Activism

Ants, angels and armor: further conversations on human nature

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“We’re the ants patiently carrying sand a grain at a time from under the castle wall. We work from the bottom up. The knights up there don’t see the ants and don’t know what we’re doing. They’ll figure it out only when the wall begins to fall. It takes time and quiet persistence. Always remember this: They fight with money and we resist with time, and they’re going to run out of money before we run out of time”

(Discussion with “Peak Shrink” Kathy McMahon, “Ecological Footprint” originator Bill Rees and Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace International.)

Making 2012 the year resilience built

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It’s all too easy to feel that hope is lost. But with your help, we’re determined to make 2012 the year that resilience built.

2011 has been another turbulent year … looming behind it all — increasingly acknowledged, but still not often addressed — resource, environmental, economic, and social constraints.

For Post Carbon Institute, the question has not been, “What to do?” but rather, “What to do first?” There are so many challenges, all of them interrelated, and so many areas that need attention. Building on the wise counsel of our Fellows, Board, Advisers, Allies, and Supporters, PCI has developed three primary strategies:

  • Setting the Agenda
  • Changing the Conversation
  • Building Resilience

The Making of the American 99%

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In fact, once an American starts to slip downward, a variety of forces kick in to help accelerate the slide. An estimated 60% of American firms now check applicants’ credit ratings, and discrimination against the unemployed is widespread enough to have begun to warrant Congressional concern. Even bankruptcy is a prohibitively expensive, often crushingly difficult status to achieve. Failure to pay government-imposed fines or fees can even lead, through a concatenation of unlucky breaks, to an arrest warrant or a criminal record. Where other once-wealthy nations have a safety net, America offers a greased chute, leading down to destitution with alarming speed.

BREAKING: Calls needed now to Obama to stop Keystone XL pipeline

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As I type this, Big Oil’s representatives in the House and Senate are pushing legislation that would rush approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Up until now, President Barack Obama has stood strong, threatening to reject any bill that includes the pipeline.

But in the last hour, some terrible news has begun to leak from Washington, D.C.—President Obama seems to be on the verge of caving on Keystone.

Occupy economics departments

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On November 2nd nearly 70 students walked out of an introductory economics class at Harvard in solidarity with the Occupy movement. The mainstream media largely ignored the protest. That’s regrettable since the economics profession has provided the intellectual framework and justification for the inequality and centralization of corporate power the Occupiers are challenging.

Occupy – Dec 14

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– TIME Person of the Year 2011: ‘The protester’
– Why I Protest: Dr. Arthur Chen of Oakland, California (TIME profile)
– Inside Wukan: the Chinese village that fought back
– With Port Actions, Occupy Oakland Tests Labor Leaders
– Walter Moseley: 10 Things You Can Do to Sustain the Occupy Movement

Party of swindlers and thieves

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Just how far gone is Putin’s government? The evidence so far is that they are still feeling invincible, and are willing to resort to repression in order to make the election results stick. But the Russian people want to express themselves; they want to be heard; they want those who hear them to make the required changes in response.

Occupying Post-Collapse America: What if the industrial death-urge lived on?

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The Occupy movement is a start. But the stakes are rising. The earth is dying. The biocidal industrial economy, while coming apart at the seams, still rages on. …And what if the industrial disease DOESN’T die with collapse? What then? And what does that imply for resistance movements?

Small town Sebastopol contributes to Occupy movement

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Occupy events in big cities like New York, Oakland, and Los Angeles receive considerable coverage in the corporate media, especially when police react. Yet in small towns and mid-size cities throughout America, peaceful occupations occur that engage people in conversations and education in public spaces and beyond.