One news thought concerns the May Day rally in Los Angles showing riot police attacking and shooting rubber bullets and clubbing people, peaceful demonstrators out on a beautiful day and standing up for their human and citizenship rights.
This does not seem to be merely an isolated act of the fascist Los Angles Police Department, but it also approxiamated a Klu Klux Klan opportunistic attack. I thought the TV news was showing a riot scene in South or Central America, in South Africa, Palestine, or other poverty location where poor workers get their family members out of the house and into the fresh air and radiant sun shine of the peaceful, non violent struggle for freedom.
This was agitation. T he LAPD was trying to provoke a back-lash, riot because future fathers of future slain children might not be subdued. And this was an all out assault - not only did they hit families pushing baby carriages, they hit main stream media - some filming and some broadcasting; they hit school students, and working men and women.
What are we coming to? Or have we already reached it, and just didn't know it until now?
LW
Friday, May 4, 2007
Paul Hawken on the New Meta-Movement
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 14:50:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Lee Wood"View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Re: Paul Hawken on the New Meta-Movement
Date:
Wed, 2 May 2007 14:50:16 -0700 (PDT)
From:
"Lee Wood" View Contact Details Add Mobile Alert
Subject:
Re: Paul Hawken on the New Meta-Movement
To:
CERJ@igc.org
This article follows an earlier thread, string or line
of discussion concerning The Most Important Problem or
Movement in the world at this time (sorry I can't
access these articles and comments to quote them).
John, Manuel and another list member declared Fascism,
with all it's ugly pretensions (in and out of war), to
be Problem #1, and multitudes agree at this time
because fascism is relative to present mass reality
and daily struggle as it grows. One writer
contributor braved to suggest the environment and the
future lack of water could and/or is the most
immediate and urgent Problem #1 in the world.
My concern was and/or is that the corporate fascists
(including all great and lesser polluters) are aiding
and/or abetting global warming, and the genocide of
our Earth, and that the most appropriate focus would
be to abolish fascism either first or in the process
of repairing whatever can be repaired so as to salvage
and protect this vehicle of ours as we travel through
space. The problem I have with this is that it gives
the fascists the benefit-of-the-doubt that they would
merely halt all world treasonous pollutions out of
their internal organizational responsibility to the
world. Dream on. They are greedy bastards and they
are going to completely destroy our People and our
Earth if they are not stopped completely.
One Earth Saving argument has it that "Anything and
Everything Else Doesn't Matter - All men and women and
children to the barricades" to hold back and defeat
our deadly collision path on Earth!
My contention is that our deadly collision path can
not be significantly altered under the fascist. The
world will burn if the fascists are permitted to rule.
So, the fascists, and their zillions of dollars have
to be defeated, and their total resources have to be
taken away from them and applied directly to halting
global warming or whatever it takes to save our
beautiful world.
I would certainly hope the loose agglomeration of
individuals depicted in Paul Hawken's article on the
New Meta-Movement would suffice in saving our "small
planet". One problem is that we can't gamble with
this problem. The fascists must be completely
overthrown and totally dis-empowered before, during
and after our planet is saved.
One thought is that it's already too late.
The Earth is doomed to already devastated
environmental and planetary material realities. All
the more good reason to dethrone the fascists.
Lee
--- CERJ@igc.org wrote:
> Something earth-changing is afoot among civil
> society -- a significant social movement is eluding
> the radar of mainstream culture.
>
> http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050107EC.shtml
>
> /OR/
>
> http://www.orionmagazine.org/
>
>
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/265
>
> A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop
> by Paul Hawken
> © 2007 Orion Magazine & The Orion Society
>
> Tuesday, May 1, 2007 -- I have given nearly one
> thousand talks about the environment in the past
> fifteen years, and after every speech a smaller
> crowd gathered to talk, ask questions, and exchange
> business cards. The people offering their cards
> were working on the most salient issues of our day:
> climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace,
> water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more.
> They were from the nonprofit and nongovernmental
> world, also known as civil society. They looked
> after rivers and bays, educated consumers about
> sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with
> solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about
> pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade
> policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught
> children about the environment. Quite simply, they
> were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice.
>
> After being on the road for a week or two, I would
> return with a couple hundred cards stuffed into
> various pockets. I would lay them out on the table
> in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos,
> envisage the missions, and marvel at what groups do
> on behalf of others. Later, I would put them into
> drawers or paper bags, keepsakes of the journey. I
> couldn't throw them away.
>
> Over the years, the cards mounted into the
> thousands, and whenever I glanced at the bags in my
> closet, I kept coming back to one question: did
> anyone know how many groups there were? At first,
> this was a matter of curiosity, but it slowly grew
> into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a
> significant social movement that was eluding the
> radar of mainstream culture.
>
> I began to count. I looked at government records
> for different countries and, using various methods
> to approximate the number of environmental and
> social justice groups from tax census data, I
> initially estimated that there were thirty thousand
> environmental organizations strung around the globe;
> when I added social justice and indigenous
> organizations, the number exceeded one hundred
> thousand. I then researched past social movements
> to see if there were any equal in scale and scope,
> but I couldn't find anything.
>
> The more I probed, the more I unearthed, and the
> numbers continued to climb. In trying to pick up a
> stone, I found the exposed tip of a geological
> formation. I discovered lists, indexes, and small
> databases specific to certain sectors or geographic
> areas, but no set of data came close to describing
> the movement's breadth. Extrapolating from the
> records being accessed, I realized that the initial
> estimate of a hundred thousand organizations was off
> by at least a factor of ten. I now believe there
> are over one million organizations working toward
> ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe
> two.
>
> By conventional definition, this is not a movement.
> Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join
> movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with
> a group. You read the biography of the founder(s)
> or listen to them perorate on tape or in person.
> Movements have followers, but this movement doesn't
> work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and
> fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or
> doctrine, no authority to check with.
>
> I sought a name for it, but there isn't one.
>
> Historically, social movements have arisen primarily
> because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption.
> Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists
> that has no precedent: the planet has a
> life-threatening disease that is marked by massive
> ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It
> crossed my mind that perhaps I was seeing something
> organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in
> the conventional sense, is it a collective response
> to threat? Is it splintered for reasons that are
> innate to its purpose? Or is it simply
> disorganized? More questions followed. How does it
> function? How fast is it growing? How is it
> connected? Why is it largely ignored?
>
> After spending years researching this phenomenon,
> including creating with my colleagues a global
> database of these organizations, I have come to
> these conclusions: this is the largest social
> movement in all of history, no one knows its scope,
> and how it functions is more mysterious than what
> meets the eye.
>
> What does meet the eye is compelling: tens of
> millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people
> willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable
> odds in order to restore some semblance of grace,
> justice, and beauty to this world.
>
> Clayton Thomas-Muller speaks to a community
> gathering of the Cree nation about waste sites on
> their native land in Northern Alberta, toxic lakes
> so big you can see them from outer space. Shi
> Lihong, founder of Wild China Films, makes
> documentaries with her husband on migrants displaced
> by construction of large dams. Rosalina Tuyuc
> Velásquez, a member of the Maya-Kaqchikel people,
> fights for full accountability for tens of thousands
> of people killed by death squads in Guatemala.
> Rodrigo Baggio retrieves discarded computers from
> New York, London, and Toronto and installs them in
> the favelas of Brazil, where he and his staff teach
> computer skills to poor children. Biologist Janine
> Benyus speaks to twelve hundred executives at a
> business forum in Queensland about biologically
> inspired industrial development. Paul Sykes, a
> volunteer for the National Audubon Society,
> completes his fifty-second Christmas Bird Count in
> Little Creek, Virginia, joining fifty thousand other
> people who t
> ally 70 million birds on one day.
>
> Sumita Dasgupta leads students, engineers,
> journalists, farmers, and Adivasis (tribal people)
> on a ten-day trek through Gujarat, exploring the
> rebirth of ancient rainwater harvesting and
> catchment systems that bring life back to
> drought-prone areas of India. Silas Kpanan'Ayoung
> Siakor, who exposed links between the genocidal
> policies of former president Charles Taylor and
> illegal logging in Liberia, now creates certified,
> sustainable timber policies.
>
> These eight, who may never meet and know one
> another, are part of a coalescence comprising
> hundreds of thousands of organizations with no
> center, codified beliefs, or charismatic leader.
>
> The movement grows and spreads in every city and
> country. Virtually every tribe, culture, language,
> and religion is part of it, from Mongolians to
> Uzbeks to Tamils. It is comprised of families in
> India, students in Australia, farmers in France, the
> landless in Brazil, the bananeras of Honduras, the
> "poors" of Durban, villagers in Irian Jaya,
> indigenous tribes of Bolivia, and housewives in
> Japan. Its leaders are farmers, zoologists,
> shoemakers, and poets.
>
> The movement can't be divided because it is atomized
> -- small pieces loosely joined. It forms, gathers,
> and dissipates quickly. Many inside and out dismiss
> it as powerless, but it has been known to bring down
> governments, companies, and leaders through
> witnessing, informing, and massing.
>
> The movement has three basic roots: the
> environmental and social justice movements, and
> indigenous cultures' resistance to globalization --
> all of which are intertwining. It arises
> spontaneously from different economic sectors,
> cultures, regions, and cohorts, resulting in a
> global, classless, diverse, and embedded movement,
> spreading worldwide without exception. In a world
> grown too complex for constrictive ideologies, the
> very word 'movement' may be too small, for it is the
> largest coming together of citizens in history.
>
> There are research institutes, community development
> agencies, village- and citizen-based organizations,
> corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts,
> and foundations. They defend against corrupt
> politics and climate change, corporate predation and
> the death of the oceans, governmental indifference
> and pandemic poverty, industrial forestry and
> farming, depletion of soil and water.
>
> Describing the breadth of the movement is like
> trying to hold the ocean in your hand. It is that
> large. When a part rises above the waterline, the
> iceberg beneath usually remains unseen.
>
From: "Lee Wood"
Subject: Re: Paul Hawken on the New Meta-Movement
Date:
Wed, 2 May 2007 14:50:16 -0700 (PDT)
From:
"Lee Wood"
Subject:
Re: Paul Hawken on the New Meta-Movement
To:
CERJ@igc.org
This article follows an earlier thread, string or line
of discussion concerning The Most Important Problem or
Movement in the world at this time (sorry I can't
access these articles and comments to quote them).
John, Manuel and another list member declared Fascism,
with all it's ugly pretensions (in and out of war), to
be Problem #1, and multitudes agree at this time
because fascism is relative to present mass reality
and daily struggle as it grows. One writer
contributor braved to suggest the environment and the
future lack of water could and/or is the most
immediate and urgent Problem #1 in the world.
My concern was and/or is that the corporate fascists
(including all great and lesser polluters) are aiding
and/or abetting global warming, and the genocide of
our Earth, and that the most appropriate focus would
be to abolish fascism either first or in the process
of repairing whatever can be repaired so as to salvage
and protect this vehicle of ours as we travel through
space. The problem I have with this is that it gives
the fascists the benefit-of-the-doubt that they would
merely halt all world treasonous pollutions out of
their internal organizational responsibility to the
world. Dream on. They are greedy bastards and they
are going to completely destroy our People and our
Earth if they are not stopped completely.
One Earth Saving argument has it that "Anything and
Everything Else Doesn't Matter - All men and women and
children to the barricades" to hold back and defeat
our deadly collision path on Earth!
My contention is that our deadly collision path can
not be significantly altered under the fascist. The
world will burn if the fascists are permitted to rule.
So, the fascists, and their zillions of dollars have
to be defeated, and their total resources have to be
taken away from them and applied directly to halting
global warming or whatever it takes to save our
beautiful world.
I would certainly hope the loose agglomeration of
individuals depicted in Paul Hawken's article on the
New Meta-Movement would suffice in saving our "small
planet". One problem is that we can't gamble with
this problem. The fascists must be completely
overthrown and totally dis-empowered before, during
and after our planet is saved.
One thought is that it's already too late.
The Earth is doomed to already devastated
environmental and planetary material realities. All
the more good reason to dethrone the fascists.
Lee
--- CERJ@igc.org wrote:
> Something earth-changing is afoot among civil
> society -- a significant social movement is eluding
> the radar of mainstream culture.
>
> http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050107EC.shtml
>
> /OR/
>
> http://www.orionmagazine.org/
>
>
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/265
>
> A Global Democratic Movement Is About to Pop
> by Paul Hawken
> © 2007 Orion Magazine & The Orion Society
>
> Tuesday, May 1, 2007 -- I have given nearly one
> thousand talks about the environment in the past
> fifteen years, and after every speech a smaller
> crowd gathered to talk, ask questions, and exchange
> business cards. The people offering their cards
> were working on the most salient issues of our day:
> climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace,
> water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more.
> They were from the nonprofit and nongovernmental
> world, also known as civil society. They looked
> after rivers and bays, educated consumers about
> sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with
> solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about
> pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade
> policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught
> children about the environment. Quite simply, they
> were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice.
>
> After being on the road for a week or two, I would
> return with a couple hundred cards stuffed into
> various pockets. I would lay them out on the table
> in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos,
> envisage the missions, and marvel at what groups do
> on behalf of others. Later, I would put them into
> drawers or paper bags, keepsakes of the journey. I
> couldn't throw them away.
>
> Over the years, the cards mounted into the
> thousands, and whenever I glanced at the bags in my
> closet, I kept coming back to one question: did
> anyone know how many groups there were? At first,
> this was a matter of curiosity, but it slowly grew
> into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a
> significant social movement that was eluding the
> radar of mainstream culture.
>
> I began to count. I looked at government records
> for different countries and, using various methods
> to approximate the number of environmental and
> social justice groups from tax census data, I
> initially estimated that there were thirty thousand
> environmental organizations strung around the globe;
> when I added social justice and indigenous
> organizations, the number exceeded one hundred
> thousand. I then researched past social movements
> to see if there were any equal in scale and scope,
> but I couldn't find anything.
>
> The more I probed, the more I unearthed, and the
> numbers continued to climb. In trying to pick up a
> stone, I found the exposed tip of a geological
> formation. I discovered lists, indexes, and small
> databases specific to certain sectors or geographic
> areas, but no set of data came close to describing
> the movement's breadth. Extrapolating from the
> records being accessed, I realized that the initial
> estimate of a hundred thousand organizations was off
> by at least a factor of ten. I now believe there
> are over one million organizations working toward
> ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe
> two.
>
> By conventional definition, this is not a movement.
> Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join
> movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with
> a group. You read the biography of the founder(s)
> or listen to them perorate on tape or in person.
> Movements have followers, but this movement doesn't
> work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and
> fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or
> doctrine, no authority to check with.
>
> I sought a name for it, but there isn't one.
>
> Historically, social movements have arisen primarily
> because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption.
> Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists
> that has no precedent: the planet has a
> life-threatening disease that is marked by massive
> ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It
> crossed my mind that perhaps I was seeing something
> organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in
> the conventional sense, is it a collective response
> to threat? Is it splintered for reasons that are
> innate to its purpose? Or is it simply
> disorganized? More questions followed. How does it
> function? How fast is it growing? How is it
> connected? Why is it largely ignored?
>
> After spending years researching this phenomenon,
> including creating with my colleagues a global
> database of these organizations, I have come to
> these conclusions: this is the largest social
> movement in all of history, no one knows its scope,
> and how it functions is more mysterious than what
> meets the eye.
>
> What does meet the eye is compelling: tens of
> millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people
> willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable
> odds in order to restore some semblance of grace,
> justice, and beauty to this world.
>
> Clayton Thomas-Muller speaks to a community
> gathering of the Cree nation about waste sites on
> their native land in Northern Alberta, toxic lakes
> so big you can see them from outer space. Shi
> Lihong, founder of Wild China Films, makes
> documentaries with her husband on migrants displaced
> by construction of large dams. Rosalina Tuyuc
> Velásquez, a member of the Maya-Kaqchikel people,
> fights for full accountability for tens of thousands
> of people killed by death squads in Guatemala.
> Rodrigo Baggio retrieves discarded computers from
> New York, London, and Toronto and installs them in
> the favelas of Brazil, where he and his staff teach
> computer skills to poor children. Biologist Janine
> Benyus speaks to twelve hundred executives at a
> business forum in Queensland about biologically
> inspired industrial development. Paul Sykes, a
> volunteer for the National Audubon Society,
> completes his fifty-second Christmas Bird Count in
> Little Creek, Virginia, joining fifty thousand other
> people who t
> ally 70 million birds on one day.
>
> Sumita Dasgupta leads students, engineers,
> journalists, farmers, and Adivasis (tribal people)
> on a ten-day trek through Gujarat, exploring the
> rebirth of ancient rainwater harvesting and
> catchment systems that bring life back to
> drought-prone areas of India. Silas Kpanan'Ayoung
> Siakor, who exposed links between the genocidal
> policies of former president Charles Taylor and
> illegal logging in Liberia, now creates certified,
> sustainable timber policies.
>
> These eight, who may never meet and know one
> another, are part of a coalescence comprising
> hundreds of thousands of organizations with no
> center, codified beliefs, or charismatic leader.
>
> The movement grows and spreads in every city and
> country. Virtually every tribe, culture, language,
> and religion is part of it, from Mongolians to
> Uzbeks to Tamils. It is comprised of families in
> India, students in Australia, farmers in France, the
> landless in Brazil, the bananeras of Honduras, the
> "poors" of Durban, villagers in Irian Jaya,
> indigenous tribes of Bolivia, and housewives in
> Japan. Its leaders are farmers, zoologists,
> shoemakers, and poets.
>
> The movement can't be divided because it is atomized
> -- small pieces loosely joined. It forms, gathers,
> and dissipates quickly. Many inside and out dismiss
> it as powerless, but it has been known to bring down
> governments, companies, and leaders through
> witnessing, informing, and massing.
>
> The movement has three basic roots: the
> environmental and social justice movements, and
> indigenous cultures' resistance to globalization --
> all of which are intertwining. It arises
> spontaneously from different economic sectors,
> cultures, regions, and cohorts, resulting in a
> global, classless, diverse, and embedded movement,
> spreading worldwide without exception. In a world
> grown too complex for constrictive ideologies, the
> very word 'movement' may be too small, for it is the
> largest coming together of citizens in history.
>
> There are research institutes, community development
> agencies, village- and citizen-based organizations,
> corporations, networks, faith-based groups, trusts,
> and foundations. They defend against corrupt
> politics and climate change, corporate predation and
> the death of the oceans, governmental indifference
> and pandemic poverty, industrial forestry and
> farming, depletion of soil and water.
>
> Describing the breadth of the movement is like
> trying to hold the ocean in your hand. It is that
> large. When a part rises above the waterline, the
> iceberg beneath usually remains unseen.
>
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