Ma'ikwe Ludwig Releases 'Together Resilient'

TEDx speaker and longtime sustainable community activist Ma'ikwe Ludwig will be releasing her new book on Earth Day, April 22, 2017. Ludwig will then be available for speaking engagements all over the country, talking about climate disruption, intentional communities, legal and economic reform, and the development of cooperative culture.

Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet and founder of the climate change organization 350.org says, "When people ask me where to move to escape climate change, I tell them there's no escape and that the thing to look for is a strong community. This book explains how to build that kind of community anywhere-it's a manual for the future."

The basis of this new book is the two decades that Ludwig has lived in residential intentional communities, and learning the deep skills of cooperation. Intentional communities are groups of people who live together based on common values and purposes. The Fellowship for Intentional Community's online directory lists over 1,300 such groups, ranging from student co-ops and ecovillages to monasteries and upscale cohousing communities.

The book also takes on predatory capitalism and systems of oppression, according to the author. "We can't really solve the climate crisis without looking at how we are organized socially and economically. The book includes a whole chapter on legal and economic reform, and that chapter is just as essential as the one on starting a community," said Ludwig from her home in Laramie, WY. "My basic premise is that the US cultural tendency toward isolation and hyper-consumerism is a large portion of how we've gotten ourselves into this mess. The solutions need to happen on just as many levels: cultural, economic, personal and social."

Dr. Chong Kee Tan, the founder of the alternative currency system in California called Bay Bucks, agrees. "Is it possible to jettison our current system of exploitation and environmental destruction, and create a new system, that is not only sustainable but affords us a comfortable and fulfilling life? [This book] reminds us how the way is fraught with challenges and shows us how to conquer them."

The book also profiles two US intentional communities in terms of their carbon footprints, livability and economic security for their members: Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri, and Twin Oaks Community in Virginia. Ludwig's 2013 TEDx Talk, titled, "Sustainable Is Possible-And It Doesn't Suck!," focused on Dancing Rabbit as a model low consumption community.

This national speaking tour will be Ludwig's second. In 2015, when she was the Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture, she spent 6 months on the road. That tour provided the opportunity to develop a portion of the material in the new book.

The book is currently available in two ways: participation in the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign (which results in the book getting to people about a week before the public release, and being acknowledged in the book, for anyone who participates by April 1), and by ordering through the Fellowship's website.

View the Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign: https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/in-this-together-climate-disruption-community/x/6404087.

Inquiries about speaking tour stops, or interview requests for Ma'ikwe Ludwig can be made by emailing Mariyam Medovaya, the Tour Coordinator, at climatetour[at]ic.org

About the Fellowship for Intentional Community:
FIC's mission is to support and promote the development of intentional communities and the evolution of cooperative culture. FIC publishes Communities magazine, and the Communities Directory (both online and in print), and offers a range of services and other publications to support communities forming and thriving. We also regularly work with researchers and the press to make sure accurate information is available about the communities movement.

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