Kila Donovan
Kila Donovan, co-founder of Firestorm Cafe & Books and Asheville LETS
Kila Donovan is an Asheville community organizer and musician whose work contributes to the development of social spaces and economic systems aimed at facilitating individual and collective empowerment on a local level. Through extensive travel and volunteer work, she has gathered and applied tools from varying fields such as permaculture, ceremony, local currency, worker-owned enterprise, mass-mobilization logistics organizing, intentional community, theater and consensus process decision-making. She enjoys living in a world with lessening dependence on centralized, oppressive institutions and increasing occurrences of delicious, homemade pies.
Building Community Resilience Through Economic Mutualism
It is now commonly accepted that the Capitalist Era is coming to a close, and not a moment too soon. Out of sync with human need and ecological reality, state and corporate governance structures have proven themselves unable to adequately manage the crises that they have created. We believe that humanity’s best hope lies with the growth of a third sector: the social economy, comprised of networks, cooperatives and other mutual organizations that operate for the benefit of stakeholders and their communities. These enterprises are inspired by the elegance and resilience of mutualism in the biological world, a form of symbiosis in which two organisms each derive individual benefit from their relationship. Embracing a “small is beautiful” approach, participants discard the reliance of mass society on rigid hierarchies and social coercion in favor of horizontal and voluntary organizational patterns. Acting locally with friends and colleagues, we have sought to realize the principles of economic mutualism through two projects: the Asheville Local Exchange Trading System (Asheville LETS), a community service-exchange network, and Firestorm Cafe & Books, a socially focused worker-cooperative. These collaborations are part of a growing economy of relationships that is enriching the lives of participants and preparing the broader community for a re-localized future.
