To everyone who can help
This request is now made to all of you.
We do not ask any one person to provide everything. We ask each person to consider honestly what they can do.
If you possess suitable land, please open part of it to life.
If you can purchase land, please help acquire it.
If you administer land on behalf of a government, council, faith, charity, company or trust, please identify what can be released.
If you understand law, please help protect the land permanently.
If you can provide small homes, water, energy, sanitation, accessibility, food production or care for nature, please bring that knowledge.
If you cannot provide land or money but know somebody who can, please carry this letter to them.
If you can do only one small thing, please do that one thing and ask another person to follow suit.
One person may open the land. Another may protect it in trust. Another may build a modest home. Another may establish water. Another may grow food. Another may help resolve a disagreement. Another may simply sit peacefully beside somebody who has forgotten what safety feels like.
Together, these small acts could create somewhere real.
Open the lands
We ask that suitable lands be opened voluntarily and peacefully, without displacing the people, animals, plants or natural systems already living there.
The purpose is not to seize land or replace one form of domination with another. It is to release land from permanent exclusion and place it into the permanent care of life.
The first place could be small: a few simple, safe and accessible homes; shared land for growing food; clean water; sanitation; renewable energy where possible; quiet space; restored habitat; and enough common ground for friendship without forcing constant social contact.
People should be free to participate in community without losing the right to privacy, solitude and rest.
Nobody should be another person’s master. Nobody should gain control over another because they supplied money, land, labour, food, medicine or shelter. A gift that demands obedience is not freedom.
An eternal guarantee
We ask for more than temporary permission. We ask for an enduring moral and legal guarantee that the land will remain a refuge for life.
It should be protected in perpetuity—as permanently as human law can provide—through a community land trust, protected foundation, binding covenant, secure long-term lease or another structure that prevents the land from later being taken back for speculation, private profit or control.
Its permanent promise should be:
This land is held for life. Its purpose may not be sold away. Nobody may use shelter to dominate another person, and nobody may be abandoned into homelessness.
A person should not lose their home because they become poor, disabled, old, ill, overwhelmed or unable to work. Shelter should not depend upon religious belief, political allegiance, social status or obedience to a benefactor.
If serious conflict means that people cannot safely remain together, separation may sometimes be necessary. But separation must never mean abandonment. Every person must still have somewhere safe to go.
No honest promise can remove every danger from human life. Love itself cannot be forced. But we can permanently protect the conditions in which safety, love, care, friendship, freedom and understanding are allowed to grow.
That is the eternal guarantee being requested: not a claim that difficulty will never arise, but a promise that when it does, nobody will be discarded.
A peaceful way through conflict
Conflict should first be resolved through communication, time, distance and understanding.
Any person who becomes unable to continue safely should be able to use one universal word:
OVERWHELMED
It may be whispered, spoken, screamed, shouted, sung, written, signed or chanted. However it is communicated, it means:
“I cannot safely process this interaction. Please stop and give me space.”
If able, the overwhelmed person may sit down and repeat the word so that others understand what is happening.
Everyone who can safely do so should stop arguing, questioning, approaching, touching, following, surrounding or filming them. Voices should be lowered. A clear way out and somewhere quiet should be provided.
One calm person may ask whether medical help, the police, a trusted person or complete quiet is needed. No further explanation should be demanded while the person remains overwhelmed.
The word pauses the conflict. It does not decide who is right, erase harm or remove responsibility. It creates enough space to prevent an overwhelmed human being from being pushed beyond their capacity. Communication can resume later, when everyone involved is capable of listening and responding safely.
If violence occurs or somebody faces immediate danger, the police and emergency services remain available. Their first purpose should be to protect life, create safety and de-escalate the situation.
We are supposed to be civilised. We should be able to recognise distress and allow a person to pause before fear becomes violence.
Freedom without dominance
Freedom does not mean freedom to harm, exploit, frighten or neglect others.
It means freedom from unnecessary domination. It means that rules exist only where they are genuinely needed to protect people, other living beings and the land itself.
Rules should be clear, minimal, understandable, supported by evidence and developed with the consent of those affected. They should remain open to questioning and review. Safeguarding should protect people without becoming surveillance. Care should support people without turning into control.
Every resident should have an equal voice. Knowledge should be shared. Decisions should be explained. Disagreements should be approached with curiosity before judgement.
Nobody should rule simply because they are richer, louder, stronger, more educated or better connected.
Please follow suit
To every person who answers this request: please do not let your action stand alone.
If you open one piece of land, ask another landowner to open another.
If you fund one home, ask another person to fund the next.
If you create one protected community, share what was learned so that another community can begin more easily.
Let one peaceful refuge become ten, then one hundred, then enough that every living person knows there is somewhere they may go.
A civilisation should be able to guarantee more than survival through fear. It should guarantee that when somebody is exhausted, displaced, frightened or overwhelmed, they will not be cast out of life.
We ask for quiet mornings, open ground, simple homes, food growing from cared-for soil, places where children may be safe, places where older and disabled people may rest, places where nature is protected and places where friendship is not something that must be purchased.
We ask for somewhere to contribute according to our abilities and rest according to our needs.
We ask for somewhere we are allowed to exist without fear.
This is not a request for luxury, power or riches.
It is a request from life to life:
Please open one door. Please open suitable land. Please protect it forever. Please help others follow.
We would like to live too, please.
I ask for everyone who needs such a place, and I ask for myself. If I may also be welcomed—with my tired and battered body and bones—I would be deeply grateful for the chance to rest, recover, contribute what I can and experience the beauty of being alive again.
There is no shame in begging when the request is made for peace.
God even begs us to choose love.
So, with humility, love, care, friendship, freedom and understanding, I beg everyone able to help:
Please hear us.
Please open the lands to life.
Please make the guarantee enduring.
Please do what you can—and then ask another person to follow suit.
A place to go. A word that creates space. A peaceful way back to one another.
Let friendship cross every border that domination and fear have built.