Inspiration

XR protest in London

Extinction Rebellion is showing Britain what real democracy could look like

By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog

The protest movement’s call for meaningful participation highlights the failings of dysfunctional Westminster politics It’s good entertainment, but that’s all it is. Seeing Boris Johnson ritually dismembered in parliament might make us feel better, but nothing changes. He still has an 80-seat majority, though less than 30% of the electorate voted for the Conservatives. We are reduced, for five long years, to spectators. Our system allows the victorious government a mandate to do what it likes between elections, without further reference to the people. As we have seen, this can include breaking international law, suspending parliament, curtailing the judiciary, politicising the civil service, attacking the Electoral Commission and invoking royal prerogative powers to make policy without anyone’s consent. This is not democracy, but a parody of democracy. The problem, in other words, is not just Johnson. The problem is the UK’s political system, which presents an open invitation for autocratic behaviour. In the past, people warned that a...

  • September 22, 2020
Buffalo

The Brotherhood of the Buffalo

By Talli Nauman, Esperanza Project

RAPID CITY, South Dakota — When Native American Natural Foods launched Tanka Bars and Tanka Bites in 2007 it had a mission:  “To heal the people and our Mother Earth by building a company that innovates real food products based on the traditional values of Native American respect for all living things by living in balance with mind, body and spirit.” Native American Natural Foods co-founder Karlene Hunter was one of the keynote speakers invited to address the first Annual Lakota Food Summit to address the touted trend toward tribal economic development through food sovereignty. The Oglala Lakota social entrepreneur from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had a tale of hope to tell. Her struggling majority-Indian-owned business, which invented the first bison-and-berry snack bars in the United States, has a new partner to help native producers compete in the marketplace. Her reservation-based company has joined with Niman Ranch, a Purdue...

  • September 22, 2020
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Vicki Robin

Gritty Hope: now what could possibly go right?

By Vicki Robin, Vicki Robin blog

“What could possibly go right?” To hold such a brazen question in tough times, we may just have to dig deeper into our souls, and accept that “right” may not ripen for decades or even centuries. Even as my heart breaks for those suffering the consequences of our monumental blindness to the cost of modernity, I still ask, “What could possibly go right?” 

  • September 23, 2020
Less is More cover

Degrowth and MMT: A thought experiment

By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog

As Giorgos Kallis has put it, “capitalism cannot survive under conditions of abundance”. MMT provides an opportunity for us to create a post-growth, post-capitalist economy.

  • September 23, 2020
David Graeber

The New Vistas that David Graeber Opened Up

By David Bollier, David Bollier blog

David Graeber was a cruel loss in these already-difficult times. Graeber was only 59....he clearly had many more dazzling books ahead of him....and those of us questing for system-change as multiple crises converge, took great inspiration from his thinking.

  • September 21, 2020
Vermont village

Building Bioregional Food Systems Post-COVID 19: The Northeast Healthy Soil Network & the power of regional food system reform consortium work

By Josie Watson, 350 Vermont

COVID-19 has reminded us, perhaps as never before, that we need an overhaul, not only of our health care system, but our food system as well. [1]  As a steady stream of studies and articles point out, a priority of future food system policy should be to support the emergence of local and regional, diversified, healthy food and farming systems, derived from fertile, carbon-rich soils.

  • September 21, 2020
Ebony-Lunsford-Evans

Pittsburgh’s Black farmers work to grow a new future

By Hal B. Klein, Health & Environmental Funders Network

A small group of new farmers have seeded a movement to change the local food industry. Will COVID-19's impact on the local economy set them back? Or will it — and the growing push for social justice — help?  

  • September 17, 2020
food at Detroit Vegan Soul

Now is the time to re-think everything about how food businesses work

By Oscar Perry Abello, Shareable

With the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering many food businesses temporarily or permanently, FoodLab Detroit has refocused on supporting surviving businesses that want to break the cycles of racist, exploitative, profit-first practices — such as tipping — that have long been taken for granted.

  • September 11, 2020
Clothing workers in Bangladesh

Can international trade ever be anti-racist?

By Charlotte Timson, Traidcraft Exchange

We tend to ignore the racist history of trade when looking at trade issues. It’s complicated, uncomfortable and more convenient to gloss over it. The truth is the racism that underpinned colonialism and slavery continues within our global supply chains today.

  • September 10, 2020
Member of Indigenous Community, Honduras

What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us About Economics

By Helena Norberg-Hodge, Local Futures

Just as Indigenous wisdom is rooted in a myriad of complex and reciprocal interactions with the community, the land and water, the animals and plants, localizing makes visible the threads of interdependence that hold the living world together.

  • September 9, 2020
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