Protest, violence, class
The tactics of ‘get off our land’ and ‘hey, we have a collective civilizational problem that needs greater action’ are not the same, even if they’re part of the same larger story.
social change
The risk of a progressive reversal
Thinking about the post-pandemic future and the scenarios that could emerge is as challenging as it is important. One cannot conceive of a more pressing issue for a progressive movement. Finding a workable response is thus of critical importance.
If democracy looks doomed, Extinction Rebellion may have an answer
At the heart of a new climate emergency bill lies a simple idea to cut through Westminster groupthink: a citizens’ assembly.
2026: A new agenda for tomorrow
With ideas like the Green New Deal, or the “Beauty New Deal,” which the Maryland-based Bread and Roses Party has proposed, we should be able to write another volume—2026: A New Agenda for Tomorrow.
A letter to real power: a letter to us
I started to re-assess my assumption about who this letter would be directed to. When I looked up the dictionary definition – “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events” – and I recalled the way the world has changed since 2018, it became clearer where the power really is.
With us, the people.
Politics, Trauma and Empathy: Breakthrough to a politics of the heart?
We can choose to believe the future is inescapably set in stone, and thereby make it so; or we can dare to create an opening for a different future, and so give us all a chance.
How to Bring About Catastrophic Success in the Face of Climate Change
The collective project of remaking the world needs to be approached with care for—and active consent from—everyone, because everyone is working together on a project that will be better than anything that currently exists.
Solidarity Forever: Essential Workers, Public Goods, and How We Are in This Together
There is a chance we can shatter some of the toxic narratives that justify, and lend support to, the brutal systems of inequality, racism, and environmental devastation that are wreaking havoc on our lives.
Coronavirus: Have we Already Missed the Opportunity to Build a Better World?
If lesson one of coronavirus is that things can change, and lesson two is that they easily slip back again, then lesson three must be about the importance of presenting images of the future that motivate people to imagine change.
Thinking Outside the Ring
I grant that at this moment in our converging health, societal, and economic crises—including the equivalent of a 32.9 percent annual decline in GDP—words discouraging economic activity probably come as unwelcome (especially from the jewelry store owners and the malls that lease them space).
Beyond the Divides of Black-and-White Thinking – Coming Together in the Heart of Our Wholeness: Part 4
High and low, rich and poor, black and white, left and right – it is time for us to end our divisions, and create a world, not of unlimited growth for the few, but the well-being of the many — a level playing field where all of us, and all of life, can flourish.
Transforming the University to Confront the Climate Crisis, Part 2
We are aiming high: to assist in laying the foundations for the establishment of an ongoing, multigenerational, student-community initiative for an equitable and just transition in Isla Vista, California, and to put the result, Eco Vista, forward as an experiential model that other small towns with college students might want to freely adapt for their communities.