New Clear Vision

The Benefits of Small-scale Food Production

by Ellen LaConte

Spring has sprung — at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it — and the grass has ‘riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having to choose between paying their mortgages, credit card bills, car payments, and medical and utility bills and eating enough and healthily. Many are eating more fast food, prepared foods, junk food — all of which are also becoming more expensive — or less food.

In some American towns, and not just impoverished backwaters, as many as 30 percent of residents can’t afford to feed themselves and their families sufficiently, let alone nutritiously. (more…)

Green Justice Coalition Supports Labor and the Environment

by Amy Dean

According to Republican governors in places such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, our states are in crisis and the only solution is to squeeze middle-class employees. Unions, in their view, are part of the problem. And if you point out that their attempts to seize power in the name of balancing budgets do little, if anything, to solve the real economic problems we face, they will insist that there is no alternative.

They are dead wrong. There is a better answer.

These governors could travel to Boston and the North Shore in Massachusetts to talk to Ana Perdomo about how we can create jobs, raise working standards and increase services for hard-hit communities – all while reinvesting public dollars in local taxpayers’ communities. The politicians might even learn a thing or two about protecting the environment.

A remarkable process has taken place around green jobs in the Boston area. It did not come easy, but rather took hard work and cooperation from local labor unions and community organizations. (more…)

Eternal Vigilance, Grounded Struggle Define Democracy

by David D. Leeper

Main Street, Wisconsin — harbinger for the nation — is becoming aware that our democracy is being threatened by some very rich, powerful people. The super-wealthy are threatening the very core of our democracy as they consolidate more and more wealth and power. For those who recognize this conflict and want to resist, the first thing to realize is there is no quick-fix.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote, in 1857: “If there is no struggle there is no progress…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Benjamin Franklin reportedly told people that the form of government our founders had created “is a democracy — if you can keep it.” Preserving our democracy is not something we can accomplish with one powerful demonstration. Like freedom, democracy’s cost is eternal vigilance. (more…)

America’s Paradox: Getting Heavier and Growing Hungrier

by Kat Asselin, Kendra Broadwater, and Mollie Tarte

In a world of climbing food costs, media outlets are predicting the downfall of Americans increasingly subject to the diseases of obesity while concurrently talking about the epidemic of food insecurity that has only worsened in the decades since the so-called Green Revolution.

Obesity is clinically defined as a body mass index in excess of 30, but other studies and models suggest that there is genetic diversity in body types and a strong correlation with century-old dietary practices and co-evolution of human bodies and heritage cuisines. Over the past 30 years, the proportion of obese adults has climbed in most states, in some cases from less than 10% to more than 30% today.  The attention given to the ever-expanding American waistline has been impossible to ignore.

You can even see this drama unfold on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) website. (more…)

Promoting Wellness through Accountability, Community, and Justice

by David K. Cundiff, MD

The Health Economy will take the place of today’s bankrupt Waste Economy that has let down working people. The American people are capable of increasing individual and public health, prosperity, and happiness. We can replace institutionalized waste and inefficiencies in the public and private sectors with valuable economic activities and community building pursuits that are not for money. Volunteerism and mutual aid can be incentivized.

Jeffersonian democracy with cooperative community involvement is what works, while the same old greed, corruption, and economic disparities of our dysfunctional government and corporate systems display failure more starkly each day. We can’t afford the present level of government spending and consumer debt, but we can definitely afford health, helping others, and economic justice. (more…)

Youth Gardening as a Pathway to Academic Success

by Tessa James, Kalyn Janae Marab, and Sabine Parrish

Caitlin Flanagan’s 2010 article in The Atlantic, Cultivating Failure, ridicules the idea that schoolyard gardens can help children in any way become better educated.  Her principal argument is that gardens do not teach students the necessary skill sets to pass the standardized examinations required of most students across the nation:

“Here is the essential question we must ask about the school gardens: What evidence do we have that participation in one of these programs — so enthusiastically supported, so uncritically championed — improves a child’s chances of doing well on the state tests that will determine his or her future (especially the all-important high-school exit exam) and passing Algebra I, which is becoming the make-or-break class for California high-school students?”

Contrary to this statement, there is growing evidence that gardening cultivates not just crops but young minds. This includes teaching environmental consciousness — but gardening can also teach practical and applied lessons in science and math and is an engaging and creative way to explore natural and cultural history.  The question should not be, “Will our students pass these tests?” Instead, we might ask: “Why have we developed a system in which standardized tests determine our children’s future?” (more…)

Peasant Farmers Grow Hope, Trust … and Food

by Gustavo Esteva

This is grim news: food prices are reaching record levels worldwide. The thousands of farmers who have killed themselves over the past decade seems to have no precedent. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s director, the goal to reduce the number of hungry people by half will only be achieved in 2050.

In Mexico, this is just another facet of the crisis that started in the 1980s, when the government dismantled its support for peasant farmers. “My obligation as minister of agriculture is to get rid of 10 million peasants,” declared Carlos Hank in 1991. “What are you going to do with them?” a journalist asked. “That is not my area of work,” he answered.

But no one assumed that responsibility. Vicente Fox, former president of Coca-Cola and president of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, used to say “those peasants can be gardeners in Texas.” For him and other policymakers, Mexico had too many peasants; America, their model, was producing food for the world with only 2.5% of the labor force. In 1992 they opened to the private market the land which had been in the hands of peasants since the 1910 revolution. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which came into force in 1994, consolidated this anti-peasant orientation in the name of free market. (more…)