Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Coronavirus is both a symptom of the problematic globalized economy and an important signal that things need to change. Emergency short-term measures to contain the virus also have a positive impact on decimated global ecosystems.
Because beyond whether we achieve everything in the vision for a Green New Deal or not, it is inspiring that young people do not view climate change as a pass/fail test. For them, failure is not an option. Instead, the question is: how transformative will our success be?
When we get intentional about doing what we can to strengthen and build up our communities now, we’re doing more than surviving. We’re setting the stage for renewed growth and revitalization once this pandemic dies down (and it will). One day in the not-too-distant future, we will find we made it through the tough times and came out on the other side stronger, better, and closer than ever.
DisCOs are a commons-oriented, feminist, cooperative way for people to work together. A set of ideals and criteria for ensuring that patterns of oppression and violence that permeate our society are not replicated within intentional, cooperative spaces. DisCOs systematize fairness and the recognition of care work.
The point to make in this article is of the need to self isolate and/or practice social distancing, at the same time as maintaining economic activity as best we can. There will be no one size fits all ways of doing it and each person will have to improvise during this crisis.
If we really care about the health of people and planet, we should think twice before we decide to spend money on accelerating this destructive trajectory. While it is essential that jobs are maintained and undue hardship is avoided, propping up the status quo is not the only option available.
There are many proposals for radical economies from progressive economists, activists and think tanks. Artists are increasingly joining these debates with speculative proposals and unconventional methodologies.
Essentially, coping requires that we attend to the things about being human that never change, and which we share with other people, even if they take different cultural expressions: temporality, death, sociality, language, pain, joy, suffering, doubt, anxiety, rejection, loss, uncertainty, sexuality, fun, creativity, imagination, curiosity, love, inventiveness, the capacity to express ourselves.
Workers should be in charge. People who have their life on the line should make the decisions. Because those that have their livelihood on the line are more likely to make decisions that would benefit the company as well as themselves because the decisions that are made impact them and beyond.
Fairbnb.coop is a platform co-op whose name precedes it. Everyone’s heard of the venture-capital-backed alternative that’s putting hotels and traditional B&Bs out of business, and Fairbnb.coop is the antithesis of that – a platform co-op which puts ethics back into home-sharing.
While an entire chapter of Understanding Socialism is devoted to defining the word, right at the outset Wolff provides one of the broadest definitions of the term socialism I’ve heard. Socialism is a yearning — a yearning for something better than the status quo, better than capitalism.
In a Washington Post opinion piece last month, Robert Frank sought to instruct us in how peer pressure can “help stop climate change.” He wasn’t very convincing on that point; he did help, however, to inadvertently make the case that collective efforts, ones much more sweeping than individual role-modeling, are necessary to staving off climate catastrophe.
