In 1987 Graham Ellis founded Bellyacres Artistic Ecovillage on a 10 acre jungle lot with a vision to experiment with sustainable community living practices. By 2007 Graham had raised $500,000 to build the Seaview Performance Arts Center for Education (S.P.A.C.E.), which in 2010 was described as “perhaps the most sustainable community center in the USA.” His article “My Struggle to Legalize Sustainable Living” appeared in Communities #168, Fall 2015, and he is currently writing a book, My Sustainable Community Experience: 27 Years Living with Jugglers in the Jungle. As we prepared this issue for press, we learned that Graham was deported from the US on July 19, 2017 for an expired visa under the stricter immigration enforcement protocols put in place by the Trump administration. He, his wife, and their five children had already been planning to relocate later this year to the UK, where he hopes to serve as a community consultant—but uncertainty remains about when or if the rest of his family will be granted the visas necessary to join him. See www.civilbeat.org/2017/06/a-big-island-juggler-with-leukemia-faces-deportation.
20 views