New Clear Vision

What Real Immigration Reform Would Look Like

by David Bacon

Oralia Maceda, an immigrant mother from Oaxaca, asked the obvious last weekend in Fresno.  At a meeting, talking about the Senate immigration reform bill, she wanted to know why Senators would spend almost $50 billion on more border walls, yet show no interest in why people leave home to cross them.

This Congressional blindness will get worse as immigration reform moves to the House.  It condemns U.S. immigration policy to a kind of punitive venality, making rational political decisions virtually impossible.  Yet alternatives are often proposed by migrant communities themselves, and reflect a better understanding of global economics and human rights. (more…)

Neighborhood Activism and the Pursuit of Happiness

by Jay Walljasper 

At one point in my life, my neighbors and I were fighting battles on two fronts to protect our community. Our modest Kingfield neighborhood in Minneapolis was threatened on one side by the widening of a freeway, which would rip out scores of homes, and on the other side by the widening of an avenue, which would escalate traffic speeds on an already dangerous road.

I remember a dizzying round of strategy sessions, protest rallies, public meetings, more strategy sessions, and, eventually, victory parties, which wound up redirecting my life and work in gratifying ways Until that point, I rarely thought about opportunities for improving people’s lives by boosting public life and revitalizing public spaces. (more…)

Reflections on 30 Years of the Environmental Justice Movement 

by Devon G. Peña

I was having a very serious conversation this morning with a University of New Mexico graduate student preparing for her dissertation proposal defense when talk eventually turned to the question of the status of the environmental justice movement (EJM). My colleague — who is a highly respected activist in New Mexico — declared that the movement is largely dead. The EJM, she explained, is a casualty of defunding and especially the loss of financial support for the various national and regional networks. There is no national movement, she argued, because the funders abandoned their commitment to the EJ organizations.

I can vouch for at least aspects of this view in that sense that many of the larger, trend-setting grantmakers like the Ford Foundation refused to fund what would have been the Third Environmental Justice Summit we had planned for 2012; with the painful absence of Ford, no other funders stepped into the void to continue supporting an earth-shaking, history-making event. (more…)

In Praise of Vacant Lots and Community Development

by Jay Walljasper

It’s easy to talk about the importance of the commons in grand terms — vast stretches of breathtaking  wilderness, publicly funded advances in science and technology, essential cultural and civic institutions,  the air and water which we all depend on for survival. But let’s not forget the lowly commons all around that enrich our lives. Things like sidewalks, playgrounds, community gardens, murals, neighborhood hangouts, and vacant lots. Especially vacant lots.

Modern society’s obsession with efficiency, productivity, and purposefulness sometimes blinds us to the epic possibilities of empty spaces that aren’t serving any profitable economic function. The word “vacant” itself implies that these places are devoid of value. But think back to all the imaginative uses you could discover for vacant land as a kid. You probably realized someone else owned it, but it was still yours to run around, play ball, plant a garden, host tea parties, pitch a tent or just get away from the watchful eye of adults. Thankfully, commoners in many places are working to make sure that vacant lots will be there for future generations of kids. (more…)

Understanding the Worsening Vibe of Violence in the U.S.

by Jan Lundberg

It certainly feels to me more peaceful and convivial in Germany and Holland, for example, than in the U.S. Aside from the oft-heard complaint of the U.S. as a crime-ridden and crazy place, here are three factors out of several offered in this article that contribute to significant cultural and physical-environment differences:

* The threat of physical violence posed by police and associated agencies that can instill fear without even making direct contact with civilians. * Job-insecurity and obsession about money for survival and self-image. * The car-oriented infrastructure that makes most streets potential death zones for pedestrians and bicyclists, not to mention creating ugly urban blight. (Not necessarily listed in order of importance.)

There appears to be more shocking police brutality in the U.S. than before, with more focus by alternative media outlets. Conventional news reporters tend to downplay police crimes because the police are important sources for news stories. But regardless, violence by police, sociopaths killing random crowds, and rising suicides are but symptoms of a society looking more like a madhouse than anywhere else besides war zones. (more…)

New Book Highlights What We Must Do

by David Swanson

If you’re like me you’ve read several books that list inspiring examples of worker owned businesses and co-ops, suggesting that expanding on such models might begin to right the wrongs of an incredibly unequal society that is growing even more unequal by the day.

The best such collection I’ve found is in a new book by Gar Alperovitz called What Then Must We Do?  This book also offers a powerful argument that radical change is needed, albeit an argument with some possible flaws.  First the inspiring examples:

Workers own and run factories in Cleveland, Atlanta, Washington DC, Amarillo, and many other cities.  Labor unions that once opposed worker ownership, including the Steelworkers and several others, now create worker-owned companies.  Forty percent of Americans are members of cooperatives, including credit unions.  People moved hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, from large banks to credit unions and small banks in 2011 and 2012.  (That should continue!)  Then there are community development corporations and land trusts, alive and thriving.  There are even corporations redesigned, and labeled B Corps, chartered under new laws in 12 states to allow them to legally pursue the social good as well as profits. (more…)

Occupying Spirituality, Evolving Dharma

by John L. Murphy

Two books appearing this autumn connect “sacred activism” with principled, peaceful opposition to the dominant political and economic — as well as religious — system. Two years after Occupy Wall Street and hundreds of encampments and a few strikes, while the American prominence of the movement has faded, worldwide if scattered resistance continues. Focusing on domestic possibility, Matthew Fox and Adam Bucko in conversation relate their stories and create an agenda in Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation (Berkeley: North Atlantic, Sept. 3, 2013). Jay Michaelson shares their ideal, if from an arguably more specific perspective, as his title Evolving Dharma: Meditation, Buddhism, and the Next Generation of Enlightenment (Berkeley: North Atlantic, Oct. 15, 2013) indicates. This review explores their intersections, and summarizes their visionary themes, beginning with the Occupy book. (more…)