Texas populist, commentator, and author Jim Hightower has a few words of wisdom for us: Question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!
His latest book, Swim Against the Current, which features worker cooperatives, introduces readers to people across the country who have actually done this-people in business, politics, health care, farming, religion, and other areas who are taking charge, living their values, doing good, and doing well.
Hightower and co-author Susan DeMarco show how they are doing precisely what the elites want us to believe can’t be done: changing their lives and making a difference. He tells the stories of these people and offers inspiration and information that will help readers tap into their own maverick potential in order to navigate a different, more satisfying course of their own.
Whether they are young and just starting out or older and searching for a different path, the commonsense folks in this book have escaped the corporate tentacles to find their own way toward a richer life and a better American future. They are creating a new, deeply democratic model for the country, edging it back onto the long road toward egalitarianism and the common good.
In Activists to Grassroots, Tony discusses how activists need to start working with grassroots and create a new hybrid radical activist-grassroots persona.
Poor people and communities of color are the most impacted by the dramatic ecological crises currently facing our planet.
In April of this year, Movement Generation and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center convened nearly 30 activists and organizers representing various grassroots and social justice organizations from throughout California to participate in a two-week Liberation Permaculture Design Course.
Liberation Permaculture, a framework and design science that invokes the traditional knowledge of land-based peoples, provides organizers with a methodology to resist systems of oppression through building resiliency in our communities. It is a means to prepare oppressed communities for the oncoming environmental disasters while building the world we want and need now.
Come hear these course participants report back about how they are implementing Liberation Permaculture into their organizing work and how it can provide us with a critical framework for the necessary and just transition from a carbon, consumption, and profit-based economy to the participatory and life-affirming, need-based society we envision for the future.
Matthew Simmons, a fourth generation Republican, energy advisor to Bush White House, oil banker, peak oiler and now founder of offshore renewable venture-capital and think-tank Ocean Energy Institute makes shocking accusations against BP.
“What we don’t know anything about is the open hole which is caused by the drill bit when it tossed the blow-out preventer way out of the hole…and 120,000 minimum of toxic poison
MSNBC, May 26
BP will become bankrupt, clean-up of Gulf will cost over 1 trillion USD.
BP has been lying about the sealing of the leak, it continues at another site
the cyclone season will bring poisons to the surface that may kill people along the Gulf, requiring evacuation
worst environmental disaster in the history of the world
has spoken to Energy Secretary Chu, government scientists and industry insiders who support his claims
the only proven way to seal the leak is the use of a nuclear explosion, but this would take 6-9 months as the USA does not have any ready explosives, despite years of operation Plowshare
BP executives where partying on rig when explosion occurred
Republicans in Washington think this is conspiracy by Obama and environmentalists to stop offshore oil
Simmons hopes Obama can become like Lincoln and become great president to unite the country
Since Matthew Simmons works as an investment banker to the oil and gas industry, there are some that have put forward the theory that his doom-saying is merely a ploy to obtain more business for his business that finances oil and gas drilling rigs. However, Simmons appears quite sincere and has even founded a major alternative energy foundation, the Ocean Energy Institute. The Ocean Energy Institute researches and develops energy sources from the oceans such as wind energy and tidal energy
Source: Wikipedia
Readers here at Clusterfuck Nation are probably well aware of my past declarations of being allergic to conspiracy theories and crazy ideas generally. I’m not really equipped to evaluate Matt Simmons’s warnings about the exact nature of the Macondo blowout and what might happen in the months ahead. But I am confident, having met the guy and corresponded with him and read his books, that he is a straight shooter. I’m sure that he is sincere in proclaiming his extreme discomfort with the position he’s taken. Listen and decide for yourselves. (SIMMONS INTERVIEW WITH ERIC KING)
Each of the scenes (in broad terms) was available to edit – the parameters were not too open but still allowed for individual contributors to add their own creativity – and the 17 finalists for each scene were selected by the community that had gathered around their Facebook page.
June Agriculture Walkthrough at Factor e Farm by Sean
The bottom line is that resilience in food is not difficult to come by, but it presently requires more energy than we have with 2 full time people – engaged fully in open source equipment development. We are prioritizing technical development, such that appropriate-technology mechanized agriculture makes food provision effective. Our next priorities in terms of the type of generalists we’d like to have at Factor e Farm is 2 more flexible fabricators and the open source agroecologist. The flexible fabricators should generalize in power electronics and CNC controls, and the agroecologics should generalize in agricultural and processing equipment development.
This workshop outlines a vision for a democratic, worker-owned, advanced industrial ecology society. We seek pathways to provide the burgeoning food education/justice movement with the tools to become economically sustainable, and to link the emerging green industrial worker cooperatives with them into sovereign networks. Once active, such networks can become the basis for sustainable, socially just communities that revitalize locales via open source sustainable agriculture and manufacturing methods. Our panel — with academic, commercial, and school of hard knocks experience — will frame the demonstrated solutions, numerous pieces of the puzzle that we as a society need to put together.
Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance: Democratic Open-Source Food and Manufacturing Networks
Short Description
Worker Cooperative Networks for Sovereignty of Food, Commerce, & Community: Panel/Breakouts/Discussion to Envision & Chart Implementation Framework of Industrial Permaculture Ecology
The Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives is itself a cooperative made up of five member businesses: four cooperative bakeries and a development and support collective. Members share a common mission, share ongoing accounting, legal, educational and other support services, and support the development of new member cooperatives by the Association. http://arizmendi.coop
Mandela Market Place is a pioneer in development, application and assessment of community food systems. The organization evolved since 2001, first as a project of the Environmental Justice Institute – Tides Center, until incorporating in 2005 as a stand-alone 501c3 organization with a goal to strengthen community health, integrity and indentity by providing economic opportunity and empowerment for inner-city Oakland residents and businesses, and local family farms. Mandela MarketPlace works directly with community residents, local, state and federal agencies, non-profits, small business owners, and farmers to support strategies to meet food needs, expand economic opportunity and increase self-reliance of low-income and disenfranchised people. http://mandelamarketplace.org
Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. We are the first organization of our kind to combine ecological training and urban food production with a grassroots door-to-door organizing model that will vastly increase our educational community outreach, help us to recruit volunteers, decentralize our fundraising sources, and provide local jobs that also train young community organizers. http://www.plantingjustice.org
Mandela Foods Cooperative is a locally-owned and operated full-service grocery store and nutrition education center located in West Oakland, a community long underserved in grocery retail. The present undersupply of food retail in West Oakland represents an opportunity to leverage untapped local buying power into new business and employment opportunities and healthy eating options for West Oakland residents. The Cooperative will offer local goods, wholesome, fresh and affordable foods grown on family farms, nutrition education classes and a cooperative economic investment program that provides multi-level investment for community residents. http://www.mandelafoods.com
Abolish Human Rentals is dedicated to bringing an old idea into the public conscience, that the standard employment relationship, a contract for the rental of people, is invalid due to the inalienable rights of humans. It is based on the already widely held principle of the non-transferability of responsibility for one’s actions. That principle, taken to its logical conclusion, means the rental of humans have no more legitimacy than their sale. http://www.abolishhumanrentals.org
Language(s): English
Tracks:
Climate Justice: sustainability, resources and land
Democracy and Governance
Important pieces that will be presented here include the successful strategies employed in the worker cooperative networks/alliances of Mondragon, Ohio, and the San Francisco Bay Area, Permaculture design strategies implemented even in harsh climate zones, Denmark’s national industrial symbiosis program, non-parasitic capitalization of non-hierarchical enterprises, and regenerative urban food justice paradigms.
Participants will self-organize into groups to construct models that put some of the pieces together. Workshop participants will then seek to bolster viability of the proposed models, emphasizing possible pilot programs in Detroit, Oakland and in Brooklyn.
Panel members include Quinton Sankofa of Mandela Marketplace and James Berk of Mandela Foods Cooperative, Mike Leung of the embryonic Worker Cooperative Credit Union, and Gavin Raiders of Planting Justice. Facilitator: Kirstie Stramler of Permaculture Cooperative.
For updates leading up to USSF 2010, see the panel and workshop group pages on http://organize.ussf2010.org and videos on http://permaculture.tv/tag/ussf2010/ .
We are organizing a credit union that will serve worker cooperatives in the United States. This group is in the process of applying for a federal charter. We currently do not have an active charter and are not federally insured.
Worker cooperatives are businesses that are worker owned and democratically managed by their members. The credit union will help meet the following needs of worker cooperatives:
1) The worker co-op credit union will provide financial services for worker cooperatives and their members. Worker cooperatives often have difficulty attaining credit. This credit union will provide business lending exclusively to worker cooperatives. It will also provide personal loans for members’ capital contributions, as well as general consumer lending to its individual members. The credit union will provide a way for the members to support worker cooperatives through their use of its financial services.
2) The credit union will support technical assistance for its worker cooperative members. This may include financial, legal, or organizational assistance. It will also support efforts to develop new cooperatives and replicate existing ones.
3) The credit union will support education and awareness about worker cooperatives. It will help highlight the benefits of worker ownership and democratic management in the workplace.
We are unfortunately in an environment where an uncompromising purist for the abolition of human rentals would be a pariah. While it is never pleasant to compromise one’s beliefs, in practice the vast majority accept some level of hypocrisy in their actions. Which compromises should be made, and at what cost, needs to be an active discussion among modern abolitionists. Those choices are a sign of a vibrant movement dealing with the realities of applying theory in practice. Theory for its own sake is pointless. It is only when theory becomes widely known and widely applicable that it can reach its full potential.
Time and resources are limited, so it is important to think strategically about the most efficient ways to have an impact. This does not mean everyone should reach the same conclusions. Circumstances differ, as do abilities, and energy. Embrace these differences as a sign of progress and diversity.
There are many steps that can be taken to abolish human rentals. By analogy one can think of appropriate actions if they were seeking to abolish slavery. I will list a few things that can be done here, some more practical, others less so:
Refuse to rent yourself – Demand a vote and demand profit appropriation. Suggest your business be converted to a worker cooperative. Or become self employed.
Boycott businesses that use rented humans – Refuse to support them through your consumption. This obviously isn’t so easy in today’s society, but shifting consumption to worker cooperatives when possible definitely helps.
Divest from business that use human rentals – Don’t finance them by investing in the stock market and don’t buy their bonds. Socially responsible alternatives do exist. For starters use credit unions instead of banks. While credit union workplaces aren’t democratically managed it is a small step in the right direction.
Support worker cooperatives – Purchase from your local worker cooperative, learn about what they are doing, how they operate, and how their members and community benefit.
Educate your friends, family, and coworkers – Spread awareness, start a discussion. Due to some heavy ideological baggage this is a difficult topic to discuss with strangers, without sounding crazy. Leverage existing relationships and connections.
Organize, protest, demonstrate – Demand the immediate and unconditional abolition of human rentals. Civil disobedience has historically been the most effective opposition to injustice. Business as usual means people’s rights can continue to be ignored.
There are impediments to taking action of any sort: personal inconvenience, cost, loss of social standing, and incarceration to name a few. To act in face these or more serious consequences requires courage and support. People typically draw the line when action might threaten their career, which they deem to have invested too much to risk. Besides, a job is rarely something people can sacrifice. That barrier is undoubtedly present here. Advocacy on this issue carries significant risk and the need for mutual support is essential. Efforts to provide support and build a viable alternative should not be neglected
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