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Paxus Calta

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Calta at a protest at the Temelín Nuclear Power Station in the Czech Republic in 1996

Paxus Calta (born 1957), born Earl Schuyler "Sky" Flansburgh, is an American political activist, communitarian and writer. He has been involved with the anti-nuclear movement and is a member of the Twin Oaks Community.

Biography

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Calta was born as Earl Schuyler Flansburgh, or "Sky" as a nickname, in 1957. Calta studied engineering and economics at Cornell University, where he served as a student member of the Board of Trustees and as a member of the Quill and Dagger society. Afterward he worked as a software designer, helping to found and ultimately sell two software consulting firms.[1] In 1982, he changed his name to Paxus Calta. In 1988, he hitchhiked on sailboats across the Pacific,[2][3] settled briefly in Australia and then moved on to Hawai'i where he worked for Makai Ocean Engineering. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Calta moved to the Netherlands and worked for The World Information Service on Energy (WISE[1]) in Amsterdam.

Calta was invited by a Czech deep ecology organization, Hnutí DUHA, to run the international campaign against the Temelín Nuclear Power Station from Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1991, which remained his primary home base for most of the 1990s and from where he campaigned against nuclear power. During this time, he "moved up" in the Friends of the Earth hierarchy.[2] In 1998, Calta moved to Twin Oaks Community, located in Virginia in the United States.

Calta is a proponent of polyamory and writes[4] on the topic. In 2004, he wrote a chapter of the book The Impossible Will Take a Little While (compiled by Paul Rogat Loeb), in which he detailed a successful campaign launched by an 18-year-old to overthrow the Bulgarian government.[5]

Political activism

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Throughout the 1990s, Calta was involved in campaigns to stop nuclear power plants in 6 countries in Central Europe. Calta was the Chair of the international campaign commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.[6] and co-managed the FAIRE project (Free & Applied Internships in Renewables and Efficiency) which trained Central European activists in English language skills, campaigning and then placed them in western environmental groups as interns. The FAIRE project was funded by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is affiliated with the German Green Party. Hnutí DUHA invited Calta to be the lead international anti-nuclear campaigner after he left WISE. In 1994, Calta presented materials before the US House of Representative Subcommittee on International Development to block the Export-Import Bank of the United States from funding the Temelín reactor.[7]

Calta initiated the Clean Energy Brigade project in the early 1990s in the Czech Republic in which local activists installed energy saving hardware in residential homes and public buildings at materials cost in exchange for documentation of reduced energy use.[8] The program was later expanded to 11 Central and East European countries and is now called the International Energy Brigades.[9] In aggregate, the efficiency upgrades from this project are abating thousands of tons of CO2 annually.[8]

More recently, he campaigned against a planned new reactor at North Anna in Virginia and was arrested[10][11] and jailed[12] for protests there. On December 4, 2009 Calta critiqued Stewart Brand on NPR on the merits of using nuclear power to stop climate change.[13] Calta served on the board of directors of the anti-nuclear group Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) from 1997 til 2010, and as the president of the board for the last 3 years.[citation needed]

After the August 23, 2001, Virginia earthquake which closed down the North Anna nuclear power plant, Calta and others founded the organization "Not on Our Fault Line", for which Calta has been repeatedly a spokesperson.[14][15][16]

On November 30, 2011, Calta was arrested with 17 others in Charlottesville, Virginia as part of the Occupy Charlottesville protest.[17]

In late 2013, Calta co-founded the Point A project designed to start income sharing communities in urban centers on the East Coast of the US. These communities would be part of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities. In 2015, the Point A project launched its first new income sharing project in Washington DC called Compersia.[18]

On 16 January 2017, Certa presented an interactive workshop on activism at Elon University.[19] His effort was to describe methods that can be used, and motivate participants to choose their own causes. But his perspective was slanted as un-American when critically covered by the American Lens.[20] His response to their critique provides a minor insight into the substance of his character: "Appreciate being targeted".[21] In the summer of 2018, BBC 4 filmed part of their Utopia series at Twin Oaks, Calta was the principal guide.[22]

The Flip Project

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The Flip Project brings out-of-state activists, organizers, street performers and artists to referendums and US Senate elections of national importance. It is self funded, independent and disproportionately effective in getting voter turn out when compared with conventional door-to-door canvassing.

In 2018, Calta organized a group of intentional community members to canvass for the Florida state constitutional amendment restoring ex-felon voting rights. The referendum made the 60% threshold to be enacted in to law. Governor DeSantis blocked the referendum on a technicality cutting 1.4 million adults from the voting roles.

In 2020, Calta organized another group of activists in an effort to unseat US Senator Susan Collins in Maine, by supporting Green Party Candidate Lisa Savage. Because Maine uses rank choice voting, third party candidates are not spoilers as they are in "normal elections". After losing in Maine, the Flip team went to Georgia, where they organized concerts, tiktok videos, free ride to the polls promotion, vote curing. Both Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their very close races.

In 2022, Calta organized another group of activist to return for the re-election of Rev [Raphael Warnock] which was the only state wide election won by a Democrat that cycle.

Calta is already organizing for the 2024 election.

Lifestyle activism

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Calta authored a pamphlet about polyamory which has been translated into 5 languages.[23][24] Calta considers himself an anarchist[25] and is the principal organizer of the Fingerbook Propaganda Project, which produces and distributes "Fingerbooks" (small handbooks) on consensus decision-making,[26] designing revolutions, polyamory, and intentional communities.

He has also been a member of Twin Oaks Community since 1998, serving as the community's recruiting manager, manager of outside work and a general manager of Twin Oaks Hammocks, Inc. He has appeared on both CNN and Voice of America videos discussing the community.[27][28]

Family

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Calta is the son of the late Earl R. Flansburgh, a Boston architect, and the older brother of John Flansburgh, of rock band They Might Be Giants. His grandfather is Ralph Hospital through his mother, Polly Flansburgh, who is the founder and president of Boston by Foot, which gives architectural walking tours of the city of Boston.

References

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  1. ^ a b Reichlin, Linus (28 October 1994). "Der Aktivist". Die Zeit. Archived from the original on September 24, 2016.
  2. ^ a b "The Other American Dream". Washington Post Sunday Magazine Page W12. November 15, 1998. Archived from the original on April 11, 2012. Retrieved October 29, 2010.
  3. ^ "Ten Different Captains". Random Roads Magazine. February 10, 2010. Archived from the original on March 7, 2013. Retrieved February 9, 2013.
  4. ^ "With Open Hands: A Handbook to Open Relationships" (PDF). 1995–96. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2014-09-14. Retrieved 2014-09-13.
  5. ^ "The Impossible will take a little while". Archived from the original on 29 January 2011. Retrieved 25 January 2011. Paxus Calta-Star—'Not Deterred': Brief powerful vignette of an 18-year-old who launched the overthrow of Bulgaria's dictatorship
  6. ^ "Statement of the Chernobyl 10th Anniversary Campaign". WISE News Communique. June 16, 1995. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved January 27, 2010.
  7. ^ Transcripts of hearing on US Export-Import Bank before the Subcommittee on International Development, Finance, Trade, and Monetary Policy of the Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, House of Representatives, February 23, 1994"[1]
  8. ^ a b The Clean Energy Brigades Camp - Positive Action Against Temelin Archived 2021-10-17 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 13 March 2022.
  9. ^ Wiser Directory: International Energy Brigades. Accessed 13 March 2022.
  10. ^ "Climate crisis energizes radical environmentalists". Chicago Tribune. November 28, 2008. Archived from the original on April 21, 2012. Retrieved January 27, 2010.
  11. ^ "Radical Greens Reject Most Climate-Change Solutions". Fox News. December 1, 2008. Archived from the original on February 5, 2011. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
  12. ^ "Nuclear plant protester must serve 5 days in jail". Fredricksburgh Freelance Star. Jan 13, 2010.
  13. ^ "Changing Climate Change". NPR podcast - To the best of our Knowledge. Dec 4, 2009. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015.
  14. ^ "North Anna Remains Closed as Demonstrators Protest". NBC 29 Charlottesville. October 21, 2011. Archived from the original on October 22, 2011. Retrieved October 22, 2011.
  15. ^ "Group protests nuke plant outside Dominion HQ". Bloomberg/BusinessWeek. September 27, 2011. Archived from the original on January 18, 2013.
  16. ^ "Louisa group to protest at Dominion today". Fredricksberg Freelance Star. September 27, 2011. Archived from the original on October 4, 2011. Retrieved October 22, 2011.
  17. ^ "Occupy ousted: Cops take naked lady, 15 others". The Hook. December 1, 2011. Archived from the original on December 3, 2011. Retrieved December 10, 2011.
  18. ^ Price-Waldman, Sam. "The Pros and Cons of Living in an Income-Sharing Commune". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2017-02-11. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
  19. ^ Paxus Calta to lead 'Imaginative Activism' workshop on Jan. 16 Archived 2022-03-09 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed 13 March 2022.
  20. ^ Dillon, A. P. (2017-01-16). "Elon University Hosts "Imaginative Activism" Social Justice Workshop ⋆ American Lens". American Lens. Archived from the original on 2018-04-26. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
  21. ^ Appreciating being targeted Archived 2021-04-18 at the Wayback Machine. 4 December 2017, Blog by Paxus on Wordpress.com. Accessed 13 March 2021.
  22. ^ "BBC 4 Utopia in Search of the Dream". 2017-09-24. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  23. ^ "Czech Translation of With Open Hands". jogin.cz. Archived from the original on 2010-09-08. Retrieved 2010-01-27.
  24. ^ "German Translation of With Open Hands" (PDF). einsfeld.de. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-07-18. Retrieved 2010-01-27.
  25. ^ paxus (2018-05-08). "why i am an anarchist". your passport to complaining. Retrieved 2023-05-22.
  26. ^ Jan H; Paxus Calta. "A Handbook for Direct Democracy and the Consensus Decision Process" (PDF). Zhaba Facilitators Collective. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 14, 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
  27. ^ "Rural community a Model "Eco-village"". CNN. April 22, 2010. Archived from the original on December 30, 2010. Retrieved April 25, 2010.
  28. ^ "Virginia Commune Still Draws Members After 40 Years". Voice of America. August 21, 2009. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21.
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