy is the giving, sharing, caring, thriving, relational, resilient economy without which none of us would be alive. But we've been alienated from it. Palestinian culture is a peace economy. So first, we need to recognize where we're being used by the war economy, the extractive, destructive, and oppressive economy that is killing you, your communities, and the planet. It takes our life, our talents, our time, our energy, and our heart in the service of it. And if we can pivot away from it and then start this journey into the unknown, the book is meant to be breadcrumbs that each of us can find a path on that can illuminate this future. But even when we engage in the war economy, it is using us. I always say we're parsley on the plate as peace activists. We're there. We have to be there as part of the picture, but we're still in their picture. And we need to create our own. So, you know, the light is the direction of peace, and that's what we want to be paving. So we've been working for years to supply the tools you need on the journey. We're all on this journey together. So we want to learn from you, too. We want to learn what you need, what's not serving you, what's missing. So always feel free to make notes and let us know what's not there for you and what do you need. This has been created from what others said they needed, but we want to continue to strengthen the tools. So the first thing in addressing ourselves in relationship to the war and the peace economy have been the pivots. And I want to read something from Adrienne Marie Brown out of the book to get us started with the pivots. What each of us practices its scale of our individual lives is what is then possible for us at a large scale. I'm a microcosm of all the possible liberation, justice, pleasure, and honesty in the universe. And I act accordingly. So culture is how we act and where we feel comfortable. And right now I assume none of us feel comfortable in the culture which we live, in the failed U.S. experiment, in the failure and the violence of capitalism and militarism. And so to pivot away from that is where we start. And I'm just asking if we're, for a minute, if we could stay muted so we can finish this, that would be great. There we go. So the pivots, Emily's going to put them up. So these pivots are our life's work. They're not to be mastered but have a relationship with. They're the way we aren't used by the war economy addictions and where we can cultivate and build the muscle of the peace economy practices. It's also about being in community and learning together, sharing what is difficult. What are you learning in your practice? How do you support each other? There's no perfection. You choose to do this to cultivate peace and your own liberation which then is the liberation of all. So you can take it like by picking a few that speak to you, either where the addiction speaks to you, what you've been forced into, or the pivot you long for. We've seen over the years that it takes nine months of commitment and it leads literally to a rebirth. People have literally become somebody that they longed for but they couldn't find and they've become a force of fresh energy where new things are emerging. But it does take a commitment which is why we're here as we all get lost in the day to day in the anxieties of living and we look to those addictions that feel comfortable to relieve us but so it's not an easy path. In the beginning but the rewards I tell you are priceless. You can pick a few or pick one a day to begin your relationship with them. You can bring friends together to share in this adventure as you start here before anything because we don't want to create a future from what has not been working. So you need to create new roots and new grounding. You can see here what the pivots are and you just again in the book and you can look at the book online. We take them a little deeper so you can understand them but when you're looking at the pivots, I want you to understand that the war economy, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, forces, alienation, forces is to be self-directed, forces is into competition and being transactional. I mean transactional instead of relational is one of the great diseases of this culture. Quantity to quality, distraction to attention, either or to both and control to rootedness. It's like having the other like scarcity. The war economy thrives on us thinking that there's scarcity instead of a world of abundance. So start to have a relationship with these. You can download the book, you can access the book online, you can buy the book but we wanted it to be available for free as a tool. We printed it beautifully so that if you do pay for you've got something very special in your hands. So this is where one of the places to start and it you know it can be painful because when we recognize that that war economy that we hate so much that you know we're up against and it's violence against others has also been violent to us. So Emily. Yes. So as Jody mentioned earlier this is a journey to the unknown but you're not moving into the total unknown because indigenous cultures have lived the peace economy for millennia. And as I mentioned for the past eight months I've been in the ecosystem creating a tool for you to connect to what is happening now in local peace economies near you and our colleague April who's a brilliant storyteller and journalist has been telling and compiling stories of a local peace economy on our local peace economy wiki. Both are available on the local peace economy website and we'll share the links to both in the follow-up email but I'll give you just a little bit of a taste of both of them now. So you know what they look like and how you can begin to use them moving forward. So I'm going to share my screen again. All right so this is on our local peace economy website as it is right now and this is very much a work in progress in kind of a creation mode. A little bit down the line it's going to look a bit different be a bit more visually appealing and user friendly but for now we wanted you to have access to it so as you dive into the workbook and dive into local peace economies near you you have this tool to support you. So I don't know if any of you are familiar with Airtable but that's what this is built on right now and as you can see this is a list of different groups and projects and organizations who are part of the local peace economy doing local peace economy work across the U.S. we focused on the U.S. because that's really the belly of the beast when it comes to the war economy and you'll see that there are two different kind of spreadsheets here and I'll get to the second one in a moment but I'll just show you a little bit how you can navigate this tool right now. So the two will all start actually here you'll see there's the name of the group or project organization the type of work that they're doing kind of some broad categories a link to their website some location information donation link and contact information some other types of helpful information here that kind of describe at first glance what you might find in each of these groups and then to navigate this page I'm going to focus on these two buttons here filter and group so if you click filter you can add a condition so I'm going to add a condition let's say I wanted to find groups in this air table base in the state where I live which is Colorado so I changed name here to state these options here correspond to the columns across the top so I would choose state as any of or you can change it to a different condition here if you wanted to exclude things um you can kind of play around with that but for now for the sake of time in the city I'll just say is in Colorado and then it just filters everything else out that doesn't have Colorado as the state so that would be a great way to kind of hone in on what's happening locally and again you can do that for um any of the options here for example I could if I wanted to do type let's say I was interested in looking at what co-ops are out there I could choose co-op and I can choose more than one so I could also choose let's see I'll say is exactly say I was looking for child care co-ops so I could find them that way so you can play around with those filter options feel free to contact me if you have questions about how to use this the other one I'll share quickly is group similar idea but rather than filtering things out it'll just group them so let's say I wanted to group by region I would just hit group by region and then it would group everything in the midwest and central region together and scroll down you'll see that there's a lot here it would put all the different regions together so then there's the northeast um and if you were to continue you'd see all the other regions there um and then and another reason you know one of the things you might be looking what's local or you might be looking like what are you interested in but the other thing is just you know the local piece of economy some people feel like what is it does it exist it's also a place to just look and see how many local piece of economy's already exist and are thriving so you know it's also a place to like we say get lost in you know get lost in a deep dive like oh what is that what is what is what does it look like if it's about environment energy and you can go to their website and study so it's um it's a way to know what's happening locally and in your interest and also a way if you want to expand just what does this mean and how is it being played out absolutely yes the intention for this is to give you many pathways of possibility into the local piece economy not to overwhelm you and the second spreadsheet you'll see here is luckily we are not the first people to begin to kind of gather and map this kind of information and so the second spreadsheet here is a collection of maps already curated maps and directories I found local piece economy projects for example community land trusts are part of the local piece economy so if I were to go here the center for new economics has already put together a directory for community land trusts you can see a map here scroll down and you can search by state there's the same kind of deal for mutual aid organizations tool lending libraries csa's things like this so that's one way to get inspiration and information about the local piece economy and the other one that I mentioned is our wiki page which I'll show you now so here's our wiki page again the link will be in the follow-up email or if Jodi wants to put it in the chat now as well it's in the chat both of you in the chat awesome thanks Jodi and this is a collection of stories that have been written by our colleague April Jodi and another contributor Eric that can give you just a different way of engaging with learning with the local piece economy it's a little bit deeper on individual projects or groups there'll be interviews or articles about these groups so you can see some of the topics covered here first of all there's a local piece economy 101 so that would be a great place to start on the page and especially if you're new to this language and this work some yeah types of topics covered here alternatives to policing lessons from mutual aid practices of care there's a great article on community grief and ritual and there's tons more articles on this page as well and then eventually we'll also have another resource because as you explore this work will bring you some grief as we've already acknowledged and so creating a similar resource to the ecosystem that I shared the air table based the spreadsheet for what we're calling in the workbook the cycle of reconnection which is a cycle of grief care joy and celebration so because part of this work is asking what can we do in community to heal community healing is so important this work because the healing of community is part of the piece economy and we have so much degree as we know and as we're feeling right now and we want to move forward creating creating the new from full hearts so this resource will be a portal to deeper dives into people groups materials like books and articles and podcasts that can support you as you move through the cycle of grief care joy and celebration so some examples that you'll find on this resource are offerings from people like adrian mary brown who jody mentioned earlier and shared the quote from and francis weller who writes a lot about grief for example this is francis weller's website tons of great information about grief and supportive resources as you move through grief um another example of what you might find is the finding our way podcast from francis hempville this is one of my personal favorites um so resources like this that support you in deepening into grief care joy and celebration um as it's part of the as we do this work in the world it's also um deeply personal um and brings up a lot so that will be available as well um and i put them in the chat if you want to read them thanks so that was a really you know fast look at what's there for you and there's one thing after that and it's like besides working on the pivots and um is developing the capacities of a local piece economy so you know the capacities that have been um uh you know worked out of us you know the capacity to listen the capacity to practice mapping where am i whom i related to what where what has been here before um you know we're looking at that around you know like if you look around palestine right now like what's missing is that brain that that maps things instead of just picking one thing and and you know bludgeoning everyone because they're not believing this one line of story but being able to map and hold complexity in the bigger story and relationality and then organizing a community i mean the local piece economy is going to it's nourished in community arises from community it's that weaving that web that we're creating that the mycelium that we're connecting to that creates the connective tissue instead of the separation that we live inside and then our task is to transform culture and that also means taking ourselves out of the culture that is violent and destructive and manipulative and you know created by the war economy and take our minds and hearts backs because they have been weaponized against us and against life and you know this culture we live in is toxic on purpose billions of dollars have been spent to create this toxic culture so you know we're going to create another culture um that you know overtakes it's like the the richness of it and the beauty of it will just get in the way of the old and it shuffles away you know so it's under you know understanding that it's crucial to how you spend your time how you have your emotions and heart used and that it takes community to hold all of us um and we've kind of lost some of those muscles and they need to be redeveloped you know survival of the fittest was all about robust communities of engagement and interaction and connectivity and and the one thing you know about community is not everybody gets along and not everybody sees everything in the same way that's a cult we don't we're not interested in those a community is robust and diverse and has a richness that serves life