Dear all,
I continue to savor the experience of a big 70th birthday party, where people from all parts of my life got to meet each other and fill in their picture of who I am, while eating and drinking the fruits of my garden—so much fun!
And what a thrill to be one of four million people on Friday following our youth in speaking out against climate change! It was wonderful to go with young teens and their parents from our family center and our six-year-old grandson. I loved a sign that read: “Listen to your Youngers”.
Love,
Pamela
Rebirth
The great canopy of trees and the swell of cicada song dominate my senses as I walk to the park early on an August morning. So much life!
My mind goes to what I’ve learned recently of the history of this city neighborhood. In the mid-1800’s it was hilly wooded countryside cut through by a creek. But, with the city pushing west and money to be made from development, came a change of staggering proportions. Roads were laid out to be roughly level and the surrounding land was cut and filled—shovel by shovel, cart by cart, in a stupendous undertaking—to pave the way for long blocks of city row houses. The creek, which was already being used as a sewer by local factories, was buried in a great sewer pipeline. Nothing of the natural landscape—hills, ravines, flowing water, plants, trees—remained. Men spoke with pride of this ability to obliterate nature so completely. I never knew.
Then, more recently, I heard an interview with a man who grew up on a farm in Iowa, and has spent the last several decades restoring 30 acres of degraded land to prairie. He spoke of how, once some critical mass of biodiversity had been restored, other species started showing up—first plants and insects, then birds and mammals. I am inspired and grateful for his work and the similar work of many others throughout the great plains. And I am left with his final story echoing in my ears.
He had gone out one night to enjoy the evening and the songs of all the birds and insects that had found their way to his prairie home. Something moved him to walk to a farm neighbor’s cornfield. He listened there, in what we city folks think of as bucolic countryside, and heard—nothing.
Just like all those decades ago in my neighborhood, when a monoculture of row houses obliterated all previous life, so this monoculture of corn rows, dependent on fossil fueled machinery, chemical fertilizers and deadly pesticides, has obliterated the prairie—and all the life associated with it. And the process had the same roots. Instead of men with shovels, it was men with plows, holding fast to a vision of mastery in the name of progress, bending their backs to eradicate everything that stood in their way.
While my part of the city has had 150 years for new trees to grow and ecosystems to regenerate, our prairies are still under relentless assault. We can hear—in the silence—that this system of industrial agriculture is bad for biodiversity. It’s also bad for small farmers and farm communities that have been increasingly squeezed out by deep-pocketed giant conglomerates. It’s bad for the land, with thousands of years’ accumulation of topsoil washing away. It’s bad for the water, as great quantities of chemical fertilizers and pesticides steadily drain from the fields. It’s bad for the climate, with its fossil-fuel intensive technology, and exposed winter fields that can’t hold in the carbon. Slick attempts to characterize agro-business as part of the solution are gearing up; the “Impossible Burger” is being marketed to cash in on the growing vegetarian/vegan market—with a pseudo-food grown from fossil fuels, high-tech labs, GMO soy and Round-Up. But this is a system without a future.
The good news is that the urge to live, and to create the conditions for more life, is a strong one. I think of all the farmers all over the country (and the world), who love and nourish the health of their land. I think of how food scraps and dead plant life anywhere can turn into rich living compost. I think of how urban gardens and farms are springing up everywhere, as people of all backgrounds reclaim their ties to the earth. I think of how the honey bees flourish amid the diverse flowering plants of the city and suburbs.
Maybe cities like mine can be among the leaders here, with our big trees and urban garden lots, our hospitable honey bee habitat, and all our people who are reaching for connection. Maybe we have lessons to share around diversity, and making the most of small spaces, and how the earth nurtures community. As I listen to the song of the cicadas, I can’t help but hope.
Treasure
Dump the compost
discover an avocado plant
growing in the pile.
Go to get the pot
picked from the trash
the other day,
perfect for the avocado—
Find a sweet little
succulent
abandoned in the bottom.
Two for the price of, what?
Paying attention and
loving the earth.
Dare to Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Cooperative Community of New West Jackson
The Cooperative Community of New West Jackson is a grassroots, resident-led development model that seeks to revitalize West Jackson, Mississippi, through an inventive “inside out” strategy. They match residents’ underemployed skillsets and abandoned property resources with a creative placemaking effort that centers on local food production, folk art, and the construction trades.
With 90% of residents having a farming background, overgrown lots and abandoned houses defining the neighborhood, and everyone needing to eat, they are working to institute a neighborhood food economy to include a production farm, farmer’s market, cottage kitchen, bulk pantry, eatery, folk art studio, and educational resources. They are starting the process of determining a new shared socio-economic reality by affirming what they want, understanding what they know, and reclaiming what they have forgotten, together.
https://www.coopnwj.org/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The ruling by Botswana’s high court in June to decriminalize homosexuality, overturning a colonial-era law, and moving out in front of many other sub-Saharan countries. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48594162
Israel’s partnership with seven of its mostly-Muslim neighbours to collaborate on a coral protection research project in the Red Sea. This partnership between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan is thought to be the largest regional project of its kind. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-ally-with-arab-neighbors-around-red-sea-in-bid-to-save-worlds-corals/
New Zealand’s plan to plant a billion trees to fight climate change, and their allocation of $485 million for the first three years to implement the plan https://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/new-zealand-is-planting-1-billion-trees-to-fight-climate-change/
The growth of the movement for public banking throughout the United States, including a campaign on the brink of success in California, and new grassroots effort in Philadelphia. www.publicbankinginstitute.org
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
