This weekend, the Right to the City ( http://www.righttothecity.org/ ) is having their annual conference in Boston, being hosted by MassUniting ( http://massuniting.org/ ) and City Life/Vida Urbana ( http://clvu.org/ ).  You can read about it at http://thephoenix.com/boston/n…

Right to the City (RTTC) emerged in 2007 as a unified response to gentrification and a call to halt the displacement of low-income people, LGBTQ, and youths of color from their historic urban neighborhoods. We are a national alliance of racial, economic and environmental justice organizations.

The Boston area seems to be one of the few in the country where homeowners have been (somewhat) successfully fighting back against the banks’ foreclosures and evictions.  They have been successful because they have organized and stood up for their rights together.

My visits to the Occupy Boston site have confirmed that connections have been made between Right to the City, MassUniting, and City Life/Vida Urbana.  I expect some of the occupiers downtown will be participating in eviction blockades out in the neighborhoods.  I also expect that organizers from across the country will be taking back effective tactics and strategies to save peoples’ homes from the chicanery of such banks as Bank of America.

We need more organized solidarity like this to expand the effects of each of our separate groups.

The Conference for a Constitutional Convention at Harvard Law School on September 24 and 25 was supposed to be an opportunity for the Left and Right to talk together about the possibility of ending our broken political system through a discussion of a new Constitutional Convention.  Lawrence Lessig of Rootstrikers (http://www.rootstrikers.org/), represented the Left and Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots (http://www.teapartypatriots.org) represented the Right.

From my point of view, the conference wasn’t really the advertised meeting of the Left and the Right.  Lessig himself was a Reagan delegate to the Republican Convention back in the day;  and although there was a good bit of representation from the Tea Party Patriot group, there was nobody there explicitly from MoveOn or anything really  further left than the ADA wing of the Democratic Party, with the exception of a couple of folks from the Revolutionary Communists who were hawking their Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America (pdf alert:  http://revcom.us/socialistconstitution/SocialistConstitution-en.pdf).  It did, however, reveal a subculture that has been working towards a Constitutional Convention for decades.

Solar water disinfection

http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN

A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun.  Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.  

The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young students in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered:  http://calais.phase2technology…

Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting

http://www.elliottlemenager.co…

In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.

Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.

The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential.

“The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, in association with state regional groups that work on high-level radioactive waste policy, will be hosting public meetings to solicit feedback on the draft commission report (pdf alert:   http://www.brc.gov/sites/defau… ).  The participant host groups include; the Western Governors’ Association/Western Interstate Energy Board, the Southern States Energy Board, the Council of State Governments-Midwestern Office, and the Council of State Governments- Eastern Regional Conference.

“The meeting[s] will be held to present the draft Commission report (issued on July 29, 2011) and hear feedback from state, local and tribal perspectives – as well as from interested members of the public.  The meeting will begin with a briefing from Commission staff on the draft report, followed by comments from elected and appointed state and regional representatives.  The latter portion of the meeting will be devoted to facilitated and interactive breakout sessions open to all who attend and will conclude with a public comment period.

“All public are welcome to attend.  Pre-registration is strongly encouraged but not required.  Information about registration will be available in the near future.  The meetings will not be video webcast.  Transcripts of the meetings will be available on the website, along with all written comments anyone chooses to offer. Comments can either be made directly to the website at http://www.brc.gov or by email to: CommissionDFO@nuclear.energy.gov.   Comment deadline is October 31, 2011.”

September 13, 2011

Embassy Suites

1420 Stout Street

Denver, CO

Preregister at: http://brc-wga.eventbrite.com

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October 12, 2011

Harvard Medical School Conference Center

77 Louis Pasteur, Longwood

Boston, MA

Pre-registration http://brc-ma.eventbrite.com

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October 18, 2011

Marriot Marquis

265 Peachtree Center Avenue

Atlanta, GA

Pre-registration:  http://brc-ga.eventbrite.com

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October 20, 2011

Hilton Garden Inn, 815 14th Street N.W

Washington, DC

Pre-register at  http://brc-dc.eventbrite.com

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October 28, 2011

Radisson Plaza Hotel, 35 South Seventh Street

Minneapolis, MN

Pre-register at  http://brc-mn.eventbrite.com

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My policy is zero emissions, 100% recycling for all wastes, including low level and high level radioactive waste, and my immediate concerns for “America’s Nuclear future” are 1) how quickly we can move commercial spent fuel from wet storage, which requires a constant supply and circulation of cooling water, to dry cask storage which does not;  and 2) how many of the 35 US boiling water reactors like Fukushima have spent fuel pools above buildings outside the radiation containment structures and how soon can that be remedied?  Neither of these issues are top priorities in the present Blue Ribbon Commission report as they are looking at a different scale and timeframe.