One of the points I make when I give my “‘Impossible” is a Dare (NOT a Fact)” talks is that every one of us has the power to be an agent of change. For every Count Leo Tolstoy (born into wealth and privilege and used his position to work for social change), there are dozens if not hundreds of Martin Luther Kings, Gandhis, and Mother Teresas: ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Most meaningful social change gets accomplished by ordinary people, especially when they organize and work together. I personally started the movement that saved our local mountain. Bree’s courage and power are the norm, not the exception.
I’ve often heard very successful people get asked, “How did you do _____ before you were _______ (the successful person’s name, emphasized)? Even with my own rather limited fame, I’ve been asked “How did you save the mountain before you were Shel Horowitz?”
Here’s what they’re missing. What turned me from Shel Horowitz, self-employed marketing consultant working out of a farmhouse, to Shel Horowitz, locally famous saver of mountains, was going out and starting the movement to save the mountain. It was the doing that created the fame.
Yes, I did have the marketing skills to leverage that and eventually build a brand around profitability consulting for green and socially conscious businesses. Yes, I had the writing and research skills to create a body of work that attracted a major publisher and a celebrity co-author for my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. Yes, I created enough leverage from that book to be able to do my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, comes out in March, with endorsements by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin, the founders of BNI and GreenBiz.com, the author of The New Rules of Green Marketing (among others), and essays from the authors of Unstoppable/Unstoppable Women and Diet for a Small Planet. I grabbed the opportunities to make more of a difference in the wider world, and not just my own community. But just because I made those opportunities happen doesn’t mean they weren’t available to others.
Social change can be based in very small actions. The backstory about Mistinguette Smith’s article is that her editor wanted to ditch the phrase in the title, “Stay Woke.” Mistinguette brought that discussion to Facebook, and that may have been why she eventually won the argument. But the key element to making the change is mindset. This is how I heard about her article before it was published, and how I knew it was published and could read it.
To accomplish positive social change, I think we need two things: one is the sense that we can make a difference and the willingness to try—something any of us can achieve.
The other is the motivation to achieve a higher good than simply obtaining power or profit.I’d even go so far as to say the need to make the world better is a basic human drive, just like food or shelter or sex. If we’re not doing this in some small way, we don’t feel complete.
Let’s look at the difference between two ordinary men who led their countries out of apartheid: Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (formerly called Rhodesia). Both were hailed as liberators originally. Mugabe, a teacher and prison-educated lawyer, turned out to be a brutal thug, a dictator motivated by the desire for power and wealth.
But Mandela was clearly motivated by a desire to heal his suffering country. His actions were all about unity and reconciliation. He will be remembered as a hero to the end of time.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor works the crowd (Photo by Shel Horowitz.
By Shel Horowitz
Justice Sonia Sotomayor works the crowd (Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Yes, you can be a United States Supreme Court Justice and still keep your humanity. In an hour and a half of Q&A at the Springfield Public Forum in Springfield, Massachusetts, Justice Sonia Sotomayor not only kept her content humble and hopeful, but did her best to make herself one with the audience.
She answered the first question from the stage, but then left her comfortable armchair, announced that she wanted to make herself more accessible to the people at the far corners of the room, pleaded with the audience not to do anything that would make the Secret Service agents too nervous to let her wander, and then answered all remaining questions while walking around the room shaking hands and getting photographed—and leaving the moderator (another female judge) gaping and wondering where her speaker was at times. I’ve certainly seen speakers mingle, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one who spent virtually the entire speech mingling. It’s especially remarkable in a government official; most of them stay firmly behind their podiums, clinging tightly. I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton doing that. But Sotomayor is like that; she spent her first weeks at the Supreme Court not just boning up on the then-upcoming Citizens United case but also visiting the far corners of the building and greeting the staff. She claims to be the first Supreme Court Justice to visit the telephone operators up on the third floor.
Hillary also probably has help writing her books. Sotomayor–like President Obama–writes her own, even as she acknowledged that writing didn’t come easily to her until a college mentor observed that she was thinking in Spanish (her first language) and translating.
Like Sotomayor, I grew up poor in the Bronx (and actually fantasized about becoming a social justice lawyer and eventually, a Supreme Court Justice—though I love the career I chose instead). And I was thrilled to hear her say things like:
“I wanted to write a book that would give people hope…if I [the child of an immigrant alcoholic, raised in the tough housing projects of New York] can do it, so can you.”
“Squeeze as much as you can out of every day. Give to others. Don’t take a moment to not live life at its fullest.”
“Affirmative Action was a door opener for a door that had been closed to people of my background. Many institutions like to do the same thing over and over. But that success formula excludes certain people. The question is, what did I do with that opportunity? I wanted my career to be a bridge between my community and the wider society.” She noted that others had been given similar opportunity but chose not to make the most of it.
“As a prosecutor, I learned how to seek justice not just for society but for the defendant.
“Every mentor has made a positive mark on my life, and I hope that I have for them.”
“Accept your limitations and your strengths.”
Surprisingly, when asked where in her career she had the most fun, she didn’t hesitate to respond “as a trial judge. Every day, you’re surprised! When I retire from the Supreme Court, I want to go back to it.” She misses the human contact with the plaintiffs and defendants, who are generally not present in appeals or Supreme courtrooms.
When asked why the greatest legal minds in the country have so many split decisions, Sotomayor pointed out that this is part of the Supremes’ mandate. “The case wouldn’t come before the Supreme Court if the answer was clear. We don’t take cases unless there are disagreements in the Circuit Court decisions. That’s why we have 5-4 decisions. It doesn’t mean that the four are wrong, but that the five thought another way. Some people say [the split decisions lessen their faith in government]. I hope the split means you have more faith in the government, because if everything is 9-0, we’re not taking the care we need to. And if there’s a [written] dissent, at least somebody heard you.”
Dissents, for her, are also cause for optimism. “We can write our dissents and hope to influence Congress or a future Supreme Court decision. You have to feel optimistic that things can change. You have to hold that hope, so you can let go” and accept being on the losing side. “I remain optimistic, despite what’s happening in Congress right now.
And she asks each of us to take responsibility, to do our part for a better world, even if it’s as simple as casting a vote or calling a loved one. “Whatever you do, do it with passion and caring. Not voting is the greatest act of being a traitor. What counts is caring enough to make your voice heard. Every day, I try to become a better person, a better Justice. How many of us forget to call a friend who’s sick or suffered a loss? Every day I try to remind myself that the world doesn’t revolve around me. Every night before you go to sleep, ask yourself these two questions:
What have I learned that’s new today?
What good have I done today?
“If you can’t answer those two questions, don’t go to sleep. Send someone a [‘thinking-of-you’] email. Go on Google and learn about something.
Known as a Justice who asks a lot of questions during oral argument, Sotomayor was asked if she often changed her mind based on the lawyers’ responses to the Justices’ questions. And she said that she changes her thinking based on the oral argument, though not necessarily her vote, about 20 percent of the time. To future lawyers in the largely student audience, she advised, “Be happy when we ask questions. We engage you in engaging us.” But she said often, the real benefit to her in oral arguments is from listening to the questions of her colleagues. “I see what road they’re going down, what they’re thinking.” The Justices don’t discuss cases before oral arguments, so these are the first insights she gets about a case’s direction.
In the past, the Court was a very contentious place, with some Justices not speaking to each other for years. That changed, she said, when Sandra Day O’Connor (the first woman Justice, appointed by President Reagan) came onboard. She insisted on building collegial relationships, through instituting several changes including a weekly lunch. “She made a huge difference. There’s an ethos now that if someone says something they shouldn’t have, they call and apologize.”
She chose law, she said, because “I wanted to guide people into making decisions that were fair to themselves and to other people.” It was a way to help people solve problems, and it did not require singing, dancing, or drawing, didn’t require the patience of a teacher, and did not involve medicine; as a diabetic since age 7, she felt she’d spent far too much time in hospitals to want to work in one. When the moderator shot back that Sotomayor was the best salsa dancer she knew, the 61-year-old Justice said she’d taken lessons at 50, when she got tired of being the only Latina she knew who didn’t dance. She asked her mother why she’d never been taught to dance as a child, and her mom replied, “You were always outside chasing fireflies. We could never get you to be still long enough.”
Her final advice was to remember the people who helped you and to overcome your fears. “Every job I’ve had, every obstacle I’ve overcome, I’ve been afraid. None of us gets anywhere in life without the help of others. Nobody accomplishes alone. We are each of us blessed with the good and the bad I hope each of you can appreciate the blessings in your world.”
Note: material in quote marks and not in brackets are as accurate as my notes, memories, and ability to decipher my scrunched handwriting allow (I had no paper so I was writing on the backs of business cards). I apologize for any transcription errors I may have made. Material within square brackets is paraphrased.
I’m up to the part of Naomi Klein?‘s This Changes Everything where she talks about the interconnectedness of geolocalized people’s movements opposing “extreme/reckless resource extraction” (e.g., tar-sands oil, fracked gas and oil, mountaintop removal for coal). She dubs the movement “Blockadia.” She also casts very appropriate darts, just before this section, at the crazy idea that we should avoid climate catastrophe by throwing so much pollution into the sky that the sun can’t get through. Talk about a cure worse than the disease! Hard to believe some scientists are actually serious about this.
She points out that these technologies are far more intrusive and polluting and resource-intensive than the old-style mines and wells—and that the opposition often parses out as saving our water from destruction, modeling around the Precautionary Principle of not unleashing technologies we can’t control, and using the positive framing of protecting our water (very similar to the way I framed Save the Mountain 15 years ago—the successful movement to keep a nasty housing development off the Mount Holyoke Range in my town of Hadley, Massachusetts, US). I have said for many years that we have plenty of substitutes for oil, but if the water is gone (or unusable), so are we.
Like everything I’ve ever read by Klein, the book is impeccably researched—including interviewing primary sources directly and even suffering through climate-denier conferences and similar events in person; pursuit of the truth can be painful, sometimes.
And she isn’t afraid to go after the movement’s sacred cows. She scolds some very prominent environmental groups including The Nature Conservancy for betraying their core mission in the service of their large extraction-industry funders—even putting an oil well into one of its nature preserves, where the bird it was set up to protect can no longer be found. And she finds Sir Richard Branson’s proclamations of concern for the planet to be at odds with his actions. (I’m hoping she’s wrong about him. Even if she turns out to be right—and she might well be—he has certainly used his considerable charisma to educate the public on climate change.)
Environmentalists need to take these accusations very seriously. We need to know who we fund, and what they do with the money. And we definitely need to build the movement that insists upon meaningful action to stave off catastrophic climate change—which would have been much easier 20 or 30 years ago, but, I believe, is still possible now.
However, I break with Klein over solutions. She has essentially no faith in the business community or in technology, and she seems to think that any time an environmental group partners with a polluter, that group is sullied. Maybe I’m less of a purist than she is. But I’ve just finished another wonderful book, The Necessary Revolution, by Peter Senge et al. Reading the two together was very interesting, because Senge’s book is full of great examples of NGOs and corporations working together to tackle problems in a very meaningful way, while Klein’s is the counterpoint of these partnerships leading to a failure to address the deeper issues.
Technology doesn’t have to be about extreme extraction, GMOs designed to absorb more pesticides, nuclear power, or blocking the sun. Science and engineering can actually be the climate movement’s friends. Unlike the crazy unproven schemes requiring billions or trillions of dollars and dozens of years to ramp up, these innovations often combine deep conservation, greater efficiency in harnessing clean renewable energy, and even the fascinating science of biomimcry to slash energy use, carbon footprint, and waste—right now.
The last hundred years have also seen a similar ratchet (amplified, I’d argue, by the technology of media and of the economy) in civil rights. It’s unlikely (with the exception of despotic edicts) that women will ever lose the vote, that discrimination on race will return to apartheid-like levels, that marriage will return to being an exclusionary practice… once a social justice is embraced by a culture, it’s rarely abandoned.
Unfortunately, those “despotic edicts” are all-too-common. While the general trend is not to reverse progress, there are far too many exceptions:
Women’s rights in Iran under the Shah or Kabul pre-Taliban versus today
Rights of Jews, Gypsies, and LGB folks in prewar Germany vs. the Nazi years
The collapse of Sarajevo’s much-vaunted multiculturalism into massive racism and “ethnic cleansing” in the 1990s
Although this is a pessimistic post, I am ultimately an optimist. I think Godin is basically right–but there are many, many exceptions. Let’s work together for a world in which those exceptions are no longer tolerated–we can do this!
As someone whose stepfather is Japanese, and who had to pose with my wife, my sister and her husband in the authentic yukatas (they’re like kimonos, but less formal and lighter weight) and obis (ceremonial belts) he gave us for some event–and as someone who has certainly seen my own Jewish heritage symbols appropriated and/or misused by mainstream culture–I can relate on some level her perspective.
But I also feel it’s crucial that we learn about the wider world around us, and that e.g. eating Thai food doesn’t mean you understand Thai culture. I think the experience of wearing the very elegant but very restrictive formal Japanese outfit with kimono and obi can provide a little window into what it was like to be upper-class female in 19th-century Japan. It saddens me that those teachable moments were lost in this.
I also do have concerns about how many other opportunities to touch another culture have been taken from us in the name of political correctness. A few years ago, a local high school even canceled a production of West Side Story because they were accused of racism–missing the entire point. Ditto the campaigns to purge high school classrooms of Mark Twain’s anti-racism classic Huckleberry Finn because it used the n-word, even though Twain’s purpose was to use that epithet (which, in his time, was probably the most common word to describe blacks) to build a bridge between the black and white cultures of 19th-century southern Illinois, right next to slave-owning Missouri.
To me, the correct response would have been for the museum to meet with the protestors and ask for their input in recasting the exhibit so it enlarged the educational aspect in a way that the Japanese-American protestors found appropriate–and for the protestors to have made that, rather than ceasing the exhibit, as their demand. Instead, it’s all this shouting at each other instead of talking to each other. Yes, you protest, but then you collaborate and build a greater whole.
Of course, an even more appropriate way to handle it would have been to involve local Japanese-American organizations in the planning and curation to begin with.
I went to my first same-sex commitment ceremonies around 1979 and 1980, never dreaming that the day would come when such unions would be recognized in every state of the United States of America.
Thank you, Justice Kennedy for your beautiful opinion, and the other four Justices who added their names. And thank you, President Obama, for being consistent in your support since the day you announced that your thinking had evolved on this issue.
And thanks to the activists who brought the country forward, including those who were brave enough to do this long before it was legal.
Arky Markham, 100, watches as (from left) Marty Nathan, Mayor David Narkewicz, and Lisa Baskin light birthday candles
If your image of a 100-year-old woman is a quiet old lady vegetating in a nursing home, let me introduce you to Arky Aisenberg Markham.
She turned 100 yesterday, and celebrated with about 300 guests in a fundraiser for the Markham-Nathan Fund, one of several organizations she’s founded or co-founded (another is Social Workers for Peace and Justice). Attendees included Massachusetts Senate President Stan Rosenberg (who also happens to represent her district), Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, State Representatives Peter Kocot and Ellen Story, retired Congressman John Olver, and at least three of Northampton’s nine city councilors–and a virtual Who’s Who of activists involved for decades in peace, labor, human rights, environmental, economic justice, and democracy work, including representatives of the 15 organizations the Markham-Nathan Fund supported this year. The event probably raised several thousand dollars for social justice work.
Arky walked to the stage under her own power and shot back one-liner after one-liner during several of the speakers’ remarks. One of the speakers, I think Rep. Kocot, remarked that Arky always showed us the right path. Arky immediately zinged, “the left path.” Rosenberg made a comment about coming back to celebrate her 200th birthday, and she shouted, in Yiddish, “ein hoonderd tsvantsich” (one-hundred-twenty) evoking an old Jewish blessing about living to 120. And it was Arky herself who gave the fundraising pitch. As she left the stage, the first several people to greet her were all female. She said something like, “Now that I’m 100, all the women want to kiss me. Where are the men who want to kiss me?” So I went up and kissed her. All her comeback lines were unrehearsed and spontaneous, and had the crowd laughing regularly.
This remarkable woman was already 41 years old when I was born. Wanting to do her part to stop Hitler, she was a military air traffic controller during World War II, then used the GI bill to get an undergrad degree in Spanish and a Master’s in Social Work, which led to a career working with various underserved populations, from inner-city NYC school children to her fellow veterans. She was in her 50s when she met and married George Markham; their first date was a rally against the Vietnam War, and they were involved in numerous peace and justice causes together until George’s death in 2009, at age 100.
Why were so many dignitaries in attendance? Because they are all activists! Their electoral political work is a direct outgrowth of their commitment to a better world. The Northampton-Amherst area may be a bit unusual in the percentage of progressive activists it sends to elected office–but I, for one, find it very refreshing to live in a place where elected officials are actually about peace and justice.
[Note: Arky died on June 11, 2018, ten days before her 103rd birthday.]
Remember the World Trade Organization, which slipped into the shadows after massive Seattle protests in 1999? The same day last week that Congress initially blocked the possibility of fast track approval for the TPP trade agreement, the House voted to overturn rules requiring country-of-origin labeling for meat. Those supporting the vote said they were responding to a World Trade Organization ruling, judging US country-of-origin labeling unfair competition with meat coming from foreign countries like Canada and Mexico, and therefore a violation. They said they had no choice for fear of triggering sanctions or lawsuits from countries exporting meat across our borders.
I don’t know about you, but I like knowing whether my meat comes from Iowa or Uzbekistan, Montana or Mexico, Kentucky or Kenya. So do 93% of Americans, according to a Consumer’s Union survey. People like supporting US farmers, cutting down distance travelled, knowing there will be at least minimal inspection standards, even if the delights of e coli occasionally slip through. It seems commonsensical that we’d want at least the chance to become informed consumers, whether with the origins of our meat, GMO-derived crops, or the amount of sugar and calories in our baked goods.
Maybe the House members are wrong in insisting that the international tribunals that adjudicate trade disputes would deem this a violation. But if this particular House bill passes the Senate and gets signed by Obama, even the mere possibility of a lawsuit will have struck down a wholly reasonable law that protects our health and supports our local economies. And if TPP passes the Senate, other attempts to regulate commerce for the common good will be potentially gutted as well, from attempts at financial regulation to limits on the prices charged for drugs, to environmental rules and seemingly innocuous actions like requiring accurate labeling. Some of this could occur through legal action, and some through the mere fear that such action could occur.
Now maybe TPP won’t contain rules on meat. Maybe it will simply limit other ways we might try to exert our sovereignty over critical choices that affect us. But we do know that this agreement—involving countries constituting 40% of the global economy—through what’s called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, will establish unaccountable tribunals with the power to let corporations collect damages for loss of profits. We don’t know the precise reach of the agreement because ordinary citizens haven’t seen it. Even Congressional opponents were prohibited from taking notes when they looked at it, and “cleared advisors” who’ve seen it have been legally prohibited from talking specifics. Yet we’re told it represents an inevitable future, that the benefits will trickle down to ordinary citizens, and that those who ask reasonable questions about its profound implications are merely obstructionist whiners.
So do we demand full transparency before moving ahead? Or do we trust that the corporations that negotiated these rules have our interests at heart, and would never, in the slightest, harm our democracy? Whether or not the country-of-origin labeling on meat survives or is ended by the House bill and WTO ruling, TPP plays for far larger stakes, the ground rules that affect our very potential to take common action. The meat bill is one more warning that there are some rules and agreements where we should be careful to eagerly swallow.
Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While
What I like about Hillary:
1) She has cojones. She will not let herself be kicked around like Obama did.
2) She at least started (I’m talking 1970s) as a genuine progressive and a very effective advocate for women’s rights globally. I like that she’s talking a more progressive line these days, but not convinced it’s sincere.
3) She has experience. I would not call her tenure as S of S a failure.
What I don’t like:
1) She’s made it abundantly clear that her loyalties are to Wall Street and her policies will be centrist, not progressive
2) Doesn’t have a clue about collaborative communication, social media, etc.
3) Isn’t likely to build an organizing structure that will continue to pressure GOP hacks during her term of office (Obama surprised me with his failure on this, considering what a great job he did with it as a candidate in 2008)
4) Will not be energizing to youth, other than the first woman card
5) Concerns about her ethics
What I like about Warren, even though I’m one who thinks she should stay in the Senate:
1) Excellent grasp of domestic economic issues and serious commitment to the poor and middle class
2) Wicked smart, as we say here in New England
3) Excellent organizer and communicator
On the minus side:
4) Alarmingly ignorant on foreign policy, especially her coziness with the Israel-right-or-wrong set
5) Way too inexperienced–if you think Obama was out of his depth…
6) Those who think Hillary is the wrong generation (not an issue for me, BTW) will attack her on the same grounds–she’s only a few years younger, though she relates to youth much better
7) Most importantly, she’s been very effective in pushing Congress and Obama leftward. We need smart, articulate people pushing a progressive agenda. Right now, the press pays lots of attention to her–but they will go away if she runs less than 20% in the primaries (and she’ll probably run more like 3 to 5%). Kucinich was nearly completely ignored.
8) And she doesn’t want to run. A candidate who doesn’t engage fully in the campaign would be a disaster.
Starbucks has been getting a lot of flack since announcing its “Race Together” initiative. People are mostly either calling the company self-serving or questioning why a cafe chain would want to take on an agenda that seems so unrelated to its core business.
Now, I’ve certainly criticized companies for cause marketing that seems to have nothing to do with its purpose. For example, I’ve publicly questioned why Ford has chosen to support a breast cancer charity rather than something related to, say, transportation access.
And I’ve given space to Starbucks critics like Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans, who says the coffee giant could be doing a lot more on sustainability, fair trade, and organic.
But I actually think this time Starbucks did something sensible and good, and I was really pretty shocked at the negative media firestorm.
Consider this:
In the post-Ferguson climate, where black communities are showing righteous anger about police violence, race is back on the agenda
Many legislative bodies are imposing onerous barriers to registering and voting, ostensibly to stop “voter fraud” (which is close to zero)—but whose deeper agenda seems to be denying the vote to people of color and those with low incomes
As a culture, when we want to talk things over, we do so over coffee—so what better place to start a national conversation?
Starbucks has thousands of locations in cities—Ground Zero for the recent race incidents; thus, the company has a vested interest in de-escalating tensions and opening dialog so those stores continue to thrive, in addition to the moral grounds it cites
We have a number of planned Race Together activities in the weeks and months to come: more partner open forums, three more special sections co-produced with USA TODAY over the course of the next year, more open dialogue with police and community leaders in cities across our country, a continued focus on jobs and education for our nation’s young people plus our commitment to hire 10,000 opportunity youth over the next three years, expanding our store footprint in urban communities across the country, and new partnerships to foster dialogue and empathy and help bridge the racial and ethnic divides within our society that have existed for so many years…The heart of Race Together has always been about humanity: the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few. We leaned in because we believed that starting this dialogue is what matters most. We are learning a lot. And will always aim high in our efforts to make a difference on the issues that matter most.
If this is self-serving, I say we need more of that kind of self-serving.
