Act: Inspiration featured

Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 1

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While capitalism and consumerism dominate the culture of the United States of America and the Western world, community currencies are creating a buzz elsewhere. The radical need for alternative economies and community currencies is becoming more commonplace among societies across the globalized world dealing with the crisis of mass poverty and inequality. In part one of our three part series shining a light on some of these alternatives, we look at the Athens Integral Cooperative.

Waste Not, Want Not

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The annual holiday celebrations have arrived and it seems a good time to think about what we are really celebrating.  It seems the historic and religious significance of these holidays have been overshadowed by consumerism.  Thanksgiving and Christmas have become celebrations of consumption filled with opportunities to eat, drink, and make merry with food and gifts. 

Come for the Fun, Stay for the Revolution

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In a world that’s been increasingly paved over and privatized, it can be hard to find open places and spaces to gather. As Lucy Gomez-Feliciano of Logan Square Neighborhood Association says, many grassroots collectives have to operate as a “road show” – occupying whatever living room, church basement, library or community center they can find– or heading outside to organize.

This Is Blockadia

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As world leaders prepare to meet in Germany to negotiate climate action at COP23, activists are putting words into action by blockading a nearby coal mine. Their message is that leaders need to grasp the urgency of keeping fossil fuels in the ground, right here and right now. With an increasing frequency and intensity, such direct actions and the associated demands for climate justice are unfolding on every continent.

New Report Shines Light on Groundbreaking Catalan Cooperative

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The goal of the Catalan Integral Cooperative (“Integral” is a Spanish word best translated as “holistic”) is to build an anti-capitalist cooperative structure not just for the benefit of its own fee-paying members, but for the Commons as a whole.

Saving Wild Relatives of Crops Means Preserving Options for the Future

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The Crop Trust, the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew, and their partners are confronting this problem on a global level by identifying gaps in the world’s collections of CWRs, supporting the collecting efforts of 24 national programs to fill those gaps, and working with more than 40 institutions to develop pre-breeding materials that will help adapt crops to a changing climate.

Another Way of Learning

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I’m sure there are people out there who are much cleverer than me. What I’ve spent my life trying to do is make these welcome solutions accessible to people. You see – it’s not how clever we are individually, it’s about how effective we are. And ethics sit at the heart of permaculture. Create surplus and share it. So the surpluses we can create might be food… But what if they were happiness, insight or knowledge?

COP23: Where is the Place for Community-Led Initiatives?

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I think the only way to be optimistic is to believe that people can take things into their own hands and transform their lives. It is happening, but it is not happening enough. Setting these targets and figuring out how to accomplish them without working together with citizen initiatives, they will never succeed. I am here to promote repopulation of Europe’s rural areas with ecovillages.

Conserving Community at Blue Oak Canyon Ranch

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Safely tucked into the San Miguel mountains northeast of San Luis Obispo, down a long ambling road that leads far away from cities, highways and all of civilization, warm late afternoon light falls and fills the golden hills surrounding Blue Oak Canyon Ranch. The two humble stewards of Blue Oak are Lynn and Jim Moody, who tell me that just a week prior, the grass was still green.

Indigenous and Community Groups Pressure for Strong Climate Solutions at COP 23

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It Takes Roots is a coalition of people of color from groups such as the Indigenous Environmental Network and Cooperation Jackson. They went to COP 23 to pressure officials and government representatives like Jerry Brown — who are there to work on specific goals to reduce carbon emissions — as well as to highlight the damage caused to frontline groups, such as indigenous people.

Letting Children Roam

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When I talk to my elderly neighbours, or read interviews with people from earlier eras, one of the things that most comes through about their childhoods, and seems dramatically different than the way children are raised today, is how far and freely they roamed. Unlike most modern children, they did not spend most of their time indoors watching television or playing video games, or following one adult-led activity after another.