Egypt and Community Building

I meant to post this before Mubarak stepped down, while it was still written in present tense.  But here it is anyway.  A lot of my info came from radio reporting on KPFA and Al Jazeera, if my sources aren't directly cited.

(photo source and more photos here)

The uprising in Egypt reminds us that building community is at the heart of revolutionary movement.

During the last several weeks in Tahrir square, Egyptians for the first time felt like the country was theirs. People who've lived their entire life under the Mubarak regime for the first time felt alive - so alive that they were, and are, willing to die for the liberation of their people.

As I heard one radio commentator say, "Mass action jolts people out of feelings of individual powerlessness. It makes us realize that we have collective power."

Egyptian activists have been organizing demonstrations in Cairo and Tahrir square for years, but never saw more than a few thousand activists turn out. This time the timing was just right. The young organizers of Egypt witnessed their brothers and sisters in Tunisia oust, Ben Ali, the dictator oppressing them.  They strategized for days and organized protests through Facebook.  They made decoys to outmaneuver the police. When a critical mass of demonstrators filled the square, it spiraled and coalesced into an unstoppable movement.

The people's movement of Eygpt caught the imagination of the world. Inside that square, life blossomed where there was once endless despair. An Egyptian ex-pat living in the California told Hard Knock Radio at the Egypt Solidarity protest in San Francisco that things have been bad in Egypt for awhile, but people have been especially beaten-down in the last six to seven years. We're talking about a completely corrupt government. Mass unemployment across all sectors of society, especially the youth - including lawyers and other college graduates.  Rising food prices. Social services, including schools, that offer nothing. And to keep the people in check: severe and systematic police repression.

But on January 25th, things changed.

Entire community networks developed in the liberated land of Tahrir square and in public spaces across the Eqyptian nation. These ways of being were not just for survival, but material evidence of the people's ability to organize and govern themselves. The people of Egypt were shoving this material evident in their government's face, saying: "We do not need you. We can provide for ourselves. Indeed, we already are."

When the internet was shut down, the networks of communication and organization blossomed on the streets. They developed trash and recycling systems. Doctors roved the streets, providing medical care. Neighborhoods organized checkpoints to search each person entering, making sure they are not state police, Mubarak-thugs. Christians formed perimeters around Muslims when they needed to pray. Muslims formed perimeters around Christians when they needed to pray. Art, music, and poetry took over the streets into the night. People cooked food and distributed it to each other. Groups camped out in tent cities.  Kindergarten classes were held in the middle of the demonstrations.  A KFC was taken over and transformed into a clinic.  (Just look at this map.)  People organized federated councils to make collective decisions about next steps to take.

Women said for the first time they felt like public space was safe space.

This is the moment of revolution.  We'll see what happens, but for now, Egypt is in good hands: the hands of the Egyptians themselves.

It's a good reminder to reflect on our own lives. What networks and relationships are we building and strengthening in our own day-to-day lives?  For the strength of these networks are what sustain and move us when current status-quo systems rupture and new potential for freedom and community arises.

The Intersections of Austerity and Decentralization?

(image source)

The other day, Naomi Klein asked her Twitter followers for the "real definition of austerity," the most looked-up word of 2010 according to Websters.  Someone tweeted back, "Tightening your belt. (Around your neck.)"

We're in a time of global austerity - a time when the global evaporation of the mega-bankers swindled wealth becomes an excuse to slash and burn what tenuous public services exist in the countries lucky enough to have them.  Austerity measures are perhaps most associated with the 1980's--when the IMF imposed Structural Adjustment Programs on recently liberated countries of the Global South, and governments of industrial nations did the same thing to themselves domestically.  The Regan years. The world never recovered, and now it's happening again.  

In the United States, austerity is enacted most on the state level.  Whereas the federal government can continuously print money or borrow money,* the states cannot.**  And yet most of the social safety net in the U.S. is administered at the state level.   This past November, Republicans -- who tend to hate on public services -- made sweeping gains in power at the state level in the November elections.  A loss of revenue, plus the inability to borrow vast sums, plus Republican power? This is the perfect recipe for imposed austerity.   

So how 'bout California?

(photo source)

On January 10th, Jerry Brown unveiled his new CA budget plan.  It balances the the budget, eliminating the projected $25 billion dollar deficit.  That's billion with a B.  California spending currently stands at about $105 billion/year, to get a perspective.

Brown is widely praised for his straight talkin, no bullshitin method of accounting, which is why Democrats are generally behind him.  As Assemblyperson Jared Huffman says, his budget actually attempts to "solve our chronic fiscal mess instead of kicking the can down the road with gimmicks and borrowing [like Arnold did]."

Okay, props for that.

The plan is two fold: $12.5 billion dollars cut from the budget and about $12.5 billion dollars worth of taxes extended--but this second part is contingent on voter approval during a special election in June.  (Why do the tax extensions, but not the budget cuts, have to be approved by the voters, huh?)  And the cuts, are reportedly spread over a majority of all social programs (except k-12 education).

So what to think?

Well, as a person calling in to a radio news show stated, this is "just another neoliberal budget...it does nothing to increase progressive taxation."  Gov. Brown's budget spares the prison guard union and the adult prison industry.  He even appointed two folks tied to the prison union.  Public services only exist in response to a vastly unequal society, and budget cuts will always attack those most marginalized and disenfranchised by an oppressive economic system.

Governments are and have been slashing social services.  This deepens pain, numbness, rage.  We are witnessing the elimination or worsening of... learning opportunities for youth, counseling for mentally unstable folks, support for low-income single parents, job training for young women and men in the criminal justice system, care for foster children, health services for discriminated-against families, aid for victims of domestic violence, paychecks for case workers, resources for college students, and jobs!

That's kids and teens in shittier schools--schools that foster self-hate, that push kids out, that cannot understand the youth they pretend to serve.

That's more emotionally wounded souls with nowhere to turn.

That's more young, middle-aged, and elderly women with children they can't feed--children they fear are going down the wrong path, but they are so overburdened they don't know what they can do anymore.

That's more men two see only two doors before them--prison or death--because all others have shut.

That's more children who have to learn to survive by themselves on the streets.

That's more uncles, aunts, granny's and grandpas who die preventable deaths from chronic disease or alcoholism.  More dad's who can't work because of severe back pain and mom's who have to work the graveyard shift.  More children suffering from asthma and lack of nutrition.

That's more women and men and trans-identified people suffering trauma that hardens throughout their bodies, building barriers to other and all parts of their life, causing fractures and fissions where there where once whole things.

That's more housemates who can no longer afford rent, who are building up thousands of dollars in debt that they just don't, can't, think about right now.

That's more college students who can no longer take classes on ethnic studies and learn the real history of her people.

Support the social movements demanding a halt to the slashing! 

BUT...is there any silver lining?



YES.  First, Gov. Brown budget includes the previously laughed-at proposal of eliminating the state Department of Juvenile Justice.  Yes, abolishing the system of state-based youth incarceration.  (It would be fully transfered to the counties.)  People have been advocating for closing this horrendous and violent system for a long time.  It would be a big win.  Sign the petition!  Show some support!

Along these lines, is there something to be said for Jerry Brown's philosophical commitment to decentralizing power.  Can we find some hope?

His budget proposes structural transformation, or "realignment" - more power on a county level, which is where ordinary citizens have better ability to influence governement.  It's closer to the people.  Services can serve the needs of the people better.

Much of this goes back to Prop 13, which was passed in 1978.  It has put California in a perpetual budget crises.   It is also considered the "third rail" of California politics, meaning that neither major party even considered touching it.  (Kinda like the prison industry.)  Prop 13 essentially ushered in the Reagan years: when the rich refused to pay their taxes and got the laws changed to reflect that.  Prop 13 capped property taxes at 1% of the property's value.  This severely limited the income of the counties, which depend on property taxes.  County budgets were then supported by state money, therefore ceding a degree of sovereignty and power to the state.

Now, there's opportunity to bring power back to the county level. But the perpetual question is, What about the money?  How are local governments supposed to fund themselves?  How can we bring back progressive taxes and strong property taxes, especially on large corporate owners?  Brown's proposal doesn't address the adequacy of funding social services and how funding for county-run programs has dried up in past "realignment" programs.

But we must also keep in mind that the way things are going, we can't count on having a lot of money.   People all over the world are doing - as they have been - more with less.  It's best we hop on that train too.  A lot of it has to do with building strong and resilient communities, both in our resource-use but also in how we look out for each other.

Until then, lets try to make sure Brown and the CA legislators are tightening the belt around our stomachs, not our necks.



*Actually the same thing... All the money that "the U.S. prints" to fill its deficit holes is actually printed by the Federal Reserve, a consortium of the largest private banks, and then loaned to the federal government at interest.  (Even though Congress has the constitutional power to print it's own money if it wants!) To go down this rabbit hole, click here.

**Basically all governments (all countries and U.S. states) except the U.S. federal government are in danger of bankruptcy if they borrow two much.  The U.S. is immune because it regulates the U.S. dollar, which is cornerstone of international financial power.  But that is only for now.  In the long term, the U.S. appears to be heading down the shithole...in a more systemic way.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

"I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant."
      
             - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, 1964

The U.S.'s War and Occupation of Afghanistan

(photo source)

Joe Biden, three weeks ago on NBC's Meet the Press: "Just like we did in Iraq, we're starting it in July of 2011 and we're gonna be totally outta there come hell or high water by 2014."

Joe Biden, yesterday (alongside Hamid Karzai in Kabul): "The United States -- if the Afghan people want it -- are prepared.  We are not leaving in 2014.  Hopefully, we will have totally turned over the ability of the [??] to the Afghan security forces to maintain the security of the country.  But we will-- We are not leaving, if you don't want us to leave."

Joe Biden knows the game. Don't get played.

(Audio of his quotes here on KPFA at timecode 2:45.)

Monologue of a Young Voter

Tuesday was election day.   According to history, about 40% of the U.S. voting population voted.  60% didn't vote.  Not even a little bit.

In California 7 million people voted.   40 million people live in the state.

Facts.

Here are my thoughts:

This was the first time I got involved in the elections, even though it still wasn't much.  Don't get me wrong, I've voted since I turned 18.  In 2006, I voted for Ned Lamont in Connecticut when he was the hopeful progressive outsider challenging Joe Lieberman.  In 2008, I triumphantly voted for Obama in the primaries (and then messed up getting my absentee ballot for the general election because I was out of the country.)

But this time, I found a way to be more inspired because I'd gone to a talk by Billy Wimsatt -- the writer and organizer who gets himself and others fired up about voting and elections in way that few people can.

Taking his advice, I made a local progressive youth voter guide that I emailed to friends and family. (Of course hella last minute.  Blah.  The goal is for it to be collaborative and finished at least a little bit ahead of time so that it can be distributed all over the place... Next time!)  I researched the issues and made my little cheat sheet.  It was very empowering.

Elections are a token version of democracy, but at least they're some version of democracy, right?  If only we were able to the leverage this little opportunity to cast a ballot into something that actually began to resemble real public, participatory democracy.

I'm feeling that the whole culture around voting is wrong.  I was driving to work in the middle of the day on Tuesday feeling all pumped about how citizens across the nation were casting ballots.  But I looked around and nothing reflected that since of epicness inside me.  Just billboards for the same old ads.  The same old cars driving down the highway.  I kept changing the radio dial, but barely anyone was talking about the elections, let alone GETTING OUT THE VOTE!

It could be the fun, festive, jovial public ritual, but instead it's this private, solemn, "civic duty."  WTF?

You go to the polls before or after work.  You wait through the bureaucracy.  You vote and it's completely, super, uber private.  The layout of the ballot mixed with fluorescent lighting makes you feel dumb and gives you headaches.  You feel kinda sick voting for candidates just cause they're less evil.  This is insulting to your dignity.  You feel good voting for a proposition you really support.  You feel really effing confused about everything else.  Then you cast it into the machine and get on with the rest of your day.  Perhaps a little small talk is thrown in.

It is not empowering!

We don't have a culture of democracy, we have a culture of bureaucracy!  (Wow...haha...maybe I should be a speech writer.)

Why aren't we all having dances and block parties in the street, passing out tons of DIY voter guides, filling out ballots together, wearing t-shirts of who we're voting for, hollering out your support for Kamala Harris inside the polling place while shading in the bubble next to her name?

Think of it as a SF Giants game!  Or parade! (If only politicians were as appreciative of their base as the Giant's players are of theirs.)

As I was driving home, a lot more radio stations we're analyzing the election results.  But that's just the problem.  The media outlets LOVE the spectacle of covering election results, but where were they the day of?  Were they encouraging and empowering people to actually go out and vote? In the weeks leading up to it, were they actually helping voters to understand who and what we were voting on?  (The newspapers do their part, but not the media as a whole.)

Now the obvious response is that voting is not worth it because there's nothing to get excited about. That its a two party dictatorship.  "We have other things on our plate. Voting offers me nothing."  There is truth in this for sure, for sure.  Elections are still superficial in the bigger picture.  (Read some deep ish - Adrienne Maree Brown's wisdom about election day - here.)  But hey.

Democrats are better.  Obama has actually accomplished quite a bit.  Wonder what the ef Obama has done so far?  Check out the website: whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com.  He passed student loan reform, healthcare reform, financial regulation, de-escalated the Iraq War, and prevented a worse economy.  (Though of course the adequacy of all are arguable...and he has escalated the Afghanistan war, robot drone killings, deportations...)

But building a progressive movement is an incremental thing.  A movement that gets seriously organized can pressure people like Obama and the democrats.  A progressive movement has no chance of pressuring right-wingers.

Or if you're totally fed up with the Democrats, why not organize folks in the 60% of non-voters to vote for the Green Party?

Right now, we do not have a democratic voting culture.  People have to work on election day.  People don't know where their polling place is for their precinct.  They are not allowed to vote at a place that is close to their work but far from their home.  The ballots don't make sense.  The lines are too long.  The polling places are understaffed.  There is a ton of documented voter suppression - such as intentionally misleading voters about where they can vote.  Tons of people are barred from voting, most commonly for felony convictions.  The media tends to only confuse us more.  Third parties are legally barred from debates.  In most states, people have to register to vote weeks before the election, when it usually off the public radar.

But we can do our small parts to change that.  We can make voter guides with friends and pass them out far and wide.  We can also organize support for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote?  (It seems obvious, but is in fact not reality.)  Or universal, automatic voter registration for anyone who turns 18?  Or a day off work?

Until then I'll be following Billy Wimsatt's and others' documentation of how our generation is the most progressive since 1972.  And Jeff Chang's analysis (which I wrote about before) about the coming political battles between majority white baby boomers and a majority POC generation of young people growing into adulthood.

Peace!

-------------------------------------------------

Here are Billy Wimsatt's reason's for getting involved in electoral politics in his new book, Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs, which I highly recommend to anyone who loves social justice, honesty, organizing, and movement building:

"Top eight reasons for people who hate politics to love elections:

1) Bridge barriers: Elections force us to work together across our barriers: race, class, issues, ideology.  Women, gays, environmentalists, people of color, students, labor--we are all getting screwed by the same folks.  Elections are a very concrete way to bring us all together.

2) Talk to regular people: Elections necessitate us to get out of activist bubbles and communicate with everyday people who don't agree with us.  This can only be a good thing,

3) Include the whole country: Elections force us to focus on the entire county, especially suburban area and Middle America, not just cities and the coasts.  The movement desperately needs to become more inclusive.

4) Data: Elections make us get serious about data.  We claim to represent 'the people.' But who are these people?  Maybe they show up up at a rally.  But do we have their phone numbers? Can we contact them? No.

5) Think big: Elections encourage us to think large-scale.  They force us how to build majorities and win.

6) Money...and money: Elections open up a whole new stream of money for community-based work.  Two streams, actually -- the money it takes to win elections, and the much bigger stream controlling government budgets and what our tax dollars should be spent on.

7) Ease: On top of all of that, elections are an easy thing to organize around.  Unlike most other movement activities, the media actually wants to cover you.  Regular people are more invested in what you are talking about, and think you are addressing something practical, not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy. There are very clear deadlines, and very clear results.  Compared to "saving the planet" or "fighting racism," elections are satisfying, practical, and simple.  That makes it easy to get more people involved.

8) Winning and losing: Oh yeah. That. Winners get to hire and empower a bunch of people who share their values. And they get to vote on things that affect us all.

Bioneers: Part Two

Here are my edited, abridged, and paraphrased notes from two extraordinary panels. (Disclaimer: my own interpretations may be are inadvertently thrown in there! I'm also kinda biased toward quoting john powell, though sarah crowell is also my new hero):

Akaya Windwood of the Rockwood Leadership Institute moderated both panels. Beforehand she had told all of the panelists not to prepare anything.  "We spend too much time preparing for things we already know."  Better to have a candid conversation with wise people.  She also said, "After each question, I'm going to ask for silence so all of us in the audience can think about how we would answer it.  This builds collective wisdom in the room."

Her moderating and question skills were as powerful as the panelists' answers. Her questions were simple, direct, and the definition of what it means to be to the point.  She would also have the audience take a deep breath together periodically to remind us that the word "conspire" comes from Latin word for "to breathe together."

PANEL ONE: "Change vs. Transformation"


john a. powell - superstar philosopher based out of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University.  Oh how I want to go to his "Keeping it Real: The Practice of Diversity - A Conversation with bell hooks" on Oct 20 at OSU.
Brock Dolman -  dude who does much work on resisliency, permaculture, and ecological design at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Sarah Crowell - superstar artistic director for Destiny Arts Center for teens in Oakland, CA
Kristen Rothballer - managing director at Green For All and former organizer of the youth program at Bioneers


Akaya Windwood: [I missed the opening question because  I walked in late, but I assume is was something along the lines of the title.]

john a. powell: "'Crisis' refers to when the old has died and the new has not yet been born." [Shout out to the extraordinary teacher Gustavo Esteva!] "When positive feedback loops reach a critical point, transformation occurs--this requires a new language, a new grammar."

Akaya Windwood:  What is the role of grief or fear?


Brock Dolman: The most important water to bring back to the land has got to be tears.  Stifling grief is bad medicine.  [He was also into puns]: Scare City = Scarcity.  Bun's Dancing = Abundancy

Sarah Crowell: I was initially of afraid of working with teenagers because all I could think of was my own insecurity in those days.  Most people are afraid of teenagers.  But as a biracial, bicultural queer woman in straight world, I like to think of myself as a bridge-person.  After ten years of working with teens, my fear has dissipated...Teens are so cute!

john a. powell: In the sixties, historically white colleges started inviting many students of color, who came and transformed the institutions.  The students were ill-prepared to succeed by conventional definition, but they had their communities behind them, so they flourished.  In fact, that were too transformative from the perspective of the institutions, so now it's mostly middle class students of color who are admitted to the academy -- they are better prepared on paper, but they are flunking out because they're disconnected from their communities.

For a film example check out When We Were Kings.  George Forman was clearly the favorite to win the boxing match, but Mohammad Ali says, "I have 100 million Africans holding me up.  There's no way George Foreman can beat me." And Ali won...He did it by letting George Foreman pound on him for so long he became exhausted.  And then Ali knocked him out.  It was called rope-a-dope!

Too many of us have lost connection with our community, which means we've lost connection with ourselves.  This only leads to failure.

Akaya Windwood: What is justice?

Kristen Rothballer: The first thing that comes to mind is "just us."  It's just us here on this planet...

john a. powell:  Justice is fairness.  It is public love.  To often we think of love as exclusive love: you can only love one person.  [Then he brought it all back to the foundations of western thought. Talkin' about first the Greeks, then Enlightenment thinkers, specifically Hobbes.]  If you read these people with dispassion, they sound completely paranoid: 'First we need  a government  to protect us from each other, and then we need guns to protect ourselves from the government with is supposed to protect us from each other." [I mean seriously! is basically what he was saying. :)]

In the West, justice is all about stuff, contractual relationships, fear of the other, and it never seems to happen.

There are questions we need to address. For example, if you have food for a family of four, does everyone get a quarter of the food, or do some have specific needs that you have to take into account?

We're one of the few societies in the world that doesn't have a good samaritan statute.  In other societies, you see someone in distress and are able to help them, you are required to.  In the U.S., if you see someone in distress, you can let them suffer.

The word "private" comes from the Greek word (prive) for DEPRIVED.  But it has become our dominant form of living.  [It's cray-cray!]  Before the 1970's all porches were constructed in the front of the house.  After the 1970's they were all constructed in the back!

Sarah Crowell: [She told a story about the struggle of one of her black teenagers who was struggling with going to prom because she was worried about sweating out her straightened hair.  The story ended triumphantly and she went to the prom in an afro.]

Teens have an incredible passion for justice.  They are constantly questioning everything.

The word "justice" gets so stale.   It is fairness, but the word 'fairness' just makes me think of an adult yelling at a child.  Let's think about how justice is sexy!  It's all about: how do we work together and be creative enough to share all this joy!

Brock Dolman: Private property = private poverty.  [He also said to check out someone -- Marteen Pratel? -- for more on the idea of MUTUAL INDEBTEDNESS, but I can't find this on the google.]

Akaya Windwood: What is the gift of individuality and the role of solitude?


Brock Dolman: A 'niche' is not a place, as it's commonly misunderstood to be.  It's a job description, a role for the individual in the larger community.

Sarah Crowell: In solitude, I can remind myself of who I am so that I can again move forward.  It keeps me in a state of movement.

john a. powell:  When we quiet down, we see our feelings.  We see the ego coming and going.  We think of the ego as a solid thing, but it's actually fluid.

[He tells a Descartes joke:]  Descartes walks into a bar.  The bartender says, 'Would you like a shot of whiskey?'  Descartes says 'I think not' and disappears. [This was followed by much laughter :)]

The real decision making does not happen on a conscious level.  [This is so deep!]  Check out the book The Illusion of Choice.  Only 2% of our cognitive emotional processes are directly acessible to us consciously.  And that's where the ego is.

The individual is different than who we think she is.  She is fractured multiple, complex, situational.  If we sat for long enough like the Buddha did, we might reach his conclusion that there is no permanent self.  But does that mean we're blah?  No.  We get stuck in this dichotomy of 'John Wayne vs. blah.'

In Joseph Campbell's A Hero of a Thousand Faces, the hero explored into order to bring back new knowledge, experience, relationships to his or her community.  In our society, the hero only explores for him or herself.

Akaya Windwood: Okay, let's make some magic.  We know that language and story create reality.  Tell us your deepest vision.  What is emerging?  What is on the other side of this wave?


Sarah Crowell: I often have my teens freewrite, and usually their pens hit the paper immediately.  But one time I asked them to freewrite on 'what the world would look like without racism,' and they all looked at me like 'are you kidding?'  But that began a great conversation.  I said, 'if you can't envision it, how are we gonna create it?...Even though you can't imagine it, write about it anyway.'  ...Their writing was stunning! [She obvi couldn't recount it all right then.]

We have to remember we're all the future--not just the youth.

[She recounted an experience of a group of people, I forget who, with the goal of envisioning bliss.] The first thing that came was a lot of poetry, a lot of dancing, a lot of singing, a lot of really good sex, and seeing the beauty in each other!  There we're so many tears -- It was like I saw beauty in this person for the first time.  What if we operated daily from this place?

[Then a woman in the audience said, can we envision bliss right now?  And Ayaka Windwood was like "Aw hell no!  We've gotta get this panel finished on time."  Best moderator ever!]

Kristen Rothballer: Farmers are the true stars.  I think of the seed exchange that happened last night--that's our future, literally!

john a. powell: I am not an atheist, or a theist.  I'm not an agnostic either. [Whatev's dude, don't get too full of yourself :)]

What do we want from God?  What does God want from us?

These two questions are the vision.  I don't need my own individual vision right now.  I need to listen.  We need to listen.

Some famous author once said, "Hope is nostalgia for the future."  [Everyone was like, mmm, aw yeah, that's deep, mmm!]  ... I try to live without hope [??], but with full engagement.

[Then it ended and this white woman walked up to john a. powell and was like "Every year I choose someone here to be my teacher, and this year, it's you...I've never heard of you before this conference...Do you write?" #fail

But he was cool.  He was like, punch your email into my iPhone, and then it'll automatically send you my electronic business card.  Next.]


Phew! That took me longer than expected!  The notes from the next panel will have to be "To Be Continued..."  But it's like, do you really need more right now?

Bioneers

If you read nothing else, check out my john a powell section at the bottom.

This weekend I attended the Bioneers conference in San Rafael.   The whole event is revolutionary and visionary - justice, biomimicry, and resiliency being some of the key words - but it's also incredibly expensive, largely white (esp. among the attendees), and therefore pretty exclusive.   I hope someone is working on making it more accessible by 1) doing more to offer scholarships ( I was lucky enough to have one from an outside organization) and 2) advertising that a bunch of it is actually free!

For now, here's my small contribution in the name of making it more accessible.

Aves Plastico: seagull constructed from garbage.  You think you could go the beach and construct this? Angela Haseltine Pozzi made this with 100's of volunteers (Free).

Conference organizers introducing speaker while dressed as sperm.  It put that white middle-aged audience in cahoots!  (This part, a plenary, was free on video projection in a big tent.)

Destiny Arts teens from Oakland perform at lunchtime (free).

Sourcing food locally

A father from Oakland Green Youth Arts Media Center (I missed his name) sings to his mohawked baby boy, Obama, at the Youth Open Mic. (Free)

Wikuki Kingi, a Maori man, speaks about canoe carving in the Indigenous Forum tent.
His Maori introduction transported me back to my time in Aotearoa/New Zealand! (Free)

The Vida Verde van.  "Educational Equity in the Outdoors."

"Exploring What It Means to Be White" session.  Wasn't there, but I hope it was productive. (Free)

"Change vs. Transformation."  Moderated by Akaya Windwood of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, who would ask questions like "What is justice?" and then nuggets of wisdom would follow.  Featuring john a. powell of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity,  Brock Dolman of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Sarah Crowell of Destiny Arts.  (See notes on my twitter).

John Warren spoke about "green chemistry" and "molecular biomimicry."  "Instead of trying to always invent our own molecules, let's see how nature does it."  He told a story about how he how he was a super successful chemist - with as many awards as anyone and over 2,000 chemical synthesized, when a rare disease killed his two year old son.  He tortured himself over whether or not it was because of a chemical he'd touched.  "I realized that even though I was one of the most successful chemists, I'd never taken a course on toxicology, never been taught what makes a chemical toxic."    Let this be a WAKE UP CALL.  He says there is no money for green chemistry research in the U.S. (only for the hip and sexy "nanotechnology") but that China has 14 green chemistry labs and India is trying to require a year of green chemistry for his students.  Will and friends, you should check him out!  His book is Green Chemistry Theory and Practice.

Andy Lipkis talked about planting urban forests in south/south central L.A.  One oak tree with a 100 foot diameter can treat 57,000 gallons of water in a 12 inch flash flood.  It's nature's water treatment plant!

He spoke of a retired teacher who organized neighbors, raised money, and got a gov't permit to plant 20 trees on King Blvd, including getting "gang banger kids" to help break concrete, channel their anger.  When they decided to make it a full-on greenway, the gov't said, "Great, it'll take 10 years and $10 million dollars."  So instead, after a few months of planning, 3,000 volunteers planted a 7 mile stretch in 4 hours.  (Dude liked numbers.)

He told us they also trained 250,000 kids about ecological literacy and recycling in L.A.  This critical mass of students translated info into 6 different languages, trained their peers, and soon enough--even with resistant parents--supposedly 90% of L.A. residents recycle. (Is this true?  Can white folks put this energy into anti-police brutality organizing?)

Elmer Ave., a majority Latino neighborhood, is the first environmental justice zone in L.A.  Different home-based water catchment, filtering, and diverting technology has solved what used to be massive flooding, draught, and pollution problems in the neighborhood.  The new systems have provided resilience against what will become increasingly extreme weather patterns (global warming!), brought back a sense of community, and brought in more more birds.

L. Frank, indigenous activist and unofficial stand-up comedian, had me laughing out loud at every sentence:  "I'm half Spanish, so I oppress half myself.  Half of me is like build a canoe.  The other half is like, 'No, don't.'"

[Talking about small, naturally built houses]: "We're Indians! We don't have big houses and are like look at all this tile that we furnished our home with from Italy, where they blew up a whole mountain to get us this tile...What kinda Indian are you?!"

Check out her books on Amazon!

john a powell was dropping wisdom all over the place!!!  For me, his central theme was illuminating the intersections between ANTI-RACISM and the goal of INTERCONNECTEDNESS!!  "So often," he said, "we are good at thinking about our interconnectedness to the natural environment, but we fail when thinking about PEOPLE!"  Yes!!!  What a kind way to confront the whiteness of white environmentalists.

He quoted Jeffery Sachs - "an economist, not radical" - as saying that the U.S. is in decline because people are unable to deal with its social diversity.  More people are withdrawing from the public, retreating into shrinking private space.  As many have pointed out, the fact that the U.S. is increasing becoming less white is the underlying issue on the all the debates about public healthcare, public education, and public services in general.  This fear of the the other must be countered by a project of embracing diversity, which powell quotes Toni Morrison as saying, is both an internal and external process.

Like the fish who discovered she was swimming in water, we must be conscious of and celebrate our interconnectedness in everything we do, but, he says, "to say we are related -- to have positive feelings and attitudes -- is not enough.  We must re-structure our entire society to reflect that."

He used simple diagrams and drawing to demonstrate how our cultural upbringing (often unconsciously) affects how we see the world.  For example, on sketch looks to most westerners appears to be a bunch of people sitting in a room, but to most Tanzanians, he tells us, it seems to be a bunch of people under a tree.  "How we process things," he teaches, "is not an individual phenomenon.  It's cultural."

"The way we structure space carries value...How do we make our architecture work to reflect the best of us?"

He concludes: "Racism manifests itself in the way we arrange our space, our institutions, and our unconscious, but it is not inevitable...Finding the 'proper relationships' to have with each other is hard and complicated. The task is daunting, but the opportunity is great."


There are so many insights, but I'm spent for now.  I want everyone to go next year!