Future Hope
Posted: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 08:40
Several days ago a document, the "GlobalMay Statement," showed up in my email inbox. In the website where this statement can be found, it is explained that:
this is an attempt by some inside the [occupy] movements to reconcile statements written and endorsed in the different assemblies around the world. The process of writing the statement was consensus based, open to all, and regularly announced on our international communications platforms, that are also open to all. It was a hard and long process, full of compromises. This statement is offered to people's assemblies around the world for discussions, revisions and endorsements.
One of the things which struck me was how strong the statement is on the climate and environmental crises...
Posted: Monday, April 16, 2012 - 08:17
“Change happens one person at a time. This means there is only one way to alter the trajectory of the troubling conditions the world faces today, and that is for you to make the shift from “Me” to “We.” You must see for yourself the truths inherent in the natural laws of sustainability and the power of the five commitments. If you focus on the broader “We” that makes all life possible, and think and act sustainably, you will find great peace and happiness and become a role model that others will follow.” - Bob Doppelt, “From Me to We"
A number of years ago someone recommended that I read “The Four Agreements,” by Don Miguel Ruiz, and I did. It was a valuable book, kind of a how-to for how to live a healthy, balanced, peaceful and...
Posted: Monday, April 2, 2012 - 11:20
USA Today and Reuters earlier this week were very sobering: “Study: Global temperatures could rise 5 degrees by 2050,” (USA Today) and, even worse, “Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible.” (Reuters) It’s not that I was surprised. I have known for years how urgent things are as far as our heated-up climate. Since deciding in 2003 that I needed to do more personally on this overarching survival issue, the world has seen a dramatic rise in the number and intensity of weather disasters, just as predicted by climate scientists years ago, though coming sooner than most of them expected.
What are the main points of these two articles? One reports on extensive research at Oxford University in England using computer model simulations which...
Posted: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 - 07:20
What can happen in 2012 to further the objective of uniting the 99%? Or, as I wrote in my first “Uniting the 99%” column, how do we bring together the 70-75% that “potentially, could come together in support of a broadly-based, independent, progressive popular movement?”
Let’s start with how we will NOT, absolutely not, further that objective:
-Cutting back on independent, non-electoral organizing and independent, visible, demonstrative actions. I might argue differently if there was a powerful, multi-racial, multi-issue, “third force” mass movement that had come together and was running strong progressive candidates for office at all levels in this national election year, but such a third force doesn’t exist, not yet. Accordingly, it is...
I love the Occupy Movement’s “1% vs. 99%” frame. It speaks clearly and directly to the major problem holding back social progress in a wide range of areas: the control of obscene wealth and political and economic power by a tiny minority at the expense of everyone else.
The truth is, though, that there’s little chance that the “99%” is going to be united anytime soon to stop that “1%” from the society-suicidal path they’ve got us on. However, it is possible that a big chunk of it, a majority or even 2/3rds or more, could come together in some way in the not too far off future. This can happen if we in the Occupy and progressive movements do our work well, and the economic/political/climate/social crisis continues or deepens (which is...
Posted: Thursday, December 29, 2011 - 11:54
Eight years ago I decided that I needed to change my life. The reason? The late summer heat wave which hit Western Europe in August, 2003, leading to 30,000 or more deaths.
I knew about the issue of global warming before 2003. Indeed, in 2002, during a Green Party of New Jersey campaign for the U.S. Senate, it was one of my major issues. Prominent in my basic brochure was this statement: “Move towards energy independence, reverse global warming and create jobs through a crash program to get energy from the sun, the wind and other renewable fuels.”
But it was that European heat wave that literally drove me to serious study about this issue, and by the end of the year I was convinced that the climate crisis was much more serious, much more...
Posted: Monday, December 5, 2011 - 10:05
“But eventually, the greater danger to the movement is that it may dovetail into the presidential election campaign that's coming up. I've seen that happen before in the antiwar movement here, and I see it happening all the time in India. Eventually, all the energy goes into trying to campaign for the "better guy," in this case Barack Obama, who's actually expanding wars all over the world. Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end up in exactly the same place.” -Arundhati Roy
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen a number of articles about what the Occupy movement/the progressive movement/the climate movement should do about the 2012...