Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Who are we? And where are we going on this tiny planet of ours, this bright sparkle of life in a Universe so ridiculously vast? It’s a question worth exploring, if you have five minutes in your busy COVID day.
“How attached are you to the idea of being white?” Chenjerai Kumanyika puts that question to host John Biewen, as they revisit an unfinished conversation from a previous episode.
This emerging mosaic of alternatives for social-ecological transformation provides fertile ground for the development of ideas, practices and actions leading to a good life for all.
Is there anything crazier than the people in our towns, who are sworn to protect and serve, instead coldly taking the lives of our neighbors? Given this moment in American history marked by outrage, sadness, and massive protest, we discuss the need to address institutional racism and white privilege.
So you see, even a conservative libertarian from Texas Hill Country can turn toward the light. All it takes is a commitment to boycott Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and a refusal to look away.
Because there are many lessons to learn, one for every day of the rest of our lives, and for that reason we should look at today, and tomorrow, and the day after as opportunities to learn, to grow, to find each other, and to make change.
We are called to an evolutionary leap – from divisiveness to connectedness, from separation to co-creation, from enmity and hate (or complacent apathy) to caring, love in action. We are all part of one human race, and the clock is ticking. It is either now or never.
Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated.
George Floyd’s death was a flashpoint, erupting into the flame of truth, spreading over the world like wildfire. What is that truth, too long hidden, that needed to break through into the light of day, to break open our hearts?
The US is on the brink of becoming a racist failed state. It is no accident that this terrible moment arrives in the midst of a global pandemic; an escalating economic crisis; an oil sector meltdown. This is a perfect storm of simultaneous, complex crises. How did we get here? How do we solve this?
We call for fundamental policy changes focused on reparative justice and healing, such as defunding policing, deconstructing our carceral state, and demilitarizing our federal budget. This fed-uprising must be a wake up call to Americans. There will be no peace without justice. There will be no reconciliation without truth and repentance.
Chattel slavery in the United States, with its distinctive – and strikingly cruel – laws and structures, took shape over many decades in colonial America. The innovations that built American slavery are inseparable from the construction of Whiteness as we know it today.
