About Us
The website is called InterMission because the highlight of the evening is the intermission when people connect to neighbors over meaningful dialog and planning ways to promote sustainable practices in their community. It is also called InterMission because the mission of the organization is to connect the missions and constituencies of all the other organizations that are working on different pieces of the sustainability puzzle.
The easiest way to describe InterMission.org to others is to tell them it is a cross between Netflix, Meet-up and Alcoholics Anonymous.
• You choose which movie you would like to show at your potluck. We have a hosting kit and each movie comes with a host and participant discussion guide.
• The invitation system allows people to find neighbors they didn't already know who are also committed to creating sustainable community. (under development)
• The 12 step guide provides graduated action steps for creating sustainable communities.
Intermission.org addresses three challenges in the sustainability movement:
1. Current sustainability constituencies are fragmented around issue areas and not woven into a unified whole.
2. It is hard for people to understand the urgency of our current situation because it takes a long time to understand how lots of seemingly isolated and manageable problems signal an eventual system-wide collapse that cannot be avoided without a fundamental paradigm shift across many systems.
3. We lack a low cost, easy to replicate platform for community organizing because personal changes are not enough to get us to a sustainable world.
Our Theory of Change
If you want to change the world, the most effective place to intervene in the system is at the level of people's values. Our values create the world we live in. Our values tell us what's important to do, what's tolerable, and what's simply unacceptable behavior. Changing values is difficult because they are deeply ingrained through our upbringing, friends, and media impressions. If we stray too far from the values of our reference group, we get strong reminders that we don't fit in and that is generally very uncomfortable.
The most effective way to change peoples' values is through changing their reference group. Basically, if we start hanging out with people who have different values we are bound to change what we think is important, what we are willing to tolerate, and how we behave. That's why building meaningful relationships is core to all InterMission gatherings. From these relationships our core values are changed and from this the world is changed.
We don't believe that we can build a sustainable world one person at a time. We need other people to inspire new values and reinforce new behaviors. Individuals also need new laws, institutions and products to make it easier and more economical to live sustainable. But government and business won't create these unless the people demand it.
There are thousands of organizations working sustainability, but their efforts haven't yet coalesced into broad based movement. We believe this is because their efforts have largely been focused on educating individuals, not communities. Without an infrastructure to gather us at the local level, we don't know how many neighbors are actually quite interested in being more sustainable. InterMission provides the infrastructure to cross-fertilize the missions of national sustainability organizations at the local level. As their members meet and teach each other what they know we are creating a cohesive constituency for sustainability.
Working at the community level is the Goldilocks solution. Communities are small enough so that people can infect each with new values. Most of us get our news and views from the programs and web sites that just reflect back what we already believe. To get to a sustainable world we must make this a movement that crosses the political spectrum, economic spectrum, age spectrum and every other topic that polarizes humans and keeps us from working together. Only at the level of community do we run into people who have different values, but we respect enough that we are willing to listen and be swayed. As more people start talking about sustainability the whole community can reach a tipping point that allows new systems to be created that make sustainability much easier and cheaper. To get to a national tipping point we'll need the examples of sustainable livelihood from forward thinking communities.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
Francesca's text follows from here
We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors, we are borrowing it from our children
— Native American proverb
There is a mismatch between the size of the problem and the capacity of individuals to effect change. [We could have a fun Atlas graphic with the world labeled “Sustainability”.] The good news is that community-level solutions to toxic waste, habitat destruction, water usage, energy efficiency, renewables, and local food production are much more manageable and effective.
Together, we can do more. We can’t make sustainability happen one person at a time. It takes community to clean up this earth and create new lifestyles, systems, and habits of consumption. It takes community to support, inspire and teach each other all the things we must do to leave our children and grandchildren a clean planet with the systems in place that will help them pass along the same to generations to come. This is the true meaning and essence of sustainability and a sustainable way of life—it’s time for us all to participate by working together, one community at a time.
Achieving sustainability is a 4 step process:
• Education. Getting informed about problems and solutions—while having fun.
• Integration. Getting together with others to discuss and decide—while having fun.
• Action. Doing things differently—while having fun.
• Celebration. Celebrating the changes—which is fun when you do it together.
We need to educate ourselves on the problems and the solutions—not as individuals, but together as a community. It’s got to be fun, low cost and non-partisan or we can’t get everyone on board. Along the way, we’ll have the deep satisfaction of working with people in our community on issues that affect the livelihood of everyone in the community for generations to come. And just as God took a day off to say it was good, we need to take time to pat our own selves on the back for making changes.
Creating long-lasting connections among people that live near each other is first priority for InterMission parties. Community action is more likely to follow from the community building that happens naturally through those connections. The movies give neighbors and friends a stimulus for thoughtful dialogs. As we hear each other’s views, we grow to understand and like one another, becoming a real community of place. That’s one reason we call this InterMission.org—the most important part of the evening happens during the “intermission”. [A picture of people engaged in dialog and clearly having fun at a potluck]
Creating a sustainable future together is the number one most important shared mission of our time. InterMission is designed to make sustainability part of the mainstream. We aim to forge a cohesive constituency for sustainability by inviting neighbors from lots of national organizations to meet at local house parties where they will inspire each other to build more sustainable ways of living. That’s the second reason why we call this InterMission.org—we connect the missions of national organizations by connecting their members locally to work on shared goals. To get there we must connect missions across the political spectrum, economic spectrum, age spectrum and every other topic that polarizes humans and keeps us from working together.