What is Joy Bomb?
Joy Bomb is a place for people and communities to encounter one another, commune, and collaborate to bring a better world to life.
Now more than ever, we need each other. We need each other to bring a care-centered, human focused, ecologically balanced world into existence. This starts with meeting one another, socializing, and finding common ground.
Rooted in principles that support human emancipation, living in communities harmonized with the natural world, we aim to empower each one of us to contribute our unique gifts to the creation of a better world.
Principles and Values
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Radical Hospitality: We move with generosity, actively breaking down barriers to access while creating genuine belonging and connection. Beyond kindness; we commit to ensuring even the most oppressed and exploited flourish—not wilt—in our space.
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Interdependence: We celebrate the fullest range of human identities and experiences. Our diversity and our relationships with one another are our greatest strengths. We believe this whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and our interdependence and common humanity unite us. The road is long, and we must walk it together.
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Anti-Hierarchy: We oppose all systems of domination. We fight against capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, white supremacy, the state, and all other forms of oppression, and lift up the voices of the most marginalized. We promote communal values of sharing and uphold feminist, egalitarian, and indigenous values against colonial, capitalist, and hierarchical values.
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Self-Governance // Consent Decision Making: We recognize the necessity of replacing systems of command with practices of self-governance, if we are to strike at the roots of society’s ills. We exercise our agency by deciding together in all matters that impact our lives, directly, without handing those decisions to others in hopes they will do so on our behalf. If we want to reach an equitable, need-centered, and ecologically harmonious society, we must possess the power to decide for ourselves.
What separates Joy Bomb from a library, a coffee shop, a community center, a venue, or even a church?
Great question! While our activities might look very similar to any one of these spaces, it is radically different. You can think of Joy Bomb as a "house of the people", your community's living room. We go to great lengths to encourage people to encounter one another in a new way.
Building people power // community networks, catalyzing mutual aid projects that meet our community’s needs, and practicing horizontal organizational strategies with the goal of infusing our region with an action-based, cooperative culture.
Organization and
Collective Action
As earlier experiments in collective self-governance have taught us, organization is the best method we have to both arrive at true agreement and to prevent people from gaining power, holding ourselves accountable as a group. To be effective members of a group that aspires to practice consent in action, Joy Bomb uses a governance system called sociocracy. Sociocracy is a framework for the conscious, collective, non-hierarchical distribution of decision making authority, power, and operational tasks necessary to running effective coordination. Due to horizontal distribution of operational tasks, rooted in consent, sociocracy allows us to ensure the highest level of participation, transparency, and engagement from the highest number of people.
Some of the basic principles of sociocracy include:
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Each person's voice matters.
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Listening is as important as sharing perspective.
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Each person has a wealth of abilities, networks, and resources.
You can learn more about sociocracy here!
Intention
We nurture communities that currently exist, invite them to co-mingle, and seed the growth of new communities.
Purpose
Our aim is to infuse our communities with cooperative principles and practices, building solidarity across communities in the process.
Collective Action
Everything we do is focused on empowering each of us to live more free and meaningful lives together, here-and-now.