The Rhizome Collective is a consensus-run

Consensus democracy

Consensus democracy is the application of consensus decision-making to the process of legislation in a democracy. It is characterised by a decision-making structure which involves and takes into account as broad a range of opinions as possible, as opposed to systems where minority opinions can...

 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization

Nonprofit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 based on Austin

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, USA

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It operates an Educational Center for Urban Sustainability and a Center for Community Organizing.

Activities

In 2004, the Rhizome Collective received a $200,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

 to convert an abandoned lot in Montopolis, Austin, into an educational park.
The Rhizome Collective operates out of three warehouses on Allen Street in East Austin. These warehouses and the 1/3 acre on which they sit make up the "Rhizosphere". In addition to housing the collective, the Rhizosphere is used as a space for the development of urban sustainability practices. The Rhizosphere hosts space for organizations such as Austin Indymedia, the Austin Zine Library, the Inside Books Project, which ships reading material to prison inmates, Bikes Across Borders, and Food Not Bombs

Food Not Bombs

Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, serving free vegan and vegetarian food to others. Food Not Bombs' ideology is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance...

. In 2008, Rhizome released Toolbox For Sustainable Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide, which has been described by the authors as "a DIY guide for creating locally-based, ecologically sustainable communities in today's cities."

Eviction

On March 5th, 2009, the Rhizome Collective received a letter from the Code Enforcement Division of the City of Austin requiring the warehouse from which they operated since 2000 to be vacated. The Collective contacted contractors to evaluate the cost of the modifications required by the city, but in an official communication stated that they "did not believe it will be possible to get an estimate, obtain permits and complete the work by the City’s deadline", and were appealing to the local, national and international communities for helphttp://www.rhizomecollective.org/.