Osha interviews Georgia Kelly of Praxis Peace Institute about the Mondragon model of Democracy, employee owned business, and creating a more positive future. Successful models of democracy can be found at Mondragon Institute https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/ in the Basque region of Spain and in Nordic countries. It can be done. https://praxispeace.org/

TRANSCRIPT
Georgia Kelly 0:10
In our inquiry toward how do we get to peace, we realize there’s no direct line from where we are to peace. We have to go through these different doorways.

How do we move from war to peace and build upon that peace, create a more positive and sustainable future? This is Aspire with Osha, art, nature, humanity, and I’m your host, Osha Hayden. Our guest today, Georgia Kelly, is someone who has been working to address these important questions. Georgia Kelly is the founder and executive director of Praxis Peace Institute. She developed a week long seminar and tour at the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain. One of numerous multi-day conferences she has produced, she compiled the Mondragon report an account of how the Praxis Mondragon seminar has impacted the cooperative movement in the US. She’s co author of Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism. Georgia also holds a certificate in conflict resolution from Sonoma State University and teaches conflict resolution workshops and mediation. Her previous career was as a musician and you’ve probably heard her. She’s a harpist, composer and recording artist. You can hear her music at www.georgiakelly.com. Welcome to the show, Georgia. I’m so happy to have you on. Thank you.

It’s nice to be here.

Osha Hayden 1:47
I have a question for you, because you’re a well known harpist, and harp music has been shown to have a healing and calming effect on people- so I’m just wondering, do you think that your musical career as a harpist influenced the work that you’re doing now with praxis peace Institute?

Georgia Kelly 2:08
That’s really a difficult question to answer because both of these ideas had been growing in my mind and life almost simultaneously. When I think back, I think my first political thought was when I was seven years old. I’ve always been aware of politics and been interested in politics, and been interested in peace. And I did start music at three and a half. So it was a little before I was seven. So but I think they grew together. And I think they influenced each other. I’m not sure one influence the other more, I think they both are interwoven in a way. And finally, I feel like I can do both in some capacity, which is nice. Usually, totally separate in my life. Yeah.

Osha Hayden 2:56
Which is what you’re doing now. Well, let’s talk about Praxis Peace Institute, and also the Mondragon Institute in Spain, the work you’ve been doing there?

Georgia Kelly 3:10
Well, the praxis peace Institute actually was born out of a conference that I produced for another nonprofit back in 2000, so 20 years ago, and that was a peace conference, because I had spent six months living in Yugoslavia before that country fell apart. In fact, I was living there when the country did fall apart, in 1991. So I was living in Zagreb, which is the capital of Croatia, during that civil war, and then spent a few months in Dubrovnik Also that year. So I was living 26 kilometers from frontlines at time. And the airport closed and I couldn’t leave anyway, at least not by air. So I learned a lot about being upfront close to war again, even though I had definitely opposed and actively opposed the Vietnam War. And then, of course, the Iraq War, which had just begun in the US the year before 1990. So I was thinking, going to Yugoslavia, well, I’m going to just get away from war for a while. And I’m going to live there for six months, bring my harp because I was playing in a festival there. And within two months, that country was in war, the war. And I thought, at that point I did write an albums worth of music that year. But I thought, we’ve got to figure out why we keep repeating the same wars. You know, why we don’t learn the lessons of history? What is this about? So the idea I had was to put a conference together that would be an inquiry, asking those questions, why don’t we learn from history? What do we need to pay attention to and why are we so dumb about how to deal with conflict in a way that would get us past these reactionary types of violent behavior? So that was the purpose of that conference. And it was a seven day event held in Dubrovnik, Croatia. And at the end of it, it became clear that we hadn’t answered that question at all, in fact, more questions had arisen as a result of it, so I asked people on the last day if they’d be interested, yes, yeah. It seems like we can always afford war and never afford peace.

Osha Hayden 5:29
Hmm.

Georgia Kelly 5:30
I mean, well, dollars.

Osha Hayden 5:33
My position there was that we cannot afford war.

Georgia Kelly 5:38
Well, though I what I mean, when I say afford war is that our congress constantly – just did it again – gives lots of money to military, lots of money to war efforts, very stingy with social benefits. Right. So it’s, that’s where we see the money goes toward war, does it go toward creating a healthier society? In this country – it’s not true abroad.

Osha Hayden 6:03
So what did you discover when you went to Mondragon? And am I pronouncing that correctly? Mondragon?

Georgia Kelly 6:11
Yes. Well, I had been interested in Mondragon for quite some time before I went there. I learned about it in 1993. Because at that time, I was actually working for our former Governor Jerry Brown and scheduling guests for his radio show on kpfa. And one of his guests was a man named Terry Molnar, who had been to Mondragon in 1979. 40 years later, he came back to Mondragon, on one of our trips, which was in 2019, which was our last one because then COVID hit. So I was very interested after I heard that interview, and I called Terry after the interview, and I said, Tell me more, I want to know about this place. So it was in my mind, someday, I’m going to go there. Well, it was many years later, it was 2006. When I contacted people at Mondragon, to invite somebody from there to speak at a conference we were doing in Dubrovnik again, and they sent somebody and while he was there, I asked him if we could bring a group to learn about what they did there. So the following year, we brought our first group of 25 people to learn about worker ownership, which I thought was exactly all we were learning about. But as I’ve gone now, 10 times, we’ve not only learned about the economics of worker ownership, which is really, there’s so much equality built into this model. The CEO doesn’t make more than six or eight times the lowest paid worker. So this is a completely different model than what we see in the US where they might be making 400-500 times. CEOs might be making that much more than the average worker. So this was a different model. And it was built on a different value system. And that was very impressive. So my interest was, well, where did this come from? How did they know to do this? And the more they used to always take us to this Peace Center up in the mountains, from Mondragon. And we realized I think that they were very involved with the Peace Center in some way. And the man who was head of it was quite extraordinary. And he ended up negotiating or helped to negotiate a peace with the Basque separatist organization, that had killed over 1100 people in 60 years. And when the ETA in a 10 year period – he went from negotiating with them to doing truth and reconciliation, which is a very powerful tool with both victims and perpetrators. And at the end of that time, the ETA decided to dissolve its own organization, all that violence is gone. And the communication between the groups changed the dynamic. And the Basques have had their own semi autonomous region with their own parliament. And the President said, Okay, we’re going to establish a department of peace. And the man who helped negotiate this whole peace deal is going to be the head of it. So then I got to see how peace was, it was really built into this system. And that the President acknowledged that by creating a department of peace, which they now work with prisoners, they work with all kinds of people and it’s just changed a dynamic and you realize, what I realized in module nine, is they are never static. They’re always evolving, and they’re consciously evolving. And that it’s like they never think they’ve made it. They’re always working to better everything: work, working to better reality and social things for people. So there’s a commitment and empathy, compassion and a sense of equality and respect for all people. Not for all viewpoints, but for all people.

Osha Hayden 10:17
And that’s quite different than pretty much the state of affairs that we see in this country right now.

Georgia Kelly 10:24
Very different. Yes. So I’ve learned a lot by going there so many times. And I wish I could bring everybody there every year. Because the more I’ve gone, the more I’ve learned. And the more I’ve tried to bring that into our next seminars is I’ll ask them there, I get, can we include this? Can we include that? So finally, our group is the only one that actually got to go to the Basque parliament, and have a special session with their department of peace, which is, yeah, so that’s really, that’s a big deal. And it’s now called the Department of what is it called? They changed the name because they said, We have peace now. So we call it, it’s a communication, something in human rights. But anyway, they they are working more on human rights issues now. And it’s quite extraordinary. I think, what they continue to accomplish, it’s never a past tense.

Osha Hayden 11:21
And tell us about the social programs that they have woven into the the Mondragon Institute.

Georgia Kelly 11:30
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by that question.

Osha Hayden 11:34
Well, my understanding is they have hospitals, they take care of the health care, they take care of a lot of different things.

Georgia Kelly 11:43
Well, they don’t actually have hospitals, what they have are, they have their own Insurance Group, so that all of their worker owners have their own separate insurance from the Spanish government’s insurance. So they have their own health insurance, they have their own pensions through the Mondragon social program. And they have unemployment through it, they have retraining so they can get for free. So that’s paid for by this Insurance Group. If they’re sick, they’re covered. They of course, maternity and paternity leave, which is covered by their system, which is an addition to the Spanish system. So they have their own insurance thing that is very supportive of people, of their worker owners. They have their own banking system. They have a university complex. They have elementary schools that are Montessori method. And they have the largest research and development complex in all of Europe. And for a small thing, this is incredible.

Osha Hayden 12:52
That that’s a very big deal.

Unknown Speaker 12:54
It’s a very big deal. They’re on the cutting edge, always have new equipment. I mean, they make everything from elevators, to bicycles, to computer chips, to medicines and health related research that they do. They’re ever cutting edge.

Osha Hayden 13:16
That’s amazing. We were talking about all the various programs they have that are inter woven there at the Mondragon Institute. How do they keep the peace? What happens if there’s a dispute?

Georgia Kelly 13:32
Well, that’s of course, what people always ask: what happens if there’s a dispute? What are the worker businesses, because some of them are large? And but they have what they call social councils that deal with disputes. And so they actually, I’ve never really heard of things not being resolved – because another question people asked, Well, how do you fire people if they’re not, if they’re slacking off on the job? And they said, Well, no, we don’t fire people, we go and find out what’s happening in that person’s life. And, you know, maybe there’s a hardship happening that they don’t talk about. So we go to find out what’s going on in the person’s life. And what I found interesting about that is their first reaction isn’t punitive.

Inquiry. Hmm.

And what a difference that is, you know, when your first response is one of Oh, I wonder what’s happening in that person’s life. Instead of, oh, he’s late, he’s not doing this well, we’re gonna punish him, but we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna take away some perk. It’s never that attitude. And I think that is peacemaking in the way one lives.

Osha Hayden 14:47
We’re going to a short break, so stay tuned, and we’ll have more from Georgia Kelly.

15:06
Thank you for staying tuned, we’re back with Georgia Kelly. We were just talking about the practices of creating peace at the Mondragon Institute in Spain, and how rather than taking a punitive approach to an employee who maybe is late, they instead take the role of inquiry in going to find out what’s happening in that person’s life. It’s a very different model, and one that they have proven to be very, very effective. It also addresses that ladder of perception that can happen where one person sees something happening, they perceive that as meaning that & that, & that, & that , and ascribe all sorts of meaning to it, before they’ve ever spoken to the person to get the other person’s view.

Georgia Kelly

I call that self referencing, we ascribe to somebody else, what we might have been doing in the same position, instead of paying attention to what is really going on with the person and we see a lot of that in our American culture, a lot of that. And, and you see it less in Europe anyway. You know, I’ve spent a little time in the Nordic countries, Oh, actually Norway. And it’s very different there as well. But just generally speaking, I think people in Europe live quite differently than we do and, and don’t have this undercurrent that we have here. That is, it especially, it’s been enabled by our current president, the bullying, the violence, the hatred that’s come out for different groups of people. It’s really frightening and, and the license that they’ve been given to be like that. So we’re coming up against, I think, a very difficult time in our country, in spite of Biden being elected, we now see a lot of militia groups that have been emboldened by this president, and encouraged. So we have a lot to do in the coming years to undo the incredible damage that’s been done in the past four years.

Right. And it’s sort of that culture of outrage, and blame and making up reasons for why someone else is doing something. You know, that fiction, and that narrative of, there’s something wrong with you, you’re a bad person if you don’t agree with me. So it has really created such a split.

Well, the polarization Yeah, a lot of people think that’s the problem. And we need to all talk. Well, I disagree with that, even as a peacemaker. How would you talk to a Nazi? You know, there’s a point at which they have to change before they can even be open to talking to someone who doesn’t agree with them. We can’t accommodate them to the point of tolerating the intolerable. I think once people like that are willing to open up and say, Okay, I’m willing to talk, I’m willing to talk, and I’m willing to listen, then you’ve got an opening. But as long as they’re convinced they’re right. And either you go along with them, like the democrats often do with the Republicans, which is a big mistake. Or you know, that giving in, which is tolerating the intolerable is a serious social problem. And I think peacemakers who are really good understand that distinction, but a lot of them don’t. And there’s this thing, oh, we’ve got to do Kumbaya, we’ve got to all get along. Well, no, we don’t have to all get along, until we can all hear each other. And that’s what’s missing here, is one group doesn’t want to hear and doesn’t want to, doesn’t want the conversation. So you can’t force it. You can’t force the conversation. And often what people do when they can’t force it is to just give in, and that enables further. Enables the perpetrators to do more, because they just got by with so much. So accountability is a huge part. And the truth and reconciliation process does include accountability, accountability as part of that process. And I don’t think the Biden administration runs away from accountability for what the Trump administration has done the way Obama did with the people who had caused the economic meltdown. We can’t let them get by with it and not hold them accountable and expect anything to change.

Osha Hayden 19:51
Right. Well, that said, accountability and also the element of power.

Georgia Kelly 19:57
Yes,

That’s where the element of power comes. Because sometimes the only way to get someone to come to a have a conversation and actually listen is to invoke the element of power.

Sometimes, yes. I mean, this is this is a complicated arena, we’re starting to get into I don’t know if I want to go into it fully. But I think it’s important that the person I told you, that was the head of the police department at the Basque parliament has written a few books, one of them is on being human, and it was translated into English. And to me, it’s one of the best books on peacemaking I have ever read. It’s phenomenal. And it is available online, at least it was, I haven’t looked recently, I have it in both Spanish and English, because he autographed by Spanish copy, but it’s On Being Human and being human.

Unknown Speaker 20:56
And his name is Jonan Fernandez.

Osha Hayden 21:10
our listeners might be interested in that book.

Georgia Kelly 21:13
Yes. I mean, you don’t see it in the States, you’d have to get it online. But it is quite profound. And I learned things from that, that I had never learned in my peace studies. So it’s, it’s a different perspective. And I think a very helpful one.

Osha Hayden 21:30
And so the way that the author’s name is spelled j o n a n. Fernandez, right? On Being Human.

Georgia Kelly 21:40
yeah,

Osha Hayden 21:41
Well, you know, when I was talking about invoking power, What I meant is sometimes, sometimes if you invoke power, just in the sense of threatening a lawsuit alright, you know, then you can at least get someone to the table, so that they’re willing to negotiate.

Unknown Speaker 22:02
That’s exactly right.

Osha Hayden 22:04
it’s invoking, I don’t mean power in the sense of, you know, armed guns and tanks and that sort of thing, that power in the sense of using the powers that are available legally, who, yes, to bring someone into a space where they’re willing to actually sit down and have a conversation.

Georgia Kelly 22:26
And this is why we have courts. Exactly. I mean, we have a judicial system to do exactly that. So when we don’t hold accountable, it’s like, would you say, okay, you can go ahead and do that. We won’t do anything to you. We won’t even slap you on the hand. We’ll just let you do it. And that’s what I think what has really emboldened the right to the point where Trump could even get elected. I think they were emboldened by what they could get by with. And now they’re trying the ultimate, which is to have a coup in the US and overthrow a democratically elected president. So we’re seeing how emboldened they’ve become, I mean, it’s just mind boggling in a way. And yeah, predictable, on one level?

Osha Hayden 23:08
Sure. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I told my husband a few years ago, I said, You know, we live in this wonderful peaceful community here. But there could be be a day when armed militia come in and they start ramming down your door and taking over and you’ve got like the Taliban running your community.

Georgia Kelly 23:28
Well, this is very possible. And our speaker this Friday is going to talk about some of that on our call. Because what happens between now and January 20 is quite critical. And we just make assumptions: will Biden’s elected Yes. But all this other stuff that’s going on? That’s very serious. And I’m quite concerned about it because I agree that there could, there are armed militias now but they’re not organized as a group. But they’re there. They’re all over. And this is how I saw war start in Yugoslavia. This is how the civil war began. It began with people shooting up neighborhoods, going into neighborhoods making people take sides. It’s a model that’s happened before. And it’s scary to think of it as possible here and yet it is.

Osha Hayden 24:22
Yeah, if someone had told me, oh, say 10 years ago, that we would be in this situation, I would not have believed them. I would not have believed them. I would have thought there’s no way this is, this is America. This is Democracy. We would not be emboldening white supremacists and Nazis and armed militias.

Georgia Kelly 24:47
Well, I did something very typically American when I was living in Yugoslavia when the Civil War broke, and I really reflected on it. I said this could never happen in America. You’ve never had these demagogues like Milosevic Judgment running Serbia and Croatia, as authoritarians, we would just never have this. And we have it. And I thought about it many times. And I thought, you know, it can happen anywhere. And vigilance is so critically important. So we’re kind of at that precipice. I know we’ve gone far afield. But at practice, what we’re trying to do now is have these programs that help people understand not only to educate everybody about what’s going on, but also to give us talking points, so we can talk to others about what’s happening. And those are the kinds of speakers we’re doing a lot on zoom. Now we’re doing more programs than we ever did it in person. Because zoom allows us to get people from everywhere. And we have a speaker from San Diego on this coming Friday, talking about the legality of what’s going on between now and January 20, and the attempted coup. And then we have Ellen Brown, who started the public banking Institute in January, and also in June, and she’ll be in LA and we have someone from Finland in January, she will speak about her book, which is called the Nordic Theory of Everything. And basically she will talk about the programs in Finland. And she and her American husband who had lived in New York, decided to move to Finland, because they had a child and they realized we can’t really afford to live here, when we could live so much better in Finland. They have childcare, they have health care, they have education, all this is free. So they moved. And so she’ll be live from Finland in January. So those are the kinds of programs we can do online.

Osha Hayden 26:56
So how does someone get to attend those programs?

Georgia Kelly 27:00
Let me give you our website, because that’s probably the best way. It’s www.praxispeace.org.

Osha Hayden 27:12
And it’s PRAXISPeace.org.

Georgia Kelly 27:19
That’s correct. praxis

Osha Hayden 27:22
Praxispeace.org.

Georgia Kelly 27:22
So all right. I haven’t put up the latest one, the one I was just talking about finish. I have to put that one up. I haven’t done it yet. But the others are up there already. And that one will go up in the next day or two. So yeah, we have really good programs coming. And then we have the past. We’re recording them. So we have them on our private YouTube channel. And people can register and see ones we’ve already had.

Osha Hayden 27:46
So great.

Georgia Kelly 27:47
Yeah, so we have a good library now of people who’ve spoken Rihanna Eisler. Hazel Henderson, David Talbert, David Corden. We’ve had some really good speakers.

Osha Hayden 27:59
That’s excellent. Well, we’re going to go to a short break now. And we’ll be back in a moment with more with Georgia Kelly.

We’re back with Georgia Kelly, in case you’re just tuning in. And we’re talking about praxis peace Institute. And lots more. She was just showing me on the break her harp, which is right next to her on the zoom screen as I’m watching it. You may know her from her music as a harpist. Georgia Kelly. Yeah. So thank you for being here, Georgia.

Georgia Kelly 28:46
It’s definitely fun talking to you. And a lot of interesting ideas that we’re exploring I think together too. It’s nice,

right? Well, we’re really talking about how to create a more positive future, how to create greater cooperation among people and build more peace in the world. And this is a lot of the work that you’ve been doing for a long time now.

It is, it’s certainly an evolving process, from the early days of kind of rebellion with the Vietnam War and not understanding a lot of how to deal with things like that. And, you know, through the years going through different processes and seeing war, right up front, like in Yugoslavia, gave me a really different look at how things happen. And then we’ve studied through our conferences and our events, we’re really studying and our book club, we have a book club that’s unbelievable. It should grant degrees, it’s so good. I mean, we read really intense things and discuss them and occasionally we record them because they’re like, well, we read Thomas Piketty books, which we read both of his books.

Osha Hayden 30:08
We’re going to a short break, we’ll be back in just a moment with more from Georgia, Kelly.

Thank you for staying tuned. We’re here with Georgia Kelly. And we’re talking about the process of creating peace.

Georgia Kelly 30:37
In our inquiry toward how do we get to peace, we realize there’s no direct line from where we are to peace, we have to go through these different doorways. One of them is to look at the influences of culture, which includes our social media, and how it, I hate to use the word, that they really control us to some degree, they manage to get the reactions they want. And so we have to be very vigilant about social media, and culture and cultural norms. It’s like, if you’re not part of this group, then who are you, if you’re not hip with something, then you’re not cool. I mean, it’s really, getting out of that kind of mind frame is very important. So culture is critical. And we spent a whole conference on that. But eventually, we got to economics, and we will never get off of economics and culture. They are totally interwoven. And looking at the economic reasons why conflict persists, is very important, I think to understand. And you know, when there’s money to be made for war, but not peace, then we’re going to have war.

Osha Hayden 31:55
Correct.

Georgia Kelly 31:57
And that’s the situation we’re in. Unfortunately, we haven’t redirected that money.

Osha Hayden 32:06
And you wrote a book that kind of addresses some of the cultural aspects. And civil liberties, deconstructing libertarianism. I mean, you were one of the co authors.

Georgia Kelly 32:18
Yes, I edited and as a co author, and five other praxis members contributed essays to that book. Three are PhDs and three are called more activists. So we have the academic look at libertarianism, and we have the activist’s look at it. And every one of the six people who wrote an essay is coming from a slightly different place. But critiquing it very seriously, because libertarianism has had such a strong influence on American culture. The libertarian is really a severe limitation of our culture. And the idea of freedom for most libertarians means license, I can do what I want. I don’t want to wear a mask, I’m not gonna wear a mask, you’re not gonna tell me what to do. In a way, it’s like, an adolescent rebellion, I think of libertarianism as, as an adolescent political movement, and it’s, more men are attracted to it than women. Which I think is kind of obvious why. But we did a lot of work on it. We had a lot of discussions on it among the six of us. And when we wrote the book, we published it seven years ago. And people said, Oh, this whole libertarian thing will just blow over and I said, No, this is not gonna blow over. We’re gonna be seeing this for some time to come. That’s why we did the book. And of course, it’s worse now than it was in 2013. We’re dealing with it at a much more serious level than we were seven years ago. So I think that book is more relevant today than it was when we published it. And I’m very glad we did that. Because I think this is one of the problems in America is this libertarian mindset? Kind of the Wild West?

Osha Hayden 34:17
Right? Well, it’s sort of, I can do whatever I want, versus what is what is the most caring thing to do for myself and my neighbors.

Georgia Kelly 34:28
Yeah, that’s not a question they ask.

Osha Hayden 34:31
Yeah, it’s a missing question.

Georgia Kelly 34:34
The question you have to ask them is, okay, well, where does my Liberty get? Where does my liberty end so that you have your liberty? I mean, where do they cross? You know, if you have so much liberty, then it takes away from mine. So you know, that’s not something they really necessarily want to look at. One are the books we’re reading for book club this Sunday, actually is called The Libertarian Who Walked into a Bear.

Osha Hayden 35:01
Yeah, I love the title.

Georgia Kelly 35:03
I know, I think the title was so fun that we had to read it. But it basically looks at this in, in a real life situation in a town in New Hampshire that libertarians hoped to take over and make into this free town. And they run into all sorts of problems because they don’t want to pay taxes. So they constantly vote against taxes, they lose their fire department, they lose all the services that most towns have, because they don’t pay the taxes for them. And how the culture devolves because of it. So it’s, it’s funny on one level, and the bears kind of ended up taking over the town. So that’s the other part of it. That’s kind of funny, but not funny because they attacked people. So it’s, you know, it’s it’s a ridiculous philosophy. And taken to its extreme, because most people who say, well, it never really worked, because we never did it completely. Well, doing it completely is Somalia. It’s total disorganization, or as Thom Hartmann would say, Oh, yes, we’ve had libertarianism. It’s every society before it’s been organized, before it’s been civil. And I think that’s true, you know, that the ultimate goal of it, I think a lot of them haven’t really thought that through. Because who would pick up the garbage? Who would do these these kinds of things, you know, and a lot of that is not thought through in a libertarian so called philosophy, if one could call it that. I don’t know when. But it’s definitely worth understanding in America, especially.

Osha Hayden 36:48
How many of them want to go out and pick up all the garbage?

Georgia Kelly 36:52
Probably none of them.

Osha Hayden 36:55
So who

Georgia Kelly 37:00
wants to pick up garbage? Especially if you’re not paid for it?

Osha Hayden 37:05
I know. So, what is the opposite then? What would be the opposite of libertarianism?

Georgia Kelly 37:15
Well, compassion, empathy, caring. To me, Mondragon is a perfect example of the juxtaposition. It’s, it’s an opposite in a way. It’s empathic. It’s compassionate. It cares about what happens to everybody. It’s not just my way or the highway. It’s not just what happens to me. It’s what happens to me and my community. And the community is important. When I’m in that culture there, I feel like, I can breathe, I can exhale, I can feel totally safe. I think no matter what would happen to me, I’m safe there. And that feeling, I miss it this year, because I can’t go because of COVID. And I’m not even going next year. We’re taking another seminar to Mondragon in May of 2022. And I’m very sad to not go back until then. But I don’t think it’s wise to try and go next year when the shots are just being administered. And we probably couldn’t go before the Fall anyway. And the weather’s not as good. May it’s just beautiful in Spain. It’s a good time to go. But I miss it. I definitely miss getting that cultural booster shot I get from them.

Osha Hayden 38:38
We’ve been seeing more of that model happening around here. I mean, locally in Sonoma County. There’s the Made Local Marketplace. There’s a new food cooperative of the farmers coming together to distribute food.

Georgia Kelly 38:58
Yeah, this is, I think we have some very good models that are in Sonoma County. Oliver’s market with lots of farmers markets, really good food, extraordinarily good food, and much better because it hasn’t traveled for miles and needed to be refrigerated. It’s fresh. So I really like that, that we have that in Sonoma County. And, you know, we have I think, a very concerned citizenry here. I don’t know if you know this, but we had a 90% voter turnout in November. That’s great. Yeah. It’s incredible. And it shows the level of interest people take in what’s going on in the community.

Osha Hayden 39:39
Well, and the last I heard Sonoma County was also considered the greenest county in all of California.

Georgia Kelly 39:46
Yes, that’s right. In terms of sustainability, so that does say something about the level of, of conscious inquiry into how can we do this better …

Transcribed by https://otter.ai