Solidarity With Front-line Struggles
Earth Activist Training is a place for stewards of soil and spirit to gather. Where, hands, calloused yet tender, cradle seeds—the sacred promise of sustenance and renewal. As permaculturists, we weave threads of connection, invoke magic, and stand in fierce solidarity with all life.
Threads of Connection and Earth Care: Our roots intertwine, seeking nourishment from the same Earth. Just as mycelium weaves through soil, connecting trees unseen, we too reach out—across borders, cultures, and generations. Our shared heartbeat echoes through forests, deserts, and urban jungles alike. We cradle our planet, knowing that her health is our own. We compost, regenerate, and honor the cycles of life. The land beneath our feet is not mere substrate; it is the living tapestry of stories—the whispers of ancestors and the promise of generations yet unborn.
Magic of Seeds and Global Activism: Each seed we plant carries memory—the resilience of countless ancestors. It holds the promise of sustenance, resilience, and beauty. In our gardens, we invoke spells of growth: sunlight, rain, and the alchemy of soil microbes. As we sow, we honor the spirits of land, water, and air—the unseen allies who dance with us. Like activists on the streets or halls of power, we raise our voices against oppressive systems. Our banners bear symbols of solidarity: hands, seeds, and spirals—a reminder that our liberation is bound together. We chant, “Another world is possible!” The global uprising is not a distant echo; it is the pulse of our collective heartbeat—a rhythm of change, demanding justice for every blade of grass, every forgotten voice.
Reparations, Reciprocity, and Fair Share: We recognize historical wounds inflicted upon marginalized communities—the stolen lands, erased cultures, and silenced voices. Our solidarity extends beyond words; it demands action. Reparations are not charity; they are justice. We redistribute resources, amplify marginalized voices, and work towards healing the wounds of the past. But justice is not a one-way street. Reciprocity is the heartbeat of sustainability—a dance of giving and receiving. We give back to the Earth what she provides—a cycle of care and nourishment. Just as the sun’s warmth fuels photosynthesis, our actions ripple outward. We share knowledge, mentorship, and abundance. In this reciprocity, we find resilience—the promise that sustains life.
So let us tend our plots, whether vast or humble, with reverence. Let us share seeds, stories, and sustenance. And when the winds of change blow fierce, may our solidarity be the shelter that stands unyielding—a living testament to our interconnectedness. The magic of solidarity blooms fully when we actively engage in reparations and embrace the reciprocity that binds us all.
Earth Activist Training invites you to join this dance—to weave your thread into the fabric of change, to honor the land, and to stand in fierce love.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
Earth Activist Training is honored and humbled to be located on the land of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples, and hold its in-person intensives on the land of the Kashaya Pomo peoples, in what is known as Northern California.
We recognize that we have so much to learn about how to live in harmony and in abundance with these sacred ecosystems, which the Indigenous peoples of California have stewarded since time immemorial.
We recognize that the Ramaytush Ohlone and Kashaya Pomo peoples understand the interconnectedness of all things and have maintained harmony with nature for millennia. We honor them for their enduring commitment to Mother Earth. As the Indigenous protectors of this land, the Ramaytush Ohlone and Kashaya Pomo peoples have never ceded, lost, nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all of the peoples who reside on their traditional territory.
We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as First Peoples and wish to pay respect to the Ancestors, Elders, and Relatives of the Ramaytush Ohlone and Kashaya Pomo communities.
We recognize that to respectfully honor the Ramaytush Ohlone and Kashaya Pomo peoples, we must embrace and collaborate meaningfully to record Indigenous knowledge in how we care for all peoples.
Acknowledging in words our honor and gratitude to Indigenous People is a start, but to be meaningful, it must be accompanied by actions. At Earth Activist Training, we provede Diversity Scholarships for indigenous students as well as people of color, as one of our forms of action.
Adapted with gratitude from the San Francisco Public Library Indigenous land acknowledgment, created in partnership with the American Indian Cultural District
Black Lives Matter Solidarity Statement
We wish to publicly state our support for the Black Lives Matter movement and the ongoing fight to end all police violence against communities of color.
Permaculture is a system of regenerative ecological design rooted in indigenous knowledge and wisdom. Its three core ethics, care for the earth, care for the people, care for the future lead us to call for accountability for police who currently target, harass and murder people in communities of color, and especially the black community, with impunity.
We cannot care for the people unless we assure justice for all people and assert the value of every person’s life.
We see this current system is designed to benefit certain people at the expense of others and is part of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. Out of this comes an opportunity to redesign a truly restorative way of dealing with injustice, conflicts, competing needs, and past wounds.
At this time of grave environmental crisis, we recognize that the divisive impact of all forms of discrimination and prejudice hamper every effort to shift the path of our society off of the road to ruin and onto the path of regeneration. Our economic, political and social systems can only find ecological balance when they are founded upon justice.
One of the core permaculture principles is that diversity creates resilience. We are committed to envision, design and create a world in which we affirm and celebrate human diversity, where we can learn from one another’s perspectives and support one another’s struggles. We are proud to lend our support to all those who work to make that vision real.
Statement by Starhawk, Earth Activist Training and Pandora Thomas, Black Permaculture Network
Earth Activist Training signed onto:
Permaculture & Palestine
A Statement from the Movement
(30 August 2025)
I. Who We Are & Why We Speak
We are farmers and growers, builders and carers, students and educators, parents and children united by our care for the Earth and her people. All over the world our dearest wish is to live simple lives, tending our lands and communities, and healing the damage done.
However, we are called to rise in response to the brutal destruction of lives, land, and cultures in Palestine. We join the growing call to end genocide, apartheid, colonial occupation, ecocide, and enforced starvation. We stand in solidarity with those resisting oppression—and invite permaculture practitioners everywhere to act in alignment with our ethics.
The Israeli genocide of Palestinians is not happening in a vacuum. The revival of rightwing ideologies, combined with the rise of sophisticated economic, electronic, cybernetic and media tools of control, dominion and mass distraction, uphold colonial structures and mindsets that have never truly disappeared. Meanwhile, capitalism facilitates the drive towards endless growth and destruction on a finite planet. What is happening in Gaza is part of the repression, marginalisation and obliteration of indigenous peoples around the world.
As a permaculture community we cannot be silent in the face of the genocide in Palestine. The rising of political forces, especially within Western countries, intent on disintegrating the most basic human rights gained through the struggle of the generations who came before us, is posing a global threat to the very survival of life on our planet. It is our moral duty to stand up and confront the destruction:
- More than 80 percent of Gaza’s total cropland area has been damaged (UN – FAO).
- At least 70% of Gaza buildings destroyed (UN, Aug 2025).
- More than 20,000 children for acute malnutrition since April 2025. Catastrophic levels of food insecurity are projected for entire population by September (UN, July 2025).
- Last week the Israeli military uprooted 10,000 olive trees in al-Mughayyir village (West Bank). Since 1967, the Israeli government has uprooted over 800,000 olive trees, and bulldozed hundreds of miles of agricultural land in Palestine (Jewish Voice for Peace).
We embrace complexity and can differentiate between Judaism and Zionism, and between Islam and Islamic extremism. We reject all violent religious extremism.
We condemn anti-Semitism and the centuries of pogroms and violence leading to the Nazi genocide. We affirm our commitment to “Never Again”…and this means never again for anyone. We also recognise that charges of anti-Semitism are often weaponised to silence opposition to Israeli policy, and that this distracts from the dangerous rise of real anti-Semitism linked to the extreme right around the world.
We condemn the Zionist campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing used to create the state of Israel, both before, during and after the Nakba (“the Catastrophe”, 1948), which brutally expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. The current genocide in Gaza is a continuation of the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
We support the 2024 International Permaculture Convergence petition “Defending Life Against Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Aggression,” and encourage all to read and sign it too.
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II. The Ethics We Are Called to Live
We, as permaculturists, speak from a shared ethical foundation: Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share. These are not metaphors. They are imperatives.
Earth Care
In Palestine, land is not only being taken—it is being systematically destroyed. War leaves behind a toxic legacy that devastates ecosystems, contaminates water sources, and harms communities for generations after. Explosives, heavy metals, white phosphorus, and other chemicals can linger in the soil and water, posing long-term threats to health and food security. The destruction of olive groves, farms, forests, seed banks (such as the UAWC Seed Bank in Hebron), and water systems is part of a war on life. From Gaza to the West Bank, this destruction targets not only the environment and food systems, but the people who steward them and rely upon them.
To care for the Earth here means to stand with Palestinian farmers, seed savers, and land protectors as they work to feed their communities and steward their lands. It means supporting place-based and community accessible bioremediation and ecological restoration projects to heal the destruction and toxic contamination left behind by war. It means calling out greenwashing by institutions complicit in occupation, and by Israeli permaculturalists developing farms and organising courses and retreats in the West Bank.
People Care
This principle begins with listening—and continues with justice.
Palestinians are being dehumanized, displaced, imprisoned, and killed.
Schools, hospitals and market places are being systematically attacked to demolish the infrastructure of human existence.
These are not isolated acts of war. They are patterns of state violence and genocide, enabled by global silence.
People Care demands that we centre Palestinian voices, resist erasure, and challenge the normalisation of settler colonialism. We must also recognise how this violence echoes in other colonized, racialized, and dispossessed communities.
Fair Share
Fair Share is not possible under apartheid. It calls for equity, not occupation.
Palestinian access to water, movement, land, food, and housing is violently restricted. Meanwhile, parts of the global permaculture community operate within or adjacent to systems of oppression and occupied land.
To share fairly, we must ask:
- Who benefits from silence?
- Who profits from stolen land?
- What are we willing to risk in order to live our ethics?
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III. What We Commit To
We call on permaculturists – individually and collectively – to:
Speak clearly against genocide, apartheid, and ecocide.
Amplify Palestinian knowledge and voices in courses, gatherings, and projects.
Join or form working groups to strategize long-term solidarity.
Support Palestinian-led initiatives, cooperatives, Baladi farming (traditional, small-scale agriculture focused on local, heirloom crop varieties and sustainable practices), food sovereignty, and ecological restoration.
Defend the right of Palestinians to lead their own post-war recovery and reconstruction in Gaza. Stand against international post-war plans that seek to displace Palestinians and result in more land theft, occupation, and violence.
Engage with the BDS campaign (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) and support businesses and companies that do not profit from the Economy of Genocide.
Protest, take to the streets, and disrupt business as usual.
Develop online and in-person training for Palestinians, both in their territory and for those displaced in the diaspora.
Organise “Homeplaces” and support networks where Palestinians can live safely until they are able to return home.
Refuse complicity—by examining land use, institutional funding, and silence.
Recognise the challenge given to our movement by indigenous groups expressed in their ‘Whitewashed hope’ statement.
Include discussion on colonisation and genocide in Palestine in our training courses and PDCs
Sign and circulate this statement, which has grown from shared conversations among permaculture practitioners across diverse lands and experiences.
Join the Permaculture & Palestine Telegram group by clicking HERE, the email list by clicking HERE or alternatively send an email to: permaculture-palestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net to subscribe (don’t forget to check your inbox, for a confirmation email).
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IV. By Signing This Statement…
…I commit to aligning my permaculture practice with action.
…I commit to at least one step among those named above—from sharing this message to building ongoing collaboration.
…I choose to live the ethics of permaculture—not as metaphor, but as commitment.
Permaculture & Palestine: Global Solidarity Call
Click Here to Sign this Statement from the Permaculture Movement and Get Involved.
Accessibility and Inclusion
Valuing diversity and fostering beneficial relationships is at the core of Earth Activist Training’s (EAT) approach to permaculture. We understand diversity is much more than a set of traits one is born with; it includes a rich multiplicity of ways people show up in the world, both seen and unseen. We celebrate that our students, staff, and instructors bring their unique gifts, wounds, and experiences that add to the richness of our community. EAT strives to make our workplace, courses, and events accessible and inclusive to all who want to attend.
In recent years, we have focused on improving accessibility and inclusion of Indigenous Peoples, People of Color, those on the front lines of environmental and social justice struggles, and those in the def community.
To foster accessibility EAT:
- Offers diversity scholarships with associated organizational support
- ASL Interpretation for our seasonal free events and courses as needed.
- Closed captions for all of our live and recorded events
- Include Accessibility tools on our website for easier access
- Provide a range of dietary options for our in-person classes
- Have staff dedicated to supporting accessibility needs
Scholarships
Earth Activist Training teaches ecological design with a grounding in spirit and a focus on organizing and activism. As part of our commitment to reparations, we offer scholarships to Black and Indigenous students and students of color engaged in social and environmental work. One of the permaculture principles is that diversity generates resilience, and over and over again, we see that in action!
The problems of climate change are rooted in injustice and inequality, and taken together, they can all feel overwhelming and insurmountable. However, there is a global movement of people working quietly in small and large ways to regenerate the land and bring hope and healing to their communities. We are so grateful to be part of that movement and to play our part in bringing training and education to those on the front lines of struggle.
EAT is committed to increasing the diversity of global permaculture and regenerative land movements. We recognize the history of this land, which is called the United States and Canada, and seek to do what we can to rectify the deep injustices and systems of inequity that formed and continue to shape society today. Diversity Scholarships are available for Indigenous Peoples and Peoples of Color working in their communities on environmental or social justice.
Diversity Scholarships are pay-what-you-can with the recommended value of 50% of standard course tuition for online courses and a pay-what-you-can, above a fixed reduced price for in-person courses.
International Scholarships
In addition to Students of Color and Indigenous Students EAT, we now offer pay-what-you-can scholarships to our online courses for students from Gaza and Palestine, Ukraine, and other war zones, refugees, and asylum seekers.
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