Joanne Poyourow

To the 99% and #OccupyWallStreet

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I haven’t journeyed down to OccupyLA myself. In part that’s because it is quite a distance from me, and I have kids’ schedules to uphold. But deep down, those are simply excuses; really, my heart’s not in it. I see the Occupy movement as an outbursting of emotion, expressing that the existing System is horribly broken, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. But the protests, now shifting to from Wall Street to upscale neighborhoods, are a gigantic “blame game” which cannot possibly fix anything real.

The peak oil crisis: contagion

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With every passing day it is becoming more apparent that the crisis of the depletion of cheap oil has become deeply enmeshed in the European debt crises. … Concern over the course of the Greek debt crisis has been roiling the foreign exchange and equity markets of late taking oil prices along for a rather wild ride. Last week we had London oil below $100 a barrel, but renewed optimism, or as it is now known, “risk appetite,” soon sent London oil back up over $111 where it continues to methodically eat the heart out of the OECD economies. London oil has now been above $100 a barrel for the last nine months and so far shows no signs of collapsing to the fabled $60 a barrel level as it did three years ago.

Pope Mary and the new wave of food hubs

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He and the people in his church are part of the new “food hub” wave, although he didn’t call it that. He just wants to encourage the people in his church to start asserting their food independence. But instead of going the usual route of venturing forth and trying to teach the people how to grow food, Mike decided to ask the parishioners themselves how to go about it.

Some thoughts on diversity, leadership and patience in Transition

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I must own up to something at the start of this: I have a bias. I have an agenda. I am not impartial. I see things through a complicated lens of culture, class, and gender. I am a mature male of African, Native American and European heritage, a son of the Americas. I decided at an early age that all of that, despite what was happening in the outside world, would be at peace with me.
[The author is a writer, educator, activist, poet – and a Transition trainer.]

How I prepared my family for peak oil – Nicole Foss (video and text)

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Nicole Foss is senior editor of The Automatic Earth web site, and an international speaker integrating topics of peak oil, economics and personal preparation. In 2001, Foss moved her family from England to rural Ontario, in order to prepare her family for peak oil and economic uncertainty. Local Future nonprofit has published to YouTube the entire 40-minute presentation by Foss on her considerations for personal preparation, in advance of her keynote presentation at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition and Culture Change: Vision, Action, Leadership.

Why the metamovement will ultimately fail

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There have been, belatedly, attempts to connect the “We Are the 99%” Occupy Wall Street protests with the protests in the Mideast against anti-democratic regimes and in Europe against unemployment, austerity and government inaction. What is unique about the newest US protests (at least since the ill-fated anti-globalization protests of a decade ago), and perhaps the reason why it took so long for them to get media and public traction, is that they are anti-corporate more than anti-government.