Patrick Mazza

Progressive activist and journalist since 1981. Lived in Seattle since 1998, and the Pacific Northwest, aka Cascadia, since 1977.

community garden

How to build the future in place: Taking the first steps

The prescription for despair is collective action where it is possible to act most fruitfully. Any journey starts from where we live. It starts by beginning to build the future in place.

September 18, 2023

sowing seeds

Moving beyond empire, building the future in place

That is what building the future in place is all about, creating an ecosystem of community institutions that meets human needs and balances our relations in the natural world, prioritizing communities and people falling through the cracks of the current system.

August 22, 2023

Franklin Roosevelt

How the U.S. ascended to global empire in the 20th century

It is time to abandon empire as a way of life and turn to the hard work of creating community, beginning where we live.

July 31, 2023

Explosion of the battleship Maine

How the U.S. moved from continental to global empire

When confronted with a choice between building a society based on communitarian values or expanding to dodge the difficulties that would have entailed, the U.S. consistently chose imperial expansion.

July 6, 2023

New York under wildfire smoke

We should have listened to Jim Hansen

This is why degrowth advocates such as Richard Heinberg tell us we need to consider fundamental economic assumptions. It isn’t just the climate, but the unraveling of ecosystems around the world.

June 27, 2023

Signing the constitution

Military bloat and empire as a way of life

Williams was the dean of what came to be known as the revisionist school of U.S. history that penetrated the myth of American exceptionalism with the facts of history, that the U.S. was an empire from its colonial roots, and behaved much as any other empire.

June 6, 2023

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