East Wind Community is an intentional community located in the Missouri Ozarks. Founded in 1973, it is a secular and democratic community in which members hold all communities assets in common. Each member is also given food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education, and a monthly stipend. All major decisions are made by direct democratic processes and most positions in the community are elected.
East Wind Community owns 1,045 acres (4.23 km2) of land and several businesses. The community is located off Route 160 on the southern end of county road 547 in Ozark County just outside Tecumseh, Missouri.
Their stated goal is peace, social justice, and economic and social democracy. The name was taken from a quote by Mao Zedong, which was along the lines of "The East Wind shall prevail over the West."
The East Wind Community has several income sources including a nut butter business named East Wind Nutbutters that generates $500,000 annually. The community manufactures roasted peanuts, peanut butter, cashew butter, almond butter and tahini as well as a peanut butter and a tahini that are organic. In addition they produce "Utopian Rope Sandals", also known as "Utopes". They used to produce handmade drums through Slackjaw Percussion. Members are required to work a certain number of hours and income from the businesses is used to support the community.
Prospective members are selected by a membership team and are then invited for a three-week visitor period, at the end of which they may become provisional members, barring the existence of too many concerns within the community. Following a one year provisional membership full members have the opportunity to call for a vote on any new member who may either be too disruptive or who is failing to do their fair share of the labor. There is also an associate status for people who do not wish to make a full commitment to the community. A provisional member has an option to take a leave. If during the first two weeks as a provisional member this leave may be up to a year long.
East Wind is a member of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, which also includes the communities Twin Oaks, Sandhill Farm, and several others. There are many community conferences and labor exchanges between the communities, and there is a fund which all the communities pay into to help cover any major medical expenses.
Members live in dorm style buildings and there is a central dining hall, laundry and shower house. There are also several personal shelters designated as doubles for couples and visitors. Common spaces for recreational activities including computers also exist.
National Geographic covered the community in their August 2005 issue.
Famous quotes containing the words east, wind and/or community:
“The very nursery tales of this generation were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from west to east; now expanded into the “tale divine” of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You are wind in a stark tree,
you are the stark tree unbent,
you are a strung bow,
you are an arrow.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“I do not mean to imply that the good old days were perfect. But the institutions and structure—the web—of society needed reform, not demolition. To have cut the institutional and community strands without replacing them with new ones proved to be a form of abuse to one generation and to the next. For so many Americans, the tragedy was not in dreaming that life could be better; the tragedy was that the dreaming ended.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)