Freedom's Future

Finding local community in global crisis

After driving half an hour outside my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, I spot a hand-painted blue sign flanked by two red and silver pinwheels. The sign reads: “Freedom Market: Sunday, 12-4:00PM” with a yellow arrow pointing toward the Apker Family Farm parking lot.

The heat is oppressive. Temperatures clock in at over 95 degrees as the afternoon sun beats down from the clear blue sky. Despite the uncomfortable conditions, the parking lot is nearly full. Visitors have driven from Eugene, Springfield, Creswell, and other nearby towns to Dexter, an “unincorporated community” of less than one thousands residents situated in Oregon’s Lane County.

The attraction was the Freedom Market, a monthly gathering held at rotating rural locations across Lane County. Vendors sell everything from local bison meat to homemade soaps. A string band performs classic country music. Children cool down in an inflatable pool. The Market’s mission statement, posted on a bare-bones website and displayed at the entry to the farm, is as thought-provoking as it is succinct:

The Freedom Market vision is to provide people with access to food and other needed products and services regardless of shifting political and medical policies and/or mandates. We envision building relationships of mutual aid between people and farms.

Our core values are: honesty; freedom of speech and bodily autonomy; and freedom to buy, sell and trade with each other.

The Market’s vision bespeaks its origins in the crucible of covid. I wouldn’t have found out about it myself had it not been for a publication that was born in response to the pandemic. I learned about the Freedom Market from a newsletter called Truth & Liberty in Community (TLC), which emerged in 2022 from a loosely affiliated group of Lane County residents opposed to the dominant covid narrative.

I went to the Market this month to find out more about TLC. In the process, I learned that the newsletter is just one part of a burgeoning assemblage of groups in Lane County that have, perhaps paradoxically, found local community as a result of the global covid crisis.

“This Would Not Have Happened if it Hadn’t Been for Covid”

I met a number of people associated with TLC at the Freedom Market. Two of them, (who I’ll call Jim and Marion) agreed to meet with me the following week for an interview about their efforts with the newsletter and related initiatives.

Jim and Marion told me that their current activities can be traced back to Breathe Free Lane County, an ad hoc group that emerged to protest covid-era mask mandates. They began attending Breathe Free Lane County protests in Eugene and meetings in the neighboring town of Springfield where they met many people who were, for one reason or another, opposed to the mainstream pandemic narrative.

The connections that were fostered under the broad Breathe Free Lane County coalition led to the organic formation of four interconnected yet independent initiatives: The Truth & Liberty in Community newsletter; the Freedom Market; a weekly discussion group; and a skills-focused collective called Sustainers. Covid was the impetus for all four of these groups.

“That’s the miracle of it…The thing that has been most antagonistic to us and most alienating is actually the only reason we got acquainted with a lot of people who we consider very very good friends,” Jim said. Marion stated unequivocally that “this would not have happened if it hadn’t been for covid.”

The issue was personal for Marion. She lost her job during covid for refusing to comply with the mask mandates imposed by her employer. Marion found herself not only excluded by her workplace but also isolated from her coworkers: “I was horrified by how children were being treated [during the pandemic] and I felt like none of the people that I worked with cared enough,” she said. “Even if they understood what was going on, they were willing to cooperate in order to keep their jobs.”

Image by Wikimedia Commons.

Covid prompted the nascent community to delve into what Jim described as the “backstory of the relationship of big money and big pharma and government.” Research into this history transformed the group’s understanding of American medicine. “We have been reeducated in a way…and it’s from covid that that even happened,” Jim said.

The common thread between Jim and Marion’s comments is the idea that the global covid crisis was the primary or even sole reason behind the formation of their new community. While far from Marxists, their analysis brings to mind the Leninist directive to find opportunity in crisis. “There’s always potential in any kind of chaotic situation, in any kind of situation where people are trying to control and intimidate others. There’s always opportunities that come out of that if you look for them. And I think that’s what’s happened here,” Marion said.

For Jim, this lesson was spiritual. Reflecting on the paradoxical relationship between the global covid crisis and his newfound local community, he remarked that “there’s intelligent design behind everything, however bizarre it might look initially.”

“You Gotta Salvage Your Own Humanity Out of This Somehow”

Initiatives like the Freedom Market focus on material alternatives to the centralized global economic system. However, Jim’s comment on intelligent design suggests that spiritual and metaphysical elements are also at play for this unconventional Lane County community.

Jim and Marion attend a weekly discussion group that meets at a Eugene coffee shop. This group has been meeting for around three years and attracts around 12 to 18 participants each week. It originally emerged as a rare opportunity to gather in person during the pandemic with others who were increasingly excluded from public life by covid mandates. The totalizing nature of the covid regime demanded not just material mutual aid, but also mutual aid in the form of emotional, psychological, and spiritual support.

Jim told me that the weekly discussion is “very much a support group” and Marion said that “it verges on a counseling session sometimes.” Jim went on to compare the weekly meetings to twelve-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He likened attendees to “a group of addicts” who, during covid, “reach[ed]...a profound low point or something where you feel like you gotta salvage your own humanity out of this somehow. And you do it mutually, and it turns out it works out very splendidly if you do it mutually.”

Jim spoke to the profound “intimacy” that has developed among regular participants in the weekly discussion group. This intimacy has allowed them to discuss not only their responses to covid and related global transformations, but also to deeply personal issues, including overcoming addiction and their relationships with troubled family members.

For Marion, this kind of community support is necessary to develop the spiritual courage to choose personal responsibility over enslavement to globalism. “Either I’m going to become a sovereign individual and take responsibility for that or I’m going to be subject to enslavement,” she remarked. “Those are the two directions that things are going, and people are going to have to be supported somehow…to make their decision…which way they’re going.”

“The Old-School Methods of Getting Information Out Were Going to be More and More Necessary”

The first issue of Truth & Liberty in Community was published on July 4th, 2022. The newsletter serves as a bridge of sorts between the various community groups that spontaneously arose from the earlier Breathe Free Lane County coalition. TLC is published monthly as an 8-page newsletter. In addition to articles with analysis of local, national, and global affairs, it contains information on the weekly discussion group, monthly Freedom Market, and any gatherings hosted by Sustainers.

TLC is printed on a home color printer and distributed at various sites in Lane County. Readers can also subscribe to receive a PDF copy of the newsletter via email.¹ Jim and Marion informed me that the newsletter is currently emailed to around 500 subscribers each month. Unlike most newsletters, such as those on Substack, TLC is not available on a website. The “About” section of the newsletter describes it as “an independent, free publication for the purpose of educating and informing Lane County residents about issues affecting their freedoms and rights.”

The Lane County focus is intentional in order to ground the newsletter in a concrete place and community. The original slogan of the newsletter was “Standing Against Globalist Agendas,” and the decisively local character of the newsletter stands as a practical instantiation of resistance to globalism. Many publications rail against the global order, but TLC is among the few that strives to integrate its opposition into the very form of its newsletter distribution.

Recent issues of Truth & Liberty in Community

The offline character of the publication is also practical. Marion explained that she “started feeling very strongly that at some point there was going to be censorship of the internet, and the old-school methods of getting information out were going to be more and more necessary.” The distribution sites for this “old-school” print newsletter span the Lane County towns of Eugene, Veneta, Cheshire, and Cottage Grove. Their names demonstrate TLC’s rootedness in a range of local community institutions:

• Robbie’s Windowbox Caffe

• Beyond Body Healing Arts

• Eugene Public Library

• Theo’s Coffee House

• Polyrock Ranch and Dairy

• Fern Ridge Library

• McAllister Family Farm and Creamery

• Christ Lutheran Church

• Schweitzer’s Work and Western Wear

Despite the diverse distribution points including cafes, farms, libraries, and churches, TLC has struggled to develop the same level of diversity on a demographic level. “It happened, unfortunately, that a majority, well virtually all, are retired people, because we have disposable time and can meet wherever we want, whenever we want,” Jim told me.

TLC states that “All articles are original and present both facts and the opinions of the authors. Our policy, for privacy reasons, is to not put names on articles contributed by staff.” Despite the anonymity of most of the newsletter’s authors, the final page includes a section titled “Educate Yourself” with links to specific websites, blogs, and other online sources that address topics related to the content in the publication. In the spirit of freedom of speech and the search for truth, TLC prefaces this section with the following statement: “We aren’t advocating that you believe everything you read or hear at the sites below, or that this is a comprehensive list. Add to it or delete from it and come to your own conclusions!”

Just as the Freedom Market is guided by the “core values” of “honesty; freedom of speech and bodily autonomy; and freedom to buy, sell and trade with each other,” TLC prints its Founding Principles on the front page of every issue:

Marion told me that the theme for each newsletter tends to emerge organically from in-person interactions with people at the Freedom Market or other local events. She described it as a newsletter that speaks first and foremost to “human needs” and, therefore, derives its form and content from the requirements of the local community.

“You Can’t Just Fight Against Something, You Have to Say What You’re For”

TLC has been publishing monthly issues for three years. For the first half of its existence, the newsletter stuck with the aforementioned slogan—“Standing Against Globalist Agendas.” However, after a year and a half, the newsletter committee made the conscious choice to change its motto to “Standing for Humanity.”

Jim explained that TLC had “been railing against these things…in a very pointed, information-packed way for a long time…and we want[ed] to try and strike out in a more positive direction somehow.” Marion pithily summed up this transformation when she proclaimed, “you can’t just fight against something, you have to say what you’re for.”

Marion contrasts this positive approach to what she sees as the negative essence encapsulated in the technocratic worldview of thinkers like Peter Thiel. She told me that Thiel “defines libertarianism as ‘I don’t wanna die, I don’t like this, I don’t like that.’ It’s like separating him…from his own humanity. And people take that in as if it’s a positive, because this culture does not support either a philosophical or a spiritual basis for life.” TLC does not want to replicate this negative approach in their own writings, which explains the shift from “Standing Against Globalist Agendas” to “Standing for Humanity.”

Peter Thiel speaking in 2022 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Image by Gage Skidmore.

TLC’s positive vision has both material and spiritual components. In addition to the alternative economic model envisioned by the Freedom Market, the Sustainers group focuses on building concrete skills in gardening, herbalism, animal husbandry, and health and wellness. Recent Sustainers gatherings featured educational presentations on topics such as “Raising Chickens: Safe Chickens, Safe Eggs, Safe Food”; “Onions: What You Might Not Know About Growing Onions”; and “Rife Technologies: Another Perspective” about the “subtle electromagnetic pulsed frequencies that are proving to support healing and health.”

This positive material focus is complemented by a positive spiritual direction. Jim’s recent serialized writing on the phenomenon of near-death experiences (NDEs) is illustrative. “I kind of ran out of things that were really world connected, that had to do with what I call ‘busting the bad guys,’” he said. He developed a fascination with the NDE phenomenon, which contributes to TLC’s broader vision of putting forth a “spiritual basis for life.”

Speaking to the importance of Jim’s 12-part series on NDEs, Marion said that it presents “evidence of more than the material in this world…and…what [this] maybe means for humanity. It’s another way of grounding that isn’t about how to grow bell peppers, or whatever…It is a form of grounding for people to consider what it means to be human.”

Toward the end of my discussion with Jim and Marion, I remarked on the unusual combination of writing on economics and near-death experiences in the pages of the same publication. Jim laughed and called the pairing “highly eccentric.” Eccentricity is bound to turn off some potential readers, just like TLC’s local distribution model limits the scope of its audience. But if limits are part of what makes us human, perhaps eccentricity is part of what makes us free.

If freedom is to have a future in an increasingly unfree America, I wouldn’t be surprised if it looks highly eccentric.

1. Interested readers can write to TLCsubscribe@proton.me to request back issues of Truth & Liberty in Community and subscribe to receive forthcoming issues of the monthly newsletter via email.