#210 Coarse and smooth

 Dear all,

What a time we’ve been through! Now that the inauguration is behind us, we’re no longer waiting to exhale, and are breathing some better air, I’m looking forward to being able to turn our attention to other things. But I think it might still be too early. So I’m going to wait till next month to share some thinking about settler relationships with indigenous experience, and go with a brief reflection on the transition we are currently in.

I’m continuing to love being out in the mornings when darkness turns to light, and am thankful for all the points of goodness, hope and connection that are there to be found when I put my attention in their direction.

Love,

Pamela

Coarse and smooth

With a new administration, many of us are feeling great relief in the break from unrelenting coarseness and constant abrasion in our public discourse. Yet I can’t help but reflect on the reality that many others among us actually found this tone attractive. As I wondered what there could be to love about coarseness, I began to consider that its opposite—smooth—can be problematic as well.

Think of those slick politicians whose oily speeches cover real issues with a slippery coat of fine-sounding words that leaves no place to get a grip. Or think of the smooth surface of a carefully crafted, but ultimately false, pseudo-reality that provides its inhabitants with no way to see, much less challenge, its lies. Or just think of an icy sidewalk, the ultimate in smoothness, and how good it would be to have a little grit beneath your feet.

As someone who has done my share of wood repair, I know that sometimes you need to first abrade the surfaces you want to join before applying the glue. Two smooth surfaces cannot easily come together in a strong bond. Those little wood fibers need to be sticking out, to give the glue something to hold onto.

Now make no mistake. I am thrilled to be free from the unrelenting coarseness that was the hallmark of our last president. The continual abrasion was painful, like having one’s elbows and knees freshly scraped each day, constantly raw and unprotected. I rest deeply in a new tone of civility and kindness. And I have a great respect for the power of courtesy in helping the complex mechanisms of social interaction to function smoothly. Yet I’m not prepared to give up on grit, or on the people who would choose it over smoothness.

What would it mean for all of us who are feeling such relief on the departure of Trump to commit with equal intensity to cutting through nice words to expose painful truths, to challenge a smoothness that chooses comfort over justice, to willingly follow anger to its source? Maybe there’s something to be learned about the abrasion of the sandpaper as well as the smoothness of the glue that together create the conditions for a stronger mend. 





Community service
 
When COVID came
the only reading source nearby
was the tiny free library box
at the corner of the park.

Our house was stuffed with books
we’d never read again
so every morning on my walk
I took three or four to share
all through the spring.

I loved to see them gone,
knowing they’d been chosen,
adding value to a stranger’s life.

By June I finish culling every shelf,
begin to look for free books on my walks,
to save them from the rain 

and from the trash, for higher use.

All fall I bring my little offering
each early morning, straighten shelves
notice what has come in
what has gone.

Then one day, deep in winter,
I see a woman stop, consider
choose a book, walk on—
a human face to this need I have served
for all these months.


 

Dare to imagine: a new economy is possible!

Battery recycling

With the demand for batteries soaring, especially in the growing electric car market, and more than 500,000 tons of lithium batteries being tossed worldwide, we need a “circular” system that builds the next generation of batteries from the materials of the last.

Start-up, Redwood Materials, currently handles all the waste materials and defective batteries coming out of the nearby Tesla Gigafactory, using proprietary processes involving a combination of burning batteries to melt their contents and submerging them in liquids that leach out desired elements, recovering 95% to 98% of the nickel, cobalt, aluminum, graphite, and more than 80% of the lithium. Much of those materials are sold back to make new Tesla batteries.

Another start-up, Li-Cycle, collects batteries at local “spoke” facilities, which shred them into three components: plastic casings, mixed metals (such as foils), and the active materials like cobalt and nickel at the battery’s heart — a dark dust known as “black mass.” Li-Cycle can sell these materials directly or ship the black mass to a central “hub” factory and immerse it in liquids in a process that extracts the metals, including lithium, at 90% to 95% efficiency.  

A more efficient route may be to recycle batteries at a level of renovation rather than demolition, salvaging their larger molecular structure as opposed to their atoms. In the case of lithium-ion batteries, this means replacing the lithium, a little bit of which gets stuck to the battery’s molecular scaffolding during every charge and discharge until the battery runs out of freely flowing lithium. OnTo Technology, a battery research firm, has disassembled recalled Apple batteries, and soaked their active materials in a lithium-rich bath to restore them to pristine condition, with the final product marking the first full fuel cell re-assembled from an industrial source.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/12/amazon-panasonic-preparing-for-demand-of-battery-recycling.html

Some things that have made me hopeful recently. (This month I find myself thinking of groups, rather than events)

The Public Banking Institute is the umbrella under which a remarkable movement is taking place, for reclaiming our public resources from private profit-maximizing financial institutions back to public use for public good.

https://www.publicbankinginstitute.org/

Friends Peace Teams, Asia West Pacific, supports peace workers in areas of conflict and suffering, seeking to restore and nurture peace, share stories of nonviolence, healing and reconciliation, discover our common humanity and celebrate our rich cultural diversity.
https://friendspeaceteams.org/awp/

Ekta Parishad, a mass-based Gandhian peoples' movement for land rights in India, with an active membership of 250,000 landless poor, promotes nonviolence as a way for the struggle, dialogue, and constructive actions towards building a peaceful and just society.

https://www.ektaparishadindia.org/oursuccess

Germantown Residents for Economic Alternatives Together (GREAT), a grassroots and visionary group of neighbors in Philadelphia sharing common interest in working toward cooperative ownership, resource/skill-sharing, and active citizenship where people of the community shape the development that occurs. 
https://www.greatgtown.org/

 

Resources 

Finding Steady Ground
If you need reminding of some simple ways to stay grounded in challenging times, I recommend this website, which I helped a friend develop following the last presidential election. 
www.findingsteadyground.com   

Other resources 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  
Climate Resistance Handbook, or I was part of a climate action. Now what? https://commonslibrary.org/climate-resistance-handbook-or-i-was-part-of-a-climate-action-now-what/
Leading Groups On-Line. https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/leading-groups-online-book/ 

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

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:  New link: https://www.peaceworkersus.org/docs/muscle_building_for_peace_and_justice.pdf (or just google the title)

#202 The gift

Dear all,

What a world we live in! It’s a challenge to stay grounded as great waves of change sweep in and engulf us. I’ve struggled to find my footing in this newest wave, the national uprising around racism and policing. I’m not content with making statements, but not prepared to risk infection by joining protests in the streets. It’s been good to take the time to learn about the history of police systems, and humbling to acknowledge that I’d never done so before (check out mpd150.com). I realize that what I most want for white people is to tend to ourselves and our relationships in the light of racism—to feel the heartbreak, dare to make mistakes, decide to stay. When we have practiced going through that fire, we’ll have so much more to offer the world around us. And so I come to realize that the piece I decided not to share in March, just as we had been knocked off our feet by the wave of COVID, may be my best offering as we work to ground ourselves in this next great wave.

Love,
Pamela




The gift

Building on dual passions, for urban agriculture and for connections across barriers that divide us, I joined the board of a local urban farming project years ago. The farm, then a white-led initiative in a black neighborhood, was full of everything that is right and everything that is wrong in our society. It has been a rich and wonderful experience, and nothing about it has been easy.

As we struggled with the problems of any small non-profit, with scarcity on all fronts, we also found ourselves dealing with gut-wrenching staff issues centered around gender and race, all within the context of an unfulfilled vision of local leadership, and ever-present second-guessing about the appropriateness of white people like me being involved at all.

I had to look hard at the ugliness of racism as it affected all of us in so many ways. Several years in, I found myself leading the board because no one else would do it, and we all knew I could. I felt the weight of the farm’s survival heavy on my shoulders as I tried to nurture new board members and staff of color, follow the leadership that was there, and hold everything together in the face of unrelenting challenges.

Our commitment to grounding the farm back in its neighborhood led to a shared decision a few years ago to not make a new administrative hire till we could hire locally, which led to more work for our one farmer, greater burden on the few remaining board members, and an increasingly stressed context for both program work and fundraising.

We’ve done amazingly well under the circumstances, made good decisions, survived. The potential remains enormous and I’ve never regretted the choice to put so much time and energy into nurturing this jewel of an urban farm. I’ve loved being around all the people who love it, and have known that it was a gift in my life. One fellow board member, who clearly values me but just doesn’t reassure or comfort my whiteness, has shown a light on parts of me that might otherwise have gone unexamined. Life just would have been so much more comfortable if I’d looked away and settled for smaller challenges!

Months ago there was a turnaround—with new local board members of color, some very successful grant-writing, and a vision on the part of this friend, now our board leader. to transform to a cooperative model based in the black farmers movement. That first newly-expanded and energized board meeting brought more unexpected emotional work for me. Now, rather than feeling overwhelmed by just trying to keep the farm afloat, I was overwhelmed by feelings that I was no longer needed—clearly the wrong color, in the wrong place.

I fought my way, slowly and painfully, to the perspective that it’s not my job to act preemptively on the assumption that I’m not welcome, even if I’m white, even if it would feel easier to give up and disappear. It’s not mine to make assumptions about how others perceive me. That’s their job. My job is to keep showing up as fully as I know how, despite my feelings, and to let others take the lead in evaluating my contribution and working out the racial composition of the board going forward. At some point, everything I’m doing now may well be adequately and more appropriately done by others, but I can still be fully present till then. I can continue to treasure the relationships that have been built through struggle over the years. I can even make new ones.

In the midst of all this hard work—emotional and otherwise—I had the opportunity to support a young climate activist friend. His vision, commitment and initiative had put him in the center of the national climate movement, with all its contentious issues around turf, leadership, and direction, and with opportunities to make race-related mistakes at every turn. He was engaged in a delicate racially-charged alliance-building project and glad for the opportunity to get some attention.

What became abundantly clear was that living through the challenges in my own little corner of the world had set me up to understand experientially the challenges he was dealing with. By bringing my own hard-won experience to the table, knowing in my bones something of what he was going through, he could rest in feeling seen and understood. He could use the space I was able to offer to look at his hardest feelings, regain perspective and think freshly about next steps. As I stretched to bring everything I had to support this man I loved, doing work that mattered deeply to me, I was thankful beyond words for the gifts I had been given by the farm.





Slipping the leash
Good human.
Stay inside.
Walk with a mask.
Don’t consort with strangers
(or anyone else).
Do your work safely.
Wash your hands.
Follow the rules.

Life can be good
indoors and on a leash.
Pleasures can be sniffed out.
There can be rewards.

But, oh to run free!

Escape far into the woods.
Leave life on a leash
far behind.
Take in deep and fearless breaths
Cavort, play, run, explore
in exquisite freedom.

Till the time comes
to return
and submit once more
to the leash.  





Dare to imagine:  Another economy is possible!

Many worker cooperatives around the world are responding to the pandemic by producing personal protective equipment. In Spain, a cooperative of the Mondragón group is adapting its production to manufacture 60 million masks over a six-month period. On a smaller scale, members of the largely-female worker coop Ipiranga in Brazil, the Tejiendo Paz Cooperative in Colombia, Cooperative Home Care Associates sewing coop in the US, twelve Italian coops, 17 Bulgarian worker coops employing people with disabilities, the French worker cooperative SCOP TI, the Polish Social Cooperative “Centrum Aktywizacji Zawodowej” which reintegrates people with disabilities in the job market, and the Druchema coop in the Union of Czech Production cooperatives have all adapted their production to personal protective equipment and disinfectant products.

https://www.cicopa.coop/news/covid19-how-cooperatives-in-industry-and-services-are-responding-to-the-crisis/





Some things that have made me hopeful recently:

All the courage, civic-mindedness and commitment to justice that has been evident over the last couple of weeks, among so many people all across our country.

The decision by the Minneapolis City Council to switch to investing in proven community-led public safety rather than traditional policing models.
https://theappeal.org/minneapolis-city-council-members-announce-intent-to-disband-the-police-department-invest-in-proven-community-led-public-safety/

The success of a three-year campaign to stop a major fracked gas pipeline in New York City has been stopped for good thanks to a 3-year Stop Williams Pipeline campaign, sending a signal across the U.S. that we don’t need more fossil fuel infrastructure.
https://350.org/williamspipelinevictory/?akid=121761.1048214.Pogdjn&rd=1&t=6

A federal judge’s ruling against the Bureau of Land Management’s recent approval of oil and gas leases across staggering swaths of Montana’s public lands, a victory that protects local groundwater and the climate for Montana landowners, farmers, and conservation groups.
https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2020/news-rural-landowners-farmers-and-conservation-groups-celebrate-court-victory-halting-risky-oil-and-gas-giveaway

Resources

Finding Steady Ground
If you need reminding of some simple ways to stay grounded in challenging times, I recommend this website, which I helped a friend develop following the last presidential election.
www.findingsteadyground.com 

Other resources 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 
Climate Resistance Handbook, or I was part of a climate action. Now what? https://commonslibrary.org/climate-resistance-handbook-or-i-was-part-of-a-climate-action-now-what/
Leading Groups On-Line. https://www.trainingforchange.org/training_tools/leading-groups-online-book/

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

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:  New link: https://www.peaceworkersus.org/docs/muscle_building_for_peace_and_justice.pdf (or just google the title)

#198 Right to repair

Dear all,

My big news is that I’ve cut down my hours at work—a just-right-sized step toward retirement—and am feeling the spaciousness of time. So far it’s been easily filled by  long-delayed visits with friends, time with a grandson I've seen too rarely this year, and relaxed, connected social change work. I’m heartened by developments in the public banking campaign, glad to offer emotional support to organizers in the youth climate movement, Sunrise, and helping my congregation be more active in the movement to end cash bail.

Once again we celebrated Valentines Day by sending a love/news-letter to our widespread community, and receiving a shower of love-notes in return. If you didn’t get a copy and would like one, just let me know.

Love,
Pamela





Right to repair

Last fall the European Union passed groundbreaking new “right to repair” legislation. Major appliances must now be produced to be repairable and recyclable. What a concept!  But there’s more. As of last spring around twenty states in the US had considered right-to-repair bills to protect consumers’ ability to fix their electronic property—whether through parts, software, independent repair shops or skilled friends. The goal is to break the grip that companies have on unnecessarily expensive repairs, that are tipping us toward dumping the old one—whether washer or cell phone—in the landfill and buying a new one instead. What a sea change it would be to claim our right to repair!

I know what it’s like to make a good repair and extending the life of something that has value through my time and skill. Sometimes it’s as simple as sewing back a button on a shirt or a favorite pair of jeans. Stitching up a seam to make a beloved stuffed animal that is losing its stuffing as good as new can take just a few minutes, but bring joy to a child. We found an old chest on the street—wobbly and falling apart in many ways—but glue and clamps were really all that were needed to make it a lovely and desirable piece of furniture again. Our grandchildren are entranced by the possibility and the process of fixing broken toys. They are clear about the joy and power of repair.

I know what it is like to find a good repair person who can pick up where my skills let off. I place great value on these relationships, and am never quite comfortable with a new appliance till I find someone who can keep it going. It was a pleasure to visit with and get to know the man who was so good with our washer, dryer and stove, resting in the knowledge that I was in the very best of hands. I’ll never forget the sewing machine repair man who once sent home not only my repaired machine, but another one that he had on hand and thought I could use! I have a deep respect for their skills, and my life is better for knowing them.

I also know the frustration of being unable to make a repair. Those crappy plastic toys that came into our house when the children were small, and broke soon thereafter used to drive me crazy. (I’m sure the manufacturers count on adults preferring to buy new ones than having to handle the big upsets of small children!) But it’s not just children’s toys. Last fall my computer’s battery failed. Even our tech-savvy friend was unable to install a new one. The computer was more than a couple of years old, and intended for obsolescence; making people buy new ones is so much better for the company’s bottom line.

What would it mean to have a right to repair?  We could call on manufacturers to have the integrity to produce with the sustainability of products and the planet in mind. This would not only cut down waste, extend product life, and support a cadre of skilled repair people, but reorient our whole culture to one of valuing what we have rather than focusing always on the next new thing.

Maybe it would invite us to think even more broadly about repair. Just as those who are already skilled in repair take pride in their craft, maybe we could become a whole culture of repairers.  What if we believed that we could build the skills to repair other things that are broken—broken relationships, broken communities, broken economic systems?

Of course, some things should never be produced in the first place, and some are simply beyond repair. But maybe if we set our sights higher than just getting better at recycling plastic bottles, we can expand the categories of things we don’t throw away—to include phones, washers, computers, small towns, marginalized people. To repair assumes agency and power. What if we claimed it as a human right?





Misinformation

The automated voice on the el
Is seriously off track.
As we travel east
below the city center
stopping at 15th, 11th, 8th
she announces neighborhood stations
heading west:
Huntingdon, Dauphin, Berks, Girard.

We have to shut that voice out
focus on what we see and what we know
trust ourselves to find our way.

It’s disorienting to exist
within a narrative so false
spoken with such authority.
At least here, on the subway
we’re a savvy bunch.
We don’t get fooled.






Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Municipalization of private ownership

(Re)municipalization is redefining public ownership in the 21st century, offering a new route towards community-led, climate conscious and gender-sensitive public services. With more than 1,400 successful (re)municipalization cases, involving over 2,400 cities in 58 countries, resistance to privatization has turned into a powerful force for change:

Philippine cities Binalonan, Caloocan and Lanuza are recentering their public services to prioritize the needs of the most marginalized people in society. Other cities, such as Paris, Terrassa and Wolfhagen, are sharing decision-making powers and opening up ownership models to representatives of users, workers, civil society and research institutions.

(Re)emunicipalization efforts go beyond the most common sectors of water and energy, to include waste management in some countries in Africa, the many new public pharmacies in Chile, and the call of the UK Labour Party to provide public internet access as a human right.

https://www.tni.org/en/publication/the-future-is-public




Some things (among many!) that have made me hopeful recently:

The Saugeen Ojibway Nation’s decision to forego $150 million to prevent a nuclear waste facility from being built on the shores of Lake Huron.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/04/saugeen-ojibway-nation-has-saved-lake-huron-from-a-nuclear-waste-dump/

Twenty-four cities in Turkey, representing 25% of the population, announcing a “Cities for Climate Action” declaration; and also in Turkey, a Living Soil, Local Seed initiative that provides livelihoods for Turkish women and Syrian refugees, while also working toward climate-proof local agriculture.
https://350.org/press-release/24-turkish-local-authorities-say-we-are-in-on-the-paris-climate-agreement/?akid=109855.1048214.j88VgK&rd=1&t=5
https://truthout.org/articles/this-turkish-chef-is-fighting-climate-change-with-the-help-of-syrian-refugees/

A second decision by a federal judge ruling in favor of faith-based volunteers who were prosecuted for providing aid to migrants traveling through the dangerous Arizona desert.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/04/rejecting-profoundly-disturbing-logic-criminalizes-empathy-judge-reverses?cd-origin=rss&utm

Put People First-PA, a group of Pennsylvanians from rural, small town and urban areas who bring people together to find solutions to the problems we all face—in the school system, in the workplace, or in the effort to make ends meet.
https://www.putpeoplefirstpa.org/who-we-are/






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:  New link: https://www.peaceworkersus.org/docs/muscle_building_for_peace_and_justice.pdf (or just google the title)

#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)

#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)

#178 On bail

Dear all,

At a workshop I went to in May, I got a clearer picture of the relationship between looking squarely at our earliest childhood defeats—which often involved settling for disconnection—and reclaiming our ability to act on our full power in the present. I’m excited about moving forward with a vision that more is possible.

And I had a lovely conversation with our five-year-old grandson the other day about what makes a family and how you can decide that people are part of your family. I give thanks for family that has extended beyond biology—through our neighborhood to other parts of the country and across the ocean.  There’s more potential for loss of course, but overall, what a blessing!

Love,
Pamela





On bail

As one small step in the long journey to end mass incarceration, several of us ventured through a metal detector and down a flight of stairs to the small basement room in our city where bail hearings take place. There we found the court players separated by a glass wall from a few benches for observers. Each of them works with a long computer list of names, with access to the nature of the charges. There are tall stacks of thick reports as well. People who have been arrested appear via a video screen from where they are being held at different police districts around the city.

Many of the individual hearings take less than a minute. The bail commissioner, or magistrate, verifies the person’s name, reads the charges, lets them know their court date and warns that if they don’t show up a warrant will be issued for their arrest. Then comes the question of bail. Sometimes this is done with minimal consultation. With a simple DUI or drug possession case, the person is often now released on their own recognizance—signing for bail without having to pay anything.  Sometimes the commissioner wants more information and enquires about previous arrests or detainers (requests that a person be held in relation to another charge). Sometimes it’s more complex. The DA’s representative suggests a bail amount, the Public Defender counters. The commissioner may ask for their reasoning. Then s/he decides, announces the amount of the bail, and the next person in line is brought in.

We learned from a fellow observer at the second session that the hearings are held every four hours, 24 hours a day, with different court personnel rotating in and out. With such a steep learning curve, all we could do at first was try to follow along. By the end of the afternoon, however, we had gotten our bearings and could start to reflect on the nature of what we were witnessing.

Everyone was focused on “just the facts”, as the conveyor belt on their assembly-line job brought an endless stream of human misery—oppression, straitened circumstances, addiction, poor judgment. The one sign of shared humanity we witnessed was with a veteran charged with DUI and damage of another vehicle. The commissioner probed to learn that he had served in Afghanistan, made a point of telling him about court programs for veterans, and thanked him for his service. 

It was hard to watch people attempting to dispense justice in the midst of such an unjust system. There was no uniform treatment here. The commissioner and DA’s rep in the second session were both much more punitive than those in the first. At one point, the latter recommended a bail of $300,000! That the commissioner came down to $50,000 was probably of scant comfort to the guy on the screen. The $5000 required up front was clearly beyond his reach or the reach of anybody else we saw that day. Even the challenge of finding $500 for bail of $5000 would keep most of these folks in jail or send them straight to the bail bondsmen and their extortionate rates.

Did any of the thirty or forty people we observed need to be behind bars before their arraignment? Maybe the guy who had missed 23 of his last 26 court appearances.  Possibly the two who had threatened family members. If so, then why not just say that those few are too much of a danger to society, rather than using a bail system that punishes the poor and lets the rich buy their way out? In the bigger picture, the people who are seriously endangering us and eroding the quality of life in our country have fat wallets, work in high places and would never be caught by this system.

I carry the weight of what we witnessed with me. How can those of us who have some protection from this part of our penal system (I hesitate to call it criminal justice) take in its enormity?  How can we face squarely the incredible injustice and pain that permeate it, and acknowledge how we have acquiesced to its existence? In a situation where silence implies consent, what needs to happen for us to speak out?






Scorning fear

The shirt in the pricey store window
was designed to jar the eye.

Did its creator feel a flutter of fear
in making that bold choice?
Was it sweet to scorn the fear
and forge ahead?

We need our courage.
If only it could be harnessed
to a higher good
than fashion.






Imagine: A new economy is possible!
Carbon neutral steel production

Producing one ton of steel generates 600 kg of other materials – including carbon, slag, dust, sludge, heat and gases. ArcelorMittal Tubarão, a Brazilian steel plant is now leading the industry in selling and reusing internally around 90% of what was previously categorized as waste. 

Both new production and recycling of used steel requires significant energy. The use of charcoal in steel production is common practice in Brazil. However, badly managed timber extraction can rapidly increase the rate of deforestation, with its many damaging environmental impacts. ArcelorMittal BioFlorestas has been cultivating renewable eucalyptus forests, rebuilding soils, and improving the overall health of the ecosystem, while using the charcoal to create ‘carbon neutral steel’; the carbon sequestration during the growth of the forest matches or even exceeds the carbon released during combustion for the steel production process.

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/case-studies/new-entry






Some things that have made me hopeful recently:


The European Union’s agreement on a total ban on bee-harming pesticides
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/eu-agrees-total-ban-on-bee-harming-pesticides

American Samoa’s success in finally getting their own full-service bank — and renewing energy for public banking in the United States.
https://www.americanbanker.com/news/american-samoa-finally-gets-a-public-bank-and-us-states-are-watching

New Zealand’s ban on all new offshore oil exploration as part of a 'carbon-neutral future'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/12/new-zealand-bans-all-new-offshore-oil-exploration-as-part-of-carbon-neutral-future
and New Jersey’s ban on offshore drilling.
http://observer.com/2018/04/phil-murphy-signs-bill-banning-offshore-drilling-new-jersey/

An indigenous town in Mexico that banned outside politicians, so they could address their own issues in their own ways.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/mexico-indigenous-town-banned-politicians-cheran 






Resources

Money and Soul
A transcript of a keynote address I delivered at a Quaker conference in New Mexico, June 2017
https://westernfriend.org/media/money-and-soul-unabridged


Toward a Right Relationship with Finance 
Check out this new book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.

The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth.  However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy.  This book:
    • offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
    • frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
    • suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
    • invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness?  Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?

To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.



More resources

www.findingsteadyground.org

Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide.  http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide 

Posts on other web/blog sites:

In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.

            http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust

        http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby

Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years:  https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)

faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)

www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.  NOTE THE NEW URL.

#176 Town Hall

Dear all,

Well, I finally got rid of my two-month cough, which turned out to be pneumonia (again!).  What a pleasure to feel healthy!  A sweet moment was when my colleagues at our big two-day annual work conference sent me home to bed in no uncertain terms.  I keep learning more about noticing and taking in the love and help that is available around me.

Some of you contributed to the project of a young man I know in Northern Uganda who was raising money to make a documentary on the environmental impact of charcoal-burning.  His 16-minute video is now available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPz2g18DLxU&feature=youtu.be

On the eve of the first day of spring arrives, a winter storm is headed our way.  Yet we know that spring will prevail.

Love,
Pamela





Town hall

When we arrived at the neighborhood rec center for the town hall   More and more chairs were brought in to accommodate the growing crowd, and still people were left standing.  Clearly the topic of cash bail hits a nerve in this neighborhood.

The town meeting was hosted by two progressive-minded city  They had invited our new District Attorney, the head of the Defenders Association, a Mayor’s representative on criminal justice reform, and representatives of several community organizations that are working to end cash bail.

The feisty determination of both the new DA and the Public Defender to change the system was heartening.  I kept being surprised at how neither of them (a white man and a black woman) sounded like politicians or bureaucrats; it was more like they were zealots on a common mission.

The crowd was certainly with them, ready to be led and ready to pull them ahead even faster and farther.  It was this crowd—and my part in it—that really caught my attention.  I’m still puzzling over how I could have remained so deeply ignorant of the impact of this issue for so long.  I remember disagreeing with the policies of an earlier DA with a reputation for being “tough on crime”, but now I was hearing from a mother in the row directly behind us about her son who was locked up at age 15 by this DA many years ago and has been in jail ever since.  She is my neighbor.  How could I be so insulated from her pain?

In this room, only a mile from home, I was finally experiencing the raw reality of the weight of mass incarceration in my community.  It was the difference between having information about wrongs and being witness to them.  Three mothers spoke, clearly in a never-ending and passionate quest for justice for their sons.  How had I failed to be under the weight of this injustice, failed to take into my heart how families are still being ripped apart by a system that started with slavery and morphed almost seamlessly into mass incarceration?

I remember the shock of learning several years ago how towns like Ferguson, Missouri fill their coffers by extorting traffic fines from their minority neighborhoods.  I am embarrassed that I have only recently educated myself on cash bail—a system where the innocent poor can languish in jail for months waiting for trial while the guilty rich simply buy their freedom.  But this evening we learned together about another layer of injustice; we learned that 30% of all posted bail is kept by the city—whether the person is taken to trial, proved innocent or not.

I was present as the reality of this outrage took shape and gained weight before our eyes: the meager resources of those who have the least are being pillaged to support the system that oppresses them.

We didn’t know.  Even the City Councilman, a guy who said he might have ended up in jail himself if somebody hadn’t offered him another path, didn’t know.  How could we not know these things?  What forces have allowed us to accept such a system as inevitable?  Are those who have been victimized by it too inured to oppression and injustice to speak up?  Are those who haven’t been personally touched by its horrors too buffered from inconvenient truths, or too invested in not knowing?

Learning and knowing hard things can be painful.  But we don’t have to learn or know them, or act on what we have learned, alone.  And choosing to not know is way worse.  The opportunity to be with my neighbors as we looked squarely at this system together, and united in an intention to change it, was a gift.





Welcome and farewell


Welcome the tiny crocuses
new sprouts of green
astonishing warmth of sun
on my cheek.

Farewell the clear line
of tree branches
against the sky.

Love of what is
giving way to
love of what is to come.





Imagine:  A New Economy is Possible!
Reclaiming Public Services

Cities and towns that want well-run water and sanitation services, low-cost access to the internet, and affordable housing should keep those operations public or run by local nonprofits, or “re-municipalize” them if necessary, a new report from the Netherlands has found.


Based on research involving 1,600 cities in 45 countries that have chosen public ownership over corporate ownership, especially of their energy and water systems, “(re)municipalisations generally succeeded in bringing down costs and tariffs, improving conditions for workers and boosting service quality, while ensuring greater transparency and accountability”.  Both Hamburg, Germany, and Boulder, Colorado, for example, are making their electric power enterprises public in order to shift to green and renewable energy sources.

https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/reclaiming_public_services.pdf





Some things that have made me hopeful recently

The declaration of Colombia’s Constitutional Court that the Atrato River basin possesses rights to “protection, conservation, maintenance, and restoration”, challenging the assumption that nature is “property” that is right-less under the law (as has been the case with women and enslaved people).
https://celdf.org/2017/05/press-release-colombia-constitutional-court-finds-atrato-river-possesses-rights/?utm_source=Press%20Release&utm_medium=PowerMail&utm_campaign=PR

The growing interest (among former debt collectors and TV personalities) in buying up people’s medical debt at pennies on the dollar, in order to forgive it.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/tv-stations-follow-john-olivers-lead-in-the-movement-to-forgive-medical-debt-20180301

The energy in my city, from the grassroots to the District Attorney and chief Public Defender to members of City Council and the Mayor for addressing the terrible injustices in our court and prison system.
http://www.philly.com/archive/samantha_melamed/krasner-cash-bail-philadelphia-reform-district-attorney-20180319.html

The new movies, Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time, which offer widely accessible and impactful corrections to deeply-held and damaging stereotypes about black people and women.





Resources

Money and Soul
A transcript of a keynote address I delivered at a Quaker conference in New Mexico, June 2017
https://westernfriend.org/media/money-and-soul-unabridged


Toward a Right Relationship with Finance 
Check out this new book that I co-authored on Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.

The growth economy is failing to provide equitable well-being for humanity and a life-sustaining future for Earth.  However our institutional endowments and individual retirement are dependent on that same growth economy.  This book:
    • offers background on our current economic system--how it is based on unearned income on the one hand and debt on the other, with a built-in momentum toward economy inequality and ecological overshoot;
    • frames the conversation within the context of our deepest values and beliefs;
    • suggests plausible and historically grounded alternatives to the current system, particularly with regard to financing retirement; and
    • invites everyone to imagine new forms of durable economic and social security, and to help create the relationships and institutions that will make them a reality.
With many people now counting as never before on the performance of Wall Street for retirement security, how can this system be challenged with integrity and effectiveness?  Can we break with our dependence on financial speculation and build up new structures of security in a transformed, life-centered economy?

To order the book, or read it on line, go to http://www.quakerinstitute.org/?page_id=5 and scroll down.



More resources

www.findingsteadyground.org

Resource from my friend Daniel Hunter, Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow; An Organizing Guide.  http://www.danielhunter.org/books/building-movement-end-new-jim-crow-organizing-guide 

Recent posts on other web/blog sites:

In http://www.classism.org/gifts-american-dream/, Pamela Haines locates her family's homey DIY celebrations on a class spectrum of different connections to upward mobility.

            http://www.transitionus.org/blog/unlikely-suspects-–-deep-outreach-diverse-initiating-groups-–-pace-building-trust

        http://www.classism.org/demolition-derby

Muscle Building for Peace and Justice; a Non-Violent Workout Routine for the 21st Century--an integration of much of my experience and thinking over the years:  https://www.trainingforchange.org/publications/muscle-building-peace-and-justice-nonviolent-workout-routine-21st-century (or just google the title)

faitheconomyecology.wordpress.com, a website that I've contributed to often (check the archives)

www.ourchildrenourselves.com, a home for all the parenting writing I've done over the past 20 years.  NOTE THE NEW URL.