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




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