Polls show the majority of people in the US want a clean
environment, clean renewable energy, an end to pollution industry subsidies, to
mitigate global warming, to create social justice, and an end to war—but no one
knows what could successfully lead us down that path.
The COME framework was developed to empower coalitions of
mutual support and action to build critical mass based on non-hierarchical
tools and natural systems principles to institute fundamental systemic change
from which a sustainable future can emerge. This will provide the necessary
systemic alternative to the status quo industrial growth paradigm that requires
domination through economic debt, imperialism, exploitation, and destruction.
Honestly addressing root causes, providing means to easily discover and share
resources, and using shared values toward a common goal can support—at a
foundational level—the core missions of constituent groups. This necessarily
means it must be based on ecological wisdom, social justice, economic equity,
and participatory democracy. This combination holistically works together to
improve quality of life for all life because it is more natural.
COME thus provides a model for social entrepreneurship
that takes an honest look at the systemic failures of the growth paradigm, industrialism
and dominator hierarchies, and proposes an equally systemic alternative that
both embraces technological innovation and implements sustainability based on
working with the underlying natural systems principles that keep ecosystems
healthy, vibrant, and resilient.
COME honestly addresses the root causes of rapidly
converging crises and provides organization, communication and decision making
skills necessary to create and support a systemic framework to ameliorate these
issues of concern by providing pragmatic alternatives. Catastrophe and collapse
are approaching from many directions and denial is not an effective response.
Sustainability is more than just a goal; it is a living systems process that
keeps destructive symptoms from re-emerging and taking over.
The overall product provided by COME is a practical
framework that can be adopted and implemented at all scales—neighborhood,
county, state, nation—to support place-based innovation in moving toward
sustainability. It includes non-hierarchical methods of organizing,
communicating and decision making, and enables resource and information
sharing. This includes workshops, training, and implementation support to
understand what sustainability entails and to raise awareness that this presents a
practical and realistic alternative among progressive, environmental,
community, educational, and government agencies and bodies.
