I call this Love’s Rebellion—a refusal to accept the ethos of materialism and selfishness as the ultimate truth of our lives, an insistence on seeing the goodness in others, and a determination to replace “power over” with caring for each other and the earth! It’s time now to give Love’s Rebellion a political platform. And to make that happen, we need your help to push these issues into the public sphere. The most effective way to help introduce a spiritual progressive voice is for you to build a caucus in your union, professional organization, church, synagogue, mosque, political party, or run for some sort of office.
2013
Environmental Alert: Join Us in Making Revolutionary Changes to Save Life on Earth
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As the oceans rise to earth-destroying levels, the agricultural heartlands turn to desert, and the rate of skin cancer grows to match the rate of the common cold… now is the time to talk honestly with the American public about dramatically reducing consumption, combating the immense power of the 1 percent, and preparing ourselves to counter the mainstream media’s obfuscations of the urgency of the coming crisis.
Articles
Lost Limbs and New Gestures in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
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People living in contaminated areas collect military waste to melt into household goods: they’re called war spoons, war chopsticks, war knives, etc. Houses are built on stilts made of bomb cases, which don’t rot in the monsoon mud. Householders make bomb gardens, using the largest bomb cases as raised planters. And, of course, bombs also explode and kill or injure more people every year.
2013
Co-ops: A Good Alternative?
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Historically, the co-op model has offered a workplace theory far superior to capitalism. Not driven by the profit motive, co-ops ought to be worker-empowering, democratic, healthier, less expensive, and more responsive to employee and community needs— valuable traits during this period of capitalist meltdown.
27.2 Spring
Occupy the Climate Emergency: Reflections on Climate, Empathy, and Intergenerational Justice
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We cannot sacrifice civil society or future generations to satisfy the greed of those intent on altering the chemical composition of our atmosphere. The urgency of our situation requires us to act. Shall we “occupy” this climate emergency instead of denying it—until the urgent truth of our situation is acted upon?
2012
Occupy’s Message to the Food Movement: Bridge the Class Divides
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The food landscape and its correlation to class is complicated and rife with contradiction. This is partly because our modern-day American food system is brand new—it’s only been in existence for about sixty years.
2012
Localization: The Economics of Happiness
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One of the most destructive effects of globalization is that it eliminates diversity. In order to grow and to provide the “economies of scale” that huge transnational corporations require, whole populations are induced to want the same consumer goods. Economic localization has been described as the economics of happiness.
Articles
We Are All Facing Extinction
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We live in a society that pits the needs of human beings against nature. Over and over again, through advertisements and public pronouncements, we’re urged to sacrifice forests, mountaintops, rivers, wholes species, or even the quality of the air we breathe so we can have energy, jobs, economic well-being. But the conflict that is conjured by corporate interests between what we need and the needs of the earth should not be confused with the human condition.
Articles
A Community Perspective on the Rights of Nature
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Although we live two continents and nearly 11,000 miles apart, as community organizers, Desmond D’sa and I look at climate change from similar perspectives — with our eyes on the ground in the places where we work. From these places, we see the results of the market-based global economic system as it transforms our communities and ecosystems into sacrifice zones for corporate profit.
Articles
Obama’s Deregulation of GMO Crops
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Early this spring, while the world was distracted by Egypt’s uprising, President Barack Obama pushed the Secretary of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets in the United States. The USDA came through as he directed, totally deregulating these Monsanto-patented genes in early February.
2011
Shasta and Goliath: Bringing Down Corporate Rule
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Mt. Shasta, a small northern California town of 3,500 residents nestled in the foothills of magnificent Mount Shasta, is taking on corporate power through an unusual process — democracy.
2011
The Age of Super Crises
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Consider the latest toxic spill in Hungary. To put it in terms that anyone can grasp, it is as though we filled up the entire Empire State Building with some of the worst stuff imaginable, tipped the building completely on its side, and then spilled the full contents on the ground. The resulting mess would have filled an area of approximately seventeen square blocks, or slightly over a half-mile in any direction.
2011
Climate Stability First
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And we will inflict damage as long as we burn fossil fuel, and we will burn fossil fuel as long as we keep allowing the oil and coal companies to pour their waste into the atmosphere for free. And we’ll keep doing that as long as we don’t stand up politically to the power of that industry.
2010
Yankee Doodle Faced Big Oil
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The human race — not for the first time in our history — has lost the sacred sense of self-restraint. We don’t restrain ourselves. And what’s the result? The earth will give forth thorns and thistles, not abundance, and you will have to work with the sweat pouring down your faces to get just barely enough to eat.
2010
The Race to Save Civilization
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If we look at early civilizations that declined and collapsed, more often than not it was a shortage of food that brought them down. Until recently I had rejected the idea that food could be the weak link in our modern civilization; I now think it probably is.