Gather The Women
Washington,
DC
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Part of a grassroots movement for social change rooted in women's wisdom,
Gather The Women DC (GTWDC) serves as a catalyst and clearinghouse
to help women in the Washington, DC area connect and collaborate for powerful
action on peace and sustainability.
2007 GTWDC Conference
Creating Sustainable
CommunitiesOctober 27, 2007,
Silver Spring, Maryland
On October 27, 2007, Gather the Women DC held its second annual conference. The conference coincided with meetings of other Gather the Women groups around the United States and Brazil. Thirty-three women participated from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC.
The main business of the conference was using the “Open Space” interactive, participatory process to identify common interests, possibilities for action, and the group resources to address them on three levels:
1. Holding actions to slow damage to Earth and its beings, like advocacy and protests, which is change at the political level, i.e., using our political systems to bring about change.
2. Building alternative structures for a sustainable future, i.e., renewable energy, collaborative living arrangements, community gardens, consumer cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, local currencies/barter economy, which is change at the economic level in how we define value.
3. Achieving the shift in consciousness and new paradigm thinking, which is change at the cultural level in how we define our material and spiritual values.
There were ten breakout groups:
1. Connecting People with Nature and Animals
2. Creating Local Non-Partisan Political Action Communities
3. Energy
4. Forming Local Circles
5. Framing Partnership Consciousness
6. Health Care
7. New Feminism
8. Sustainable Buildings
9. Transformational Process
10. Women as LeadersParticipants shared insights, experiences and strategies from environmental, new feminist, and simple living movements and spiritual traditions. Key points:
The ecological and social crises we face - global warming, end of oil, war over resources, loss of biodiversity, pollution, poverty - are caused by an economic system that measures performance in terms of continuous growth, and depends on converting resources into consumer products, weapons, and waste.
At the root is a “dominator” or power over world view concerned with control and acquisition of power and things, endangering all species and the planet itself.
To save the planet, a radical transformation is needed in the way we relate to each other and to Nature to a partnership model of cooperation and empowerment. This involves mainstreaming feminine values of affiliation, nurturing, and compassion. Maternal concern to make the world safe for children will move us toward peace and sustainability.
Circle process is the social technology to create the new partnership paradigm.
The new paradigm is to support one another and help each other find his/her own voice in the process, so that we all contribute in our own unique way. With each one working on their own small piece of the problem, together we can make progress.
Several of the break out groups have plans to continue meeting and work on projects together.
For more information, join the GTWDC listserve at GTWDC-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
November
2007 GTWDC Conference
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What's
New at On our Circles page find a list of GTW members who are forming circles in our area and would like to gather like-minded women to join or would help others in forming their own circle. Consider supporting or volunteering for these Ogranizations that are doing great work with or for women. Please visit the website of the The Jung Society of Washington. They are our partner organization that has generously donated conference space and a place to park our website. Check out their many and very interesting local programs. Several of our members have given or are about to give workshops, courses and lectures there. Read Janet Kane's article Gather the Women, Save the World, fiirst published in Pathways Magazine in their Spring 2006 issue. She writes about GTW's history, purpose and current happenings. Here is a link to GTW Global Matrix, our national mother organization. See what other women and local GTW groups are doing around the country and world. |
Women are the home keepers for Earth, concerned with creating a safe world for children. They can sustainably manage resources, resolve conflicts, work collaboratively, ask questions, listen, learn from others, and act with compassion for the benefit of all people and species, including generations to come.
The world needs feminine ideas and values to solve the big problems of our day - environmental devastation, social injustice, war.
To join our listserv send
a blank email to GTWDC-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
Join http://www.gatherthewomen.org to receive their free newsletter about GTW projects around the world or contact Janet Kane at janetkane@verizon.net or call 301-345-2571