Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
People around the country have been forming small groups like Resilience Circles and social action affinity groups. These groups are a way to relearn skills of mutuality, consensus-building, story-sharing, and real listening. They form an essential piece of the architecture of social movements built on solidarity and relatedness.
But pulling together a small group can be a real challenge.
Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin is our prince’s name, and he eventually became a renowned scientist who advanced the understanding of the history of glaciers, an historian of revolutionary movements, foremost theoretician of anarchism, and, because of his lifelong burning desire to do something to help the plight of the common man, something of a revolutionary himself.
Democracy, individualism , liberalism and many of the dimensions of modern societies that we most cherish and take for granted, emerged on the back of high energy throughput and growth. The pacified, individuated personality structure which allows the ‘I’ to be partially dissociated from the ‘We’ is itself historically and metabolically specific. It is very difficult for people with such an elaborated sense of self even to imagine the worldview of other people living in the past, or in those very few simpler societies in the present which have not been forcibly integrated into the connected modern world.
It is equally difficult to imagine the values, predispositions or likely attitudes of our children’s children’s children, living in a world which, if James Kunstler and Richard Heinberg are correct, will have become larger, more closed and less connected. But one thing does seem clear: degrowth is not a liberal prospect [excerpts from a to-be-published paper].
Thousands of people surrounded the Spanish Parliament in Madrid on Tuesday to protest austerity measures and the loss of public confidence in elected leaders. The “Occupy Congress” protest came as the conservative administration of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy prepares to unveil further austerity measures on Thursday. After hours of protest, police in riot gear charged against demonstrators with batons and fired rubber bullets. Thirty-five people were arrested, and at least 60 people were injured. We go to Madrid to speak with independent journalist Maria Carrion.
-Land grabbing and food sovereignty in West and Central Africa
-Africa: Land, Water and Resource-Grabbing and Its Impact on Food Security
-Antonio Trejo, Honduras rights lawyer, killed at wedding
-Chinese villagers protest at slow progress over land dispute
-The global need of non-violent struggle around land rights: a path for change?
September 17 (S17) is of course the one-year anniversary of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, a reclaiming of public space that galvanized the political imagination of the country and the world with its proclaimed opposition between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, its prefigurative emphasis on horizontality and mutual aid, and its linking of grievances from climate change to Stop and Frisk to predatory debt. All summer, OWS organizers have poured their energy into preparing for a three-day convergence of “education, celebration and resistance” to mark the anniversary…
Occupy is now a year old. A year is an almost ridiculous measure of time for much of what matters: at one year old, Georgia O’Keeffe was not a great painter, and Bessie Smith wasn’t much of a singer. One year into the Civil Rights Movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was still in progress, catalyzed by the unknown secretary of the local NAACP chapter and a preacher from Atlanta — by, that is, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Occupy, our bouncing baby, was born with such struggle and joy a year ago, and here we are, 12 long months later.
The victory last year to stop the Keystone XL pipeline was a temporary victory. I guess all environmental victories are temporary, but this one was even more temporary than most. Mitt Romney has made it absolutely clear that if he wins the election his first duty, on his first day in office, will be to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Barack Obama hasn’t said one way or another what he will do, but the signs aren’t particularly great.
-An open letter to Owen Paterson, the new environment secretary
-“The 1%”: The Pluses and Minuses of an Historic Term
-We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say
George Lakey has campaigned and written about non-violent social change since the 1960s. He says:
“… people get farther if they do have a vision of the new society and that be a widely shared vision that comes about through a discussion. That process seems to be very important, that people both develop a vision of where they want to go and also a strategy from getting from here to there.”
The nuns provide a model for all who are exploring ways in which humanity can reconstitute itself and forge a post-industrial culture that radically departs from the paradigm of industrial civilization. Members of Sisters Of The Earth are deeply involved not only with social justice issues, but with local organic food efforts, permaculture, the Transition movment, raising awareness on climate change, economic justice, and sustainable living.
The word “sustainability” sometimes is used to green-wash and promote things that are not sustainable. Genuine sustainability must be evidence-based. But language can be used to conceal rather than reveal. Lets explore as a case study what is currently occurring in the small town of Sebastopol, Northern California.
