Occupy the Countryside

Our economy isn't working well, and there are no signs of our current political system fixing it anytime soon. A good question at such a time is "what should I do about it." I don't want to say anything definitive about the Occupy Wall Street movement/s here, and yet protesting doesn't seem like an unreasonable response to our national situation.

And yet I think there is something better. The industrial machine, economic colonialism, globalism, and such must be reversed from the ground up. It can't come from just the government. Wendell Berry writes:

The answer, the only answer, to economic colonialism is to make the greatest local advantage of the products of the local countryside, producing and processing for local consumption first of all, and only then for export. This exactly reverses the colonial economy that, if it could, would have the local people starve in order to export food, or live in shacks and shanties in order to export logs. 

Yes, laws need to change. But we also need to change. We need to put away our iphones and computers, and take to working humbly and living simply. This starts at the level of the household and individual, not at Washington or New York.

We probably need both: a movement on the national and the local level. But the news is focused on the national and negative. I want see and join a movement toward sustainable and just living. I'm still not sure what that looks like in my neighborhood, but I want to find out.