One Female Cultural Creative

The Public Library Manifesto: Why Libraries Matter, and How We Can Save Them by David Morris

2011-05-09T17:11:00.000-07:00

SOCIAL INVESTMENT | POLITICAL AGENDA | THE COMMONS | LIFELONG LEARNING

by David Morris
posted May 06, 2011
"The word 'public' has been removed from the name of the Fort Worth Library.  Why? Simply put, to keep up with the times." 
-Press release regarding the rebranding of the Fort Worth Library

Photo by Simply Shutterbug

In an age of greed and selfishness, the public library stands as an enduring monument to the values of cooperation and sharing. In an age where global corporations stride the earth, public libraries remains firmly rooted in local communities. In an age of widespread cynicism and distrust of government, the tax-supported public library has widespread, enthusiastic support.

This is not the time to take the word “public” out of the public library. It is time to put it in capitals.

The public library is a singularly American invention. Europeans had subscription libraries for 100 years before the United States was born. But in April 1833, the good citizens of Peterborough, New Hampshire created a radically new concept—a public library. All town residents, regardless of income, had the right to freely share the community’s stored knowledge. Their only obligation was to return the information on time and in good condition, allowing others to exercise that same right.

Public libraries are one of the most ubiquitous of all American institutions, more widespread than Starbucks or McDonalds.
By the 1870s, 11 states together boasted 188 public libraries. By 1910, all states had them. Today, 9,000 central buildings and about 7500 branches have made public libraries one of the most ubiquitous of all American institutions, more widespread than Starbucks or McDonalds.

Almost two thirds of us carry library cards. About half of us visit a public library at least once a year, many of us much more than once. Library use varies by class and race and by age and educational level, but the majority Americans—blacks and Latinos and whites, old and young, poor and rich, high school dropouts and university graduates, use the public library.

Protecting the Right to Know
When we think of libraries, we tend to think of books, and rightly so: Public libraries are by far our largest bookstores, and a majority of the 2.5 billion items checked out are still books. Indeed, for every two books sold in America, one book is borrowed from the public library.

But libraries are much more than bookstores. About 30 percent of the people who visit libraries don't borrow books or even DVDs. For a greater number of people than we might care to believe, the library serves as a warm and dry sanctuary, a place they can sit without fear of being bothered. For others, it is a refuge from loneliness, a place full of hustle and bustle, where you can attend a concert, or hear a lecture, or read a magazine free of charge.

Since its inception, the American public library’s prime directive has been to protect the public’s access to information. In 1894, this emphasis on the right to know led Denver’s public library to pioneer the concept of open stacks. For the first time, patrons had the freedom to browse. In the 1930s, the right to know led Kentucky’s librarians to ride horses and mules, their saddlebags filled with books, into remote sections of the state.

In 1872, the right to know led the Worcester Massachusetts Public Library to open its doors on Sundays. Many viewed that as sacrilege, but head librarian Samuel Green calmly responded that a library intended to serve the public could do so only if it were accessible when the public could use it. The six-day, 60-hour workweeks common at the time meant that if libraries were to serve the majority in the communities, they must be open on Sundays. Referring to those who might not spend their Sundays at worship, Green impishly added, “If they are not going to save their souls in the church they should improve their minds in the library.”

More than 125 years later, Sundays remain the busiest day of the week for public libraries; Sunday closings are the first sign of fiscal distress.

In a time of soup lines and economic destitution, the library was known as the “bread line of the spirit."
By 1935, public libraries were serving 60 percent of the population. They had so proven their value that few libraries closed their doors even during the Great Depression. To stay open, the Cleveland public library sponsored “overdue weeks,” encouraging patrons who could afford to do so to keep their library books until they were overdue, allowing the library to collect the 12 cents per week fine. In a time of soup lines and economic destitution, the library was known as the “bread line of the spirit."

Its mission of protecting our access to information has often led the public library to confront authorities that would obstruct that access.

In 1953, at the height of McCarthism, when magazine like the Nation were banned in many places and William Faulkner’s novels were seized as pornographic literature, the American Library Association (ALA) adopted a Library Bill of Rights. “The freedom to read is of little consequence when expended on the trivia,” it insisted. “Ideas can be dangerous … Freedom itself is a dangerous way of life, but it is ours.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, when the federal government began giving taxpayer-financed data to private companies, who then copyrighted the information and charged higher prices for access, the library community expressed its displeasure. Then ALA President Patricia Shuman declared, “privatization has resulted in less access and higher cost for the America public. If we accept the commodization of information…we will diminish the public’s right to know.”

Just as fiercely as public librarians fight to protect our access to information, they fight to protect our personal information from prying eyes. In the 1980s, when the FBI tried to turn librarians into spies by asking them to identify those who checked out military or subversive books, Americans librarians firmly rejected the request.

12 Things Really Educated People Know
Sometimes, protecting the people’s right to information means not only confronting the authority of government but of parents. A few years ago the director of the Elkhart Indiana Public Library explained, “Sometimes a parent will get angry at a book a kid has brought home. And the parent will bring in the kid’s card and tell us he’s returning it. We mail the card back to the child. It’s his card. The child can return it, but no one can return it for the child.”

This month the Queens Public Library, located in one of the most ethnically diverse and immigrant-rich communities in the world—its web site and phone answering system are in six languages—will begin allowing the "matricula consular," a personal identification card issued to immigrants by their consulates, to be used as a valid document to obtain a library card.

"At Queens Library, we strive to make our collections and services available to all," said Maureen O'Connor, director of programs and services for the library. They’ve succeeded admirably: The Queens Library has the highest circulation rate of any public library system in the country.

Libraries in Danger When We Need Them Most
Despite their enormous popularity and widespread use, public libraries have rarely been well funded. Librarian Robert Reagan offers one reason: “Everybody loves libraries, but mostly they are mute about it.” Libraries "are plagued by the image that we are nice, but not essential” one librarian complained to the Washington Post. People will defend their libraries, but only when the lights are about to go out.

Now, the lights are beginning to go out. U.S. mayors facing budget shortfalls report that library budgets are one of the first items on the chopping block. Some 19 states cut funding for public libraries last year. More than half of the reductions were greater than 10 percent. Meanwhile, operating costs—electricity, maintenance, materials—are going up. The result is that even when operating budgets remain constant, something—books or computers or service hours—has to give.

These budget cuts are coming just as library use is soaring. Economic hard times encourage people to borrow DVDs, books, and newspapers rather than buy them, and to use public computer terminals for job searches. Library usage is increasing by 15-30 percent while budgets are being cut by 10-15 percent.

All That We Share
Welcome to a new kind of movement—one that reshapes how we think about ownership and cooperation.
This is truly a case of penny wise and pound foolish. By any cost-benefit calculus, dollars spent on public libraries are a wise investment.

A few years ago, the Windsor, Connecticut Public Library hosted an Open House named, “I Got My Money’s Worth at the Windsor Public Library.” At that time, for about $26 per person per year, Windsor residents could borrow from more than $7 million worth of resources, including books, records, tapes, compact discs, and videos—not even counting the much larger treasure trove of materials available through inter-library loan, another 19th century American innovation.

Today the per capita cost of the Windsor library has increased to $36 a year, although the rate of increase has been much slower than inflation. Meanwhile, the information and resources available have soared dramatically. Over 80 percent of all public libraries now have publicly available computers. They have supplemented their print media with free online access to thousands of newspapers and journals and reference materials, either on-site or from their patrons' homes. And today most librarians will answer questions not only in person and by phone but also via email. Last year they collectively answered about 300 million questions.

Library Economics
Some 60 percent of the individuals who use public computers a Chicago’s libraries are searching for and applying for jobs.
In 2010 the Chicago affiliate of FOX TV News aired a segment called, "Are Libraries Necessary, or a Waste of Tax Money?" You may already know the narrative: “They eat up millions of your hard earned tax dollars. It's money that could be used to keep your child's school running. So with the internet and e-books, do we really need millions for libraries?... should these institutions—that date back to 1900 B.C.—be on the way out?”

Mary A. Dempsey, the head of the Chicago Public Library System delivered a classic librarian’s response—fact-filled, to-the-point, and devastatingly effective:

Let me speak about the Chicago Public Library, which serves 12 million visitors per year. No other cultural, educational, entertainment, or athletic organization in Chicago can make that claim.

The Chicago Public Library, through its 74 locations, serves every neighborhood of our city, is open 7 days per week at its three largest locations, 6 days per week at 71 branch libraries, and 24/7 on its website, which is filled with online research collections, downloadable content, reference help, and access to vast arrays of the Library’s holdings and information.

Last year, Chicagoans checked out nearly 10 million items...

The Chicago Public Library provided 3.8 million free one hour Internet sessions to the people of Chicago in 2009. The Internet has made public libraries more relevant, not less, as your story suggests. There continues to exist in this country a vast digital divide. It exists along lines of race and class and is only bridged consistently and equitably through the free access provided by the Chicago Public Library and all public libraries in this nation. Some 60 percent of the individuals who use public computers a Chicago’s libraries are searching for and applying for jobs.

Chicago’s schools offer the shortest school day in the nation. As schools slash their budgets for school libraries and shorten their classroom teaching time, thousands of children flock to Chicago’s public libraries every day after school, in the evening, and on weekends for homework assistance from our librarians and certified teachers hired by the public library.

Only recently have public libraries needed to use economics to justify their existence, but the results are consistently eye opening. A Florida study (Patience, this site takes forever to load, hmmm...) found that for each dollar of taxpayer money spent on libraries, communities received $6.54 in benefits. A study of Wisconsin’s libraries estimated a $4 benefit for each $1 of taxpayer money; one in Indiana estimated $2.38 in benefits; in Vermont, it was $5. In other words, for every $1 states or cities cut from their library budgets, households and businesses spend $2.38 to $6.54 more from their own pockets.

Consider the case of Philadelphia. In 2010 the city spent $33 million on its public libraries, which received another $12 million from other sources. That same year the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania undertook a detailed analysis of the economic impact of the public library.

A Florida study found that for each dollar of taxpayer money spent on libraries, communities received $6.54 in benefits.
Among other things, it found that within 1/4 mile of one of Philadelphia’s 54 branches, the value of a home rose by $9,630. Overall, Philadelphia’s public libraries added $698 million to home values—which in turn generated an additional $18.5 million in property taxes to the City and School District each year. That benefit alone recouped more than half of the city’s investment.

Add to that, the value of 6.5 million items borrowed each year, a value Fels calculated at more $100 million; the value of the 3.2 million reference questions answered; the value of the 1.2 million times people used computer terminals to access information outside the library; and the millions of times people read materials inside the library but did not borrow them.

Add the value of the lessons in computer literacy and English as a second language of after school tutoring.

And then add the hard to quantify intangibles: a safe and warm refuge, concerts and lectures, camaraderie.

Even the most Scrooge-like conservative would conclude that Philadelphia should increase, not decrease, its investment in its public libraries.

Trying To Take The Public Out Of Public Libraries
Recently, the idea of public ownership has been under attack; Fort Worth's example shows how effective that attack has been. The city explained that it was dropping the word “public” from the name of its library system because of its “potentially negative connotation.” John Adams wrote in 1776, “There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest … established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions.” Thomas Jefferson agreed, “I profess… that to be false pride which postpones the public good to any private or personal considerations.”

Would it be improper for me to mention the Forth Worth rebranding initiative was mostly paid for by a large oil drilling company?

Before the advent of the public library, information was much harder to access for those without wealth.

Carl Spitzweg, The Bookworm. Oil on canvas, c. 1850. Georg Schäfer Museum.

An increasing number of library systems have gone beyond name changing to actual privatization of ever-larger parts of their library operations. The biggest player in the library privatization game is Library Systems & Services (LSSI), founded in 1981 to take advantage of President Reagan’s initiative to privatize government services. LSSI (Lutheran Social Services of Illinois) now privately manages more than 60 public libraries nationwide and now trails only Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City as an operator of library branches.

For many years, libraries have outsourced some operations. But the new wave of privatization goes far beyond simple contracting out for services and raises fundamental questions. For example, LSSI’s contract with Santa Clarita, California gives LSSI control of all hiring and materials purchasing.

Privatization can undermine the public library’s mission: protecting the public’s access to information. The public library is a non-profit organization controlled by representatives of the users of the library; the mission of private companies is to maximize profits. They are controlled by representatives of their investors. LSSI, for example, is owned by a private equity fund, Islington Capital Partners, whose investors surely expect a handsome profit on their investment. (The company does not disclose its earnings.)

LSSI’s Chief Executive Frank A. Pezzanite is straightforward about how he views public libraries. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization,” he says. To him, they are just a business.

Private companies insist they operate more efficiently than a public non-profit, but that is problematic. After all, LSSI charges administrative fees as high as 15 percent. When the city of Linden, New Jersey ended its LSSI contract early, Mayor John Gregorio maintained the city would save $300,000—about 15 percent of the library budget—by running the library itself.

Private companies cut costs the same way the public sector cuts costs—by cutting services, acquisitions, staff, or staff benefits. In 2007 Jackson County, Oregon contracted with LSSI to run its library system. The five-year contract was for half the amount the county had previously paid to run its libraries. It also cut in half the libraries’ operating hours. All libraries are now closed on Sundays.

A truly public library is there for the long term. A private company has a short-term view. The Paterson, New Jersey library board considered an LSSI proposal but instead found a new automation-savvy director, Cindy Czesak. "I'd have no trouble hiring LSSI to do consulting, but I have real questions about them running a whole system," says Czesak, a former New Jersey Library Association President. "I think they worry less about developing long-term relationships within the community."

As I’ve observed, librarians have often stood up to authority when it came to protecting their patrons’ privacy or access to information. When public librarians go to work for private companies, they often lose job protection. It will be much harder for them to take a principled stand when they risk their jobs.

We need to fight the privatization of the public library while at the same time defending and nourishing our existing libraries.

A few weeks ago the nation celebrated National Library Week. You didn’t know? Few did. A search of more than 500 U.S. papers via Nexis came up with only a few dozen news items on the subject. The vast majority consisted of a couple of lines about an event at the local library. At a time when public libraries are fighting for their very existence there was no fiery advocacy, indeed, no fire at all.

When activists have managed to put a library funding measure one the ballot, they usually win. In 2010, some 87 percent of these ballot initiatives were approved across the country.
Because most libraries get 90 percent of their funding from local taxes, grassroots initiative can have a major impact. When activists have managed to put a library funding measure one the ballot, they usually win. In 2010, some 87 percent of these ballot initiatives were approved across the country.

We need a grassroots effort to defend our public libraries, an effort that can and should be part of a growing nationwide and international effort to defend the public sphere itself. Such efforts have begun.

In Bedford, Texas, after a community-wide petition campaign to oppose library outsourcing gathered 1,700 signatures in four days, city council members voted 4-3 to reject privatization.

51 Ways to Spark a Commons Revolution
What you can do, alone and with others, to share life.
In 2008, without a formal vote of the City Council, Philadelphia announced it was going to close 11 library branches. Grassroots organizations such as the Coalition to Save the Libraries sprang up, and residents of the affected neighborhoods along with several city councilors filed suit, citing an ordinance that no city-owned facility may close, be abandoned, or go into disuse without City Council approval. After two days of hearings packed with library supporters, and just hours before the mandated closure, Judge Idee Fox granted an injunction against the closures.

In her ruling Judge Fox made clear the city’s decision was about more than money, “The decision to close these eleven library branches is more than a response to a financial crisis; it changes the very foundation of our City.”

Fort Worth got it wrong. We need to put the PUBLIC back into public library.

David Morris is vice president and co-founder of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and a contributor to On the Commons, where this article was originally published.

Interested?

Rewriting the "Tragedy of the Commons"
Bill McKibben: We've been privatizing our way to disaster. It's time to chart a new course.
8 Keys to a Successful Commons
Advice on how to govern our commons by Nobel winner Elinor Ostrom.
How to Share a Waffle
Bartering for your breakfast: One step closer to a local economy?

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

This news just in From Sendai, Japan

2011-03-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting my awesome blog here that is focused on healthy alternatives to all that mainstream often doesn't have to offer all of us at any one time! My own neglect is reflective of the recession I am afraid; nineteen months now looking for work_ with good skills and education!
Never mind who we can slur a sarcastic thanks for this recalcitrant mess for the moment!
The most inspiring way I can recognize to restart my blogging again, is thanks to a friend's forwarded email today, concerning the catastrophe in Japan. We are resilient as a species_ never forget this! When all the material trappings & consumer hoopla is stripped away, there is still caring and kindness actively showing up_ in order that we each can carry on more in tune with our true nature.
In this vein of mutual inspiration, I post this report sent just today. It is written by another (extra)ordinary American citizen who right now, is living and working in Sendai, Japan. In her poetic words that follow, she shares with us a glimpse about her experiences day-to-day, moment-to-moment now, as people cope together with life as it is happening on that surface of our beloved planet, only very seemingly a world away_ for the moment. I share it here for all of us:

"It's not payday, and I'm not sending a poem, but I received the following letter from a teacher friend of mine, and it was so full of hope and light, that it felt like a poem, and I wanted to share it with you all.

From an American teacher in Sendai, sent to her loved ones here:
Subject: from Sendai, Japan

Hello My Lovely Family and Friends,

First I want to thank you so very much for your concern for me. I am very touched. I also wish to apologize for a generic message to you all. But it seems the best way at the moment to get my message to you.

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly, where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on.

But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun.

People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled.

The mountains are Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entrance way. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me,
With Love in return, to you all"

How is your holiday week-end?

2010-11-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

Watch the full episode. See more American Masters.

An American Thanksgiving - 2010

2010-11-24T23:34:00.001-08:00

The source of my inspiration!

Can we now move on to prepare the Groundwork for the Empathic Civilization- that is Us?!

2010-11-12T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press reports that Burma's long imprisoned pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from house-arrest. The Voice of America provides some good analysis.

This has happened before. Daw Suu's party won over eighty percent of the 1990 election. As the head of the party she is at least technically the last democratically elected leader of the country. But she never served due to a military coup, and instead has spent fifteen of the last twenty-one years in detention.

The military dictators are at the end of what is widely seen as a fraudulent election, and some see this as simple window dressing in that process.

Time will tell...

Amnesty International reports:

In this season of giving thanks, we are thrilled and grateful for the release today of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar (Burma)! The government released her after seven and a half years of house arrest.

Will she re-form the National League for Democracy? Will she continue to advocate for democracy? Will her release be for good this time, or will the government find another reason for imprisoning her yet again? Only time will tell.

While we couldn’t be happier about Suu Kyi’s release, time continues to run short for the over 2,200 other political prisoners who are still behind bars in some of the most notorious prisons in the world. They from suffer lack of medical care, proper nutrition, and lack of contact with their families. Many are imprisoned hundreds of miles from their homes, making travel for their families difficult if not impossible.

So while we give thanks for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, let’s do something for the others. Join us in calling for freedom for all prisoners of conscience in Myanmar!

*Thank-you to James Ford, for this post (above) on his blog: Monkey Mind.

In light then of this very recent development in the world of human rights & social justice, can we move more stridently toward a more outward-expressing, collectively empathic world view, to change the critical-mass standard of human consciousness & interaction, toward a dominant peace and democracy the world over now?

Organize a V-Day Event

2010-11-08T10:19:00.000-08:00

2011 Sign ups are now open. Click here to enter the V-Spot and register for an event.

Every year V-Day invites activists in colleges, communities, high schools or youthgroups around the world to present select benefit events (listed below) during & leading up to V-Season (February 1st - April 30th). The purpose of these events is to raise awareness about violence against women and girls as well as raise money for local beneficiaries that are working to end violence. There is no theater or producing experience necessary.

READ Eve's Welcome to 2011 Activists >

To learn more about V-Day, click here

What are V-Day Events? (see below)

Where do V-Day Events Happen? (see below)

When May I Organize a V-Day Event?

How do I Register to Organize a V-Day Event?

What are V-Day Events?

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES (performance) The award-winning play is based on V-Day Founder/playwright Eve Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace the piece celebrates women’s sexuality and strength. Through this play and the liberation of this one word, countless women throughout the world have taken control of their bodies and their lives. For more than twelve years, The Vagina Monologues has given voice to experiences and feelings not previously exposed in public.

A MEMORY, A MONOLOGUE, A RANT AND A PRAYER: WRITINGS TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN & GIRLS (performance) A groundbreaking collection of monologues by world-renowned authors and playwrights, edited by Eve Ensler and Mollie Doyle. These diverse voices rise up in a collective roar to break open, expose, and examine the insidiousness of violence at all levels: brutality, neglect, a punch, even a put-down. The volume features such authors and topics as: Edward Albee on S&M; Maya Angelou on women's work; Michael Cunningham on self-mutilation; Dave Eggers on a Sudanese abduction; Edwidge Danticat on a border crossing; Carol Gilligan on a daughter witnessing her mother being hit; Susan Miller on raising a son as a single mother; Sharon Olds on a bra; Patricia Bosworth on her own physically abusive relationship; Jane Fonda on reclaiming our Mojo; and many more. It is available for you to present as a reading, and includes pieces by and for men. We encourage men to register to host readings in conjunction with other V-Day activities.

ANY ONE OF US: WORDS FROM PRISON (performance) This piece evolved from a decade long writing group with Eve Ensler and 15 women at Bedford Hill’s Correctional Facility. This piece is a collection of stories from the raw voices of fierceness and honesty written by the original 15 women combined with writing from women in prisons across the nation moving forward toward healing, understanding, and change with the ultimate goal of using their writing and voices to impact policy, laws and treatment of incarcerated women. Together these writings reveal the deep connection between women in prison and the violence that often brings them there.

UNTIL THE VIOLENCE STOPS (film screening)

an uplifting documentary that looks at the V-Day movement and the work we have done around the world. It is an inspiring introduction to V-Day for your friends and community. Until The Violence Stops features playwright and activist Eve Ensler in a powerful film that documents how The Vagina Monologues grew into the international grassroots movement stopping violence against women and girls - V-Day. The film highlights the 2002 season, where eight hundred cities around the world participated in V-Day by staging benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues. Until the Violence Stops shows women from Harlem, New York to Ukiah, California; from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Philippines and Kenya, uniting and courageously revealing their intimate and deeply painful experiences with abuse ranging from rape to female circumcision.

WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU (film screening)

An unprecedented look into the minds and hearts of the women inmates of New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The film goes inside a writing workshop led by playwright and activist Eve Ensler, consisting of 15 women, most of whom were convicted of murder. Through a series of exercises and discussions, the women delve into their pasts and explore the nature of their crimes and the extent of their own culpability. The film culminates in an emotionally charged prison performance of the women's writing (the first edition of “Any One of Us”) by acclaimed actors Mary Alice, Glenn Close, Hazelle Goodman, Rosie Perez and Marisa Tomei. The film documents both the wrenching personal journeys undertaken by the inmates to find the words that tell their own stories, and the power of those words to move the outside world.

CONGO SPOTLIGHT TEACH-IN (powerpoint presentation) a downloadable PowerPoint presentation created by V-Day about the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The PowerPoint is designed to educate you, your campuses and communities about the history and current situation in the DRC where women are bearing the brunt of the vicious war in the region. It is a powerful tool to activate and motivate the public to put pressure on elected officials and raise awareness and funds for V-Day projects on the ground in the DRC.

V-MEN (workshop & powerpoint presentation) a powerpoint presentation compiled by a dedicated committee of V-Men along with an overview for hosting a workshop to engage men in a dialogue about ending violence against women.

V-GIRLS (book clubs & academic curriculum)
V-Girls Book Clubs provide girls and their advocates with a platform to explore issues that matter to them, giving them a pathway to ignite their activism through Eve Ensler's newest work, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World. The free downloadable book club guide will help girls and adults explore the book, reflect and discuss the text together, while also guiding participants through a process to plan a creative response to speak out on global issues facing girls. Girls can write and perform their own monologues inspired by the book, host a poetry slam or benefit concert, or create an art exhibit. Groups may choose to raise funds through their event for V-Day's Safe Houses for Girls in Kenya.

The V-Girls Academic curriculum is now available for 7-12 grades in Social Studies, Language Arts, Theater and Health and is supported by National Curriculum Standards.

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Where do V-Day Events Happen?

COMMUNITY You are a member of a community theatre group, a non-profit organization, a community member and will be presenting your event/s in a community rental space.

COLLEGE You are a college student, faculty member or are otherwise directly affiliated with a college or university and will be presenting your event/s in a venue on campus. (***IF YOU ARE A COLLEGE GROUP, BUT MUST PERFORM OFF CAMPUS, PLEASE CHOOSE THIS OPTION AND ANSWER RELEVANT QUESTIONS DURING THE APPLICATION PROCESS.***)

V-GIRLS You are a student under the age of 18 or an educator working with students of this age and will be presenting your event/s at a school or youth venue.

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When May I Organize a V-Day Event?

V-Day events are usually hosted on or around Valentine’s Day (February 14th) each year. V-Season is from February 1st through April 30th. Performance events (TVM, MMRP, AOOU) must be hosted during V-Season (February 1-April 30), while other event options (UTVS, WIW, TEACH-IN, V-MEN) can be held leading up to V-Season. To register for one of these events after the season has ended, please write to campaign@vday.org.

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How do I Register to Organize a V-Day Event?

REQUIREMENTS FOR HOSTING ANY V-DAY EVENT

Failure to adhere to these rules will result in V-Day's rescinding permission for you to present a V-Day event.

Most Important:

* You must register for the rights to host ANY V-Day event EVERY year. Rights are       free.
* Maximum of 3 performances/screenings for each event. No exceptions.
* You must work collaboratively with all other V-Day events in your area. We will       be putting you in touch with one another!

Money:

* Organizers & all supporting teams should NOT be paid. (Union technical staff       contracted by venue are the only exceptions.)
* Tickets should be charged for theatrical pieces & suggested donations for the       other works are at your discretion.
* Donate 10% of net profits to V-Day 2011 Spotlight Campaign.
* Keep production costs down. Donation goal should be 94 cents of every dollar.

Beneficiary:

* Donate profits to local group that specifically works to end violence against       women (preventative, educational, supportive, empowerment).
* Include your beneficiary in your activities, outreach and publicity.

Organizer requirements:

* Only 1 organizer is approved for each event. (18yrs & under require a dual       application)
* We require an active email address that can be shared publicly.
* Incomplete follow up reports will result in denial of any future applications.

Outreach:

* Focus your outreach to your group affiliation (college, community or high school)
* Strive for diversity of all kinds.
* You must include ALL that seek to be involved in your event in some way.

Venue:

* Your venue must coincide with your group affiliation (college, community or high       school) unless approved by the Directors of the Campaigns.

Scripts:

* Use ONLY the 2011 version of the scripts for your event. NO books or previous       scripts are authorized.
* No edits are allowed to monologues or introductions AT ALL!
* No additions to the scripts are allowed unless specified.
* Do not reproduce any scripts for any purpose other than V-Day events.
* All V-Day events should not exceed 90 minutes.
* Performances should be done without intermissions.

Casting:

* A minimum of 5 people in any performance. No maximum & we encourage you to       include as many people as possible.
* Strive for diversity of all kinds.
* No acting experience is necessary.

Publicity:

* You must use your correct event title, as it appears on the top of your V-Spot       login, in all publicity.
* You must adhere to ‘Identity & Social Networking Guidelines’ found under the       "Publicity" section of the V-Spot.
* Absolutely no excerpt performances of any plays for promotional purposes or       otherwise.
* No filming of events beyond 3-minute publicity limits outlined in “Publicity”       section of the V-Spot.

Requirements for “The Vagina Monologues” performances

* Performances should happen during V-Season ONLY (Feb 1- April 30)
* Charge tickets for your production unless given special permission by the       directors of the campaigns.
* No excluding, editing or order changes to any of the monologues.
* No male actors, but please include & encourage involvement. (We suggest using       the following guideline to determine who "qualifies": People who lead their       lives as women are eligible to perform in your production. This includes people       who are born as women and transgendered individuals, it does not include drag       queens. We leave it to your good judgment and your sensitivity to specific       situations to make the casting decisions for your individual production. If you       would like any help with this issue, please feel free to write to       campaign@vday.org )
* Choose only 1 optional monologue (in addition to the spotlight monologue) to be       included in order to keep productions to 90 minutes
* Your official event name will be: V-Day [your college/city name/youth group]       “The Vagina Monologues” 2011.

Requirements for “ A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, A Prayer” performances

* Performances should happen during V-Season ONLY (Feb 1- April 30)
* Charge tickets for your production unless given special permission by the       directors of the campaigns.
* Choose between 5 & 10 monologues, but do not edit the monologues themselves.
* Include men as performers in the pieces written for men.
* Consider a beneficiary that is working with men and boys in ending violence       against women and girls.
* Your official event name will be: V-Day [your college/city name/youth group] “A       Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and a Prayer” 2011.

Requirements for “Any One of Us” Performances

* Performances should happen during V-Season ONLY (Feb 1- April 30)
* Charge tickets for your production unless given special permission by the       directors of the campaigns.
* Consider a beneficiary that is specifically working with women in prison groups       addressing the issues of violence against women in relation to incarceration,       laws, policy, advocacy, etc.
* We encourage you to include up to 2 local pieces of writing from formerly or       currently incarcerated women to add to your event. Their writing should be       specifically focused on how their experiences with violence led to their       incarceration.
* Reach out to & include formerly incarcerated women whose experiences with       violence directly led to their incarceration.
* Reach out to local correctional facilities to request permission to perform       inside of the prison.
* Your official event name will be: V-Day [your college/city name/youth group]       “Any One of Us” 2011.

Requirements for “Until The Violence Stops” screenings

* Screenings can happen any time of the year leading up to or take place during       V-Season (Feb 1- April 30)
* You may charge tickets for your screening or solicit suggested donations at the       end of your event.
* The rights are FREE, but you must purchase a copy of the film through       www.vday.org/store.
* Your official event name is “A V-Day Benefit Screening of “Until The Violence       Stops”: [your college/city name/youth group].

Requirements for “What I Want My Words To Do To You” screenings

* Screenings can happen any time of the year leading up to or take place during       V-Season (Feb 1- April 30)
* You may charge tickets for your screening or solicit suggested donations at the       end of your event.
* The rights are FREE, but you must purchase a copy of the film through       www.vday.org/store.
* Reach out to local correctional facilities to request permission to host a       screening inside of the prison
* Consider a beneficiary that is specifically working with women in prison groups       addressing the issues of violence against women in relation to incarceration,       laws, policy, advocacy, etc.
* Your official event name will be: V-Day [your college/city name/youth group]       “What I Want My Words to Do to You” 2011.

Requirements for “Spotlight Teach-In” events

* Teach-Ins can happen any time of the year leading up to or take place during       V-Season (Feb 1- April 30)
* The event should be free of charge or suggested donations at your discretion.
* Your official event name will be: V-Day [your college/city name/youth group]       “Spotlight Teach In” 2011.

Requirements for “V-Men” events

* Attendance at the workshop should be free of charge.
* Workshops can happen any time of the year leading up to or take place during       V-Season (Feb 1- April 30).
* Workshop host & attendees must be male.
* Your official event name will be: V-Day [your college/city name/youth group]       “V-Men Workshop” 2011.

© 2010 V-Day

Restoring Sanity Through U.N. Scrutiny?!

2010-10-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Rally to Restore Sanity…to Reproductive Policies

October 30, 2010 by Carol King

While some of my friends were on their way to Washington, D.C. to “Rally to Restore Sanity,” one friend is preparing to go to Geneva, Switzerland, to make a plea for sanity to the United Nations about abortion. Renee Chelian, founder of Northland Family Planning in Southfield, Mich., will testify about the dismal reality of providing abortions in the United States.

Reproductive rights supporters are hoping the U.N. will use its influence to improve conditions for American women. As part of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review Working Group meeting November 1-12, 16 countries will have their human rights records examined. For the first time, the United States will be one of those countries.

“I thought the U.N. was only about peacekeeping,” said Chelian. “I’m learning that they’re concerned about human rights around world. They try to be our eyes, ears and conscience” when it comes to safeguarding everyone’s human rights. “They may not have enforceable powers, but they do have tremendous influence.”

Chelian, along with representatives from the Center for Reproductive Rights, Amnesty International USA and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, hope to convince members of the Human Rights Council and other international human rights experts to look at the threatened state of reproductive rights in the U.S. The Center for Reproductive Rights is hosting a side event where panelists will share the obstacles American women face in seeking reproductive health care, and what steps the government can and should take to increase access for all women.

“I will describe the kinds of attacks against abortion providers, clinic staff and patients. We have been burned down, bombed out, harassed and intimidated and finally murdered,” said Chelian. The Obama Administration is working with clinics and staff, but Chelian believes, “We need to put pressure on the federal government. They have the ability to protect us and they should.”

The issues go beyond protecting the clinics, workers and patients. The harassment, intimidation and vilification of abortion providers has resulted in fewer doctors willing to do the work. Women’s access to reproductive health care is limited by income, location, family situation and other factors. Said Chelian,

Physicians in rural areas do not add abortion care because of threats to themselves and their families. [They become] targets in the community–followed to the grocery store, restaurants, church. [They] fear losing patients because of the harassment and intimidation of other patients. Who would want to see this physician? If there are no physicians, legal abortion means nothing.

With no abortion facilities nearby, rural woman face unnecessary delays created by having to travel to a distant clinic, organizing time off work, finding child care and a driver, and enduring waiting periods which require two clinic visits.

Access for poor women is equally difficult. As they try to raise sufficient money, they often delay their abortions until the second trimester–when the procedure becomes even more expensive. It’s a Catch-22.

In a country so determined to make abortion as inaccessible and unpleasant as possible, you would expect unparalleled support for pregnant women, but we can’t even take comfort in that. According to Amnesty International, American women have a higher risk of dying of pregnancy-related complications than those in 40 other countries.

I’ll be keeping track of the proceedings in Geneva and report on the progress being made to define reproductive rights as human rights.

Photo from Flickr user alexandralee, under license from Creative Commons 2.0.

Now take a listen to this video!

Then, there is the Rally to Restore Sanity:

Signs Of 'Sanity' In Washington
by NPR Staff and Wires

When Reason Wears A Bear Costume
A "sanity" rally blending laughs and political activism drew thousands to the National Mall on Saturday.

People assembled by the tens of thousands Saturday on the National Mall, for a "sanity" blending laughs, activism, and a call for civility from two improbable maestros of moderation, comedians Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

"In the shadow of the Capitol and close to the election, comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert entertained a huge throng rallying on Saturday for "sanity," poking fun at the nation's diversity and its ill-tempered politics.

In one shtick, Stewart and his associates queried some crowd-goers to identify themselves by category, eliciting answers from attendees such as "half-Mexican, half-white," "American woman single" and "Asian-American from Taiwan."

"It's a perfect demographic sampling of the American people," Stewart cracked. "As you know, if you have too many white people at a rally, your cause is racist. If you have too many people of color, then you must be asking for something — special rights, like eating at restaurants or piggy back rides."

Colbert honored NPR among other news organizations at the event with a "Medal of Fear" for forbidding employees to attend the rally. A 7-year-old girl accepted the award in NPR's absence.

*Watch the credits at the very end of this video, & then act positively on the suggestions they represent. Hint: for the good of the WHOLE country!

The event sought in part to be a counterpoint to the "Restoring Honor" rally in August by Glenn Beck, the Fox News commentator popular among conservatives and tea party supporters. Beck's rally, which had strong religious overtones, drew some protests from civil rights supporters.

Don Novello, who years ago played Father Guido Sarducci on "Saturday Night Live," provided the benediction. He polled the crowd on their religious leanings, then gave thanks to God for allowing everyone to assign their various causes to him.

Egged on by the hosts, Ozzy Osbourne and Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, engaged in something of a battle of the bands, the heavy-metal rocker and the folkie interrupting each other.

The crowds — easily tens of thousands strong — were festive, goofy, disillusioned with the state of politics if not the nation, and ready to play nice at a gathering called as a counterweight to all the shouting and flying insults of these polarized times. But there were political undertones, too, pushing back against conservatives ahead of Tuesday's election.

Slogans urged people to "relax." But also: "Righties, don't stomp on my head," a reference to a Republican rally in Kentucky at which a liberal activist was pulled to the ground and stepped on. And, "I wouldn't care if the president was Muslim."

Shannon Escobar, 31, of Bangor, Pa., came with a group of 400 people on buses chartered in New York. A supporter of President Barack Obama in 2008, she said she's tired of nasty rhetoric from both sides and disenchanted with lack of progress in Washington.

"I want to see real change — not Obama change," she said. "We need a clean slate and start over with people really working together."

A regular viewer of Stewart's "The Daily Show," she said she had a dream that he ran for political office, but got "corrupt and dirty."

"I need him to stay pure," she said, deadpan.

People also carried signs in favor of United Farmworkers and the movement to give the District of Columbia a vote in Congress. Many were college students, but the crowd cut across all age groups. "Seniors for pot" cried a half-dozen older people.

Organizers insisted the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear wasn't about politics. Still, supporters and left-leaning advocacy groups hoped it would rekindle some of the voter enthusiasm for Democrats seen in 2008, particularly among young adults.

Stewart is popular especially with Democrats and independents, a Pew Research Center poll found. Colbert of "The Colbert Report" poses as an ultraconservative, and the stage Saturday was stacked with entertainers associated with Democratic causes or Obama's 2008 campaign.

Even so, Stewart said the day was about toning down anger and partisan division. "Shouting is annoying, counterproductive and terrible for your throat," he said on his website."

One more soundbite; even though the truth is we have only all of our own selves to "blame" for the entire mess that our beacon of Democracy is in. America the beautiful, the land of the free and the brave, no matter who we are alive in this period of our history, no matter how hard we may have worked for the right access to include everyone, while keeping our air, water & land to grow food, clean with the seventh generation in mind_ we are all part of this mess of self-centered blame to which our once beautiful beacon of Democracy has sunk. NOW! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TO CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER FOR EVERYONE, NO EXCEPTION?

REMEMBER, STAND-UP, BE COUNTED & TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for the entire mess we are all in together America, on BOTH sides of the aisle!

The Question on Manifesting

2010-10-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

U.S. says China Must Calrify Rare Earth Exports Restrictions

2010-10-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

By MATTHEW LEE
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 3:31 AM

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a news conference with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, not in the photo, on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010 in Honolulu, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool) (Evan Vucci - AP)

HONOLULU -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday called on China to clarify its policy on the export of exotic metals key to the global high-tech industry.

Opening a two-week Asia-Pacific tour aimed at cementing ties with allies who are wary of Beijing's increasing assertiveness, Clinton took on a primary point of friction between China and Japan.

She said recent Chinese restrictions on the sale of rare earth minerals served as a "wake-up call" for the industrialized world, including the United States and Europe, which has largely abandoned their production in favor of cheaper exports from China.

"I would welcome any clarification of their policy and hope that it means trade and commerce around these important materials will continue unabated and without any interference," she said at a news conference after meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara in Honolulu.

Clinton and Maehara both said China's stifling of the supply meant the international community would have to look for other sources of rare earths that are essential to producing high-tech devices such as cell phones, missiles and solar energy panels.

China produces 97 percent of the world's supply, something Maehara said "was not appropriate." Even if the current situation is resolved, he said it was critical to diversify the production of rare earths.

"This served as a wake-up call (about) being so dependent on only one source," Clinton said, calling rare earths both "commercially and strategically" essential. "The entire world has to seek additional supplies in order to protect the important production needs that these materials serve."
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Japan has been urging China to resume exports of rare earths. Japanese companies say Beijing has blocked shipments since Sept. 21, in possible retaliation for Tokyo's arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain near disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Many see China's action as indicative of its growing aggressiveness in dealing with such disputes. Some nations are seeking reassurance from the U.S., the traditional dominant power in the Pacific Rim, that it will remain a major player.

Clinton vowed that the United States remains committed to regional stability and the security of allies like Japan. She is to meet Saturday on China's Hainan Island with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo and said she intended to raise the rare earths issue, among other matters of concern.

She said a satisfactory Chinese clarification of its position on mineral exports "may shorten that discussion, but there is a lot to talk about," particularly to prepare for a state visit to the U.S. by Chinese President Hu Jintao in January.

Clinton's trip to Hainan - a last-minute addition to the itinerary - is loaded with symbolism for the Chinese.

The island is a powerful reminder of Chinese military might, hosting an array of intelligence and espionage facilities of the People's Liberation Army. It was where an American spy plane was forced to land in 2001 after it collided with a Chinese fighter jet. The 24 crew members were held for 11 days until the Bush administration apologized.

Clinton will also visit Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia.

At all stops, she said she would focus on strategic planning to counter existing threats from North Korea and other "contingencies," an apparent reference to possible Chinese muscle-flexing.

"We need to be looking at all kinds of scenarios, all kinds of contingencies, work though responses to events that might occur in the future and, of course, stay focused on the threat posed by North Korea," she said.

Before leaving Hawaii for Vietnam on Thursday, Clinton is to give a speech in which she is expected to underscore the importance the Obama administration places on the Asia-Pacific region.

Babson College Professor's message of the valuable basic infrastructure of Entrepreneurship in Rebuilding Haiti

2010-10-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

The Great Turning_ in action!

2010-09-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

The Greenhorns - 11 min trailer - Feb 2010 from The Greenhorns on Vimeo.

Shades of the Back-to-the-Land Movement of the Seventies in its evolved through time and education_ forms and expressions! Grow on young farmers at this time when sustainable practices of all kinds must be re-integrated back into the American culture and society!

Another Woman Slated as President of the nation of Brazil

2010-09-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

Dilma Rousseff, anticipated new president of_
Brazil, rich in oil, population and economy!
America just doesn't seem to have what it takes to elect a woman leader! We are a country that cannot peacefully, intelligently settle our own family differences on all levels both personally and publicly_ spoiled and divided as a nation about the maturity and responsibility democracy requires of every citizen,(what value is real education?) we may be all but conquered!

If Facebook existed years & even centuries ago, part I & II

2010-09-26T13:00:00.000-07:00

For a little fun_As found on Scotteriology
September 24, 2010
by agathos

If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses – Part 2

So How Did the Bush Tax Cuts Work Out for the Economy?

2010-09-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

David Cay Johnston | Sep. 24, 2010 08:02 PM EDT

The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess the fulfillment of the Republican promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency.

Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running this year on an economic platform of tax cuts, especially making the tax cuts permanent for the richest among us. So how did the tax cuts work out? My analysis of the new data, with all figures in 2008 dollars:

Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels.

That much additional income would have more than made up for the lack of demand that keeps us mired in the Great Recession. That would mean no need for a stimulus, although it would not have affected the last administration's interfering with market capitalism by bailing out irresponsible Wall Streeters instead of letting the market determine their fortunes.

In only two years was total income up, but even when those years are combined they exceed the declines in only one of the other six years.

Even if we limit the analysis by starting in 2003, when the dividend and capital gains tax cuts began, through the peak year of 2007, the result is still less income than at the 2000 level. Total income was down $951 billion during those four years.

Average incomes fell. Average taxpayer income was down $3,512, or 5.7 percent, in 2008 compared with 2000, President Bush's own benchmark year for his promises of prosperity through tax cuts.

Had incomes stayed at 2000 levels, the average taxpayer would have earned almost $21,000 more over those eight years. That's almost $50 per week.

The changes in average and total incomes are detailed on the next page in Table 1, the first of four tables analyzing the whole data.

Now that we have looked at the whole eight-year period, what does the new data show about 2008, the worst recession ear since the 1930s, show when compared to the peak year of 2007, when the average taxpayer made $63,096, which was 2.5 percent more than in 2000.

In only two of the eight Bush years, 2006 and 2007, were average incomes higher than in 2000, but the gains were highly concentrated at the top. Of the total increase in income in 2007 over that in 2005, nearly 30 percent went to taxpayers who made $1 million or more.

Now surely some will say that it is not fair to saddle George W. Bush and those who supported his tax cuts with the economic figures from 2001 and 2008. The first would be on the theory that President Clinton should be charged for that year (just as Bush should be charged with 2009, the first year of the Obama administration). The second is on less solid ground, but let's consider it for the sake of argument.

Just measuring the second through seventh years we find that total income was still nearly $2 trillion lower than if 2000 level income continued. Stacking the deck in President George W. Bush's favor does not change the awful performance or even soften it much.

The tax cuts cost $1.8 trillion in the first eight years, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, whose reliability the last administration went out of its way to praise. Those cuts were heavily weighted toward the people candidate George W. Bush famously called "haves and the have-mores . . . some people call you the elite. I call you my base."

In the two years since 2008, the cuts' total cost grew to $2.3 trillion, the Tax Policy Center estimated.

One of every eight dollars of the tax cuts went to the 1 in 1,000 taxpayers in the top tenth of 1 percent, the annual threshold for which was in the $2 million range throughout the last administration. The only other large beneficiary was parents with children under 17 who make enough to pay income taxes, thanks to the $1,000-per-child tax credit Republicans started championing in the mid-1990s.

Now let's look at wages, the source of most people's income. In 2008 the average taxpayer made $58,000. That was $5,100 less than in 2007, a decline of 8.1 percent.

The number of taxpayers reporting any wages in 2008 was 1.26 million fewer than in 2007, a scary figure when you consider that most people do not expect to be out of work for an entire year and that the population grew by more than a percentage point. In August 42 percent of the unemployed -- 6.2 million people -- had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The average for all jobless workers was 33.6 weeks of unemployment, the equivalent of going from New Year's Day through August 23 without a paycheck.

The number of taxpayers with incomes below $100,000 with any wage income fell in 2008 by 1.8 million. Because married couples file many tax returns, this means more than 2 million people who worked in 2007 earned no wages in 2008.

Total wages in 2008 fell by nearly 4 percent, compared with a year earlier, for the 87 percent of Americans whose total income was less than $100,000. Since 2000, population grew more than wages.

Those reporting negative incomes quadrupled from less than 600,000 in 2000 to nearly 2.5 million in 2008. Their losses worsened slightly from -$64,000 on average to -$66,000.

The number of workers earning $500,000 or more in total income also fell, by just under 100,000 (or nearly 12 percent), but their average wage of $718,000 is still more than the average American earns in a decade at 2008 levels.

The number of people reporting incomes of $200,000 or more but legally paying no federal income taxes skyrocketed in the second Bush term. A decade ago it was fewer than 1,500 taxpayers; in 2000 it was about 2,300. This high-income, tax-free group jumped to more than 11,000 in 2007 and then doubled in 2008 to more than 22,000.

In 2008 nearly 1 in every 200 high-income taxpayers paid no federal income tax, up from about 1 in 1,500 in 1998.

The share of high incomes that were untaxed increased more than sevenfold to one dollar of every $166.

The Statistics of Income data on tax-free, high incomes severely understate economic reality because they exclude deferral accounts, including those of hedge fund managers with billion-dollar incomes who can legally report no current income and borrow against their untaxed gains to live tax free.

Table 1. 2008 Average Incomes Fell Well Below 2000 Level

Table_1.pdf *Find the pdf links here

The one bright spot in the SOI data at Table 1.4 was that the number of people making $100,000 to $200,000 grew significantly between 2007 and 2008. Their ranks increased by 393,465, or 3 percent, to more than 13.8 million taxpayers.

This truly is good news, because most of the increase had to be people who worked their way up into six-figure incomes from 2007 to 2008.

We know this because fewer than 160,000 taxpayers fell out of the $200,000-and-up income groups. Even if we assume that every one of them fell into the $100,000-$200,000 class, that still leaves 233,000 taxpayers who joined this income group. These 233,000 taxpayers must be people who increased their incomes enough to get them above the $100,000 line. And we know that they did it mostly through becoming more valuable workers, because this group relies on paychecks for more than 77 percent of its income.

But despite that one sliver of good news about low six-figure incomes, the data show overwhelmingly that the Republican-sponsored tax cuts damaged our nation.

Examining performance against the promises, what do we find? Overwhelming evidence that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 made us much worse off.

Table 2. More Taxpayers, Less Revenue

Table_2.pdf *Find the pdf links here

Ignore the cynics who say the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, in Wasilla, and on the airwaves care only about the rich. I don't believe that. I think they are captive to economic theories few of them understand and that are simplistic in the extreme. I take them at their word, that they truly believe their policies will produce broad benefits for all, but accepting that does not diminish the fact that the policies these Republicans promote also produce massive tax savings for the superrich who finance their campaigns.

The question to ask is whether their policies worked as promised. Have they even come close? Where is the prosperity -- and where was it in the Bush years, when massive increases in both military and discretionary spending provided a chronic stimulus to the economy?

Table 3. 2007 to 2008: Fewer Jobs, Less Money (Mostly)

Table_3.pdf *Find the pdf links here

The hard, empirical facts:

The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt. And at the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and immoral system that rations healthcare -- while consuming every sixth dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small businesses, less efficient and less profitable.

This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional. The evidence is in, and it shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts failed to achieve the promised goals.

So why in the world is anyone giving any credence to the insistence by Republican leaders that tax cuts, more tax cuts, and deeper tax cuts are the remedy to our economic woes? Why are they not laughingstocks? It is one thing for Fox News to treat these policies as successful, but what of the rest of what Sarah Palin calls with some justification the "lamestream media," who treat these policies as worthy ideas?

The Republican leadership is like the doctors who believed bleeding cured the sick. When physicians bled George Washington, he got worse, so they increased the treatment until they bled him to death. Our government, the basis of our freedoms, is spewing red ink, and the Republican solution is to spill ever more.

Those who ignore evidence and pledge blind faith in policy based on ideological fantasy are little different from the clerics who made Galileo Galilei confess that the sun revolves around the earth. The Capitol Hill and media Republicans differ only in not threatening death to those who deny their dogma.

How much more evidence do we need that we made terrible and costly mistakes in 2001 and 2003?

Figure 1. High-Income Paying Zero Tax 1998-2008

Figure_1.pdf *Find the pdf links here

The number of individual income tax returns showing adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more, but no income tax liability, has been rising rapidly in recent years.

Table 4. 2008: Fewer Jobs, Lower Pay
(With Exceptions in Bold)

Table_4.pdf *Find the pdf links here

If Life is EVER so Boring for you...

2010-09-26T12:18:00.001-07:00

Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design

Stephen Hawking in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 15, 2009. (AP)

"Physicist Stephen Hawking got the world’s attention a long time ago. The brilliant scientist, trapped in wheel chair and Lou Gehrig’s disease, whose mind encompassed the cosmos.

In “A Brief History of Time”, Hawking laid out what we knew of the universe in compelling imagery and metaphor.

Now he’s back, with physicist Leonard Mlodinow, for a cosmic update. Not one universe out there, but many, they say. And no need now for God to explain the origin of everything. Science, they say, will do it.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Leonard Mlodinow, co-author, with Stephen Hawking, of “The Grand Design.” Mlodinow is a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and author of “The Drunkard’s Walk.” Because of his physical limitations and the live format, we will only hear Hawking via pretaped audio."

Really, it may not be the article itself, but rather the comments that follow it! Find them here and ponder!

Colbert Gives More Attention to Farmworkers’ Struggle than Any Reporter in Half a Century

2010-09-26T11:02:00.000-07:00

from Firedoglake by David Dayen

"Just Google “Harvest of Shame (h/t @danabacon). He said that “I like talking about people who don’t have any power…. I feel the need to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.” He quoted scripture, in particular Matthew 25:40: “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’” He added that we tell migrants to come to America to pick our fruits and vegetables, back-breaking work in perilous and often deadly conditions. “We ask them to come and work, and then we ask them to leave again. These people suffer, and they have no rights,” he concluded.

Yes, he was also very funny. But more to the point, he lent his name to an issue that gets almost no attention. Not one of these blow-dried idiots that sit around the White House Press room would ever dare the same. Colbert joked that he believes that one day of studying anything makes him an expert on the subject. Of course, it’s one more day than any of the people criticizing him for sullying the hallowed halls of Congress.

So the question becomes, who’s the actual reporter here?"

Alex Brandon
Comedian Stephen Colbert delivered a mostly satirical statement on illegal immigrant farm work.

The Great Turning; a synopsis

2010-09-19T10:45:00.000-07:00

'The Great Turning: the work of an entire species shifting its entire historic human mindset of who and what we are in relation to the entire planet; recognizing deeply that we are a species that is A LIVING PART OF a LIVING PLANET.' (paraphrased) _ Joanna Macy

Need I say More?!

2010-09-13T23:05:00.001-07:00

Fighting Fossil Fools

2010-09-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

An example of what a KMTP load will look like — bigger than a brontosaurus (apatosaurus if you’re nitpicky). Photo courtesy Imperial Oil

This article first appeared in the Eugene Weekly, Sept 2, 2010, Vol. XXIX

Rage Against the Machines
Giant loads of dirty fossil fuel equipment are going up the Columbia River
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN

Picture the oil monsters: Giant earth gobbling machines, bigger than a brontosaurus, slowly barging up the Columbia River, making their ponderous way past endangered salmon, through the craggy gorge to the Snake River and then bellying up to a dock at the Port of Lewiston where they hit the highways. They’re coming our way in a scheme called the Kearl Module Transport Project (KMTP). Former Green Party vice-presidential candidate and Native American (Anishinaabe) activist Winona LaDuke says, “There’s no history of anything of this scope. The highway system is going to be crushed by the loads.”
An example of what a KMTP load will look like — bigger than a brontosaurus (apatosaurus if you’re nitpicky). Photo courtesy Imperial Oil
Winona LaDuke. Photo by Todd Cooper.
Patricia Weber. Photo by Todd Cooper.

Pius Rolheiser, spokesman for the dubiously named Imperial Oil, says the behemoth shipments — the largest of which is 210 feet long, 30 feet high, 24 feet wide and weighing 500,000 pounds — are nontoxic. “People have expressed concern about these modules potentially containing hazardous chemicals or whatever, but until they arrive on site and are assembled, they contain no hazardous chemicals,” he says.

The hazardous chemicals come into play at the Alberta tar sands (aka the Alberta or Athabasca oil sands). What was once a carbon-storing boreal forest is becoming a vast mined wasteland, and if the Kearl project succeeds the machines will begin swallowing bitumen and spitting out dirty oil. Oregon will be the gateway to this fossil fuel hell.

A Canadian oil company controlled by ExxonMobil, Imperial Oil is one of the companies in the business of extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands. Opponents to tar sands extraction call it a dirty open-pit mining process that destroys forests and poisons land, water and people. Imperial Oil’s Kearl Module Transport Project involves building massive oil-extracting machinery in South Korea, shipping it across the Pacific to the mouth of the Columbia and barging it up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to Idaho, where it will be placed on super-sized trucks and shipped through Idaho and Montana to Canada. Conservationists, concerned citizens and environmental justice advocates like LaDuke are trying to get the project stopped in Idaho and Montana. But the KMTP has flown under Oregon’s radar, and it’s not clear if there’s anything this state can do to keep the machines from coming.

A recent advertisement placed in The New Yorker by the folks from the Alberta tar sands reads: “A good neighbour lends you a cup of sugar. A great neighbour supplies you with 1.4 million barrels of oil a day.” (FYI, that’s how they spell neighbor in Canada). Rolheiser says the project is “a large vital source of energy for a growing North American market.”

Patricia Weber of Corvallis, an electrical engineer and land use planner working with LaDuke and the coalition All Against the Haul on stopping the KMTP, says the Kearl project “is the Gulf oil spill to the north of us that nobody knows about, in terms of ecosystem destruction.”

Ruin: The Tar Sands

If oil is the addictive drug the U.S. is trying to kick, then the pusher keeping us hooked isn’t some Middle East country; it’s that mellow nation to the north, Canada. It’s our top supplier of foreign oil -— Canada provides almost 20 percent. Currently about half of what we get from the Canucks is a result of tar sands extraction. According to Imperial Oil’s website, the tar sands project can provide oil for the next 40 years to the tune of 300,000 barrels of oil per day.

“Imperial Oil is firmly of the belief that the oil sands can be developed responsibly and in a sustainable manner,” Rolheiser says.

LaDuke begs to differ. She and her Native-led environmental group Honor the Earth say that on top of devastating the boreal forest — the second largest intact forest in the world, second to the Amazon — and affecting fish and wildlife, the Kearl and other oil sands projects are poisoning Canada’s First Nations people. She says the small First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan, located near the oil sands, has had 100 deaths attributed to cancer in a community of only 1,200. LaDuke blames the toxic oil sands extraction and the poisons it’s leaving behind. The Canadian oil sands project is one of the largest industrial projects on Earth.

The group ForestEthics is asking U.S. corporations to avoid using tar sands oil. Walgreens, Whole Foods and Bed, Bath and Beyond have already signed on, and the Canadian press reports that The Gap, Timberland and Levi Strauss told their transportation contractors they will give preference to those who avoid oil sands fuels.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen, one of the first researchers to bring global warming to the world’s attention, wrote about the project in a 2009 editorial: “The tar sands of Canada constitute one of our planet’s greatest threats. They are a double-barreled threat. First, producing oil from tar sands emits two-to-three times the global warming pollution of conventional oil. But the process also diminishes one of the best carbon-reduction tools on the planet: Canada’s boreal forest.”

First the forests are logged, slowly turning the green vegetation in an area the size of Florida to a desert of sand and mud; then the land is cleared of what the oil companies call “overburden,” the former C02-storing forestland and muskeg (bog land). After the top layer of earth has been scraped away, mining can begin. Some exploitation of the tar sands is done by in situ mining, in which steam is injected into an oil deposit to heat the sand and lower the viscosity of the bitumen. The heated bitumen migrates towards producing wells, where it’s brought to the surface. Right now, however, it’s mostly open pit mining.

Brobdingnagian machines weighing millions of pounds, some standing three stories high, dig up the sands, then dump the bitumen-bearing earth, also called ore grade, into giant trucks. The trucks, far more massive than any monster truck you’ll see at the Cottage Grove Speedway, haul the bitumen to be crushed in giant drums. Hot water is added to make slurry, which is further diluted and separated until it becomes froth — 60 percent bitumen, 30 percent water and 10 percent solids. The froth is mixed with a solvent, and hydrogen is used to break up the long carbon molecules to make synthetic oil products.

The process leaves behind toxic mine tailings in ponds, and it draws vast amounts from the waterways. According to a study released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Aug. 30, oil sands extraction has left elevated levels of mercury, lead, arsenic and 10 other toxic elements in the Athabasca River. In 2008, some 500 migrating ducks died when they landed in a toxic Syncrude tailings pond (Imperial has a 25 percent stake in Syncrude). Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board conditionally approved Imperial Oil’s plan to handle waste from its Kearl oil sands project this month, but Imperial has said it would not be able to meet clean-up targets for the first six years of operations at the Kearl project because it needs time to work on new technology.

Weber says, “It’s not simple oil; it has to be extracted. It takes a tremendous amount of water and tremendous amount of natural gas.”

The natural gas is used to heat the water for oil extraction. In a circular sort of fossil foolishness, the oil companies are using one fossil fuel to extract another one. Weber says, “It’s kind of like a monster with all these tentacles. The head is the tar sands. We’re trying to go after the tentacles as we can.”

Roads: Highway to Hell

The tentacle that folks in the U.S. have been going after so far is the roads.

Comparing a KMTP load to a dinosaur is actually a bit skewed. The loads are bigger than a brontosaurus, and they weigh a lot more. Activists compare the size of a load to the Statue of Liberty. The longest load is actually a good 50 feet longer than the height of Lady Liberty from her heels to her torch. The Statue of Liberty weighs in at 450,000 pounds of copper and steel. A KMTP load can weigh up to half a million pounds — 50,000 more than the statute.

So how do you move a load as long as a hockey rink, as high as a three story building, and heavier than the our symbolic beacon of liberty?

The short answer is: very carefully. But the long answer is a little more complicated.

Imperial Oil’s Rolheiser says before choosing the route on U.S. roadways, the company explored “a number of other alternatives.”

He says, “Generally speaking, the route we selected was driven by the size of the modules. The modules are too large to be transported on an interstate highway.” Anything with an overpass, he says, “is a non-starter.”

Once the loads are removed from the barges at the Port of Lewiston, they will be placed onto massive Mammoet truck and trailer rigs (mammoet is Dutch for mammoth). The trailers, Rolheiser says, have up to 14 axles. He says the distribution force on a highway roadbed is like a semi truck.

LaDuke and Weber are skeptical — 207 loads, weighing up to 500,000 pounds, amounts to a little bit more than a semi-truck, which legally tops out at 80,000 pounds.

The route crosses bridges, goes over tall mountain passes and through national forests and tribal lands, and along a wild and scenic river. The monster loads start in Idaho and take Highway 12, following the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway through wild areas along the wild salmon and steelhead bearing Lochsa River in Idaho, over Lolo Pass into Montana through the town of Missoula, up Highway 200, over the Continental Divide and then up to Canada.

The route follows a road more narrow and windy than Oregon’s Highway 126 out the McKenzie, and like that highway, it is right up against a river. It goes through Missoula — a college town not unlike Eugene. Bob Gentry, a Montana attorney working to stop the loads, says that traffic signals in Missoula would be put on swivel bases to let the loads pass.

When she saw the proposed route, LaDuke says her first thought was “Are you guys high?”

Oregon’s Rep. Peter DeFazio recently was alerted to the KMTP issue, which has been kept so quiet there were no news stories about it prior to December 2009. The representative says: “I knew about tar sands. I knew about the extraction, but I didn’t know that anyone was intending to move super-giant-sized loads over roads and bridges in the United States to deliver machinery to extract tar sands in Canada.” DeFazio is a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

“There are huge questions here, and this has been pretty much under the radar,” DeFazio adds.

In order to get the trucks down roads not engineered for loads so large, Imperial Oil plans to bury power lines in the Lolo National Forest and along the Nez Perce National Historic Trail. Rolheiser says Imperial will construct, improve or widen turnouts along the route, so the trucks can pull over in the case of bad weather, and also because Idaho and Montana have 10 minute rules for traffic — each state’s law says traffic cannot be held up for more than that amount of time. Opponents see no way the ponderous vehicles could move fast enough to allow for only 10-minute hold ups. And Gentry says in Montana alone the project would build 53 new highway turnouts and modify or lengthen 22 existing turnouts with potential ecological effects on the nearby rivers.

The loads will roll mainly at night, and people have asked about what will happen if a load stops traffic and an emergency vehicle needs to get through. This concern is one of the things holding up a similar shipment of four sauropodian-sized heavy haul loads from ConocoPhillips that have been stalled since May at the Port of Lewiston. An Idaho judge ordered the state’s transportation department to review ConocoPhillips’ application and said that the state did not address the “inevitable” accident or breakdown that could shut Highway 12 for days or weeks, as well as overlooking “the quintessential disaster and its effects on the users of Highway 12.”

Winona LaDuke. Photo by Todd Cooper.

Rolheiser says for its part, Imperial Oil isn’t planning on having any accidents. “Our plan is as I mentioned based on moving them as safely and efficiently as we can so we don’t have an incident.”

Rolheiser also says Imperial Oil will cover the costs of “any work associated with the infrastructures changes,” even the costs of the highway patrol and escorts for the wide loads.

But DeFazio says his office looked into the KMTP and discovered that the Idaho Department of Transportation has applied for a competitive federal TIGER (Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery) grant. The grant application references improving the port for the Kearl project several times, adding that “Idaho’s Congressional Delegation has written a letter of support encouraging the utilization of the Port of Lewiston for shipments to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada.”

DeFazio has made inquiries to the federal highway division and had no response, so he has sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and asked him to have his staff scrutinize the super-oversized loads.

“I just think that’s outrageous. This is all to benefit one corporation and a foreign country,” DeFazio says.

Weber says that KMTP opponents fear that the wild and scenic river and popular recreation area might become a thoroughfare not just for Imperial Oil’s massive loads, but for other oil companies looking to exploit the tar sands. The Idaho TIGER grant says once the improvements are in place, other oil companies may want to use the new transportation route in the future.

Oregon’s 4th District congressman says he also wonders if the uber-heavy machines will cross any federally funded bridges. A map from a Mammoet document detailing the route shows it crosses seven overpasses on I-90 and a bridge over the Clark Fork River. Gentry says the route crosses a number of U.S. highway bridges as well, and “I don’t think anyone has done the prerequisite inspection of bridges to see if each structure can support these loads.”

The Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) did a state Environmental Assessment examining the project in its roads, a process Gentry calls a “mini-NEPA.” MDT has said it won’t release the statement until September but an EW search found an MDT document dated August 2010 that issues a “finding of significant impact” (FONSI), meaning that that more detailed environmental impact statement that KMTP opponents have called for won’t happen.

Rivers: Oil and Water Don’t Mix

LaDuke and Weber say that one concern that hasn’t been fully addressed is what happens if one of these loads falls into the pristine Lochsa or Blackfoot Rivers. How exactly do you get a half-million pounds or so of machinery back on the road and what happens to the salmon and other fish?

The FONSI document says Imperial Oil has come up with a plan, but according to Sam Mace of Save Our Wild Salmon, “If one of the loads goes into the river, they can’t just pick it up and put it back on the trucks.” She says a crane of that size would have to come in from Seattle or Portland.

She says the likeliest section for an accident to happen is the most winding one and to get the module out, they would have to build a giant base for the crane. Concrete supports would possibly go in the river itself, causing more sedimentation and damage.

“This overarching issue is that we’re allowing ExxonMobil to use our river corridor and our wild and scenic roads up there to transport equipment to one of the biggest polluting projects in North America,” Mace says.

Patricia Weber. Photo by Todd Cooper.

She says her coalition represents a diverse coalition of groups from fisherman to conservationists. Their concern is with the project’s effects on wild salmon and steelhead, not only because of the tar sands’ impact on climate change but because of its direct impact on the rivers due to construction and possible accidents.

The salmon and steelhead that swim up the Columbia are the same ones that make the long journey to Lochsa River in Idaho and beyond. “What happens to habitat in Idaho affects Oregon fisherman,” Mace says.

Brett VandenHeuvel of Columbia Riverkeeper, a group that works to protect the water and life connected to waterway, says there are multiple listed salmon species that would be affected by this project. Echoing the sentiments of others, he says the contents of the loads aren’t hazardous until they reach the tar sands. Bur he says, when it comes to pollution and environmental justice, “There certainly federal and national issues.”

Problems that affect Oregon’s fish also affect fisherman, tribes and the state’s economy. But no one in Oregon seems to know very much about the project. Most people don’t even know it exists, and certain details are still unclear. Some documents say the modules are coming through the Port of Portland; Rolheiser says they are coming through Vancouver, Wash.; and no one seems to know if there’s anything Oregonians can do to stop the Goliaths.

Scott Clemans of the Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams on the Columbia, says he isn’t aware of any permits needed from the Corps for the leviathan loads. He says the Coast Guard issues permits for hazardous shipments like liquefied natural gas tankers. “We don’t really permit things that go on the Columbia,” Clemans says. “If it can fit into the navigation locks, then it’s good enough for us.”

Charles Hudson of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission asks: “Is this an appropriate use of the Columbia/Snake system to facilitate the fossil fuel industry in an era when we are trying very hard to move in the other direction, on a river system that is trying to become more integrated with renewable energy?”

Gentry says, optimistically, “There’s a very strong argument there should be a federal review with the Forest Service, the Army Corps or the EPA. Nobody’s taken a look at the cumulative environmental impact of the final project,” thanks to what he calls its improper segmentation.

Right now, courts in Montana and Idaho are pitting the little guys versus Imperial Oil over the modules. Imperial Oil wants to see the hulking shipments get underway in October, and to finish by November 2011. The oil company wants their tar sands oil extraction to begin in 2012 — doomsday for the environment, and the day we begin to go the way of the dinosaurs.

For more information on Winona LaDuke and the tar sands, go to www.honorearth.org

Read more about Save Our Wild Salmon’s efforts against the KMTP at www.wildsalmon.org

And you can find Patricia Weber and other members of the coalition at www.allagainstthehaul.org

Flooding Victimizes Helpless Babies in Karachi

2010-09-06T10:33:00.000-07:00

Reposted from TEDChris.com
Titter: Pakistan Flood Relief

Just received this video from Dr Awab Avi, fresh back from a visit to a pediatric ward overwhelmed by flood victims.

Watch if you dare...

Dr. Awab Alvi takes you through a walk-thru tour of the Pediatric ward at the Civil Hospital Shikarpur to show the deplorable conditions.

The ward looks after only the most severe cases. There are three natal wards with a total of 20 beds, which now hold over 100 children. Some generous donor had air-conditioners installed, making it barely livable. Once you walk out of the rooms, the stench and the heat of the hallway is unimaginable. Toilets down the hall are over-flooding beyond belief.

Team members from OffroadPakistan visited the ward, and desperately want to make a difference. They need help to raise funds and expertise to save the lives of these gentle little kids. Dreaming big, they hope to revamp the entire Civil Hospital in this area, as a long-lasting measure for this impoverished city.

You can donate at SARELIEF.com

The Meaning of Intelligence

2010-08-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Meaning of Intelligence
An expansive reflection on work, education, and civic imagination with Mike Rose. He is an esteemed researcher and teacher at UCLA and a poetic writer. We explore his perspective, through life and scholarship, on hard subjects that drive to the heart of who we are — literacy, schooling, social class, and the deepest meaning of vocation.

Krista Tippett, host of Speaking of Faith
Valuing Intellectual Depth and Its Relationship to Work and Life in All Its Forms
I was hooked by the opening lines of Mike Rose's lovely book, The Mind at Work:

"I grew up a witness to the intelligence of the waitress in motion, the reflective welder, the strategy of the guy on the assembly line. This, then is something I know: the thought it takes to do physical work. Such work put food on our table, gave shape to stories of affliction and ability, framed how I saw the world … I've been thinking about this business of intelligence for a long time: the way we decide who's smart and who isn't, the way the work someone does feeds into that judgment, and the effect such judgment has on our sense of who we are and what we can do."

Mike Rose grew up in an immigrant family in the center of Los Angeles; I grew up in a small town in the melting pot of Oklahoma. I did not grow up around much physical work, but I did attend a school where advanced classes in languages, math, and science were axed to sustain a strong football team. His story of his late discovery of the strength of his own mind, and, even later, grasping the forms of intelligence he had known without appreciating, sparked all kinds of longing and recognition in me. Our stories taken together are disparate but kindred facets of a schizophrenia in the American story that thrives, largely unexamined, in our public life. Despite our national history of exceptional intellectual achievement, we also harbor what the historian Richard Hofstadter classically observed as a "national distaste for intellect."

This takes the form of a defiant bias against "book learning" where I grew up. Joe Six-Pack is, after all, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson's "common man." Sarah Palin strums these guitar chords powerfully, as Mike Rose points out — a phenomenon that learned commentators deride but fail to understand. For the other side of our schizophrenia is a learned dismissal of the cognitive accomplishments of "average" people, working people, summed up in a phrase like manual labor.

Mike Rose can demonstrate the error of such dismissiveness with hard research. But his concern goes deeper than that and is relevant to us all. Failing to see and nurture the intellectual and civic substance of all kinds of work, he worries, is profoundly undemocratic. It limits our collective vision and range of action from school reform to social planning. We shape educational policies with economic competitiveness in mind; we don't ask what kind of education befits a democracy. Mike Rose asks this question through his life story and in his scholarship, and speaking with him leaves me at once nourished and challenged.

This conversation with Mike Rose is more about intelligence and its relationship to work and life than it is about schooling per se, though he also offers very fresh and provocative observations on standardized testing and on what we might collectively learn from the controversial experience of No Child Left Behind.

Working on this program strummed some guitar chords already resonating in me and my colleagues after our show last fall titled "Learning, Doing, Being" with neuroscientist Adele Diamond. Many of you responded passionately to that show, and Mike Rose helps explain that response, I think. He calls forth — in a way we rarely do in our society, even in discussions about educational policy — the life-changing memories so many of us can summon of school or of teachers or of moments of reading or learning when our minds came alive; and how such moments formed who we wanted to be, who we are. We've gathered those insights on our website and would love to add yours.

The Mind at Work by Mike Rose
I Recommend Reading:
The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker
by Mike Rose
This refreshing, wonderfully written examination of beliefs about the mind explores blue-collar vocations and offers ample opportunity for the reader to reevaluate one's assumptions about the complexity of thinking that takes place as a hairdresser snips a lock, a waitress juggles multiple tables and orders, a carpenter problem-solves on site.

*This article is entirely the property & contents of the American Public Media Newsletter

Social Entrepreneurship in Turbulent Times

2010-07-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

"What's startling to me is that when I started talking about ideas like these 30 years ago, they were so new and strange that people looked at me as if I had two heads. In retrospect, I think I was looked on as something of a cultural clown - a "crazy" who was fun to listen to. The reaction I get now worries me a lot more, because what most people say is "Bob, today you're right, but we're not going to do anything about it."'
"My goal is to create a situation of full unemployment--a world in which people do not have to hold a job. And I believe that this kind of world can actually be achieved." _Robert Theobald

It is time for action in the streets, concerning full employment in America!

From his book, Rapids of Change, I quote the author, economist and futurist_ whose time is now:

Avoiding Catastrophic Failures (p.178-181)
The long-run cycles in Western industrial systems have played a critical part in ensuring the continued viability of rich societies. They have purged the excesses which accumulated as oversupply built up. Obsolete goods and facotires were consigned to the dustheap. Of course, this unemotional description of a slump hides the agony of people who (were)(my parenthesis) made useless. It also enables us to foget the wars that have been fought for markets./ Nevertheless, the mechanisms did work, despite the pain caused.
Today, however, we must learn how to prevent slumps and other massive catastrophes because the potential consequences are too dangerous. To do this we must gain a better understanding of what goes on during the development of the long-run cycle.
Economies emerge from a slump in a state of relative balance. People have been sufficiently firghtened by the disasters they have experienced that they choose to be careful. But as the years go by, excitement grows and the magnitude of the short-run cycles begins to increase.
Constraints, both regulatory and within professions, are imposed. But the general trend remains upward, and over excitement begins to take hold. Governments try to control these excesses. But the trends still look good to people. At this point, systems move onto a very dangerous downward slope through feverishness controlled by ever increasing power and then chaos.
At the end of the Carter Administration, we were firmly set on a course through fever into chaos because of excessive demand and inflation. The Reagan administration controlled inflation, but was also willing to allow other imbalances by pushing hige amounts of credit into the system, and by allowing business funding though junk bonds. Other countries have followed similar policies.
Can we move back up the circle and reverse the normal direction of flow toward entropy and breakdown? this question arises not only for economic slumps but also in human breakdowns. We can learn how we might act economically if we look at personal patterns. We used to assume that alcoholics and drug users had to fall, literally and figuratively, into the gutter before they would be willing to save themselves. It was thought that they would not be willing to make the effort to escape their cravings uintil there was absolutely no other option. We have now discovered ways to surround the alcoholic with fammily, friends and colleagues and to challenge her or him into accepting the need for change. this is a tough role because the alcoholic has perfected avoidance mechanisms and escape hatches just to avoid facing the ultimate consequences of his or her path. But an individual can be effectively confronted and the approaches to make the challenge as successful as possible have been developed over time.
Similarly, we have learned better skills for preventing catastrophic breakup in marriages if people wish to avoid anger and hatred. Families can be counseled in ways which help them decide whether they can effectively get back together or need to break up. If breaking up is necessary this cvan also be handled positively, although the need for leagal processes all too often detroys this possibility. Similar processes have been developed for larger groups including institutional renewal. I was able to healp a community college in Dallas rediscover the excitement of teaching and the joy of education. We do know the patterns and understandings which are required for both personal and institutional renewal.
We need to develop large-scale social processes similar to those which have been learned for individuals, families, and groups. We can confront people with the need for change in ways they cannot easiliy avoid. Personal change is achieved by forcing people to listen to what they don't want to hear. It might seem then that all we have to do is send more and more messages about growing evidence of potential catastrophe. This will not work, however, because most people have become experts at tuyning out messages they don't want to hear.
Unpleasant messages are all to easily blocked unless the messenger is trusted. The alcoholic eventually listens because the costs of ignoring the challenges of family, friends and colleagues is too high to be tolerable. We must develop a trust relationship with those we want ro influence in the society if we hope to get them to listen and then commit to avoiding total breakdown.
People are so stressed out today that the first step toward trust is to give them a chance to unwind. This is a fundamentally different strategy from that usually chosen by the change agents. Rapids is one step toward this new approach. It starts from the assumption that we can challenge people to move toward an attitude of realistic hope. Most people no longer believe that there is a shortcut to a better world, but many are still willing to try to build new approaches with each other.
The core aspect of our work will be to pull individuals, groups and systems away from the chaos into which we are drifting and back toward balance. Fortunately, a great deal of imaginative work has already been done in this area. We have the tools and models that can be employed, once we fully understand our directions and why they are fundamentally different from those of industrial systems."

To be continued... Ask yourself how much of this reading is a review? Where are we now? How is any of this information different? Should "industrial systems" be replaced with "corporate institutional/environments"?

*Thank-you for this uplifting inspiration from Diane Wilson!!

Modest Needs, can you help?

2010-07-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of Modest Needs?

Even though the link I have provided takes you straight to my particular grant request, you can go to the homepage to check out the whole Modest Needs story from the "Start Here" section on the menu bar, or really, from the top of any page_ including mine.

My own grant request is modest, as I transition back into new employment, after a recession lay-off 10 months ago. Your donation, of any size to my request, will be ever so appreciated! Just click on the link below and thank-you, very much!!

Application 159557: New Job - Rent Help - Modest Needs®

*Be sure to pass this information on to those you know who may need the kind of help available through a Modest Needs grant!!

I for one will always stand for peace; What my father's costly death in US WAR taught me

2010-07-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

An End to Constant War
Seven reasons we're always at war... and seven ways to quit.
by William J. Astore

"Most Americans are not only convinced we have the best troops, the best training, and the most advanced weapons, but also the purest motives." Photo by Jayel Aheram.

If one quality characterizes our wars today, it’s their endurance. They never seem to end. Though war itself may not be an American inevitability, these days many factors combine to make constant war an American near certainty. Put metaphorically, our nation’s pursuit of war taps so many wellsprings of our behavior that a concerted effort to cap it would dwarf BP’s efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

Our political leaders, the media, and the military interpret enduring war as a measure of our national fitness, our global power, our grit in the face of eternal danger, and our seriousness. A desire to de-escalate and withdraw, on the other hand, is invariably seen as cut-and-run appeasement and discounted as weakness. Withdrawal options are, in a pet phrase of Washington elites, invariably “off the table” when global policy is at stake, as was true during the Obama administration’s full-scale reconsideration of the Afghan war in the fall of 2009. Viewed in this light, the president’s ultimate decision to surge in Afghanistan was not only predictable, but the only course considered suitable for an American war leader. Rather than the tough choice, it was the path of least resistance.

Why do our elites so readily and regularly give war, not peace, a chance? What exactly are the wellsprings of Washington’s (and America’s) behavior when it comes to war and preparations for more of the same?
Consider these seven:

1. We wage war because we think we’re good at it—and because, at a gut level, we’ve come to believe that American wars can bring good to others (hence our feel-good names for them, like Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom). Most Americans are not only convinced we have the best troops, the best training, and the most advanced weapons, but also the purest motives. Unlike the bad guys and the barbarians out there in the global marketplace of death, our warriors and warfighters are seen as gift-givers and freedom-bringers, not as death-dealers and resource-exploiters. Our illusions about the military we “support” serve as catalyst for, and apology for, the persistent war-making we condone.

2. We wage war because we’ve already devoted so many of our resources to it. It’s what we’re most prepared to do. More than half of discretionary federal spending goes to fund our military and its war making or war preparations. The military-industrial complex is a well-oiled, extremely profitable machine and the armed forces, our favorite child, the one we’ve lavished the most resources and praise upon. It’s natural to give your favorite child free rein.

3. We’ve managed to isolate war’s physical and emotional costs, leaving them on the shoulders of a tiny minority of Americans. By eliminating the draft and relying ever more on for-profit private military contractors, we’ve made war a distant abstraction for most Americans, who can choose to consume it as spectacle or simply tune it out as so much background noise.

4. While war and its costs have, to date, been kept at arm’s length, American society has been militarizing fast. Our media outlets, intelligence agencies, politicians, foreign policy establishment, and “homeland security” bureaucracy are so intertwined with military priorities and agendas as to be inseparable from them. In militarized America, griping about soft-hearted tactics or the outspokenness of a certain general may be tolerated, but forceful criticism of our military or our wars is still treated as deviant and “un-American.”

High-tech drones, such as this Reaper drone are examples of machinery that drive up the cost of war. Photo by US Air Force.

5. Our profligate, high-tech approach to war, including those Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles, has served to limit American casualties—and so has limited the anger over, and harsh questioning of, our wars that might go with them. While the U.S. has had more than 1,000 troops killed in Afghanistan, over a similar period in Vietnam we lost more than 58,000 troops. Improved medical evacuation and trauma care, greater reliance on standoff precision weaponry and similar “force multipliers,” stronger emphasis on “force protection” within American military units: All these and more have helped tamp down concern about the immeasurable and soaring costs of our wars.

6. As we incessantly develop those force-multiplying weapons to give us our “edge” (though never an edge that leads to victory), it’s hardly surprising that the United States has come to dominate, if not quite monopolize, the global arms trade. In these years, as American jobs were outsourced or simply disappeared in the Great Recession, armaments have been one of our few growth industries. Endless war has proven endlessly profitable—not perhaps for all of us, but certainly for those in the business of war.

7. And don’t forget the seductive power of beyond-worse-case, doomsday scenarios, of the prophecies of pundits and so-called experts, who regularly tell us that, bad as our wars may be, doing anything to end them would be far worse. A typical scenario goes like this: If we withdraw from Afghanistan, the government of Hamid Karzai will collapse, the Taliban will surge to victory, al-Qaeda will pour into Afghan safe havens, and Pakistan will be further destabilized, its atomic bombs falling into the hands of terrorists out to destroy Peoria and Orlando.

Such fevered nightmares, impossible to disprove, may be conjured at any moment to scare critics into silence. They are a convenient bogeyman, leaving us cowering as we send our superman military out to save us (and the world as well), while preserving our right to visit the mall and travel to Disney World without being nuked.

The truth is that no one really knows what would happen if the United States disengaged from Afghanistan. But we do know what’s happening now, with us fully engaged: We’re pursuing a war that’s costing us nearly $7 billion a month that we’re not winning (and that’s arguably unwinnable), a war that may be increasing the chances of another 9/11, rather than decreasing them.

Capping the Wellsprings of War

Each one of these seven wellsprings feeding our enduring wars must be capped. So here are seven suggestions for the sort of “caps”—hopefully more effective than BP’s flailing improvisations —we need to install:

1. Let’s reject the idea that war is either admirable or good—and in the process, remind ourselves that others often see us as “the foreign fighters” and profligate war consumers who kill innocents (despite our efforts to apply deadly force in surgically precise ways reflecting “courageous restraint”).

2. Let’s cut defense spending now, and reduce the global “mission” that goes with it. Set a reasonable goal—a 6-8 percent reduction annually for the next 10 years, until levels of defense spending are at least back to where they were before 9/11—and then stick to it.

3. Let’s stop privatizing war. Creating ever more profitable incentives for war was always a ludicrous idea. It’s time to make war a non-profit, last-resort activity. And let’s revive national service (including elective military service) for all young adults. What we need is a revived civilian conservation corps, not a new civilian “expeditionary” force.

4. Let’s reverse the militarization of so many dimensions of our society. To cite one example, it’s time to empower truly independent (non-embedded) journalists to cover our wars, and stop relying on retired generals and admirals who led our previous wars to be our media guides. Men who are beholden to their former service branch or the current defense contractor who employs them can hardly be trusted to be critical and unbiased guides to future conflicts.

5. Let’s recognize that expensive high-tech weapons systems are not war-winners. They’ve kept us in the game without yielding decisive results—unless you measure “results” in terms of cost overruns and burgeoning federal budget deficits.

6. Let’s retool our economy and reinvest our money, moving it out of the military-industrial complex and into strengthening our anemic system of mass transit, our crumbling infrastructure, and alternative energy technology. We need high-speed rail, safer roads and bridges, and more wind turbines, not more overpriced jet fighters.

7. Finally, let’s banish nightmare scenarios from our minds. The world is scary enough without forever imagining smoking guns morphing into mushroom clouds.

There you have it: my seven “caps” to contain our gushing support for permanent war. No one said it would be easy. Just ask BP how easy it is to cap one out-of-control gusher.

Nonetheless, if we as a society aren’t willing to work hard for actual change—indeed, to demand it—we’ll be on that military escalatory curve until we implode. And that way madness lies.

William-J.-Astore.jpgWilliam J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and regular contributor to TomDispatch.com where this article first appeared.
He has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School and currently teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.

*Find the source from which I reposted this article, here!

When the Greater Good for All Prevails

2010-07-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

Find the original article in Yes! Magazine, posted here!
Pecos Singer, a student at Santa Fe Waldorf High School in New Mexico, read and responded to the YES! Magazine article, "Who Will Rule?" by Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly.

Prompt: The article Who Will Rule? by Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly in YES! Magazine, opens with these lines: “Corporate power lies behind nearly every major problem we face–from stagnant wages to unaffordable health care to over consumption and global warming.” What are corporations, why are they so bad, and why are they so powerful?

Read the original article "Who Will Rule?" Illustration by Don Baker for YES! Magazine. www.evidenceofhumanity.org

A corporation is simply a group of shareholders, organized into a conglomerate that can be held liable separate from its owners. This maneuver helps CEOs and major shareholders avoid being held accountable for their business-related activities. The word “corporation” comes from the Latin corporare, meaning “to embody” (“corporation”).

The corporation is a machine, with a computer at its head. The script that the computer reads is called the charter, which dictates how the company will run. Nearly every corporation in the world today is a for-profit corporation that operates with only one objective: to generate high dividends for its shareholders. Here lie two major problems. The first is that most major shareholders are high up in the company. With their large portion of shares, they profit doubly as corporate executives and as incorporated investors. The second problem is that these people are also “incorporated” in politics. Not only do they use their tremendous monetary strength to influence the legislative and elective processes, they also end up holding offices in these very institutions. This, in turn, gives rise to a third problem. These powerful people who control many facets of government have their eyes focused on only the nearest future and the highest returns. The critical issue of “short-termism” causes blindness and greed to infiltrate important corporate and government decisions.

Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly suggest in their article “Who Will Rule?” that “we need to restore democracy and … control corporate power.” “This means elevating the rights of local municipalities over corporations.” In a sense, this just means allowing power to rest with the people, not with the money, which is perhaps the primary issue with corporations in the world today. Because of the media, itself a massive for-profit industry, many high-ranking public officials gain office through sheer brute spending. And through corporate lobbying in D.C., laws are put into place that support the agendas of the biggest spending companies. As if this weren’t enough, people in the top corporations transition smoothly into powerful political offices and back again. This “revolving door” between corporations and politics, facilitated by a steady flow of cash, is the backbone of corruption in the modern West.

Corporations are like firearms. People don’t shoot people; guns shoot people. If there were no guns, no one would be shot. The government is the casing, and the money is the ammunition. These machines fire a million times a day, and no Kevlar vest can protect us. The only protection comes from severely restricting “the realms in which for-profit corporations operate.” “The solution is to develop strong institutions that have ownership rights over common wealth.” Imagine a corporation charter that viewed all profits as “for-benefit.” And shareholders who expected dividends “for the greater good,” investing in “well-being” and “happiness,” rather than gambling on monetary profits and losses.

Marx and Kelly recommend that we use the power of community to overcome corporations. “We can stop thinking that the solution is more Democrats in power, and realize it is more democracy.” By working together, we can achieve feats of immense magnitude:

“We can knit ourselves into a single movement by adopting common frames and by integrating strategic common priorities into existing campaigns. For example, campaigns covering any issues from the environment to living wages could demand that targeted companies end all involvement in political campaigns.”

By striking boldly and accurately, the people of the world can reclaim the realm of politics and the economy.

I disagree with the first line of the article, blaming the corporations for the world’s problems. The problems arose before the corporations, who are merely a new face on the scene of humanity. The stage was set long before paper money and credit ratings, and before banks and machine guns. There is a chance for these new entities to be harnessed and used for good as well.

When you write, for example, that “By working together, we can achieve feats of immense magnitude,” I find my heart feel a hopefulness. - Majorie Kelly's response to this essay

The origins of the corporation lie next to the human desire to join together in order to fulfill something impossible for each part to accomplish individually. Yet this act of social community threatens to extinguish all that is human. The modern-day corporation shares ties not only with nature, where bees live in hive-communities to amass life-giving honey, but also with most organized religions, where people of similar beliefs congregate to achieve something holy or sacred. All three seek to unite many parts in order to benefit the whole. There is one fatal difference, however. The corporation itself takes on a persona, not as a human-like “God” character of the Middle Ages, who is either wrathful or merciful, but as a monster of accumulation and insatiable hunger. Because the conventional goal of the corporation is to make profits for its shareholders, the creators of a corporation incarnate a portion of their own innate, human greed into an entity of self-restraint.

The answer will not come through politics, nor will it come solely through economical means. This next revolution will be no different from those that came before it. It will be a philosophical revolution, but it can only be achieved when human beings resolve their relationship with technology, intellectualism, and machines, whose tremendous power for destruction could spell out doom for all life. At the heart of the philosophical revolution will be the determination and courage to spell out: “That is wrong and this is right for the good of all.”

Practically speaking, however, it will be the grassroots initiatives that will pull us into a glorious twenty-first century. This laurel will rest with cooperative movements and ecologically sustainable communities. But the crown gem of this revolution could be the powerful bankers, the CEOs, and the senators who hear the call and also rally for the greater good. These people are in an excellent place to greatly affect our future; all they need is a bit of persuasion.

Yes, this may sound utopian, but I agree with Marx and Kelly when they say, “with a citizens movement, we could turn these musings into reality in 20 years.” In the words of John Lennon, “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”

Pecos SingerDaniel "Pecos" Singer is a graduate of the Santa Fe Waldorf High Schooland is matriculating at the University of Oregon, School of Music and Robert D. Clark Honors College, in the Fall 2010. Pecos plans to turn his passion into a career by majoring in music.

Interested?

* Want an opportunity for your students to step up their writing and write for a real audience? Learn about how to join the YES! Magazine Exemplary Essay Project here.

July Fourth Outrage: British Gov't Elevates Disgraced BP Boss

2010-07-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

by Tom Bower

The U.K. government has appointed former BP chief Lord Browne as its new efficiencyczar. Tom Bower on the extraordinary insult of promoting the man who bears huge responsibility for the Gulf oil crisis.

The British government appointed Lord Browne, the former CEO of BP, as a new “super-director” to cut waste and increase the efficiency of the British government machine in Whitehall. The announcement of Browne’s appointment was delayed while officials weighed the consequences of inevitable controversy. Browne is widely blamed for the drastic cuts of BP’s safety and maintenance program of its oil installations in the U.S. while he was BP’s CEO between 1998 and 2007. The consequence of those cuts were three major accidents in the U.S.—an explosion at the Texas City refinery in 2005, two oil spills in Alaska in 2006; and the current catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. Adamantly, Browne has refused to discuss his responsibility for the Gulf crisis. He is undoubtedly relieved that the British government decided to ignore the allegations about his culpability and promote him to a senior position. Ever since he was forced to abruptly retire from BP after signing an untruthful court statement about his gay relationship with a young Canadian, he has struggled to restore his reputation as the “Sun King.”

The hapless Tony Hayward who inherited the poisoned legacy was never suitable to repair the damage which inevitably led to the explosion one mile beneath the Gulf’s waters.

Lord Browne's spotty tenure at BP

Small, dapper, and authoritarian, Browne transformed BP from a dying oil corporation in the early 1990’s into the world’s second largest oil behemoth. By re-focusing BP on “elephants”—the big oil reservoirs—and ruthlessly cutting costs, his mastery of financial engineering used BP’s rising share price to stage audacious takeovers of failing oil companies, especially Arco and Amoco in America. BP flourished by consistently discovering new reserves to replenish the oil it was extracting. His stint at BP showed he was the master of so-called efficiency savings and self-publicity. In a speech at Stanford, he re-branded BP as “Beyond Petroleum”—the world’s most environmentally friendly oil company. The re-labelling was condemned by many environmentalists as a cynical ruse but, with the help of lobbyists and donations to Congressmen and senators, Browne won praise in Washington as a pathfinder for the oil industry and, unusually, a CEO who could be trusted.

Full coverage of the BP oil spill

In reality, behind BP’s new sunburst logo, some insiders were railing against an increasingly putrid organization. Unwilling to tolerate their criticism, Browne ruthlessly removed talented executives and potential rivals who threatened to prematurely inherit his crown. What remained were “the turtles,” the sycophants trusted by Browne to carry his burden and unquestioningly deliver his ambition. Tony Hayward ranked among the chosen ones, as did Robert Dudley, the new American supremo.

Cutting costs was Browne’s obsession. His philosophy was ‘More for less”—100 percent of a task would be completed at a cost of only 90 percent of the previous resources. Targets became his Gospel. On July 11, 2000, he announced that BP’s production would annually grow over three years by 5.5 percent to 7 percent, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico and Angola. In fact, growth never exceeded 2.9% and skilled oil men resigned rather than worship Browne’s impossible dream. Among them was Doug Ford, the ex-Amoco executive responsible for refineries including Texas City. Ford was appalled by Browne’s confrontational challenges to cut costs accompanied by the unspoken threat: “You’d better deliver.” Meetings with Browne were characterized by Al Kozinski, also an ex-Amoco refinery specialist as “a clash of big egos.” Browne expected clicking of heels in obedience rather than measured discussion. He ignored warnings about the consequences of his draconian cuts. Along with hundreds of BP’s engineers, Ford and Kozinski resigned and were replaced by a Browne “turtle,” John Manzoni, an accountant who zealously pruned safety and maintenance costs. The first casualties were 15 sub-contractors killed at an explosion in Texas City. A US government report blamed “systemic lapses” by BP’s management and budget cuts which knowingly left at Texas City “unsafe and antiquated designs…in place, and unacceptable deficiencies in preventive maintenance were tolerated.”

Although he paid lip-service to investing in maintenance, Browne rejected the criticism and continued to replace BP’s engineers with sub-contractors. Just as ExxonMobil was hiring engineers because “drilling is the core of our business,” Browne was ditching BP’s in-house expertise which could second-guess every technical operation on land and under the sea. Farming-out saved money but changed BP’s culture. Instead of specializing in oil engineering—needed to minutely supervise the sub-contractors working on Deep Horizon in the Gulf—Brown pursued financial engineering to fulfill his ambition: to overtake ExxonMobil and transform BP into the world’s biggest oil corporation. His goal could only be realised if BP’s high profits sustained a record share price to grease a merger with Shell. He was betting the house on beating his competitors.

Despite the condemnation of Browne by the U.S. government’s regulator in Texas, he approved Manzoni’s continued cut backs on maintenance in Alaska—even abolishing the employees annual lobster feast. When oil burst through a corroded pipeline, Browne pleaded honest apologies but Congressional investigators unearthed negligence and even suppression of the evidence. In London, Peter Sutherland, BP’s highly respected Irish chairman, was exasperated by Browne’s behaviour and suspicious of his excuses. He wanted Browne out but the wily executive had made the appointment of a suitable replacement impossible. No one of real aptitude had been left standing after Browne’s cull. The hapless Tony Hayward who inherited the poisoned legacy was never suitable to repair the damage which inevitably led to the explosion one mile beneath the Gulf’s waters.

Since his retirement, Browne published, Beyond Business: An Inspirational Memoir From a Visionary Leader. So far the British, with bizarrely civilized manners, have not damned Browne for his “vision.” Instead, the government has promoted him to deploy the same skills for Britain as he applied to BP.

Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.

Tom Bower is a distinguished investigative historian, broadcaster, and journalist, as well as the author of several bestselling books about tycoons, politicians, intelligence and post-war Europe.

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* Find the complete article here.

Health concerns emerge over BP oil spill

2010-07-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

By Bill Lindner

Seventy-three days after the Gulf Coast oil crisis began, people are being advised to avoid some coastal areas affected by the BP oil spill. Also, there are concerns over the health and safety of workers involved in clean-up efforts.
More than two months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up, causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, oil continues spewing unabated into the Gulf of Mexico and reaching land in several states. Now health concerns of residents and cleanup workers in the areas affected by the spill are growing.
There are reports from parts of Florida that water in the Gulf may not be safe for swimming. The CDC says that swimming in water affected by the oil spill will be unpleasant and could be harmful. They also recommend avoiding contact with oil that ends up on shore because coming into close contact with the oil for long periods of time can be harmful. CNN reports a health advisory was issued Thursday for all beaches in Escambia County, including Pensacola Beach, Perdido Key and parts of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.
Advisories were also issues for beaches along certain stretches of Mississippi and Alabama.
In Louisiana, the Cajun Coast Visitors and Convention Bureau website reports "most of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, 70 percent, is unaffected by the oil spill and remains open for commercial and recreational fishing...All affected areas, as well as areas of uncertainty, have been closed to fishing by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries in portions of Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, and Terrebonne parishes."
More oil will be pushed onto Gulf Coast beaches and further inland this hurricane season, which will reportedly shut down BP's clean up and recovery efforts for a couple weeks.
'Large gaps' in health data of the 34,000 workers that are cleaning up the largest oil spill in U.S. history are reportedly reaping concern that British Petroleum (BP) will cover up problems should they arise.
According to a Business Week report, there are few studies on the long-term ramifications of exposure to crude oil toxins, but a 2002 study from the Prestige Oil spill off the Galician Coast found biomarkers indicating that those cleanup workers, coastal residents and fishermen faced a higher-risk of cancer than the rest of the population.
Business Week reported that Linda McCauley, dean of the Emory University's school of nursing in Atlanta who led a panel on health effects of the Gulf spill at a U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) hearing, is worried about transparency because the cleanup workers are hired by the same company responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

CDC Advises People to Avoid the Oil and Spill-affected Areas

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) claims to have reviewed sampling data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and says that levels of the chemical dispersant are 'well below' the level that could harm pregnant women or their unborn children, but goes on to say that the effects of the chemicals depends on many factors. The CDC is working with the EPA to monitor the levels of oil in the environment.
The CDC further notes that: "People, including pregnant women, can be exposed to these chemicals by breathing them (air), by swallowing them (water, food), or by touching them (skin). If possible, everyone, including pregnant women, should avoid the oil and spill-affected areas" and recommends using a N95 respirator mask -- something BP refuses to let cleanup workers wear -- with an odor control feature to provide some relief from the smell in the Gulf Coast, but says you do not need to use one for your safety based on what they know now.
Some of the chemicals in the dispersant can cause harm to people under some conditions according to the CDC. For most people, brief contact with small amounts of oil spill dispersant won't be harmful, but longer contact with them can cause a rash, dry skin, and eye irritation. Breathing in or swallowing the dispersant can cause nausea, vomiting and possibly throat and lung irritation.
BusinessWeek also reported that children are among the most-susceptible population after the spill workers. Children could be more prone to inhalation problems associated with the spill, absorption through their skin and ingestion because children tend to put things in their mouths and fail to follow public guidelines.

More Than a Million Gallons of Corexit Dumped into the Gulf

Eight researchers interviewed by Business Week over a period of several days said that the government must track the extent of the exposure, gather consistent and clear data, and routinely test cleanup workers to detect early signs of problems.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has $10 million set aside to study the public health impact of the oil spill which will focus on cleanup workers and residents in the Gulf Coast. The health problems won't be limited to physical ailments and illnesses. Louisiana officials are reportedly warning of a potential mental health crisis in communities affected by the oil spill and are calling on BP to fund mental health programs.
In May, the EPA Administrator reportedly promised to conduct tests to determine the least toxic, most effective dispersant available in the volumes necessary for a crisis the magnitude of the Gulf Coast spill. As of June 27, those tests have not been completed and at least 1.4 million gallons of Corexit has been dumped into the Gulf. There have already been widespread reports of cleanup crews suffering from various injuries including respiratory distress, dizziness and headaches.
The Corexit dispersant is also suspected of inflicting widespread crop damage and a whistle blower is reportedly testifying that BP's use of Corexit is a deliberate attempt to sink oil as a coverup. The last two months have revealed why anyone would worry about BP withholding information or covering things up: BP's most recent coverup reportedly involves trucking in sand to cover up the oil on the beaches instead of cleaning the oil up.
A recent article from the New York Times that claims the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) -- which enforces worker-safety standards onshore and near shore in the Gulf of Mexico -- continues affirming that its tests show no risk of unsafe chemical exposures among responders to the spill from the chemical dispersant being used by BP despite the Environmental Protection Agency's directive to stop using them.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that "As much as 1 million times the normal level of methane gas has been found in some regions near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, enough to potentially deplete oxygen and create a dead zone, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday."

Majority of Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Cleanup Workers now Dead

BP said that Methane makes up about 40 percent of the leaking crude by mass in late May. Large amounts of toxic hydrogen sulfide, benzene and methylene chloride -- in addition to the Methane -- are also leaking into the Gulf. Throw in the toxic dispersant being used by BP and you've got a deadly chemical cocktail that could easily be absorbed and spread by hurricanes, killing virtually everything it comes into contact with, including humans. Plans are reportedly being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of cities and towns within a 200-mile radius of the gusher.
Rachel Maddow recently pointed out that BP netted $58.5 billion over the past three years. They reportedly spent $29 million researching safer ways to drill over those same three years and spent nothing -- zero dollars -- researching how to respond to an oil spill. BP falsified their clean up response plan, which the U.S. government quickly approved, using dead experts. A recently uncovered BP document bragged of Gulf of Mexico growth and cheap production costs.
A recent CNN report claims that the vast majority of those who worked on the clean up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 are now dead, and one expert told CNN that the life expectancy for those who worked on it is about 51 years. The Gulf of Mexico spill has surpassed the Exxon Valdez many times over and will continue doing so. A video released by John L. Wathen reveals some of the damage done by the oil spill that paints a damning picture of oil saturated water that is killing schools of dolphins and more.
A lengthy article from Uruknet -- Gulf Coast Toxicity Syndrome -- reports on effects from the oil spill that you can see, like oil washing ashore, and those you can't see, like when oil compounds break down and go airborne, highlighting part of the nightmare unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, the disastrous cost to mankind, and the epic, ongoing coverup by Federal health officials, the government and BP.
Why is BP in charge of the oil spill response? A report from the Washington Examiner reveals just how bad BP's clean up response has been. There are reports of shoddy disposal work being done by cleanup workers hired by BP that is actually doing more harm than good.
The Institute of Medicine recently held a two-day workshop assessing the human health effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Information from the EPA regarding health and the oil spill can be found at their website. It's impossible to say what the overall health impact will be at the moment, and as noted by Daily Finance, there are far more questions than answers at this stage. More information on crude oil spills and health can be found from the National Library of Medicine, the CDC, and the LSU media center.

Training for the Oil Spill Cleanup

2010-06-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Oil spill clean up preparations and training are gearing up across the country.

Going to the Gulf

2010-06-13T13:36:00.000-07:00

In my own endeavors to find employment since being laid-off last August, I am going to ship out as it were, from the more pristine waters of my current home of 33 years in the Pacific Northwest, to return to former stomping grounds of my teenage years and early twenties on the Gulf Coast. I was last down south in 2006 and over the ensuing years have only been there very episodically throughout the birth and earliest growing up years of my daughter.
As an asset in the world of art, I am the "sort" who has insisted on following my passions in art all of my adult life. For the past ten years there has been very little to any creative output, as I have seen that my daughter got through high school successfully and off to a good college, from which she has just recently graduated in music. The past decades have also seen me struggle to piece together inner peace and clarity about long-held myths of family support that have never truly existed for me. Not ever existed the way I needed, let alone ever expected.
I parented my child full-time on my own, in the life-long commitment I had always made to myself from early childhood, to work hard in order to always endeavor to grow more consciously aware, in order to understand clearly, the historical psychological and emotional familial chaos I had come from. Endeavor in order to identify with clarity, so as to to turn early deeply negative impacts around for the better for myself. Yet as those solo parenting years have turned out, to date, I may have only provided the benefit of all guided work accomplished through therapy and yoga, only for my daughter's gain. Admittedly, I am not certain I can or will ever accept the possibility that life may ultimately only work this way.
Concurrent with the preceding twenty-two years, even after earning my own college degree in the apparently remote disciplines of art and cultural research, prior to my daughter entering high school, I have yet to make a go of steady paid work I can identify qualifying for, even in a parallel definition of more traditional, professional employment. Even in an incredibly small local market economy, I know good steady work with benefits, is out there even for me! In the ceaseless interim searching, I continue to still be quite vulnerable to the whims of temporary employment opportunities, wherever they pop up quite literally. Therefore, on the positive heels of having very recently earned, acceptance into a local cultural institutional setting, as a volunteer EI-in-training for the next twelve months, I will precede my newly earned unpaid career investment, by at least a couple of months exposure to paid work assisting in the clean up, of the still oozing toxic goo that is the reckless proposition of runaway oil drilling, off our nation's southern shore. Know that I will also ever more actively, vote for all policies and their development to absolutely change the environmental safety standards in this industry. Yes! I do support intelligent, stewardship-centered choices to our current energy consumption history. Choices that from now on may make us money, and also do not leave our precious planet behind.
In anticipation of my pending new paid employment, I can't escape the inner image of everyone there, neck-deep in all that humidity of high summer temperatures hovering around an ever-growing shiny black primal soup, that was once the beautiful Gulf of Mexico, with no more than teaspoons in our hands.
From my minuscule reading & research on the Gulf Oil Spill thus far, apparently BP has a very poor standard for this exact environmental degradation, wherever it drills. And has for quite some time now as evidenced on the African continent, off the coast of Nigeria.
It sickens me to realize what I am volunteering myself to be exposed to, for even the basic needs that drive earning an income. Yet, I am also one of the voices in America to say aloud what too many compromise their very lives to tolerate: conditions in which to earn a dignified income that are unacceptable! I do not voluntarily want to be exposed to chemical carcinogenic and organic pollutants, to mercury and other metals harmful to the human liver, skin or lungs; to harsh ingredients that are toxic to human bones and marrow!
What have I built my life for? Ultimately only corporate exploitation? I say NO! This tragic environmental disaster has happened yes. Because corporations are unscrupulous, and habitually in bed with the partnerships of national policies that define the extraction of natural resources only in terms of making the most money, and within the most crude of perceptions, the human species has yet to collectively and proactively recognize_ as intolerable! To take from this planet what we will, all else be damned_ must end!
The rest of this story about how we make our money, is about all of us collectively! Willing to remain dis-empowered for all manner of noble reasons, having to do with our responsibilities to one another! And somewhere now, we have got to unite together in conscious recognition and appreciation of our combined power as a human family. To stand up to this constant compromise to the cost of our lives, our families, our own soil across this entire world_ to take a stand. No more of this way of doing business! No more lying, no more dangerously cutting corners, no more cutting costs to the benefit of only the few that is due to a historically out-of-control vicious nature of competition! These are the things about us that we can change for the better, all of the time. This fundamental level of human madness, of unconsciousness, of not wanting to face our primal selfishness, is over! We all are alive in a time of more real awareness for how we are the effectors of our reality as a species. We are more broadly aware that we do have choices for the benefit of all, no matter what the situation. We are more aware of what outcomes are immediate when we take right action to first do no harm in ALL that we do.
In three and a half weeks time, if I am ultimately to go, I will attend to my assigned duties responsibly with my eyes open. When I am finished with my assigned tasks by the deadline to return home for my other commitments, I will report all that I experience directly in word and in my art. This too is my job and my commitment to the quality of my one valuable life, to my own family and to my larger human family. I will not be victimized, I will tell the truth according to my own experiences and in context with all accessible information. Making information generally accessible, I will participate in assuring for all who want to know the truth of BP practices, and the real impact to our nation's environments, and our fellow citizen's livelihoods.

Protect Our Credit Unions!! TAKE ACTION TODAY, by contacting Congress!

2010-06-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

It is extremely important to inform you about an issue that could negatively impact the members of credit unions across the country.

There is pending federal legislation that could affect the system that processes credit and debit card payments.

Each time you use your (particular local credit union) Visa® debit or credit card, a merchant is paid immediately and your credit union receives what is described as “interchange” through the card payment processing system. This complex interchange system reflects a merchant’s fair share of the costs (usually pennies on the dollar) of this convenient and beneficial payment system. It provides you with the ease of a credit or debit card and enables the merchant to instantly receive payment for your purchase without having to handle cash or wait for a check to clear.

At your particular credit union, it is likely they receive one-third of the interchange fee paid by the merchant, and each credit union may use this to:

* Help keep those cards free of, or with low, annual fees
* Pay for the cost of fraud and instantly issuing your particular credit union replacement card in the event of card breaches.

The U.S. Senate recently passed S. 3217, Restoring American Financial Stability Act, and the entire Congress is now considering the bill. Current amendments to the bill would be harmful to credit unions and consumers alike. While we recognize the need and we support financial reform, this specific provision – which has nothing to do with financial reform and has had no hearings, no debate, and no input – would reduce the amount of interchange fees paid by retailers and threaten our ability to offer debit and credit cards. This amendment is not good for consumers in the end.

The current bill and its concerning amendment is in front of the legislature now and slated for a possible vote soon. We encourage you to send a message today to your Congressional Representatives and Senators urging them to make this important issue more transparent with hearings and needed debate. Ask them to oppose any legislative changes to the interchange system which would affect debit and credit card-issuing credit unions and the card payment system until such hearings and debate can take place.

To simplify voicing your opinion, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) has provided an online tool that helps you send a message to your federal legislators in a matter of a few minutes. Click here to send a message to your federal legislators today.

The Important Stuff to Remember in Life

2010-05-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Nuclear Weapons- DEMAND: ZERO

2010-05-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

Women & Power "Our Time To Lead"

2010-05-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

My goal this fall is to attend this conference! Meanwhile, I am opening my own doors on a vision; my business as an artist/healer. The time has come. This is empowering work that starts in an intersection in body-centered psychology, nutritional healing and in my visual work.
Contact me, starting here.
I am looking for investors and adding additional clients.

Happy Mother's Day 2010

2010-05-07T19:21:00.000-07:00

This one is for us, most especially the governor & citizens of Arizona

2010-05-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

To Governor Janice K. Brewer & the paranoid human beings calling themselves "living" in the ill-informed state of Arizona: If you bait hatred and exploit others for short-sighted greed, who will care about you when you are helplessly in need of REAL HELP?

Who Are You Speaking Up For?

2010-04-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sheena LaShay Jaclyn Roars

Angela Shelton Survival Manual

Take a Breathe Break

Army of Angels

A Breakthrough for International Peacebuilding Structures in our Federal Government! Exciting Update from D.C.!

2010-04-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

Foreign Assistance Act Reform
Major Milestone: Strong potential to include significant peacebuilding funding and infrastructure

After years of advocacy, our efforts are helping to change the conversation!

Advocating for peacebuilding in Washington D.C. has never been an easy task, as many of you know. Last week at the Dirksen Senate building, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion. But for once the emotion stemmed from deep appreciation rather than frustration.

Recently, Washington D.C. has seen a breakthrough for the field of international peacebuilding. As part of the Foreign Assistance Act Reform (the legislation that put USAID into place), there is a brand new section on peacebuilding and conflict mitigation. Members of Congress, specifically House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), now recognize the integral relationship between development and peacebuilding, as violence can be considered development in reverse. As such, Rep. Berman requested that leaders of the international peacebuilding community, led by Chic Dambach of Alliance for Peacebuilding and Lisa Schirch of 3D Security, draft a concept paper on what the peacebuilding section of the bill should include. Aaron Voldman and I, representing The Peace Alliance and Student Peace Alliance in D.C., were asked to contribute to the concept paper.

This concept paper provided the opportunity to place a peacebuilding framework into our foreign affairs policy and gain recognition of peacebuilding as a national priority. An opportunity brought about in many ways by our collective continued persistence and commitment to furthering peacebuilding within our federal government.

Last month the concept paper was handed to the House Foreign Affairs Committee who used it in developing a joint peacebuilding discussion paper with the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. This discussion paper's first page reads like our messaging of the last six years. I have never seen a document from the government so clearly lay out the problems of our current foreign policy approach and also offer solutions that are aligned with what we have advocated for since the beginning of our work. Here are some important highlights:

1) A joint USAID-State Council with the mandate to foster a unified and clear peacebuilding approach within the State Department and USAID that will enable these agencies to assume meaningful responsibility for peacebuilding policy and programming, including crisis management, contingency operations and conflict prevention, and provide the capacity to effectively mobilize and target resources. There exists a strong contingent of advocates calling for this Council to be named the Peacebuilding Council.

2) The Director of the Council would be nominated by the President.

3) The new Council would conduct conflict and risk assessments on an annual basis.

4) Training in conflict prevention and mitigation would be required of certain Foreign Service Officers.

5) The President would be directed to establish a standing interagency coordination mechanism specifically to address early action and preventive measures.

You can find both the concept paper and the Committees' discussion paper online at our website. You can also join me in a discussion on DoPeace. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and will be happy to answer any questions.

Last week the Committees held an open meeting for feedback on the discussion paper and over 75 representatives from the peacebuilding field attended! The staffers answered questions, provided some insight and most importantly of all, listened. It was clear by the end that they really get it. When I went up to shake the hand of the main drafter of the discussion paper I nearly cried as I shared with her my appreciation for all that she has done and all that she continues to do to move this forward.

These changes represent the growing commitment of our government to peacebuilding. The committee staffers, along with those in the peacebuilding field, also recognize the need for the Administration to come forward with a mission and strategy for security that will provide a framework for these possible changes. We still have questions and some concerns about the discussion paper (such as the lack of coordination with civil society) and many organizations (including Alliance for Peacebuilding and 3D Security) have submitted response papers to the Committees to help strengthen it.

We are honored that The Peace Alliance and Student Peace Alliance have been a part of this process, and are excited to see what makes it into the final bill. Regardless, the bottom line is that the peacebuilding conversation is happening in Washington D.C. The conversation we have been working for, of how to make peacebuilding a true federal priority and central to our policy-making, is actually occurring at the highest levels of government, even more than we know. There remain a lot of questions as we work towards consensus on the solutions to the problems articulated in the discussion paper. These discussions, and the proposed new structures, represent a huge step for the field of international peacebuilding.

We will keep you updated about the progress of the legislation and possible opportunities for support. Be proud of the influence The Peace Alliance and Student Peace Alliance has had on the role of peacebuilding in our federal government. We continue to have a measurable impact in the nation's capital.

I am proud to represent The Peace Alliance and Student Peace Alliance in Washington D.C. Now is finally our time!

Thank you for your continued commitment to this cause,

Julia Simon-Mishel
D.C. Staff of The Peace Alliance
Student Peace Alliance Managing Director

Pouvior aux Femmes et Filles en DRC

2010-04-24T17:46:00.000-07:00

STOP Raping Our Greatest Resource:
Power to Women and Girls of Democratic Republic of Congo

Turning Pain to Power

Compassion is the Thought & Deed for Earth Day, 2010

2010-04-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

***This article is posted in its entirety, unedited or changed in any way, and as it was originally posted, including all functioning links as originally posted. Except for the word "Originally" which is added in the sentence by the name of this article's author, on the Immanent Frame

Rethinking secularism Making compassion cool: an interview with Karen Armstrong

Originally posted by Nathan Schneider

A former Catholic nun, Karen Armstrong has written more than 20 books on comparative religions, including A History of God, The Great Transformation, and, most recently, A Case for God. In 2008, she received the TED Prize, which granted $100,000 to support her proposal—her “wish,” as it’s called—for a Charter for Compassion “based on the fundamental principle of the Golden Rule.” Since then, she and TED have parlayed the Charter into a movement of political and religious leaders, as well as, through its website, thousands of people around the world.

This interview was conducted in conjunction with the SSRC’s projects on Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life and Religion and International Affairs.—ed.

* * *

NS: Was it surprising to you that TED, by awarding you their annual prize, would choose to make such a serious commitment to religion?

KA: It was very surprising indeed. I had never heard of TED, which at that time was little-known in the UK. When friends of mine who did know TED heard the news, they were astonished, because they had always thought of it as a remarkably secular organization, many of whose members were skeptical about religion. I realized that TED was going out on a limb in giving me the prize, and I have been inspired by the generosity, creativity, and sheer energy that everybody at TED has put behind my wish.

NS: Tell me about the collaborative process by which you developed the text for the Charter for Compassion. What did that process enable you to accomplish?

KA: First of all, Chris Andersen and Amy Novogratz at TED helped me refine and word my “wish” in a way that would appeal to the TED community. I had been a little diffident about my idea, but their immediate enthusiasm energized me. After I made my acceptance speech at the TED Conference in Monterey in late February 2008, there was a lunch meeting for all the TEDsters who were interested in helping me with my wish and they all made very valuable suggestions. My initial idea had been to have the Charter composed by a group of leading thinkers representing each of the major religions, but TED persuaded me first to put a draft Charter up on a multi-lingual website, so that members of the broader public would have a chance to contribute and feel that they “owned” it, that it was not simply something imposed on them by yet another group of people behind closed doors. This is something I would never have thought of and that is the terrific thing about the TED prize. It brings together people with different kinds of expertise who might never have met otherwise.

Next, we started to build a network. We now have about 150 partners representing many different faiths in nearly every inhabited region of the globe. We met with many of them in Vevey, Switzerland in February 2009. They had all read with great care and attention the contributions made by the public. The meeting included the Grand Mufti of Egypt, who is one of the most authoritative clerics in the Muslim world, John Cheyne, Bishop of Washington, Rabbi David Saperstein, Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, Salman Ahmed, a Pakistani rock star who is also a practicing Sufi, and Jean Zarou, a Palestinian Quaker from Ramallah. All the Council members have been engaged in practical compassionate initiatives. The Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, who chaired the meeting, for example, worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Rev. Peter Storey had worked alongside Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu (who is another of our Council members, though he could not come to Switzerland) during the apartheid years. The excitement, enthusiasm, and deep thought that pervaded the meeting were wonderful. Afterward, we corresponded electronically for about three months until, finally, we had a text for the Charter that everybody really liked.

At a time when religions are generally considered to be at loggerheads, the composition of the Charter was a demonstration of cooperation, showing that it is really possible for us to work together because, despite our interesting and revealing differences, we all know that compassion and the Golden Rule—“Do not treat others as you would not wish to be treated yourself”—is at the core of every single one of our traditions: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian.

NS: Do you anticipate that the Charter will eventually translate into meaningful social change?

KA: All religious teaching must issue in practical action. This is something that has become very clear to me during the last twenty years, which I have devoted to the study of world religions. The doctrines and stories of faith make no sense at all unless they are translated into action. This is one of the essential themes of my latest book, The Case for God, which was being written at the same time as we were composing the Charter. We were all convinced that somehow the Charter must be a call to action. There was no point in us all embracing one another on the day of the launch if there would be no practical follow up. We need compassion—the ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes, to “experience with” the other—in politics, social policy, finance, education, and media. Unless we can learn to treat all nations and all peoples as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we are unlikely, in these days of global terror, to have a viable world to hand on to the next generation.

The last section of the Charter, for instance, demands that we learn to refrain from inaccurate, bigoted speech about others (even those with whom we are at war) and that young people are given respectful and impartial information about other traditions and cultures. A small planning group will meet soon to formulate a practical strategy for this. But exciting things are already happening. In Australia, our partners are going to launch the Charter in Parliament and are currently working to get it included in the educational curriculum. A TEDster from the UAE has been introducing the Charter to the rulers and imams of the Arab world, and they are beginning to sign up. In April, I shall be making a visit to the Gulf to talk about the Charter with leaders and educators there to see how we can integrate it into curricula. In Malaysia, the former prime minister has formed an organization devoted to implementing the Charter, and there are similar motions afoot in Singapore. We need to overhaul textbooks—in the East and the West—and revise those that speak in a prejudiced manner of others.

NS: There is also a very personal component to the Charter’s website, where people can send in and share their own acts of compassion. What role does this play?

KA: It is no use urging other people to be compassionate if we do not practice it ourselves, “all day and every day,” to quote Confucius. This is hard, because, as the Charter says, it demands that we dethrone ourselves, habitually and reflexively, from the center of our worlds and practice putting others there. On our website we are going to set up a space in which Council members and I will write a piece every week reflecting on the meaning and practice of compassion. I would like it to become “cool” to be compassionate; I would like people to become sensitive to uncompassionate speech, in the same way as we have become sensitized to the language of race and gender. I envisage “compassion clubs” in colleges and schools, where people might follow a twelve-step program that will help them to live more compassionately and see what a difference it can make to their spiritual and emotional lives.

NS: Your books appeal to people interested in exploring world religions in ways that their own traditions oftentimes don’t readily allow for, which can make for a very individualized mode of spirituality. Do you think people in this position—and perhaps you can speak from your own experience—are at a disadvantage when trying to organize for social and political change?

KA: Yes, my books are read by people on lonely quests, but they are also read by people who are firmly established in their own traditions. Community is crucial to the religious life. It is the training ground for compassion; even in the strongest communities, there are people we find uncongenial, and learning to behave with sympathy and respect for them is a dress rehearsal for the challenging task of addressing people who are strangers or foreigners. I myself am at a disadvantage as a “freelance monotheist” in not having a ready-made religious community, though on my travels I have found a global community of like-minded people across many faiths. My experience with the Charter has, so far, shown me that this has not been a problem. In fact, because my work is read by so many people from different traditions, it has been an advantage. People might be unwilling to come to something organized by a leading representative of Christianity, say, or Islam, but people do not feel that I have a particular axe to grind.

NS: By the same token, does an independent initiative like the Charter challenge the authority of conventional religious authorities?

KA: Some religious authorities may take the Charter as a challenge because we’ve designed it as a grassroots movement, something that happens from the bottom up. But a lot of religious leaders and organizations are eager to contribute. Traditional communities should be working for social and political change, but some of them are not doing so. The Charter is an attempt to step in and see if we can encourage them. It is not saying anything new or heretical; it is simply saying what the traditions themselves have been saying for centuries. But sometimes the compassionate ethos gets lost in institutional goals, dogmatic priorities, or the internal politics of organized religions.

NS: What about atheism, which you take on in your latest book, or the growing number of people who identify as ‘not religious’? Can they participate in the Charter? Do their outlooks have access to the kind of compassion that you’re advocating?

KA: Of course, the religions don’t “own” the compassionate ethos! While drafting the text, we were very concerned that it be inclusive and not confined to people of faith. It says that compassion lies at the core of all religious and ethical traditions; it is the basis for morality and is deeply enshrined within our human nature. The fact that all the major world faiths have formulated their own version of the Golden Rule shows us something important about the structure of our humanity, that this is how human beings work. But even though compassion is natural to us, we have to cultivate it assiduously, just as we cultivate our capacity for language, dance, or music. At their best, religions help people with that cultivation, but they have also failed, often spectacularly, as the Charter admits. Compassion is an ideal that can bring us all—religious (whether we belong to the “new” or “old” faiths) and secular—together.

NS: If that is the case, why is it necessary to orient the Charter around religions?

KA: Well, I am a religious historian, so it was natural for me to think in religious terms. I had become frustrated that the religions, which should be making a major contribution to global harmony, are often seen as part of the problem. The compassionate voice of religion has been drowned out by the strident voices of extremism. I wanted to restore compassion to the heart of the religious life. But after I had made my acceptance speech, I was surrounded by secularist and atheist TEDsters who insisted that they wanted to take part in this endeavor. Quite frankly, I was astonished. In the UK, which is an extremely secular country, I get such hostility from secularists and atheists who think that it never occurred to me that they would be at all interested in the project. But it is, of course, absolutely thrilling to me that people of no religious faith are enthusiastic about the Charter.

NS: The Charter declares, “Any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate.” Can we be so sure of the meaning of these ancient texts? Could it be that an ethic of comprehensive compassion such as you propose requires us to look beyond those texts, to hold something else as a higher authority?

KA: The quick answer would be to read my book The Bible: The Biography. While researching it I found that when Judaism and Christianity became “religions of the book” during the first and second centuries CE, they both insisted that compassion was the key to the interpretation of scripture. The rabbis who composed the Talmud all insisted that “Love of God and neighbor” was the central principle of the Torah and that any other exegesis was illegitimate. When he formulated the Golden Rule, Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that it was the Torah and that everything else was merely “commentary.” In the same spirit, St. Augustine, one of the great authorities of the Western tradition, insisted that if a biblical text seemed to teach hatred, it must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity. And every reading of the Qur’an begins with an invocation of the Compassion and Mercy which is God. We need to get together and get back to these principles. We should also decide what to do with those difficult texts that are used by extremists in all traditions to justify hatred and even atrocity. We might not have the same taste for allegory as Augustine, but we need to find a way of making these more rebarbative scriptures speak of charity—in a twenty-first century way.

NS: Who are some of the theorists that have most informed how you think about comparative religions?

KA: Wilfred Cantwell Smith almost single-handedly turned my thinking around and helped me appreciate what religion was really about. In particular, I was struck by his insight that faith was not the same thing as belief, and that our Western preoccupation with doctrinal orthodoxy was a very peculiar religious development. He was a Christian minister, but when he taught Islamic studies at McGill, he used to make his students live like Muslims, observing the prayers, fasts, and rules of Islam, because religion only makes sense when you practice it. I have also been hugely indebted to the work of Tu Wei Ming, a great Confucian scholar, who is one of our Council members. He taught me to love and admire Confucianism, with its emphasis on compassion, practically expressed, all day and every day. I was also massively inspired by the work of Herbert Fingarette on Confucius. The work of Michael Fishbane has been important to me too; he helped me enter into the rabbinical mindset and explore the richness of the Talmudic methods of interpretation. Seyyed Hussein Nasr’s books taught me to appreciate the Islamic tradition. And I have been greatly indebted to the work of Joseph Campbell. I like to think that I have done for the monotheisms what he did so brilliantly for the Native American and other indigenous traditions.

NS: Though you insist that the Charter does not declare all religions to be the same, could identifying such common values perhaps still cause us to overlook important differences between them—differences worth treasuring as the inheritances of unique traditions?

KA: Each tradition has its own particular genius, so each will have its own particular “take” on compassion. The Charter does not say that all faiths are the same. But it does say that in every single faith, compassion represents the test of true spirituality; it is what brings us into relation with what we call God, Brahman, Nirvana, or Dao. My books have continually explored the differences between the faiths, and these differences are absolutely precious.

It was very revealing that people around the table at the Vevey meeting, who represented six different traditions, all had their own particular way of expressing the compassionate ideal, but they were also in absolute agreement that the compassionate ideal was crucial. They could all recognize that our present policies—political, financial, environmental—were no longer sustainable, and that if any faiths do not emphasize the compassionate ethos, they will fail the test of our time.

Tags: Charter for Compassion, comparative religions, Deathless questions, ethics, international affairs, spirituality, TED

AMA citation:
Schneider N. Making compassion cool: an interview with Karen Armstrong. The Immanent Frame. 2010. Available at: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/01/27/making-compassion-cool/. Accessed April 22, 2010.

APA citation:

Schneider, Nathan. (2010). Making compassion cool: an interview with Karen Armstrong. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from The Immanent Frame Web site: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/01/27/making-compassion-cool/

Chicago citation:

Schneider, Nathan. 2010. Making compassion cool: an interview with Karen Armstrong. The Immanent Frame. http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/01/27/making-compassion-cool/ (accessed April 22, 2010).

Harvard citation:

Schneider, N 2010, Making compassion cool: an interview with Karen Armstrong, The Immanent Frame. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from

MLA citation:

Schneider, Nathan. "Making compassion cool: an interview with Karen Armstrong." 27 Jan. 2010. The Immanent Frame. Accessed 22 Apr. 2010.

Ten Things You Can Do to Help Progressive Journalism

2010-04-07T23:04:00.001-07:00

April 1, 2010 This article appeared in the April 19, 2010 edition of The Nation.

This monthly feature was conceived by writer and Nation editorial board member Walter Mosley as a kind of do-it-yourself opinion and action device. Most often "Ten Things" will offer a brief list of recommendations for accomplishing a desired political or social end, sometimes bringing to light something generally unknown. The purpose of the feature is to go to the heart of issues in a stripped-down, active and informed way. After getting our visiting expert--or everyday citizen--to construct the list, we will interview that person and post a brief online version of "Ten Things," with links to relevant websites, books or other information. Readers who wish to propose ideas for "Ten Things" should e-mail us at NationTenThings@gmail.com or use the e-form at the bottom of this page.

What's wrong with this picture? Air America vanishes into the ether, while Glenn Beck indoctrinates 2.7 million daily viewers with his histrionic brand of right-wing lunacy. Independent news agencies must continuously solicit donations from readers to stay afloat, while hate-filled shock jock Rush Limbaugh makes $50 million a year.

On the other hand, there's still a lot of great progressive media on the airwaves, including Democracy Now!, which airs on more than 800 TV and radio stations worldwide, along with radio shows by Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller. The Nation and TheNation.com are part of a progressive journalistic community that is challenging the right in every medium. ZP Heller, a writer (HuffPo, OpenLeft, AlterNet) who is working on a novel lampooning corporate media, lists ten steps you can take to help keep progressive journalism alive:

1 Check it. Media Matters and Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) have been dogged in holding Fox News accountable for spewing gross misinformation on a near daily basis. Get the facts about how Fox's right-wing agenda still oozes on the air, even when Beck, O'Reilly and Hannity aren't on-screen. Go to mediamatters.org and fair.org.

2 Read it. AlterNet just underwent a major overhaul, with renewed emphasis on hard-hitting content and investigative reporting. The site also features a Progressive News Wire, which sifts through more than two dozen sources. And AlterNet encourages readers to play a more active role, either by contributing to SoapBox, user-generated blogs that post directly to the homepage, or in its Take Action section.

3 Watch it. Former Air America host and current Nation contributor Laura Flanders brings the heat with her free daily show, GRITtv, as does Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks. And Brave New Films just released the groundbreaking documentary Rethink Afghanistan. Get a DVD and host a screening for people in your community.

4 Post it. Facebook just passed Google as the most visited US website, which means friends' recommendations can be a huge force in effecting social change. So use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to post that riveting article you just finished and spark dialogue and action on the issues.

5 Click it. Even when you can't make a financial donation to your favorite site, you can still help it thrive by posting or voting for a story on Digg, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit, BuzzFlash and Delicious. Not only will helping a story go viral garner attention for a progressive issue; it will also improve the odds of a news outlet successfully approaching larger donors. Go here for an explanation of how they work.

6 Sign it. After you're done reading and clicking, take action by signing petitions, which have become an effective means of rallying support for good causes. Many progressive sites, like ColorOfChange.org encourage readers to take easy steps like this because online petitions have become an effective means of rallying support for good causes..

7 Tweet it. With Act.ly you can use Twitter to take action. This viral tool, developed by activists Jim Gilliam and Jesse Haff, enables users to create and sign petitions by tweeting. Unlike with other online petitions, the target of your Act.ly petition will see the signatures pile up in real time via Twitter, which makes them difficult to ignore. These petitions have already prompted replies from such big names as Microsoft's Bing, Google and Rick Warren. Some of the petitions currently on fire were created by American Rights at Work, Governor Mike Huckabee, and PETA.

8 Change it. Firedoglake is using its influence in the blogosphere to fire up readers. In its inaugural round of voting, FDL selected Representatives Dennis Kucinich, Alan Grayson and Anthony Weiner as its top three Fire Dogs, for whom the site is raising $10,000 and identifying 500 voters apiece for GOTV activities.

9 Say it in español. Brave New Foundation recently launched Cuéntame, a bilingual Facebook project dedicated to discussing and raising awareness on issues affecting the Latino community. Watch the introductory video and join the bilingual discussion on Facebook.

10 Enjoy it. After reading, posting, clicking and signing, kick back with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. These endlessly entertaining shows have their fingers on the pulse of the progressive community, and unlike the hosts of other news shows, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert aren't afraid to confront politicians and corporate media alike.

CONCEIVED by WALTER MOSLEY with research by Rae Gomes

Thursday deadline: Protect net neutrality

2010-04-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: On April 6, the D.C. Court of Appeals issued a ruling that has made this cause more urgent. See below for more information on how this action relates to the court decision.

One of Glenn Beck's latest conspiracies involves a "gang of communists" who want to turn the Internet into a "Marxist utopia." That dangerous gang of communists he's warning Fox News viewers against? They're net neutrality supporters.

Glenn Beck has it all wrong: Net neutrality protects -- not threatens -- free speech online. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet users, not Internet service providers, should be in control. It ensures that Internet service providers can't speed up, slow down, or block Web content based on its source, ownership, or destination.

The FCC is accepting public comments until Thursday on a proposed regulation that would protect net neutrality. Will you say that you won't be fooled by scare tactics and that you support an open Internet?

We've made it easy to submit a public comment in support of net neutrality. Just use the sample comment at right to craft your own personal comment.

When the FCC initially took comments in January, pro-net neutrality submissions vastly outweighed comments from opponents of Internet freedom. As a result, big telecom companies are running scared. They're worried that the FCC might agree with us and prohibit them from inspecting and filtering the Internet content you access, blocking Web sites and applications they don't like, and overcharging you for using the Web. Out of the 120,000 comments submitted, 98,000 of them - a whopping 74 percent - were from CREDO Action members like you.

The FCC has opened a second round in the comment period. So we need to repeat that performance and beat back the media monopolists once again.

You can help us dominate the second round, too. Submit your comment today!

The big telecom companies have deployed hundreds of lobbyists and pushed outrageous lies. Their goal? Overcome our voices by duping the public into believing their net neutrality myths.

We have only two days to debunk these lies and protect the free-flowing Web, as the FCC is only accepting the second round of comments until April 8. We've made it easy for you to submit your comment on our site -- but we'll need it by 10 a.m. Pacific time on April 8 in order to get it into the docket by the deadline.

Without strong net neutrality rules, we might have to rely upon the good will of large telecoms to protect our access to the diversity of political perspectives. We might have to trust companies like Comcast, which actively and secretly interfered with users' ability to access popular video, photo and music sharing applications; AT&T, which censored anti-Bush comments made by Pearl Jam's lead singer during a concert; and Verizon Wireless, which interfered with NARAL Pro-Choice America's ability to send text messages to its members.

Without net neutrality, the Internet would cease to be a public platform for free speech, political organizing, and equal opportunity.

Speak out against the corporate lies. Submit your public comment today.

Update in reference to Court of Appeals ruling:

In 2002, the FCC, working in alliance with the Bush administration and its corporate backers, went on a deregulation binge. The FCC decided to classify and treat broadband Internet service providers outside of the legal framework that traditionally applied to the companies that offer two-way communications services.

On April 6, the court held that as long as that Bush-era reclassification stands, the FCC lacks the authority to impose on broadband providers certain important regulations, including net neutrality. Because both the D.C. Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court are consistent allies of corporations over citizens, it is unlikely that this will be overturned.

Despite the ruling, the FCC can still impose net neutrality rules. But first the FCC must reclassify broadband companies as telecommunications carriers. The FCC has the ability to do this, but it needs to see strong public support to justify revisiting the Bush-era decision. It is now even more urgent that we speak out in support of net neutrality before Thursday's deadline.

For more information, check out articles in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post and a Huffington Post blog from Free Press.

George Soros Commits $5 Million for Oxford Economics Institute

2010-04-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

Posted on April 6, 2010

Billionaire financier George Soros has committed $5 million to help create a new economics institute at the University of Oxford, the London Times reports.

As yet unnamed, the new institute is the first to be funded by the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (Inet), which Soros launched with a $50 million pledge last fall to stimulate debate about the role of government regulation in the economy and financial markets.

The funds for the new institute will be directed to Oxford's James Martin 21st Century School, which is matching the gift. The institute will be headed by professor Sir David Hendry, a fellow of Nuffield College.

Both Inet and the Oxford institute reflect Soros's frustration with the prevailing wisdom that global financial markets can be left to their own devices. Inet director Robert Johnson, a former managing director at Soros Fund Management, said that Britain was chosen for the new institute because it appears to be more open to broadening the economic debate than the United States. "We want to go to a climate where the minds are open," said Johnson. "We find the climate in the UK to be much more conducive to change. In the US the orthodoxy is a little bit more embedded."

Frean, Alexandra. “George Soros Backs Oxford to Refresh Economics.” London Times 4/05/10.

David C. Korten & Paul Krugman, PLEASE help the forward-thinking Americans of the USA to take action now to close this gap! We the open-minded, do NOT want to be economically left behind!

Welcome To The New American Independents Movement!

2010-04-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=743886378&ref=profile#!/Independent.Voters?v=app_109302975758164&ref=mf

The new polling interface is all set to go just as soon as we hit 5,000 fans! Click on the menu link above, "Statement of Priorities", and invite all your friends to vote too so it'll be a true consensus of what we the people want.

Our programmers are turning out dramatic new political mobilizing tools for Facebook at such an astonishing rate, we created this "Home" page tab to organize it all so you could have an overview of the forming structure. These extraordinary additional capabilities ALREADY make this resource the most powerful of its kind on Facebook or perhaps anywhere, and the best part is we are SHARING all these tools with any other Facebook profile page that wants to use them! We have 300 million people to mobilize. Let's get to it.

You can of course click on the standard Facebook Wall or Discussion tabs to participate in the lively discussions going on there. But please take a moment to read on and we will tell you where we see this going, and give you some ideas about what you can do RIGHT NOW so that we all get there faster.

The most critical thing right now is to blow as many of the "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper stickers out the door as we possibly can. There is no donation required, though it is only those who are donating who are keeping this going. We need everyone reading these words to go click on the Stickers tab, and then click on the menu link there that says "Share This Page". This will open up a Facebook multi-friend selector, and you can send all your friends a direct invitation to come to this page and get their own stickers.

And when they come, it will also be an introduction to this movement and they will become fans, and we will quickly build the largest assembled base of independent voters in the history of American politics. What will we do with this base? Why, rally behind and support worthy independent candidates for office of course, and get them actually elected.

Who will decide who is worthy? YOU WILL!!! The plan is . . . as an election approaches our participants in each congressional district will VOTE to decide which ONE independent candidate (which might be an existing third party candidate, your call) to jump behind, and then we will get that person elected.

Very shortly now (when we hit 5,000 fans) we will put it up to YOU what the Statement of Principles of this resource for INDEPENDENTS should be. There are hundreds of posts in the discussion topics on this. We will put the proposals there up for a vote, and YOU will decide what direction we will take. That this is happening in the first place is because YOU were asking for it.

We want this to be a bottom up organization. We want to be inclusive, not exclusive. We have a vision of autonomous leadership developing in each state and each congressional district, ultimately down to the most local level, developing our own candidates if necessary at the grass roots level. We will have our own transparent elections for administrators and everything else. We are not afraid of democracy. We embrace it. It is time for the interests of the PEOPLE to be served. We will make it so.

But most of all we must be respectful of each other's ideas. Let us speak candidly, but politely, among ourselves. In doing so, the few whose agenda might be to sow dissension will make themselves clearly known and will thereby eliminate themselves. Let us teach, not attack each other.

The "Hub" application is just in its first iteration. While we are working on the ranking engine to compile the daily lists, please get your links submitted. If you are an independent or third party candidate, if you have an independent political activist web site, or if you represent an existing third party interested in a civil debate, submit the links to your sites on the first page of the Hub tab.

The social media resources have now matured to a point, on Facebook in particular with their huge participant base and the power boosting enhancements we are building on top of that, where we can get to any citizen of the United States with no more than about 1 degree of separation FROM those who are engaged here already. It is possible to do now what could never have been dreamed of before.

We are just getting started in this. We have mobilizing concepts in the development pipeline that are beyond your wildest imagination. USE the vehicles we have already deployed. Take them where YOU want them to go. Click on the new application tabs and explore their menus. Use them, talk about them, promote them. Add them to your own profiles whether it is your own personal page or you have your own organization page on Facebook. And encourage all your own friends to use them as well.

We now understand that hope alone is NOT sufficient to make change happen. For that there must be ongoing and robust mass activism. And if anybody tries to tell us we won't prevail, we have a NEW slogan in our lives . . . "Oh yes, we WILL!"

Copyright 2010 The People's Email Network, Patent Pending

All that President Obama Has Accomplished, So Far!

2010-03-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

All that President Obama has accomplished between January 2009 and March 2010:

1. Saved the collapse of the American automotive industry by making GM restructure before bailing them out, and putting incentive money to help the industry
2. Shifted the focus of the war from Iraq to Afghanistan, and putting the emphasis on reducing terrorism where it should have been all along
3. Relaxed Anti-American tensions throughout the world... See More
4. Signed order to close the prisoner “torture camp” at Guantanamo Bay
5. Has made the environment a national priority, and a primary source for job creation
6. Has made education a national priority by putting emphasis and money behind new ideas like charter schools, but speaking directly to school children in telling them they have to do their part.
7. Won the Nobel Peace Prize
8. $789 billion economic stimulus plan
9. Appointment of first Latina to the Supreme Court
10. Attractive tax write-offs for those who buy hybrid automobiles
11. Authorized construction/opening of additional health centers to care for veterans
12. Beginning the process of reforming and restructuring the military 20 years after the Cold War to a more modern fighting force… this includes new procurement policies, increasing size of military, new technology and cyber units and operations, etc.
13. Better body armor is now being provided to our troops
14. “Cash for clunkers” program offers vouchers to trade in fuel inefficient, polluting old cars for new cars; stimulates auto sales
15. Changed the failing/status quo military command in Afghanistan
16. Closed offshore tax safe havens
17. Deployed additional troops to Afghanistan
18. Ended media “blackout” on war casualties; reporting full information
19. Ended previous policy of awarding no-bid defense contracts
20. Ended previous policy of cutting the FDA and circumventing FDA rules
21. Ended previous practice of forbidding Medicare from negotiating with drug manufacturers for cheaper drugs; the federal government is now realizing hundreds of millions in savings
22. Ended previous practice of having White House aides rewrite scientific and environmental rules, regulations, and reports
23. Ended previous policy of not regulating and labeling carbon dioxide emissions
24. Ended previous policy of offering tax benefits to corporations who outsource American jobs; the new policy is to promote in-sourcing to bring jobs back
25. Ended previous policy on torture; the US now has a no torture policy and is in compliance with the Geneva Convention standards
26. Ended previous practice of protecting credit card companies; in place of it are new consumer protections from credit card industry’s predatory practices
27. Ended previous “stop-loss” policy that kept soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan longer than their enlistment date
28. Energy producing plants must begin preparing to produce 15% of their energy from renewable sources
29. Established a National Performance Officer charged with saving the federal government money and making federal operations more efficient
30. Established a new cyber security office
31. Expanded the SCHIP program to cover health care for 4 million more children
32. Expanding vaccination programs
33. Families of fallen soldiers have expenses
34. Federal support for stem-cell and new biomedical research
35. Funds for high-speed, broadband Internet access to K-12 schools
36. Immediate and efficient response to the floods in North Dakota and other natural disasters
37. Improved housing for military personnel
38. Improved conditions at Walter Reed Military Hospital and other military hospitals
39. Improving benefits for veterans
40. Increased infrastructure spending (roads, bridges, power plants…) after years of neglect
41. Increasing opportunities in AmeriCorps program
42. Increasing pay and benefits for military personnel
43. Increasing student loans
44. Instituted a new policy on Cuba, allowing Cuban families to return “home” to visit loved ones
45. Limited salaries of senior White House aides; cut to $100,000
46. Limits on lobbyists’ access to the White House
47. Limits on White House aides working for lobbyists after their tenure in the administration
48. Lower drug costs for seniors
49. Making more loans available to small businesses
50. Many more press conferences and town halls and much more media access than previous administration
51. Negotiated deal with Swiss banks to permit US government to gain access to records of tax evaders and criminals
52. New Afghan War policy that limits aerial bombing and prioritizes aid, development of infrastructure, diplomacy, and good government practices by Afghans
53. New federal funding for science and research labs
54. New funds for school construction
55. Ordered all federal agencies to undertake a study and make recommendations for ways to cut spending
56. Ordered a review of all federal operations to identify and cut wasteful spending and practices
57. Phasing out the expensive F-22 war plane and other outdated weapons systems, which weren’t even used or needed in Iraq/Afghanistan
58. Reengaged in the agreements/talks on global warming and greenhouse gas emissions
59. Reengaged in the treaties/agreements to protect the Antarctic
60. Removed restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research
61. Renewed loan guarantees for Israel
62. Restarted the nuclear non-proliferation talks and building back up the nuclear inspection infrastructure/protocols
63. Returned money authorized for refurbishment of White House offices and private living quarters
64. Sent envoys to Middle East and other parts of the world that had been neglected for years; reengaging in multilateral and bilateral talks and diplomacy
65. Signed national service legislation; expanded national youth service program
66. States are permitted to enact federal fuel efficiency standards above federal standards
67. Students struggling to make college loan payments can have their loans refinanced
68. Successful release of US captain held by Somali pirates; authorized the SEALS to do their job
69. The FDA is now regulating tobacco
70. The missile defense program is being cut by $1.4 billion in 2010
71. The public can meet with federal housing insurers to refinance (the new plan can be completed in one day) a mortgage if they are having trouble paying
72. The “secret detention” facilities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere are being closed
73. US financial and banking rescue plan
74. US Navy increasing patrols off Somali coast
75. Visited more countries and met with more world leaders than any president in his first six months in office
76. Improved relations with Iran
77. Improved U.S. policy on climate change
78. Set timetable for exiting Iraq (already started removing troops)
79. Improved relations with Russia
80. Improved relations with the Islamic World
81. Made progress towards grater cooperation on limiting nuclear proliferation
82. Drastically slowed down the recession
83. Saved Wall Street
84. Passed the Lilly Ledbetter Act (equal work for equal pay)
85. Heathcare reform
86. Arms agreement with Russia

*Thank-you to Cynthia Casper Roberts for this (list of President Obama's accomplishments) comment on the White House fb post: "Harvesting the Winter Garden," March 28, 2010!

Harvesting the Winter Garden from White House on Vimeo.

"If you think it's a socialist plot, give up your federal health care"

2010-02-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

"Senator Dick Durbin asks Republicans who oppose health reform to give up the health plans they and their families receive from the federal government as members of Congress: "The federal employees health benefit program that we enjoy as individuals and want for our families is all we are asking for in this bill for families across America. If you think it is a socialist plot and it's wrong, for goodness sakes, drop out of the federal employees health benefit program. But if you think it is good enough for your family, shouldn't our health insurance be good enough for the rest of America?""

In the plain-spoken words of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard: "Make it so!"

From the American people to the U.S. Congress, "This is a direct order!"

Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system | Video on TED.com

2010-02-22T13:14:00.000-08:00

Such an IMPORTANT presentation first, to listen to (20 well invested minutes!), then share EVERYWHERE, and finally to discuss with everyone! You'll hear why from the very beginning of the presentation:Philip K. Howard: Four ways to fix a broken legal system | Video on TED.com

Vgirls- Let me rephrase that: I am an Emotional Creature! and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being a GIRL!!!

2010-02-09T20:16:00.000-08:00

Check THIS out, and THIS!

Vgirls *Thank-you Eve Ensler, for insisting and so bringing to us all_ HEALING! ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Radical Homemakers

2010-02-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Follow this link for now; I will post the article here and more, soon!

*** I will add all the proper links & images in the article soon!!

Meet the Radical Homemakers
How families are achieving ecological, social, and economic transformation... starting under their own roofs.

by Shannon Hayes
posted Feb 01, 2010

Shannon Hayes at home

Shannon Hayes in the kitchen with her daughter, Saoirse.

Photo by Bob Hooper

Long before we could pronounce Betty Friedan’s last name, Americans from my generation felt her impact. Many of us born in the mid-1970s learned from our parents and our teachers that women no longer needed to stay home, that there were professional opportunities awaiting us. In my own school experience, homemaking, like farming, gained a reputation as a vocation for the scholastically impaired. Those of us with academic promise learned that we could do whatever we put our minds to, whether it was conquering the world or saving the world. I was personally interested in saving the world. That path eventually led me to conclude that homemaking would play a major role toward achieving that goal.

My own farming background led me to pursue advanced degrees in the field of sustainable agriculture, with a powerful interest in the local food movement. By the time my Ph.D. was conferred, I was married, and I was in a state of confusion. The more I understood about the importance of small farms and the nutritional, ecological, and social value of local food, the more I questioned the value of a 9-to-5 job. If my husband and I both worked and had children, it appeared that our family’s ecological impact would be considerable. We’d require two cars, professional wardrobes, convenience foods to make up for lost time in the kitchen … and we’d have to buy, rather than produce, harvest, and store, our own food.

food revolution8 Ways to Join the Local Food Movement "Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you grown with pleasure."
-Barbara Kingsolver

The economics didn’t work out, either. When we crunched the numbers, our gross incomes from two careers would have been high, but the cost of living was also considerable, especially when daycare was figured into the calculation. Abandoning the job market, we re-joined my parents on our small grassfed livestock farm and became homemakers. For almost ten years now, we’ve been able to eat locally and organically, support local businesses, avoid big box stores, save money, and support a family of four on less than $45,000 per year.

Wondering if my family was a freaky aberration to the conventional American culture, I decided to post a notice on my webpage, looking to connect with other ecologically minded homemakers. My fingers trembled on the keyboard as I typed the notice. What, exactly, would be the repercussions for taking a pro-homemaker stand and seeking out others? Was encouraging a Radical Homemaking movement going to unravel all the social advancements that have been made in the last 40-plus years? Women, after all, have been the homemakers since the beginning of time. Or so I thought.
The Origins of Homemaking: A vocation for both sexes
Housewives and husbands were free people, who owned their own homes and lived off their land.

Upon further investigation, I learned that the household did not become the “woman’s sphere” until the Industrial Revolution. A search for the origin of the word housewife traces it back to the thirteenth century, as the feudal period was coming to an end in Europe and the first signs of a middle class were popping up. Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan explains that housewives were wedded to husbands, whose name came from hus, an old spelling of house, and bonded. Husbands were bonded to houses, rather than to lords. Housewives and husbands were free people, who owned their own homes and lived off their land. While there was a division of labor among the sexes in these early households, there was also an equal distribution of domestic work. Once the Industrial Revolution happened, however, things changed. Men left the household to work for wages, which were then used to purchase goods and services that they were no longer home to provide. Indeed, the men were the first to lose their domestic skills as successive generations forgot how to butcher the family hog, how to sew leather, how to chop firewood.

As the Industrial Revolution forged on and crossed the ocean to America, men and women eventually stopped working together to provide for their household sustenance. They developed their separate spheres—man in the factory, woman in the home. The more a man worked outside the home, the more the household would have to buy in order to have needs met. Soon the factories were able to fabricate products to supplant the housewives’ duties as well. The housewife’s primary function ultimately became chauffeur and consumer. The household was no longer a unit of production. It was a unit of consumption.
Housewife’s Syndrome

The effect on the American housewife was devastating. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, documenting for the first time “the problem that has no name,” Housewife’s Syndrome, where American girls grew up fantasizing about finding their husbands, buying their dream homes and appliances, popping out babies, and living happily ever after. In truth, pointed out Friedan, happily-ever-after never came. Countless women suffered from depression and nervous breakdowns as they faced the endless meaningless tasks of shopping and driving children hither and yon. They never had opportunities to fulfill their highest potential, to challenge themselves, to feel as though they were truly contributing to society beyond wielding the credit card to keep the consumer culture humming. Friedan’s book sent women to work in droves. And corporate America seized upon a golden opportunity to secure a cheaper workforce and offer countless products to use up their paychecks.
The household was no longer a unit of production. It was a unit of consumption.

Before long, the second family income was no longer an option. In the minds of many, it was a necessity. Homemaking, like eating organic foods, seemed a luxury to be enjoyed only by those wives whose husbands garnered substantial earnings, enabling them to drive their children to school rather than put them on a bus, enroll them in endless enrichment activities, oversee their educational careers, and prepare them for entry into elite colleges in order to win a leg-up in a competitive workforce. At the other extreme, homemaking was seen as the realm of the ultra-religious, where women accepted the role of Biblical “Help Meets” to their husbands. They cooked, cleaned, toiled, served and remained silent and powerless. My husband and I fell into neither category, and I suspected there were more like us.

Chicken in downtown LA, photo by Shannon Hayes

Backyard chickens in downtown L.A.? Shannon Hayes found that "radical homemaking" is transcending urban-rural divides.

Photo by Shannon Hayes

Meet the Radical Homemakers

I was right. I received hundreds of letters from rural, suburban, and city folks alike. Some ascribed to specific religious faiths, others did not. As long as the home showed no signs of domination or oppression, I was interested in learning more about them. I selected twenty households from my pile, plotted them on a map across the United States, and set about visiting each of them to see what homemaking could look like when men and women shared both power and responsibility. Curious to see if Radical Homemaking was a venture suited to more than just women in married couples, I visited with single parents, stay-at-home dads, widows, and divorcées. I spent time in families with and without children.

A glance into America’s past suggests that homemaking could play a big part in addressing the ecological, economic and social crises of our present time. Homemakers have played a powerful role during several critical periods in our nation’s history. By making use of locally available resources, they made the boycotts leading up to the American Revolution possible. They played a critical role in the foundational civic education required to launch a young democratic nation. They were driving forces behind both the abolition and suffrage movements.

Homemakers today could have a similar influence. The Radical Homemakers I interviewed had chosen to make family, community, social justice, and the health of the planet the governing principles of their lives. They rejected any form of labor or the expenditure of any resource that did not honor these tenets. For about 5,000 years, our culture has been hostage to a form of organization by domination that fails to honor our living systems, under which “he who holds the gold makes the rules.” By contrast, the Radical Homemakers are using life skills and relationships as replacements for gold, on the premise that he or she who doesn’t need the gold can change the rules. The greater one’s domestic skills, be they to plant a garden, grow tomatoes on an apartment balcony, mend a shirt, repair an appliance, provide one’s own entertainment, cook and preserve a local harvest, or care for children and loved ones, the less dependent one is on the gold.

Canning jars, photo by Shannon Hayes

Preserving food at home lets "radical homemakers" eat local, organic food year-round—even on limited budgets.

Photo by Shannon Hayes

By virtue of these skills, the Radical Homemakers I interviewed were building a great bridge from our existing extractive economy—where corporate wealth has been regarded as the foundation of economic health, where mining our Earth’s resources and exploiting our international neighbors have been acceptable costs of doing business—to a life serving economy, where the goal is, in the words of David Korten, to generate a living for all, rather than a killing for a few; where our resources are sustained, our waters are kept clean, our air pure, and families and can lead meaningful lives. In situations where one person was still required to work out of the home in the conventional extractive economy, homemakers were able to redirect the family’s financial, social and temporal resources toward building the life-serving economy. In most cases, however, the homemakers’ skills were so considerable that, while members of the household might hold jobs (more often than not they ran their own businesses), the financial needs of the family were so small that no one in the family was forced to accept any employment that did not honor the four tenets of family, community, social justice and ecological sustainability.

While all the families had some form of income that entered their lives, they were not a privileged set by any means. Most of the families I interviewed were living with a sense of abundance at about 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s a little over $40,000 for a family of four, about 37 percent below the national median family income, and 45 percent below the median income for married couple families. Some lived on considerably less, few had appreciably more. Not surprisingly, those with the lowest incomes had mastered the most domestic skills and had developed the most innovative approaches to living.
Rethinking the Impossible

The Radical Homemakers were skilled at the mental exercise of rethinking the “givens” of our society and coming to the following conclusions: nobody (who matters) cares what (or if) you drive; housing does not have to cost more than a single moderate income can afford (and can even cost less); it is okay to accept help from family and friends, to let go of the perceived ideal of independence and strive instead for interdependence; health can be achieved without making monthly payments to an insurance company; child care is not a fixed cost; education can be acquired for free; and retirement is possible, regardless of income.
Each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone.

As for domestic skills, the range of talents held by these households was as varied as the day is long. Many kept gardens, but not all. Some gardened on city rooftops, some on country acres, some in suburban yards. Some were wizards at car and appliance repairs. Others could sew. Some could build and fix houses; some kept livestock. Others crafted furniture, played music, or wrote. All could cook. (Really well, as my waistline will attest.) None of them could do everything. No one was completely self-sufficient, an independent island separate from the rest of the world. Thus the universal skills that they all possessed were far more complex than simply knowing how to can green beans or build a root cellar. In order to make it as homemakers, these people had to be wizards at nurturing relationships and working with family and community. They needed an intimate understanding of the life-serving economy, where a paycheck is not always exchanged for all services rendered. They needed to be their own teachers—to pursue their educations throughout life, forever learning new ways to do more, create more, give more.

Caring Economics, Don Baker illustrationLiving Wealth: Better than Money
David Korten: If there is to be a human future, we must build economies with heart.

In addition, the happiest among them were successful at setting realistic expectations for themselves. They did not live in impeccably clean houses on manicured estates. They saw their homes as living systems and accepted the flux, flow, dirt, and chaos that are a natural part of that. They were masters at redefining pleasure not as something that should be bought in the consumer marketplace, but as something that could be created, no matter how much or how little money they had in their pockets. And above all, they were fearless. They did not let themselves be bullied by the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions. These families did not see their homes as a refuge from the world. Rather, each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone.

Home is where the great change will begin. It is not where it ends. Once we feel sufficiently proficient with our domestic skills, few of us will be content to simply practice them to the end of our days. Many of us will strive for more, to bring more beauty to the world, to bring about greater social change, to make life better for our neighbors, to contribute our creative powers to the building of a new, brighter, more sustainable, and happier future. That is precisely the great work we should all be tackling. If we start by focusing our energies on our domestic lives, we will do more than reduce our ecological impact and help create a living for all. We will craft a safe, nurturing place from which this great creative work can happen.

Shannon HayesShannon Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Shannon is the author of Radical Homemakers, The Farmer and the Grill, and The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in upstate New York and hosts two websites, grassfedcooking.com and radicalhomemakers.com. Copies of her books are available through those websites.

Radical HomemakingPortions of this story are excerpted from Shannon Hayes’ newest book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture, Left to Write Press, 2010.

Interested?
Do-It-Yourself Liberation: A handy "how-to" guide for reclaiming the spaces around you.

New Crop of Farmers: Today’s young farmers are protecting the land and seeds, reclaiming farming traditions, and sharing abundance with family and community. Meet some of these young farmers in our photo essay.

The Good Life Doesn't Have to Cost the Planet: What if you woke one day to find that humans had made all the right decisions, and those decisions had had all the right effects, and, well, the world turned out to be a pretty cool place?

MY HAITIAN COLLEGE FRIEND IS FOUND!

2010-01-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

MY FRIEND MAGALIE ROSEMOND, WAS FOUND_ OR RATHER AS SHE HAD MOST LIKELY ALREADY BEEN EVAC'D OUT OF THE COUNTRY YESTERDAY, IT WAS HER SISTER WHO HAD NOTICED MY ONLINE POSTS IN MY SEARCH TO FIND HER. TODAY, I TURNED ON MY COMPUTER AND OPENED MY EMAIL ACCOUNT TO FIND A MESSAGE FROM HER IN MY INBOX! AS SOON AS I HAVE A PHOTO TO POST I WILL DO SO. I HAVE WRITTEN THIS ALL IN CAPS BECAUSE I AM ELATED THAT ONE MORE PERSON CAN TELL A GOOD NEWS STORY COMING OUT OF HAITI!
THROUGH ALL OF THE ONLINE RESOURCES TO GET IN AND FIND LOVED ONES, IT TOOK A TOTAL OF FOUR DAYS FOR ME TO HEAR THAT MY FRIEND HAD SURVIVED! THANK-YOU TO ALL THE HEROES WHO ARE MAKING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO GET IN SUPPLIES, FUND-RAISING, PERSONNEL, OPENING & KEEPING OPEN LINES OF COMMUNICATION, ETC. THANK-YOU!!
THIS LINK SHOWS A PHOTO OF MY FRIEND ON THE JOB,(BEFORE THE QUAKE!), SHE IS IN THE PINK SHIRT.

I AM POSTING THIS VIDEO, "LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED," by the beatles, AS SUNG BY THE WHOLE WORLD SIMULTANEOUSLY_ IT ISN'T ONLY FOR AIDS AWARENESS TODAY AND EVERYDAY; IT IS FOR AIDS AWARENESS AND EARTHQUAKE RELIEF IN HAITI TODAY, HURRICANE RELIEF IN NEW ORLEANS TODAY, WAR RELIEF IN AFGHANISTAN TODAY, VIOLENCE END IN THE CONGO TODAY, IN TIBET, IN KOREA, AND EVERY CORNER OF THE GLOBE BEING BRUTALIZED ON ANY ANY SCALE IN ANY WAY TODAY, AND EVERYDAY, UNTIL THE VIOLENCE WORLDWIDE ENDS IN US AS A HUMAN SPECIES.

Women's movement mourns death of 3 Haitian leaders

2010-01-20T14:53:00.000-08:00

By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
January 20, 2010 1:11 p.m. EST

Myriam Merlet was one of three leading activists in the Haitian women's movement who died, a victim of the earthquake.

(CNN) -- "One returned to her Haitian roots, to give voice to women, honor their stories and shape their futures.

Another urged women to pack a courtroom in Haiti, where she succeeded in getting a guilty verdict against a man who battered his wife.

A third joined the others and helped change the law to make rape, long a political weapon in Haiti, a punishable crime.

Myriam Merlet, Magalie Marcelin and Anne Marie Coriolan, founders of three of the country's most important advocacy organizations working on behalf of women and girls, are confirmed dead -- victims of last week's 7.0 earthquake.

Remembering the victims of the Haiti earthquake

And their deaths have left members of the women's movement, Haitian and otherwise, reeling.

"Words are missing for me. I lost a large chunk of my personal, political and social life," Carolle Charles wrote in an e-mail to colleagues. The Haitian-born sociology professor at Baruch College in New York is chair of Dwa Fanm (meaning "Women's Rights" in Creole), a Brooklyn-based advocacy group. These women "were my friends, my colleagues and my associates. I cannot envision going to Haiti without seeing them."

Myriam Merlet was until recently the chief of staff of Haiti's Ministry for Gender and the Rights of Women, established in 1995, and still served as a top adviser. She died after being trapped beneath her collapsed Port-au-Prince home, Charles said. She was 53.

iReport: A tribute to Merlet

Merlet, an author as well as an activist, fled Haiti in the 1970s. She studied in Canada, steeping herself in economics, women's issues, feminist theory and political sociology.

In the mid-1980s, she returned to her homeland. In "Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance," published in 2001, she contributed an essay, "The More People Dream," in which she described what brought her back.

"While I was abroad I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I chose to be a Haitian woman," she wrote. "We're a country in which three-fourths of the people can't read and don't eat properly. I'm an integral part of the situation. I am not in Canada in a black ghetto, or an extraterrestrial from outer space. I am a Haitian woman. I don't mean to say that I am responsible for the problems. But still, as a Haitian woman, I must make an effort so that all together we can extricate ourselves from them."

I felt the need to find out who I was and where my soul was. I chose to be a Haitian woman.
--Myriam Merlet, in her essay "The More People Dream"

She was a founder of Enfofamn, an organization that raises awareness about women through media, collects stories and works to honor their names. Among her efforts, she set out to get streets named after Haitian women who came before her, Charles said.

Dubbed a "Vagina Warrior," she was remembered Tuesday by her friend Eve Ensler, the award-winning playwright and force behind V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

"She was very bold," said Ensler, who at Merlet's insistence brought her play "The Vagina Monologues" to Haiti and helped establish safe houses for women in Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien. "She had an incredible vision of what was possible for Haitian women, and she lifted their spirits. ... And we had such a wonderful time. I remember her dancing in the streets of New Orleans and just being so alive."

Magalie Marcelin, a lawyer and actress who appeared in films and on stage, established Kay Fanm, a women's rights organization that deals with domestic violence, offers services and shelter to women and makes microcredits, or loans, available to women working in markets, said Charles, the chair of Dwa Fanm.

Charles remembered a visit to Haiti about two years ago when Marcelin, believed to be in her mid-50s, called seeking help. Hoping to deflect the political clout of a defendant in court, she asked for women to come out in droves and pack the courtroom. Charles watched as the man on trial was convicted for battering his wife.

Her death has been reported through various media outlets, and was confirmed to CNN by Carribbean Radio Television based in Port-au-Prince. Her own daughter helped dig her body out from rubble in the aftermath of the quake, Charles said she learned when she got the call from Marcelin's cousin.

In an interview last year with the Haitian Times, Marcelin spoke of the image of a drum that adorned public awareness stickers.

"It's very symbolic in the Haitian cultural imagination," Marcelin said, according to the Haitian Times report. "The sound of the drum is the sound of freedom, it's the sound of slaves breaking with slavery."

With Merlet, Anne Marie Coriolan, 53, served as a top adviser to the women's rights ministry.

Coriolan, who died when her boyfriend's home collapsed, was the founder of Solidarite Fanm Ayisyen (Solidarity with Haitian Women, or SOFA), which Charles described as an advocacy and services organization.

Her daughter, Wani Thelusmon Coriolan, said in Haiti children bear only their father's surname, but her mother insisted on keeping her maiden name and making sure her two children shared it, too.

"She said my dad was not the only one who created me. She was involved, too," her 24-year-old daughter, who lives and is studying in Montreal, Quebec, said with a laugh.

Even though Wani and her brother no longer live in Haiti (he is in Paris, France), she said her mother was determined to make sure they were proud of their homeland.

"She loved her country. She never stopped believing in Haiti. She said that when you have a dream you have to fight for it," Wani said. "She wanted women to have equal rights. She wanted women to hold their heads high."

Coriolan was a political organizer who helped bring rape -- "an instrument of terror and war," Charles said -- to the forefront of Haitian courts.

Before 2005, rapes in Haiti were treated as nothing more than "crimes of passion," Charles explained. That changed because of the collective efforts of these women activists -- and others they inspired.

She had an incredible vision of what was possible for Haitian women, and she lifted their spirits.
--Eve Ensler, on her friend Myriam Merlet

With the three leaders gone, there is concern about the future of Haiti's women and girls. Even with all that's been achieved, the struggle for equality and against violence remains enormous.

The chaos that's taken over the devastated nation heightens those worries, said Taina Bien-Aimé, the executive director of Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to women.

Before the disaster struck last week, a survey of Haitian women and girls showed an estimated 72 percent had been raped, according to study done by Kay Fanm. And at least 40 percent of the women surveyed were victims of domestic violence, Bien-Aimé said.

And humanitarian emergencies have been linked to increased violence and exploitation in the past, she said.

"From where we stand," Bien-Aimé wrote in an e-mail, "the most critical and urgent issue is what, if any, contingencies the relief/humanitarian agencies are putting in place not only to ensure that women have easy access to food, water and medical care, but to guarantee their protection."

Concerned women in the New York area plan to gather Wednesday to strategize their next steps, Ensler said.

And while they will certainly keep mourning, she and the others are hopeful that Haitian women, inspired by these fallen heros and leaders, will forge ahead -- keeping their fight and legacies alive."

***AS THE AUTHOR OF THIS BLOG, I AM LOOKING FOR MY FRIEND, MAGALIE ROSEMOND of (PORT AU PRINCE) HAITI! PLEASE DIRECT HER AND/OR ANY INFORMATION OF HER WHEREABOUTS TO THIS BLOG!! THANK-YOU
Her title in Haïti: la Directrice, Madame Magalie Rosemond,Centrale de Pharmacie / Contrôle de Substances chimiques, (Ph Directrice DCP/CSC-MSPP).

Happy MLK Day

2010-01-18T22:34:00.000-08:00

A couple of words mis-spelled... nevertheless, you get the message.

Free American Hikers-Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd & Joshua Fattal From Iran

2010-01-10T13:51:00.000-08:00

Free American Hikers-Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd & Joshua Fattal From Iran, SIGN THE PETITION

Playing For Change

2010-01-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Playing For Change; Peace Around The World

Amazing Speech by A War Veteran

2010-01-09T20:17:00.000-08:00

"Our real enemy is not the ones living in a distant land whose names or policies we don't understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it's profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it's profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us" _Mike Prysner

"The chain reaction of evil... wars producing more wars... must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." _Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a
foreign enemy... The loss of Liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad..." _James Madison

"THEY" also are our neighbors with families of their own. Isn't it time to have open dialogs about the mentality of profit at all costs? When are we, the nation of materialism going to take our cognizant evolution into our own hands responsibly? What is the real value of money, of transaction, of an energetic exchange even of goods and services? What is our real value here, now in this life? Are we separate? Am I only a body? Do I just die? Is money the only means by which I provide for? The only way to shoulder or exhibit responsibility in a civil society? What exactly is this stuff called money? Paper... metals, inks, design... if it all sits on a table and I just walk away from it, does IT run off out into the world by itself intent on competing against, dominating over and destroying lives?!
Or is the medium of exchange imbued with OUR collective conditioning? What is that conditioning? Fear-based? Shame-based? Judgmental? Again, fear-based?
What does it take for us to drop all barriers, all shields, all inner myths about others out to take from us? When will we look in the mirror and see all that is happening we are part of every, single solitary bit through fear. Fear. FEAR. What is fear? Ego. What is ego? What we need to protect us so we can operate in the world.... If you can even begin to agree with this and stand naked in the mirror and deeply ask yourself, now what?
What if it is only about arriving into "adulthood" as an innocent, wonder-filled child, with intelligent, conscious thought? Capable of maturity and living in a supportive environment. What would that environment look and feel like? Safe? Mutual? Respected? No agenda. No reactionism. No clubs. No organizations. No affiliations. No outer identity. No designer label. Just naked. Everyone. At the same time. Laughing. What language do you do that in? Crying. Bleeding. Lonely. Hurting. Gleeful. Mischievious. Angry. Misunderstood. Frightened. Content. Peaceful. Tell me what it is going to take? No excuses, no reasons, just say what it is going to take. When? When is that perfect time EVER going to come? Who is going to be more perfect to make that moment ever come? I am fifty-five and I am still wondering this. I have been wondering this in one way or another since I was a very small child. The conditions or prerequisites to do this kind of change don't seem to be any different. Those requisites to create change from this fear of worthiness to a world where all is truly possible; all is truly accessible to everyone, no exceptions_ don't ever seem to change.
So, I am just wondering when we will open this door and talk about this dilemma of money, of transaction, of exchange out in the open? I am wondering out loud now because I have never had money of my own. I have had my father's money or my grandmother's money, or my mother's money and every great once in a while I actually have my own money and then a few months later I am unemployed again... no good reasons for this cycle. I am intelligent. Educated. Articulate. Motivated. Have dreams, desires. Responsible. Made sacrifices to my country, born the burden that sacrifice was to protect someone else's professional reputation. They have a family also...
So, when are we going to get down to money, value, self-worth without condemning, judging and competing against? When? When will it be ok for everyone to have enough? To be educated? To have health that is good for each one? When America? When? When?

Say: "I Am Wonderful!"

2010-01-07T20:01:00.000-08:00

I Am Wonderful

Hot chocolate wisdom...

2009-12-29T16:52:00.000-08:00

Another Winter Holiday card for the World_ no matter where you live!

2009-12-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

There are as many humanities as there are people. We are not one humanity we are many. Our differences are there even if we do not judge each other by them. Your needs and my needs are the same, as are the needs of all living things. Yet the ways of all living things are different. I will not impose my need or ways onto you just because you appear to be like me. Do not impose your ways on me just because I appear to be like you.

Blessings for us all without exception. Without exception. Without exception.

Dear Mr. President

2009-12-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

Stop the money machine as usual! If corporations aren't going to hire as they once did, and they are not_ because the millions of makers inside those settings are no longer working, hence they/we are no longer buying, now is the time to innovate. Do you hear that young people in the workforce, and those just entering? You now have legitimate permission to think for yourselves!! What does this all possibly mean for you? So, Mr. President, utilize all this ability and hear me say that I like many want to work.
I want to work in the the sustainable energy field, namely installing solar panels across this land. It is time to innovate Mr. President, and I like many do appreciate the fight you have put up on our behalf for national health care. Though, I have stayed away from the fight messiness over national health care_ that resistance-at-everyone's-expense, outside of online citizen actions in which I do believe. Therefore I have participated to be heard in large numbers. We need national health care and yet isn't it is so incredibly stupid how those obvious changes are not being handled?! Some people are just married to the dollar.
Simultaneously, now is also very simply the time to innovate with regard to our failing economy. I am calling on you Mr. President, to just really do this. To take government/corporate partners kicking and screaming right along with your decisions to put us back to work, as anything else is a waste and I like many do not want to live this way any longer. The further back from the news I live my life, the more the patterns of agenda reveal of themselves, which are not in the best interests of the common good.
Just like President Roosevelt did, you can choose to create the programs to mobilize this nation back to work. Just update his idea to our time & put us back to work now. Enact a sustainability economy in this New Age Deal; New Deal Age; New Century Economy; the New Century Sustainable Economy!!! On behalf of everyone Mr. President, innovate now.

Dedicated

2009-12-12T18:10:00.001-08:00

Therefore, I believe: