Hi! My name is CJ and I am an intern for the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture. I am twenty years old and I use they/them pronouns. I am also a creative writing major at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. I serve as an activist and street medic, as well as being a writer. I have been following Dancing Rabbit online for five years and am absolutely in love with the community.

I was drawn to Dancing Rabbit because of the way it serves as a living, breathing laboratory. Residents experiment with different building techniques and create homes that range from pretty normal looking to something straight out of Lord of the Rings. They grow their own food, and live in close harmony with nature and with each other. So much of society today is designed to isolate us from nature and our local communities, so there’s something magical about seeing people throw off modern society and try for something better.

There is so much we can learn from Dancing Rabbit, both directly and indirectly. For example, I am a founding member of Orlando Action Medical, a street medic coalition here in Florida. We had a lot of trouble figuring out how to organize when we started. None of us were big on hierarchy and we wanted to ensure that whatever system we used let everyone have a voice. Our beginning featured several four-hour meetings where we discussed different organizational structures. It’s surprising how heated discussions about bureaucracy can get! I remembered how Dancing Rabbit uses consensus to make decisions, and suggested we try it. The system works great for us! Everyone gets a voice no matter what. It can make meetings time consuming, but it has the benefit of an increase in compromise and communication, and a decrease in resentment. Our group is all the more tight-knit and functional for it.

Beyond that there is so much we can learn from Dancing Rabbit about living more sustainably. Dancing Rabbit measures its collective ecological impact and is always looking for areas of improvement and ways to teach others how they can lower their carbon footprint wherever they are. For example, even if you are forced by your local building codes to use traditional materials, you can design a house with a passive solar orientation, or buy a home that has a passive solar design. We can all turn our yards and porches into food gardens. We can all create less waste by simply consuming less.

The most important things we can learn from Dancing Rabbit are less tangible. Learning about Dancing Rabbit and intentional communities has inspired me to build a stronger sense of community in my life, something we all can do, wherever we are. Especially in my generation, so many people are lonely and scared to reach out. My friends and I have often joked about the fear we share of being the person to reach out via text first. Dancing Rabbit shows us what is possible when we connect with each other, pushing back against the forces in our society that benefit from us being scared and alone.
Intentional communities are making big strides in finding ways for humans to minimize our impact on the planet. I am so excited to help the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture spread the word about Dancing Rabbit’s work. You’ll be hearing more from me in the upcoming months as I work on new projects with the CSCC!

As an intern, I will expand the website to include more informative articles on the Dancing Rabbit community. I will be talking to members, learning their stories and discussing what they think are the most important lessons we can learn from Dancing Rabbit. I hope to bring us all a little bit of hope for the future during this difficult time. Hope straight from Dancing Rabbit.


 

CJ, short for Clara-Joseph, is majoring in creative writing at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. They live with their fiancé, cat, and four parakeets. When they aren't reading or writing, they can be found playing music or exploring nature. They have loved Dancing Rabbit since they were a kid and can't wait to help share its message with the world!