Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: "Larger" Issues

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 2 Jul 2011, at 10:21 AM, Racheli Gai wrote:

> Going to work means working on larger issues?  How so? --
> I was thinking about the kind of work for pay people in my community  
> do, and the overwhelming majority doesn't get close
> to dealing with  larger issues as part of those jobs.

Maybe because we are in DC, most of our people do some kind of work that is 
satisfying to them in terms of larger issues. A lot of policy work and non 
profit organizations. Paid work: water use policy, social work, education, city 
budget oversight, legislation, peace corp, accessibility policy, economic 
development in African countries, conflict resolution, medical services for 
veterans, energy policy, transportation policy, energy in developing countries, 
environmental law and technology, breast cancer, government watching, 
adolescent guidance, economic development in pre-industrialized countries, 
English as a second language, peace work, cohousing, body work therapy, therapy.

Unpaid: Democracy in Saudia Arabia, support for special ed students, Red Cross 
volunteer, bird conservation, energy conservation in low income housing,  
raising adopted "hard to place" children, consensus, governance, technology 
support, child care, etc.

It would be my own judgment but I think a very small minority of our residents 
work at jobs that they would walk away from tomorrow and only keep because they 
need the money. They are all single parents.

Most have worked themselves into jobs that they believe contribute to a better 
society. Are they perfect?  No, but I think from one view point or another they 
would be considered contributing to the public good — not just manufacturing 
useless objects or convincing people to buy more or high paying.

The list above is from my mental survey of the units and what I know about what 
people do. I didn't include the two librarians at the Library of Congress but 
they are also doing public service every day to a wide variety of people who 
are working on a wide variety of issues. We have 7 children who were adopted 
from poor or war-torn countries or from drug addicted parents whose parents 
work really, really hard to overcome various developmental deficits.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org