Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This piece is a gust of fresh air – a much-needed, long-overdue challenge to the corporate and university powers that control academic publishing. Through inertia, ignorance, and sometimes complicity, universities are not challenging the distinct limits of corporate-controlled “openness” and defending the ideals of academic scholarship.
With the COVID-19 pandemic laying waste to the country, and President Trump’s chances of re-election fading, America is at last beginning to look more deeply into the country’s problems.
Also, if we cannot expand our perspective to transcend White supremacy, how are we going to transcend “human supremacy,” that is, the delusional belief that we are outside of nature, that we don’t have to obey the same laws as every other species on the planet?
JoinedUp is a scheme proposing to re-open our unused cultural institutions for the use of these ‘bubbles’ during the periods they aren’t at school, and create local programmes to alleviate the pressure on teachers, parents and the economy.
I believe that working on intersecting crises, on so-called wicked problems, is the order of the day, and as in most things, the very interlocking of our crises gives me hope for confronting them with courage and vision.
As eviction moratoriums around the United States come to an end, it is expected that landlords will begin evicting nonpaying tenants en masse. Barring new moratoriums on eviction, one estimate suggests 23 million people will be subject to eviction by the end of September … I believe that there is yet great turmoil ahead. We are unlikely to return to the system of finance capitalism which is crumbling before our eyes.
The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing deep inequalities in race and economic status, and the inadequacy of the nation’s social safety nets. Still, the massive social disruption caused by the pandemic offers important lessons to consider as we craft strategies for aggressive climate action.
When we are able to quiet all the worries, the media, and public frenzy, we can see a bigger picture: This moment is an opportunity to come together in community, in care, and in preparation. Grave threats like climate change and pandemics are real—we know this as crisis scenarios become more frequent and more extreme.
We are aiming high: to assist in laying the foundations for the establishment of an ongoing, multigenerational, student-community initiative for an equitable and just transition in Isla Vista, California, and to put the result, Eco Vista, forward as an experiential model that other small towns with college students might want to freely adapt for their communities.
As global heating speeds up, humanity can no longer assume to control our destiny. We can let that tough realisation sit heavily with us, but then breathe and redouble our commitment to life and love, no matter what the odds, opposition or outcomes
Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S.
Perhaps 2020 vision could unveil to us that life matters and is sacred. That honored boundaries allow fires to chart a healing course and give breathing room to the full diversity and dignity of life. What if the lives of those most often suppressed, eradicated, ignored, coopted, most readily resistant actually mattered?
