Leahnes

“thriving depends on more than meeting basic physical needs, and includes goods like a sense of community, mutual support, and equality. Wealth is much more than what GDP measures, and the market is not the only source of economic value. She urges policymakers to recognize the values of common lands, green space, biodiversity.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibility of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters”
― Audre Lorde, Your Silence Will Not Protect You: Essays and Poems

“Public libraries seem to me a powerful example of the way that gift economies can coexist with market economies, at a larger scale. . . To me, they embody the civic-scale practice of a gift economy and the notion of common property. Libraries are models of gift economies, providing free access not only to books but also music, tools, seeds, and more. We don't each have to own everything. The books at the library belong to everyone, serving the public with free books. . . Take the books, enjoy them, bring them back so someone else can enjoy them, with literary abundance for all. And all you need is a library card, which is a kind of agreement to respect and take care of the common good.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World