Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It seems to me that the OWS movement is moral in nature, that occupiers want the country to change its moral focus. It is easy to find useful policies; hundreds have been suggested. It is harder to find a moral focus and stick to it. If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands.
Occupy Wall Street gatherings on Oct. 15 at around 1500 sites in some 80 countries revealed a global uprising for building democratic learning and action communities. People were joyous to be together in streets and parks, on church steps, outside banks, and elsewhere—playing music, chanting, and exercising their freedoms. They sat in circles, paraded around with bands, and fed each other in dramatic outpourings of anger, aspiration, feelings, energy, humor, yearning, and wisdom.
Dear young man who died on the fourth day of this turbulent 2011, dear Mohammed Bouazizi, I want to write you about an astonishing year — with three months yet to run. I want to tell you about the power of despair and the margins of hope and the bonds of civil society. I wish you could see the way that your small life and large death became a catalyst for the fall of so many dictators in what is known as the Arab Spring. We are now in some sort of an American Fall. Civil society here has suddenly hit the ground running, and we are all headed toward a future no one imagined when you, a young Tunisian vegetable seller capable of giving so much, who instead had so much taken from you, burned yourself to death to protest your impoverished and humiliated state.
Shareable publisher Neal Gorenflo and founder of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives Michel Bauwens talked with solidarity economy activist and organizer Mira Luna about the historical moment and what’s coming soon from alternative economies
A new report from Greenpeace calls for the complete closure of all Japanese nuclear power plants by 2012. The report was released at the same time as the new Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, was making his first policy speech to parliament calling for the restart of all reactors that are currently offline due to routine safety checks and maintenance.
“I have a ball preserving food with my friends!” And at the same time Kathy Harrison is making sure her kids can eat if storms knock out power or roads. The author of Just in Case: How to Be Self Sufficient when The Unexpected Happens gives practical tips on storing food without getting overwhelmed. She looks at dehydrating, canning, and root cellaring; finding and preserving local food, and buying food at discount. For Kathy, preparedness is an empowering, community activity.
The New York Times is one of many major news outlets blowing the story of the century (see “Silence of the Lambs: Media herd’s coverage of climate change “fell off the map” in 2010”).
The one-time “paper of record” cut coverage sharply since its peak in 2006 and 2007 and failed to connect the dots — heck, a headline this week even blamed the recent record-setting Thailand floods on Thai “officials” not “an unusually heavy monsoon season.”
I know I shouldn’t be at all emotional, but honestly, I find myself a bit verklempt about moving my bank accounts out of Bank of America. Yes, it’s a hassle, but it needs to be done, as the Move Your Money Project makes amply clear. Since they’re a national bank, the biggest part of every dollar I deposit with Bank of America goes into the financial system and leaves my community. And if B of A uses my deposits to fund reckless speculation, fat bonuses for their execs or donations to Tea Party Congressmen, then my money will be harming America. And as a Transitioner trying to relocalize my area’s economy, I’ve felt especially guilty staying with a big corporate bank.
Canada has joined the ranks of exporting oil nations and now supplies more petroleum to the United States than Mexico or Saudi Arabia. The unconventional character of mined bitumen as well as the startling revenue it generates for government coffers has irrevocably changed the country. Five per cent of the nation’s GDP comes from oil while bitumen makes up 25 per cent of the nation’s exports. As the wild debate about the Keystone XL pipeline illustrates, Canada’s $200-billion energy project has also become a global lightning rod. No oil exporting nation, whether Christian or Muslim, is immune from the corrosive influence of oil money and its dirty politics. Yet Canada has anointed bitumen as the nation’s new “economic engine” without setting clear public policy goals or assessing the economic risks.
If the Occupy movement is to succeed over time, it must follow the lead of community rights building efforts that have begun work to dismantle the body of law that perpetually subordinates people, community, and nature to wealthy corporate minorities.
When we’re young, as Tod and Copper were when they became friends, we simply don’t see the differences the world has created between us. We have to learn the divisions that set people apart. In the global north, we learn that black is a colour of danger and negativity and that white is a colour of purity and light. We are taught how to divide people up according to their accents, their clothes, their jobs. We learn that the so-called “middle-class” culture is the one that gets people places. And before we know it, talking about “us” and “them” has become so second nature that we’ve no idea how to get back to the wholeness that we were born with.
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