Resilience and Resistance

Resilience and Resistance: Building Sustainable Communities for a Post Oil Age is a collection of columns that had their origin in the local Brattleboro newspapers, The Commons and the Reformer. Together with a couple of original pieces, they serve as the contents of this book.

They have been arranged, not in the order they were written, but in a way that hopefully suggests the evolution of Post Oil Solutions over its 10 years. From its start (and continuation) as a community organizing project that operates in the belief that a successful transition to a world beyond fossil fuels involves building sustainable communities whose people are adaptable and resilient, collaborative and sufficient. Then to our good fortune at striking a responsive chord with many folks in the larger Windham County, and nearby Massachusetts and New Hampshire region around local food and the many ways it serves to build community. And then most recently has been our focus with climate change, as well as other political issues, like GMOs and food sovereignty, and social justice, in general. All of these are largely dealt with in the three parts of the body, with a Prologue and Epilogue bracketing them, setting the stage and wrapping things up.

Founded by a small group of Windham County residents in June, 2005, Post Oil is a community organizing project whose stated mission isto empower the people of the Central Connecticut River Valley bioregion to develop sustainable, collaborative, and socially just communities leading to a self-sufficient post petroleum society.

Tim Stevenson of Halifax, VT

Founding Director of and community organizer with Post Oil Solutions, Tim Stevenson has done community organizing much of his adult life around such issues as welfare rights, peace & war, box stores, and nuclear power plants. He lives with his wife, Sherry, in Athens, where in their imperfect ways, they do the best they can to walk the talk. He also thinks a lot about his two children and 2 grandchildren living in a world of climate change.