Projects and Partnerships

Culture Shifting and Education

Workshops: Uncovering Our Hidden History

Democracy Unlimited understands the importance of transforming the ideas that shape our world in order to make it more just and democratic. To that end, our local education program engages community members to reconsider what the idea of democracy is, and to rediscover anew the history of the United States from a framework of radical democracy.

In Humboldt County, we offer our all-day introductory workshop, “Challenging Corporate Rule, Creating Democracy”, three times a year. This workshop provides understanding for how corporations have been granted both the rights and decision-making power which we as citizens should have, and presents ideas and strategies for creating a genuine democracy in which people, not corporations, rule.

Our local education program also involves work with other local community organizations, schools, and universities.

★ To invite Democracy Unlimited to speak to your group or class please contact us.

★ To find out more about our different workshop offerings please visit our Workshops Section.

The Honor Tax

The Honor Tax is a project to encourage individuals, community organizations, and businesses to recognize and pay tribute to those Native tribes whose land they occupy. The tax is self-imposed and the amount is self-determined. The act of paying the Honor Tax is meant to recognize the sovereignty of Native nations, many who were forced off the lands that white people and other immigrants now occupy.

The Honor Tax project aims to place power in the hands of individuals and communities to take action to recognize not only our national history genocidal, but to help eliminate current racist discourse that both makes Native peoples invisible in our society and fails to recognize the sovereignty of Native governments and their right to self-rule.

This project is co-sponsored by Democracy Unlimited and the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, who each pay the honor tax to the Wiyot Nation in Humboldt County. Our groups do not collect the tax from others interested in participating, or involve ourselves in any way with handling of the funds. Rather, both groups seek to educate fellow citizens on the importance of recognizing Native sovereignty and to encourage payment of the Honor Tax.

★ Participation in the Honor Tax is simple: determine how much you wish to pay and contact the governing authority of the tribe on whose land you live or work to figure out how best to send them the tax. If you don't know which tribe or nation to contact, do a little research and find out!

★ You can sign up to pay your Honor Tax on the project website: www.HonorTax.org.

★ Check out the Honor Tax Networking Group on this website to stay informed or get involved.

Community Skillshares

In our consumption driven society many of us have forgotten the skills necessary for self-sufficiency and autonomy. There is a growing resurgence of interest in these skills, but often community empowerment is still left out of the equation: what good does it do us to learn to take care of ourselves in isolation or for purely selfish reasons? We need to re-awaken our communal preservation instincts!

Since 2005 Democracy Unlimited has hosted free Community Skillshare events, offering the opportunity for neighbors to teach and learn from each other about a wide-range of valuable skills including herbal first aid, sock darning, changing your car's oil, baking break, bike maintenance, putting a website online, making tamales, saving and starting seeds, sewing outdoor clothes, canning, making mead and beer, and many, many more.

Now instead of an annual event, we host a workshop each month at our Pancake Breakfast to spread the skills around the entire year.

★ To find out about upcoming Skillshare Workshops, check our Upcoming Events calendar.

★ If you have a skill to teach, please fill out the workshop application form here.

Economic Democracy and Sustainable Alternatives

Humboldt County Independent Business Alliance (HumIBA)

Independent Business Alliances are a proven tool for protecting unique community character, ensuring continued opportunities for entrepreneurs, building local economic strength, and preventing the displacement of locally-owned businesses by chains.

HumIBA has four main areas of focus:

1) Informing citizens about the value of community-based businesses and their importance to the local economy, culture and social fabric. To that end, it annually publishes the Local Options Directory, a listing of Humboldt-based independent businesses.

2) Strengthening the voice of the locally-owned independent business community by creating strong relationships with local government and the media.

3) Elevating the profile of our community-based businesses through group branding and advertising to help level the playing field with national chains.

4) Developing and supporting policies that promote community-rooted enterprise.

In this way, HumIBA seeks to support local economic democracy through support of both businesses and policies that place power over important economic decisions in the hands of community members, and creates a viable sustainable system for doing community-minded business in Humboldt County.

★ Help support independent businesses by using your Local Options Directory!

★ If you own a local business, make sure you're in the Directory by signing up at www.HumIBA.org.

★ Check out the HumIBA on this website to stay informed or get involved.

Note: The HumIBA was started as a project of Democracy Unlimited, but now it is a separate organization. We still share office space with the HumIBA.

Food and Democracy Project

The Food and Democracy Project seeks to lessen the dependence of the Humboldt community on corporate agribusiness by connecting them with healthier, more democratic food systems.

To that end, we partner with Green Fire Farm in Hoopa to coordinate a Community Supported Agriculture program with drop-off locations in both Eureka and Arcata. We also provide a Eureka drop site for Neukom Family Farm of Willow Creek. We also help to encourage participation in other CSA farms, as well as community gardens and other sustainable and democratic food systems.

Twice a year we partner with Redwood Roots Farm to hold a Food and Democracy workshop. The workshop challenges participants to consider the possibilities for reclaiming our decision-making authority over our food system and potential individual and collective action.

★ Find out more about our partnership with Green Fire Farm, or sign up for a share.

★ Check out our complete list of all the CSA Farms in Humboldt County.

★ Check out the Food and Democracy Networking Group on this website to stay informed or get involved.

Organizing Skills and Training

Internship Program

We provide intensive training and hands-on experience for two interns every spring, summer, and fall. Interns provide valuable support for us while gaining the skills they need to pursue a wide variety of organizing opportunities. Local, national, and international students have all participated in our internship program, and gone on to help build the democracy movement both locally and abroad.

★ Click here for more information including dates and application instructions.

★ Local supporters of Democracy Unlimited can help our internship program flourish by offering financial support or by providing host housing for out-of-the-area interns. If you would like to be an intern host, please contact David.

Monthly Organizing Skills Trainings

We host monthly organizing skills trainings for community members of all skill levels. Come learn methods for everything from holding better meetings, doing media work, tabling and volunteer outreach to running canvasses, fundraising, and coalition building.

We believe that skills are a form of power; come empower yourself to be as effective as you can in working for social change.

★ Trainings are the second Tuesday of each month, from 6:00-7:30pm at the Duck House in Eureka.

★ Click here for a list of all topics and more information.

Challenging Corporate Rule and Asserting Community Rights

Arcata Committee on Democracy and Corporations

The CDC, or Arcata Committee on Democracy and Corporations, is an official standing committee established by the Arcata City Council. The CDC seeks to create policies and programs “which ensure democratic control over corporations conducting business within the city, in which ever ways are necessary to ensure the health and well-being of our community and environment.”

Democracy Unlimited helped pass the ballot initiative that brought the CDC into existence and played a lead role in organizing the two Arcata town hall meetings which shaped the formation of the Committee. We continue to provide ongoing organizing support to CDC members. The committee remains a unique and valuable resource for local residents, the only local entity of its kind in the country.

★ To get involved with the CDC, see the official Committee webpage on the City of Arcata site, or attend the monthly meeting: third Tuesdays, 4:30pm, in the Arcata City Council Chambers.

★ You can also help out by letting your City Council members know you support the work of the CDC, including policies brought forward by the CDC like the Formula Retail Ordinance. For more info, contact Jon.

★ Check out the CDC Networking Group on this website to stay informed or get involved.

Asserting Community Rights

In 2006, Democracy Unlimited helped provide leadership for the Humboldt Coalition for Community Rights, an organization that successfully passed the Humboldt County Ordinance to Protect Our Right to Fair Elections and Local Democracy, or Measure T, a county ballot initiative banning non-local corporations from donating to local elections and challenging the legal doctrine of Corporate Personhood.

We continue to look for local issues that can be used to educate and work for greater community and human rights while challenging corporate rights and corporate rule. We also recognize the importance of doing this work in partnership with other communities, and to that end we provide training and consultation for local organizing groups across the nation who are interested in passing legislation that challenges corporate power and asserts community control.

Once a year we also host a weekend-long retreat that brings organizers from across the country to Humboldt County to learn about Measure T and to gain networks, skills and strategies for building a movement for genuine democracy. Creating a network of strong national allies increases our own ability to pass and defend truly democratic laws here in Humboldt.

★ Help support our Deep Democracy Retreat by hosting visiting organizers in your home or by volunteering the weekend of. To help out, email us.

★ Interested in bringing Democracy Unlimited to your community to challenge corporate rule and assert your town's right to democratic self-governance? Contact Kaitlin.

Move to Amend

We are a part of a broad coalition of grassroots groups and national organizations that are asserting a bold call to amend the Constitution to restore the power of people over corporations.

Since the Supreme Court's January 2010 ruling on Citizens United v FEC, several different groups have amassed to challenge the decision. The Campaign to Legalize Democracy is the only group taking a broad, grassroots, movement-building approach. And we are the only group that has done the work to ensure that we are multi-racial, geographically and ethnically diverse, and gender-balanced in our leadership.

At Democracy Unlimited we believe it is time we confront the entire current Constitutional framework that puts the "rights" of property above the rights of people. It's time to make the promise of democracy a reality. We also see this moment as an opportunity to continue building a grassroots movement to assert democratic local control over corporations.

★ To sign the petition of support for the Constitutional amendment, or to learn more, check out the Move to Amend campaign website.

★ Check out the Humboldt Move to Amend Campaign Network on this website to stay informed or get involved.