(a note from the GrassRoots Team)

As we land on the shortest day of the year and winter officially begins we see 2016 coming to a close, we’re grateful and ready for a bright new year! As we contemplate this year and look inside our hearts we find our new year pledge to you – to create more beauty, more magic, more love, more community.

We want to assure all of you that we’re here for you, and in the midst of worldly challenge and change we’re going to keep doing what we do– celebrating the beauty in life, bringing amazing music to our stages, creating a space for connection, getting you outside among the big sky and the brilliant trees, putting down dance floors so you can shake it out, shake it off and remember what fuels you, what feeds you.

We couldn’t do what we do without you and we thank you, you inspire us, you keep us going and we want to help keep you going, keep you feeling the love, seeing the beauty and moving to the music. From the bottom of our hearts we wish you a very happy holiday and an inspiring new year, see you in 2017!

Last spring, the GrassRoots Festival organization partnered with Democracy 2.1, also known as D21, to create the GrassRoots TownHall where anyone can express their opinion about the festival and goings-on in the world around us. D21 came to us from our festival friends in Miami, based in the Czech Republic it is the creation of mathematician Karel Janacek, who has also spent several years fighting corruption in government there, he invented D21 as a system to help curve future corruption in their multi-party democracy. D21 offers an algorithm designed to achieve a better consensus in voting processes by incorporating multiple yes votes and also a no vote when choosing among multiple options or proposals. After being introduced to democratic reform by our work with Ben Cohen and his “Stamp Money Out Of Politics” campaign GrassRoots was of course excited about the possibilities of better government based on a greater consensus than the simple 51 percent wins all system now in place in the United States.

We now have the results from our D21 polls in the spring! We wanted to share them with you and let you know that we are very interested in the results. We hope to continue working with D21, and will hope to poll on a yearly basis, as well as do what we can with the information we get from the polls. This is your festival and it’s great to know what you think! Voting is important, our voices – all of them – are important!

Here are the links to the results:

How do you think the festival should address drug use? – 274 voters

To improve our democracy, which of the following ideas do we most urgently need? – 259 voters

What steps would you support to resolve the debate around LGBT discrimination (HB 2)? – 286 voters

What issues would you most like to see GrassRoots support? – 282 voters

What kinds of music would you like to see more or less of at GrassRoots? – 281 voters

See previous Festival Desk post about our involvement with Democracy 2.1.

Find out more about Democracy 2.1!

We are creating a way for the Shakori Hills GrassRoots community to stand in solidarity with, and show support for the Indigenous-led movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. We believe in this movement and we believe Water is Life.

At the Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival October 6-9 we’ll be collecting supplies and donations to help sustain the camps at Standing Rock throughout the winter. Ed Griffin and Luke Miller have graciously agreed to transport the supplies to North Dakota. Any money raised will go towards purchasing needed supplies for the camps as well as help with the transportation costs.

If you are interested in donating supplies they are mostly looking for items to support through the cold weather months. Below are the camp Amazon Wish Lists that are updated regularly. We ask you to please check out these lists to get a sense of what is needed, the idea is to bring what they truly need at this time!

Amazon Wish Lists:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/ref=sr_1_1_acs_wl_1?cid=A1ZID74L1YUB15&ie=UTF8&qid=1472512327&sr=8-1-acs

https://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/196PVIWRDX1M4

You can also donate directly to the legal defense funds here:
https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/red-warrior-camp-legal-fund-nodapl

https://fundrazr.com/d19fAf?ref=sh_25rPQa

More information on the movement can be found here:

Sacred Stone Camp

NODAPL Solidarity

At the festival we’ll be accepting donations in a trailer parked next to the Tractor Shuttle tent in the parking area. We’ll update here with info on when donations can be dropped off, thinking we’ll set hours each day for this, stay tuned and check back.

If you’d like to make cash donations you can do so at the Coffee Barn throughout the festival, there will be a clearly marked box to do this at.

See our Facebook Invitation for updates.

submitted by community member, Lyle Estil

I’ve watched Shakori Hills rise from the earth. For years. Cobbled together by little more than passion, vision, and an assembled army of believers. To some it is largely known for its torrential rains and mud slides, but to others it is the very model of a successful grassroots endeavor.

I’ve been a “vendor” for Shakori. They have run some of their fleet on biodiesel made by Piedmont Biofuels, where I work. I’ve supplied some of their acts with fuel to get their buses to the next town. At Piedmont Biofuels we have been “fuel attendants to the stars.”

I’ve also sold fuel to festival attendees—occasionally doing “concierge fills,” where we pluck a diesel car from the parking lot, fill it with biodiesel, and send it on its way. We were once a program “sponsor”—advertising “Shakori Fills.”

At Shakori I have sold books I have written, and spirits we have made at the Fair Game Beverage Company.

I’ve “performed” at Shakori—giving talks on backyard biodiesel production at the Sustainability Pavilion, and dragging our Clean Technology Demonstration trailer out to show festival attendees.

When Shakori needed to deploy some “alternative” financing to buy the land that houses the festival site, my wife Tami and I made a donation toward the down payment. When the time came to make a loan, we helped out on that too.

I’ve “volunteered” for the festival, dragging my big chess pieces to the grounds–repairing them and washing the mud off them twice a year.

Despite my many connections to the festival, I don’t think of myself as a vendor. Or a sponsor. Or a performer. Or a financier. I don’t consider myself a volunteer.

My self image when it comes to Shakori is that of “attendee.”

I camp. I dance. I visit the seemingly endless people I know on the scene. When the festival comes to town I like to vanish into its midst, and consume all that it has to offer. I leave my world for the better part of a week and immerse myself in the event.

Each time Monday slams up against me at the end of the festival, I return to my world with what I refer to as “The Post Shakori Let Down Blues.” I try to shake them off by taking the spirit of Shakori with me into my non-festival life. In the world I want to inhabit, Shakori’s undeniable grassroots power should be an everyday occurrence, rather than just a couple of time a year…

Hello and welcome! We’ve been working hard this summer to make our home on the Internet your home too. We hope that those of you who know us well and come to the festivals will enjoy the new layout, and we hope too that you new folks and friends enjoy it as well! We think our layout is easier to navigate and our store a better online shopping experience. Of course, nothing online could be as fun as actually being together, outside, amongst the music, trees, and stars. But, we hope that by visiting our website, you’ll get a step closer to actually being here.

We’d love your feedback! If you like it, let us know. If you have some thoughts on how we could make it better, feel free to share those as well! Send us a message to shakorihills@grassrootsfest.org.

Have fun exploring, and we hope you will decide to come see us this fall!