#221 Our story

 Dear all,

Chuck and I are finding our way as we finish the second week of chemo and radiation—doing well and very thankful for the circle of love and care that surrounds us. It's a blessing to still have space for other parts of my life—a rich and heartwarming Thanksgiving with my siblings, being part of a City Council hearing where public banking legislation was voted out of committee with unanimous backing (!), hauling leaves to mulch the big front flower bed at the community garden, making gifts with grandchildren—all the while soaking up the goodness of relationships.

I’m not sure that my reflection below is done, but I think I’ll share it in this form rather than wait for perfection. And I look forward to taking in the moon, which I know is shining and full even though it’s currently covered by clouds.

Love,
Pamela



Our story

At a training on race and equity at work, a lovely and thoughtful woman walked us through our country’s history of imperialism, colonialism and racism and the devastating impact that origin story continues to have on our lives today. In one small group we were invited to consider our responses to that history and reflect on what our country’s story is in the present. She closed with a provocative question. Can we recover from that damage? If so, how? If not, why not?

I’ve been pondering her questions. What is our story today? Of course we know the founding narrative, taught to schoolchildren generation after generation down through the years. We are the birthplace of freedom. We are a land of sturdy colonists, intrepid pioneers, fierce defenders of liberty—a melting pot that offers opportunity for all. A strong, coherent and compelling story, it has been a durable source of pride for many of us.

Yet here we are in the present, increasingly unable to ignore the unstable foundations on which it was built, or all of its structural weaknesses. Some of us are ready to just throw the whole thing out in horror and disgust. How can a story that was built on the wholesale dehumanization of black and indigenous people have a place in any mind or heart with a scrap of moral fiber? Others are clinging to this origin story fiercely, holding out for the ideals, willing it to be true ever more desperately as the weaknesses are exposed, shoring it up with intense loyalty and anger at those who would do the exposing.

Our conflict over this story is driving us apart. Those who have grown rich off the American Dream and want to hang onto its benefits, along with others who identify with those sturdy (mostly white male) settlers and still have some hope of benefiting, tend to inhabit one side. Those who never felt included in this dream or were explicitly excluded from it, along with others with the space or inclination to question or a desire to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, inhabit the other. If we would tell a new story going forward, what would it be?

My mind goes to our own family stories—many of which diverged significantly from our lived reality. My parents were from white first-generation college-educated families who had been in this country for a long time. Their story was of hardworking and upstanding citizens, with values better than most, raising a good and happy family. There is much about this story that is true. My parents certainly believed deeply in those ideals. They worked hard. They loved us. And yet all was not well. Unspoken conflicts simmered. Issues of domination played out, and we breathed in the oppressive messages that were in the air. Their judgment of others was harsh, and their need for us to be happy was a burden to carry. I wonder if any of us escaped that misalignment between story and lived reality.

What do we do with our broken family stories—and our broken families? We dare to face what really happened, even if it means digging through layers and years of denial. We work to heal what can be healed, and make right what can be made right. We love, staying connected to, or working to retrieve, that which is solid and good. We grieve that which is lost. And we reach to understand and forgive those whose struggles amidst scarcity and misinformation caused harm.

Could this be a model for a new story for our country? Flawed and misinformed people doing damaging things that left lasting scars, even as they held to big ideals and love as deeply as they were able? We can’t call people from the past to account for the things they did. We can be clear about what was wrong and put our feet on a different path, even as we strive for some kind of understanding of the context in which they did those things. Perhaps our country’s story going forward is that of a people with a fractured and blood-stained past, with ideals not yet fully realized but still worth striving for, trying to find our way together toward repair, healing, and ever greater integrity.





At ease

The chrysanthemums you buy in pots
call out their magnificence—
great masses of bold color
each stem and flower trained
to play its role in that one glorious whole.
They stand at attention, in formation,
aim to please—until they dry up and are done.

The mums in our front garden
bloom luxuriantly year after year.
They claim the space that other flowers,
less hardy, have abandoned to the cold.
At ease, they spread and stretch
in softer loveliness, relaxed, at home
inviting all the neighbors in.


 

 
Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Buy Nothing

The Buy Nothing Project is a social movement that has over 6,500 groups worldwide. It's a network of hyper-local gift economies where neighbors can come together and share pretty much everything with each other, from a cup of sugar to corner sofas, without exchanging money. Founded in 2013 by two friends in Bainbridge Island, Washington, current numbers indicate 4.25 million participants in 44 countries. The purpose of the group is to be able to give and receive things for free among neighbors ("Give Where You Live” is the founding principle). It helps not only with decluttering and finding things you need, but also with recycling and community building.
https://www.today.com/tmrw/how-buy-nothing-project-taught-me-rethink-how-i-shop-t228063

Some things that have made me hopeful recently:

Indian farmers, who have scored a big win after a year-long strike, forcing the prime minister to roll back laws that threatened to corporatize agriculture and threaten the food security of more than 800 million people.
https://inequality.org/research/indian-farmers-victory/?

A young man from Sierra Leone who has developed a simple technology to create electricity from the impact of pedestrians’ feet and cars on local roads.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210713-how-pedestrians-are-lighting-homes-in-sierra-leone

A landmark decision from Ecuador’s high court that affirms constitutional protections for the rights of nature.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03122021/ecuador-rights-of-nature/?

How growing crops under solar panels proves to be advantageous for both harvests and energy production.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/agrivoltaics-of-solar-power-and-farming-are-a-big-success-on-this-boulder-farm/?    

 

Resources

Alive in this World
A book of poetry in three parts: A Home with the Trees, Commuter Encounters, and A Home with the Earth

https://bookshop.org/books/alive-in-this-world/9789768273260

That Clear and Certain Sound; Finding Solid Ground in Perilous Times

A book of essays from this blog.

https://bookshop.org/books/quaker-quicks-that-clear-and-certain-sound-finding-solid-ground-in-perilous-times/9781789047653

Public Banking Has the Potential to Truly Revolutionize Our Economy

An article on my experience with the public banking movement as revolutionary reform.

https://truthout.org/articles/public-banking-has-the-potential-to-truly-revolutionize-our-economy/

Envision or Perish; Why we must start imagining the world we want to live in

An article I co-authored with George Lakey
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/02/envision-or-perish-why-we-must-start-imagining-the-world-we-want/  

The Financial Roots of the Climate Crisis 

Link to a talk I gave at a church in Houston 
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7910215

Money and Soul; Quaker Faith and Practice and the Economy

If money troubles your soul, try this down-to-earth Quaker perspective on economies large and small. 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/quaker-quicks-money-and-soul-pamela-haines/1129872483?ean=9781789040890

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; Debt, Interest, Growth and Security.

https://bookshop.org/books/toward-a-right-relationship-with-finance-debt-interest-growth-and-security/9789768142887

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


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/   


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)

#218 Knowledge

 Dear all, 

I think all of us are finding it hard to keep our balance these days as we step into the fall. With both vaccinations and the delta variant, how do we balance new possibilities with caution? With signs of both progressive movement and strong backlash in our country, how do we balance hope and fear? 

In my personal life, I’m faced with balancing on-going commitments with new projects, including moving from deeply intuitive writing to deeply non-intuitive book marketing (and I just signed two more contracts—yay/yikes!) I’m proud, though, of how I’ve been asking for help, and thrilled with what I’m receiving.

It’s been a pleasure to have two young grandchildren join me in our shared love for the moon, as we watched it grow this month from a sickle to stunning fullness. It reminds me of the constancy and beauty and power that are always there to be found.

Love,

Pamela

Knowledge

My daughter-in-law was reading a challenging text for a course she was taking—a philosophical treatise on white supremacy, full of long complicated words and longer more complicated sentences. As she vented about the challenge, I was a little surprised at the intensity of my response. I got mad. I was ready to throw all philosophers and all their stupid long words and sentences into oblivion. But she held out for the validity of philosophy, and I was called to think through my position a little more clearly.

I realized that it wasn’t the field of philosophy that offended me so deeply. After all, there is nothing inherently wrong with “love of wisdom”! It is the weaponizing of wisdom that gets under my skin: presenting knowledge in a way that demonstrates how much more you understand than the deficient masses; protecting your vulnerable sense of self-worth with a show of importance; publicly claiming your membership in an elite superior group. It smells of domination, seems full of the seeds of oppression.

The field of economics has a similar story, where self-proclaimed “experts” created a complex mathematical system to explain the workings of the markets, then built a wall around their new discipline and required those who would enter to master the intricacies of their creation. Those on the outside came to feel that they just didn’t know enough to understand, that they had no choice but to cede the whole territory to the “experts”. Yet “economics”, from the Greek for “household management,” is something anybody can think about. It’s full of values and common sense that those who claim expertise have obscured rather than clarified. Everybody has the capacity and right to engage on this territory.

So, am I saying that there’s no place for expertise in this world? That putting in the effort to master complexity is, at its heart, suspect? Well, that couldn’t be right. We certainly wouldn’t want to hold out an expectation that nobody should know more than anybody else. But there is something about our attitude toward knowledge that needs closer examination.

If we see it as private property then it’s logical to use it to our own advantage, to prop up our egos, to keep it scarce so its value stays high, to hoard and to deploy it for mastery over others. Some may approach it privately, but pursue knowledge for the sheer joy of personal discovery—like my eight-year-old grandson. Others may be on a quest to uplift humanity. Theirs may be the hardest job, because their goal extends beyond the personal. They would choose to serve, yet if an idea is presented in language that blocks understanding it’s like giving and taking back in the same motion. If you really believe you’ve come across something important, then you either need to learn how to communicate it in words that people can understand, or you have to acknowledge that it will be useless unless somebody else does that job for you.

I would argue that, in the process of pushing the edges of human understanding, there is no place for ownership. Our knowledge is part of a shared cultural heritage, a common wealth. Everyone of us who has explored a new idea is standing on the shoulders of those who have come before. Our minds are our own, it is true, yet we do not exist in isolation. And for our thoughts to matter to anyone else they have to find a pathway not only out of our heads but  into the heads of others. For that to happen, they have to be accessible.

Perhaps my passion here grows from the reality that I too have a love for wisdom. I am committed to seeking it and sharing what I find. So the text my daughter-in-law was reading grew from something that I love, but had been twisted into another shape, sharpened and misused. I think the way forward is simple—abandon the lures of private property, claim all our knowledge and wisdom as part of the commons, and keep access at its very heart.

 

Strand of the web

As I weeded at the trolley portal
he would come by on his little city sidewalk vacuum sweeper
and we would say hello—
a small human moment to cherish
as we both tended to beauty in the neighborhood.

Years pass, those public beds make way for other city plans,
our paths no longer cross.

Then, deep in the winter of pandemic,
I see him on my morning walk, closer to home.
Perhaps his route has changed.
Bundled and masked, I smile and wave.
He waves back, but does he know it’s me?
The months go by. I see him now and then
look for a chance to catch his eye and say hello.

Then one day the stars align—
maskless and present, we connect.
His cheerful greeting warms my heart—
a strand in the web of life reclaimed, restored.





Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Solidarity investing club supports coops

The Vermont Solidarity Investing Club, with 27 members, has invested all of its more than $60,000 specifically in cooperatives. Each member owns a portion of the LLC, to which they contribute $20 to $200 on a monthly basis.

The largest of VSIC’s current investments is in the Cooperative Fund of New England, which loans money to co-ops, democratic worker-owned businesses, and community organizations. VSIC also invests in other cooperative funds, existing coop businesses and new cooperative ventures, supporting the network of coops throughout the region.

https://www.shareable.net/solidarity-investing-club-helps-plant-a-new-crop-of-co-ops-in-vermont/  






Some things that have given me hope recently:

Locals are interrupting violence in Minneapolis, by sitting in lawn chairs at dangerous corners.

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/minneapolis-nashville-and-baltimore-violence-interrupters/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_medium=weekly_mailout&utm_source=22-09-2021

Farmers have been teaming up with meatpackers, realizing they have more in common with these immigrants than with agribusiness CEOs.

https://otherwords.org/farmers-and-meatpackers-are-teaming-up-for-pandemic-safety/

With Tunisia facing both climate and economic crises, a group of women have started cooperatives and small businesses to protect the environment and create a sustainable livelihood.
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/saving-seeds-and-lives-tunisian-women-on-the-frontline-of-climate-change-49799?

And a handful of fossil fuel victories!

Indigenous resistance has staved off 25% of U.S. and Canada’s annual emissions, the pollution equivalent of approximately 400 new coal-fired power plants.

https://grist.org/protest/indigenous-resistance-has-cut-u-s-and-canadas-annual-emissions/

Student pressure on Harvard, the world’s richest university, to divest from fossil fuels has finally succeeded.

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/harvard-fossil-fuel-divestment-won/

After intense grassroots pressure,15 insurers drop the Trans Mountain Pipeline 
https://truthout.org/articles/15-insurers-drop-trans-mountain-pipeline-after-grassroots-pressure/

A federal judge’s rejection of a huge Alaska oil drilling project is the latest reversal of Trump policy and a win for Indigenous and environmental activists.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20082021/alaska-willow-oil-project-biden-trump/?

Resources

Alive in this World
A book of poetry in three parts: A Home with the Trees, Commuter Encounters, and A Home with the Earth
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/alive-in-this-world-pamela-haines/1139506943.

That Clear and Certain Sound; Finding Solid Ground in Perilous Times

A book of essays, many from this blog, available for pre-order till November
https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/christian-alternative-books/our-books/quaker-quicks-that-clear-certain-sound.

The Financial Roots of the Climate Crisis 
Link to a talk I gave at a church in Houston 
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7910215

Envision or Perish; Why we must start imagining the world we want to live in

An article I co-authored with George Lakey
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/02/envision-or-perish-why-we-must-start-imagining-the-world-we-want/  

Money and Soul
My newish 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.


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/   


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)

#217. In common

 Dear all, 

After moving a much-anticipated in-person work event online earlier this month, my mind is on new COVID challenges—how much we don’t know, and how hard it is to re-pace ourselves when we thought we were almost home. I’ve also had the opportunity this month to listen to a group of passionate childcare workers sharing stories about their frontline work in struggling communities, then to assemble a newsletter for work with a focus on race and equity in childcare, another opportunity to interact closely with wonderful people’s stories of injustice, humanity, perseverance and hope.

In the midst of these compelling stories, I also want to make space for my own voice, as we prepare for my book/birthday celebration this coming Friday evening. If you didn’t get an invitation and would like to be present, just drop me a line and I’ll sent a link.

Love,

Pamela

In common

To focus on what we have in common seems like a radical notion these days. In a hyper-individualized and divisive culture, most of our energy is divided between amassing and protecting what we can claim as our own, and sharpening the lines between us and them. Yet giving up what we have in common is a tendency with far-reaching and damaging consequences.

The enclosure of the English commons—a town’s shared meadows and grazing lands—for private ownership and profit was a fateful step toward landless wage labor and urban poverty in the industrial west. Current battles around the enclosure of the commons are being waged on equally far-reaching and ominous fronts—the privatization of our waters, the pollution of our air and oceans, the claim of rights to ownership over cyberspace and even our shared genome. This is a time like no other to vigorously claim a shared right to that which supports all life.

How do we stake a claim to our common rights even as we are experiencing a great surge of othering? Perhaps this is a job of building critical muscles, but in two very different kinds of exercise. On the one hand we practice flexing our muscles of courage, voice and solidarity as we work to ensure common control over the air, water, soil and communication space that support life in our common home. On the other hand we practice relaxing our muscles around the differences among us—disarming our protections and letting down our defenses against the “other” as we reach for a shared humanity.

On the relaxing front, I was struck recently by a story about a couple of men who started up a business that catered to veterans. They chose products that would appeal to that conservative base, and used political humor to market their brand. They supported a man for president that I find depraved and dangerous—in part with an eye toward their own gain.

At this point in the story, I was ready to write them off in disgust. What could we possibly have in common? But adopting this easy and obvious choice as my go-to strategy comes at a cost. If that’s my best tool for handling behavior that I don’t like, and I use it with full-blown righteousness in the direction of these people, what habits am I developing? Who else do I write off? Where do I draw the line?

I think there is a line. Some behavior is so damaging to the commons that it just has to stop—like seeking power or profit from fossil fuel extraction, whipping people up into a frenzy of hate, mass incarceration, voter suppression, worker exploitation. But that’s not these guys.

As I read on, I learned that these are also men who have reached out with consistency and compassion, and at considerable personal expense, to offer returning veterans an alternative to the open pipeline to militarized police work, a pathway to a decent livelihood in the context of caring and community.

We have something in common here. If I want it to grow, uncomfortable as it might be, I think I have to love them. There are lots of things you can change without love, particularly if you have a habit of righteousness and a taste for domination. You can change people’s outer shape and their public face. You can stunt personalities, feed fears, manipulate behavior and oppress whole groups. You can certainly destroy ecosystems. But you can’t get at that internal place that allows for transformation. This requires an openness to touching the heart of the other, and to appreciating the mystery of what we can’t understand.

There is much that is mysterious to me about angry white men, but these guys invite my curiosity. What is it like to come home traumatized from war, to witness the disappearance of your traditional means of livelihood, to have your people’s central place in a country’s history slipping away? What allows some people to hold on to their humanity in the face of great adversity? How can we find each other and fight together for the commons, for our common humanity, for our shared interest in a livable world?

 




Sing

A simple pleasure lost to the pandemic—
gathering round the piano to sing.
In May, with vaccinations
comes a seed of cautious hope.
Would it be irresponsible?
Could we be safe?

Just to be inside another house
seems bold, but we don’t linger there—
push the piano out the open door
onto the deck, bring out kitchen chairs.

Sing through the twilight, sing with the birds
Sing to the neighbors (who clap unseen in the dark)
Sing up hope.






Dare to imagine: A new economy is possible!
Community Land Trusts and Racial/Economic Justice

The Community Land Trust (CLT) model was first created and implemented during the late 1960s by African American leaders in rural Albany, Georgia, who were responding to the harsh reality of oppression, violence, and eviction endured by Black tenant farmers across the American South. The goal was to support African American families to own and control land, achieve greater economic security, and fully exercise their legal voting rights without obstruction. Modern CLT organizations are part of a broader shared-equity housing sector typically developing, selling, and stewarding affordable homes that provide security and stability for low- and moderate-income families.  CLTs are most impactful when they can steward land on behalf of the community for the uses desired by a majority of local residents. Examples of CLTs partnering with cities to vision, plan, and implement revitalization strategies that prevent displacement are evident in areas such as Buffalo and Houston.

https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/how-community-land-trusts-can-advance-racial-and-economic-justice






Somethings that have made me hopeful recently (all domestic this time):

The state of Maine is leading the way both in banning “forever chemicals” in an effort to stop climate change, and in shifting costs of recycling from taxpayers to companies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/15/maine-law-pfas-forever-chemicals-ban?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/maine-becomes-first-state-to-shift-costs-of-recycling-from-taxpayers-to-companies/2021/07/13/aa6fbe44-e416-11eb-8aa5-5662858b696e_story.html

In a dramatic victory for the American labor movement, last fall1,800 nurses at Asheville, North Carolina-based Mission Hospital voted by 70% to be represented by a union, National Nurses United, and this summer they celebrated ratification of their first ever union contract. The victory is the largest at a nonunion hospital in the South since 1975, and is the first private sector hospital union win ever in North Carolina. 

https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/largest-hospital-union-victory-south-1975
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hr/mission-hospital-nurses-approve-1st-union-contract.html

Local heritage seeds are now available to anyone in Tuscan with a library card.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2018/04/06/how-tucson-preserves-its-native-food-heritage/?

https://www.library.pima.gov/seedlibrary/

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, started in 1981 in citizen outrage around tax and property laws that favored coal companies, continues to organize for a new balance of power and a just society in Kentucky.

https://www.kftc.org/about-us/our-history

Resources

Alive in this World
A book of poetry in three parts: A Home with the Trees, Commuter Encounters, and A Home with the Earth
Available in paperback and e-book at barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com.

That Clear and Certain Sound; Finding Solid Ground in Perilous Times
A book of my essays, available via QuakerBooks or other on-line distributors

The Financial Roots of the Climate Crisis 
Link to a talk I gave at a church in Houston 
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7910215

Envision or Perish; Why we must start imagining the world we want to live in

An article I co-authored with George Lakey
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/02/envision-or-perish-why-we-must-start-imagining-the-world-we-want/  

Money and Soul
My newish 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.


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/   


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)

#214. Repair

 Dear all,

I’m finding myself a little disoriented in this in-between time: Between avoiding human contact in the pandemic and the possibility that it might be safe again. Between the end of a very challenging and fulfilling project—teaching an understanding economics class to over a hundred non-economists from around the world—and what come next. Between the promise of spring and the reality of summer. Between the promise of a new administration and the reality of its limitations. Between ever-clearer glimpses of the possibility of living outside the constraints of conflict aversion and the weight of the Protestant work ethic, while the patterns of a lifetime still exert their force.

And so I focus on the present, with all its hour- and day-sized joys and challenges and opportunities. Wishing you grace in your in-between times as well.

Love,
Pamela





Creating the conditions for repair

Our grandson fell and broke a folding wooden table that holds a computer when we work in the bedroom. This table has served us well for decades, though never more intensively than during these months of pandemic. I finger the broken pieces and moving parts, wondering if I have the skill to make it whole again. Yet I value it and am not willing to just declare its usefulness over and throw it out—wherever “out” might be. So I get out the wood glue and the clamps, and fit the pieces together as best I can. The next day it still wobbles and I work on it some more. The repair is far from perfect, yet we are back in a working relationship and I am thankful.

I have struggled in a new relationship that crosses divisions of race and class. The opportunity to be close to this person is a precious gift. I am astonished at how she moves in the world—it is so different from my experience. We take on a project together and come to a point of conflict. Wishing in every bone in my body that this were not the reality, I wade in, knowing beyond a shadow of doubt that keeping my distance could easily be a mortal blow to the life of the relationship. I do my best, but the way I approach it leaves her feeling unseen and disrespected. I feel devastated.

I listen, try to understand, hold off on my urge to explain and defend, focus on the part that is mine to work on. I try hard to stay open to to everyone’s goodness, including mine, open to new perspectives and opportunities for growth, open to truth. As I learn, acknowledge, apologize, responding in the most open-hearted way I can summon, power dynamics are illuminated, the hard knot of conflict loosens, and the rift begins to mend. Incredibly, we find ourselves stronger on the other side.

I’ve known repairs that were simpler—sewing a button back on, taping a torn page, making an apology for a small thing in a solid relationship. These two were at the edge of my abilities and included some pretty rough edges. If we raise our sights to the repairs that are needed in the world, how much more daunting is that prospect? Trust has been shattered. Entire peoples—and the very earth—have been grievously wronged. We see damage so great that wholeness can seem like an impossible dream.

Yet I believe that the principles remain the same. And I can see only two choices here: to despair and give up, or to gather all the lessons we can from what makes repair possible and turn out lives in that direction. What does this look like? It means valuing what has been broken, understanding how the break has happened, feeling a sense of connection to our place in the brokenness, and being able to imagine the possibility of wholeness.

Ultimately, it involves believing we have the capacity, individually and collectively, to engage in the process of repair. This means not being so focused on our own grief, shame, or guilt at the break that we are immobilized and can’t pay attention to anything except ourselves. It means not being so intent on avoiding the pain of looking straight at great damage that we can’t grieve the loss. It means having access to the relationships that are key to the repair—including with those that we or our people have wronged. Finally, it means deciding to stay awake and alert to possibility, to stay in motion in the direction of repair.

As I reflect on that good little table, on that priceless relationship, and on all the possibilities for wholeness in a broken world, I can’t help but wonder if there is any more important skill than that of repair.





Hope in flight

The fate of the bald eagle shadowed my childhood.
Could we allow this great bird to go extinct
through careless inattention,
blind pursuit of lesser goals?

Their comeback sent a message:
maybe we could be redeemed.
I read of nest sites
slowly growing closer to this populated place.
Would I ever catch a glimpse of one myself?

A nearby bit of woods and water
ringed by airport, oil refineries, development
has managed to endure against all odds.
Late April, the day alive in every way
blue sky, spring green, high wind
I sighted one, then two
circling the water, beating back against the wind.

Decades of grieving laid to rest
waiting over, hope fulfilled
in that soaring flight.

Dare to imagine:  A new economy is possible!

Coop internet service provider

Hundreds of cable technicians have banded together to create an affordable, pro-people telecom option in New York City. People’s Choice Communications is the culmination of years of research, organizing, and outreach by striking Charter-Spectrum workers as a lower-cost, publicly-owned alternative to the big players. “We are the workers who built a large part of New York City’s internet infrastructure in the first place,” PCC’s website explains. This employee-owned social enterprise is intended to “bridge the digital divide and help our neighbors get connected to the Internet during the COVID-19 pandemic.” So far, PCC has installed mass WiFi hubs at multiple schools and supportive housing buildings in the Bronx and Manhattan, allowing the group and its customer-owners to make use of thousands of miles of free conduit there, among other available infrastructure.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2021/04/13/spectrum-strikers-launch-public-isp-for-and-by-the-people-of-nyc/?sh=321a5ed46494

 

 

Some things that have made me hopeful recently: 

How a union drive at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, though unsuccessful, made global headlines, with workers in Italy, Germany and India joining into an international struggle against the company’s harsh working conditions.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/workers-world-unite-amazon-union-busting-organizing-labor-rights

A river in Quebec that has been granted legal rights as part of global 'personhood' movement.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/magpie-river-quebec-canada-personhood-1.5931067

Progressive gains in Philadelphia’s primaries for judges and District Attorney, indicating widespread support for broader reforms in the criminal legal system.
https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/philadelphia-results-krasner-wins-judges/

The small town of Batesville, Arkansas, which installed fifteen hundred solar panels in and around a school, saving it more than $600,000, and allowing for massive salary raises for teachers.  
https://www.kristv.com/news/local-news/solar-panel-saves-arkansas-school-enough-for-teachers-get-up-to-15k-in-raises?

Resources 

The Financial Roots of the Climate Crisis 
Link to a talk I gave at a church in Houston 
https://vimeo.com/showcase/7910215

Envision or Perish; Why we must start imagining the world we want to live in

An article I co-authored with George Lakey
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/02/envision-or-perish-why-we-must-start-imagining-the-world-we-want/  

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.


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/   


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)

#211 Taking and Joining

 Dear all,

In the midst of a very cold and snowy February, I’ve found myself cultivating and harvesting some unexpected fruits. 

• The seed of a reflection on dandelions grew and ended up being published in Friends Journal, https://www.friendsjournal.org/dandelions-and-domination/ . 
• A conversation with my friend George Lakey about the importance of tending to vision grew into an article in Waging Nonviolence, https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/02/envision-or-perish-why-we-must-start-imagining-the-world-we-want/. 
• And a conviction that those who care about climate need to understand economics has generated an online class series for our peer counseling community, starting with a robust and well-received intro with folks from across the world! 

I’m reminded of all the different kinds of seeds that are out there, just lying in waiting for the right conditions to sprout and grow. 

And here is a reflection that I’ve been holding for a while, as our collective attention has been riveted on the national scene.

Love,
Pamela





Taking and joining

I may have heard of the Navajo in my childhood. I undoubtedly saw images that got lodged in my brain. I do remember, as a young adult, driving through a reservation in the Southwest, and feeling uncomfortably like a voyeur. My most substantial introduction came with a series of mystery novels set in Navajo land. They were well-written, sympathetic, full of details of daily life, and I was captivated.

I had picked up a critical overall perspective on our country’s past and present treatment of its native population as a young adult, but was well past middle age before I decided that more was required of me in this area. I began reading in more depth. Following my sister, I took steps that eventually grew into rich connections and real relationships with members of the Haudenosaunee nation. I started the painful work of confronting my settler identity. I looked for and found ways to engage in the struggle around Standing Rock.

During this time, I picked up a book of short stories set on a native reservation, by an author whose name was familiar, prepared to deepen my experience in yet another way. When something about the tone didn’t sit well I looked him up, to discover that he was of European descent and had chosen the genre for its market appeal. The feeling of violation was visceral. The people whom he claimed to be representing had been used, in a way that turned my stomach. My trust in the integrity of the storyteller had been violated as well. The painful shock of this up close and personal experience with Native cultural appropriation helped me to recognize it in other places and be clear about the harm it caused, whether as a punch in the gut to a Native person or through the insidious distortion of history and reality for the rest of us.

Finding myself with all my pores open to Native experience, a news item that COVID was spreading on the Navajo Nation, and that they were struggling to contain the flow of outside traffic through the reservation, went to my heart. This was at the same time that my partner and I were working our way through an archive of Native films that a friend had shared with us. Three were about the Navajo—a girls’ basketball saga; a coming-of-age story told by a woman who was returning to the reservation in search of her roots; and one with a rich mix of the experience of acting in old westerns, losing a child to missionaries, and the health impacts of uranium mining. Though I could no longer enjoy those well-plotted mysteries set by an outsider in the Four Corners, I was finally getting to see through the eyes of trustworthy sources.

And then two more things happened. I had been getting to know a lovely and passionate young woman, and just as I had found a way to invite her into even closer connection she said that she was heading back to the Navajo reservation to be with her grandfather who was dying of COVID. Within a week I got a message out of the blue from a rabble-rousing friend from my young-adult years who had gone into public health and adventured in Cuba and Guatemala along the way. He was now at the federal Center for Disease Control, working on containing COVID with the health department of the Navajo Nation.

For so many years, my relationship to the Navajo had been all about me. From a mixture of incomplete history, fragmented and romanticized images, and tales of questionable authenticity, I had constructed a story that satisfied my needs for some kind of safe familiarity. While I wasn’t engaged in cultural appropriation for fame or profit, I was essentially a taker.

Now, having immersed myself in Native voices, done some work, and gained the benefits of relationship building closer to home, I was finding my way toward more solid ground. Through the people who shared themselves in those videos, my new friend and her grieving family, my old friend and the health care workers he is getting to know, I could connect with real people, with their love for a real place, with real present-time joys and sorrows. I could hear the echoes from the past, and glimpse a place for me in a future that includes us all.






Kind and nice

Nice is a coating, an armor
It tends to outer things, can soothe or scare.
Who knows what lies beneath?

Kind has a power source deep inside
It pushes out from inner realms
Can pierce through nice.






Dare to Imagine:  A new economy is possible!
Zero Waste

The roots of Zero Waste in Europe were in Capannori, a town of 46,700 in Northern Italy. After a successful citizen-led movement against a proposed incinerator, the town committed in 2007 to send zero waste to landfills by 2020. Residents were consulted door to door; bins, bags and composting kits were provided; a new tariff on measured waste was introduced; composting, recycling, reuse and upcycling were encouraged; disposable diapers were subsidized; milk was provided direct from farmers with almost all customers providing their own containers; cloth shopping bags were distributed to all households; the use of disposable cutlery was halted in schools and other government settings.

With this proactive, holistic approach and the involvement of residents in all stages of policy development, the municipality now has one of the highest waste segregation rates in Europe, with 82% of its waste sorted. The money city council has saved on waste recycling has been spent on a reduction in waste tax per capita and building a composting plant, and new workplaces have been created in the region. Everybody benefits: the cheapest waste for buyers, municipalities and the environment is that which is never created. Today hundreds of European municipalities are following the example of Capannori.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/waste/ten-zero-waste-cities-how-capannori-inspired-other-european-municipalities-on-zero-waste-68623






Some things that have made me hopeful recently

The city of Paris, France, is launching a new participatory budgeting project that will allow 25% of the city’s budget from now until 2026 to be decided with citizen input. https://citymonitor.ai/government/civic-engagement/how-paris-participatory-budget-is-reinvigorating-democracy?

Tribal biologists have confirmed that chinook salmon are spawning in the upper-Columbia River system in Washington state for the first time in 80 years.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/salmon-spawn-again-on-colville-tribes-sanpoil-river/?

In a global first, women will make up half the constitutional convention to write Chile’s new constitution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/30/chile-voted-write-new-constitution-will-it-promise-more-than-government-can-deliver/

Illinois is poised to become the first state in the country to completely end the use of cash bail, with a law passed by the state legislature that is expected to be signed by the governor into law.  

https://inthesetimes.com/article/money-bond-pretrial-fairness-freedom-incarceration-jail-illinois

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)