Society

#Occupy – ANALYSIS – Oct 22

by

– How Occupy Wall Street Really Got Started
– From Protest to Disruption: Frances Fox Piven on Occupy Wall Street
– What ‘Diversity of Tactics’ Really Means for Occupy Wall Street
– Could the Occupy Movement’s General Assemblies Replace Today’s Parliaments and Legislatures?
– What can OWS learn from a defunct French avant-garde group? (Situationists)

Whether in Egypt or America, it takes organization to win

by

In its purest form, politics in a democracy is about the contest for power. The best ideas don’t always win, nor do the most deserving candidates or causes. It is the side that organizes the best and mobilizes its voters most effectively that carries the day and takes power.

This is a lesson we learned in 1981, and it is lesson that is being learned in the Arab Spring states of Tunisia and Egypt where elections will soon decide which side initially takes power and reaps the benefits of the popular mobilizations that led to the downfall of the regimes that governed for decades.

7 billion: Understanding the demographic transition

by

The term “Demographic Transition” describes the movement of human populations from higher initial birth rates to a stabilzed lower one, and seems to be a general feature of most societies over the last several hundred years.

The demographic transition is not a product of wealth or cheap energy in large quantities – we can see that by viewing the history of demographic shifts in Europe and the US. Instead, it is mostly about enabling people to make different reproductive choices, and supporting those choices – it requires no coercion, no high energy infrastructure, and is comparatively cheap to achieve.

Can Earth survive another billion people? An interview with Robert Walker

by

Happy Birthday humans! At the end of October 2011, the 7th billion person will be born on Earth. With over a billion humans already going to bed hungry every night, this may not be a blessed event.

Just twelve years after we hit the 6 billion mark in 1999, it’s going to a be a lot harder to look after the new arrivals. The extra billion people will find an unstable climate, declining energy and resources, and a host of other challenges.

The first review of ‘The Transition Companion’

by

I read so many books about peak oil, the state of the world, and environmental degradation that I often glaze over. This one is different. It has authority born from practical experience, a musculature that is immediately engaging, even reassuring. It feels mature. The book is not afraid to catalogue the limitations and failures, even celebrate them, as well as the successes. I like the way the book was crowd sourced. Rob blogged on each Transition Tool and invited feedback and ideas. The participatory aspect brings it alive: here is more than one visionary man’s voice but a whole chorus of voices.

How to frame yourself: a framing memo for Occupy Wall Street

by

It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands.

A lesson in practical magic

by

It seems remarkably hard for people nowadays to remember that ours is hardly the first society to find itself teetering on the edge of catastrophic change. In this next installment of The Archdruid Report‘s discussion of the interface between peak oil and magic–that is, the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will–another society in much the same situation provides the stage, and one of the most improbable figures in 19th century history is the main character. His insights have an uncanny relevance to some elements of the crisis of our own time.

Peak Moment 203: Soccer mom prepares for the unexpected

by

“I have a ball preserving food with my friends!” And at the same time Kathy Harrison is making sure her kids can eat if storms knock out power or roads. The author of Just in Case: How to Be Self Sufficient when The Unexpected Happens gives practical tips on storing food without getting overwhelmed. She looks at dehydrating, canning, and root cellaring; finding and preserving local food, and buying food at discount. For Kathy, preparedness is an empowering, community activity.

Going back to diversity?

by

When we’re young, as Tod and Copper were when they became friends, we simply don’t see the differences the world has created between us. We have to learn the divisions that set people apart. In the global north, we learn that black is a colour of danger and negativity and that white is a colour of purity and light. We are taught how to divide people up according to their accents, their clothes, their jobs. We learn that the so-called “middle-class” culture is the one that gets people places. And before we know it, talking about “us” and “them” has become so second nature that we’ve no idea how to get back to the wholeness that we were born with.