A fictional scenario that follows the daily activities of Kathy, named after Marxist, anti-work author Kathi Weeks, as she navigates life in a car-free, anti-work society.
Kathy wakes up with the morning sun shining through her bedroom window. Her partner is already gone and took their nine year to school. He teaches a few morning classes down the street and spends the rest of the day helping out around the neighbourhood. Kathy is trained as a nurse, but hospital admissions have been in sharp decline. She’ll be there if she’s needed, but she hasn’t been needed for a while and she’s happy about that.
She sits up in bed and stretches a little. Her apartment is two bedrooms with a small kitchen and bathroom. Since they never use the kitchen, they’ve converted it into a kind of multi-purpose work space. The bedrooms are big enough for a desk and chairs, but Kathy prefers to go to the library down the street when she wants to read or write. The library has private rooms, plenty of books, and comfortable chairs. When she wants to socialise, practically every other space is made for that.
She gets ready for the day and heads downstairs to the communal dining hall. “Well-well, look who decided to finally get out of bed,” a neighbour teases. Four people aged twenty-something to sixty-something are seated at one of the tables in the hall. They greet Kathy with a round of good mornings. These four and Kathy manage a two acre section of the neighbourhood organic vegetable garden (NOVG) that feeds the community. There are usually eight, but three have gone wandering for the summer.
Kathy is always the last to arrive, but the others aren’t in a rush either. They’ve already eaten breakfast and cleaned up. A cold bowl of porridge with apples, bilberries, and a hazelnut butter drizzled on top has been waiting for Kathy. All of these ingredients were grown locally. The apples are from the courtyard tree, grown last year and stored in the cold root cellar. The courtyard has herbs and greens for everyday eating. Most courtyards in the neighbourhood have vegetable gardens. There are plenty of parks, streets, and other places for the kids. Kids love playing in gardens too.
Not everyone in this garden management group lives in the same building as Kathy. They came together because of shared ideals and complementary personalities. They all have an interest in growing food and manage a larger forest restoration project on an abandoned agro-industrial field outside the city. That’s where the bilberries came from, frozen from last year.
Kathy eats her porridge and listens to the discussion. She knows most of today’s plans made here won’t matter. We’ll see what needs to be done when we get to the garden, she thinks. They did so much these past few weeks that there isn’t much to do today. A little weeding perhaps. It hasn’t rained in weeks, but the rainwater collection storage system is holding and they covered the bare soil with straw to help retain moisture.
Everyone agrees to work in the garden first and then go to the forest, likely in the afternoon. Kathy finishes her porridge and washes her bowl.
It’s about 8:30 AM. The streets are convivial. People of all ages are gathered, seated on benches and stoops. They talk, laugh, and eat. School children work on projects. A few tend flower gardens lining the streets. The flowers are covered in bees, butterflies, beetles, and other insects.
Their NOVG is only 300 metres from Kathy’s apartment and it’s lush despite the dry spell. Almost every known edible plant that grows in this climate can be found here. Vegetables for everyday use are most abundant. A chicken coup and yard with fruit trees is situated at the edge of the garden boundary. A couple dozen hens root for grub. The gardens are encircled by irrigation canals kept oxygenated by a combination of solar power, gravity pumps, and oxygenating plants like hornwort.
The group gets to work adjusting supports to accommodate new growth. There are a few early raspberries, strawberries, ripe cucumbers, snap peas, green beans, and other greens that need to be harvested. They gather these and place them into collective storage. They set the ones that need to be eaten aside for lunch. This takes all morning.
They brought some bread, homemade mayonnaise, hummus, mustard, and boiled eggs to the garden. They make sandwiches and eat the vegetables from the garden. They talk lightly or admire the garden and watch the birds and the clouds high in the sky. Some are fluffy and white. Dark ones rise on the horizon.
After lunch they ride bicycles out to the forest along the old four lane highway. The aging asphalt is cracking to pieces. It’s going to be a massive project to convert this into a human-scale trail, Kathy thinks. Where are we going to put all that hazardous asphalt? Trees could block the hot sun and wind, and it would be a cosier if it were narrower and maybe add some gentle curves. All along the decaying highway are ecosystem restoration projects, ecological agriculture, or grazing animals.
Their forest management project isn’t much of a forest yet – a few acres of saplings and juvenile trees. The fast growing boxelders are nearly two metres high. Deer have been nibbling away at the oak saplings. “We need to plant more and protect them until they’re bigger,” one of them says. They’ve planted cottonwood, white birch, wild plum, and hackberries, a section of spruces and bilberries, red and black currants, saskatoon, and gooseberries, and ferns and other low lying forest plants. “What other berries could we plant in here?” someone asks pointing to an open grassy area. “I think we should leave as it is,” another says and they begin to argue.
Kathy ignores them. “Hopefully those dark clouds will bring some rain,” she says and thinks but only after we get back. The forest has a reedy, willowy marsh and a boardwalk leading out to the middle. The group built a shack to store watering cans, shovels, and other tools. Kathy takes a few watering cans and walks to the end of the boardwalk to dunk them into the pond. Even if it rains, it won’t hurt the baby trees to get a little extra in this dry weather. Mallards, northern shovelers, and buffleheads beat their wings on the water and take flight. Everyone turns to look at the sound.
After sprinkling the saplings with water, there isn’t much more to do. Kathy imagines what this place will look like five years from now, a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now. I hope it won’t be destroyed, she thinks.
They mount their bikes and head back to their neighbourhood along the crumbling highway. It starts to rain and they begin pedalling faster, laughing. Thankful.
It’s the middle of the afternoon when they get back. Everyone disperses to dry off at home, but then they return to the common spaces to meet with friends or head off to another work space. Some are in music groups, some are visual artists, craftworkers, some make clothing, some fix or make electronics or have cleaning to do. They make pottery or do metallurgy. They build furniture, salvage and repair. Some give lectures, some attend lectures. Some stay in their apartments and relax with a cup of tea. Some head back to the garden. All activities are done either because they are needed or wanted. No one does anything that benefits a small group of people at the expense of the others.
Supper is a community affair organised by meal groups who rotate responsibilities. Kathy belongs to one of these, just like everyone else, but it’s no her turn tonight. Every night is a feast and party with live music, theatrical performances, readings, and discussions. When it comes time to eat, Kathy sits at a table with her partner, daughter, and a few friends. They are planning to take the train to a different city tomorrow just to see what they are doing over there. It’s a good time of year to do something like this. More people want to join. They want to catch the early train so they will be there before 9 AM. “Alright,” Kathy chides. “I’ll go to bed early.” They finish eating and a band starts to play.
This scenario provides a glimpse into the day in a life in a possible car-free post-work degrowth anarchist future. Exploring imagined lives for multiple characters in an ethnography of the imagination would augment a fuller picture of this utopian society. How does Kathy’s partner spend his day? How about their daughter? An elderly individual? Someone who doesn’t garden? A multi-author collaboration developing additional characters would bring more diverse perspectives into the fold, something for later perhaps. I left out details like what kind of toilets are used (compost toilets), how buildings are heated and powered (definitely not fossil fuels or nuclear), and global relations. Peace and stability needs friendly worldwide cooperation, the dismantling of hierarchies, and a deep valuation of ecosystems. These are topics for another time.