Category: Diversity

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Diversity, Entrepreneurship, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , ,

The pundits have dubbed today “CyberMonday,” meaning we good little sheep are to go bravely forth over our modems and contribute to the global economy, from the comfort of our homes and offices.

Well, sorry, but I’m not playing. I did participate in Small Business Saturday, whose focus was on buying local. But I feel no need to glorify online commerce.

I’m actually a strong advocate of buying local when it’s practical. Local purchasing means money stays local. The people employed by locally owned stores spend their own money right here in my community. And the jobs I help create reduce unemployment right here where I live. And the culture of locally owned bookstores, artist venues, hardware stores and such makes my community a more desirable place to live. That’s the kind of abundance I wish to encourage.

Mind you, I’m not a purist. I do buy online. I do even buy from chain stores sometimes. I do see the occasional movie at the mall (though I see a far greater number at my local independent cinemas). But today, as millions rush to their workstations to undermine the lcoal economies, I can bloody well keep my wallet away from my computer. If I buy anything today, it will be at a local store.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Diversity, Peace and War, People Helping People, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Watching the fireworks from my lawn last night, I found myself thinking about a long-ago July 4th, and how it helped shape who I am today.

The year was 1976. I was a scrawny, long-haired, 19-year-old peace and human rights activist who had just finished my senior term at Antioch College.

I was broke and jobless. And, not having any better plan, I was going to hitchhike around the United States for the summer, shifting my itinerary depending on where the rides were going. Though I was pretty sure I wanted to see Denver and San Francisco, at least, I knew it was a big country with lots to explore, and I hadn’t seen very much of it so far. I didn’t know a thing about hitchhiking, and I hadn’t done any research about what to bring—though I did hook up briefly with a friend who was a very experienced hitchhiker, who showed me the basics of where to stand safely.

So off I went, with $200 in travelers checks in my pocket, and a bunch of inappropriate stuff packed in three inappropriate daypacks. I didn’t have a traveler’s frame pack, a sleeping bag, decent rain protection, a sun hat, or a lot of other things I should have thought about. Instead, I had an entire daypack filled with my creative output: poetry notebooks, my dream journal, and such. Plus a bare minimum of clothing and a bit of food.

I did, however, have a supply of thick markers for making hitchhiking signs that people could read at 60 miles per hour; even back then, I understood some basic marketing principles. 🙂

Setting off from my college town, Yellow Springs, Ohio, in late June, I stopped to visit family in New York before heading to Washington for the Bicentennial.

For weeks, I’d been growing more and more disgusted with the insane commercialism around the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence—stuff like “Happy birthday, America, we’re having a sale on our new Fords because it’s your birthday,” accompanied by various patriotic songs.

I was, at that time, very alienated from mainstream American culture. The United States had finally pulled its last soldiers out of the Vietnam quagmire (which I’d been actively protesting since 1969), and Saigon had fallen only 14 months earlier. Examples of racism and sexism and homophobia and oppression of various minorities were easy to find. Police violence against progressives and racial minorities was a part of daily life, and we assumed we were being spied on.

I’d recently completed an internship at a socialist newspaper in Georgia, where the sense of “us against them” was palpable—and where the advertising base had largely abandoned the paper as soon as a safe, bourgeois counterculture paper started publishing, providing access to the lucrative hippie market around Atlanta without funding anti-government journalism. I saw business as the enemy of progress, and could not have named a single example of a business trying to do good, other than a couple of leftist bookstores and healthfood co-ops. I’d been a vegetarian for almost three years, and had discovered that this made me unwelcome in many restaurants.

In short, I was disenfranchised, cynical, militant, and even hostile. I had a pretty big chip on my shoulder.

There were a lot of events in Washington on July 4, 1976, including the grand opening of Union Station as a National Visitors Center, and of course, a huge birthday celebration. As I recall, there were several large public events around different parts of the Mall.

The one I was there to attend was a peace and take-back-the-government rally called by the People’s Bicentennial Commission—and organized, interestingly enough, under the “Don’t Tread on Me” rattlesnake banner that we’ve seen at a lot of Tea Party events in the past few years.

Aside: Columnist Ed Tant, who covered the event for the Athens, GA Observer, remembers the flag as quite integral to the demonstration:

The People’s Bicentennial rally 34 years ago still stands out in my memory for its hopeful patriotism and its message against the predations of plutocracy symbolized by the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag flying from the stage and from the crowd more than a generation before the same flag was appropriated by the tea party crew.

The Gadsden flag was named for Christopher Gadsden, a Revolutionary War hero from South Carolina. It was flown by American sailors and marines during the revolution, but the first political group to feature the rattlesnake flag at a Washington rally was the People’s Bicentennial Commission that flew the flag to warn against the growing power of multinational corporations…

During the People’s Bicentennial rally in 1976, activist Mary Murphy explained the symbolism of the rattlesnake flag, saying, “The rattlesnake has no eyelids, so it is ever-vigilant. Also, it never attacks without warning.”

I seem to remember seeing it at many rallies over the early 1970s, but it may be that the July 4, 1976 demonstration was the first to make it the rally’s official symbol. Somewhere, I might still have my copy of that button.[Aside ends]

Although some conservatives had worried publicly that this anniversary would be a magnet for terrorism and violence, what impressed me above all was the lack of that kind of drama. Only a few years after hard-hat construction workers had attacked war protestors in New York, after Chicago police had attacked protestors at the Democratic Convention, and after the country had been split into opposing camps on so many issues—multiple large gatherings, each representing a different segment of the political landscape from ultraprogressive to ultraconservative, and a huge apolitical middle that was just there to party out on the Bicentennial, all coexisting. All peacefully listening to their own sets of speakers and performers, sometimes coming into contact with each other at the edges, and even sharing food. As far as I could tell, there was no violence, no overt conflict at all, even as hippies in torn flag t-shirts encountered flag-waving conservatives.

And then, after all the rallies were over, we all left our separate public events and gathered around the Washington Monument—to peacefully watch one of the best fireworks displays I’ve ever seen. For one magical night, there seemed to be no great divide. Just a whole lot of people watching a grand fireworks display.

Hitching out of Washington on my way west the next morning, I encountered the generosity of people from both the protests and the parties. I made it back to Yellow Springs in three rides, with very little waiting time. It took only about a half-hour longer than driving would have taken.

And that was the beginning of my summer-long lesson that most Americans are good people who want to do the right thing…that the world is abundant and people will help others when they need it…and that the hostility I thought mainstream America had felt toward the counterculture was at least in large measure, confined to my own imagination.

I have taken the lessons of that day of unity and that summer of hope with me for 35 years now, and I trace a lot of who I am today and how I act in the world to the revelations of that time.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Events, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

30 years ago, Dina and I marched in the first-ever Gay Rights march in Northampton, Massachusetts. Organized by a very political—you could even call them militant—group called Gay And Lesbian Activists, the event drew about 500 people. We were proud and defiant in a society where being gay or lesbian was so threatening that some of the marchers wore paper bags over their heads to protect their identities and avoid reprisals. The speeches were all about claiming our place in a rejecting society.

Back then, there was a large contingent of counterdemonstrators from the local Baptist church, shouting slogans and carrying signs that today would be considered hate speech.

A few months later, some prominent lesbians in town received a series of threatening phone calls, and went to the police. A group of activists demanded and received a meeting with public officials. We pressed the mayor for a statement condemning the harassment. He waffled for quite some time until the District Attorney, who’d been quietly watching, said “I’ll give you a statement.” Once he had the political cover of the DA, the mayor quickly agreed as well. And later, the harasser was actually found, tried, and convicted. Yet, shortly after the second annual march, a City Councilor ran unopposed for re-election on a platform of stopping the Gay Rights march. (When his term was up two years later and he still had no opposition, I ran against him. He won that year and was defeated by another progressive two years later.)

Fast-forward to 2011: yesterday’s 30th annual parade, now officially called the “Noho Pride LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] Parade and Pride Event” and organized by a group called Noho Pride. The parade stretched for blocks and moved down Main Street to a cheering throng of some 15,000, lining not only both sidewalks but also the midline of our very wide boulevard.

Spectators applaud the Forbes Library contingent, #Nohopride 2011
Spectators applaud the Forbes Library contingent, #Nohopride 2011

Contingents included students, teachers, and parents from several elementary and high schools…dozens of churches…our local public library, where I and several other writers marched along with the director, assistant director, and a couple of the trustees…and a number of prominent politicians including both mayoral candidates (one gay, one not), Northampton’s State Representative Peter Kokot, and a candidate for US Senate who actually took a booth.

Vendors at the rally site included banks, home improvement contractors, and other very mainstream businesses. There was almost no political content, although there was a large tent for activist organizations, and the tent was crowded.

One of the local newspapers described the scene:

The atmosphere was a jubilant one – with hula-hoopers, a group doing intricate formations with shopping carts, drag queens, Rocky Horror Picture Show actors, the Raging Grannies, and countless school groups, some chanting “five, six, seven, eight, don’t assume your kids are straight.”

In the intervening years, a lot has happened in the queer community around Northampton, including national press in the early 1990s in the National Enquirer (which dubbed it Lesbianville USA) and the TV program 20/20. Several openly gay or lesbian politicians have won their races, including Northampton’s openly lesbian mayor, Clare Higgins, who is finishing up her sixth two-year term—longer than anyone else has ever held the post. Same-sex marriage has been legal for years. You have to look really hard to find someone who isn’t aware of same-sex couples in their places of worship, their workplaces, or their circle of friends.

And the Pride event has gone from a defiant statement of our rights to a festive, touristy celebration of culture. So much so that the organizers were publicly criticized by a group of activists including at least two who were there from the beginning, for squeezing the politics of change out of the event.

To me, while I recognize the validity and sincerity of those complaints, that we can now party out tells me that yes, we are making huge progress in this area, among others.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, National Conference on Media Reform, People Helping People, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , , , ,

By Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

Michael Copps: There’s no larger question in the US right now than how do we get the media back?

We started out in 2002, 03, opposing Michael Powell’s plan to loosen media ownership rules. I said the people have a real interest in this, and thanks to FreePress and other groups, three million people contacted the FCC. We’ve conducted some good holding actions, but it’s time to win the battle.

The real question is, shouldn’t consumers be deciding where they want to go and what they want to do online, and that’s what Net Neutrality is about.

We’ve lost a lot of public interest territory over the years, and you don’t get that back an inch at a time.

How do we ensure that everyone has access to broadband? It’s the future of democracy. The facts are gone; the investigative journalism is gone. Thousands of journalists no longer walk the beat. How many facts are buried so deep that the few journalists left can’t find them? Let’s have the data. I have watched the evisceration of the public interest all of these years. I think it’s the most important issue facing the country. The resolution of all of those other issues rides on how they are depicted by the media—and if the facts are told to the American people so they can make a decision. You can’t get that from the starvation diet, the journalism lite that we get from the traditional newsrooms now.

We should bring back a licensing regimen where the public interest is actually included. Where the public interest controls. Where the localism, the news of our various communities, is actually covered. Where minorities are not caricatured but their real issues are covered. Where we can say, “if you’re not serving your community, we’ll take that license back and give it to someone who will.”

Citizen action can still work. Very few people hold outrageous amounts of power, and control what goes on in this country. But citizen action can still make a difference. Look at women’s rights, labor, minority rights, they all had uphill fight, but they all persevered. It never happens easily. We should rededicate and recommit ourselves, and we can make some real down payments on media democracy in the months ahead. And then we can get real progress in getting media that is of and by and for the people.

 

Mignon Clyburn (former South Carolina State Commissioner and activist)

You reaffirm to me how important it is to fight for parity when I put my head on the chopping block. Remember what people were doing 10 years ago while waiting for flights? Reading a book or staring at the ceiling? Now they’re playing a game with a friend in New Zealand, tweeting, texting, IMing. Count the number of wireless activities next time. I hear about the fast approaching mobile TV and mobile broadband. Wireless availability and ease of use is no longer a fun novelty. It’s an essential part of everyday routines. An overwhelming majority would say they couldn’t live without their cell phones. This is especially true in lower income communities. It may be far more economical to communicate in short text messages than taking up too many voice minutes. Wireless is becoming the choice for students, under 30, families with small discretionary incomes. They are relying on them to find bus arrival times and weather forecasts, and to mange  smoother ways of living. But this ease that many of us take for granted is at risk, for others.

1 in 4 households rely solely on wireless. They’re cutting costs and cutting the cord. Data apps on wireless are far more common in Afro-American and Latino communities, and they take advantage of a much wider array of the data than their white counterparts.

And we must be mindful of the effects of this on the ecosystem. If the costs become prohibitive, we have failed.

Small businesses pay significantly more per user (than big) for wireless.

I am an unlikely candidate for this job.  A non-lawyer from a small, poor, “interesting” state. But I am a person who saw the disconnects, the inequities from the day she was born that minimize the potential in her communities. I know that these technologies, the potential for unlocking the spirit and the hope and desires and the excellence in all of us—we have that potential as commissioners, and you have the potential to not let us get away with anything less than our best.

Response to government shutdown:
Copps: we’re wasting all this time on the high noon shootout when there are all these bigger issues.

Clyburn: A lessons we learned in our household that we can disagree without being disagreeable. We don’t see that in our public spaces and places, and because of that, we’re unable and unwilling to compromise.

Oversight of broadband

Clyburn: We are to ensure a robust telecommunications industry. People expect that when they sign up for a service, that they can access information. We established high-level rules to do just that. They’re not onerous rules. I am comfortable with that direction. At the end of the day, we talk about this consolidation. The majority of Americans have two or fewer Internet providers, and that does not stimulate competition. I’m a substitute for competition.

Copps: Internet users should be very worried, because the Net Neutrality we passed is a partial measure. It does not include wireless telecom and there’s the potential for companies to do mischief. Long-term, we should be more worried. Every new telecom technology starts out as the dawn of an era of openness and freedom, but control gets tighter and tighter. That’s the danger to the future of the Internet, probably the most liberating technology since the printing press, and it’s going down the same road as the rest. We’re talking about keeping this technology free, and not letting a few telecoms put up a toll booth. Of course we have authority to do this. The telecoms convinced previous FCCs to call it information services (not regulatable).

State regulators vs. municipal

Clyburn: There are significant donut holes in this nation. 95% has high-speed access, but that means 14-24 MILLION have no broadband access available. The companies say the economic case can’t be made. So cities and towns should have the flexibility to wire those communities.

Copps: We have a spectrum shortage, we need more for wireless. But that should not translate into taking it from broadcast. We have a democracy crisis in large pat due to the state of our media. Let’s look at how broadcasters are using the people’s spectrum. There’s room for both wireless and broadcast.

What would it take for ATT/TMobile merger to be in the public interest?

Copps: A hell of a lot more than I’ve seen before. We have to say, what about competition? What they’re looking for is deregulated monopoly and I hope that’s not the course of American history.

Clyburn: I look at broadband access as a human rights issue. This is the last opportunity—the TV airwaves are unaffordable and almost unreachable. Those traditional platforms are too expensive. If we let this go, what do we have left? It is the pathway forward.

Copps: I think you can justify access to broadband as a civil right very easily. You’re not going to be a young person who can’t get a job because you can’t apply online. You can’t monitor your kids’ learning, your health. We’re 15th or 20th in the world, and that means all these kids are growing up without that opportunity. You think we’ve got outsourcing now…

License renewals:

We used to have 14 guidelines. I don’t think we need to have that many, but you need an honest-to-god licensing system. I’d have the renewals every three years, and you make a judgment about whether the station is serving the public. And if not, you put them on probation for a year or two, and if not, plenty of other people would like to have access to bandwidth.

Diversity:

Copps: Diversity is one of our mandates, but station ownership doesn’t reflect that diversity. We’ve had a committee that has proposed 70-75 measures we could take. I’ve proposed that we take one of them up each month.

Free Expression:

Clyburn: We have to make space for viewpoints we disagree with. But if we diversify, people have more venues to get their voices across. They get drowned out and we cannot be satisfied with that. We have to push this agency and our lawmakers to be creative thinkers. And the advertisers will follow, and the voices we have problems with become less popular. Speak with your clickers and those voices will be gone.

Copps: I’d like to see the FCC require full disclosure on political advertisements. You hear, “brought to you by Citizens for Spacious Skies and Amber Waves of Grain,” and you don’t know it’s a chemical company.

The FCC is one of many agencies with a revolving door. We should say, for x number of years [former regulators can’t work as industry lobbyists]. It’s the crushing influence of money in Washington.

Clyburn: Reaffirmations that public-private partnerships are the way to go. I am not satisfied about our diversity initiatives. I don’t hear enough southern accents. [race, gender]. The revolving door works both ways. I’m the beneficiary of the expertise of my staffer on mergers, from the outside.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I have lived in a housing project of 55,000 people in New York City—so insignificant in the city’s eyes that we didn’t even have a subway stop; we had to bus or walk a mile to one of two different trains, one of which could have easily been extended a mile over Interstate 95. In all, I lived in New York City for about 20 years, including birth to 16. In my early 20s, I lived in four of the five boroughs: Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.

At the other extreme, for the past 12+ years, I’ve lived on a working farm in a village of about 200 within Hadley, Massachusetts—a town of 4753 people—part of Hampshire County, whose 20 “cities” and towns within 545 square miles increased over the past decade to 152,251. (City, as Massachusetts defines it, refers to a municipality administered by a mayor and council rather than Selectboard and Town Meeting, and has nothing to do with population.) And I actually serve on an official town land-use committee, where we wrestle constantly with shaping the future of our town.

New York City’s five densely populated boroughs comprise just under 305 square miles, and hold 8,391,881 residents. You could move NYC to my county and still have almost half the land area left —maybe to grow enough food for all those residents. My county has 1/55 as many people as NYC, spread out over 1.78 times as much land.

Between the time I first lived outside of New York, in 1973, and settled in Hampshire County, in 1981, I lived in various cities and towns ranging from under 5000 to 1,688,210. All of these communities can offer sustainability wisdom from which other places can learn—either by doing it right, or by doing it wrong (so much so that I could write a book on this—maybe I will, some day). Here are a few of the insights:

  • Vibrant neighborhoods require mixed use. In every city I’ve ever lived in, the exciting neighborhoods are those where people live, work, play, and shop in close proximity. The best US examples I know are Northampton and Amherst, MA, New York’s Upper West Side and Park Slope, and the Fox Point area of Providence. Much of Europe uses this model, and European cities are highly livable.
  • Car-centered cultures adversely affect quality of life. Strong mass transit usually enhances it. In New York City (where a car is a liability), commuting time on public transit is productive. People read, write, get through their e-mail, walk a few blocks to their destination, and don’t feel like they’ve wasted the time. Sometimes they even build friendships with the people they see every day on their commute. In Hadley, the shopping district is suburban-style, with big malls and strip malls along a state highway. Almost no one lives on that road, and it’s not a place for cultural events, other than movies. While the largest food stores actually do provide chances to hang out a bit with neighbors (all arriving in separate cars), having a brief chat with an acquaintance you run into in the produce aisle is not the same kind of community building as you can get in a cafe or a bookstore.
  • A corollary: planning must take into account the existing transportation patterns. Mass-transit thinking can’t just be grafted onto a car-oriented culture, and car-oriented thinking won’t work in crowded urban areas. Those patterns can change over time, but it’s a slow process.
  • A real community transcends ethnic and cultural differences. My current neighborhood of Hockanum  Village has a number of families that have been on the same land for 200 years or more. Some of them trace their lineage to the Mayflower. The whole neighborhood gets together every year for a Christmas party that attracts former residents from as far as Florida, and sometimes a summer picnic along the river. A few neighbors gather at the local coffee shop for breakfast once a week. I could knock on any door in the neighborhood with a request, and people would try to help me.
  • Cities lend themselves well to centralized renewable energy collection—but this potential to make a big difference in climate change and oil dependency has barely been tapped. Instead, many centrally heated buildings in New York are overheated to the point where tenants need to open windows on cold winter days, and that’s crazy.
  • Cities could supply a significant portion of their own food, but again, this potential is not tapped much.
  • Farmers and gardeners understand the food cycle. They know what it’s like to grow food for themselves, their families, and their livestock. They’ve seen crop failure. They pay close attention to weather patterns. Localism is not a theoretical construct; it’s an everyday reality.
  • Homeowners and farmers notice details and patterns, so, for instance, they anticipate and address maintenance issues before they become failures. They don’t expect anyone else to do things for them, though they might ask for help on a big project. Tenants (especially in urban areas) are much less likely to have this attitude.
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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, Peace and War, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Stupid idea of the Week award to (drumroll, please)…Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, an evangelical church in Gainesville, Florida. Jones and his 50 members want to commemorate 9/11 by burning a Koran.

Here’s what General David Petraeus had to say about this idiotic idea:

It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems, not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community…Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan – and around the world – to inflame public opinion and incite violence. Such images could, in fact, be used as were the photos from [Abu Ghraib]. And this would, again, put our troopers and civilians in jeopardy and undermine our efforts to accomplish the critical mission here in Afghanistan.

The same Washington Post article quotes a statement from the U.S. Embassy:

Americans from all religious and ethnic backgrounds reject the offensive initiative by this small group in Florida. A great number of American voices are protesting the hurtful statements made by this organization. Numerous interfaith and religious groups in America are actively working to counter this kind of ignorance and misinformation that is offensive to so many people in the U.S. and around the world.

To these 50 extremists who falsely call themselves Christian, I’ve got a few other things to say:

  • Christ’s message was one of tolerance of differences, acceptance of diversity. Consider as one among many examples the story of the Good Samaritan. Samaritans were a despised ethnic group in Christ’s day, as this post on Bible.org makes clear.
  • What makes the US different from (and better than) totalitarian governments with official state religion is that we were founded on the bedrock principles of justice and equality, even for those who are different from us. While it’s true that as a country, we certainly haven’t always lived up to these principles, they are part of our founding heritage and part of why I am proud to be an American. Bigotry is anti-American, and this is an act of bigotry.
  • As General Petraeus points out, your action inflames the passions of the zealot/terrorist faction within Islam–and while they are a tiny minority, they can do tremendous damage, especially with you doing their recruiting for them. You are putting the lives of every American soldier in Iraq (still 50,000 left, in so-called non-combat deployments) and Afghanistan at risk!, not to mention the lives of all of us on the home front. Are you willing to have the blood of these brave soldiers on your hands?

    Advice to the better selves hiding behind that racist front: don’t do it. You want to do something constructive to commemorate 9/11? How about an interfaith Christian/Muslim/Jewish dialog group?

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    By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

    Would you use the same marketing strategy to sell a Lexus and a Smart car? I certainly hope not! Market segmentation, and then marketing differently to those different segments, is a pillar of marketing strategy and has been for more than 100 years. And in our technological era, it’s so easy to do, you’d be a fool to try any kind of one-size-fits-all marketing.

    This is equally true in any sector of the Green market. Example: the affluent suburbanite who shops at Whole Foods is going to have different wants and needs than a just-getting-by urbanite who’s a member of a food co-op for economic reasons…or the rural farmstand shopper who values the freshness and health benefits of just-picked organic produce. And with each of those slices, you want to slice again: a parent of young children needs a different approach than an elder living alone. Market to them differently, or fail to market.

    Just as in B2C (Business To Consumer) marketing, in the B2B world, you have to understand not only your own motivations, but those of your clients. Are they motivated by a desire to lower carbon footprint, a desire to reach the Green market themselves, an EPA mandate to clean up their act, or simply a desire to shave 30 percent off their energy bill?

    There’s a good article on the Strategic Sustainability Consulting blog on this, which I found through Carolyn Parrs’ blog.

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    By Posted on Posted in censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Peace and War, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

    Today marks the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Right-wing extremists Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin will dishonor King’s memory by having a rally on the same site, opposed to all the values King held dear.

    I’m okay with that, actually. I’d never go, other than to hold a counterprotest sign—but I believe strongly in the 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As did King, by the way.

    I think Beck and Palin are despicable. I also think they have every right to hold their gathering of the lunatic fringe. And I’m aware that I’ve taken plenty of stands over my career for which others would paint me as “lunatic fringe.” Some of them are now mainstream, such as aiming for zero waste, repurposing rooftop space into food and energy collectors, and getting the heck off fossil and nuclear power sources—but they sure weren’t 30 or 40 years ago. I would not have granted then, and don’t grant now, the right of others to tell me how to think, and I don’t claim that same privilege against others whom I disagree with. The right to try to convince them, certainly—but NEVER to dictate what is or is not acceptable thought.

    I remember holding a lone protest in front of the local courthouse when the U.S. bombed Lybia. The first day, I got a lot of middle fingers and angry shouts. By the second day, a few people had joined me. On the third day, with a larger crowd, we were getting mostly thumbs ups and supportive honks. It was hard, on that first day. But I remembered my favorite Abraham Lincoln quote, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” Taking an unpopular position didn’t take the burden off me to take a stand.

    And some of my positions are still out of the mainstream—so far. One such is that a Muslim group has every right to practice that other First Amendment right, freedom of worship—even two blocks from Ground Zero. As Keith Olbermann pointed out recently, there’s already been an Islamic center coexisting in that neighborhood since before the World Trade Center was even built. But even if there weren’t, this country was founded on the principle that people can peaceably assemble, worship the God of our choice (or no God, if we choose), and say what we want to say even if it makes others unhappy. That’s what made us the shining light of Democracy for the world, the example that so many other nations wanted to follow. Those are American values that I hold dear. And I predict that they will once again return to the mainstream of an America that seems to have forgotten its proud heritage.

    It means the right to build an Islamic Center—a gathering place for peaceful worship and community activities—on an abandoned site a few blocks from Ground Zero, and it means that Beck and Palin are appropriately permitted for their disgusting festival of intolerance. The appropriate reaction is boycott or counterprotest, not an attempt to silence those we disagree with.

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    By Posted on Posted in censorship, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

    Came across this article, “Why Are The Feds Banning E-Readers?” by Pat Archbold, on National Catholic Register:

    Sometimes the federal government does something so laughably moronic, that one has to stop and ask the question “Are they really that dumb or is something else going on?”

    Here is the setup. Recently a number of universities around the country decided to take a look at using some modern technology in the classroom in an effort to save money. These universities took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. As you know, many people now use e-readers like the Kindle or the Nook as a replacement for traditional printed books. There are many reasons for this including cost, environmental impact, and convenience. Further, anyone who has gone to college understands the high cost of textbooks and would likely support any way to reduce this large expense.

    Here is the pathetic punchline. For conducting this experiment with the Kindle, Obama’s Department of Justice threatened legal action against the universities. The ridiculous contention of the Obama administration is that the Kindle and e-readers violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. Why? Because the blind can’t easily use them.

    Now the first thing that would pop into the minds of anybody with a third grade education and that does not work for the government is this simple question. If e-readers discriminate against the blind, do not traditional textbooks discriminate equally? The obvious answer is yes.

    The obvious solution, in my mind, is to require the universities to offer a suitable alternative for blind and visually impaired users—NOT to prohibit the devices entirely. E-book texts are easily converted to voice, so the only issue is giving those who don’t see a way to navigate into the right e-book.

    But his article, and the comments it drew, amazed me with their various “evil conspiracy” theories. Yes, there were some that argued rationally about the legitimate difficulties blind users have with these devices (and pointing out that they have much more difficulty with a printed book). But there were also a number of comments speculating that this is a way for the Obama administration to control dissent and silence conservative voices.

    My question to them: what have you been smoking?

    Here’s Archbold:

    I posit another and perhaps more nefarious reason. I think that the federal government is adamantly opposed to the use of e-readers as an alternative to textbooks for fear of loss of control. This loss of control is not so much at the university level but at much younger levels. The universities just happened to be the first ones to try.

    Here’s one of the comments, from “Frank”:

    A great deal of control over curriculum nationwide is exerted through textbook control. Education is critical to progressives. Remember, those who control education, control the culture. (Now , think of Obama’s childhood development, i.e. Indonesian grade school;, contact with Frank Mitchell Davis during high school years;, professors at Occidental College and Columbia University;, Alinsky acolytes in Chicago; social/political training in Hyde Park, Chicago South Side; Chicago political cauldron. Put it all together, what else can you expect but what we have experienced since January 20, 2009?)

    To me, the ruling that e-readers are out of compliance with ADA—and I speak as a disability advocate who served on my city’s official Disability Awareness committee for six years—is nothing more than the typical heavy-handed over-response of large government entities. No malfeasance, just bureaucratic inability to see past a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s the same mentality that, here in Massachusetts under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40B, allows developers to ram through inappropriate and out-of-character housing projects that violate local zoning, in the name of increasing the ratio of affordable housing. Affordable housing is a worthy goal, and I spent about ten years doing a lot of volunteer work to address that issue—but 40B is a cannon shot fired against a mosquito: the wrong tool, with lots of unintended and undesirable consequences.

    The same mentality that thinks every road improvement—even our local bikeway—has to include over-widening, over-straightening, and often removing trees, stone walls, and other vital features.

    Big governments are slow and clumsy creatures with limited intelligence, even when they’re headed by very smart people. Over time, we as a society will realize that conditions vary in different locations, and one size really fits no one at all, only breeds resentment.

    Progressives can make common cause with the Right on this issue: local control is the preferred alternative whenever practical.

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    By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

    This post is part of today’s worldwide BloggersUnite event, Empowering People With Disabilities.

    As my Boomer generation ages, and as our parents move well into the elder category, I reflect often on something I learned as a young organizer with the Gray Panthers (1979-80): the idea that society had best learn how to incorporate people with disabilities into active daily life, because most of us were going to grow into that category sooner or later. Accidents, injuries, degenerative diseases, and the general aging process mean that most of us can’t physically do some of what we used to do.

    But it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t be useful and productive. Role models are all around us. My Gray Panther chapter leader was a woman in her 70s who could barely see or hear and had some walking disabilities. She could still give fiery speeches once I brought her to the senior center we’d be speaking at that day–and at age 70, she’d taken up yoga and become a vegetarian.

    In fact, long before there was consciousness about disability rights, I was raised reading about some of the intellectual and artistic superstars with disabilities. Helen Keller is the most famous, a widely respected author, speaker, and thinker who could neither see nor hear. Also, the inventor and scientist Charles Steinmetz and President Franklin Roosevelt, among others. Grandma Moses, one of America’s most famous painters, never picked up a brush until age 76–and that left a 25-year career as an artist before her death at 101.In our own era, physicist Stephen Hawking comes to mind.

    Now, with disability activism and a much greater visibility following the 1988 Americans with Disabilities Act, we see over and over again the talent and resources we had lost by shutting people with disabilities away and out of the mainstream. We’re a long way from full equality, but we’ve sure made progress.

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