Building Community Archives

There’s Something Happening Here…

December 15, 2020April 27, 2011 by Dave Pollard

Put these things together — a tone of hopelessness in the mainstream progressive media, a largely useless outpouring of outrage in the indymedia, a giving up of citizens on the viability of centralized representative governments, reactionary responses to black swan events instead of constructive ones, the ratcheting up of existing systems to prolong the period before tipping points, and a naivete about the powerlessness of even the most powerful in modern complex systems — and what do we have?

From the Pleistocene to the Motor City: Revolutions in human ecology

December 15, 2020April 27, 2011 by Stephanie Mills

Revolutions in human ecology might usefully be grounded in a sense of humanity’s deep past, for that is where our power arrangements began.

Cornerstones of a Rooted Economy

December 15, 2020April 27, 2011 by Robin Broad

We want to know: Is an alternative future possible—one rooted in small fishers, small farmers, and the teeming biodiversity of the islands? For starters we want to know: Can small fishers become a pillar of a new economy as this country begins to run out of oil and gas?

Walking for Water

December 15, 2020April 26, 2011 by Faye Brown

“You have to decide what it is you are going to stand for,” Day explains. “Water is essential to life. We live in the water of the womb of our mother before we come into the world. We are birthed from water, our bodies are primarily water and we can’t survive without clean water. At some time in your life you have to take a stand.”

Economic Resilience #3. Rethink the idea of “Jobs”

December 15, 2020April 25, 2011 by Joanne Poyourow

“Jobs” as we know them today — paychecks from large corporate employers — are a very recent phenomenon in human history. Within our new understanding of the future economy, this form of earning a living is not too likely to continue.

Food production, food preservation, food storage – A three legged stool

December 15, 2020April 25, 2011 by Sharon Astyk

If we are to make by necessity or desire, a shift to a lower input society, it is necessary to take the lessons learned in other lower-input societies and ask the question: what are the major food security issues likely to be?

Rebuilding after the tsunami: eco- or transition towns?

December 15, 2020April 25, 2011 by Brendan Barrett

In the sphere of disaster recovery there is a term that we can expect to hear a lot in the coming months, even years — “build back better”.

San Francisco passes progressive urban agriculture policy

December 15, 2020April 25, 2011 by Antonio Roman-Alcalá

This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed one of the most progressive pieces of legislation for urban agriculture in the nation. The new legislation has amended the zoning code to allow agricultural activities in all parts of the city, as well as defining the parameters by which urban agriculturists can sell their products.

The uses and abuses of ‘happiness’

December 15, 2020April 25, 2011 by William Davies

One question that needs to be asked is – do the happiness proponents and their public spokespersons know what they’re doing?

Oakland lighting the climate path

December 15, 2020April 24, 2011 by Naomi Klein

Local initiatives like the Oakland Energy and Climate Action Plan aren’t enough to tackle the climate crisis. We need national and international regulations requiring deep, scientifically grounded emission reductions, and we need strict systems of enforcement. But before that can happen, people need to see that getting off fossil fuels isn’t a dour punishment. Done right, it can be a kind of gift. Oakland, once again, is leading the way.

The Law of Mother Earth: behind Bolivia’s historic bill

December 15, 2020April 24, 2011 by Nick Buxton

A new law expected to pass in Bolivia mandates a fundamental ecological reorientation of the nation’s economy and society.

Language, “promontory views” and American perceptions of the world

December 15, 2020April 24, 2011 by Thomas S. Harrington

One no longer needs to go through the long and often arduous process of becoming a “person-in-the-foreign-culture” in order to spout off in public as an expert about its core realities. The new discourses about the other are predicated, more often than not, on an underlying belief in the essentially normative and universal nature of US cultural, political and economic behaviors.