Manifesto

This is a living document. These ideas and principles guide how we order, support, and enjoy our community.

Definitions

Community: a collection of people who are accountable to each other, collaborate, and share resources. Intention: a resolve to act.

Introduction

The intention of this community is to prompt and foster growth, nourish its members health in all forms. We encourage creative expression, acceptance of ourselves and others, active and ongoing communication, and levity. We support each other to accomplish security in our shared home and lives. We strive to have a positive impact on our broader communities, both small and large.

Tenets

Community Governance and Labor

Material decisions require consent. Material decisions are decisions which impose expectations on people’s behavior, consume communal resources, or would be difficult to reverse.

How We Support Financially

Every person deserves access to home regardless of income. We practice financial transparency, trust, and communicate our wealth or deficit. We expect each other to reflect on and examine how we contribute to and consume resources. We practice ongoing financial check-ins.

Individual lifestyle vs community lifestyle

Communal spaces and resources can have expectations of comportment surrounding noise, smell, light, nudity, et al. Beyond discussed, consented, and established expectations it is up to the individual to communicate their boundaries.

Community building and responsibility

We accept invitations to participate in pre-existing community institutions. We extend invitations for our local community to participate in Swamp Dog’s institutions. We appraise what our house consumes and redistributes in its ecosystems (money, garbage, acquisition of goods, food) and we choose which institutions we interact with on an ethical basis.

Changes in membership

When inviting new members into Swamp Dog Hobble we clearly lay out expectations of the new member and support them inhabiting their full member status from the first day.

Conflict and communication

Conflict arises naturally in any community. We expect each other to identify conflict plainly, and early. We offer and anticipate grace when communicating about conflict. We look for resolutions when they are available.

Community building internal

We are the authors of our home and vouch the energy and time necessary to manifest the community we want to live in. What we put in, we get out.