About us
Bay Area Solarpunks is eco-futurist, optimistic, and rebellious.
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We envision a future where people live in harmony with nature in autonomous communities organized as participatory democracies.
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We oppose all forms of exploitation of nature and people.
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We are part of the global Solarpunk Movement.
Our immediate goal is to build a Solarpunk community in the Bay Area, discussing, researching, and critiquing environmental, social, political, and cultural issues. We have monthly discussions, a blog with essays, fiction, and art, a book club, and movie nights.
Our midrange goal is to create an alternative community with our own beliefs, culture, permaculture gardens, third spaces, and governance.
The global Solarpunk Movement’s long term goal is to save civilization from itself by replacing capitalism and colonialism with a new world of democratically run communities living symbiotically with the natural world.
Upcoming events
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Capitalist dehumanization and techno-fascism or Solarpunk
·OnlineOnlineCapitalist dehumanization and techno-fascism or Solarpunk
Join us for an open discussion on:
Is capitalism turning us into Non-Player Characters?
How do we democratize and humanize: work; social media; dating and personal relationships; neighborhoods; education; countries?
How do AI applications and profit-driven social media companies dehumanize work, dating, and personal relationships? Isolate and alienate us? Atomize society and make us vulnerable to dictatorship?
How does AI enable dictatorship? Digital surveillance and pre-crime identification; Personally targeted political propaganda; Addictive cultural distractions
How the billionaire Tech Bros’ beliefs reveal their contempt for humanity, narcissism, and push for CEO style dictatorship—longtermism, singulitarianism, transhumanism, techno-solutionism, and Dark Enlightenment techno-authoritarianism.
Zoom Meeting Time: Mar 17, 2026 19:30 Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Suggested videos:
Alienation 5 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30HeJvE9KCg
Why Technology is Enslaving and Dehumanizing Us 19 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVPZsJwDh5I
Why Palantir is More Dangerous Than You Think 9 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJbVQ4Ip-bQ24 attendees
Podcast club: Are we too flawed for solarpunk to work?
·OnlineOnlineIs human nature too flawed for a Solarpunk world to work?
Join us Thursday, Mar 26, 2026 at 19:30 Pacific Time, for an online discussion of human nature and civilization, including our present situation.
Are humans too individualistic, violent, competitive, domineering for a cooperative, community-based economic democracy like Solarpunk? Have there always been exploiters and exploited, and is it in our genes to despoil the natural world? Two podcasts describe how humans lived in egalitarian communities, as hunter-gatherers, farmers, and the earliest cities for millenia, and how inequality evolved.
We welcome anyone to come and listen, but to participate in the discussion, listening to the two podcasts is required.
Required podcasts:
A New Understanding of Human History and the Roots of Inequality | David Wengrow, 17 min. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4
and
Is Civilisation About to Collapse? Luke Kemp, segment from minute 10:53 to 25:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzpHT0gj558&t=653sOptional readings and podcasts: The podcasts are discussions of two groundbreaking books, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow; Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp. There are several discussions of these books on Youtube.
Time: Mar 26, 2026 19:30 Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting6 attendees
Past events
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