#215. First Words

 Dear all,

What I have loved most about having a little more discretionary time this month has been the freedom I’ve felt to reach out to people in my web of caring—feeling like I have time to respond if they suggest more. We’ve had a string of incredibly beautiful days, my garden has been producing (my newest discovery is lambsquarter and parsley pesto), and I am ever more aware of the creativity, wisdom, imagination and hard work of birthing a new era that is there to be found among people all over the world. I’m feeling deeply grateful to be alive in this world.

Speaking of which, Alive in this World is the title of a book of my poetry that has just been published! Check it out at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. I have a series of essays as well, drawn from this column over the years: That Clear and Certain Sound; Finding Solid Ground in Perilous Times. If you’d like to help me think about marketing, or have ideas about ways to spread the word, I would be thrilled to hear from you!

Love,
Pamela





First Words

As I root a native thanksgiving address—"the words that come before all else”—into my daily life, I find it steadily growing me. Traditionally, when Haudenosaunee people (formally known as Iroquois) gather, they start with these words which help orient everyone in the same direction. Thanks are offered to the earth in all its manifestations—water, plant and animal life—to the sun moon and stars, and to the ancient wisdom carriers and the Spirit Creator. The recurring phrase—"and now are minds are one”—binds the community together in shared thanks.

I first experienced these words in a native context. It was early morning on the Six Nation Reserve in southern Ontario. A group of Six Nations people and allies had gathered to honor the treaties and protect the earth in a ten-day paddle down the Grand River. We stood in a big circle as the thanksgiving address started our day. That first morning a translated summary was offered to the non-native speakers. For the rest of the trip, we listened to these first words in Mohawk, Cayuga and Oneida. (For some who were reclaiming their language, these were first words in more ways than one.)

I couldn’t retain all the contents, so when I found them in a children’s book at a pow-wow I bought a copy. I read it, brought it home, and propped it up in my workspace—where it sat till a retreat of my Quaker meeting on right relationship with native peoples this spring. The leaders were determined to get us engaged not just with our heads, but with our hearts and bodies. There were long breaks where we were encouraged to walk with attention to the land and the people who walked this land for thousands of years before us. When asked how we could extend the experience of this retreat, I realized I could take my morning walk with native people in my heart.

My first attempts left me puzzled. How could I join with the original people on these city streets? What would I see and experience that would have been familiar to them? I was distracted by how completely the land had been transformed. Then I remember the book, propped up, patiently waiting for my attention. I could take the words that come before all else on my morning walk. For the first couple of times I was mostly just trying to remember the list of things, the order. I used the book as a reference when I got home, and when a phrase puzzled me I thought to look up the original and was reminded of the full content.

As I settled in with this practice, the gifts started coming. I already knew about being thankful for the water and the food plants and the trees and the moon, so initially it felt like a simple frame for familiar content. But then one morning, the prepositions hit me. The first words call us to be thankful not for these parts of our world, but to them. They call us to direct relationship. All of a sudden I could see how being thankful for, though certainly much better than nothing, carries with it a sense of separation. Here was a profound shift toward right relationship with the world around me.

Another morning I was struck by the obvious: I am trying to craft a private practice from what is, at heart, a communal experience. I think of the recurring phrase at the end of each section: “And now our minds are one.” We gather to find a way forward together, and start with the words that come before all else. We send thanks to the earth that provides everything we need, to the water and the animals and the plants for giving us life. In whatever decisions or actions we take, we do so with this shared understanding in the front of our minds.

What if these words started every board meeting, every gathering of people where decisions are made that affect the web of life that supports us all? Knowing that they are powerfully communal, I commit to absorbing their wisdom deep into my bones, and seeing how they might lead me in community.

Most recently I have found myself moved to send not only greetings and thanks, but love. As I walk and connect and send love, I find my body opening up, moving in new ways. It’s like a dance is growing inside me. I think of all the restraint with which I have held myself all these years, and give more thanks to the Haudenosaunee and the words that come before all else.






Gifts and needs

Kale that made it through the cold has gone to seed.
Big leaves I used for pesto early in the spring
have made way for stalk and flower.
Order and logic suggest I pull them out—
let old make way for new.

I could use the space, it’s true. And yet, and yet
these little buds are just the thing in salad greens
bees are buzzing round the flowers
and I would save some for the seeds.

Could we find a way to honor all these gifts and needs?
Pull one great plant, but pick the buds for salad,
try for one last batch of pesto with the leaves
plant new basil in that space,
leave the second plant for bees and buds and seeds,
maybe think again when basil needs more space?

This dance is complex, yet I would choose it every time
over straight rows, bare soil and mastery.
My soul is nourished by the company.

 



Imagine:  A new economy is possible!
A growing circular food system in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Family farmers in São Paulo’s rural south grow food that is healthy for consumers, for the environment and for themselves. A chef in the bustling urban center designs his menu around fresh food that is on offer each week. And another sells affordable organic meals in the outskirts of the city. These are just a few faces of a circular economy transformation that is reshaping São Paulo’s food system.

A circular economy redesign of São Paulo’s food system represents a $140 million opportunity with the potential to drive down CO2 emissions and enhance local biodiversity. Navigating between its rural and urban territories, the short video, ‘A taste of circular economy in São Paulo’, shows how different actors within the city are working together to realize this opportunity in building a more regenerative, distributed and inclusive food system.

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/news/new-mini-documentary-showcases-são-paulos-circular-food-system-transformation






Some things that have made me hopeful recently:

Alaska voters’ adoption of ranked-choice voting as a way to combat polarization and increase voter choice.
https://www.vox.com/2020/11/19/21537126/alaska-measure-2-ranked-choice-voting-results

The successes of a campaign to get apparel companies to pay $22 billion owed to factories and workers throughout the global south.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2021/03/payup-garment-workers-won-stolen-wages-fashion-industry/

A stunning set of recent victories of climate activists over fossil fuel companies:

The cancellation by its owner of the Keystone XL pipeline after years of opposition from climate campaigners
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/09/keystone-xl-pipeline-canceled

A remarkable set of shareholder votes and court rulings that have scrambled the future of three of the world’s largest oil companies. 
https://link.newyorker.com/view/5c92fd0e24c17c329bfe869be9uu1.n2e/d8d6252a

A victory for Dutch environmental groups in a court ruling that gives Shell nine years to cut its carbon emissions by 45% from 2019 levels in order to comply with the Paris climate agreement.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26052021/dutch-court-gives-shell-nine-years-to-cut-its-carbon-emissions-by-45-percent-from-2019-levels/?






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)

#213 Lines and Circles

 Dear all,

In April it’s always hard to think about anything but spring—and we’re having a beautiful one—but I’ll try! 

As more people get vaccinated, we are cautiously considering that more contact might be possible. Working with a great team to teach a six-session course on economics to co-counselors around the world has challenged my deep-seated habit of solo-functioning, and required me to imagine the possibilities of having even great impact by gathering others around. And I keep finding more ways to share the invitation to focus not just on what is desperately wrong and needs to be changed in this world, but on what is right and needs to be nourished.

Wishing you the nourishment that you need.

Love,

Pamela

Lines and circles

In spring, my mind and heart come full circle. Here we are again in the most miraculous of seasons. Just as the earth turns every night toward the morning, it has been steadily turning all through the winter toward this rebirth. If I don’t catch the fullness of this transformation—if I miss a new bud, or the unfolding of a tiny leaf, or a bird song, if I fail to fully take in the freshness of a spring breeze, it is a loss. But there is always next year. Perhaps by then I will be even more attentive, more in tune. (And of course there are all the joys of summer, fall and winter to take in before spring comes around again.)

There is a richness to this circle that makes me wonder at our collective commitment to the line. This shows most clearly in our undying allegiance to the idea of progress, the idea that we’re on an ever-upward trajectory. The past deserves only our condescending sympathy. The future will be bigger, better, brighter. (I wonder, would we want the seasons to march on to every greater heights?) Even our clocks have abandoned the circle and joined with the line.

This allegiance to the march of progress comes at a cost. The linear model of extract, consume, discard, then extract even more is wreaking havoc on our economies, our planet and our psyches. The line on the graph that heads steadily upward often leaves out more than it shows. The rising yields of the Green Revolution also brought increased fossil fuel dependence, soil and water degradation and, with seeds that could not be saved, the threat to small farm sustainability. The steady expansion of the economy brings ever-increasing, and now intolerable, stress to the planet. The incredible growth of the stock market is mirrored by the ever-growing weight of debt that supports it. The staggering number of new products that are available to consumers (who have the means) has a stubbornly neutral, if not negative, impact on well-being. And what has been the cost of monotheism, in its replacement of earth wisdom with a dominant patriarchal authority?

I think it’s time to shift our allegiance from the line back to the circle. In agriculture, this means investing back in the soil and the farmers and farm communities. In production, it means planning so that the waste product of one process are the resources for another. In finance, it means lending in a way that reliably increases the wealth of the borrower.

Are there places where a commitment to the line still makes sense? Human evolution can certainly be shaped to fit the story line of progress, with ever-increasing domination and mastery. But isn’t evolution ultimately about developing the characteristics that best equip us to flourish within the circle of life? It could be argued that as a species we are on a linear, if uneven, path toward ever-greater enlightenment. Yet wouldn’t this better be seen as an unfolding of understanding from right where we are—a movement that is not directional, but up and out and down to the roots? Not an endless extraction of new truth from the universe and a discarding of the old, but a greater clarity, a settling into the wisdom that was always right there, waiting to be revealed? 

If we commit to the line, can we ever mature and become wise? It’s unclear if this was ever a good fit for the human condition. The scientific and industrial revolutions, fueled by the gift of stored sunlight from ancient times, have certainly allowed for an explosion of knowledge and access to each other. Maybe we needed this blip in history, this experiment with the line, to provide us with some of the means of surviving what it has created.

But the costs now clearly outweigh the benefits. Our long-term survival depends on reclaiming our allegiance to the circle: to recommit to generation and regeneration rather than extraction, to thriving rather than growing, to embracing the constraints of the circle rather than remaining enslaved to the allure of the ever-rising line. It means coming around full circle to the indigenous wisdom in which all of us have our roots, cultivating an ever-deeper appreciation of that which comes around, and then comes around again. It means settling into the great circle of life.

 



Will to live

I have a plan for this front garden plot,
no more than four feet square—
a narrow band of flowers in the front
peas to climb the fence behind
kale and basil in between
all protected by a layer of mulch.
A modest plan to balance beauty,
nourishment and care of soil.

The peas are up.
I crouch down to plant my kale—
and am undone.

There’s no blank canvas here.
Two earthworms with their thick bands joined
have claimed the space to make new life.
Countless tiny parsley leaves uncurl
across the bed, from seeds that fell to earth last fall
eager for the chance to grow,
and I find poppies sprouting up as well.
There’s life abundant here without my plans.

A layer of mulch laid thick would win
against their will to grow.
But do I want that victory?

The worms are fine, no need to worry there.
I set four kale plants in amid the parsley,
transplant some poppies to a planter by the street
to make more room for basil down the road,
abandon plans for mulch, at least for now.

We’ll find our way together in this bed,
somehow.






Dare to imagine:  A new economy is possible
Investing in worker coops

Seed Commons is a national network of locally rooted, non-extractive loan funds that brings the power of big finance under community control. By taking guidance from the grassroots and sharing capital and resources to invest in local coops, they are building the infrastructure necessary for a truly just, democratic and sustainable new economy. Non-extraction is one of the key principles of Seed Commons, and it dictates the terms for all of their loans and investments: returns to the lender will never exceed the wealth created by the borrower using the capital. This is often colloquially said as “a borrower will never be worse off than before working with us.” Seed Commons is a 501(c)(3) community development financial institution (CDFI).

https://seedcommons.org/about-seed-commons/ 






Some things that have made me hopeful recently:

The Chicago suburb of Evanston approving reparations for Black residents, a likely first.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/23/980277688/in-likely-first-chicago-suburb-of-evanston-approves-reparations-for-black-reside 

How Mexico’s decision to ban Glyphosate has rocked the agribusiness world.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/02/24/mexicos-decision-ban-glyphosate-has-rocked-agribusiness-world 

The response to rising anti-immigrant sentiment by a Danish group working to integrate new arrivals to Copenhagen by taking care of honeybees.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2021/04/02/denmark-refugees-honeybees?

The sign from the University of Michigan’s decision to divest from fossil fuels that change is here.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/27/university-of-michigan-divesting-fossil-fuels-change-is-here

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)

#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)