products meet our community who tells to go back to basics and how special reports x. are to. you know what time. it's easy to look at well in society it's easy to look out at what's going on in politics or society and say well i don't like that like i want to protest against that or you know some political decision or whatever you know whatever happens there's things that it's good to you know the easy to identify

a protest against but. there's got to be a flip side to say well here's what you're against but then what are you in favor of so we talked about you know some people go off to the occupy wall street protests but that in a way is just as important to stay here and keep. you know keep our businesses going well here's the alternative if you don't like the corporations well then you support companies and businesses that are owned by the workers you know so politically that it feels to me like rather than going out and doing something political in a way my life might work just maintaining this place is sort of a political action.

it's hard to locate twenty six philosophically because we operate as a communistic organization and we're sort of a pure pure sort of communism however the way we function is that we're not trying to keep people here and they can't believe we have a leading lesser people who want to join and the only consequence we have for people who don't work their share they get kicked down and so this sort of small scale communism works really well. floats christmas morning so we're having our brunch so everybody in the community. who wants to have a special brunch. here. and then left a lot of people are bringing other things with them to help contribute. because

what happens around christmas is we get a lot of stuff in the mail from their family and friends go. through to. the people you have fruit cakes some things like that and so then they can bring into this brunch and share that. this is in central virginia right between the cities charlottesville and richmond we're about ten miles outside of the town of louisa a very rural environment. there are one hundred people living in twenty six there are ninety four adults and thirteen children. twelfth's was started in one nine hundred sixty seven and has been a robust community ever since then and we have spawned other communities using our

systems we helped start east when community in the jury we helped start acorn community. just down the road and a lot of other communities have adopted our systems and adopted our practices so we developed these robust systems for keeping people equal and equally empowered. i think. they all say that well. i don't feel a constant like advertisements and people get minute by. walking around with bunch of strangers who don't want to look you in the eye and also like you know my resource of the like they put a little. like

a better way for me to live but i'm afraid of living a life so. thanks. for. the work it's so much more fulfilling the more i didn't. feel i was a lot of. crappy jobs for food service firms to most service. and i didn't know the filth. and. laughing so much and it's like feel like everything i do feel. like hoping. and contributing to something bigger.

this is a boiler. boiler takes about five. to heat the water that. people. i think are more focused on quality of life. people here say that we pay ourselves and fresh vegetables which is a nice idea. have a sense of ownership of my work in a way that i didn't. mainstream society the work that i do here directly impacts

the community. community. because of that there is a lot of incentive to do things. and it's very nice. i think i found the place that i was looking for i don't know if. i'll be here for the rest of my life or just. as long as it takes to like. learn to love myself. learn to love the world. i think that there's a lot of opportunity to connect with nature and silence and stillness. if you. hear the. word. or phrase.

why. it's so much. what. social. political. twenty six is it is entirely up to the individual how they relate to any greater being there is no. state religion that the community is mandating and so there are people here who go to a local christian church there are people who celebrate like solstice and equinox like the other holidays like that.

for. feelings. if. you can hear it. he. you know there's. a mind tory. taking care of you so. i really enjoy taking care of. and it's hard it's hard but it's worth it if you're really. capable

and then. we're ready to. take a leadership role in. no it tends to happen is that we have new members come to the community and since there are so many areas of the community and they all need managing we have a kitchen in a kitchen manager and automate once an auto manager and. quickly even new members are asked to be a manager of some area it's a very educational process because each of the managers are expected to provide a service to the community in their area and they're expected to only use the amount of resources that they're budgeted don't go over budget. in every culture there is still an elite and we're twin oaks is trying to do is to get beyond having any sort of elite so everybody who's expected to be responsible

and so we don't have a political elite to keep everybody at the same economic level so we don't have an economic elite and we also everybody has their own relationship to a greater power and so we don't have a religiously. i was born in taiwan. my dad was in the cia and worked in the cia for twenty twenty five years central intelligence agency and so we traveled back and forth. my dad retired from the cia in seventy seven and he wrote his book. cold deadly to see my twenty five years in cia and it is all public information like you didn't reveal

any secrets. but it is critical of the cia's role in the government basically what my dad says in his book is that the cia is a tool of multinational corporations that it's not and. that the cia doesn't gather intelligence it creates propaganda to support american foreign policy. and so what became clear to me is this is life of keeping secrets this was bad and made him unhappy and i think that something changed in music i don't want to live a life where i have to keep secrets. and so i i imagine it had something to do with how it shows to come to twenty six because here everything is there everybody knows my business and a real sad business what we are doing at twenty six is clear and public we're not

keeping any secrets from anybody. and i think that that makes the people who live here happier. than it. would be soon which brightened. the bounds from feinstein pressure. these friends down totty don't come.

to the. science technology innovation all these developments around russia we've got the future covered.

it worked for me. the theme for our new year's eve party is twin oaks and wonderland and so. we're taking some of the chiefs from the book. such as mushrooms and giant ism and we're trying to create that space so when people walk into our living room they're going to see giant mushrooms over their head and they're going to feel like they're very small like alice was when she drank the potion that made her very small. each adult member of the community has a labor obligation that's forty two hours a week and exchange for doing those forty two hours the community covers basically all the costs of living. if all of your medical and your clothing and your housing

your food and insurance and entertainment and transportation basically all of the costs you have so most of the members who live here in most days actually handle any money this is extremely unusual for the united states almost everybody in the country is an adult handles money almost every day and almost everybody who's here almost every day. we have two big businesses hammocks making is one of the businesses one of the big businesses and we also like tofu from soybeans. there are basically no significant scale hammocks production facilities in the united states except for us and the way that we're able to do that. is that we

don't have any managers there were paying fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a year for and so that's why it's possible for cooperate workers cooperative to complete compete with globalized industries in other countries because we don't have this capitalist overhead of the very expensive managers on top it's. a. model of one way that it's possible for production to happen in this country and still be competitive with places like china and. the. nice thing about hammocks were is that if you come in at any time of the day or night and you who work for as long as you like and then when you leave you don't actually have to leave any note or information to the people who are coming after you they can figure out what needs to be done simply by looking at your work and there are no supervisors and no time clocks it's an honor system. tofu is a much more industrial process and there's

a real assembly line and you get scheduled a shift and you need to be there and you need to be working at a pace that keeps the whole assembly line running so if you're if you have a job that's in the middle if you go too slowly and stuff stacks up in the middle and it negatively impacts the people who are after. and if you. see any anyplace after the first location is affected by the speed of the previous locations and you kind of have to keep up and it's quite it's quite a brisk work pace it will be and it's also heavy wet work though after the automation that we're currently investing almost a million dollars to upgrade the facility much less heavy. work it will still be lots of wet work in the two for it will be that is the one of the principal design. elements of the. expansion and improvement he took the business

to reduce the stress and work. it really was a little hard. for me and i have no idea how many people were going to have but i'm going to have a few hundreds of groupies oh well yeah there's going to be a lot of cookies tonight. that's a way to begin the new year. i . don't like. doing here is. like you know.

i can't. all oral or a whole. area we ate. before i moved to twin oaks i actually was an elementary school teacher i have my master's degree in elementary education and i wasn't very happy with the options available to me teaching in public schools or private schools elsewhere because i would always be working with twenty or thirty kids and you just can't can't get to know each kid that well and you can't tailor the curriculum and you never get to know their parents and things like that and you can't follow them you know i would have a kid in my class one year and then they'd be gone and i'd never see them again. you know they haven't. plea. deal but hear it to

know they can stay here as long as their parents live here and i'll be able to work with them as babies and toddlers and teach them history when they get older. you know. well i'm going to order you know more in school and everything that help and then i like pick out my party. yet. there is a whole costume section of comic clothes which is over here. we get all kinds of. contribution.

so this is a custom somebody made for halloween some years back and i really i took a formal new year's party and it was that it was the hit of the pole so this is coming close short for community codes and it is a free clothes lending library doesn't have a librarian so anybody in the community can come up and they can find something that is of their liking and they can take it and they weird until they're tired of it or until it's dirty and then they throw it in the community clothes laundry and somebody else washes it and somebody else dries it and somebody else fixes it if they've banged it up and somebody else brings it up here and puts it in the right location so it can be found again. said certain choices. always seem correct to joe bloggs he quickly. is. in here and so.

so then it. and so would you. just presented with with values. in. mind. that everything i know here homeschooled i have the longest time i've been in public schools about the thirty minutes i travelled a lot when i was a kid. and have and really liked the experience of travel so i would like rohan to have the option. to do anything he was like grown to have the option to do anything he wants so if he wants a career that is someplace else if you want to travel to other countries who are

live in other countries i would like him to be feel that he is competent and capable enough to do that. twenty two to fifty words. three three. or four days before. one of the things i know how to do is how to build. and so i want to make sure that growing knows how to build things too. so he's. even when he was. seventy years old he was using a drill. i

. i'm just trying to figure a little bit in my head. you know.

happy new year that. they are are you doing. happy tonys hello yes can i give you a big hug and that's who. you talking to my much like you know my dad works and stay and i actually do have a mike keenan. it's still great to talk to you couldn't sleep like this can you tell me your life's purpose now yes the secret of life is to love everything as though everything where you. live you can even i'm not saying that because this is a be on t.v. sets.

the left the right and almost every political grouping in between old marching in russia this may day. seems. like the president made a deal coming out of the cold his policy in protest against the presidential votes as the white river believe would point that song until the six bullet details coming up shortly. with egypt set to vote for its new leader the country's vital tourist industry is hoping democratic rule will help it bounce back with concerns however that the islamists growing power could stifle it. and the world's top whistleblower julian assange sure feels more secrets in another blockbuster and diffuse this time though with the new president of tunisia you can watch that later today here on alt.