Dear all,
I hope you're all finding ways to rest and replenish in this slowed down winter holiday time. Sometimes the way Christmas, for instance, has been secularized and commercialized makes me want to take a stand against the whole thing. I've been challenged (once again) this season to consider how the holidays can remind us of our best and most enduring values, and what it would take to decide to approach every day as a "holy-day".
Wishing you love and strength for the new year,
Pamela
Outside the law?
I’ll never forget the little boy on our street who, when asked to pick up a snack wrapper he had dropped, defiantly replied that his mother let him litter. While many of us may have an ambivalent relationship to the law, I’m not sure I’d ever heard such an unapologetic decision to live outside of it—and I wonder what laws he flouts as an adult.
Beyond attempts to live outside the letter of the law, there are also those who defy a less clearly defined social contract, the expectation that everybody will grow up, be responsible and do their share of the work. They tend to cluster in two extremes: those who cannot find their way into the social contract because of inequity and oppression and respond with various kinds of lawlessness, and those who have access to enough money to buy their way out.
Their experience outside the social contract is very different. Those with too little who have broken criminal laws are pushed into prison in a system that seems increasingly intent on barring such people from equal participation in society forever. Those with too much often drift untethered outside the circle, roaming from one adventure to another, bedeviled by the irony that, when anything is possible and nothing is required, choice itself loses meaning. Yet this individual freedom, the right to do anything we want, unconstrained by limits, is held out as the ultimate good in our society.
This is a problem, since we are all subjects of another big law out there—natural law—that we didn’t create and can’t change. We have been blind. The discovery of an ancient layer of compressed plant life confused us into believing that our energy supplies are unlimited. The earth and its atmosphere’s enormous capacity to absorb waste lulled us into assuming that it had no end. We assumed there was an “away” into which we could throw things. We thought we could find high tech solutions to water shortages, greenhouse gas increases, soil degradation, resource depletion. We have been trying to live outside the natural law since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but are facing its ever more unavoidable requirements.
It’s a hard transition to make. We have channeled our narrative of living within the law into harsh punishment of the smallest infractions by the most marginalized people. (Perhaps it’s not surprising that those whose violations are breathtakingly bold and outsized—damaging tens of thousands of lives in high-stakes gambling on home mortgages, or avoiding billions of dollars of taxes in complex off-shore schemes—get a slap on the wrist, if not a pay off.)
One way of reshaping the narrative is to embrace the challenge of living within, and being constrained by, natural law. The possibilities are endless. Explore all the other options to cool yourself before turning on the air-conditioner. Do without foods that have traveled thousands of miles, and cultivate a taste for what’s local and in-season. Stand against the pressure to buy new when what you have will still serve. Get somewhere without a car. Practice savoring each tiny taste or moment of a luxury, so you don’t need much to be satisfied. Think of this not as privation, but as a series of victories in finding joy living within the law.
Of course individual change is not enough. Those who are rogues when it comes to the law of nature need to be stopped, and standard legal and political remedies will likely fall short. Nonviolent direct action—which challenges the law, but is prepared to abide by its consequences—is a promising way of pushing our current system from the inside to reshape its boundaries.
As I reflect on it, there is something about that little boy’s distain for the letter of the law that resonates with the rebel in me. But I resonate more deeply with restorative justice practices, where nobody is ever pushed outside the circle. It is so clear: as members of the community of life on Earth, we all belong within the circle of its law.
Stretch
Toes on the curb, I stretch
as I take in the beauty of the park.
It makes the backs of my legs ache
but it’s a good ache.
I don’t mind.
Are there other stretches
not just in body
waiting for that choice
to welcome the ache?
Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Expanding health care
To help San Francisco provide access to quality health care for its uninsured adults, a law was passed in 2006 requiring covered employers to pay towards the health care costs of their employees. Healthy San Francisco is not health insurance, nor is it tied to a job. It is a program designed to help uninsured individuals in the city find access to affordable health care services. It allows eligible employers to make their obligated health care contributions directly to the City. The collected funds can then be accessed by their employees, either to help cover the cost of medical services or to receive medical reimbursement accounts. The city’s mid-sized businesses have employer health care spending requirements of $1.63 per hour, while large businesses pay $2.44 per hour and small businesses are exempt.
https://framework.gusto.com/healthy-san-francisco-what-it-means-for-local-businesses/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
New York’s American Museum of Natural History, one of the world's most respected science museums, has slashed fossil fuel investments from its $650 million endowment.
Portland, Oregon has just adopted the first tax penalty on corporations that pay their CEOs more than 100 times what they pay typical workers. http://www.ips-dc.org/city-just-came-novel-way-fight-inequality-starts-bold-grassroots-action/
As part of the growing #MoveYourMoney and #GrabYourWallet campaigns in support of the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Norway’s largest bank has sold its assets in the project. http://www.ecowatch.com/norway-dnb-dakota-access-pipeline-2098464180.html
The Army Corps of Engineers has announced that it will not approve an easement that would allow the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota. http://www.badlandsjournal.com/2016-12-05/008532
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Saturday, October 22, 2016
#160 Inalienable rights
Dear all,
I'm feeling filled up with the possibility of change, after a whirlwind weekend learning about a Nicaragua micro-credit lending group, a Democracy School on local communities standing up to corporate predation, the launch of a video I was part of on the links between climate/race/justice issues and the economic system, a mind-expanding afternoon with four seven year olds and their parents playing and problem solving together, participation from afar in a native full moon ceremony, and finding an unlikely new friend and ally in challenging the monetary system--oh my!
It's just as well that all my weekends aren't this full, but what a gift to have such opportunities available. My contribution below is one effort at sharing some of what I took in.
Love,
Pamela
Inalienable rights
How did a school nurse in a little coal mining town in Pennsylvania stand up against a big corporation--and influence the Constitution of Ecuador in the process? Well, first she had to see something that had been invisible to her, and remains invisible to most of us.
Though she joined her local borough council mostly to challenge an “old boys” network, she became increasingly concerned about plans for the dumping of toxic sludge and coal fly ash in abandoned mines on the edge of town. It was shocking to discover how little power her town had to protect its people. How could a faceless corporation, with no ties to the area, have the right to come in and endanger a whole community’s air and water supply?
She learned the answer to that question at a Democracy School, where the curriculum begins in 1773. Towns all over the colonies were fed up with England writing all the laws to benefit the king and protect the profits of the East India Company. They wanted the right to make their own laws, for the benefit of their own communities. Dozens of them wrote up resolutions that were the inspiration for our Declaration of Independence, a bold (and wholly illegal) challenge to the laws of empire.
It turned out, however, that moneyed interests in the colonies were not ready to abandon a system based on the rule of property, or to embrace popular democracy, and the 1787 Constitution brought back many elements of the British system. The rights of property over people were reintroduced and became more and more entrenched in law as the decades went by—until by the late 1800’s corporations had gained the status of personhood, and keeping them from their profits became a violation of their rights. Over the same period of time, more and more local laws were pre-empted by state and federal bodies, and structures of community self-government were steadily eroded away.
Many communities now facing outside corporate harm turn to regulatory agencies as their only hope for protection. While these agencies theoretically curb harmful practices, they tend to be staffed by industry leaders, who set up the systems and write the rules, with a not-too-hidden goal of buffering the industry from the public. Furthermore, their function is to manage harms, not to stand against them, and public input at hearings has no legal status.
So, what’s a school nurse faced with a big corporation that’s threatening her community going to do? Propose a Community Bill of Rights, saying that we have a right to act to protect our community from external harm. That our human rights are inalienable and take precedence over property rights. And while we’re at it, let’s say that nature has rights too.
But is this legal? It’s certainly as legal as the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate so happily every 4th of July. In any case, the Community Bill of Rights passed a borough council vote (narrowly), the toxic sludge and fly ash corporations were told to stay away, and the world had its first example of legislation declaring that nature has rights. This inspired other municipalities—including Pittsburgh—to adopt similar community rights ordinances, and some folks in Ecuador, then in the process of rewriting its Constitution, took notice. Ecuador now has language in its Constitution saying that nature has the right to “integral respect for its existence”.
What is the moral of this story? Small acts can have big ripples. Corporate creation of “sacrifice zones” can be stopped, if those targeted communities are willing to be bold. And standing up for the inalienable rights of humans and ecosystems may create the rights movement that will save the planet.
For more detail on Tamaqua’s struggle: http://celdf.org/2015/08/tamaqua-borough/ For more on how it fits with a larger rights to nature movement:
http://therightsofnature.org/natural-law-global-alliance For more on the group that is spearheading this movement: http://celdf.org/
Work machine
Front loader coming down the street
Last time I saw one here
a three year old was captivated.
We waved at the man
and he waved back.
So I look this time.
It's a different man--
an individual
not just a work machine
in motion.
Imagine: A new economy is possible (it may already be here)
Unbeknownst to many, literally thousands of on-the-ground efforts at building a new economy have been developing. These include cooperatives, worker-owned companies,neighborhood corporations, and many little known municipal, state, and regional efforts. These emerging economic alternatives suggest different ways in which capital can be held in common by small and large publics. They include nonprofit community corporations and land trusts that develop low-income housing, as well as community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that have over $108 billion in assets under their management. Employee ownership is also on the rise, involving three million more workers than are members of private sector unions. A third of Americans belong to cooperatives, including credit unions that serve 107 million people and manage $1.3 trillion in assets.
In the public sector, local government economic development programs invest in local businesses, while municipal enterprises build infrastructure and provide services, raising revenue and creating employment, diversifying the base of locally controlled capital. Public utilities, together with co-ops, make up nearly 90 percent of all electricity providers and generate over 20 percent of America’s electricity. From California to Alabama, public pension assets are being channeled into job creation and community development. Cities and states are looking to the creation of public banking systems like that of North Dakota…
http://www.thenextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NSPOberlin-final.pdf
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Two more Brazilian cities have prohibited fracking, reaching a total number of 72, and joining bans in Germany, Scotland, France, Northern Ireland and Bulgaria.
https://350.org/press-release/momentum-continues-to-grow-in-the-opposition-to-fracking-more-than-70-brazilian-cities-approve-fracking-bans/
All plastic cups, cutlery and plates must be designed to be compostable in France, according to a new law which comes into effect in 2020.
http://circulatenews.org/2016/09/ban-on-plastic-cups-plates-and-cutlery-passed-in-france/
Civilian monitors from Mon State in Myanmar have traveled to the Philippines to learn lessons about civilian ceasefire monitoring in Mindanao.
http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/what-we-do/stories-from-the-field/30-myanmar-news/448-civilian-monitors-from-mon-state-myanmar-learn-lessons-about-civilian-ceasefire-monitoring-in-mindanao-philippines
The General Council of the Ho-Chunk Nation has voted overwhelmingly to amend their tribal constitution to enshrine the Rights of Nature, becoming the first tribal nation in the United States to take this critical step.
http://celdf.org/2016/10/times-ho-chunk-nation-wisconsin-becomes-first-add-rights-nature-tribal-constitution/
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
I'm feeling filled up with the possibility of change, after a whirlwind weekend learning about a Nicaragua micro-credit lending group, a Democracy School on local communities standing up to corporate predation, the launch of a video I was part of on the links between climate/race/justice issues and the economic system, a mind-expanding afternoon with four seven year olds and their parents playing and problem solving together, participation from afar in a native full moon ceremony, and finding an unlikely new friend and ally in challenging the monetary system--oh my!
It's just as well that all my weekends aren't this full, but what a gift to have such opportunities available. My contribution below is one effort at sharing some of what I took in.
Love,
Pamela
Inalienable rights
How did a school nurse in a little coal mining town in Pennsylvania stand up against a big corporation--and influence the Constitution of Ecuador in the process? Well, first she had to see something that had been invisible to her, and remains invisible to most of us.
Though she joined her local borough council mostly to challenge an “old boys” network, she became increasingly concerned about plans for the dumping of toxic sludge and coal fly ash in abandoned mines on the edge of town. It was shocking to discover how little power her town had to protect its people. How could a faceless corporation, with no ties to the area, have the right to come in and endanger a whole community’s air and water supply?
She learned the answer to that question at a Democracy School, where the curriculum begins in 1773. Towns all over the colonies were fed up with England writing all the laws to benefit the king and protect the profits of the East India Company. They wanted the right to make their own laws, for the benefit of their own communities. Dozens of them wrote up resolutions that were the inspiration for our Declaration of Independence, a bold (and wholly illegal) challenge to the laws of empire.
It turned out, however, that moneyed interests in the colonies were not ready to abandon a system based on the rule of property, or to embrace popular democracy, and the 1787 Constitution brought back many elements of the British system. The rights of property over people were reintroduced and became more and more entrenched in law as the decades went by—until by the late 1800’s corporations had gained the status of personhood, and keeping them from their profits became a violation of their rights. Over the same period of time, more and more local laws were pre-empted by state and federal bodies, and structures of community self-government were steadily eroded away.
Many communities now facing outside corporate harm turn to regulatory agencies as their only hope for protection. While these agencies theoretically curb harmful practices, they tend to be staffed by industry leaders, who set up the systems and write the rules, with a not-too-hidden goal of buffering the industry from the public. Furthermore, their function is to manage harms, not to stand against them, and public input at hearings has no legal status.
So, what’s a school nurse faced with a big corporation that’s threatening her community going to do? Propose a Community Bill of Rights, saying that we have a right to act to protect our community from external harm. That our human rights are inalienable and take precedence over property rights. And while we’re at it, let’s say that nature has rights too.
But is this legal? It’s certainly as legal as the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate so happily every 4th of July. In any case, the Community Bill of Rights passed a borough council vote (narrowly), the toxic sludge and fly ash corporations were told to stay away, and the world had its first example of legislation declaring that nature has rights. This inspired other municipalities—including Pittsburgh—to adopt similar community rights ordinances, and some folks in Ecuador, then in the process of rewriting its Constitution, took notice. Ecuador now has language in its Constitution saying that nature has the right to “integral respect for its existence”.
What is the moral of this story? Small acts can have big ripples. Corporate creation of “sacrifice zones” can be stopped, if those targeted communities are willing to be bold. And standing up for the inalienable rights of humans and ecosystems may create the rights movement that will save the planet.
For more detail on Tamaqua’s struggle: http://celdf.org/2015/08/tamaqua-borough/ For more on how it fits with a larger rights to nature movement:
http://therightsofnature.org/natural-law-global-alliance For more on the group that is spearheading this movement: http://celdf.org/
Work machine
Front loader coming down the street
Last time I saw one here
a three year old was captivated.
We waved at the man
and he waved back.
So I look this time.
It's a different man--
an individual
not just a work machine
in motion.
Imagine: A new economy is possible (it may already be here)
Unbeknownst to many, literally thousands of on-the-ground efforts at building a new economy have been developing. These include cooperatives, worker-owned companies,neighborhood corporations, and many little known municipal, state, and regional efforts. These emerging economic alternatives suggest different ways in which capital can be held in common by small and large publics. They include nonprofit community corporations and land trusts that develop low-income housing, as well as community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that have over $108 billion in assets under their management. Employee ownership is also on the rise, involving three million more workers than are members of private sector unions. A third of Americans belong to cooperatives, including credit unions that serve 107 million people and manage $1.3 trillion in assets.
In the public sector, local government economic development programs invest in local businesses, while municipal enterprises build infrastructure and provide services, raising revenue and creating employment, diversifying the base of locally controlled capital. Public utilities, together with co-ops, make up nearly 90 percent of all electricity providers and generate over 20 percent of America’s electricity. From California to Alabama, public pension assets are being channeled into job creation and community development. Cities and states are looking to the creation of public banking systems like that of North Dakota…
http://www.thenextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NSPOberlin-final.pdf
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Two more Brazilian cities have prohibited fracking, reaching a total number of 72, and joining bans in Germany, Scotland, France, Northern Ireland and Bulgaria.
https://350.org/press-release/momentum-continues-to-grow-in-the-opposition-to-fracking-more-than-70-brazilian-cities-approve-fracking-bans/
All plastic cups, cutlery and plates must be designed to be compostable in France, according to a new law which comes into effect in 2020.
http://circulatenews.org/2016/09/ban-on-plastic-cups-plates-and-cutlery-passed-in-france/
Civilian monitors from Mon State in Myanmar have traveled to the Philippines to learn lessons about civilian ceasefire monitoring in Mindanao.
http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/what-we-do/stories-from-the-field/30-myanmar-news/448-civilian-monitors-from-mon-state-myanmar-learn-lessons-about-civilian-ceasefire-monitoring-in-mindanao-philippines
The General Council of the Ho-Chunk Nation has voted overwhelmingly to amend their tribal constitution to enshrine the Rights of Nature, becoming the first tribal nation in the United States to take this critical step.
http://celdf.org/2016/10/times-ho-chunk-nation-wisconsin-becomes-first-add-rights-nature-tribal-constitution/
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Sunday, October 2, 2016
#159 Turtle Island
Dear all,
I wrote Turtle Island early in the month and sent it to the newspaper, as a way of trying to call attention to the events at Standing Rock--which were still virtually invisible then. Though they didn't print it and it's now a little dated, the story is still true.
I'm feeling blessed by the breadth and depth of relationships in my life. I would never have imagined as a small child that I would get to be close to so many people, from so many backgrounds, with so many accompanying joys and challenges.
And, as we continue to be assaulted by bad news and dire predictions, I keep reminding myself that I can always do my share, and that despair is an insult to the future.
Love,
Pamela
Turtle Island
This is a story about an old stone turtle in our neighborhood park, a pre-dawn walk with a one year old, and the Standing Rock Sioux nation’s struggle to stop a pipeline that threatens their river and sacred sites in the Dakotas.
I’ve known the turtle for a long time. My boys, who used to play at the little wall and slide surrounding it, now have children of their own. While the rest of the playground was torn down years ago to make way for a bigger, fancier one across the street, the turtle has stayed. The Standing Rock nation is new to me, though I have been following stories of indigenous leadership in protecting the environment, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, for several years. I’ve cheered their efforts from afar, as a well-wishing onlooker needing all the hope I can get in this scary world.
But after spending five days kayaking from the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario to Lake Erie in July, in a joint effort to honor the treaties and protect the earth, that well-wishing onlooker role no longer fits. It’s personal now. With the tension growing around the pipeline standoff, the drum-beat of urgency grows: People are being brutalized by pipeline security guards. Rights are being flagrantly abused on all sides and no one is listening. If you care, you’ve got to do something. Get yourself out to North Dakota. Drop everything you’re doing to organize everyone you know to stand against this injustice.
I’d like to. My heart is pounding along with that drum. But I don’t see how I can drop everything I’m doing, and something keeps me from seeking out videos of oppression and details of injustice, sharing with all my friends, and urging them to watch and share as well. I just don’t see how more free-floating outrage, laced with despair, numbness and guilt, will help.
So when I get a note from a new friend on the Six Nations reserve that they will be holding a sunrise prayer service Labor Day morning to support the people of Standing Rock, and inviting me to join from a distance, I know I want to be there. These are people I know and love. This would be a way to connect. But I had offered to take our two young grandchildren Sunday night, to give my son and daughter-in-law a break and help her heal from a nasty concussion. Even with the help of my husband, I have no idea what will be required of me at dawn.
But the one-year old is awake at 5:30, ready for a new day. So we get up, gather clothes for the cool of the morning, collect the stroller, and head down to the park to greet the day. As I wonder where to settle, I remember the turtle. With me sitting on the ground and him content in the stroller, it’s a perfect spot. We stroke the rough places and the smooth places on the turtle’s back and head, and I talk to him about why we are here. I talk about Turtle Island, the name local indigenous groups gave to this land, about how we love the earth and the water and the air, how we need to protect it, about the people of Standing Rock and our friends at the Six Nations reserve, how we’re all in this together. We play with the spiky little balls from a sweet gum tree. And the sun comes up. And in the sweetness of this time together, my eyes fill with tears.
This was the missing piece. One of the great gifts of July’s kayaking trip had been a story that an elder shared from her grandmother: You have to cry till your tears run sweet. With those tears, I can remember not just what is urgent, but what I love.
The next evening I hear from one of our other new friends. She is heading out to the Dakotas to serve as a medic in the pipeline struggle and looking for support. This I can do, and I’m glad for the opportunity to do it. I’m thankful to these precious friends and wise ancestors, to a bright-eyed grandchild, and to that old stone turtle, invisible to me in the park all those years, for helping me find a way to do my part.
Guys
I may have to leave this seat.
There is much I can tolerate
on the trolley
but hyper-confident male argument
about which hot shot coaches and athletes
should have done what
to win the big game
loud in my ear from right behind
is an assault almost unbearable.
As I consider my options
the conversation shifts.
Do you have a date for the weekend?
Suddenly, these are high school boys
shy and awkward
reaching out as best they can.
They leave before me
now visible--
one tall and fair
the other compact and dark-skinned
and I give thanks
for the chance I had to witness
these two friends.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Feeding school children from small farms
A 2009 law in Brazil stipulates that school authorities must spend at least 30 percent of their school meal budget on produce from smallholder farmers. With about 45 million children receiving free school lunches each day, Brazil’s 5 million small farmers are among the prime beneficiaries of the hundreds of millions of dollars the government spends on school meals.
Access to a guaranteed market through the feeding program allows many of these small farmers to stay on their land rather than migrating to the big cities in search of work. With the process of formalizing land claims expensive and time consuming, farmers without formal land title deeds also benefit, using the income from the program to gain such deeds.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/where-the-worlds-biggest-school-meal-program-is-keeping-local-farmers-in-business-20160902
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The hope and energy gathered around the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/09/14/standing-rock-protest-camp-becomes-movement#gallery
Dual announcements in July that Berlin’s parliament voted to divest from oil, coal and gas companies, and the city of Stuttgart, in southwestern Germany, pulled its funds out of fossil fuels in response to the mounting threat of climate change.
http://gofossilfree.org/europe/category/divestment-2/
The action by Philippines environment secretary Gina Lopez over the summer to close eight mines for various violations of land, water quality, and air emissions standards, with the shutdowns indefinite pending restoration work and changes in practices that bring them back into compliance with environmental statutes.
http://www.circleofblue.org/2016/water-management/gina-lopez-crusader-sets-philippines-water-mining-safety-unexpected-new-course/
The Moral Day of Action on September 12, where religious leaders in 30 state capitols stood with people impacted by unjust policies to declare that some issues are not liberal or conservative, but right versus wrong.
http://www.breachrepairers.org/blog/moraldayofaction
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
I wrote Turtle Island early in the month and sent it to the newspaper, as a way of trying to call attention to the events at Standing Rock--which were still virtually invisible then. Though they didn't print it and it's now a little dated, the story is still true.
I'm feeling blessed by the breadth and depth of relationships in my life. I would never have imagined as a small child that I would get to be close to so many people, from so many backgrounds, with so many accompanying joys and challenges.
And, as we continue to be assaulted by bad news and dire predictions, I keep reminding myself that I can always do my share, and that despair is an insult to the future.
Love,
Pamela
Turtle Island
This is a story about an old stone turtle in our neighborhood park, a pre-dawn walk with a one year old, and the Standing Rock Sioux nation’s struggle to stop a pipeline that threatens their river and sacred sites in the Dakotas.
I’ve known the turtle for a long time. My boys, who used to play at the little wall and slide surrounding it, now have children of their own. While the rest of the playground was torn down years ago to make way for a bigger, fancier one across the street, the turtle has stayed. The Standing Rock nation is new to me, though I have been following stories of indigenous leadership in protecting the environment, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, for several years. I’ve cheered their efforts from afar, as a well-wishing onlooker needing all the hope I can get in this scary world.
But after spending five days kayaking from the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario to Lake Erie in July, in a joint effort to honor the treaties and protect the earth, that well-wishing onlooker role no longer fits. It’s personal now. With the tension growing around the pipeline standoff, the drum-beat of urgency grows: People are being brutalized by pipeline security guards. Rights are being flagrantly abused on all sides and no one is listening. If you care, you’ve got to do something. Get yourself out to North Dakota. Drop everything you’re doing to organize everyone you know to stand against this injustice.
I’d like to. My heart is pounding along with that drum. But I don’t see how I can drop everything I’m doing, and something keeps me from seeking out videos of oppression and details of injustice, sharing with all my friends, and urging them to watch and share as well. I just don’t see how more free-floating outrage, laced with despair, numbness and guilt, will help.
So when I get a note from a new friend on the Six Nations reserve that they will be holding a sunrise prayer service Labor Day morning to support the people of Standing Rock, and inviting me to join from a distance, I know I want to be there. These are people I know and love. This would be a way to connect. But I had offered to take our two young grandchildren Sunday night, to give my son and daughter-in-law a break and help her heal from a nasty concussion. Even with the help of my husband, I have no idea what will be required of me at dawn.
But the one-year old is awake at 5:30, ready for a new day. So we get up, gather clothes for the cool of the morning, collect the stroller, and head down to the park to greet the day. As I wonder where to settle, I remember the turtle. With me sitting on the ground and him content in the stroller, it’s a perfect spot. We stroke the rough places and the smooth places on the turtle’s back and head, and I talk to him about why we are here. I talk about Turtle Island, the name local indigenous groups gave to this land, about how we love the earth and the water and the air, how we need to protect it, about the people of Standing Rock and our friends at the Six Nations reserve, how we’re all in this together. We play with the spiky little balls from a sweet gum tree. And the sun comes up. And in the sweetness of this time together, my eyes fill with tears.
This was the missing piece. One of the great gifts of July’s kayaking trip had been a story that an elder shared from her grandmother: You have to cry till your tears run sweet. With those tears, I can remember not just what is urgent, but what I love.
The next evening I hear from one of our other new friends. She is heading out to the Dakotas to serve as a medic in the pipeline struggle and looking for support. This I can do, and I’m glad for the opportunity to do it. I’m thankful to these precious friends and wise ancestors, to a bright-eyed grandchild, and to that old stone turtle, invisible to me in the park all those years, for helping me find a way to do my part.
Guys
I may have to leave this seat.
There is much I can tolerate
on the trolley
but hyper-confident male argument
about which hot shot coaches and athletes
should have done what
to win the big game
loud in my ear from right behind
is an assault almost unbearable.
As I consider my options
the conversation shifts.
Do you have a date for the weekend?
Suddenly, these are high school boys
shy and awkward
reaching out as best they can.
They leave before me
now visible--
one tall and fair
the other compact and dark-skinned
and I give thanks
for the chance I had to witness
these two friends.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Feeding school children from small farms
A 2009 law in Brazil stipulates that school authorities must spend at least 30 percent of their school meal budget on produce from smallholder farmers. With about 45 million children receiving free school lunches each day, Brazil’s 5 million small farmers are among the prime beneficiaries of the hundreds of millions of dollars the government spends on school meals.
Access to a guaranteed market through the feeding program allows many of these small farmers to stay on their land rather than migrating to the big cities in search of work. With the process of formalizing land claims expensive and time consuming, farmers without formal land title deeds also benefit, using the income from the program to gain such deeds.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/where-the-worlds-biggest-school-meal-program-is-keeping-local-farmers-in-business-20160902
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The hope and energy gathered around the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/09/14/standing-rock-protest-camp-becomes-movement#gallery
Dual announcements in July that Berlin’s parliament voted to divest from oil, coal and gas companies, and the city of Stuttgart, in southwestern Germany, pulled its funds out of fossil fuels in response to the mounting threat of climate change.
http://gofossilfree.org/europe/category/divestment-2/
The action by Philippines environment secretary Gina Lopez over the summer to close eight mines for various violations of land, water quality, and air emissions standards, with the shutdowns indefinite pending restoration work and changes in practices that bring them back into compliance with environmental statutes.
http://www.circleofblue.org/2016/water-management/gina-lopez-crusader-sets-philippines-water-mining-safety-unexpected-new-course/
The Moral Day of Action on September 12, where religious leaders in 30 state capitols stood with people impacted by unjust policies to declare that some issues are not liberal or conservative, but right versus wrong.
http://www.breachrepairers.org/blog/moraldayofaction
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Sunday, August 28, 2016
#157 Bitter and Sweet
Dear all,
Our boys and their wonderful families keep being served health challenges--we're so much looking forward to the time when everyone is well again! And while it's lovely to get to the garden in the coolness of dawn--and the tomatoes are delicious--I'm also looking forward to the end of this oppressive heat.
But my slowed down summer evenings have been a treat. I've loved tracking the cycle of the moon, and joining new friends from last month's kayaking trip (from a distance) as they hold full moon ceremonies in service to the health of their people. And I keep forgetting to mention the book I've been working on for two years that is now out! (see "Imagine" below)
Love,
Pamela
Bitter and Sweet
Bitterness and sweet tears have been on my mind this summer. On the eve of a five-day paddle down an unknown river early in the summer, we gathered for orientation at a campground on a Native reserve in Canada. Everything—and almost everybody—was new. We closed with an elder sharing stories from her grandmother, and one sentence settled deep into my heart with the ring of truth. Her grandmother said, “You have to cry till your tears are sweet.” Grieve beyond the point of bitterness. This was the moment at which my journey down the river began—taking in a gift of wisdom as I prepared to put out my best effort toward defending the treaties and protecting the earth.
In midsummer I heard from a young woman across the ocean who is like a daughter to me that her marriage was in trouble and she needed advice. I pulled myself together to offer everything I had—and it wasn’t enough. Her response that she was feeling bitter—this from one of the most generous, hardworking and loving people I know—shocked me as nothing else had, and I entered into a full-blown campaign to gather more resources around her. This woman, of all people, must not be left to bitterness.
Late in the summer, I read an article in the paper about “bitter voters”. President Obama had used those words in the 2008 election campaign to characterize white working class people whose small Midwestern towns had been left behind, where the promises of successive administrations had not brought regeneration. He said, “It’s not surprising that they get bitter. People feel like government’s not listening to them, and as a consequence, they find that they can only rely on the traditions and the things that have been important to them for generation after generation: Faith. Family. Traditions like hunting. And they get frustrated.”
In an attempt to join those voters, to be on their side, another politician had challenged that characterization of bitterness and negativity and emphasized their spiritual richness. While I have no doubt these are good people, I still think Obama was right. They were also bitter, and they still are. You can try to sanitize that bitterness, or gloss over it, or pretend it is something that it is not. Or, much more problematic, you can feed on it for political advantage. But the advice of our native grandmother’s grandmother—to cry till the tears are sweet—offers a way forward that rings with the sound of truth.
Bitterness is a hard, tight thing. It needs to be loosened, by attention, by understanding, by tears. Someone in this election season has said that you cannot make an impact on such voters in an interchange of less than ten minutes. I would guess that it takes significantly more, and that it cannot succeed at all without a deep well of open-hearted listening. There are so many lost hopes and broken promises. There is such a strong sense of betrayal, of becoming invisible in one’s own country. What will it take for the tears of the bitter voters to run sweet?
Beyond knowing
I take it to bed with me
A report on corporate tax evasion
financial power grabs
shadow banking
regulatory loopholes.
The need to know is strong.
What are the levers
to rein in these shadowy
and powerful forces
that lurk at the core
of much of what is wrong
in our world?
I wade through dense language
barely hanging on at times
determined to understand.
These folks suggest
detailed policy changes
hoping to guide
the next president.
I have been guided as well
and now know more.
But just my knowing
changes nothing.
What do I do with the clarity
inside my head?
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Reverend William Barber’s call for a 21st century moral movement that evokes Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, both in a revival I attended in Philadelphia and in a speech at the Democratic National Convention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAFZKcYn8qI).
A TV news reporter's astonishingly direct discussion of our country's historical relationship to native people, their role as our first environmentalists, and the irony of arresting them for trespass as they protest pipelines that endanger all our waters. http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/rewrite-the-protests-at-standing-rock-751440963846
Muslims in France who publicly attended mass in response to the killing of a Catholic priest by a Muslim extremist. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslims-catholic-mass-france_us_579e3c67e4b0e2e15eb63576
A campaign led by students at Columbia University that has successfully pressured the school to become the first institution of higher education to divest from the private prison corporation CCA and the private security company G4S, combined with the federal Justice Department’s announced plan to end the use of private prisons after concluding that they are less safe and less effective that government run prisons. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp
More resources
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Our boys and their wonderful families keep being served health challenges--we're so much looking forward to the time when everyone is well again! And while it's lovely to get to the garden in the coolness of dawn--and the tomatoes are delicious--I'm also looking forward to the end of this oppressive heat.
But my slowed down summer evenings have been a treat. I've loved tracking the cycle of the moon, and joining new friends from last month's kayaking trip (from a distance) as they hold full moon ceremonies in service to the health of their people. And I keep forgetting to mention the book I've been working on for two years that is now out! (see "Imagine" below)
Love,
Pamela
Bitter and Sweet
Bitterness and sweet tears have been on my mind this summer. On the eve of a five-day paddle down an unknown river early in the summer, we gathered for orientation at a campground on a Native reserve in Canada. Everything—and almost everybody—was new. We closed with an elder sharing stories from her grandmother, and one sentence settled deep into my heart with the ring of truth. Her grandmother said, “You have to cry till your tears are sweet.” Grieve beyond the point of bitterness. This was the moment at which my journey down the river began—taking in a gift of wisdom as I prepared to put out my best effort toward defending the treaties and protecting the earth.
In midsummer I heard from a young woman across the ocean who is like a daughter to me that her marriage was in trouble and she needed advice. I pulled myself together to offer everything I had—and it wasn’t enough. Her response that she was feeling bitter—this from one of the most generous, hardworking and loving people I know—shocked me as nothing else had, and I entered into a full-blown campaign to gather more resources around her. This woman, of all people, must not be left to bitterness.
Late in the summer, I read an article in the paper about “bitter voters”. President Obama had used those words in the 2008 election campaign to characterize white working class people whose small Midwestern towns had been left behind, where the promises of successive administrations had not brought regeneration. He said, “It’s not surprising that they get bitter. People feel like government’s not listening to them, and as a consequence, they find that they can only rely on the traditions and the things that have been important to them for generation after generation: Faith. Family. Traditions like hunting. And they get frustrated.”
In an attempt to join those voters, to be on their side, another politician had challenged that characterization of bitterness and negativity and emphasized their spiritual richness. While I have no doubt these are good people, I still think Obama was right. They were also bitter, and they still are. You can try to sanitize that bitterness, or gloss over it, or pretend it is something that it is not. Or, much more problematic, you can feed on it for political advantage. But the advice of our native grandmother’s grandmother—to cry till the tears are sweet—offers a way forward that rings with the sound of truth.
Bitterness is a hard, tight thing. It needs to be loosened, by attention, by understanding, by tears. Someone in this election season has said that you cannot make an impact on such voters in an interchange of less than ten minutes. I would guess that it takes significantly more, and that it cannot succeed at all without a deep well of open-hearted listening. There are so many lost hopes and broken promises. There is such a strong sense of betrayal, of becoming invisible in one’s own country. What will it take for the tears of the bitter voters to run sweet?
Beyond knowing
I take it to bed with me
A report on corporate tax evasion
financial power grabs
shadow banking
regulatory loopholes.
The need to know is strong.
What are the levers
to rein in these shadowy
and powerful forces
that lurk at the core
of much of what is wrong
in our world?
I wade through dense language
barely hanging on at times
determined to understand.
These folks suggest
detailed policy changes
hoping to guide
the next president.
I have been guided as well
and now know more.
But just my knowing
changes nothing.
What do I do with the clarity
inside my head?
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance.
Check out this new 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.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Reverend William Barber’s call for a 21st century moral movement that evokes Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, both in a revival I attended in Philadelphia and in a speech at the Democratic National Convention. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAFZKcYn8qI).
A TV news reporter's astonishingly direct discussion of our country's historical relationship to native people, their role as our first environmentalists, and the irony of arresting them for trespass as they protest pipelines that endanger all our waters. http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/rewrite-the-protests-at-standing-rock-751440963846
Muslims in France who publicly attended mass in response to the killing of a Catholic priest by a Muslim extremist. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslims-catholic-mass-france_us_579e3c67e4b0e2e15eb63576
A campaign led by students at Columbia University that has successfully pressured the school to become the first institution of higher education to divest from the private prison corporation CCA and the private security company G4S, combined with the federal Justice Department’s announced plan to end the use of private prisons after concluding that they are less safe and less effective that government run prisons. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp
More resources
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
#156 A good mind
Dear all,
What a month! (Quite apart from everything that's going on in the world…) Chuck and I had the honor of participating in a native solidarity kayaking trip in southern Ontario which was way more mind/heart expanding and inspiring than we could have imagined, then came home to the news that our dear friend from Northern Uganda, Abitimo Odongkara, had just died. It feels like it's taken the rest of the month to give both experiences--and both communities involved--the attention they have called out for.
We are blessed to have both these communities in our lives, and it's good to remember that only when we are willing to know deep sorrow can we experience deep joy. Yet I have to say that I"m hoping for a more tranquil August!
And the good news from the community garden is that the peaches from the tree I planted a couple of years ago are ripe, and delicious.
Love,
Pamela
A good mind
Before we set out on our first day of paddling, we gather in a circle for the traditional Haudenosaunee (Six Nations, Iroquois, People of the Longhouse) thanksgiving address. These are the words that come before all else.
Bruce, an unassuming man in his forties, takes about five minutes to offer these thanks, in a native language that I learn later is Cayuga. With heads uncovered, we follow the theme of thanksgiving as best we can, each in our own way. Then Brooke gives an overview in English, mentioning everything Bruce has given thanks for.
Starting with the responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things, we give thanks to one another as people. Then we give thanks for the earth mother, the waters, the fish, the plants, the food plants, the medicine plants, the animals, the trees, the birds, the four winds, the thunders, the sun, Grandmother Moon, the stars, the wisdom keepers, and the creator. Having given these thanks, our minds are one.
Then Brooke offers a few words of her own, reminding us of the opportunity to be healed on the water, offering her hope that we will all keep a good mind. A good mind. That phrase comes up over and over again during our five days paddling down the Grand River together to honor the treaties and protect the earth, inspired by the1613 Two Row treaty where whites and natives agreed to live respectfully, side by side.
One evening we listen to Lisa, who felt compelled last fall to respond somehow to the outbreak of suicides on this Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario. Looking to traditional rituals for guidance, she decided to revive the sacred fires of the solstice and equinox. With a few friends, she shared these intentions and gathered a big group of people for a weekend fire at the winter solstice. She said that the summer solstice fire was hard; not so many people came, and keeping it burning from Friday evening through Sunday morning was a challenge. But even if just one person has been healed, she says, it’s worth it.
Since November, Lisa has also been holding a moon circle, a ceremony for women, at every full moon. These are time for sharing, open to any woman in the community. She has noticed that women will share in these settings things they would never reveal to social workers. Individual by individual, she is helping to knit the fabric of the community back together, good mind by good mind.
Suzie tells a compelling story in another evening sharing circle. We have camped at the Caledonia Fairgrounds, just below the bridge. In Caledonia ten years ago, a simmering land dispute between the Six Nations and land developers in town sparked into ugly confrontation. Emotions ran high, and the two peoples were left even more distrustful and separated. Yet they live right across the river from each other; we can see the bridge from where we sit. Suzie, a teacher in the Six Nations, found another teacher in Caledonia who was willing to do a pen-pal project with their students. It was a simple idea, connecting children one by one. They met at the end of the year, and the next year more children—and their families—were involved. Ten years later, 2000 children were pen pals, the celebration caught up whole communities, and the idea had leapfrogged across Canada to Alberta. Now here is a good mind at work!
Shane joined the paddle at the last minute, a stranger to everybody, just knowing somehow that this was where he needed to be. Shane never told a story. It was clear that there was trouble and hardship in his past, but he wasn’t one for words. Still he found his way into the center of the group, with his intimate knowledge of the river, his flashes of humor, and his ever-ready helping hand. At our closing circle, he said that he had never been treated with so much respect in his life, and he would honor the group by working harder to keep a good mind, something he had not done so well in the past.
There are many other ways to describe this journey, many stories that could be told. But it’s the power of this group of people—native and allies, men and women, young and old, friends and strangers—all intent on keeping a good mind as we traveled together down the river, that will stay with me forever.
Haiku on the first evening of our paddle
The First Nations elder
on water:
You have to cry
till your tears taste sweet.
White river guide:
deep native ties,
tales of savagery
still fascinate.
Camp bathroom talk:
Fierce scientist
sampling water to fight
pipeline danger.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Shared resources
Many people on the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario remember the community rowboat that was tied up at the river, available to anyone who needed to cross over to the store on the other side.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A paired set of victories on the West Coast, where Native communities were able to assert their traditional rights and halt first the Gateway Pacific Coal Port near Seattle and then the Northern Gateway Pipelines project in British Columbia.
http://orcasissues.com/gateway-pacific-coal-port-rejected/
http://ens-newswire.com/2016/07/01/canadian-court-kills-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Philadelphia’s water department, that exceeded their five-year clean water targets, creating over 837 greened acres--enough to keep an estimated 1.5 billion gallons of polluted water out of the city’s waterways during a typical year of rainfall.
http://www.phillywatersheds.org/big-news-green-city-clean-waters-blows-past-year-five-targets
A woman from the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario, who spearheaded an enormously successful movement to build relationships between native and European heritage children.
http://www.penpalproject.ca/gatherings/2016.html
http://www.penpalproject.ca/information/background.html
More than thirty city mayors from fourteen states, who signed onto a letter in June, calling on state legislatures to “affirm the ability of localities to protect the health and quality of life of residents against the widespread expansion of industrial fracking”—indicating the potential for change from local elected officials.
http://celdf.org/2016/07/blog-u-s-mayors-embrace-community-rights-condemn-legalization-corporate-violence/
More resources
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
A paired set of victories on the West Coast, where Native communities were able to assert their traditional rights and halt first the Gateway Pacific Coal Port near Seattle and then the Northern Gateway Pipelines project in British Columbia.
http://orcasissues.com/gateway-pacific-coal-port-rejected/
http://ens-newswire.com/2016/07/01/canadian-court-kills-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Philadelphia’s water department, that exceeded their five-year clean water targets, creating over 837 greened acres--enough to keep an estimated 1.5 billion gallons of polluted water out of the city’s waterways during a typical year of rainfall.
http://www.phillywatersheds.org/big-news-green-city-clean-waters-blows-past-year-five-targets
A woman from the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario, who spearheaded an enormously successful movement to build relationships between native and European heritage children.
http://www.penpalproject.ca/gatherings/2016.html
http://www.penpalproject.ca/information/background.html
More than thirty city mayors from fourteen states, who signed onto a letter in June, calling on state legislatures to “affirm the ability of localities to protect the health and quality of life of residents against the widespread expansion of industrial fracking”—indicating the potential for change from local elected officials.
http://celdf.org/2016/07/blog-u-s-mayors-embrace-community-rights-condemn-legalization-corporate-violence/
What a month! (Quite apart from everything that's going on in the world…) Chuck and I had the honor of participating in a native solidarity kayaking trip in southern Ontario which was way more mind/heart expanding and inspiring than we could have imagined, then came home to the news that our dear friend from Northern Uganda, Abitimo Odongkara, had just died. It feels like it's taken the rest of the month to give both experiences--and both communities involved--the attention they have called out for.
We are blessed to have both these communities in our lives, and it's good to remember that only when we are willing to know deep sorrow can we experience deep joy. Yet I have to say that I"m hoping for a more tranquil August!
And the good news from the community garden is that the peaches from the tree I planted a couple of years ago are ripe, and delicious.
Love,
Pamela
A good mind
Before we set out on our first day of paddling, we gather in a circle for the traditional Haudenosaunee (Six Nations, Iroquois, People of the Longhouse) thanksgiving address. These are the words that come before all else.
Bruce, an unassuming man in his forties, takes about five minutes to offer these thanks, in a native language that I learn later is Cayuga. With heads uncovered, we follow the theme of thanksgiving as best we can, each in our own way. Then Brooke gives an overview in English, mentioning everything Bruce has given thanks for.
Starting with the responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things, we give thanks to one another as people. Then we give thanks for the earth mother, the waters, the fish, the plants, the food plants, the medicine plants, the animals, the trees, the birds, the four winds, the thunders, the sun, Grandmother Moon, the stars, the wisdom keepers, and the creator. Having given these thanks, our minds are one.
Then Brooke offers a few words of her own, reminding us of the opportunity to be healed on the water, offering her hope that we will all keep a good mind. A good mind. That phrase comes up over and over again during our five days paddling down the Grand River together to honor the treaties and protect the earth, inspired by the1613 Two Row treaty where whites and natives agreed to live respectfully, side by side.
One evening we listen to Lisa, who felt compelled last fall to respond somehow to the outbreak of suicides on this Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario. Looking to traditional rituals for guidance, she decided to revive the sacred fires of the solstice and equinox. With a few friends, she shared these intentions and gathered a big group of people for a weekend fire at the winter solstice. She said that the summer solstice fire was hard; not so many people came, and keeping it burning from Friday evening through Sunday morning was a challenge. But even if just one person has been healed, she says, it’s worth it.
Since November, Lisa has also been holding a moon circle, a ceremony for women, at every full moon. These are time for sharing, open to any woman in the community. She has noticed that women will share in these settings things they would never reveal to social workers. Individual by individual, she is helping to knit the fabric of the community back together, good mind by good mind.
Suzie tells a compelling story in another evening sharing circle. We have camped at the Caledonia Fairgrounds, just below the bridge. In Caledonia ten years ago, a simmering land dispute between the Six Nations and land developers in town sparked into ugly confrontation. Emotions ran high, and the two peoples were left even more distrustful and separated. Yet they live right across the river from each other; we can see the bridge from where we sit. Suzie, a teacher in the Six Nations, found another teacher in Caledonia who was willing to do a pen-pal project with their students. It was a simple idea, connecting children one by one. They met at the end of the year, and the next year more children—and their families—were involved. Ten years later, 2000 children were pen pals, the celebration caught up whole communities, and the idea had leapfrogged across Canada to Alberta. Now here is a good mind at work!
Shane joined the paddle at the last minute, a stranger to everybody, just knowing somehow that this was where he needed to be. Shane never told a story. It was clear that there was trouble and hardship in his past, but he wasn’t one for words. Still he found his way into the center of the group, with his intimate knowledge of the river, his flashes of humor, and his ever-ready helping hand. At our closing circle, he said that he had never been treated with so much respect in his life, and he would honor the group by working harder to keep a good mind, something he had not done so well in the past.
There are many other ways to describe this journey, many stories that could be told. But it’s the power of this group of people—native and allies, men and women, young and old, friends and strangers—all intent on keeping a good mind as we traveled together down the river, that will stay with me forever.
Haiku on the first evening of our paddle
The First Nations elder
on water:
You have to cry
till your tears taste sweet.
White river guide:
deep native ties,
tales of savagery
still fascinate.
Camp bathroom talk:
Fierce scientist
sampling water to fight
pipeline danger.
Imagine--A new economy is possible!
Shared resources
Many people on the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario remember the community rowboat that was tied up at the river, available to anyone who needed to cross over to the store on the other side.
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A paired set of victories on the West Coast, where Native communities were able to assert their traditional rights and halt first the Gateway Pacific Coal Port near Seattle and then the Northern Gateway Pipelines project in British Columbia.
http://orcasissues.com/gateway-pacific-coal-port-rejected/
http://ens-newswire.com/2016/07/01/canadian-court-kills-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Philadelphia’s water department, that exceeded their five-year clean water targets, creating over 837 greened acres--enough to keep an estimated 1.5 billion gallons of polluted water out of the city’s waterways during a typical year of rainfall.
http://www.phillywatersheds.org/big-news-green-city-clean-waters-blows-past-year-five-targets
A woman from the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario, who spearheaded an enormously successful movement to build relationships between native and European heritage children.
http://www.penpalproject.ca/gatherings/2016.html
http://www.penpalproject.ca/information/background.html
More than thirty city mayors from fourteen states, who signed onto a letter in June, calling on state legislatures to “affirm the ability of localities to protect the health and quality of life of residents against the widespread expansion of industrial fracking”—indicating the potential for change from local elected officials.
http://celdf.org/2016/07/blog-u-s-mayors-embrace-community-rights-condemn-legalization-corporate-violence/
More resources
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
A paired set of victories on the West Coast, where Native communities were able to assert their traditional rights and halt first the Gateway Pacific Coal Port near Seattle and then the Northern Gateway Pipelines project in British Columbia.
http://orcasissues.com/gateway-pacific-coal-port-rejected/
http://ens-newswire.com/2016/07/01/canadian-court-kills-enbridge-northern-gateway-pipeline/
Philadelphia’s water department, that exceeded their five-year clean water targets, creating over 837 greened acres--enough to keep an estimated 1.5 billion gallons of polluted water out of the city’s waterways during a typical year of rainfall.
http://www.phillywatersheds.org/big-news-green-city-clean-waters-blows-past-year-five-targets
A woman from the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario, who spearheaded an enormously successful movement to build relationships between native and European heritage children.
http://www.penpalproject.ca/gatherings/2016.html
http://www.penpalproject.ca/information/background.html
More than thirty city mayors from fourteen states, who signed onto a letter in June, calling on state legislatures to “affirm the ability of localities to protect the health and quality of life of residents against the widespread expansion of industrial fracking”—indicating the potential for change from local elected officials.
http://celdf.org/2016/07/blog-u-s-mayors-embrace-community-rights-condemn-legalization-corporate-violence/
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
#155 Escape
Dear all,
Two big worrisome unknowns have resolved this month, with very hopeful outcomes. My director of nineteen years at work--and partner and friend--has retired, and I'm thrilled to be liking everything about the woman who is taking her place. Then, the co-director of the urban farm whose board I lead resigned this spring, amidst a thicket of thorny problems, and the woman we were finally able to hire brings more promise than we had dared hope for. Two big sighs of relief! My summer schedule is also beginning to open up a little, and I'm enjoying cool early morning time in the garden or park. Two great gifts.
Love,
Pamela
Escape
Two narratives of escape were colliding in my brain. I was reading an account of life in the conflict regions of East Africa, including harrowing stories from people who had escaped to the Kibera refugee camp in the Congo. At the same time, many of my co-workers had taken advantage of a conference in Orlando to escape from the daily grind and go to Disney World. They were worlds apart and totally different, of course. Or were they?
What do I know about escape? As a woman, it’s been easy to notice how many men seem to use sports as an escape. I’ve sometimes wondered if the energy and passion they put into being on top of the sports news is a safer alternative to being on top of the much more troubling news of the real world.
It was a humbling moment when I realized that I had my own gender-based escape in reading feel-good novels. Other women choose shopping, or immerse themselves in the pop culture, becoming experts in the lives of others. With more gender neutral choices—many of them involving screens—the impetus is similar: I want out of the real world and into a place where I have no responsibility and can be sure that nothing problematic will intrude.
Then there is escape that is less benign. Many try escaping seemingly intractable problems—poverty, oppression, pain—through drugs or other damaging addictions. Which brings us to the refugees in Kibera who are escaping for their lives.
Clearly it would have been better if the people in Kibera camp had not had to flee, if the perpetrators had not committed the initial atrocities, if they could have been stopped. Indeed, some people in the camp were trying to escape from that they had done, and wondering how their lives could ever be whole again. Similarly, it would be better if those who escape to dangerous addiction could find another way, if the resources could be found to deal with the pain or if their other needs could be met. In both situations there is immeasurable and tragic waste.
Yes, yes, you may say, but where do sports, fiction, shopping and Disney World fit into this grim picture? By all appearances, they are totally different. Our lives are not ruined as a result of such escapes. On the contrary. We have simply laid down the yoke of obligation and given ourselves a little break.
But what does a need to escape say about the lives we are living? What are we escaping from? Could it be related to some basic lack of connection or meaning? Could it be something that is killing us? I can’t help but wonder if we were more closely connected with those people in Kibera whether we would see our choices in a different light.
When is escape an expression of our power and life-affirming determination, as in escape from abuse or confinement into a future that is different and better? And when is it the opposite—an expression of lack of power, a coping mechanism for endurance in a life-draining situation that we can see no way to change?
I wonder if we can make a clearer distinction between refreshment and escape. Let’s be refreshed by all means. Let’s take the vacations that invigorate us, rest deeply when we need rest, do what’s needed to get a new perspective when ours is getting stale. But let’s question the pull to escape. Let’s asks what we are escaping from, then try deciding to stay, to gather the resources to face down the dragons, and put our energy into looking for real meaning and joy in our lives and those of others around us.
Efficiency
Part of me
(the old part)
is sharp with impatience.
I could do this transaction
in a quarter of the time
a tenth.
There’s work to be done
I haven’t got all day.
The other(newer)part
would extend this moment
buying dry-root strawberries
(five kinds)
from the young man
at our new neighborhood nursery.
We chat.
He gardens across the river
volunteers at the same
urban farm I love
with the same black farmer.
I have visions of
young black men
from all over the city
finding this farmer
soaking up the lore
of earth and growing things,
reclaiming their roots.
We knit a connection
while he takes his time
sorting and packaging
strawberry roots.
Why would I ever
want it to end?
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Building a circular economy
Reverse logistics is the process of moving post consumption goods to their ultimate destination: remanufacturing, refurbishing, reusing or recycling. Much of this involves incentivizing users to return them. Lush, a cosmetic company, exchanges empty cosmetics pots from its customers with new products; once collected, empty pots are recycled into new ones. Caterpillar links used engine cores to a deposit and discount system to maximize the capture of used components into their remanufacturing operations.
Heineken’s distribution company in France has installed equipment at its customer sites that crushes and stores up to 20 kg of glass. This equipment reduces the space required for empty bottles, lowers transportation costs, and minimizes health and safety risks. Because recovery of their products can be challenging, Apple and the telecom company O2, lease phones to their customers to ensure their return.
By closing the loop of product lifecycles, reverse logistics plays an important role to transitioning to a circular economy. Products can also be designed from the start with resource recovery and recycling in mind, but that’s a different part of the story!
http://circulatenews.org/2016/06/why-corporations-will-have-to-invest-in-their-reverse-logistics/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Diébédo Francis Kéré, an architect from Burkina Faso, who has created a beautiful naturally air-conditioned school in the village he grew up in, all with local materials and labor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgrIhbuneSI
Hand in Hand, a group of schools in Israel where Jews and Arabs learn and grow together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHEkP6cBIG8&feature=youtu.be
D.C.’s Retirement Board, that has divested its $6.4 billion city government pension fund from the 200 largest publicly traded coal, oil and gas companies.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/06/3785278/dc-pension-divests/
350.org’s campaign in Vietnam to raise awareness about the devastating health effects of coal-fired power plants, leading to Vietnam’s Prime Minister halting new coal plant development and reviewing the country’s national power development plan.
http://350.org/campaign-update-east-asia/?akid=14359.1048214.zLdj9M&rd=1&t=11
More resources
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
Recent 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)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Sunday, May 22, 2016
#154 Onion dreams
Dear all,
It seems like there's more stress and scarcity in my life than usual these days--nagging little health issues, various systems resisting repair or resolution, urgent to-do lists, illness and death in the community.
Then I go to the garden and am reminded of another reality. Mary gifts us with vegetable starts that she grew in the greenhouse. Karen is glad to share her stunning deep purple irises so I can plant some in the front flower bed. Sue asks if I'd like a bouquet of her lovely pink roses. I'm delighted to offer Denora some currants that I propagated last fall so she can plant them in the neighborhood. I'm surrounded by wholesome abundance and sharing, and I breathe more deeply.
I wish that experience of grace and abundance for all of us.
Love,
Pamela
Onion dreams
How to invite a three year old fully into the joys of the garden in spring? I want him to love it—and I also want the little vegetable plants to survive. Having wooden walkways helps, but it’s hard to remember, hard to always be careful. So one day in the back yard I mention that he doesn’t have to be careful in the mint. It is strong and sturdy and will bounce back. His eyes light up. He checks to make sure he understood, then steps into the mint bed and proceeds to walk around. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I know that mint is indeed incredibly resilient, and not in short supply, so I hold my tongue.
At our community garden the next week, he helps with planting and watering new strawberry plants, then plays while I transplant tomatoes and peppers. I keep pointing out the plants he’s almost stepping on (trying to keep the urgency out of my voice) and reminding him of the wooden plank paths.
At one point he asks if the winter onions will grow back. When I say they will, he takes a deliberate step into the bed. I consider—there are more than I need, the season is almost over, they do bounce back—and I don’t warn him away. He proceeds to walk in the bed, to stomp in it, delighted to be in the middle of a winter onion jungle. Then it occurs to him that he could lie down in this green and growing bed. He lies down happily and announces that he is sleeping on a winter onion pillow. He is so pleased that I have to smile. “Are you having onion dreams?” I ask. More delight. “I’m having onion dreams.”
Back home, as he’s telling his parents about our garden adventures, I know I made the right choice—to relax my protective instincts and sacrifice a few onions in order to invite him all the way into the joys of the garden. “I lay down in the winter onion bed,” he says. “I had onion dreams.”
Dandelions
At my house
dandelions were not allowed.
You could find
mold in the fridge
dustballs in the corners
stacks on the surfaces
But dandelions were dug out
every year, one by one.
A lawn, after all,
is no place for a weed.
We picked them in meadows
slit and curled the long stems
braided flower crowns
blew on those irresistible
fragile spheres
but that was different.
Learning they were valued once
as earliest greens of spring
created dissonance.
My first salad
of dandelion greens
with hot bacon dressing
specialty of the Pennsylvania Dutch
was a surprise and a delight.
Yet I dug them steadily
from yard and garden
habits strong
virtue and vigilance combined.
A country relative
brings a dandelion green
salad for Easter.
Weeding his garden
he found so many
he couldn’t resist.
It was a labor of love, he said
all that washing.
As I savor
the sharp taste
I give thanks
for this love of a weed.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Participatory budgeting
The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre started the first full participatory budgeting process in 1989. In Porto Alegre, as many as 50,000 people have participated each year, to decide as much as 20% of the city budget. Since then, participatory budgeting has spread to over 1,500 cities in Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. In the US and Canada, it has been used in Toronto, Montreal, Guelph, Chicago, New York City, and Vallejo (California).
While participatory budgeting doesn’t change economic structures, it facilitates grassroots democratic decision-making, over the design of the budgeting process; what proposals go on the ballot; and what gets funded. It changes how government works and how people can engage in democracy, by crafting processes that build individuals’ skills and knowledge; bringing neighbors together across divides; and connecting residents, experts, and officials, to make better decisions together.
http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/about-participatory-budgeting/examples-of-participatory-budgeting/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A small town in western Pennsylvania that has legalized civil disobedience in its fight against fracking. http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/faced-with-a-fracking-giant-this-small-town-just-legalized-civil-disobedience-20160513
The new Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who ran a campaign on bread and butter issues and working together, and beat a candidate who tried to raise fears of Muslim extremism. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/world/europe/britain-election-results.html?_r=0
Black farmers, from farms in the south to cities in the north and everywhere in between, who are reclaiming the positive values of their connection to the land. (See video on Soul Fire Farm at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-DS6qnFTk, or check out this Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Mid-Atlantic-Wellbeing-Diaspora-Herbs-Initiative-504561246295470/ )
The recent White Privilege Conference, held in Philadelphia, where 2000 people wrestled with hard issues and didn’t give up.
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
It seems like there's more stress and scarcity in my life than usual these days--nagging little health issues, various systems resisting repair or resolution, urgent to-do lists, illness and death in the community.
Then I go to the garden and am reminded of another reality. Mary gifts us with vegetable starts that she grew in the greenhouse. Karen is glad to share her stunning deep purple irises so I can plant some in the front flower bed. Sue asks if I'd like a bouquet of her lovely pink roses. I'm delighted to offer Denora some currants that I propagated last fall so she can plant them in the neighborhood. I'm surrounded by wholesome abundance and sharing, and I breathe more deeply.
I wish that experience of grace and abundance for all of us.
Love,
Pamela
Onion dreams
How to invite a three year old fully into the joys of the garden in spring? I want him to love it—and I also want the little vegetable plants to survive. Having wooden walkways helps, but it’s hard to remember, hard to always be careful. So one day in the back yard I mention that he doesn’t have to be careful in the mint. It is strong and sturdy and will bounce back. His eyes light up. He checks to make sure he understood, then steps into the mint bed and proceeds to walk around. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I know that mint is indeed incredibly resilient, and not in short supply, so I hold my tongue.
At our community garden the next week, he helps with planting and watering new strawberry plants, then plays while I transplant tomatoes and peppers. I keep pointing out the plants he’s almost stepping on (trying to keep the urgency out of my voice) and reminding him of the wooden plank paths.
At one point he asks if the winter onions will grow back. When I say they will, he takes a deliberate step into the bed. I consider—there are more than I need, the season is almost over, they do bounce back—and I don’t warn him away. He proceeds to walk in the bed, to stomp in it, delighted to be in the middle of a winter onion jungle. Then it occurs to him that he could lie down in this green and growing bed. He lies down happily and announces that he is sleeping on a winter onion pillow. He is so pleased that I have to smile. “Are you having onion dreams?” I ask. More delight. “I’m having onion dreams.”
Back home, as he’s telling his parents about our garden adventures, I know I made the right choice—to relax my protective instincts and sacrifice a few onions in order to invite him all the way into the joys of the garden. “I lay down in the winter onion bed,” he says. “I had onion dreams.”
Dandelions
At my house
dandelions were not allowed.
You could find
mold in the fridge
dustballs in the corners
stacks on the surfaces
But dandelions were dug out
every year, one by one.
A lawn, after all,
is no place for a weed.
We picked them in meadows
slit and curled the long stems
braided flower crowns
blew on those irresistible
fragile spheres
but that was different.
Learning they were valued once
as earliest greens of spring
created dissonance.
My first salad
of dandelion greens
with hot bacon dressing
specialty of the Pennsylvania Dutch
was a surprise and a delight.
Yet I dug them steadily
from yard and garden
habits strong
virtue and vigilance combined.
A country relative
brings a dandelion green
salad for Easter.
Weeding his garden
he found so many
he couldn’t resist.
It was a labor of love, he said
all that washing.
As I savor
the sharp taste
I give thanks
for this love of a weed.
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Participatory budgeting
The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre started the first full participatory budgeting process in 1989. In Porto Alegre, as many as 50,000 people have participated each year, to decide as much as 20% of the city budget. Since then, participatory budgeting has spread to over 1,500 cities in Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. In the US and Canada, it has been used in Toronto, Montreal, Guelph, Chicago, New York City, and Vallejo (California).
While participatory budgeting doesn’t change economic structures, it facilitates grassroots democratic decision-making, over the design of the budgeting process; what proposals go on the ballot; and what gets funded. It changes how government works and how people can engage in democracy, by crafting processes that build individuals’ skills and knowledge; bringing neighbors together across divides; and connecting residents, experts, and officials, to make better decisions together.
http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/about-participatory-budgeting/examples-of-participatory-budgeting/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A small town in western Pennsylvania that has legalized civil disobedience in its fight against fracking. http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/faced-with-a-fracking-giant-this-small-town-just-legalized-civil-disobedience-20160513
The new Muslim mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who ran a campaign on bread and butter issues and working together, and beat a candidate who tried to raise fears of Muslim extremism. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/07/world/europe/britain-election-results.html?_r=0
Black farmers, from farms in the south to cities in the north and everywhere in between, who are reclaiming the positive values of their connection to the land. (See video on Soul Fire Farm at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-DS6qnFTk, or check out this Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Mid-Atlantic-Wellbeing-Diaspora-Herbs-Initiative-504561246295470/ )
The recent White Privilege Conference, held in Philadelphia, where 2000 people wrestled with hard issues and didn’t give up.
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
#153 The real thing
Dear all,
This has been a more challenging month than some, with sickness in the midst of work--and other--obligations, a friend's final struggle with cancer, project I'm responsible for hitting snags, challenges around racism.
Yet spring comes, the moon waxes and wanes, grandchildren explore and grow, help manifests, love is there to be offered and taken in. I'm grateful for all of these things, grateful to be on the mend, grateful to be alive in this world.
Love,
Pamela
The real thing
I recently spent ten days with my son and his wife and two small boys, helping out as Erin was dealing with a health issue that kept her mostly in bed. I’m very good at making myself useful, and my help was clearly needed, so I cheerfully read stories, pushed swings, washed dishes, prepared meals, played chase games, did laundry, picked up toys, and ran errands.
What I was not prepared for was Erin's comment toward the end of my stay that what she appreciated most about my being there was that I loved her boys. It caught me by surprise. In my mind, based on a lifetime of training, my contribution was the work. I had to get my mind around the fact that, while I’m sure she was glad for the help, it was my love--something that couldn’t be seen or measured--that really made the difference.
Then I came home to find this quote from Bruce Springsteen in my mailbox: "I understand it's the music that keeps me alive.... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses — that's not the American dream.... Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself — then you've been suckered in.”
Those things that you see and can measure—the TV, the car, the house—those are the booby prizes. The real thing that keeps you alive, the music, the meaning, the higher ground, is invisible.
I can’t tell if I’m more taken by Springsteen’s characterization of these visible signs of affluence as "booby prizes", or more sobered by how much I still measure my life’s worth in terms of visible work produced. While I’m not prepared to view all my work as a booby prize, it’s helpful to have been offered this perspective on tasks accomplished, and to notice the times when I hold them up as the highest prize. At the same time, I’m compelled to take more seriously that which I offer which is invisible. I guess, as I think about it, it’s not the work, but the spirit in which I do my work that is the real thing.
Mint
Early spring day
a three year old samples
the promise of the yard.
Worms, of course
tastes of parsley and celery
survivors of winter
Mint, just coming up.
He pinches at those
little nubs of green
barely poking through the earth
getting just enough
to remind a remembering mouth
of that potent delight.
Imagine - A new economy is possible!
Financing household energy efficiency
Many households don’t upgrade to energy efficient technologies because they can’t afford the up-front costs. On-bill financing overcomes this barrier by covering such costs, which are then repaid over time via charges on the utility bill.
This allows people to get efficiency upgrades at no added cost, since energy savings from efficiency improvements are greater than the on-bill finance costs. Default rates have been found to be lower than with other loans, since people are used to making payments via their gas or electricity bill. Using a utility bill repayment history to underwrite upgrades also allows customers with poorer credit scores access to financing.
The South Carolina “Help My House” Rural Energy Savings Program Pilot led to a 34 percent reduction in energy use for residential program participants and resulted in average annual savings of $288 per home after loan payments.
Twelve states have enacted legislation to create loan funds for capital, create pilot programs or require utilities to offer on-bill financing. Another 20 states have utilities with on-bill financing programs in place.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/on-bill-financing-cost-free-energy-efficiency-improvements.aspx
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The Philadelphia Orchard Project, which has repurposed acres of blight and planted thousands fruit trees and bushes in 53 urban orchards, providing free fruit for neighborhoods that need it.
http://newfoodeconomy.com/city-orchards-philadelphia/
The encouragement from Pope Francis for a conference on just war to focus on the importance of non-violent action as a means to struggle for justice.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-encourages-vatican-just-war-conference-revitalize-tools-non-violence#.Vw7Ic8g-jKY.facebook
How the release of the Panama Papers has shed light on the shadowy practice of hiding wealth in shell companies overseas.
http://www.alternet.org/world/panama-papers-show-how-easy-it-finance-terror-using-us-shell-companies
Stories of how, in the midst of government inaction, civilians in Greece have stepped up to aid Syrian refugees.
http://www.albawaba.com/news/impact-humanitarian-volunteers-greece-820222
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
This has been a more challenging month than some, with sickness in the midst of work--and other--obligations, a friend's final struggle with cancer, project I'm responsible for hitting snags, challenges around racism.
Yet spring comes, the moon waxes and wanes, grandchildren explore and grow, help manifests, love is there to be offered and taken in. I'm grateful for all of these things, grateful to be on the mend, grateful to be alive in this world.
Love,
Pamela
The real thing
I recently spent ten days with my son and his wife and two small boys, helping out as Erin was dealing with a health issue that kept her mostly in bed. I’m very good at making myself useful, and my help was clearly needed, so I cheerfully read stories, pushed swings, washed dishes, prepared meals, played chase games, did laundry, picked up toys, and ran errands.
What I was not prepared for was Erin's comment toward the end of my stay that what she appreciated most about my being there was that I loved her boys. It caught me by surprise. In my mind, based on a lifetime of training, my contribution was the work. I had to get my mind around the fact that, while I’m sure she was glad for the help, it was my love--something that couldn’t be seen or measured--that really made the difference.
Then I came home to find this quote from Bruce Springsteen in my mailbox: "I understand it's the music that keeps me alive.... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses — that's not the American dream.... Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them, when you achieve them, you believe that this is the end in and of itself — then you've been suckered in.”
Those things that you see and can measure—the TV, the car, the house—those are the booby prizes. The real thing that keeps you alive, the music, the meaning, the higher ground, is invisible.
I can’t tell if I’m more taken by Springsteen’s characterization of these visible signs of affluence as "booby prizes", or more sobered by how much I still measure my life’s worth in terms of visible work produced. While I’m not prepared to view all my work as a booby prize, it’s helpful to have been offered this perspective on tasks accomplished, and to notice the times when I hold them up as the highest prize. At the same time, I’m compelled to take more seriously that which I offer which is invisible. I guess, as I think about it, it’s not the work, but the spirit in which I do my work that is the real thing.
Mint
Early spring day
a three year old samples
the promise of the yard.
Worms, of course
tastes of parsley and celery
survivors of winter
Mint, just coming up.
He pinches at those
little nubs of green
barely poking through the earth
getting just enough
to remind a remembering mouth
of that potent delight.
Imagine - A new economy is possible!
Financing household energy efficiency
Many households don’t upgrade to energy efficient technologies because they can’t afford the up-front costs. On-bill financing overcomes this barrier by covering such costs, which are then repaid over time via charges on the utility bill.
This allows people to get efficiency upgrades at no added cost, since energy savings from efficiency improvements are greater than the on-bill finance costs. Default rates have been found to be lower than with other loans, since people are used to making payments via their gas or electricity bill. Using a utility bill repayment history to underwrite upgrades also allows customers with poorer credit scores access to financing.
The South Carolina “Help My House” Rural Energy Savings Program Pilot led to a 34 percent reduction in energy use for residential program participants and resulted in average annual savings of $288 per home after loan payments.
Twelve states have enacted legislation to create loan funds for capital, create pilot programs or require utilities to offer on-bill financing. Another 20 states have utilities with on-bill financing programs in place.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/on-bill-financing-cost-free-energy-efficiency-improvements.aspx
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The Philadelphia Orchard Project, which has repurposed acres of blight and planted thousands fruit trees and bushes in 53 urban orchards, providing free fruit for neighborhoods that need it.
http://newfoodeconomy.com/city-orchards-philadelphia/
The encouragement from Pope Francis for a conference on just war to focus on the importance of non-violent action as a means to struggle for justice.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/francis-encourages-vatican-just-war-conference-revitalize-tools-non-violence#.Vw7Ic8g-jKY.facebook
How the release of the Panama Papers has shed light on the shadowy practice of hiding wealth in shell companies overseas.
http://www.alternet.org/world/panama-papers-show-how-easy-it-finance-terror-using-us-shell-companies
Stories of how, in the midst of government inaction, civilians in Greece have stepped up to aid Syrian refugees.
http://www.albawaba.com/news/impact-humanitarian-volunteers-greece-820222
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Saturday, March 12, 2016
#152 Help and confidence
Dear all,
I am awed, once again, by the beauty of spring as it is beginning to unfold around us. The threat of global warming makes it feel more important than ever to delight in and value the earth that envelops us.
As a mother, I rejoiced in our son Tim's trip to Nicaragua with this three year old, who got to hang out with friends in his first language. I was glad to add a generous dose of help and love to our son Andrew's family out in British Columbia as they face Erin's multiple ankle surgeries, though sobered by the health ripples of childhood leukemia treatment of the 1990's.
As always, I am glad to be alive in this world amidst all its joys and challenges.
Love,
Pamela
Help and confidence
Something had happened to my computer, leaving me unable to get on the Internet. Nothing I tried made a difference, except possibly to make it worse. Nobody around me could help. The Apple Store seemed to offer the only hope.
I had never gotten tech help there, and couldn’t quite believe there wasn’t some catch. I’m generally suspicious of institutional bureaucracies, and of putting myself in the hands of people with power. I would rather stay away, but there seemed to be no alternative.
So I walk into the store with my unusable computer, my story, my need, and my suspicion. What I get is a revelation: pure help, served up with kindness on all sides. It takes two visits, but I leave with a system that is not only restored but improved, and a head swirling with new thoughts and images about help.
Why is this experience still reverberating after days? Well, help is something that I struggle with in general. I’m used to not asking for it, not getting it, assuming it’s not there, managing on my own. So this was a striking reminder that my habits and assumptions come from deep in the past and are neither the best fit for current reality nor the best prescription for my emotional well-being.
But there’s more. What was it that allowed all the staff in this store—and I interacted with many of them over those two days—to offer their help with such warmth and generosity? While good customer service training may play a role, I can’t believe it explains the whole. I think the key likes in the fact that they knew they could help. We were coming in with problems that had solutions; we didn’t have access to those solutions, but they did. They could afford to be kind, because they were confident. And they had each other. When one part of the puzzle I brought in was outside someone’s expertise, he was totally relaxed about letting me know that he needed to consult. He wasn’t worried about the outcome, or about his self-worth. He didn’t try to make what he knew be enough when it wasn’t. He didn’t need to defend his limitations or worry about them. He knew that together, they could do anything that was possible to be done.
I begin imagining other things that might be fixed in such an environment. Maybe children could bring their malfunctioning families to the store. They would describe the problem they were experiencing and an employee would say, “Oh yes, we can help you with this. We know what to do. We’ve seen this problem before. It may take a little while, but we can straighten it out.”
Or maybe people who are concerned about the climate could bring the planet to the store. They would explain what was broken, and an employee would say, “You’re right; this is a bad problem. I’ll have to call in all my colleagues—and actually there’s a role you’ll need to play here too. Let me explain the process. It will take quite a while, but don’t worry. We do know just what has to be done.”
As these scenarios were finding a home in my brain, I started wondering about the times that people come to me for help. Do they see me the way I saw that staff, as unwaveringly confident, kind and able? That’s a pretty humbling thought! While I do try to be kind, I often don’t feel all that confident, and there are lots of problems I can’t solve. But it reminds me of the importance of sharing every bit of real confidence I do have. And when I don’t, maybe that’s where my co-workers—my fellow human beings—come in. What would it mean, and what would it make possible, if we all could rest in the confidence that we have each other, and that together we can do anything that is possible to be done?
Lent
Invited to Lent
not my tradition but interesting.
What to give up?
Cookies?
Then a new invitation:
What would God
want you to give up?
Work as a to-do list
all production, no joy?
This pops into my head, unbidden.
I’m in.
The discipline and tradition surround me.
If others can do this
have done it for centuries
are doing it right now
then so can I.
I remember, repeatedly
that there is joy to be found
in any moment as I work
(I also forget).
The forty days
is somehow comforting.
I’m not stuck with this choice,
not trapped.
I can always go back to
work without joy
if that’s what I want.
It’s just for Lent.
Imagine - A new economy is possible!
Chippewa tribe bans fracking
Members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians banned fracking on their 77,000 acre reservation in 2011, one of the first such bans in North America. Some initially thought an oil and gas boom would be a good thing, but they learned that the frackers would drill right through their precious aquifer, risking contamination of their drinking water and lakes. They learned that at a nearby reservation in the heart of the Bakken oil fields, fallout from a fracking boom included a spike in violent crime, pollution from contaminated materials dumped on the reservation, damaged roads, and increased demand for social services.
Receiving this information, the Turtle Mountain tribal council unanimously voted to ban fracking. An impoverished tribe left millions of dollars on the table, saying “We all know that in the very near future, water will be more valuable than oil or gold or anything else.” The council has since adopted a water code that solidifies the tribe’s stance on fracking, and with the help of a Department of Energy grant, the tribe is moving into developing the abundant solar and wind energy resources of the reservation.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/in-north-dakotas-booming-oil-patch-one-tribe-beat-back-fracking-20160121
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The Moral Monday movement, started in North Carolina, that invites a grassroots fusion of economic and social justice issues within the framework of morality.
http://newsone.com/3345792/the-third-reconstruction-how-moral-mondays-fusion-politics-are-fueling-the-rise-of-a-new-justice-movement/
The new white working class mayor of Philadelphia who doesn’t seem to have trouble identifying with the strengths and needs of the minority community, and who is putting out a very progressive agenda for the city.
A small timber and mill town in southwest Washington with a desperate need for jobs, whose commissioners voted unanimously against a proposed $1.25 billion oil refinery and propane export terminal, on the basis of environmental and health concerns.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/how-a-small-town-won-an-unlikely-victory-against-big-oil-20160226
The comeback of the monarch butterfly in its winter sanctuary in Mexico, more than tripling the area they cover from last year.
http://news.discovery.com/animals/insects/monarch-butterfly-population-surges-in-mexico-160229.htm
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
I am awed, once again, by the beauty of spring as it is beginning to unfold around us. The threat of global warming makes it feel more important than ever to delight in and value the earth that envelops us.
As a mother, I rejoiced in our son Tim's trip to Nicaragua with this three year old, who got to hang out with friends in his first language. I was glad to add a generous dose of help and love to our son Andrew's family out in British Columbia as they face Erin's multiple ankle surgeries, though sobered by the health ripples of childhood leukemia treatment of the 1990's.
As always, I am glad to be alive in this world amidst all its joys and challenges.
Love,
Pamela
Help and confidence
Something had happened to my computer, leaving me unable to get on the Internet. Nothing I tried made a difference, except possibly to make it worse. Nobody around me could help. The Apple Store seemed to offer the only hope.
I had never gotten tech help there, and couldn’t quite believe there wasn’t some catch. I’m generally suspicious of institutional bureaucracies, and of putting myself in the hands of people with power. I would rather stay away, but there seemed to be no alternative.
So I walk into the store with my unusable computer, my story, my need, and my suspicion. What I get is a revelation: pure help, served up with kindness on all sides. It takes two visits, but I leave with a system that is not only restored but improved, and a head swirling with new thoughts and images about help.
Why is this experience still reverberating after days? Well, help is something that I struggle with in general. I’m used to not asking for it, not getting it, assuming it’s not there, managing on my own. So this was a striking reminder that my habits and assumptions come from deep in the past and are neither the best fit for current reality nor the best prescription for my emotional well-being.
But there’s more. What was it that allowed all the staff in this store—and I interacted with many of them over those two days—to offer their help with such warmth and generosity? While good customer service training may play a role, I can’t believe it explains the whole. I think the key likes in the fact that they knew they could help. We were coming in with problems that had solutions; we didn’t have access to those solutions, but they did. They could afford to be kind, because they were confident. And they had each other. When one part of the puzzle I brought in was outside someone’s expertise, he was totally relaxed about letting me know that he needed to consult. He wasn’t worried about the outcome, or about his self-worth. He didn’t try to make what he knew be enough when it wasn’t. He didn’t need to defend his limitations or worry about them. He knew that together, they could do anything that was possible to be done.
I begin imagining other things that might be fixed in such an environment. Maybe children could bring their malfunctioning families to the store. They would describe the problem they were experiencing and an employee would say, “Oh yes, we can help you with this. We know what to do. We’ve seen this problem before. It may take a little while, but we can straighten it out.”
Or maybe people who are concerned about the climate could bring the planet to the store. They would explain what was broken, and an employee would say, “You’re right; this is a bad problem. I’ll have to call in all my colleagues—and actually there’s a role you’ll need to play here too. Let me explain the process. It will take quite a while, but don’t worry. We do know just what has to be done.”
As these scenarios were finding a home in my brain, I started wondering about the times that people come to me for help. Do they see me the way I saw that staff, as unwaveringly confident, kind and able? That’s a pretty humbling thought! While I do try to be kind, I often don’t feel all that confident, and there are lots of problems I can’t solve. But it reminds me of the importance of sharing every bit of real confidence I do have. And when I don’t, maybe that’s where my co-workers—my fellow human beings—come in. What would it mean, and what would it make possible, if we all could rest in the confidence that we have each other, and that together we can do anything that is possible to be done?
Lent
Invited to Lent
not my tradition but interesting.
What to give up?
Cookies?
Then a new invitation:
What would God
want you to give up?
Work as a to-do list
all production, no joy?
This pops into my head, unbidden.
I’m in.
The discipline and tradition surround me.
If others can do this
have done it for centuries
are doing it right now
then so can I.
I remember, repeatedly
that there is joy to be found
in any moment as I work
(I also forget).
The forty days
is somehow comforting.
I’m not stuck with this choice,
not trapped.
I can always go back to
work without joy
if that’s what I want.
It’s just for Lent.
Imagine - A new economy is possible!
Chippewa tribe bans fracking
Members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians banned fracking on their 77,000 acre reservation in 2011, one of the first such bans in North America. Some initially thought an oil and gas boom would be a good thing, but they learned that the frackers would drill right through their precious aquifer, risking contamination of their drinking water and lakes. They learned that at a nearby reservation in the heart of the Bakken oil fields, fallout from a fracking boom included a spike in violent crime, pollution from contaminated materials dumped on the reservation, damaged roads, and increased demand for social services.
Receiving this information, the Turtle Mountain tribal council unanimously voted to ban fracking. An impoverished tribe left millions of dollars on the table, saying “We all know that in the very near future, water will be more valuable than oil or gold or anything else.” The council has since adopted a water code that solidifies the tribe’s stance on fracking, and with the help of a Department of Energy grant, the tribe is moving into developing the abundant solar and wind energy resources of the reservation.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/in-north-dakotas-booming-oil-patch-one-tribe-beat-back-fracking-20160121
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The Moral Monday movement, started in North Carolina, that invites a grassroots fusion of economic and social justice issues within the framework of morality.
http://newsone.com/3345792/the-third-reconstruction-how-moral-mondays-fusion-politics-are-fueling-the-rise-of-a-new-justice-movement/
The new white working class mayor of Philadelphia who doesn’t seem to have trouble identifying with the strengths and needs of the minority community, and who is putting out a very progressive agenda for the city.
A small timber and mill town in southwest Washington with a desperate need for jobs, whose commissioners voted unanimously against a proposed $1.25 billion oil refinery and propane export terminal, on the basis of environmental and health concerns.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/how-a-small-town-won-an-unlikely-victory-against-big-oil-20160226
The comeback of the monarch butterfly in its winter sanctuary in Mexico, more than tripling the area they cover from last year.
http://news.discovery.com/animals/insects/monarch-butterfly-population-surges-in-mexico-160229.htm
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
#150 Loving Francis
Dear all,
What a rich winter holiday, with ALL our family--including four grandchildren four and under--gathered for over a week of visiting, playing, laughing, exploring, and taking turns. And now, with Chuck gone for three weeks in Australia, I have a very different rich opportunity--for quiet and self-direction. I'm grateful for both.
I bring other people's voices more than usual this month. My initial reflection is full of Pope Francis, and Instead of a poem I include a few thoughts from Robin Ward Kimmerer, a woman with Native American roots who knows and says things I would wish I could say myself.
With the buzz of festivities and hype of resolutions over, I wish you all a good start to a good new year.
Love,
Pamela
Loving Francis
When Pope Francis released his encyclical, Laudato Si, in the summer, I was delighted. I have since come to appreciate how the timing and content were planned strategically to have the greatest possible impact on the Paris climate talks. More recently, as part of sharing the encyclical with my faith community, I’ve had the opportunity to put that delight into words.
I love having a spiritual leader decide it was his place to speak out on matters that are usually seen as secular—and strongly defended as such. I love how he has mined the wealth of his spiritual understanding and tradition to bring such a fresh and powerful perspective to these big issues, in language that is accessible to everyone. I love having someone so wise to follow and be guided by—and I love it that such guidance is available outside of my (sometimes smug) Quaker tradition.
I love how he refuses to be put in a box. He’s not focusing just on personal morality or spirituality. He’s not focusing just on compassion for the poor. He’s not focusing just on stewardship of God’s earth. He’s focusing on how they are all part of one whole—and it is the connections among them that end up providing us with the most insight. What can we learn from his suggestion that “the human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together”?
I particularly love his emphasis on economics and technology. No part of our lives has been more fiercely walled off as secular territory or more fiercely protected against the “soft” and “unscientific” voices of ethics and religion. And Pope Francis just wades right in—totally and serenely confident in his right to be there!
He is eloquent on the dangers of compulsive consumerism, an issue dear to my heart. “Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products”, he says, “people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. That paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.” Freedom, indeed!
I love how clear he is about the limits of economic growth. We cannot grow our way into equality; indeed, without strong government intervention, economic growth has historically led to greater and greater disparities of wealth. “And the idea of infinite or unlimited growth…is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of earth’s goods.” I love someone who isn’t afraid to call out a lie.
He is also eloquent about the limits of technological solutions. While technology has remedied countless evils over the years, when it is “linked to business interests, and presented as the only way of solving these problems, it proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things, and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others”. Furthermore, “a technology severed from great ethical principles will not easily be able to limit its own power”. Now there’s a warning to ponder.
I love how he turns our ideas about debt upside down. While we tend to think of the Global South—the poor countries of the world—as being indebted to the Global North, he says no. Rather, we who have extracted their resources and used up way more than our share of the earth’s fossil fuels to power our industrialized lifestyles, it is we who owe them a very real debt.
We can’t just tinker with our current economic system, says Francis. “Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations?” Read that one again, slowly. If we are to survive, we have to transform our systems of providing for common well-being (and he uses that word “common” over and over again); we have to transform our relationships with each other; we have to transform our relationship to the earth.
He’s like the little boy who has called out the emperor with no clothes. I find that enormously hopeful, particularly because of the number of people who listen to him. With Pope Francis, I feel that we are on solid ground. The news is not good and the future is not secure. But we know what’s true, we know what’s important, we know how it’s all connected, and we know how to face as we move forward. Ultimately our lives will be better for grounding ourselves in truth, and acting from the basis of the love and connection that are at the center of his message.
Reclaiming the Honorable Harvest
Robin Ward Kimmerer
We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth: air to breathe, fresh water, the companionship of geese and maples--and food. Since we lack the gift of photosynthesis, we animals are designed by biology to be utterly dependent upon the lives of others, the inherently generous, more-than human persons with whom we share the planet...
How can we reciprocate the gifts of the Earth? In gratitude, in ceremony, through acts of practical reverence and land stewardship, in fierce defense of the places we love, in art, in science, in song, in gardens, in children, in ballots, in stories of renewal, in creative resistance, in how we spend our money and our precious lives, by refusing to be complicit with the forces of ecological destruction. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and dance for the renewal of the world.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/good-health/the-honorable-harvest-lessons-from-an-indigenous-tradition-of-giving-thanks-20151126/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz1vgfZ3etE
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Boulder's Carbon tax
First approved by voters in 2006, Boulder’s Climate Action Plan levies a carbon tax on energy use and uses the proceeds to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. In 2012, Boulder voters approved a five-year extension of CAP, which generates around $1.9 million for the city. The average annual cost is $21 to residents, $94 to businesses, and $9,600 to industrial customers. The tax pays for energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs, including rebates, credits and "energy audits" for homeowners and businesses.
The city now mandates energy-efficiency standards for rental housing and uses CAP funds to provide rebates and incentives to help landlords reach those mandates. It also runs a pilot program to get businesses to track their energy use more, and may mandate that businesses reach certain energy-efficiency standards. By encouraging upgrades, CAP tax funds help Boulder continue reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_21941854/boulder-issue-2a-carbon-tax-appears-likely-be
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
How Muslims on a bus in Kenya saved Christians from a terrorist attack, and helped shift the conversation about Islam and terrorism in Kenya.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/12063208/Muslim-bus-passengers-save-Christian-brothers-and-sisters-during-Al-Shabaab-attack.html
How US presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders is helping to change the political conversation by focusing his campaign on the economic needs of the working poor and middle class and the moral crisis of extreme inequality.
How millions in China are using a new app that provides updates on air and water pollution to put pressure on violators.
http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/millions-in-china-use-app-to-pressure-polluters-with-govt-help/
How Amsterdam in the Netherlands offers financing for local sustainability projects, available to start-ups, commercial ventures, and individual residents.
http://www.iamsterdam.com/en/media-centre/city-hall/press-releases/2014-press-room/amsterdam-sustainability-fund-award
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
What a rich winter holiday, with ALL our family--including four grandchildren four and under--gathered for over a week of visiting, playing, laughing, exploring, and taking turns. And now, with Chuck gone for three weeks in Australia, I have a very different rich opportunity--for quiet and self-direction. I'm grateful for both.
I bring other people's voices more than usual this month. My initial reflection is full of Pope Francis, and Instead of a poem I include a few thoughts from Robin Ward Kimmerer, a woman with Native American roots who knows and says things I would wish I could say myself.
With the buzz of festivities and hype of resolutions over, I wish you all a good start to a good new year.
Love,
Pamela
Loving Francis
When Pope Francis released his encyclical, Laudato Si, in the summer, I was delighted. I have since come to appreciate how the timing and content were planned strategically to have the greatest possible impact on the Paris climate talks. More recently, as part of sharing the encyclical with my faith community, I’ve had the opportunity to put that delight into words.
I love having a spiritual leader decide it was his place to speak out on matters that are usually seen as secular—and strongly defended as such. I love how he has mined the wealth of his spiritual understanding and tradition to bring such a fresh and powerful perspective to these big issues, in language that is accessible to everyone. I love having someone so wise to follow and be guided by—and I love it that such guidance is available outside of my (sometimes smug) Quaker tradition.
I love how he refuses to be put in a box. He’s not focusing just on personal morality or spirituality. He’s not focusing just on compassion for the poor. He’s not focusing just on stewardship of God’s earth. He’s focusing on how they are all part of one whole—and it is the connections among them that end up providing us with the most insight. What can we learn from his suggestion that “the human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together”?
I particularly love his emphasis on economics and technology. No part of our lives has been more fiercely walled off as secular territory or more fiercely protected against the “soft” and “unscientific” voices of ethics and religion. And Pope Francis just wades right in—totally and serenely confident in his right to be there!
He is eloquent on the dangers of compulsive consumerism, an issue dear to my heart. “Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products”, he says, “people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. That paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.” Freedom, indeed!
I love how clear he is about the limits of economic growth. We cannot grow our way into equality; indeed, without strong government intervention, economic growth has historically led to greater and greater disparities of wealth. “And the idea of infinite or unlimited growth…is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of earth’s goods.” I love someone who isn’t afraid to call out a lie.
He is also eloquent about the limits of technological solutions. While technology has remedied countless evils over the years, when it is “linked to business interests, and presented as the only way of solving these problems, it proves incapable of seeing the mysterious network of relations between things, and so sometimes solves one problem only to create others”. Furthermore, “a technology severed from great ethical principles will not easily be able to limit its own power”. Now there’s a warning to ponder.
I love how he turns our ideas about debt upside down. While we tend to think of the Global South—the poor countries of the world—as being indebted to the Global North, he says no. Rather, we who have extracted their resources and used up way more than our share of the earth’s fossil fuels to power our industrialized lifestyles, it is we who owe them a very real debt.
We can’t just tinker with our current economic system, says Francis. “Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations?” Read that one again, slowly. If we are to survive, we have to transform our systems of providing for common well-being (and he uses that word “common” over and over again); we have to transform our relationships with each other; we have to transform our relationship to the earth.
He’s like the little boy who has called out the emperor with no clothes. I find that enormously hopeful, particularly because of the number of people who listen to him. With Pope Francis, I feel that we are on solid ground. The news is not good and the future is not secure. But we know what’s true, we know what’s important, we know how it’s all connected, and we know how to face as we move forward. Ultimately our lives will be better for grounding ourselves in truth, and acting from the basis of the love and connection that are at the center of his message.
Reclaiming the Honorable Harvest
Robin Ward Kimmerer
We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth: air to breathe, fresh water, the companionship of geese and maples--and food. Since we lack the gift of photosynthesis, we animals are designed by biology to be utterly dependent upon the lives of others, the inherently generous, more-than human persons with whom we share the planet...
How can we reciprocate the gifts of the Earth? In gratitude, in ceremony, through acts of practical reverence and land stewardship, in fierce defense of the places we love, in art, in science, in song, in gardens, in children, in ballots, in stories of renewal, in creative resistance, in how we spend our money and our precious lives, by refusing to be complicit with the forces of ecological destruction. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and dance for the renewal of the world.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/good-health/the-honorable-harvest-lessons-from-an-indigenous-tradition-of-giving-thanks-20151126/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz1vgfZ3etE
Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Boulder's Carbon tax
First approved by voters in 2006, Boulder’s Climate Action Plan levies a carbon tax on energy use and uses the proceeds to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. In 2012, Boulder voters approved a five-year extension of CAP, which generates around $1.9 million for the city. The average annual cost is $21 to residents, $94 to businesses, and $9,600 to industrial customers. The tax pays for energy-efficiency and renewable-energy programs, including rebates, credits and "energy audits" for homeowners and businesses.
The city now mandates energy-efficiency standards for rental housing and uses CAP funds to provide rebates and incentives to help landlords reach those mandates. It also runs a pilot program to get businesses to track their energy use more, and may mandate that businesses reach certain energy-efficiency standards. By encouraging upgrades, CAP tax funds help Boulder continue reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_21941854/boulder-issue-2a-carbon-tax-appears-likely-be
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
How Muslims on a bus in Kenya saved Christians from a terrorist attack, and helped shift the conversation about Islam and terrorism in Kenya.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/kenya/12063208/Muslim-bus-passengers-save-Christian-brothers-and-sisters-during-Al-Shabaab-attack.html
How US presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders is helping to change the political conversation by focusing his campaign on the economic needs of the working poor and middle class and the moral crisis of extreme inequality.
How millions in China are using a new app that provides updates on air and water pollution to put pressure on violators.
http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/millions-in-china-use-app-to-pressure-polluters-with-govt-help/
How Amsterdam in the Netherlands offers financing for local sustainability projects, available to start-ups, commercial ventures, and individual residents.
http://www.iamsterdam.com/en/media-centre/city-hall/press-releases/2014-press-room/amsterdam-sustainability-fund-award
More resources
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
Recent 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: doingdemocracy.com/MB4PnJ02.htm (or just google the title)
faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)
www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years. NOTE THE NEW URL.
www.startguide.org. START: a way to study and work together with others to create a better world.
For earlier columns, go to www.pamelascolumn.blogspot.com. I'm currently posting at pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/where-dignity-is-part-of-the-school-day
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
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