Building Community

Planning for Irene

by

If you live in the Eastern US, particularly, but not exclusively the eastern coastal US, you need to be prepared for quite a storm…We don’t always get a heads up like this about a potential threat – so many come unexpected upon us. When we do, it behooves us to remember that there’s a lot we can do to keep safe, secure and be ready – and that lives depend on us taking action. The actions are simple, and easily become part of our basic routine – just like keeping school records or feeding the pets. But now is the time – whether you live in Irene’s path or not, to make sure your preps are ready – so that you don’t have to ask for help unless you really need it, so you can help others, so you can make sure that resources go to the most vulnerable.

Citywatch: Taking the nature cure

by

Once regional planners come alive to the planning considerations of cities designed for mental health, human scale and biophilic connections, they need to locate spaces and activities that can make pay the freight of high-spaced city land. This, in my opinion, is where urban agriculture wins its day in the sun. What Swiss army knives and scarves are to multi-tasking in the wilds, urban agriculture is to multi-tasking in the cities, which is how it pays down the high cost of urban land to support it.

Don’t defend the university, transform it!

by

The future of the university hangs in the balance and the instinct to defend it against a wholesale attack seems to be an obvious response. But what is it that so many rush to defend? Could it be that rather than seize our placard shields, we should instead rejoice in the downfall of the institution? Or should we perhaps seize this opportunity to search for ways to re-imagine the university and radically transform its inner workings, to look at the actual functioning of the university, to question the kind of subjects it produces and the form of market-led ‘common sense’ that it reproduces?

On settling down

by

Most of us are here where we are without substantial ability to change our circumstances, at least in a deep material sense. I think this observation is true, but painful for many people – that is it is possible that we may move about, it is possible that we may change jobs. But we are on a gradual slide away from economic stability, away from a dream that growth could always continue or come back, away from the idea of giving our children better in the sense of material increase, and utimately, towards the realization that we are staying where we are in the largest sense – the possibility of new frontiers has been erased. We can no longer go to the always-already-imaginary unpopulated west. We will not live in space. There is no empty place – and never was.

The new Congressional Debt Panel: An opportunity for an essential economic debate

by

Now is the time to put grassroots pressure on the media, especially in the states and districts of the 12 Senators and Representatives on the debt panel. Let’s seize the offensive and move the discussion of tax code changes under the framework of responsibility.

Civil disobedience vs the tar sands – Aug 22

by

-Tar Sands and the Carbon Numbers
-A Debate: Should the U.S. Approve TransCanada’s Massive Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline?
-Interview: James Hansen on the Tar Sands Pipeline Protest, the Obama Administration and Intergenerational Justice
-Dozens Arrested in Pipeline Protest
-Tar Sands Pipeline Protests Continue