Tuned in, not out

Counterculture ideals bring activists together at Raleigh collective

RALEIGH -- The living arrangement has a name, The Mayview Collective, which conjures '60s-era images of backyard chickens and overgrown vegetable patches. Living in a duplex with three bedrooms on each side, members of the Collective kick in $325 per month toward rent, utilities and a reserve fund for household expenses. Not long ago, they bought a vacuum cleaner.

The back side of the home includes a kitchen where volunteers cook meals for the homeless and a space where more volunteers help people fix their bicycles.

Within walking distance of Cameron Village, the people who live here carry a different worldview than their neighbors. Their relationships -- with one another and the community -- seem to carry the influence of a prior generation.

But don't call them hippies. By and large, members of this group identify themselves as anarchists.

"By definition, anarchy is 'rule by no one,' " says Emily Tokarski, a Mayview member. "The basic idea is that people know what they need better than the white males in power."

It's not difficult to see, though, how the duplex, with its multicolored shutters, gives a certain impression, and how neighbors have come to assume the hippie-ness of the folks who live there.

Plus, they do have backyard chickens and overgrown vegetable patches.

The Mayview Collective is just one facet of a larger nonprofit organization, ACRe, or Action for Community in Raleigh.

Founded in 2005, ACRe aims to be a center for progressive and radical activity in Raleigh. On its Web site, the organization describes itself thusly: "ACRe blurs the line between public and private space making activism not something we do in our spare time, but some1thing that we live."

To that end, there are six bedrooms available for rent as part of the Mayview Collective, named for the street on which it stands. The lower level of the home is devoted, in large part, to community activities.

Volunteers for Food Not Bombs, an international movement that prepares food that might otherwise go to waste, cook in the back kitchen on Sundays and hand out meals in Moore Square.

The group 1304 Bikes holds open bike workshops where riders can come to fix their bicycles, with help from volunteers and a room full of tools. There is a room devoted to the "American Waste Distro," where visitors can pick up pamphlets devoted to ending Selective Service and guerrilla gardening, or buy a CD from a band that shares similar politics.

A perfect fit

Tokarski, 22, moved into the home around the beginning of the year, after finishing college in Michigan. She came to Raleigh to work with AmeriCorps, found out about the Mayview Collective through Craigslist, and still remembers what she thought when she first saw the ad: "Man, that sounds perfect."

Tokarski, who studied photography and philosophy, wanted to live in a home committed to social and environmental justice. In broad terms, that means "working against oppression of all forms -- sexism, racism, classism."

She describes herself as an anarchist, although not everyone involved with the goings-on at 2419 Mayview does. In particular, the folks who work on the bikes seem less politically motivated.

Anarchy is not about chaos, Tokarski says. Rather, it emphasizes smaller communities and "providing for each other without having to depend on corporations."

Even with that definition, anarchy is complicated. See the answer given by 17-year-old Ryan Moore, when asked to describe his political leanings.

"Anarchist syndicalism."

He doesn't live in the home but runs the Distro (short for "distribution"). When asked to explain a little more about this political philosophy, he began answering the question with one of his own.