Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As the coronavirus spreads anxiety and panic across the globe, people are finding ways to share information and support each other.
Citing the “collective solidarity” of friends and family in China and Hong Kong who have been affected by the coronavirus, a Seattle group has formed an online community to coordinate resources and provide support to those most vulnerable to the infection.
Thus, what has to be done? Since the cause of right-wing populism is the failure of neoliberalism, cosmetic changes will not have a long-lasting effect, we need to rethink the entire system. We need to put food producers – not multinational corporations and supermarket chains – at the centre of the European food system and decision making.
The critical question is one the with which I began: OK, young’uns–is Joe Biden’s position on climate change good enough? Good enough that is for progressive Democrats and their supporters to endorse him and work actively between now and November to defeat Donald John Trump?
For the sake of the environment, I hope it is.
Essentially, coping requires that we attend to the things about being human that never change, and which we share with other people, even if they take different cultural expressions: temporality, death, sociality, language, pain, joy, suffering, doubt, anxiety, rejection, loss, uncertainty, sexuality, fun, creativity, imagination, curiosity, love, inventiveness, the capacity to express ourselves.
The ultimate challenge we humans have ever faced may be the multiple, cascading crises of today. Our legacy as a species may well be how we meet the challenge for tomorrow.
The global spread of a new pathogen has exposed the fragility of modern life. As it moves around the world, the coronavirus has compromised the circulatory system of globalization, dramatically reducing the international flow of money, goods, and people.
It’s easy to picture a group of social justice and environmental activists gathering in a circle. But these days, instead of holding hands and singing songs, they’re loading weapons and taking aim. Ahhhhh, the carnage! Why are progressives so eager to join a circular firing squad?
May I re-frame the coronavirus conversation? Outbreaks are going to happen more often in our climate-altered world, and they highlight the fragility of our growth-or-bust industrial system.
We will continue dreaming to protect our forest. We are the earth, the water, the air. We are the forest itself. And for her, we will continue to fight and unite until the end, with lots of love, and lots of rebellion.
While an entire chapter of Understanding Socialism is devoted to defining the word, right at the outset Wolff provides one of the broadest definitions of the term socialism I’ve heard. Socialism is a yearning — a yearning for something better than the status quo, better than capitalism.
But I feel like this story is really the story of our lifetime and our planet. It’s the story that crosses every boundary that we humans have artificially put upon the world. Anybody who can be engaged in dealing with it, on any level, should do that. And so, being a journalist, I feel it’s my responsibility to tell these stories.
In either case, the ultimate realization of social justice, economic equity, true democracy, peace, and environmental stability will depend on people learning to work together in our communities to find common ground and tackle the larger task of building systems that better serve all the people and promote the common good. Your vote does count, so stand up and be counted.
