What do you do when a friend is slimed by Fox News? If you respond, do you simply feed the venom? But if you don’t respond, do their lies stand, unchallenged? Or is it a badge of honor to be called out by Fox, however nasty it feels? […]
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All over the country, people are flocking to the streets to join occupations demanding a just system for the 99%. It’s an inspiring vision: thousands of people participating in direct democracy, making decisions, having their voices heard. And it’s a potential nightmare—thousands of ordinary Americans being subjected to really bad, ponderous consensus meetings, fleeing in frustration and anguish and ready to accept any tyranny over the prospect of more long meetings! Consensus process can be wonderful—or terrible. At it’s best, it can be empowering, creative and efficient. But for that to happen, people need to understand and agree upon the process. […] Something is happening. Occupations are springing up all over the place. One of the young women organizers told me she’d passed on my consensus download to someone about to start Occupy Mississippi! There are union folks here from Wisconsin, displaced stockbrokers from New York, laid off policy wonks from here in DC, affable former corporate managers from Texas, ex-cons from the ‘hood here in DC, a lot of homeless people, and students who’ve woken up to the fact that they are debt-slaves. What will happen if ordinary folks all over the country get addicted to having a say in the decisions that affect their lives? […] October 7th, 2011 | Tags: OccupyDC, October2011 | Category: climate change, Political Activism, social justice, Uncategorized | 7 comments With so many people new to consensus process, the meetings are sometimes ponderous—and yet there’s an archetypal quality to it all, people sitting under a tree debating and discussing and coming to decisions together in a process designed to assure that everyone has a voice. I think we crave that experience, somewhere deep in the soul. It is exactly what democracy looks like, and right now it seems that all over the world people are hearing the call. […] October 6th, 2011 | Category: Paganism/earth-based spirituality, Political Activism, social justice | 4 comments “Western culture” itself is multicultural. Breivik blew up his buildings with explosives invented in China. He counted his dead in Arabic numerals. The media is full of strident voices telling us greed and prejudice and self-righteous, self-justifying bile are not only okay, they’re patriotic! Breivik’s horrific murders were a clear message about where that thinking leads—to the death of innocents. We need strong voices now to raise up a powerful countercry, to say that all of us have value, that we’re here on earth to take care of one another, to proclaim that every difference of background and culture and perspective is a gift. We need a vision of how we might live in such a world—for if we can’t imagine it, how can we create it? […] July 28th, 2011 | Tags: Breivik, multiculturalism, Norway killings, terrorism | Category: Fifth Sacred thing movie, social justice | 7 comments Patrick McCollum unloading the Maypole “When Pagans get their rights, everyone gets their rights,” say Patrick McCollum, who for the last fifteen years has volunteered to serve as a Pagan chaplain in the California prisons. McCollum, a talented jewelry designer and craftsman by nature, has in the last decade spent the bulk of […] May 17th, 2011 | Tags: Pagan prisoners, Patrick McCollum, prison reform, Prisons | Category: Paganism/earth-based spirituality, Prison, social justice | 28 comments And along with those two big events, I started teaching our long-term training program in Bayview Hunters Point, teaching permaculture design and environmental leadership to both garden coordinators and young adults who live in public housing in San Francisco’s poorest neighborhood. […] November 26th, 2010 | Tags: food security, gardens, Pagan, permaculture, pumpkin pie, recipes, social justice, Spiral Dance, sustainability, urban gardens | Category: Bayview Hunters Point, Food and recipes, gardens, Paganism/earth-based spirituality, Permaculture, social justice, sustainability | 13 comments Remember that the real work of change is always going on—if not in Washington, then in thousands of towns and neighborhoods and communities, if not in the halls of power, then in the streets. Don’t be complacent, but don’t despair. All around us are allies working for more justice, more freedom, more ecological balance, more peace. This is not a time to fall back, but to step up, to be bolder, braver, louder, funnier, more inventive, more outrageous, more committed. Political winds blow back and forth—hold to your deepest values, and we’ll stay the course. […] 10 AM on 10-10-10—an auspicious moment, if you like the number 10! I am at the Alice Griffith Garden in the Doublerock public housing development in Bayview Hunters Point—a neighborhood of San Francisco sometimes known as a ‘food desert’. It’s easy to buy a bottle of liquor or a fistful of oblivion here—really hard to get a good, fresh vegetable. […] October 12th, 2010 | Category: climate change, gardens, Permaculture, Political Activism, social justice, sustainability, Uncategorized | 4 comments Too many times I’ve sat in meetings having the same conversation, over and over again—where are the people of color? The answer is not to go comb the streets, dragging in random people to make our group look more diverse. Nor is it to stop doing what we’re doing, if it’s the work we’re called to. An effective answer involves drawing a bigger circle, like this Forum has done, that includes all of our multiple movements and issues within it as allies, and if we have resources or skills or connections, saying to our brothers and sisters, “We’re on the same mission—how can I be of service to you?” […] June 29th, 2010 | Category: gardens, Political Activism, social justice, Uncategorized, US Social Forum | 6 comments |
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