February 2012
6 posts
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The People’s Media →
The public interest community and media justice organizations continue to fight for policies that will create a more democratic media system. We need policies that decentralize control of our media system and allow the voices of ordinary people to be heard rather than giving greater power to corporate gatekeepers.
This is critically important for people of color. We have seen the damage...
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What If Corporations Couldn't Use Our Commons For... →
There’s been much discussion of late about how to save America’s declining middle class. The answer politicians of both parties give is always the same: jobs, jobs, jobs. The parties differ on how the jobs will be created — Republicans say the market will do it if we cut taxes and regulation, Democrats say government can help by investing in infrastructure and education. Either way, it...
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Folks, This Ain't Normal: Joel Salatin at the 92nd... →
I haven’t seen the movie, “Food, Inc.,” so I didn’t know what sustainable farmer Joel Salatin looked like until I saw him take the stage Monday night at the 92nd Street Y.
I was immediately struck by his crisp gray suit and his red power tie. For all his subsequent talk about poop, Salatin’s corporate look announced that he means business. And that business...
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Put planet and its people at the core of... →
Social and environmental costs need to be integrated into measurement of economic activity, a new UN report said on Monday as it urged world leaders to focus on the long-term resilience of the planet and its people.
The report from the high-level panel on global sustainability calls for a set of sustainable development indicators that go beyond the traditional approach of gross domestic ...
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Clinging to economic growth suffocates the... →
Listen to the news today and you would think that economic growth was the only answer to all our problems. But 40 years ago The Limits to Growth, written by a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and published by The Club of Rome, broke a modern taboo: it suggested that growth itself might be the problem.
It wasn’t the first time someone had suggested that an...
January 2012
63 posts
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Less Work, More Living →
Here’s a perfect article for the back-to-work-week doldrums:
Millions of Americans have lost control over the basic rhythm of their daily lives. They work too much, eat too quickly, socialize too little, drive and sit in traffic for too many hours, don’t get enough sleep, and feel harried too much of the time. It’s a way of life that undermines basic sources of wealth and...
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A “Living” Built Environment →
For three years, “Living Buildings”—buildings that generate their own energy from renewable resources, capture and treat all the water they use, reclaim pre-developed sites, and fulfill a host of other requirements—have set the standard for green building.
But like other green building certification programs, the first iteration of the Living Building Challenge focused on...
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Local Economies for a Global Future →
This article is about a simple, singular idea, yet the significance of the idea to modern society is profound and far-reaching. Here it is: In the near future anything heavy will become intensely local while at the same time the limits to things that are ‘light’, ideas, philosophies, information will travel even further than today—literally and figuratively. This is a new paradigm for...
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“The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it...”
– Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (via sunrec)
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Urban gardens: The future of food? →
With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s. Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland.
That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is...
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Urban farming essentials: Authors of a new,... →
The new book, The Essential Urban Farmer, is a 500-page nuts-and-bolts guide to farming in the city — complete with sample garden designs, detailed illustrations, and photos of rabbit genitalia. Rosenthal, who is also a Waldorf School teacher and runs a small CSA in Berkeley, wrote the first two sections of the book: “Designing Your Urban Farm” and “Raising City Vegetables and Fruits.” ...
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For Farmers Everywhere, Small is (Still) Beautiful... →
There is battle raging across the world over who can better feed its people: small-scale farmers practicing sustainable agriculture, or giant agribusinesses using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
It was small-scale organic farmers growing rice for themselves and local markets in the Philippines who first convinced us that they could feed both their communities and their country. Part of...
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WatchPeak Oil, Climate Change and Community — Transition Houston
If you’re coming from the same place as us – overwhelmed by the destructive potential of global problems like climate change and peak oil, then the Transition Movement is just the medicine you need! Started in the UK in 2005, the Transition Movement responds to threats and danger with a resounding: Yes please!
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The Transition Town Movement →
The Transition Movement is comprised of vibrant, grassroots community initiatives that seek to build community resilience in the face of such challenges as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis. Transition Initiatives differentiate themselves from other sustainability and “environmental” groups by seeking to mitigate these converging global crises by engaging their...
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Book review: Hessel & Morin — The Road to Hope →
You may remember Stéphane Hessel, the 94-year old French resistance hero, from his various notable efforts in the name of humanity. His latest contributions are mainly delivered in writing, in the form of books or pamphlets, such as Indignez-Vous. Hessel’s call for indignation and taking action was heard beyond the French boarders and inspired the name of the Spanish indignados movement, that...
“I am convinced, that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution,...”
– Martin Luther King Jr. (via rooftopsedge)
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Chicago Urban Farm Aims for Environmental and... →
It’s an innovative solution, based on a principle known as aquaponics, where everything exists to work together. Tilapia fish waste is high in ammonia which nourishes the plants; the plants clean the water, which can then be returned to the fish. The businesses within the building work in symbiosis, too. So, waste from the brewery provides the perfect growing material for the mushroom...
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Greeks reclaim the land to ease the pain of... →
‘If we want to survive on this land we must first help to heal the earth,’ said Nicola Netién, agro-ecologist, teacher and co-creator of the NGO Permaculture Research Institute Hellas. He was talking to a group of some fifty people of all ages who had gathered for two days of workshops on self-sufficiency, how to self-organize, agro-ecology and composting. This small gathering was...
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To Build Community, an Economy of Gifts →
Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is “community.” What happened to community, and why don’t we have it any more? There are many reasons—the layout of suburbia, the disappearance of public space, the automobile and the television, the high mobility of people and jobs—and, if...
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Prospects for Eco-Socialism →
These crises, especially the underlying general resource crisis, will generate hitherto unknown kinds of inflation and recession. Until a year or two ago, generally, inflation used to be caused by high wage demands of trade unions and/or rapidly rising demand for consumer and investment goods, while supply could be raised only slowly. The remedy was simple: persuade the trade unions to make...
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The day after: the movement beyond the protest →
Over time, the wave of mobilizations that first hit the shores of the Mediterranean and extended outwards over the course of 2011 has overcome its initial, expressive phase. This phase managed to substitute the dominant narrative with our own. We now know that the problem is not some mysterious technical failure we call a crisis, but the intentional crimes of a cleptocracy.
This...
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Zero-mile diet: five tips for the aspiring urban... →
Last Sunday at the Noor Cultural Centre in Toronto, Kathleen Ko from Young Urban Farmers guided 60 people on the finer points of how to set up a veggie garden in an urban setting. The good thing is that it’s not as hard as you might expect. The bad thing is that it’s still going to require some time (and who in Toronto has any of that to spare?). For the truly motivated, here are five...
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Hello local, goodbye global →
By now, many people have heard of The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, which is the best-selling 2007 book written by Vancouver authors Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon. The couple gave sustenance to a growing movement toward eating locally. The concept of the 100-mile diet has also given birth to something Vancouver fashion designer Kim Cathers likes to call the “100-mile rule”, which...
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The economic case for urban agriculture →
Urban agriculture is simply growing plants and raising livestock within and around cities.
What distinguishes it from rural agriculture is that it is integrated into the urban economy and is part of the uban food system. Urban residents are the farm laborers.
And it uses typical urban resources like organic waste as compost and urban wastewater for irrigation and thus impacts directly on ...
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How Relocalization Worked →
A good many worldsaving plans now in circulation, however new the rhetoric that surrounds them, simply rehash proposals that were tried in the past and failed repeatedly; trying them yet again may thus not be the best use of our limited resources and time. Of course there’s another side to history that’s more hopeful: something that worked well in the past can be a useful guide to what ...
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Radical Relocalization →
How can we create more local, resilient, and self-reliant community in this time of radical change?
Radical Relocalization is about the possibility of building resilient community and stronger local economies now, where you are. It’s also about finding a part in this change that really works for you. Relocalization builds local strength in the face of economic downturns, challenges from...
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Seasonal Ingredient Map →
When we expect to be able to eat fresh strawberries year-round no matter where we are, we rely on a system of food production that stretches around the world and is extremely destructive. Therefore, a major part of reducing your (and your community’s) dependence on the industrialized food system is knowing what is in season and where it is available. This flash map by Epicurious shows...
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Free book: The Rough Guide to Community Energy →
A new book is being distributed for free to encourage people to launch carbon-cutting and renewable-energy projects in their local communities. The book covers everything from setting up a group to picking a renewable technology, as well as providing advice on finances and governance.
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New Categories page
I’ve added a page where you can find posts from frequently used tags here on the communes! Check it out if you are looking for information to meet a specific interest.
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Grace Boggs: Reviving the Lost City →
The long, unconventional life of activist-philosopher Grace Lee Boggs began in 1915 in Providence, R.I. Born to Chinese immigrant restaurant owners, Boggs earned a Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr College in 1940 partly because anti-Oriental sentiments kept her out of work. She went to Chicago on a whim, got a job paying $10 a week in the philosophy library of the University of Chicago, and became...
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The communities taking renewable energy into their... →
There are now 43 communities who are in the process of or already producing renewable energy through co-operative structures. They are set up and run by everyday people – local residents mostly – who are investing their time and money and together installing solar panels, large wind turbines or hydro-electric power for their local communities.
The report highlights a series of examples....
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37 Ways to Join the Gift Economy →
You don’t have to participate in a local currency or service exchange to be part of the cooperative gift economy. Any time you do a favor for a family member, neighbor, colleague, or stranger you’re part of it. Here are some ways you can spend time in the gift economy, where you’ll find fun, freedom, and connection.
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Making Local Food Real →
How community-supported agriculture is working for one northern Vermont city:
You might think it would be difficult to find a cheerful and optimistic farmer the year a hurricane wiped out most of the crop, but I did so in Burlington, Vt., the day after Thanksgiving. I was visiting the Intervale Center, a nonprofit that manages a 350-plus-acre flood plain not far from downtown.
The ...
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Lost in Transition →
While I was in India, there was a year when the price of some basic foods rose by as much as 40%, due to international shortages. It hardly affected me, but for the low-income communities I interacted with, it was a life-constricting squeeze. Families skipped meals and everyone had to find more work. Hikes in global oil prices were equally painful. Gasoline is subsidized in India,...
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Future generations risk 'enslavement' without a... →
It’s a new year, so let’s start with a new idea: a democratic body to safeguard the basic needs and fundamental interests of future people.
That is the proposal of Rupert Read, a philosopher at the University of East Anglia, in a report called Guardians of the Future for the think tank Green House. The core idea is both radical and straightforward: a council of “Guardians of...
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Open Q: Is "Local Food" really the answer?
“Open Q” takes place on this blog every Saturday at 8pm. These posts include an ongoing debate or opinion regarding local living, sustainability, food policy, community organization, or similar topics, and will prompt for your input on these issues. Let us know what you think! Discussion is key to understanding the issues our world faces today and the potential alternatives to...
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