In a post on local resilience the other day, I mentioned The Freedom Cell Network. This is a grassroots effort to get people connected with each other to solve systemic problems. It involves everything from supporting peaceful non-compliance with bad policies to creating parallel institutions. That all sounded good to me, so I filled out a form on the website, found my local Telegram group, and introduced myself.

This intro excluded most of my relevant skills and experiences. I didn't mention gardening or foraging or renewable energy. I didn't mention traditional crafts or primitive skills. I didn't mention the years I'd spent in intentional communities and the rainbow family. Nor did I say anything about the various community efforts to build resilience that I'd been a part of.

"If they want to keep growing, they should focus first on replacement rates." - a disappointed Freedom Cell Singles Mingle event attendee

These omissions were partially due to expedience. Telegram isn't great for long lists. But I'm also not sure that I want to be known in this community for these things. When I was a kid, my dad taught me a valuable lesson about practical skills. He knew how to fix cars, but kept this skill hidden to avoid having to spend all of his time fixing other people's cars. In my case, I could just as easily design a solar pv system as hand sew a leather backpack. But I'm extremely selective about who I actually do these kinds of things for.

True, I'll happily share my knowledge with anyone who genuinely wants to know. I could see doing some kind of Freedom Cell skill share at some point. That could be good, but my primary interest lies elsewhere. My strongest interest is in barter networks and crypto.

Non-Monetary Currency

The Minneapolis Freedom Cell description includes this sentence: "We are creating a community center and gearing up to develop a non-monetary currency." The community center is a physical space called CoCreating Community that I'll check out eventually. But I don't yet know what they mean by gearing up, or what they mean by non-monetary currency.

If they're talking about crypto, then I'd like to get involved in the conversation. For starters, if they're talking about creating a new token, I'm familiar with how that works. And maybe they'd even be interested in using Rstory instead of devising something new. That token is just sitting on a shelf, awaiting a purpose.

Of course, the fastest track to an alternative economy for dozens of people or more is to have them all set up Hive accounts. Hive is a turnkey solution for anyone wanting a functional alternative to USD. Plus, the censorship-proof nature of Hive blogs seems like it would be attractive to the Freedom Cell crowd. I'll bring it up after I've met more people and see what they say.

There are a little over 200 people in the Telegram group I just joined. I've only met 2 so far, with one being the disappointed Singles Mingles attendee quoted above. There isn't much going on in the crypto channel of the Telegram. The sense I get is that physical events are where Cell members speak freely and network. I look forward to meeting these people in real life.

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Read my novels:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
• The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.

See my NFTs:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
• History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
• Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.