About Us
The Jubilee Project is a mutual aid initiative based in Grand Isle, Vermont. Our mission is three-fold:
- Steward closed-loop systems to reduce market dependence and reach towards buen vivir.
- Host spaces of encounter and recovery for organizers.
- Educate people in revolutionary citizenship.
We believe enforced market dependence is the root of many, if not most, modern social problems. Exploitation, for example, is only possible if the exploited have no choice but to work or starve. While markets have achieved remarkable growth - of populations, supply chains, global reach - the profit motive inevitably chooses quantity over quality. When that logic is applied to the reproduction of human lives, it produces massive quantities of food without nutrition, medicine which treats but doesn't cure, and housing that shelters but discourages community, distributed only to those willing and able to submit to market forces. The technology it builds surveils, extracts, and alienates, when it could enable leisurely efficiency, natural regeneration, and authentic human connection. Knowing this, The Jubilee Project aspires to market independence through community-scale means of social reproduction: local closed-loop food systems, preventative medical care, and prosocial housing, to name a few. We believe self-sufficient communities have crucial leverage against exploitation: the power to walk away from markets and demand better conditions.
But, how can we get there? In our increasingly alienated society, a vision of genuine community sufficiency can seem impractically utopian. We believe an important step is a debt jubilee, the broad forgiveness of debts. Historically, jubilees were declared by new rulers to win the favor of their subjects. Slaves would be freed from their masters, obligations would be cancelled, and all subjects could return to their homeland and family. Today, however, we're not holding our breath. Rather than wait for the ruling class to declare forgiveness of personal debts, we can enact a jubilee ourselves by simply disregarding the debts of the old world (that is, how much money someone has to offer) and instead valuing reciprocity: how we can mutually aid one another. For example, our Farm Stewardship is essentially a conventional land lease for $0/month. Rather than value this relationship in terms of dollars, we choose to value it in other ways: the joy of seeing the land support others, the knowledge gained through cooperation, and the countless benefits of a hyperlocal food system. This is not charity, it is the seed of a new social contract.
That social contract is still being written, and we suspect the work will never be done. Whereas a good citizen abides by the social contract of their era, a good revolutionary citizen actively participates in its ongoing redefinition, considering ideals of justice which transcend the norms, expectations, and even laws of their era. Yet those ideals are only a compass heading which alone cannot map the winding path forward. We can only progress by encountering others along the path and deliberating our options just ahead. This is, we believe, what the Zapatistas mean by preguntamos caminando: while walking, we ask questions. In service of this, The Jubilee Project facilitates spaces of encounter and rest for those on this path, invites them to deliberate their next steps and, whenever possible, to walk forward together.