Dear all,
We are now back from three weeks in Northern Uganda, where we dug our roots back into a community we have come to know and love, deepened relationships, made new friends, and, in the midst of great oppression and resilience, took on hard challenges together. I may have more to say later. In the meantime, if you would like a copy of the letter with updates on the school we support, please let me know.
As we enter a season where the minds of many of us are turned to giving, I wanted to share what was perhaps the biggest gift I received this year.
Love,
Pamela
For love of the land
I’ve loved this bit of land for over fifty years. Coming up over the hill, my heart always opens anew to the jewel of a valley spread out below, part of the rolling farmland and woodlots of central New York state. My father bought an old farm here in the 60’s, preparing for a job move that didn’t work out. But my family loved the land. The old farmhouse became a focal point for a group of young adult Quakers, a gathering and landing place as we attempted to shape lives that aligned with our deepest faith values. Our community loved the land.
Then my mother moved up there in her retirement and it became the center of family gatherings for her six children and growing extended family. My sister, Liseli, lived across the road on adjoining farmland, and dug her roots in deep. When my mother died, it took us some time to decide that we needed to sell the house, but none of us wanted to sell the land. How could we ensure that it would continue to be loved as we loved it?
My sister and her partner had been on their own journey, building ever-closer relationships with members of the neighboring Onondaga nation, and coming under the weight of our country’s history of broken treaties, stolen land, and destruction of whole indigenous nations. Living on traditional Oneida territory, Liseli had started exploring the idea of a land trust with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (who used to be known as the Iroquois) of which the Oneida are a part. But as time passed with no visible progress, the outcome seemed increasingly uncertain.
Then, last fall she met an Oneida woman who was working with others in Wisconsin and southern Ontario to rekindle a shared traditional identity—a challenge, given that the only tiny remnant of their traditional homeland was now given over to a casino and entertainment complex. This meeting was the opening my sister had been waiting and hoping for. Over the next nine months, they worked together to create a nonprofit organization, my sister consulted with her siblings, and we joyfully agreed to return that thirty acres to these Oneida women.
At a ceremony in July, the three groups of Oneida women gathered on the land to mark its return. They sang to the land in its home language. They squished their toes in the wet earth. I can’t imagine any better resolution, any better future for that land that so many of us have loved over all these years—and so many Oneida people had loved long before.
I was already struggling to take in the terrible injustice of our nation’s treatment of native people. But being able to be part of one tiny thing that was so completely right has opened me up in a new way—both to the heartbreak and to the possibilities of healing.
Late harvest
The weather has turned cold.
The sweet potatoes wait, still in the ground.
I seize an unexpected daylight hour,
take old coat, old gloves, a fork,
a shopping cart of leaves,
go out to dig—
and step into an ancient rite.
It’s true I tucked in little slips last spring.
Vines have grown and leaves have multiplied
but who knows what has happened underground?
Now, vines stripped away,
all that’s left to see is barren ground.
What magic has been working down below?
And so I dig.
Each time I turn the earth
there’s treasure to be found.
I straighten to a stunning sunset
spread across the sky
(I would have missed it from indoors).
My harvest grows
the colors shift, then fade.
I pile the leaves as cover for the soil,
fill my basket, head for home
Darkness settles.
All is well.
Dare to Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Free Public Transit
Lawmakers in Kansas City, Missouri have voted to make public transportation in the city free of charge, setting the stage for it to be the first major U.S. city to have free public transit. They will set aside $8 million to cover the costs, with hopes that the effort will have a positive impact on economic inequality and boost the overall economy.
Estonia is the world leader in free public transit. In 2013, all public transit in its capital, Tallinn, became free to local residents (but not tourists or other visitors, even those from other parts of the country). The new national free-ride scheme with extend this model even further, making all state-run bus travel in rural municipalities free and extending cost-free transit out from the capital into other regions.
https://portside.org/2019-12-06/kansas-city-missouri-approves-free-public-transit-all
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/estonia-will-roll-out-free-public-transit-nationwide/560648/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A female chief in Malawi who has broken up more than 1000 child marriages so girls can go back to school.
https://www.lifegate.com/people/news/theresa-kachindamoto-child-marriage-malawi
The decision by the lending arm of the EU, the world’s largest multinational lending institution, to become first ‘climate bank’ by ending financing of oil, gas and coal projects after 2021.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/15/european-investment-bank-to-phase-out-fossil-fuels-financing
A determined Indian farmer who proved the government wrong by planting trees in an area known as “uncultivable”.
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/farmer-plants-trees-desert/
(There was one more, but my computer deleted everything as I was trying to send, and these are the threeI can remember… Look for it next time!)
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.com
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Saturday, November 16, 2019
#195 Hemlocks
Dear all,
It’s been a rich month—a weekend reunion of the nonviolent social change community that shaped my life as a young adult; the first frost and then a freeze, signaling the end of the growing season; lovely community building opportunities at work as I look, with profound ambivalence, toward retirement; grandchildren; precious time with new and old friends—and tomorrow we leave for three weeks in Northern Uganda. Oh my!
It’s good to take this quiet moment with all of you. Thanks for being there.
Love,
Pamela
Hemlocks
Last spring, faced with a threat to a beloved hemlock forest in northern Pennsylvania, I couldn’t imagine just sitting back and doing nothing. But how can one person take on an invasive insect? The only thing I could think of was to be proactive in planting other trees. So I worked to propagate a flat of tiny slips of larch, cut from the tips of a healthy larch that grows near the hemlocks by the pond.
It didn’t work. I must have done some part of the process wrong, and each fresh little green slip eventually dried up and died. But while I was in motion, I looked up the name of the tiny insect that was sucking the life out of these great trees. Browsing the internet, I found not only its name—woolly adelgid—but the name of a group that offered a biological remedy. A new seed began to take root and grow.
I shared this resource with my biologist friend, John, who had first seen the telltale whiteness on the tip of a hemlock branch. They seemed legitimate to him, and I reached out. We were offered an on-site consultation, but only during a narrow window of time in the fall, and only on a weekday. The logistics were daunting, but finally one evening in late October we got in a car and headed north.
Hurtling through the night in our little cocoon, we took advantage of this spacious opportunity to catch up on months of news. As we got closer, on narrow roads winding through deep woods, we caught glimpses of the gold of fall in the maples. Then we were there, stepping out into a starry night, opening up a cold cabin at midnight and burrowing under covers. In the morning, there was the luxury of reading by the fire as we waited for the Tree Savers man to complete his two-hour journey to this bit of woods.
With no cell phone service and no address for a GPS, the directions I’d sent in advance were all we had, but he found us. We walked together to look at the hemlocks around the pond, then back to the cabin to the ones I had transplanted twenty years ago—now big young trees—then down the old logging road, through the fields that are now turning to woods, to the forest in the gorge, where we could hear the stream rushing over the little waterfall. This is one of my favorite places on earth, where you step out of the sunshine into the quiet cool cathedral of towering hemlocks.
I liked this young man. His cousin had invited him into her project when he was just sixteen, he’d gone off to college in environmental science, and now this was all he did. His knowledge about the trees, the life cycle of the wooly adelgid, and the habits of the beetle that survives by eating it, was deep. He was proud of the work they were doing together to breed this foreign beetle and help save hemlock forests all up and down the east coast. And he loved the trees. He would stand back and take in an individual hemlock—admiring its shape, its fullness, its color.
Clearly we were in good hands. And best of all, we might not be too late. He spoke of seeing miles of devastated hemlock forest not far away, all dead and gray. “But your trees are still healthy,” he said. “You’ve caught it in time.”
We came back to the cabin, worked out the beginnings of a plan, and noted the details I’d need to get clarified before presenting a proposal to the larger group. Then he left. And John and I packed our few things and got back in the car for the long ride home.
There was an otherworldly quality to the whole experience—that journey in the dark, meeting a young stranger in the middle of the woods, bearer of the gift of precious good news, then traveling back to our real lives, seemingly unchanged, but carrying that treasure within us. And the message continues to warm my heart. It’s good to try. Little seeds can grow to bear fruit. And maybe we’re not too late. Maybe we can do this thing.
Rain choice
Out from work
and into steady rain.
I’ll reach the trolley quickest turning right
yet there’s a sandwich
lying heavy in my bag.
I missed my homeless friend
on the way in,
won’t find him if I take the shorter route,
may not find him anyhow.
I hover as the rain pours down
and then turn left
at rest in that good choice.
And then I find him,
give the sandwich
chat beneath an overhang—
a spot of brightness
in the midst of all that rain.
Dare to Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Green Bay Packers Coop
The Green Bay Packers football team are owned by the fans, making them the only publicly owned, not-for-profit, major professional team in the United States. In 1923, the Packers, on the brink of bankruptcy, decided to sell shares to the community at a couple of dollars a piece to keep the team afloat. Now more than a hundred thousand stockholders own more than four million shares. They are limited to no more than two hundred thousand shares, keeping any individual from gaining control over the club. Shareholders receive no dividend check and no free tickets. They elect a board of directors and a seven-member executive committee to stand in at N.F.L. owners meetings, with football decisions made by the General Manager.
Wisconsin fans get to enjoy the team with the confidence that their owner won’t threaten to move to get a better deal. Volunteers work concessions, with sixty per cent of the proceeds going to local charities. Even the beer is cheaper than at a typical N.F.L. stadium. Not only has home field been sold out for two decades, but during snowstorms, the team routinely puts out calls for volunteers to help shovel and is never disappointed by the response.
https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/those-non-profit-packers
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
So many successful local efforts to combat fossil fuels:
--a Philippine province declared coal free https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/225951-youth-behind-coal-free-negros-occidental,
--a Berkeley ordinance banning the use of natural gas in new construction https://www.dailycal.org/2019/08/07/mayor-jesse-arreguin-officially-signs-natural-gas-ban-into-berkeley-law/mayor,
--a coal plant project that would have damaged a fragile marine ecosystem in Kenya stopped by the courts, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/ar-AADut6v,
--and New York City’s sweeping climate change legislation, https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/04/new-york-city-just-passed-historic-climate-legislation-its-own-green-new-deal/
New “right to repair” legislation in the European Union that includes requirements for improving the life span, maintenance, re-use, upgrade, recyclability, and waste handling of appliances. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/eu-approves-groundbreaking-right-to-repair-laws/
All the thousands of people who worked so hard to send a great Working Families Party candidate to Philadelphia City Council—and all the other hopeful election news.
A grassroots bee petition in Bavaria that garnered signatures from more than 10% of the population, and led the German state’s premier to have the petition’s language—turning grassland into meadow and calling for a third of farms to be organic—written into law. https://www.positive.news/environment/grassroots-bee-petition-forces-greener-farming-measures-in-bavaria/
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.com
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
It’s been a rich month—a weekend reunion of the nonviolent social change community that shaped my life as a young adult; the first frost and then a freeze, signaling the end of the growing season; lovely community building opportunities at work as I look, with profound ambivalence, toward retirement; grandchildren; precious time with new and old friends—and tomorrow we leave for three weeks in Northern Uganda. Oh my!
It’s good to take this quiet moment with all of you. Thanks for being there.
Love,
Pamela
Hemlocks
Last spring, faced with a threat to a beloved hemlock forest in northern Pennsylvania, I couldn’t imagine just sitting back and doing nothing. But how can one person take on an invasive insect? The only thing I could think of was to be proactive in planting other trees. So I worked to propagate a flat of tiny slips of larch, cut from the tips of a healthy larch that grows near the hemlocks by the pond.
It didn’t work. I must have done some part of the process wrong, and each fresh little green slip eventually dried up and died. But while I was in motion, I looked up the name of the tiny insect that was sucking the life out of these great trees. Browsing the internet, I found not only its name—woolly adelgid—but the name of a group that offered a biological remedy. A new seed began to take root and grow.
I shared this resource with my biologist friend, John, who had first seen the telltale whiteness on the tip of a hemlock branch. They seemed legitimate to him, and I reached out. We were offered an on-site consultation, but only during a narrow window of time in the fall, and only on a weekday. The logistics were daunting, but finally one evening in late October we got in a car and headed north.
Hurtling through the night in our little cocoon, we took advantage of this spacious opportunity to catch up on months of news. As we got closer, on narrow roads winding through deep woods, we caught glimpses of the gold of fall in the maples. Then we were there, stepping out into a starry night, opening up a cold cabin at midnight and burrowing under covers. In the morning, there was the luxury of reading by the fire as we waited for the Tree Savers man to complete his two-hour journey to this bit of woods.
With no cell phone service and no address for a GPS, the directions I’d sent in advance were all we had, but he found us. We walked together to look at the hemlocks around the pond, then back to the cabin to the ones I had transplanted twenty years ago—now big young trees—then down the old logging road, through the fields that are now turning to woods, to the forest in the gorge, where we could hear the stream rushing over the little waterfall. This is one of my favorite places on earth, where you step out of the sunshine into the quiet cool cathedral of towering hemlocks.
I liked this young man. His cousin had invited him into her project when he was just sixteen, he’d gone off to college in environmental science, and now this was all he did. His knowledge about the trees, the life cycle of the wooly adelgid, and the habits of the beetle that survives by eating it, was deep. He was proud of the work they were doing together to breed this foreign beetle and help save hemlock forests all up and down the east coast. And he loved the trees. He would stand back and take in an individual hemlock—admiring its shape, its fullness, its color.
Clearly we were in good hands. And best of all, we might not be too late. He spoke of seeing miles of devastated hemlock forest not far away, all dead and gray. “But your trees are still healthy,” he said. “You’ve caught it in time.”
We came back to the cabin, worked out the beginnings of a plan, and noted the details I’d need to get clarified before presenting a proposal to the larger group. Then he left. And John and I packed our few things and got back in the car for the long ride home.
There was an otherworldly quality to the whole experience—that journey in the dark, meeting a young stranger in the middle of the woods, bearer of the gift of precious good news, then traveling back to our real lives, seemingly unchanged, but carrying that treasure within us. And the message continues to warm my heart. It’s good to try. Little seeds can grow to bear fruit. And maybe we’re not too late. Maybe we can do this thing.
Rain choice
Out from work
and into steady rain.
I’ll reach the trolley quickest turning right
yet there’s a sandwich
lying heavy in my bag.
I missed my homeless friend
on the way in,
won’t find him if I take the shorter route,
may not find him anyhow.
I hover as the rain pours down
and then turn left
at rest in that good choice.
And then I find him,
give the sandwich
chat beneath an overhang—
a spot of brightness
in the midst of all that rain.
Dare to Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Green Bay Packers Coop
The Green Bay Packers football team are owned by the fans, making them the only publicly owned, not-for-profit, major professional team in the United States. In 1923, the Packers, on the brink of bankruptcy, decided to sell shares to the community at a couple of dollars a piece to keep the team afloat. Now more than a hundred thousand stockholders own more than four million shares. They are limited to no more than two hundred thousand shares, keeping any individual from gaining control over the club. Shareholders receive no dividend check and no free tickets. They elect a board of directors and a seven-member executive committee to stand in at N.F.L. owners meetings, with football decisions made by the General Manager.
Wisconsin fans get to enjoy the team with the confidence that their owner won’t threaten to move to get a better deal. Volunteers work concessions, with sixty per cent of the proceeds going to local charities. Even the beer is cheaper than at a typical N.F.L. stadium. Not only has home field been sold out for two decades, but during snowstorms, the team routinely puts out calls for volunteers to help shovel and is never disappointed by the response.
https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/those-non-profit-packers
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
So many successful local efforts to combat fossil fuels:
--a Philippine province declared coal free https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/225951-youth-behind-coal-free-negros-occidental,
--a Berkeley ordinance banning the use of natural gas in new construction https://www.dailycal.org/2019/08/07/mayor-jesse-arreguin-officially-signs-natural-gas-ban-into-berkeley-law/mayor,
--a coal plant project that would have damaged a fragile marine ecosystem in Kenya stopped by the courts, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/ar-AADut6v,
--and New York City’s sweeping climate change legislation, https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/04/new-york-city-just-passed-historic-climate-legislation-its-own-green-new-deal/
New “right to repair” legislation in the European Union that includes requirements for improving the life span, maintenance, re-use, upgrade, recyclability, and waste handling of appliances. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/eu-approves-groundbreaking-right-to-repair-laws/
All the thousands of people who worked so hard to send a great Working Families Party candidate to Philadelphia City Council—and all the other hopeful election news.
A grassroots bee petition in Bavaria that garnered signatures from more than 10% of the population, and led the German state’s premier to have the petition’s language—turning grassland into meadow and calling for a third of farms to be organic—written into law. https://www.positive.news/environment/grassroots-bee-petition-forces-greener-farming-measures-in-bavaria/
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.com
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Saturday, October 19, 2019
#194 Ignorance
Dear all,
I continue to be heartened by gathered voices and steps forward in this world—such as the climate strike and new public banking law in California—while weighed down by the scary challenges we face. I keep reminding myself of the resources on connecting and grounding that we developed at www.findingsteadyground.com, and that the essence of my work is to be who I am, as big as I can be.
I am always stunned by the amazing transformation from summmer to fall that we experience here in the northeastern US, and it's been a blessing to have more clear days this month to follow the cycle of the moon.
Love,
Pamela
Ignorance
I’ve been wondering recently whether a greater appreciation of our ignorance might shine a light on the pathway to wisdom.
Someone I know led off a workshop on race and racism not long ago by asking participants to rank themselves as beginning, intermediate or advanced on the issue. It’s an intriguing question. I think I would have said that I’m sufficiently advanced to know what a beginner I am. A few years ago I might have claimed the rank of advanced. After all, I’ve learned history, puzzled over theory, built a wide variety of relationship, done lots of emotional work, helped others engage with the issues.
Since then, however, I’ve taken a deep dive into the nitty-gritties of racism in an urban farm project that has had to address thorny issues of black spaces, reparations and community control. I am deeply grateful for that very painful opportunity, and have learned much in the process. I think I knew enough to play a role that was more positive than negative, but am amazed at the extent of my naivete and blind spots. There is no way I can avoid my ignorance.
This is hard to admit. In my family growing up, ignorance was viewed as a terrible thing. Right answers were prized, and intellectual ability was encouraged above all else. My parents thought of themselves as outside of the mainstream, but I’ve come to see that these values of theirs were in complete alignment with the beliefs of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution that have shaped our culture for hundreds of years. The pursuit of knowledge is the noblest endeavor; with it we can master the world. Ignorance is the enemy.
Yet where has this perspective led us? I recently came across a book, Earth in Mind, by David Orr, that is eloquent on this subject. Ignorance is not a solvable problem, he says. Rather it is an inescapable part of the human condition. Knowledge, on the other hand, is a fearful thing. He reminds us that to know the name of something traditionally was to hold power over it. Misused, that power would break the sacred order and wreak havoc. Why, I wonder, does that ancient warning ring so eerily true in our present condition?
He suggests that we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities. If we are too smug about the explosive increase of knowledge in modern times, we may fail to notice the knowledge that is being lost, and the critical nature of that knowledge for the survival of our species. We have broken the world down into billions of discrete knowable bits, but are lost when it comes to understanding what makes it whole.
Examples of the flaws of putting all our eggs in the knowledge basket are everywhere. Children are pushed to learn letters and numbers ever earlier, yet long-term success in school correlates more closely with a foundation of love of learning and strong social-emotional and problem-solving skills. Business schools turn out graduates who have aced classes on finance, planning and management, yet industry is desperate for the intangible qualities of leadership and entrepreneurial spirit. Scientists have mastered mixing chemicals to increase crop yields (as least temporarily), yet know virtually nothing about what creates soil health.
What would it take to decouple knowledge from hubris and from the blindness that seems always to come with it? Can we find the humility to accept our ignorance, to assume that anything we learn will illuminate bigger areas of unknowing that were previously invisible to us, and to cultivate an attitude of wonder at the unknowable? Perhaps then we can exchange the goal of mastery through attainment of knowledge for the ability to ask the questions that get to the heart of the matter.
Neighbors
The red car is gone.
For weeks (could it be months?)
it stood there in the lot
beside our garden fence.
Two young men were living there.
We said hello, talked about the heat.
They were not bad neighbors
though the smell of pee grew strong.
I knew they were in need
didn’t step in to save
didn’t complain
chose instead for steady warm civility.
And now they’re gone
not by choice, it’s said.
I wish them well, wherever they may be,
and wonder: Could I have been
a better neighbor?
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Fair Trade in Columbia
Established 21 years ago, the ColyFlor Solidarity Economic Circuit comprises 200 suppliers (rural families, women, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities) growing agro-ecological foods in the region of Medellín, Colombia to sell at their fair trade store. It also includes a network of responsible consumers who live in Medellin and nearby municipalities. The store offers agro-ecological tours to small peasant farms, cooking courses with healthy foods, and promotion of participation in fairs and peasant markets in the city.
This effort has influenced local government rural development policies to promote agro-ecological good practice and sustainable consumption, and technical assistance for agricultural development. There are now around 17 initiatives in the region that focus on the sale of organic and agro-ecological products.
https://transformativecities.org/atlas-of-utopias/atlas-58/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
At least eight states and 130 cities have legally changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s day, including Washington DC and Wisconsin in the last month.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dc-joins-100-cities-changing-columbus-day-indigenous/story?id=66183074
The governor of California has signed a law enabling the establishment of public banks in the state, and efforts in LA and San Francisco are already underway.
https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/
Four million people around the world took part in September’s global climate strike:
Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-S4p4BwqY&feature=youtu.be
Costa Rica has doubled its forest cover, from 26% in 1983 to 52% today.
https://www.positive.news/environment/costa-rica-doubles-its-forest-cover-in-30-years/
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.com
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
I continue to be heartened by gathered voices and steps forward in this world—such as the climate strike and new public banking law in California—while weighed down by the scary challenges we face. I keep reminding myself of the resources on connecting and grounding that we developed at www.findingsteadyground.com, and that the essence of my work is to be who I am, as big as I can be.
I am always stunned by the amazing transformation from summmer to fall that we experience here in the northeastern US, and it's been a blessing to have more clear days this month to follow the cycle of the moon.
Love,
Pamela
Ignorance
I’ve been wondering recently whether a greater appreciation of our ignorance might shine a light on the pathway to wisdom.
Someone I know led off a workshop on race and racism not long ago by asking participants to rank themselves as beginning, intermediate or advanced on the issue. It’s an intriguing question. I think I would have said that I’m sufficiently advanced to know what a beginner I am. A few years ago I might have claimed the rank of advanced. After all, I’ve learned history, puzzled over theory, built a wide variety of relationship, done lots of emotional work, helped others engage with the issues.
Since then, however, I’ve taken a deep dive into the nitty-gritties of racism in an urban farm project that has had to address thorny issues of black spaces, reparations and community control. I am deeply grateful for that very painful opportunity, and have learned much in the process. I think I knew enough to play a role that was more positive than negative, but am amazed at the extent of my naivete and blind spots. There is no way I can avoid my ignorance.
This is hard to admit. In my family growing up, ignorance was viewed as a terrible thing. Right answers were prized, and intellectual ability was encouraged above all else. My parents thought of themselves as outside of the mainstream, but I’ve come to see that these values of theirs were in complete alignment with the beliefs of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution that have shaped our culture for hundreds of years. The pursuit of knowledge is the noblest endeavor; with it we can master the world. Ignorance is the enemy.
Yet where has this perspective led us? I recently came across a book, Earth in Mind, by David Orr, that is eloquent on this subject. Ignorance is not a solvable problem, he says. Rather it is an inescapable part of the human condition. Knowledge, on the other hand, is a fearful thing. He reminds us that to know the name of something traditionally was to hold power over it. Misused, that power would break the sacred order and wreak havoc. Why, I wonder, does that ancient warning ring so eerily true in our present condition?
He suggests that we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities. If we are too smug about the explosive increase of knowledge in modern times, we may fail to notice the knowledge that is being lost, and the critical nature of that knowledge for the survival of our species. We have broken the world down into billions of discrete knowable bits, but are lost when it comes to understanding what makes it whole.
Examples of the flaws of putting all our eggs in the knowledge basket are everywhere. Children are pushed to learn letters and numbers ever earlier, yet long-term success in school correlates more closely with a foundation of love of learning and strong social-emotional and problem-solving skills. Business schools turn out graduates who have aced classes on finance, planning and management, yet industry is desperate for the intangible qualities of leadership and entrepreneurial spirit. Scientists have mastered mixing chemicals to increase crop yields (as least temporarily), yet know virtually nothing about what creates soil health.
What would it take to decouple knowledge from hubris and from the blindness that seems always to come with it? Can we find the humility to accept our ignorance, to assume that anything we learn will illuminate bigger areas of unknowing that were previously invisible to us, and to cultivate an attitude of wonder at the unknowable? Perhaps then we can exchange the goal of mastery through attainment of knowledge for the ability to ask the questions that get to the heart of the matter.
Neighbors
The red car is gone.
For weeks (could it be months?)
it stood there in the lot
beside our garden fence.
Two young men were living there.
We said hello, talked about the heat.
They were not bad neighbors
though the smell of pee grew strong.
I knew they were in need
didn’t step in to save
didn’t complain
chose instead for steady warm civility.
And now they’re gone
not by choice, it’s said.
I wish them well, wherever they may be,
and wonder: Could I have been
a better neighbor?
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Fair Trade in Columbia
Established 21 years ago, the ColyFlor Solidarity Economic Circuit comprises 200 suppliers (rural families, women, indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities) growing agro-ecological foods in the region of Medellín, Colombia to sell at their fair trade store. It also includes a network of responsible consumers who live in Medellin and nearby municipalities. The store offers agro-ecological tours to small peasant farms, cooking courses with healthy foods, and promotion of participation in fairs and peasant markets in the city.
This effort has influenced local government rural development policies to promote agro-ecological good practice and sustainable consumption, and technical assistance for agricultural development. There are now around 17 initiatives in the region that focus on the sale of organic and agro-ecological products.
https://transformativecities.org/atlas-of-utopias/atlas-58/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
At least eight states and 130 cities have legally changed Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s day, including Washington DC and Wisconsin in the last month.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dc-joins-100-cities-changing-columbus-day-indigenous/story?id=66183074
The governor of California has signed a law enabling the establishment of public banks in the state, and efforts in LA and San Francisco are already underway.
https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/
Four million people around the world took part in September’s global climate strike:
Short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-S4p4BwqY&feature=youtu.be
Costa Rica has doubled its forest cover, from 26% in 1983 to 52% today.
https://www.positive.news/environment/costa-rica-doubles-its-forest-cover-in-30-years/
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.com
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Saturday, September 21, 2019
#193 Rebirth
Dear all,
I continue to savor the experience of a big 70th birthday party, where people from all parts of my life got to meet each other and fill in their picture of who I am, while eating and drinking the fruits of my garden—so much fun!
And what a thrill to be one of four million people on Friday following our youth in speaking out against climate change! It was wonderful to go with young teens and their parents from our family center and our six-year-old grandson. I loved a sign that read: “Listen to your Youngers”.
Love,
Pamela
Rebirth
The great canopy of trees and the swell of cicada song dominate my senses as I walk to the park early on an August morning. So much life!
My mind goes to what I’ve learned recently of the history of this city neighborhood. In the mid-1800’s it was hilly wooded countryside cut through by a creek. But, with the city pushing west and money to be made from development, came a change of staggering proportions. Roads were laid out to be roughly level and the surrounding land was cut and filled—shovel by shovel, cart by cart, in a stupendous undertaking—to pave the way for long blocks of city row houses. The creek, which was already being used as a sewer by local factories, was buried in a great sewer pipeline. Nothing of the natural landscape—hills, ravines, flowing water, plants, trees—remained. Men spoke with pride of this ability to obliterate nature so completely. I never knew.
Then, more recently, I heard an interview with a man who grew up on a farm in Iowa, and has spent the last several decades restoring 30 acres of degraded land to prairie. He spoke of how, once some critical mass of biodiversity had been restored, other species started showing up—first plants and insects, then birds and mammals. I am inspired and grateful for his work and the similar work of many others throughout the great plains. And I am left with his final story echoing in my ears.
He had gone out one night to enjoy the evening and the songs of all the birds and insects that had found their way to his prairie home. Something moved him to walk to a farm neighbor’s cornfield. He listened there, in what we city folks think of as bucolic countryside, and heard—nothing.
Just like all those decades ago in my neighborhood, when a monoculture of row houses obliterated all previous life, so this monoculture of corn rows, dependent on fossil fueled machinery, chemical fertilizers and deadly pesticides, has obliterated the prairie—and all the life associated with it. And the process had the same roots. Instead of men with shovels, it was men with plows, holding fast to a vision of mastery in the name of progress, bending their backs to eradicate everything that stood in their way.
While my part of the city has had 150 years for new trees to grow and ecosystems to regenerate, our prairies are still under relentless assault. We can hear—in the silence—that this system of industrial agriculture is bad for biodiversity. It’s also bad for small farmers and farm communities that have been increasingly squeezed out by deep-pocketed giant conglomerates. It’s bad for the land, with thousands of years’ accumulation of topsoil washing away. It’s bad for the water, as great quantities of chemical fertilizers and pesticides steadily drain from the fields. It’s bad for the climate, with its fossil-fuel intensive technology, and exposed winter fields that can’t hold in the carbon. Slick attempts to characterize agro-business as part of the solution are gearing up; the “Impossible Burger” is being marketed to cash in on the growing vegetarian/vegan market—with a pseudo-food grown from fossil fuels, high-tech labs, GMO soy and Round-Up. But this is a system without a future.
The good news is that the urge to live, and to create the conditions for more life, is a strong one. I think of all the farmers all over the country (and the world), who love and nourish the health of their land. I think of how food scraps and dead plant life anywhere can turn into rich living compost. I think of how urban gardens and farms are springing up everywhere, as people of all backgrounds reclaim their ties to the earth. I think of how the honey bees flourish amid the diverse flowering plants of the city and suburbs.
Maybe cities like mine can be among the leaders here, with our big trees and urban garden lots, our hospitable honey bee habitat, and all our people who are reaching for connection. Maybe we have lessons to share around diversity, and making the most of small spaces, and how the earth nurtures community. As I listen to the song of the cicadas, I can’t help but hope.
Treasure
Dump the compost
discover an avocado plant
growing in the pile.
Go to get the pot
picked from the trash
the other day,
perfect for the avocado—
Find a sweet little
succulent
abandoned in the bottom.
Two for the price of, what?
Paying attention and
loving the earth.
Dare to Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Cooperative Community of New West Jackson
The Cooperative Community of New West Jackson is a grassroots, resident-led development model that seeks to revitalize West Jackson, Mississippi, through an inventive “inside out” strategy. They match residents’ underemployed skillsets and abandoned property resources with a creative placemaking effort that centers on local food production, folk art, and the construction trades.
With 90% of residents having a farming background, overgrown lots and abandoned houses defining the neighborhood, and everyone needing to eat, they are working to institute a neighborhood food economy to include a production farm, farmer’s market, cottage kitchen, bulk pantry, eatery, folk art studio, and educational resources. They are starting the process of determining a new shared socio-economic reality by affirming what they want, understanding what they know, and reclaiming what they have forgotten, together.
https://www.coopnwj.org/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The ruling by Botswana’s high court in June to decriminalize homosexuality, overturning a colonial-era law, and moving out in front of many other sub-Saharan countries. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48594162
Israel’s partnership with seven of its mostly-Muslim neighbours to collaborate on a coral protection research project in the Red Sea. This partnership between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan is thought to be the largest regional project of its kind. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-ally-with-arab-neighbors-around-red-sea-in-bid-to-save-worlds-corals/
New Zealand’s plan to plant a billion trees to fight climate change, and their allocation of $485 million for the first three years to implement the plan https://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/new-zealand-is-planting-1-billion-trees-to-fight-climate-change/
The growth of the movement for public banking throughout the United States, including a campaign on the brink of success in California, and new grassroots effort in Philadelphia. www.publicbankinginstitute.org
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
I continue to savor the experience of a big 70th birthday party, where people from all parts of my life got to meet each other and fill in their picture of who I am, while eating and drinking the fruits of my garden—so much fun!
And what a thrill to be one of four million people on Friday following our youth in speaking out against climate change! It was wonderful to go with young teens and their parents from our family center and our six-year-old grandson. I loved a sign that read: “Listen to your Youngers”.
Love,
Pamela
Rebirth
The great canopy of trees and the swell of cicada song dominate my senses as I walk to the park early on an August morning. So much life!
My mind goes to what I’ve learned recently of the history of this city neighborhood. In the mid-1800’s it was hilly wooded countryside cut through by a creek. But, with the city pushing west and money to be made from development, came a change of staggering proportions. Roads were laid out to be roughly level and the surrounding land was cut and filled—shovel by shovel, cart by cart, in a stupendous undertaking—to pave the way for long blocks of city row houses. The creek, which was already being used as a sewer by local factories, was buried in a great sewer pipeline. Nothing of the natural landscape—hills, ravines, flowing water, plants, trees—remained. Men spoke with pride of this ability to obliterate nature so completely. I never knew.
Then, more recently, I heard an interview with a man who grew up on a farm in Iowa, and has spent the last several decades restoring 30 acres of degraded land to prairie. He spoke of how, once some critical mass of biodiversity had been restored, other species started showing up—first plants and insects, then birds and mammals. I am inspired and grateful for his work and the similar work of many others throughout the great plains. And I am left with his final story echoing in my ears.
He had gone out one night to enjoy the evening and the songs of all the birds and insects that had found their way to his prairie home. Something moved him to walk to a farm neighbor’s cornfield. He listened there, in what we city folks think of as bucolic countryside, and heard—nothing.
Just like all those decades ago in my neighborhood, when a monoculture of row houses obliterated all previous life, so this monoculture of corn rows, dependent on fossil fueled machinery, chemical fertilizers and deadly pesticides, has obliterated the prairie—and all the life associated with it. And the process had the same roots. Instead of men with shovels, it was men with plows, holding fast to a vision of mastery in the name of progress, bending their backs to eradicate everything that stood in their way.
While my part of the city has had 150 years for new trees to grow and ecosystems to regenerate, our prairies are still under relentless assault. We can hear—in the silence—that this system of industrial agriculture is bad for biodiversity. It’s also bad for small farmers and farm communities that have been increasingly squeezed out by deep-pocketed giant conglomerates. It’s bad for the land, with thousands of years’ accumulation of topsoil washing away. It’s bad for the water, as great quantities of chemical fertilizers and pesticides steadily drain from the fields. It’s bad for the climate, with its fossil-fuel intensive technology, and exposed winter fields that can’t hold in the carbon. Slick attempts to characterize agro-business as part of the solution are gearing up; the “Impossible Burger” is being marketed to cash in on the growing vegetarian/vegan market—with a pseudo-food grown from fossil fuels, high-tech labs, GMO soy and Round-Up. But this is a system without a future.
The good news is that the urge to live, and to create the conditions for more life, is a strong one. I think of all the farmers all over the country (and the world), who love and nourish the health of their land. I think of how food scraps and dead plant life anywhere can turn into rich living compost. I think of how urban gardens and farms are springing up everywhere, as people of all backgrounds reclaim their ties to the earth. I think of how the honey bees flourish amid the diverse flowering plants of the city and suburbs.
Maybe cities like mine can be among the leaders here, with our big trees and urban garden lots, our hospitable honey bee habitat, and all our people who are reaching for connection. Maybe we have lessons to share around diversity, and making the most of small spaces, and how the earth nurtures community. As I listen to the song of the cicadas, I can’t help but hope.
Treasure
Dump the compost
discover an avocado plant
growing in the pile.
Go to get the pot
picked from the trash
the other day,
perfect for the avocado—
Find a sweet little
succulent
abandoned in the bottom.
Two for the price of, what?
Paying attention and
loving the earth.
Dare to Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Cooperative Community of New West Jackson
The Cooperative Community of New West Jackson is a grassroots, resident-led development model that seeks to revitalize West Jackson, Mississippi, through an inventive “inside out” strategy. They match residents’ underemployed skillsets and abandoned property resources with a creative placemaking effort that centers on local food production, folk art, and the construction trades.
With 90% of residents having a farming background, overgrown lots and abandoned houses defining the neighborhood, and everyone needing to eat, they are working to institute a neighborhood food economy to include a production farm, farmer’s market, cottage kitchen, bulk pantry, eatery, folk art studio, and educational resources. They are starting the process of determining a new shared socio-economic reality by affirming what they want, understanding what they know, and reclaiming what they have forgotten, together.
https://www.coopnwj.org/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The ruling by Botswana’s high court in June to decriminalize homosexuality, overturning a colonial-era law, and moving out in front of many other sub-Saharan countries. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48594162
Israel’s partnership with seven of its mostly-Muslim neighbours to collaborate on a coral protection research project in the Red Sea. This partnership between Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan is thought to be the largest regional project of its kind. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-to-ally-with-arab-neighbors-around-red-sea-in-bid-to-save-worlds-corals/
New Zealand’s plan to plant a billion trees to fight climate change, and their allocation of $485 million for the first three years to implement the plan https://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/new-zealand-is-planting-1-billion-trees-to-fight-climate-change/
The growth of the movement for public banking throughout the United States, including a campaign on the brink of success in California, and new grassroots effort in Philadelphia. www.publicbankinginstitute.org
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a pamphlet of the same name) available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors.
("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.")
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
Toward a Right Relationship with Finance
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Saturday, August 17, 2019
#192 Connect
Dear all,
I’m very pleased to announce the publication of my new book, Money and Soul ("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.") It’s available on internet sites and at the FGC Bookstore in Philadelphia, and the formal launch will be on Sunday, September 15 at Friends Center. What a journey!
Having a few things slow down over the summer has given space for growing some lovely new friendships, preserving food, and bringing others to the local farmer’s market to gather signatures for a city public bank—all very satisfying and fruitful endeavors.
And what a stunning full moon the other night!
Love,
Pamela
Connect
On our fourth year with the Two Row paddle down the Grand River in southern Ontario—natives and allies joining together to honor the treaties and protect the earth—we had teachings every evening. These were rich invitations to deeper understanding in many areas: native foods and medicine, river bed ecology, the roots of the Two Row experience, traditional social dances, the role of men and women in the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, culture, to name just a few. One that continues to reverberate in my brain was a reflection by two women—one indigenous and one settler—on their joint research on the impact of participating in the Two Row paddle. In their analysis of survey comments, they found that the overarching theme for indigenous participants was about change, while that of the settler group was about connection. Eager to connect, we non-indigenous folks were learning that there is work to do first, around reconnection and disconnection.
We need to reconnect to ourselves, to the natural world around us, and to our own roots. At the same time, we need work on disconnecting from the lures and traps of materialism and individualism in our culture, and from all the points at which we’re attached, often unawarely, to a system of privileges in an oppressive society. It’s only when we are actively engaged in this process of reconnection and disconnection that we are able to connect deeply across the divisions that racism and colonialism have created.
If we are fastened securely within the structures and assumptions of privilege, there is a way in which our world is closed. Enjoying the comfort of the status quo, deep connection with those who suffer from it can only be disruptive. The surface is too smooth for the kind of connection that gets in deep and changes lives. Our hearts have not broken open wide enough to make space for the other.
On the other hand, if we respond to heartbreak about injustice by distancing ourselves as far as possible from our heritage and people in order to join with the oppressed, we are limited in other ways. By fleeing, what we have left to offer tends to be thin, insubstantial and ultimately not of much use. If we are not rooted we lean, leaving us dependent on the strength of others.
So in this paddle down the river as allies, we get to reconnect: To the land and the water, the clouds and the sun. To our bodies, and our capacity to move, to our muscles and skin and beating hearts. To our own goodness as we see the goodness of other allies like us. To our ancestors, who once knew and loved some bit of land as intimately as indigenous people have known and loved theirs. And we get to disconnect from the comfortable narratives that have reassured us: that injustice to native people is safely in the past; that racism is in a steady decline; that we, personally, are not complicit in oppressive institutions.
Reconnecting to our goodness and our people, disconnecting from false narratives that serve to protect privilege, we are both rooted and opened up. Thus, as we paddle down the river together, we build our capacity to take in all the connections for which our hearts yearn.
In crowd
A long stretch of
wet sidewalk cement
had proven irresistible.
Now when I walk
that way I pass
first Nick
then Bob
then a chicken (boldly drawn)
and finally
the Cleveland Cool Kids.
My step lightens (every time)
I have to smile.
I’m part of the crowd
they’ve invited me in—
Nick
Bob
that perky chicken
and all the cool kids
from Cleveland.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Rural Electric Cooperatives
During the New Deal, electric cooperatives sprang up all over rural America. Today there are more than 850 cooperatives in 47 states providing service to 56 percent of the nation’s landmass, While RECs aren’t perfect, by replacing private shareholders with cooperative members they can be more than just energy companies: leading in renewable energy development, providing internet services, investing in revitalization and infrastructure projects as part of a Green New Deal. Examples include:
Roanoke Electric Cooperative in North Carolina: Nearly 50 years of active engagement and organizing by majority Black membership has resulted in one of the most inclusive and impactful RECs in the country, one that is explicitly committed to creating a customer-centric utility of the future.
Pedernales Cooperative in Texas: Member-owners of the largest REC in the US overturned corruption, reformed their co-op, and set aggressive targets for renewable energy, but still must defend against fossil-fuel-backed attacks.
Ouachita Electric Cooperative in Arkansas: Success at this REC includes offering broadband, energy efficiency, and solar.
https://www.electric.coop/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Co-op_Facts_and_Figures_4-2019.pdf
https://www.electriccooporganizing.org/toolkit
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A Pennsylvania group that raised $16,000 to absolve over $1,600,000 of medical debt of families struggling in Western PA.
https://www.facebook.com/PutPeopleFirstPA/posts/3085291038162568?
https://www.wpxi.com/news/church-eliminates-6-million-of-medical-debt-for-community/966321540 (a similar campaign)
California’s deal with four major auto dealers that made an end run around the Trump emissions rollback plan.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/20727261/trump-emissions-rollback-ford-volkswagon-honda-bmw-california-deal
A court ruling in Arizona blocking construction of a giant copper mine, a victory for environmental groups and native tribes.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/08/01/hudbay-minerals-appeal-court-decision-blocking-rosemont-mine/1891386001/
The announcement by six Wall Street banks, after intense multi-year pressure, that they were severing ties with private prison companies, which stand to lose around $1.9 billion, 72% of their current financing.
https://populardemocracy.org/news/publications/wall-street-banks-sever-ties-private-prison-companies-stand-lose-over-19b-future
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a talk and a pamphlet of the same name) available via on-line distributors.
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
I’m very pleased to announce the publication of my new book, Money and Soul ("If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small.") It’s available on internet sites and at the FGC Bookstore in Philadelphia, and the formal launch will be on Sunday, September 15 at Friends Center. What a journey!
Having a few things slow down over the summer has given space for growing some lovely new friendships, preserving food, and bringing others to the local farmer’s market to gather signatures for a city public bank—all very satisfying and fruitful endeavors.
And what a stunning full moon the other night!
Love,
Pamela
Connect
On our fourth year with the Two Row paddle down the Grand River in southern Ontario—natives and allies joining together to honor the treaties and protect the earth—we had teachings every evening. These were rich invitations to deeper understanding in many areas: native foods and medicine, river bed ecology, the roots of the Two Row experience, traditional social dances, the role of men and women in the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, culture, to name just a few. One that continues to reverberate in my brain was a reflection by two women—one indigenous and one settler—on their joint research on the impact of participating in the Two Row paddle. In their analysis of survey comments, they found that the overarching theme for indigenous participants was about change, while that of the settler group was about connection. Eager to connect, we non-indigenous folks were learning that there is work to do first, around reconnection and disconnection.
We need to reconnect to ourselves, to the natural world around us, and to our own roots. At the same time, we need work on disconnecting from the lures and traps of materialism and individualism in our culture, and from all the points at which we’re attached, often unawarely, to a system of privileges in an oppressive society. It’s only when we are actively engaged in this process of reconnection and disconnection that we are able to connect deeply across the divisions that racism and colonialism have created.
If we are fastened securely within the structures and assumptions of privilege, there is a way in which our world is closed. Enjoying the comfort of the status quo, deep connection with those who suffer from it can only be disruptive. The surface is too smooth for the kind of connection that gets in deep and changes lives. Our hearts have not broken open wide enough to make space for the other.
On the other hand, if we respond to heartbreak about injustice by distancing ourselves as far as possible from our heritage and people in order to join with the oppressed, we are limited in other ways. By fleeing, what we have left to offer tends to be thin, insubstantial and ultimately not of much use. If we are not rooted we lean, leaving us dependent on the strength of others.
So in this paddle down the river as allies, we get to reconnect: To the land and the water, the clouds and the sun. To our bodies, and our capacity to move, to our muscles and skin and beating hearts. To our own goodness as we see the goodness of other allies like us. To our ancestors, who once knew and loved some bit of land as intimately as indigenous people have known and loved theirs. And we get to disconnect from the comfortable narratives that have reassured us: that injustice to native people is safely in the past; that racism is in a steady decline; that we, personally, are not complicit in oppressive institutions.
Reconnecting to our goodness and our people, disconnecting from false narratives that serve to protect privilege, we are both rooted and opened up. Thus, as we paddle down the river together, we build our capacity to take in all the connections for which our hearts yearn.
In crowd
A long stretch of
wet sidewalk cement
had proven irresistible.
Now when I walk
that way I pass
first Nick
then Bob
then a chicken (boldly drawn)
and finally
the Cleveland Cool Kids.
My step lightens (every time)
I have to smile.
I’m part of the crowd
they’ve invited me in—
Nick
Bob
that perky chicken
and all the cool kids
from Cleveland.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Rural Electric Cooperatives
During the New Deal, electric cooperatives sprang up all over rural America. Today there are more than 850 cooperatives in 47 states providing service to 56 percent of the nation’s landmass, While RECs aren’t perfect, by replacing private shareholders with cooperative members they can be more than just energy companies: leading in renewable energy development, providing internet services, investing in revitalization and infrastructure projects as part of a Green New Deal. Examples include:
Roanoke Electric Cooperative in North Carolina: Nearly 50 years of active engagement and organizing by majority Black membership has resulted in one of the most inclusive and impactful RECs in the country, one that is explicitly committed to creating a customer-centric utility of the future.
Pedernales Cooperative in Texas: Member-owners of the largest REC in the US overturned corruption, reformed their co-op, and set aggressive targets for renewable energy, but still must defend against fossil-fuel-backed attacks.
Ouachita Electric Cooperative in Arkansas: Success at this REC includes offering broadband, energy efficiency, and solar.
https://www.electric.coop/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Co-op_Facts_and_Figures_4-2019.pdf
https://www.electriccooporganizing.org/toolkit
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
A Pennsylvania group that raised $16,000 to absolve over $1,600,000 of medical debt of families struggling in Western PA.
https://www.facebook.com/PutPeopleFirstPA/posts/3085291038162568?
https://www.wpxi.com/news/church-eliminates-6-million-of-medical-debt-for-community/966321540 (a similar campaign)
California’s deal with four major auto dealers that made an end run around the Trump emissions rollback plan.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/25/20727261/trump-emissions-rollback-ford-volkswagon-honda-bmw-california-deal
A court ruling in Arizona blocking construction of a giant copper mine, a victory for environmental groups and native tribes.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2019/08/01/hudbay-minerals-appeal-court-decision-blocking-rosemont-mine/1891386001/
The announcement by six Wall Street banks, after intense multi-year pressure, that they were severing ties with private prison companies, which stand to lose around $1.9 billion, 72% of their current financing.
https://populardemocracy.org/news/publications/wall-street-banks-sever-ties-private-prison-companies-stand-lose-over-19b-future
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a talk and a pamphlet of the same name) available via on-line distributors.
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Saturday, July 20, 2019
#191 Breathe
Dear all,
Having a bit more discretionary time this summer has had an unexpected downside: more opportunities to second-guess my choices about how I use my time. Am I using my hours to the highest good? With everything that’s wrong in the world, can I afford to slack off? Finding my way through these old voices and current worries is definitely a work in progress. It helps to remember that a key to transformation is deep connection—to each other and to the earth.
I’m making great kale-basil pesto to share, the peach tree that I planted in the public front bed of the community garden has been bountiful, I’m finding more buddies to work on the public banking project (let me know if you’re interested!), my new book—Money and Soul—is coming out at the end of the month, I’m blessed with good work and an abundance of caring and loving friends, relatives and colleagues. It’s good to know you are there.
Love,
Pamela
Breathe
I was listening to a friend who is at the center of a youth climate movement. He was feeling stressed about all the logistical challenges of pulling off big collaborative actions, wishing that there could be more time to reflect—and just breathe. He was hungry to experience more flow and resonance as he went through his days, and wistful that he didn’t sense a similar hunger for spiritual grounding in more of his fellow activists.
I had just come from a meeting where I felt both that hunger and that grounding. It was a group of mostly black and brown urban farmers, reaching toward a vision of cooperative organization and work. All the standard rules of the game of living—compete, entertain, pose, position, defend—had somehow been suspended, as we engaged in a common effort to seek truth and find a way forward toward a greater good. On the floor were topics not just of rewriting by-laws and reorganizing decision-making protocols, but of patience, relationships and willingness to be changed. Whether speaking, asking questions or listening, everyone was intent on growing their understanding, ready for transformation. There was openness in the room, space to breathe.
My friend shared, almost in passing, something he’d done that morning that he was pleased with. It was a potentially challenging meeting of people who needed to find common ground to make a decision. They chatted for a while, building connection. Then he suggested that they pause and take a moment for reflection. Into that quiet moment he offered a word of thanks—and they were able to move on to complete the task.
I think this story provides a clue to his earlier question. Even if it is unexpressed, we can see evidence of this hunger for grounding all around us. Some people are just too filled with work and worry to be able to notice; others are casting about desperately, but at a loss for how to even imagine or name the possibility; others may even be fighting against it, as a “luxury” in these perilous times. But we all need to breathe. As systems of oppression bear down on us more and more heavily, the struggle to breathe in what we need for survival is becoming more immediate, more pressing, and more widespread.
The preparation that went into that farmer coop meeting, and the tone that was set, provided food for my soul. The few minutes my friend took to invite that group to ground itself helped them complete their work. Anything we can do to break our bondage to the rules of the game— to invite others to connect with their best selves and a greater reality, to provide good air—is a gift. As we help fill that deep hunger, we are creating badly-needed space in which people can breathe, and new possibilities can grow.
Rec room circle
He lived in this nursing home
for nine years,
wanted, at ninety-eight,
to pass without a scene.
Yet here we are
in a circle in the rec room
sharing stories.
His son did it for the staff,
so they could say goodbye.
Others came for love of the son.
Simple stories
of food, opera, bingo—
the courage of an old man
the humanity of care-givers
the love of a son
all brought to life
in this rec room circle.
Dare to Imagine: A new economy is possible!
The Happy Planet Index
Created in 2008, the Happy Planet Index examines sustainable happiness on a national level, ranking 143 countries according to three measurements: how happy its citizens are, how long they live, and how much of the planet’s resources they each consume. The HPI multiplies years of life expectancy by life satisfaction (as measured by the Gallup Poll and the World Values Survey), to obtain “Happy Life Years,” which are then divided by pressure on ecosystems, as measured by the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint, in turn, measures how much land and water it takes to provide for each person.
The Happy Planet Index “strips down the economy to what really matters,” says New Economics Foundation researcher Saamah Abdallah. It measures “what goes in, in terms of resource use, and the outcomes that are important, which are happy and healthy lives for us all. In this way, it reminds us that the economy is there for a purpose—and that is to improve our lives.”
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/why-costa-rica-tops-the-happiness-index-20190131
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Japanese American elders who have been protesting the repeat of history as the Administration detains immigrants in internment camps from World War II.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/24/1866919/-Japanese-Americans-protest-outside-former-internment-camp-Stop-repeating-history
A Kenya court’s ruling to stop the Lamu coal plant, a win for environmental activists and local communities who for three years argued that the coal plant would pollute the air, damage the fragile marine ecosystem, and devastate fishing communities.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/ar-AADut6v
A Correct the Record initiative, in which social media companies would have to make sure that all users who see false information on their feeds are also later presented with fact-checks.
http://time.com/5540995/correct-the-record-polling-fake-news/
The energy and momentum of the youth climate movement, Sunrise, which can be joined at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a talk and a pamphlet of the same name) available via on-line distributors July 30
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Having a bit more discretionary time this summer has had an unexpected downside: more opportunities to second-guess my choices about how I use my time. Am I using my hours to the highest good? With everything that’s wrong in the world, can I afford to slack off? Finding my way through these old voices and current worries is definitely a work in progress. It helps to remember that a key to transformation is deep connection—to each other and to the earth.
I’m making great kale-basil pesto to share, the peach tree that I planted in the public front bed of the community garden has been bountiful, I’m finding more buddies to work on the public banking project (let me know if you’re interested!), my new book—Money and Soul—is coming out at the end of the month, I’m blessed with good work and an abundance of caring and loving friends, relatives and colleagues. It’s good to know you are there.
Love,
Pamela
Breathe
I was listening to a friend who is at the center of a youth climate movement. He was feeling stressed about all the logistical challenges of pulling off big collaborative actions, wishing that there could be more time to reflect—and just breathe. He was hungry to experience more flow and resonance as he went through his days, and wistful that he didn’t sense a similar hunger for spiritual grounding in more of his fellow activists.
I had just come from a meeting where I felt both that hunger and that grounding. It was a group of mostly black and brown urban farmers, reaching toward a vision of cooperative organization and work. All the standard rules of the game of living—compete, entertain, pose, position, defend—had somehow been suspended, as we engaged in a common effort to seek truth and find a way forward toward a greater good. On the floor were topics not just of rewriting by-laws and reorganizing decision-making protocols, but of patience, relationships and willingness to be changed. Whether speaking, asking questions or listening, everyone was intent on growing their understanding, ready for transformation. There was openness in the room, space to breathe.
My friend shared, almost in passing, something he’d done that morning that he was pleased with. It was a potentially challenging meeting of people who needed to find common ground to make a decision. They chatted for a while, building connection. Then he suggested that they pause and take a moment for reflection. Into that quiet moment he offered a word of thanks—and they were able to move on to complete the task.
I think this story provides a clue to his earlier question. Even if it is unexpressed, we can see evidence of this hunger for grounding all around us. Some people are just too filled with work and worry to be able to notice; others are casting about desperately, but at a loss for how to even imagine or name the possibility; others may even be fighting against it, as a “luxury” in these perilous times. But we all need to breathe. As systems of oppression bear down on us more and more heavily, the struggle to breathe in what we need for survival is becoming more immediate, more pressing, and more widespread.
The preparation that went into that farmer coop meeting, and the tone that was set, provided food for my soul. The few minutes my friend took to invite that group to ground itself helped them complete their work. Anything we can do to break our bondage to the rules of the game— to invite others to connect with their best selves and a greater reality, to provide good air—is a gift. As we help fill that deep hunger, we are creating badly-needed space in which people can breathe, and new possibilities can grow.
Rec room circle
He lived in this nursing home
for nine years,
wanted, at ninety-eight,
to pass without a scene.
Yet here we are
in a circle in the rec room
sharing stories.
His son did it for the staff,
so they could say goodbye.
Others came for love of the son.
Simple stories
of food, opera, bingo—
the courage of an old man
the humanity of care-givers
the love of a son
all brought to life
in this rec room circle.
Dare to Imagine: A new economy is possible!
The Happy Planet Index
Created in 2008, the Happy Planet Index examines sustainable happiness on a national level, ranking 143 countries according to three measurements: how happy its citizens are, how long they live, and how much of the planet’s resources they each consume. The HPI multiplies years of life expectancy by life satisfaction (as measured by the Gallup Poll and the World Values Survey), to obtain “Happy Life Years,” which are then divided by pressure on ecosystems, as measured by the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint, in turn, measures how much land and water it takes to provide for each person.
The Happy Planet Index “strips down the economy to what really matters,” says New Economics Foundation researcher Saamah Abdallah. It measures “what goes in, in terms of resource use, and the outcomes that are important, which are happy and healthy lives for us all. In this way, it reminds us that the economy is there for a purpose—and that is to improve our lives.”
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/climate-action/why-costa-rica-tops-the-happiness-index-20190131
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
Japanese American elders who have been protesting the repeat of history as the Administration detains immigrants in internment camps from World War II.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/24/1866919/-Japanese-Americans-protest-outside-former-internment-camp-Stop-repeating-history
A Kenya court’s ruling to stop the Lamu coal plant, a win for environmental activists and local communities who for three years argued that the coal plant would pollute the air, damage the fragile marine ecosystem, and devastate fishing communities.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/ar-AADut6v
A Correct the Record initiative, in which social media companies would have to make sure that all users who see false information on their feeds are also later presented with fact-checks.
http://time.com/5540995/correct-the-record-polling-fake-news/
The energy and momentum of the youth climate movement, Sunrise, which can be joined at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&
Resources
Money and Soul
My new book (based on a talk and a pamphlet of the same name) available via on-line distributors July 30
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Sunday, June 23, 2019
#190 Hemlock and larch
Dear all,
I’ve been harvesting bounty from my little community garden plot, and spent much of yesterday working at the urban farm that I love. I have also continued to find ways to support young people who are working with Sunrise, the youth climate movement, which has been deeply satisfying. There are many things to be thankful for.
I’ve also found myself in the midst of conflict in a variety of situations. I hate conflict, but try to remember that molecules move more readily in a heated situation—that it creates potential for change. And the direction I’m holding for myself is to just show up, as fully and as fully myself as I know how.
As we move past the longest day of the year, I wish you well in this new season.
Love,
Pamela
Hemlock and larch
A tiny insect is threatening our hemlock forests. We can’t see the signs of damage yet in the place we love up in northern Pennsylvania, but a friend pulled off a hemlock twig and put it under a microscope, and there they were.
I love the hemlocks. I love the feeling of moving from an open meadow into the hemlock forest, how from one step to the next you enter a different world, cool and shady and quiet. I love the soft flatness of the needles and the tiny little cones. Years ago, I dug little hemlock volunteers from the side of the road to plant as a screen against a field of briars. Now they are thirty feet tall.
It’s hard to imagine that the forest might be destroyed. Yet I know the power of many small insects. A plague of gypsy moths, three years running, decimated the maples in the woods. Many died. Others took years to come back to health.
There are poisons that can be applied to individual trees, and limited pricey supplies of a new predator beetle. But we’re talking about a whole forest. As I wonder what I can do, my mind turns to the beautiful larches by the pond—those conifers that lose their needles in the winter. I look around for their babies, thinking perhaps I can transplant them as I did the little hemlocks all those years ago, but can find none. A little research lets me know that they don’t grow much from seed; if you want to propagate larch, it is best done through cuttings.
I take those instructions with me the next time we visit. Early one morning, with the mist rising up off the pond, I carefully clip six inch bits off the ends of branches, and wrap them in a moist paper towel to take home. They live in my refrigerator till I can get to the garden supply place for a rooting hormone and potting mixture.
They are out of rooting hormone. What can I do? Thankfully the woman who works there is resourceful. She says you just need something that’s anti-fungal. Honey will do, or cinnamon. Cinnamon is probably best. We look for a potting mixture. They don’t sell peat any more, since the peat bogs are being over-harvested. But we find an organic alternative—made of aged forest products, coconut hulls, rice husks and worm castings. I hold the bag to my heart as I make my way home on the trolley.
That evening I wash the plastic pots. Usually I wouldn’t bother, but I want to do my best by these little larch cuttings. The potting mixture seems moist and friendly as I fill the pots. I carefully strip off the bottom needles, use a little rubbing alcohol to sterilize the end, dip it in cinnamon, shake off the extra and gently poke it into a pot. Twenty-four times. Twenty-four little larch cuttings, beautifully green and hopeful. I water, and arrange them on my wide kitchen window sill to avoid direct sunlight, as the directions say.
Next morning, and the morning after that, I come downstairs to a little larch forest on my window sill. They still look healthy. I don’t know if all, or some, or any of the cuttings will survive. If they do, I don’t know if I can successfully transplant them up there at the edge of the hemlock forest.
Yet they have been surrounded by love—those clear careful instructions, my early morning walk among the big larches with the mist rising from the pond, the woman who took the time to look up the powers of cinnamon and wished me well, the people who made that lovely potting mixture, with all its contributions from forest, field and soil.
Considering the threat to the forest, this is a small thing, perhaps not the best thing, but something. It’s good that others are working on bigger solutions, and opportunities to join them may open up. But we don’t have to wait. We all can love, and act on that love in ways that are within our grasp. And if it is not enough, we will still have acted in love, and that love will carry us through.
Tuesday morning
The shabby room
in the corner church
is packed this Tuesday morning.
Neighbors of all conditions
pregnant women, dads and toddlers
elders with canes
all waiting patiently
to exercise their democratic right
to vote.
Not the whole of democracy for sure—
our voices needed everywhere.
Yet, tainted by corruption,
bought and sold,
under attack,
it’s still a role to cherish and defend.
Neighborly civility prevails,
fathers speak of why we’re here
in words a three-year-old can understand,
and so we wait,
holding fast to this, our sacred right.
Dare to Imagine—A new economy is possible!
Postal Banking
With 68 million people in the US lacking access to adequate banking opportunities, the idea of having the US Postal Service engage in basic banking services has risen again. The Postal Service already cashes Treasury checks and issues money orders. It has statutory authority to offer ATMs, paycheck cashing, bill payment and electronic money transfers in post offices.
This is not a new idea. From 1911 to 1967, the Postal Service maintained its own banking system, allowing citizens to open small savings accounts at local post offices. At the end of World War II, it had a balance of $3 billion, roughly $30 billion in today’s dollars. Congress did away with postal banking in the 1960s, but post offices in other countries—including Japan, Germany, China, and South Korea—provide banking services. Japan Post Bank is consistently ranked as one of the world’s largest financial institutions based on assets.
https://www.thenation.com/article/aoc-bernie-sanders-postal-banking-sean-hannity-john-nichols
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The San Francisco D.A. has unveiled program aimed at removing implicit bias from prosecutions by removing racial data from initial documents. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-san-francisco-da-prosecutions-implicit-bias-software-20190612-story.html
New York City realtors have lost their grip on the state legislature, which has significantly reined in their power, giving tenants a fairer deal. https://inequality.org/great-divide/in-new-york-and-beyond-our-plutocrats-may-need-a-new-playbook/
Dads who are finding their role in encouraging young children to read. https://www.facebook.com/6abcActionNews/videos/vb.9335481377/2365107793547204/?type=2&theater
Rural populists, seeing that native tribes can more effectively guard their local economies from large corporations than their state, local or federal governments, are joining “Cowboy-Indian” alliances to protect the land and waters of the place they all call home. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2019/05/populist-alliances-of-cowboys-and-indians-are-protecting-rural-lands/
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.
-Susan Cooper
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
I’ve been harvesting bounty from my little community garden plot, and spent much of yesterday working at the urban farm that I love. I have also continued to find ways to support young people who are working with Sunrise, the youth climate movement, which has been deeply satisfying. There are many things to be thankful for.
I’ve also found myself in the midst of conflict in a variety of situations. I hate conflict, but try to remember that molecules move more readily in a heated situation—that it creates potential for change. And the direction I’m holding for myself is to just show up, as fully and as fully myself as I know how.
As we move past the longest day of the year, I wish you well in this new season.
Love,
Pamela
Hemlock and larch
A tiny insect is threatening our hemlock forests. We can’t see the signs of damage yet in the place we love up in northern Pennsylvania, but a friend pulled off a hemlock twig and put it under a microscope, and there they were.
I love the hemlocks. I love the feeling of moving from an open meadow into the hemlock forest, how from one step to the next you enter a different world, cool and shady and quiet. I love the soft flatness of the needles and the tiny little cones. Years ago, I dug little hemlock volunteers from the side of the road to plant as a screen against a field of briars. Now they are thirty feet tall.
It’s hard to imagine that the forest might be destroyed. Yet I know the power of many small insects. A plague of gypsy moths, three years running, decimated the maples in the woods. Many died. Others took years to come back to health.
There are poisons that can be applied to individual trees, and limited pricey supplies of a new predator beetle. But we’re talking about a whole forest. As I wonder what I can do, my mind turns to the beautiful larches by the pond—those conifers that lose their needles in the winter. I look around for their babies, thinking perhaps I can transplant them as I did the little hemlocks all those years ago, but can find none. A little research lets me know that they don’t grow much from seed; if you want to propagate larch, it is best done through cuttings.
I take those instructions with me the next time we visit. Early one morning, with the mist rising up off the pond, I carefully clip six inch bits off the ends of branches, and wrap them in a moist paper towel to take home. They live in my refrigerator till I can get to the garden supply place for a rooting hormone and potting mixture.
They are out of rooting hormone. What can I do? Thankfully the woman who works there is resourceful. She says you just need something that’s anti-fungal. Honey will do, or cinnamon. Cinnamon is probably best. We look for a potting mixture. They don’t sell peat any more, since the peat bogs are being over-harvested. But we find an organic alternative—made of aged forest products, coconut hulls, rice husks and worm castings. I hold the bag to my heart as I make my way home on the trolley.
That evening I wash the plastic pots. Usually I wouldn’t bother, but I want to do my best by these little larch cuttings. The potting mixture seems moist and friendly as I fill the pots. I carefully strip off the bottom needles, use a little rubbing alcohol to sterilize the end, dip it in cinnamon, shake off the extra and gently poke it into a pot. Twenty-four times. Twenty-four little larch cuttings, beautifully green and hopeful. I water, and arrange them on my wide kitchen window sill to avoid direct sunlight, as the directions say.
Next morning, and the morning after that, I come downstairs to a little larch forest on my window sill. They still look healthy. I don’t know if all, or some, or any of the cuttings will survive. If they do, I don’t know if I can successfully transplant them up there at the edge of the hemlock forest.
Yet they have been surrounded by love—those clear careful instructions, my early morning walk among the big larches with the mist rising from the pond, the woman who took the time to look up the powers of cinnamon and wished me well, the people who made that lovely potting mixture, with all its contributions from forest, field and soil.
Considering the threat to the forest, this is a small thing, perhaps not the best thing, but something. It’s good that others are working on bigger solutions, and opportunities to join them may open up. But we don’t have to wait. We all can love, and act on that love in ways that are within our grasp. And if it is not enough, we will still have acted in love, and that love will carry us through.
Tuesday morning
The shabby room
in the corner church
is packed this Tuesday morning.
Neighbors of all conditions
pregnant women, dads and toddlers
elders with canes
all waiting patiently
to exercise their democratic right
to vote.
Not the whole of democracy for sure—
our voices needed everywhere.
Yet, tainted by corruption,
bought and sold,
under attack,
it’s still a role to cherish and defend.
Neighborly civility prevails,
fathers speak of why we’re here
in words a three-year-old can understand,
and so we wait,
holding fast to this, our sacred right.
Dare to Imagine—A new economy is possible!
Postal Banking
With 68 million people in the US lacking access to adequate banking opportunities, the idea of having the US Postal Service engage in basic banking services has risen again. The Postal Service already cashes Treasury checks and issues money orders. It has statutory authority to offer ATMs, paycheck cashing, bill payment and electronic money transfers in post offices.
This is not a new idea. From 1911 to 1967, the Postal Service maintained its own banking system, allowing citizens to open small savings accounts at local post offices. At the end of World War II, it had a balance of $3 billion, roughly $30 billion in today’s dollars. Congress did away with postal banking in the 1960s, but post offices in other countries—including Japan, Germany, China, and South Korea—provide banking services. Japan Post Bank is consistently ranked as one of the world’s largest financial institutions based on assets.
https://www.thenation.com/article/aoc-bernie-sanders-postal-banking-sean-hannity-john-nichols
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The San Francisco D.A. has unveiled program aimed at removing implicit bias from prosecutions by removing racial data from initial documents. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-san-francisco-da-prosecutions-implicit-bias-software-20190612-story.html
New York City realtors have lost their grip on the state legislature, which has significantly reined in their power, giving tenants a fairer deal. https://inequality.org/great-divide/in-new-york-and-beyond-our-plutocrats-may-need-a-new-playbook/
Dads who are finding their role in encouraging young children to read. https://www.facebook.com/6abcActionNews/videos/vb.9335481377/2365107793547204/?type=2&theater
Rural populists, seeing that native tribes can more effectively guard their local economies from large corporations than their state, local or federal governments, are joining “Cowboy-Indian” alliances to protect the land and waters of the place they all call home. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2019/05/populist-alliances-of-cowboys-and-indians-are-protecting-rural-lands/
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Pamela Haines
215-349-9428
The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.
-Susan Cooper
www.pamelalivinginthisworld.blogspot.com
Monday, May 20, 2019
#189 Climate - what if?
Climate – what if?
The International Panel on Climate Change came out with a report last year saying that we have twelve years to turn this climate thing around. It’s eleven now. But, in a point that was lost on many, they also said we could do it. There are big obstacles in the way, for sure, but none are insurmountable.
A significant one is our own despair—which our culture feeds. Books, movies and media of all kinds play out scary, and seemingly inevitable dystopian futures, and we are numbed into a strange kind of passive acceptance. A perceptive friend has said that it’s easier to imagine total destruction of the world as we know it than a transformation of our economic system.
It’s easy to feel scared and hopeless. It’s also easy to feel divided. But at its core, climate is not a divisive issue. Everyone wants a future for their children and grandchildren. And, if we think about it, none of us want our children and grandchildren to learn that we were bystanders during these critical years. We want to be able to tell stories of courage and creativity, of tenacity and unexpected discoveries—of a time when we learned that we were bigger than we knew.
What if we can turn this thing around and have a livable future? What if we can find a way to step outside of all the feelings and pressures that keep us in the role of helpless bystanders, and be who we really are—with all the boldness, vision and courage that we can muster?
This will, of course, take more than scared and lonely individuals changing lightbulbs and signing on-line petitions. But we can do more, and we can do it together. Here are some ideas about steps that everyone can take.
Learn about what’s working. Pay attention to reasons to be hopeful, like this one:
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/10-reasons-feel-hopeful-about-climate-change-2019
Develop a conscious strategy that works for you to not get immobilized by bad news—don’t let climate change have the last word.
Get support. Find people to talk with about what scares you, what you want, what you love, the part of this challenge that calls out to you. Better yet, make a plan to get together over time with two or three others to share ideas, set goals and report back on them.
Start conversations. Ask people what they love about the world around them. Focus more on solutions than problems. Share why you decided to act and what gives you energy to keep going. Give space for people’s worries and feelings of despair, but don’t get sucked in. Talk about how to dissipate fear’s hold on us by acting together.
Build on your strengths. Good at writing? Look for ways to get the word out about climate solutions. Active on social media? Post things that offer opportunities, energize people and give hope. Good at website design or art? Offer your services to an activist group. Love cooking? Cook for the local youth climate change house or do a fundraising dinner. Have friends? Invite them over for an inspiring movie or a conversation about what’s possible.
Take what you’re already doing up a notch. Passionate about living a sustainable life style, for example? Encourage others in your extended family, social or faith circles, or neighborhood to do the same. Already doing that? Get involved with your township or municipality’s sustainability plan, or your local or state emission reduction goals.
Explore new territory. Try things that seem just a little too scary (not alone!). There are so many possibilities: visiting city officials, calling a group to action, asking your friends to back you, giving testimony, looking for common ground with someone you disagree with, facing arrest for civil disobedience, believing you have the power to shift the tone of a group.
Help others. If your circumstances don’t allow you to do much, find someone who is able to be more active, and put energy into supporting them. If you don’t have time even for that, help others by just holding out the belief that this thing can be done.
As we steep ourselves in the possible, remembering that we are part of a vast majority rather than a beleaguered minority, what if, together, we can do this?
Bubbles
A child is blowing bubbles
from the back of the trolley.
Tiny, they float and drift.
People turn, smile.
“I thought it was snowing” says one
and laughter ripples
through the car.
Singlehandedly
a small child
has lifted our spirits.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Costa Rica’s Banco Popular
Costa Rica’s BPDC is perhaps the most democratic bank in the world, with its highest governing body the Assembly of Workers, which represents nearly 1.2 million savers, or 20% of the population. Effective control over daily operations is exercised by the National Board of Directors, which is composed of four representatives of the Assembly and three of the Government. Presently, there are four women and three men on the Board, fulfilling the requirement that it be at least half women.
The third largest bank in Costa Rica, BPDC operates with a triple bottom-line: economic, environmental, and social. A quarter of its returns are channeled into a series of ‘special funds’ to meet the social needs of those typically excluded from the banking system, yet its earnings are greater than the average private bank.
All public and private employers contribute 0.5% of paid monthly wages to the bank’s capital base and workers contribute 1% of their monthly wages. After a year, 1.25% of these savings are transferred to each worker’s own pension fund; the bank holds the other 0.25% as a means of permanent capitalization and economic stability. The BPDC also accepts over 40% of the public-sector payroll deposits and receives deposits and loans from other publicly-owned development banks to support its own lending operations.
The BPDC has developed specialty green and sustainable lending facilities, with loans for solar energy panels in residential settings, and the provisioning of safe local water supply systems. The bank has begun tracing its own consumption of energy; the pensions division, for example, has been certified as ‘carbon neutral’ for the last four years.
https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/how_public_banks_can_help_finance_a_green_and_just_energy_transformation.pdf
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The Sunrise Movement, that is mobilizing youth all over the US to fight climate change and push a Green New Deal into the mainstream of public conversation.
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&
The deal that ended the largest private-sector strike in the US in years, in which 31,000 New England Stop & Shop workers won raises and preserved retirement and healthcare benefits, standing up to one of the biggest and most profitable supermarket chains in the country.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/22/when-workers-fight-workers-win-union-declares-victory-stop-shop-strike-ends-deal
https://ips-dc.org/stop-shop-workers-end-11-day-strike-with-a-tentative-agreement/
Sudanese women, whose lives have traditionally been tightly controlled by men, playing a decisive role in the protests that overthrew the autocratic Bashir this spring.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-politics-women-idUSKCN1S60X3
The antidote to despair in laying out reasons to feel hopeful about our future on earth.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/10-reasons-feel-hopeful-about-climate-change-2019
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
The International Panel on Climate Change came out with a report last year saying that we have twelve years to turn this climate thing around. It’s eleven now. But, in a point that was lost on many, they also said we could do it. There are big obstacles in the way, for sure, but none are insurmountable.
A significant one is our own despair—which our culture feeds. Books, movies and media of all kinds play out scary, and seemingly inevitable dystopian futures, and we are numbed into a strange kind of passive acceptance. A perceptive friend has said that it’s easier to imagine total destruction of the world as we know it than a transformation of our economic system.
It’s easy to feel scared and hopeless. It’s also easy to feel divided. But at its core, climate is not a divisive issue. Everyone wants a future for their children and grandchildren. And, if we think about it, none of us want our children and grandchildren to learn that we were bystanders during these critical years. We want to be able to tell stories of courage and creativity, of tenacity and unexpected discoveries—of a time when we learned that we were bigger than we knew.
What if we can turn this thing around and have a livable future? What if we can find a way to step outside of all the feelings and pressures that keep us in the role of helpless bystanders, and be who we really are—with all the boldness, vision and courage that we can muster?
This will, of course, take more than scared and lonely individuals changing lightbulbs and signing on-line petitions. But we can do more, and we can do it together. Here are some ideas about steps that everyone can take.
Learn about what’s working. Pay attention to reasons to be hopeful, like this one:
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/10-reasons-feel-hopeful-about-climate-change-2019
Develop a conscious strategy that works for you to not get immobilized by bad news—don’t let climate change have the last word.
Get support. Find people to talk with about what scares you, what you want, what you love, the part of this challenge that calls out to you. Better yet, make a plan to get together over time with two or three others to share ideas, set goals and report back on them.
Start conversations. Ask people what they love about the world around them. Focus more on solutions than problems. Share why you decided to act and what gives you energy to keep going. Give space for people’s worries and feelings of despair, but don’t get sucked in. Talk about how to dissipate fear’s hold on us by acting together.
Build on your strengths. Good at writing? Look for ways to get the word out about climate solutions. Active on social media? Post things that offer opportunities, energize people and give hope. Good at website design or art? Offer your services to an activist group. Love cooking? Cook for the local youth climate change house or do a fundraising dinner. Have friends? Invite them over for an inspiring movie or a conversation about what’s possible.
Take what you’re already doing up a notch. Passionate about living a sustainable life style, for example? Encourage others in your extended family, social or faith circles, or neighborhood to do the same. Already doing that? Get involved with your township or municipality’s sustainability plan, or your local or state emission reduction goals.
Explore new territory. Try things that seem just a little too scary (not alone!). There are so many possibilities: visiting city officials, calling a group to action, asking your friends to back you, giving testimony, looking for common ground with someone you disagree with, facing arrest for civil disobedience, believing you have the power to shift the tone of a group.
Help others. If your circumstances don’t allow you to do much, find someone who is able to be more active, and put energy into supporting them. If you don’t have time even for that, help others by just holding out the belief that this thing can be done.
As we steep ourselves in the possible, remembering that we are part of a vast majority rather than a beleaguered minority, what if, together, we can do this?
Bubbles
A child is blowing bubbles
from the back of the trolley.
Tiny, they float and drift.
People turn, smile.
“I thought it was snowing” says one
and laughter ripples
through the car.
Singlehandedly
a small child
has lifted our spirits.
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Costa Rica’s Banco Popular
Costa Rica’s BPDC is perhaps the most democratic bank in the world, with its highest governing body the Assembly of Workers, which represents nearly 1.2 million savers, or 20% of the population. Effective control over daily operations is exercised by the National Board of Directors, which is composed of four representatives of the Assembly and three of the Government. Presently, there are four women and three men on the Board, fulfilling the requirement that it be at least half women.
The third largest bank in Costa Rica, BPDC operates with a triple bottom-line: economic, environmental, and social. A quarter of its returns are channeled into a series of ‘special funds’ to meet the social needs of those typically excluded from the banking system, yet its earnings are greater than the average private bank.
All public and private employers contribute 0.5% of paid monthly wages to the bank’s capital base and workers contribute 1% of their monthly wages. After a year, 1.25% of these savings are transferred to each worker’s own pension fund; the bank holds the other 0.25% as a means of permanent capitalization and economic stability. The BPDC also accepts over 40% of the public-sector payroll deposits and receives deposits and loans from other publicly-owned development banks to support its own lending operations.
The BPDC has developed specialty green and sustainable lending facilities, with loans for solar energy panels in residential settings, and the provisioning of safe local water supply systems. The bank has begun tracing its own consumption of energy; the pensions division, for example, has been certified as ‘carbon neutral’ for the last four years.
https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/how_public_banks_can_help_finance_a_green_and_just_energy_transformation.pdf
Some things that have made me hopeful recently:
The Sunrise Movement, that is mobilizing youth all over the US to fight climate change and push a Green New Deal into the mainstream of public conversation.
https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&
The deal that ended the largest private-sector strike in the US in years, in which 31,000 New England Stop & Shop workers won raises and preserved retirement and healthcare benefits, standing up to one of the biggest and most profitable supermarket chains in the country.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/22/when-workers-fight-workers-win-union-declares-victory-stop-shop-strike-ends-deal
https://ips-dc.org/stop-shop-workers-end-11-day-strike-with-a-tentative-agreement/
Sudanese women, whose lives have traditionally been tightly controlled by men, playing a decisive role in the protests that overthrew the autocratic Bashir this spring.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-politics-women-idUSKCN1S60X3
The antidote to despair in laying out reasons to feel hopeful about our future on earth.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/10-reasons-feel-hopeful-about-climate-change-2019
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
#188 Commonwealth
Commonwealth
One of the things I love about living in my state is our name. I’m not speaking of “Penn’s Woods”, though that’s lovely as well, but of the “Commonwealth” of Pennsylvania. What a concept: common wealth.
It’s related to “the commons”, which some of us learned about in history class. As part of the Industrial Revolution, the open areas in English villages where everybody freely grazed their cows and sheep were increasingly enclosed as private land, threatening rural livelihood and forcing villagers to move to the cities as industrial laborers.
We learned that it was sad but inevitable, and it all happened a long time ago. Yet the enclosure of the commons is a very current threat, with the idea of common wealth as central. In the US, our common land is in the form of parks (and state game lands in places), whose integrity is under increasing attack. There is also our common water, our common air, our common airwaves, all being exploited for private profit in one way or another. Privatization is steadily expanding to include our common heritage: knowledge, culture and even DNA.
Then there is all the wealth of our economy. Some flows to private owners as profit, some goes to maintain ourselves, some goes to taxes. While we could argue until those English village cows come home about who deserves the profits, I want to think here just about the taxes.
In Philadelphia, our local tax base and our share of federal taxes that come back as grants make up this part of our common wealth. Yet we currently have no control over the part that is not immediately put to use. We pay the big banks on Wall Street—the only ones currently big enough to manage that amount of money—to hold our wealth. They, in turn, invest it where they will get the greatest return—which is not in the social and infrastructure needs of our citizens. To pay for such needs, we float bonds and borrow it back from them. With interest between a third and a half of the total costs of such projects, this is no small deal. In Philadelphia last year, we paid $170 million in debt service.
What would it mean to keep our common wealth at home, in a public bank, owned by—and operated for the benefit of—the people of Philadelphia? Such a bank could be professionally managed under the governance of a Board that is politically independent and representative of our communities. It could reduce the costs of funding public projects and invest our common money locally rather than remain dependent on Wall Street banks. In this way it could promote programs of public benefit such as low-cost housing, renewable energy, energy efficiency, education, and the creation of family-sustaining jobs.
It can be done. The state Bank of North Dakota has been in operation for 100 years, receiving state funds and reinvesting them in state projects. It consistently makes a profit—40% of which is returned to the state treasury, and it supports more community banks per capita than any other state. Not surprisingly, North Dakota was the only state in the country to come through the recession of 2008 unscathed, because its money was not in the bubbles of Wall Street.
It’s exciting to be part of an effort to encourage Philadelphia to establish a public bank. The concept is powerful and the logic is compelling. Once ordinary people have the opportunity to imagine an alternative to the status quo, they get it immediately. We have found City Council members and staff remarkably receptive. All the studies that have been done are clear on the advantages of keeping our public money at home.
Of course it will be a battle because, as Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand”, and this is a challenge to the locus of greatest power in the world—the private financial sector. Yet there’s something refreshing about not nibbling around the edges, but going straight to the center and naming the big question: who should control our common wealth?
Private?
Our backyard neighbors
put up a tall wooden fence—
ensuring their privacy
blocking our little bit of sun,
the life of my lettuce and herbs,
flowers and currants
not their problem.
Our school’s neighbors
have cut down the great oak tree
that shaded us all.
I pass the magnolia
two blocks down
a neighborhood treasure—
now in full and glorious bloom.
It sits in a private yard—
fills it up.
My heart constricts.
What if they no longer chose
to have it there? Cut it down,
as is their right?
As is the right of wall builders
and tree cutters everywhere
on private property.
How did beauty
and sunlight
and shade
become private?
Dare to imagine – a new economy is possible!
Banking on Values
Beneficial State Bank, with more than 250 employees at 17 locations throughout California, Oregon, and Washington, boasts about $1 billion in assets. The bank is mandated to produce meaningful social justice and environmental benefits at the same time that it is financially sustainable. All the owners are non-profit organizations which collectively reinvest all distributed bank profits back into the communities they serve. Their main business is providing credit to constructive businesses and non-profits—especially those boosting entrepreneurial activity in inner cities, following and strengthening wellness models, or reconnecting vital rural/urban dependencies—with credit allowing these beneficial activities to grow and scale.
https://beneficialstatebank.com/our-story/about-us/our-history
Bank president, Kat Taylor, says that if Beneficial’s return exceeds 10%, “we’re likely either overcharging our customers or underpaying our colleagues”—and that “would be in defiance of our mission.” She believes that Beneficial can help upend the banking sector by demonstrating that a bank can thrive competitively, loan money in a way that boosts economic justice, is restorative to the planet, and still pay its workers 150% of a living wage.
https://capitalandmain.com/upending-the-nations-financial-giants-with-beneficial-state-banks-kat-taylor-0621
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The news that thousands of bees living on top of Notre Dame have survived the fire, https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/bees-living-on-top-of-notre-dame-have-survived-fire/
along with the action by France to ban all five pesticides linked to bee deaths—the first country to do so. https://returntonow.net/2019/01/24/france-becomes-the-first-country-to-ban-all-five-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths/?fbclid=IwAR1uc9bsP80YiSXLHFCF11JtkRDY2FGRSUWOLQYHe3j0ialBuvLKTLYZS_g
A new movement, Freedom to Prosper, working to stop the student loan trap, and restore education to its rightful place as a public good. http://www.freedomtoprosper.org
A clean energy act in Washington DC which requires the city to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2032 and to invest millions of dollars in clean energy and sustainability projects that will benefit all D.C. residents. Read more and watch the video.
A barber whose training of other Black barbers in the South to act as informal mental health counselors has started a movement.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/mental-health/what-is-barbershop-therapy-20180823
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
One of the things I love about living in my state is our name. I’m not speaking of “Penn’s Woods”, though that’s lovely as well, but of the “Commonwealth” of Pennsylvania. What a concept: common wealth.
It’s related to “the commons”, which some of us learned about in history class. As part of the Industrial Revolution, the open areas in English villages where everybody freely grazed their cows and sheep were increasingly enclosed as private land, threatening rural livelihood and forcing villagers to move to the cities as industrial laborers.
We learned that it was sad but inevitable, and it all happened a long time ago. Yet the enclosure of the commons is a very current threat, with the idea of common wealth as central. In the US, our common land is in the form of parks (and state game lands in places), whose integrity is under increasing attack. There is also our common water, our common air, our common airwaves, all being exploited for private profit in one way or another. Privatization is steadily expanding to include our common heritage: knowledge, culture and even DNA.
Then there is all the wealth of our economy. Some flows to private owners as profit, some goes to maintain ourselves, some goes to taxes. While we could argue until those English village cows come home about who deserves the profits, I want to think here just about the taxes.
In Philadelphia, our local tax base and our share of federal taxes that come back as grants make up this part of our common wealth. Yet we currently have no control over the part that is not immediately put to use. We pay the big banks on Wall Street—the only ones currently big enough to manage that amount of money—to hold our wealth. They, in turn, invest it where they will get the greatest return—which is not in the social and infrastructure needs of our citizens. To pay for such needs, we float bonds and borrow it back from them. With interest between a third and a half of the total costs of such projects, this is no small deal. In Philadelphia last year, we paid $170 million in debt service.
What would it mean to keep our common wealth at home, in a public bank, owned by—and operated for the benefit of—the people of Philadelphia? Such a bank could be professionally managed under the governance of a Board that is politically independent and representative of our communities. It could reduce the costs of funding public projects and invest our common money locally rather than remain dependent on Wall Street banks. In this way it could promote programs of public benefit such as low-cost housing, renewable energy, energy efficiency, education, and the creation of family-sustaining jobs.
It can be done. The state Bank of North Dakota has been in operation for 100 years, receiving state funds and reinvesting them in state projects. It consistently makes a profit—40% of which is returned to the state treasury, and it supports more community banks per capita than any other state. Not surprisingly, North Dakota was the only state in the country to come through the recession of 2008 unscathed, because its money was not in the bubbles of Wall Street.
It’s exciting to be part of an effort to encourage Philadelphia to establish a public bank. The concept is powerful and the logic is compelling. Once ordinary people have the opportunity to imagine an alternative to the status quo, they get it immediately. We have found City Council members and staff remarkably receptive. All the studies that have been done are clear on the advantages of keeping our public money at home.
Of course it will be a battle because, as Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand”, and this is a challenge to the locus of greatest power in the world—the private financial sector. Yet there’s something refreshing about not nibbling around the edges, but going straight to the center and naming the big question: who should control our common wealth?
Private?
Our backyard neighbors
put up a tall wooden fence—
ensuring their privacy
blocking our little bit of sun,
the life of my lettuce and herbs,
flowers and currants
not their problem.
Our school’s neighbors
have cut down the great oak tree
that shaded us all.
I pass the magnolia
two blocks down
a neighborhood treasure—
now in full and glorious bloom.
It sits in a private yard—
fills it up.
My heart constricts.
What if they no longer chose
to have it there? Cut it down,
as is their right?
As is the right of wall builders
and tree cutters everywhere
on private property.
How did beauty
and sunlight
and shade
become private?
Dare to imagine – a new economy is possible!
Banking on Values
Beneficial State Bank, with more than 250 employees at 17 locations throughout California, Oregon, and Washington, boasts about $1 billion in assets. The bank is mandated to produce meaningful social justice and environmental benefits at the same time that it is financially sustainable. All the owners are non-profit organizations which collectively reinvest all distributed bank profits back into the communities they serve. Their main business is providing credit to constructive businesses and non-profits—especially those boosting entrepreneurial activity in inner cities, following and strengthening wellness models, or reconnecting vital rural/urban dependencies—with credit allowing these beneficial activities to grow and scale.
https://beneficialstatebank.com/our-story/about-us/our-history
Bank president, Kat Taylor, says that if Beneficial’s return exceeds 10%, “we’re likely either overcharging our customers or underpaying our colleagues”—and that “would be in defiance of our mission.” She believes that Beneficial can help upend the banking sector by demonstrating that a bank can thrive competitively, loan money in a way that boosts economic justice, is restorative to the planet, and still pay its workers 150% of a living wage.
https://capitalandmain.com/upending-the-nations-financial-giants-with-beneficial-state-banks-kat-taylor-0621
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The news that thousands of bees living on top of Notre Dame have survived the fire, https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/bees-living-on-top-of-notre-dame-have-survived-fire/
along with the action by France to ban all five pesticides linked to bee deaths—the first country to do so. https://returntonow.net/2019/01/24/france-becomes-the-first-country-to-ban-all-five-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths/?fbclid=IwAR1uc9bsP80YiSXLHFCF11JtkRDY2FGRSUWOLQYHe3j0ialBuvLKTLYZS_g
A new movement, Freedom to Prosper, working to stop the student loan trap, and restore education to its rightful place as a public good. http://www.freedomtoprosper.org
A clean energy act in Washington DC which requires the city to transition to 100% renewable energy by 2032 and to invest millions of dollars in clean energy and sustainability projects that will benefit all D.C. residents. Read more and watch the video.
A barber whose training of other Black barbers in the South to act as informal mental health counselors has started a movement.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/mental-health/what-is-barbershop-therapy-20180823
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Saturday, March 30, 2019
#187 Crossing borders
Dear all,
Well, the big news is that spring is here—a great life-giving cause for celebration. Two deaths in my wide circle of loved ones have been hard, even as they remind me of the importance of tending our connections to the living. Similarly, amidst corrosive bad news in our country and the world, I am grateful for signs of new life—the Sunrise Movement (I just signed up to stay in touch at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&), the Green New Deal, the growing interest in public management of our common wealth. I’m reminded of a song I love to sing, The World Is Always Turning Toward the Morning.
Love,
Pamela
Crossing borders
The trauma of border crossing has been much in the news—and in our hearts—as more and more people flee war, poverty and oppression, seeking safety and opportunity across national lines. Unexpectedly, I have found my attention drawn to the less discussed issue of crossing borders the other way—from places of more rank and privilege to less.
After our trip to Uganda this winter, I was asked a question whose essence was “How could I travel as a white person to Africa and not fall into the trap of perpetuating colonialism?”
I can’t say for sure that I haven’t, but I do know some of the signs. Years ago, a group of U.S. high schools found out about the school in Northern Uganda that a dear friend of ours had founded, and jumped in to provide scholarships. In their enthusiasm, they raised lots of money—and kept needing more and more from the school to support their help. No one doubted their good intentions, and the money was certainly welcome, but their growing feeling of ownership of the school began to be perceived by folks on the ground as problematic.
We watched with dismay. Our approach seemed so different. When Abitimo asked us to do something, we just did it. When she died a couple of years ago, not only did we grieve, but we were caught off balance. What should be our relationship to the school without her at the center? Fortunately, her son, whom we had known for decades as a lovely, quiet, behind-the-scenes kind of guy, stepped up—and we started following him.
We learned that many of the school’s systems, which this other group had complained about loudly before ultimately bailing out, were, indeed, badly in need of change. Yet, rather than making our own judgments, we followed our friend. When he decided there needed to be new school leadership, we backed him to make the hard calls. We listened and supported, took dictation, joined him in meetings, kept track of the things he said he needed to do, and rejoiced in his every success.
Considering what makes such border crossings go well for everybody, love is the best medium, and relationships are critical. When I’m approaching a border, if people who belong there can say “She’s with us”, a legitimate place is made for me. This is how we found ourselves invited, at home, and able to be of real use among a group of South Sudanese refugees in northwest Uganda; a series of loving friendships opened the way.
It also helps a lot if we are okay with who we are, in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class. If our interest in border crossing is to become somebody else, to have another’s identity rub off on us, something will always be a little off balance. We end up having neither who we are nor who we want to be.
Home from Africa, I read a book describing the joys of crossing a border that few of us ever contemplate—that of species. What would it mean to set aside our human assumptions and put energy into being fully present to the life and reality of a foreign-seeming species? There are big barriers to connection, and therefore perhaps to love, but the opportunities for wonder are great, and we can always stand in open-hearted respect.
We can also learn from all the mistakes humans make with other humans—our unaware assumptions about what’s “normal”, and all the ways we cast others in the role of lesser beings, from captivity, anthropological study and voyeurism to seeing others only in their relationship to us.
Our connections with others through our shared DNA and shared home are real, regardless of the borders of nation, ethnicity or species that separate us. The rewards of such border crossing are great. Is there anything more hopeful and reassuring than finding a bond of commonality across differences that may have seemed unbridgeable? By being willing to find our way across those borders, our own lives are immeasurably enriched.
Bookends
Winter morning
east to work
rising sun catches the trees from below
bathes them in a glow
of golden pink.
West that night
thinnest sliver of a crescent moon
breaks through the clouds
for a shining moment.
A day
framed in grace.
Dare to Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Indigenous Cooperative
The southern state of Puebla, Mexico, is home to a network of cooperatives, Tosepan Titataniske or “United We Will Overcome”, which has been working for 40 years to build up a parallel solidarity economy among largely Nahua and Tutunaku indigenous communities. It encompasses some 35,000 members across 430 villages in 29 municipalities.
Based on the premises of democracy, fair economic participation, self-reliance, autonomy, compromise, gender equality and cooperation, it aims to provide a healthy diet and profitable businesses while employing the community members, preserving culture, and working within a sustainable framework. Activities include: the creation of an eco-friendly hotel; organic pepper, coffee and honey production; a women’s livelihood association; education in marketable skills and local sociopolitical/ethnic/environmental issues.
https://library.iated.org/view/MORALESPAREDES2014TOS https://www.localfutures.org/tosepan-resistance-and-renewal-in-mexico/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The youth-led Sunrise Movement that is changing the conversation in the US on climate change (and I know and love some of them).
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/
A California federal judge who ruled to eliminate cash bail for those who are awaiting arraignment in San Francisco, finding that it is an unconstitutional "get out of jail" card for those who can afford it.
https://www.courttrax.com/cash-bail-system-ended-in-san-francisco-by-federal-judge/
The governor of a county in Kenya who refused to participate in the usual corruption, despite extreme pressure, and was able to use the unlooted funds to benefit the community.
http://davidzarembka.com/2019/02/28/541-ending-corruption-is-possible-a-positive-example/
A lobby day for public banking in Philadelphia, where City Council people were eager to support the idea of keeping our public money out of the big banks and under local control, to be invested and reinvested to meet common needs. https://www.facebook.com/PhiladelphiaPublicBankCoalition/ and www.publicbankinginstitute.org
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
Well, the big news is that spring is here—a great life-giving cause for celebration. Two deaths in my wide circle of loved ones have been hard, even as they remind me of the importance of tending our connections to the living. Similarly, amidst corrosive bad news in our country and the world, I am grateful for signs of new life—the Sunrise Movement (I just signed up to stay in touch at https://actionnetwork.org/forms/join-us-112?source=direct_link&), the Green New Deal, the growing interest in public management of our common wealth. I’m reminded of a song I love to sing, The World Is Always Turning Toward the Morning.
Love,
Pamela
Crossing borders
The trauma of border crossing has been much in the news—and in our hearts—as more and more people flee war, poverty and oppression, seeking safety and opportunity across national lines. Unexpectedly, I have found my attention drawn to the less discussed issue of crossing borders the other way—from places of more rank and privilege to less.
After our trip to Uganda this winter, I was asked a question whose essence was “How could I travel as a white person to Africa and not fall into the trap of perpetuating colonialism?”
I can’t say for sure that I haven’t, but I do know some of the signs. Years ago, a group of U.S. high schools found out about the school in Northern Uganda that a dear friend of ours had founded, and jumped in to provide scholarships. In their enthusiasm, they raised lots of money—and kept needing more and more from the school to support their help. No one doubted their good intentions, and the money was certainly welcome, but their growing feeling of ownership of the school began to be perceived by folks on the ground as problematic.
We watched with dismay. Our approach seemed so different. When Abitimo asked us to do something, we just did it. When she died a couple of years ago, not only did we grieve, but we were caught off balance. What should be our relationship to the school without her at the center? Fortunately, her son, whom we had known for decades as a lovely, quiet, behind-the-scenes kind of guy, stepped up—and we started following him.
We learned that many of the school’s systems, which this other group had complained about loudly before ultimately bailing out, were, indeed, badly in need of change. Yet, rather than making our own judgments, we followed our friend. When he decided there needed to be new school leadership, we backed him to make the hard calls. We listened and supported, took dictation, joined him in meetings, kept track of the things he said he needed to do, and rejoiced in his every success.
Considering what makes such border crossings go well for everybody, love is the best medium, and relationships are critical. When I’m approaching a border, if people who belong there can say “She’s with us”, a legitimate place is made for me. This is how we found ourselves invited, at home, and able to be of real use among a group of South Sudanese refugees in northwest Uganda; a series of loving friendships opened the way.
It also helps a lot if we are okay with who we are, in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class. If our interest in border crossing is to become somebody else, to have another’s identity rub off on us, something will always be a little off balance. We end up having neither who we are nor who we want to be.
Home from Africa, I read a book describing the joys of crossing a border that few of us ever contemplate—that of species. What would it mean to set aside our human assumptions and put energy into being fully present to the life and reality of a foreign-seeming species? There are big barriers to connection, and therefore perhaps to love, but the opportunities for wonder are great, and we can always stand in open-hearted respect.
We can also learn from all the mistakes humans make with other humans—our unaware assumptions about what’s “normal”, and all the ways we cast others in the role of lesser beings, from captivity, anthropological study and voyeurism to seeing others only in their relationship to us.
Our connections with others through our shared DNA and shared home are real, regardless of the borders of nation, ethnicity or species that separate us. The rewards of such border crossing are great. Is there anything more hopeful and reassuring than finding a bond of commonality across differences that may have seemed unbridgeable? By being willing to find our way across those borders, our own lives are immeasurably enriched.
Bookends
Winter morning
east to work
rising sun catches the trees from below
bathes them in a glow
of golden pink.
West that night
thinnest sliver of a crescent moon
breaks through the clouds
for a shining moment.
A day
framed in grace.
Dare to Imagine: A New Economy is Possible!
Indigenous Cooperative
The southern state of Puebla, Mexico, is home to a network of cooperatives, Tosepan Titataniske or “United We Will Overcome”, which has been working for 40 years to build up a parallel solidarity economy among largely Nahua and Tutunaku indigenous communities. It encompasses some 35,000 members across 430 villages in 29 municipalities.
Based on the premises of democracy, fair economic participation, self-reliance, autonomy, compromise, gender equality and cooperation, it aims to provide a healthy diet and profitable businesses while employing the community members, preserving culture, and working within a sustainable framework. Activities include: the creation of an eco-friendly hotel; organic pepper, coffee and honey production; a women’s livelihood association; education in marketable skills and local sociopolitical/ethnic/environmental issues.
https://library.iated.org/view/MORALESPAREDES2014TOS https://www.localfutures.org/tosepan-resistance-and-renewal-in-mexico/
Some things that have made me hopeful recently
The youth-led Sunrise Movement that is changing the conversation in the US on climate change (and I know and love some of them).
https://www.sunrisemovement.org/
A California federal judge who ruled to eliminate cash bail for those who are awaiting arraignment in San Francisco, finding that it is an unconstitutional "get out of jail" card for those who can afford it.
https://www.courttrax.com/cash-bail-system-ended-in-san-francisco-by-federal-judge/
The governor of a county in Kenya who refused to participate in the usual corruption, despite extreme pressure, and was able to use the unlooted funds to benefit the community.
http://davidzarembka.com/2019/02/28/541-ending-corruption-is-possible-a-positive-example/
A lobby day for public banking in Philadelphia, where City Council people were eager to support the idea of keeping our public money out of the big banks and under local control, to be invested and reinvested to meet common needs. https://www.facebook.com/PhiladelphiaPublicBankCoalition/ and www.publicbankinginstitute.org
Resources
Money, Debt and Liberation
A video of a talk I gave at Pendle Hill in January, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nP8eJ5vy8
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
A book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.
The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth. However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy. This book:
• offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
• frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
• suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
• invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness? Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?
To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.
More resources
www.findingsteadyground.org
Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide. http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide
Posts on other web/blog sites:
In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.
http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust
http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby
Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years: https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)
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