New Clear Vision

Pedestrianizing Urban Space and Undoing the ‘Auto-cracy’

by Jay Walljasper

I am perplexed by the almost complete lack of pedestrian districts in North America.  Why is it that car-free streets — designed for pleasurable strolling, shopping, and hanging out — which have become as common as stoplights or McDonald’s in European city centers, are almost non-existent here?

I’ve only seen a few — a couple of blocks in downtown Boston, Rue Prince Arthur in Montreal, Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, and short stretches of downtown streets in college towns like Boulder, Ithaca, Iowa City, Charlottesville, and Burlington, Vermont.  (A glance at Wikipedia turns up a few more, although I notice many on the list, like the Nicollet Mall here in Minneapolis, are not truly car-free.) (more…)

Marchers Take on History, Confront Mountaintop Removal

by James Russell

Awakening from the Dominant Delusion

by Jan Lundberg

At this juncture in humanity’s story fraught with danger and destruction, the crisis needs to be addressed forthrightly. To the extent possible, we do so with a positive vision for improvement in our lives. Individually we need to liberate our minds from the propaganda and myths of the dominant culture. Collectively we need to understand we are leaving the economy of expansion.

You have most likely compromised yourself to fit into a system that opposes the reverence of life. You don’t want to believe that corporate employers and politicians are as stupid and harmful as anything that could possibly be. You would rather be swayed by the assuaging media to somehow hope for a better world — and if possible get more sex and do more shopping tomorrow. No one is supposed to get excited about anything except as a voter fearing change. Muslim garb appearing in a suburban mall would by now scare many a U.S. consumer. (more…)

Creating Community Wherever We Are

by Jay Walljasper

In a surprise, the Washington Post ran an article defending suburbs from the usual charges of being white, wealthy, boring, selfish, right-wing, and environmentally-abominable places.

More than half of Americans now live in suburbia, including most subscribers, so it’s no surprise the newspaper would take an opportunity to reassure its readers that they live in perfectly fine communities.

The surprise was who wrote the article: William Upski Wimsatt, a champion of hip hop culture who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and in 1994 published a book titled Bomb the Suburbs.  Wimsatt took pains to explain that “bomb” was youth culture slang for graffiti, but he left little doubt about his feelings toward the ‘burbs. (more…)

On the ‘Continuous, Open, and Notorious Use’ of the Commons

by Devon G. Peña

Between 2002 and 2003, in a remarkable and much discussed series of three decisions, the Colorado Supreme Court restored the historic use rights of the plaintiffs in the Lobato v. Taylor land rights case. The legendary case involves plaintiffs’ use rights on 80,000 acres of common lands in the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant (merced). This is an alterNative paradigm unfolding right before our eyes…

The grant encompasses a total of 1 million acres and most of the 1843 merced was enclosed by private owners including the portion at stake in the Rael-Lobato trilogy; on the New Mexico side of the grant, some of the land ended up in the public domain as part of the Kit Carson National Forest (including portions of the Valle Vidal) but local heirs successfully re-acquired title to more than 30,000 acres as part of what is today known as the Rio Costilla Cooperative Livestock Association (RCCLA) lands. (more…)

Restoring Justice for the Children of Incarcerated Parents

by Victoria Law

In 2004, I facilitated a discussion on incarcerated mothers at the MamaGathering, an alternative parenting conference in Minneapolis. The 20-plus parents who attended the discussion were politically conscious, if not politically active. Among them was a social worker who worked with children in foster care.

In 1997, Congress passed the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which stipulated that states must begin terminating the legal rights of parents whose children are in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months. The termination is irrevocable. Only three states made exceptions in cases of parental incarceration; the third state, New York, only passed its discretion act in August 2010.

The results were dramatic: termination proceedings involving incarcerated parents increased 108 percent nationwide from 260 in 1997 to 909 in 2002. In contrast, in the five years before ASFA, the number of termination proceedings increased from 113 in 1992 to 142 in 1996. (more…)

Building a World of Wealth and Wellbeing for All

by Diane Lefer

Okay, so the headline to this article may not garner as many hits as Sarah Palin or Charlie Sheen, but maybe it will bring in more readers than “Cumulative Environmental Impacts in Los Angeles: Public Health’s Role in Emerging Policy Solutions.” I’m trying to put into practice something I learned at a conference by that name where I also got enough facts to delight any data junkie. But speaker Dr. Tony Iton, senior vice president of the California Endowment said the public health community has put “too much emphasis on facts and data” out of the belief that “once people know the truth, things will change.” But they don’t change. So instead of offering data, I’d rather tell a story about two neighborhoods. (more…)