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My guest today is Erin Axelrod, partner and worker/owner at LIFT Economy. She joins me to discuss how LIFT Economy is working to repatriate land, resolve housing issues, and create socially responsible businesses by investing in and providing support to women, indigenous, and people of color lead organizations. Using her years of experience as a framework, Erin provides multiple specific examples of what this work looks like in practice, what we can do to steer our economy towards regenerative businesses, and to heal our relationship with money.

This conversation with Erin touches on something I’ve been working on and speaking to other folks in the community, including Karryn Olsen and Dan Palmer, about over the last few months: how can we break through the limitations we find ourselves in as a result of, to borrow from Erin, business as usual. Particularly, how do we get the education, resources, and support to implement permaculture ethics and principles at a broad scale, both in and beyond the landscape, given the dire need to do so right now and for years to come. From climate change, to oppressive policing, to improving the land where we grow food, the problems we face are numerous, with much deeper issues underlying what we see at the surface. Each of us can make a meaningful difference whether we do so through individual action or collaborating with others to dismantle harmful systems.

But, as I’ve heard in your dozens of replies to my recent inquiries into The Permaculture Pit, doing so can be difficult given the forces we find in our own life that resist change. That includes the concern about debt through university schooling, the lack of land access, or finding a quality PDC program and after PDC mentoring.

What Erin shared with us, however, opens up many different doors. There are alternative paths to the experience and education we need to become a lawyer if we so desire. I looked into that one in particular and found four states in the U.S.—California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington—which allow you to do so with no law school required, but by completing a Law Office Study Program. Three other states, New York, Maine, and Wyoming, also offer apprentice programs, but do require some law school.

Beyond the legal realm, there are also trade apprenticeships, if you want to go that route with your work. I’m also interested in exploring and speaking to others about the one-on-one permaculture mentor programs that are both less and more than a traditional Permaculture Design Course.

If you don’t have land or are not interested in land-based permaculture, but want to assist those who are, there are programs like Agrarian Trust. We can also, if life provides us a bountiful income, invest in those programs and others like them.. We can donate scholarship funds to Permaculture Design Courses. If you’ve taken a PDC, reach out to your old teachers and see if there is something you can do to support what they are currently doing.

Or send a student to LIFT Economy’s Next Economy MBA program.

There’s also room for us to work on policy change in our local communities. Lobbying, I know that sounds like such a dirty word, to repeal and replace laws that limit agriculture. Fight for food justice and cottage food industries. Support farmers markets in communities lacking fresh foods. 

And, for those of us who are already teachers in the community, do you have the room and space in your life to mentor students beyond the class and classroom?

If you took a route outside business as usual to arrive where you are, let me know, so I can share these options with others via the podcast newsletter or in a future episode.