Michael Abelman: Urban Agriculture

The Sole Food Project, now one of North America’s largest urban farm initiatives, has empowered dozens of individuals who are managing addiction and chronic mental health problems by providing jobs, agricultural training, and the chance to be part of a vibrant community of farmers and food lovers.

Rescuing Los Angeles

Ecovillages are like a shadow world government. They are not top-down electoral, C3I or Deep State puppeteers; they are grass roots, spontaneous, semi-autonomous networked infiltrators. Their weapons are not Death Stars or enslaving financial schemes but viral memes spread by new media, art and gardening.

Chemical Industrial Agriculture is Unsustainable. Here’s why

Even without pesticides, industrial agriculture is doomed to fail from extremely high rates of soil erosion and soil compaction at rates that far exceed losses in the past, since soil couldn’t wash or blow away as easily on small farms that grew many crops.

Appropriate Civilization versus New Despotism, Month 2: Tech-for-good and truth take a pounding

…a Microsoft researcher warned openly this month that AI, even in its current state, is ripe for abuse by aspiring despots: perfectly suited to the centralizing of power, tracking of populations down to the last individual, the demonizing of outsiders, all while radiating authority via a faux neutrality. “This is a fascist’s dream,” said Microsoft’s Kate Crawford, pulling no punches. “Power without accountability.”

Gandhi’s Strategy for Success — Use More than One Strategy

In serving as a figure who was able to bridge different organizing traditions, Gandhi provided a model of a complex social movement ecosystem. This model illuminates a critical idea: that transformation is most likely to come about not through any one single approach to creating social change — but through the integration of many.

Green Jobs in a Sustainable Farming Economy post-Brexit

Many sustainable farming practices offer an alternative, bringing increased opportunities for knowledge sharing, co-working and often a greater level of appreciation from consumers, local communities and the public.