Do you have 17 minutes? You might want to watch this moving presentation by Garth Lenz at TEDxVictoria.
Continue reading No other choice – leave the tar sands in the groundeli_beckerman
{ Thank you, Hallmark, for honoring this call to disarm for so many years }
Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation – 1870
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
To: Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Boston City Councilors, Governor Deval Patrick and Legislators
Whereas: Mayor Menino and the Boston City Council have granted Liberty Mutual $24 million in property tax breaks and Governor Patrick has given Liberty Mutual $22.5 million in state subsidies to build a new office tower in Boston near its existing office in Boston.
Whereas: These subsidies are being granted to a corporation so wealthy that it testified to City Council that it could build the $300 million tower with cash on hand, and is on the Forbes 100 list, earning over a billion dollars a year in profit.
Whereas: This subsidy money is being taken from essential city and state services including schools, libraries, parks, transit, youth jobs and community centers, even as their funding is being slashed.
Continue reading Revoke $46.5M in Tax Giveaways for Construction of Liberty Mutual Office TowerThe Green Party, while struggling to establish itself in the United States, is part of a global political movement that is continually gaining steam and finding traction in various nooks and crannies across the planet.
It’s always reassuring to find gains and breakthroughs happening in other countries, so this Global Greens report on the UK local elections is a good sign that people are increasingly open to new approaches, and that the Greens are offering something fundamentally different than the standard bearer political parties. From the European Green New Deal policies to the Scotland Greens’ focus on improving local councils, the Green Party is slowly finding its voice and its focus, and people are responding with their votes.
Continue reading Greens gain in UK local electionsGreat video by the Green Party of England & Wales, but pretty universal.
Continue reading Vote Green Party – Make The DifferenceA speech for today, from April 4, 1967, precisely one year before he was assassinated.
Continue reading The fierce urgency of nowGreat speech by John Nichols of the Nation:
Continue reading John Nichols at Stein HQ opening in Madison, WIVote for UMass Permaculture as College Campus Champion of Change!
You have to sign in and thus provide your email address, and you may use all 3 votes to support the UMass project.
From John Gerber, Professor of Sustainable Food and Farming at UMass Amherst:
Continue reading Help send UMass to the White House – vote by midnight Saturday (3/3)!
The UMass Permaculture Project was selected from among 1400 nominations as one of 15 finalists in the White House Campus Change Challenge. After a week of online voting we were leading the nation (until yesterday), when the University of Arkansas got a story in USA Today and picked up thousands of votes. We believe that with a last minute “push” we can retake the lead in the balloting.If you are willing please vote for us here and ask a few friends to help us out.
Our students have done a terrific job trying to change the culture on campus to be more supportive of local food and farming. This would be quite a tribute to their hard work.
by Richard Hugus
March 3, 2012
New York City appears to be going all out to win a world award for racism and bigotry. On February 24 the New York Post published a cartoon (1) depicting three men with long noses, long beards, turbans, and dishdashas assembling bombs in a locked upstairs tenement room. One of the men has a bomb strapped to his waist. He is looking out a window at an New York Police Department car in the street. The cartoon shows him speaking into the phone: “Hello, AP Press? . . . I’d like to register a complaint against the N.Y.P.D. for spying on us.”
Continue reading NYPD’s Police State Stretches All The Way To Boston