At the Sherwood Coöperative, we seek growth for ourselves and benefit to our larger communit(ies) by building/creating/strengthening our own smaller community. We feel that coöperative living is a strong platform for this growth and benefit because it allows us to learn from each other and act, as a strengthened whole, on principles which will benefit our selves, others, and our environment.

We remain open to constant change, growth, and experimentation in our methods and actions as we seek to best actualize and honor our principles as well as those that have been passed down to us.

To live in and support a coöperative house is to make a conscious and conscientious choice for community in a society that moves continually toward isolation and fragmentation. We believe the best way to foster community in the larger world is the creation and sustenance of a community right here, in our own home.

Communal meals

We cook for each other each night because it is an efficient, healthy, and essentially fun way to foster and create a sense of family. We care for each other, both nutritionally and emotionally, through our meal-eating practices. This takes the form of creating “nonviolent” vegan and vegetarian meals to feed all of us (as well as to show solidarity with vegans and veganism), so that food, like our living space, becomes a joint endeavor in which we are all invested. Cooking and—when we can—eating together is more practical as well, allowing us to conserve dishwater, packaging, and food in general. Finally, we share our food and our meals because it’s fun: we get to enjoy the company of each other, laughing and sharing stories and earnest conversation along with each other’s cultures, favorite foods and recipes, and as a group search in vain for the salt.

Consensus Decision Making

Having regular house meetings in which every house member gets to have a voice is the most important aspect of achieving democracy. But in the effort to grow a democratic community we seek to move beyond a simple one person one vote model. We have therefore made the conscious choice to adopt the Formal Consensus Process as outlined in the book On Conflict and Consensus.

The major difference between Consensus and other forms of democracy is the collaborative nature of Consensus. The final goal is to have everyone agree on a proposal where other forms of decision making would take for granted that there are always winners and losers in the quest to get the majority vote. But Consensus does not only have high ideals, its strongest point is the process it outlines to achieve unanimous agreement. The nature of this process is to let go of competition and to keep in mind what fundamental values the group holds in common.

Some of these fundamental values, as they pertain to decision making, include: being a venue for all voices, equalizing the power dynamics of society, and nonviolent decision making. We believe that honoring these principles leads to a greater degree of participation at meetings and investment in the decisions we do make. Thus we honor our principles not only by articulating them but by using a highly structured and formal process to make our communication as clear as possible.

Collective Ownership

We firmly value collective ownership of our house because it allows a sustainable, theoretically sound, and non-hierarchical solution to the problem of living in an expensive city; and, for students, in a neighborhood desirably close to the UW campus. Our land is off the market and part of a land trust, meaning that in the long term we can sustain relatively low costs to live here. That we own and collectively operate our house means we have autonomous control over both the physical and logistical decisions about our house, from finances to painting to owning chickens. Our responsibility to keep this house and this community ship-shape is thus implicit in its structure, and incites us to develop a breadth of skills from dealing with insurance to dealing with compost. Rather than relying on the movement of capital to solve our problems, provide us with resources, and do labor, we can instead rely on the wide expertise of each other. Further, a collectively-operated property allows its inhabitants the freedom to practice their politics. In total, collective ownership allows us to ensure that the land, beautiful house, and community we live in will be well-taken care of and available to a wide range of people, and inspire its inhabitants to become healthy, conscious citizens of their communities on all levels.

Communication

Being open to communicating about relevant issues having to do with relationships in the house is absolutely critical and essential for coöperative living to work. Even before a style of communication is chosen, this openness and willingness to communicate must be there if the house is to accomplish any of its goals. While there are certain times and places where we are expected to be particularly explicit about vibes issues or power dynamics, such as meetings and retreats, we also remain aware of the fact that issues that have been unspoken for a long time oftentimes need new venues with new dynamics to be truly addressed. Again, in order to be able to create the conditions necessary to address our own issues, an openness and ability to think creatively is required.

A crucial aspect of this openness is a willingness to see members of the house as part of society and therefore participants in forms of social domination that make up the fabric of that society. Regardless of our own personal political views, we have to be able to talk about the house as a site where dynamics from society play themselves out. We cannot claim to be insulated from the very society that socialized us as children and continues to form us in our daily experiences both outside and inside the house.

We know that we are accomplishing our goal when we see everybody communicating and everybody else listening. We understand the contribution of everyone to be a key foundation of democracy, and in addition to needing people who participate, we need people who are making sure that nobody is being silenced. We know that we are not accomplishing our goal when we are shouting at each other, being threatening or otherwise violating the spirit of a collaborative excavation of our feelings.

The fundamental belief here is that it is through the community that we heal our individual and collective wounds. It is the through the powers of intentional communication on an egalitarian basis that allows us to decolonize our minds, get out our internalized oppression, more fully realize ourselves, and work to be better people. In this way, community is responsible not for creating a rugged individualism that has no need for the group but individuals that owe their originality to the strong ties they have formed with others.

Comfort

Finally, we believe in comfort for all of our members, in sharing an elemental and familial trust which creates an inclusive, healthy, open lifestyle. Each person should feel comfortable and safe in the space we share, as well as with the projects we take on as a house. The idea of comfort especially involves those ideas of communication and consensus: the members of the community need to be able to speak freely about sources of discomfort, and the group make decisions that respect each person’s needs. Of all the above values, this one pervades our daily lifestyle perhaps the most. Success in the coöp is not just when we get our bills paid and our meals cooked but when each member feels like they live in a comfortable home.