Dear all,
Well, I finally got rid of my two-month cough, which turned out to be pneumonia (again!). What a pleasure to feel healthy! A sweet moment was when my colleagues at our big two-day annual work conference sent me home to bed in no uncertain terms. I keep learning more about noticing and taking in the love and help that is available around me.
Some of you contributed to the project of a young man I know in Northern Uganda who was raising money to make a documentary on the environmental impact of charcoal-burning. His 16-minute video is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPz2g18DLxU&feature=youtu.be
On the eve of the first day of spring arrives, a winter storm is headed our way. Yet we know that spring will prevail.
Love,
Pamela
Town hall
When we arrived at the neighborhood rec center for the town hall More and more chairs were brought in to accommodate the growing crowd, and still people were left standing. Clearly the topic of cash bail hits a nerve in this neighborhood.
The town meeting was hosted by two progressive-minded city They had invited our new District Attorney, the head of the Defenders Association, a Mayor’s representative on criminal justice reform, and representatives of several community organizations that are working to end cash bail.
The feisty determination of both the new DA and the Public Defender to change the system was heartening. I kept being surprised at how neither of them (a white man and a black woman) sounded like politicians or bureaucrats; it was more like they were zealots on a common mission.
The crowd was certainly with them, ready to be led and ready to pull them ahead even faster and farther. It was this crowd—and my part in it—that really caught my attention. I’m still puzzling over how I could have remained so deeply ignorant of the impact of this issue for so long. I remember disagreeing with the policies of an earlier DA with a reputation for being “tough on crime”, but now I was hearing from a mother in the row directly behind us about her son who was locked up at age 15 by this DA many years ago and has been in jail ever since. She is my neighbor. How could I be so insulated from her pain?
In this room, only a mile from home, I was finally experiencing the raw reality of the weight of mass incarceration in my community. It was the difference between having information about wrongs and being witness to them. Three mothers spoke, clearly in a never-ending and passionate quest for justice for their sons. How had I failed to be under the weight of this injustice, failed to take into my heart how families are still being ripped apart by a system that started with slavery and morphed almost seamlessly into mass incarceration?
I remember the shock of learning several years ago how towns like Ferguson, Missouri fill their coffers by extorting traffic fines from their minority neighborhoods. I am embarrassed that I have only recently educated myself on cash bail—a system where the innocent poor can languish in jail for months waiting for trial while the guilty rich simply buy their freedom. But this evening we learned together about another layer of injustice; we learned that 30% of all posted bail is kept by the city—whether the person is taken to trial, proved innocent or not.
I was present as the reality of this outrage took shape and gained weight before our eyes: the meager resources of those who have the least are being pillaged to support the system that oppresses them.
We didn’t know. Even the City Councilman, a guy who said he might have ended up in jail himself if somebody hadn’t offered him another path, didn’t know. How could we not know these things? What forces have allowed us to accept such a system as inevitable? Are those who have been victimized by it too inured to oppression and injustice to speak up? Are those who haven’t been personally touched by its horrors too buffered from inconvenient truths, or too invested in not knowing?
Learning and knowing hard things can be painful. But we don’t have to learn or know them, or act on what we have learned, alone. And choosing to not know is way worse. The opportunity to be with my neighbors as we looked squarely at this system together, and united in an intention to change it, was a gift.
Welcome and farewell
Welcome the tiny crocuses
new sprouts of green
astonishing warmth of sun
on my cheek.
Farewell the clear line
of tree branches
against the sky.
Love of what is
giving way to
love of what is to come.
Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Reclaiming Public Services
Cities and towns that want well-run water and sanitation services, low-cost access to the internet, and affordable housing should keep those operations public or run by local nonprofits, or “re-municipalize” them if necessary, a new report from the Netherlands has found.
Based on research involving 1,600 cities in 45 countries that have chosen public ownership over corporate ownership, especially of their energy and water systems, “(re)municipalisations generally succeeded in bringing down costs and tariffs, improving conditions for workers and boosting service quality, while ensuring greater transparency and accountability”. Both Hamburg, Germany, and Boulder, Colorado, for example, are making their electric power enterprises public in order to shift to green and renewable energy sources.
https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/reclaiming_public_services.pdf
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The declaration of Colombia’s Constitutional Court that the Atrato River basin possesses rights to “protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration”, challenging the assumption that nature is “property” that is right-less under the law (as has been the case with women and enslaved people).
https://celdf.org/2017/05/press-release-colombia-constitutional-court-finds-atrato-river-possesses-rights/?utm_source=Press%20Release&utm_medium=PowerMail&utm_campaign=PR
The growing interest (among former debt collectors and TV personalities) in buying up people’s medical debt at pennies on the dollar, in order to forgive it.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/tv-stations-follow-john-olivers-lead-in-the-movement-to-forgive-medical-debt-20180301
The energy in my city, from the grassroots to the District Attorney and chief Public Defender to members of City Council and the Mayor for addressing the terrible injustices in our court and prison system.
http://www.philly.com/archive/samantha_melamed/krasner-cash-bail-philadelphia-reform-district-attorney-20180319.html
The new movies, Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time, which offer widely accessible and impactful corrections to deeply-held and damaging stereotypes about black people and women.
Resources
Money and Soul
A transcript of a keynote address I delivered at a Quaker conference in New Mexico, June 2017
https://westernfriend.org/media/money-and-soul-unabridged
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
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
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.
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