One of the most rewarding aspects of the 1997 blizzard [in British Colombia, Canada], while acknowledging the damage and the losses, was the way in which we self-organized ourselves on our streets and in our neighbourhoods. The government wasn't there - and in its place, a natural instinct for mutual self-help emerged.

Good government is essential: at its best, it expresses the same spirit of mutual self-help. When not at its best, (which can be often) it becomes an obstacle to community self-organizing, instead of a support. Bureaucracies become self-important, and begin to think they are "in charge", resenting intrusion by 'the public'. Instead of the experience of "we" which happens at the local level, it becomes an experience of "them".

What would happen if we took self-organization a small step further? There will be other crises, whether earthquake or flood, food crisis or economic collapse. When a collective crisis really hits, it is at the street and neighbourhood level that we need to respond. It is at this level that we know each other personally, and can reach each other on foot.

For a start, each street or block could create its own Directory, listing its residents by name and phone number, showing the skills, equipment, interests and enthusiasms that we share. In the old days, we would have known all this simply by hanging out on the street. Today, we have to build this knowledge from scratch.

By building a foundation of shared knowledge, and getting to know each other's names and interests, we also get to trust each other (and to know who cannot be trusted). We are building the social web,  the primary basis of relationship outside the family. From that web, a thousand things can happen.

Without it, a street can be very vulnerable.

In the blizzard, on some streets the web grew quickly, and everyone worked together to clear people's roofs, unblock drains and make sure everyone was ok. On others, not even footpaths were cleared, except to people's own houses. The instinct to work together is there in all of us, but it takes leadership and organizing to bring it out.

This simple thing, working together to help each other, can be the basis of a whole new way of life, transforming communities. We can apply it to growing food together, overcoming poverty, tackling unemployment, local traffic calming, even designing whole new neighbourhood centres, so that we can walk to our local stores and not be trapped in the suburbs, as many were after Christmas. Self-organizing is a huge political principle, for which the government and welfare state are no substitute.

When the little town of Bonaparte, Iowa (population 450) lost its only shop, and saw its life collapsing, the people got together, raised the money among themselves, and re-opened the shop as a community business. From that point on, they have gone from strength to strength.
 In the Swedish village of Husa, when the population fell from 900 to 90 after the copper mine closed down, the village shop closed, and the school was under threat. But the citizens rallied round, writing and presenting a play about their village's history, which was a great success. From that, they went on to persuade the shopkeeper to re-open his shop and since 1979, they have created no less than 15 different co-operatives and associations, to tackle various social, economic and recreational projects. They even bought the mountainside where the copper mine used to be to establish a community-owned ski-lift, with 4 pistes, a restaurant and chalets. Much of the work is done by their own voluntary effort.

In the Stockyards, a declining urban blue collar low-income neighbourhood in Cleveland, Ohio, where unemployment is twice the national average, a community development society has launched an initiative to get computer ownership into 35% of the households, jumpstarting the local culture. By obtaining recycled computers, and setting up a buyers club for low income families, they are already part way there after just a year. There are 1,000 similar tales to be told, where communities are self-organizing themselves. It is one of the oldest principles of nature, if not the oldest - so we ignore it at our peril.

The difficult message we have to get used to is that because of our social and ecological screw-ups, the 21st century will see many more such crises, not fewer. The turbulences of climate change will bring us storms, droughts, floods, heatwaves and freeze-ups. The coming food crisis will bring an urgent need to grow more food locally. The imminent collapse of antibiotics will bring a huge health crisis. The real lesson of the blizzard is that our strength is not in government, but in ourselves: government's role must be to help us to self-organize better.

There is a joy in self-organizing. We saw it on the streets in the smiles, the lifts willingly shared. Barriers came down, and hands reached out. We should build on this experience for the future - not forget it as soon as the snow is gone.