Category: People Helping People

By Posted on Posted in language, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , , ,

Along with a similar campaign around business ethics, I’ve long been on a campaign to reclaim “family values” as a value that progressives can rally around. And to me, that means seeing the family as inclusive. I am not concerned about whether a family has two parents, whether it has different genders or where/how/if that family chooses to worship–and much more concerned that a family be a place of peace, love, support, and very deep connection. And the Left needs to take a firm position in favor of these true family values-to say unequivocally that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, domestic violence, and the ludicrous don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy are NOT in keeping with our family values.

And therefore I was delighted today to get a bulk email from none other than Michelle Obama, touting a 2-minute video of Barack Obama (and another father with four children) celebrating “responsible fatherhood”. Barack Obama noted once again that his father was largely absent in his life, and because of this, he’s made an intense commitment to be there for Sasha and Malia. Of course, Obama is a master marketer, and this video is an example of his marketing prowess. It shows him as not only charismatic but enormously likable.

Oddly enough, I just finished re-reading the complete Harry Potter series. Harry’s parents are killed when he’s a year old, and late in the series he castigates another character for wanting to stay and defend Harry rather than being there for his newborn child. Harry tells him that if he can be his child, that’s where he should be.

Anyway, the video is very sweet.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People Tagged with , , , ,

Want to make a REAL impact on carbon footprint, as well as put money back in the pockets of those suffering in this troubled economy (or perhaps those who never participated in the economic boom in the first place)?

I got an e-mail describing a wonderful sustainability project in Cambridge, MA–one that would be easy to replicate anywhere: Weatherization Barnraisings.

Steve Morr-Wineman, one of the initiators, wrote that a group of people organized…

a local energy co-op called the Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET). In August we organized our first event – a weatherization barnraising. It was a simple idea: bring people together to weatherize a house by doing things like insulating doors, windows, and pipes, and installing programmable thermostats and compact fluorescent lightbulbs. We publicized the event with a simple flyer, got on some listserves, and then it just took off through word of mouth – and 40 people showed up.

Since then we’ve been doing one weatherization barnraising a month, and people just keep turning out; 30-40 every time. We’ve assembled a pool of skilled team leaders, gotten contractors to come for free to some of the events, and have expanded the range of weatherizing we can do. The multiplier effects are huge, because people are learning skills they can use to weatherize their own homes.

The Boston Globe even ran a story on the community weatherization project, noting that the group is looking at doing public buildings as well, including a school.

If you’d like to start your own weatherization group, Morr-Wneman and his friends have posted a free how-to manual at https://www.audreyschulman.com/HEET/manual3.htm

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

When are sustainability measures real, and when are they a counterproductive waste of time and money?

That was one of a several very interesting questions posed by Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans and award-winning author of Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Chelsea Green, 2007).

Dean’s Beans uses only organic fair-trade coffee and cocoa, typically pays farmers well above the fair-trade minimum while still keeping consumer prices very affordable, and reinvests substantial profits into locally governed sustainability/economic development projects in the communities that supply his coffee. He’s also perhaps the business person with the highest integrity that I’ve ever encountered.

Not surprisingly, his revenues and profits have grown every year, despite the recession.

In a speech to small business owners in Massachusetts, Cycon described how he had decided not to invest thousands of dollars in a more eco-friendly liner for disposable coffee cups, that in a year would keep about a basketball’s worth of plastic out of the landfill on a year’s volume of 100,000 cups. It didn’t make either economic or environmental sense, he said.

On the flip side, Cycon was asked to be the organic coffee supplier when Keurig introduced its wildly popular single-serve coffee makers. He looked at the machine, was disturbed by the large amount of plastic that would be consumed, and suggested to the engineers that they redesign it more sustainably, replacing the disposable plastic containers with biodegradable ones made of the same thick paper used to make egg cartons. When the company declined, he refused to supply the coffee, a decision that cost him millions of dollars, but which still feels like the right decision to him. He’s actually looking to develop a competing model that would be more eco-friendly.

Cycon has also been an agent of change within the coffee industry, challenging companies like Starbucks and Green Mountain to up their percentage of fair-trade sources, and to make much larger donations to village sustainability programs in the coffee lands: $10 million to his $10,000, in one case.
On the fair trade issue, he points out that if a large coffee roaster sources four percent from fair-trade co-ops, that could mean 96 out of every 100 farmers are not making a living wage.

His challenge to business in general? Bring CSR and sustainability “deeply into your business” as an integral part of decision-making, and don’t just tack it on at the end. With that attitude, Cycon believes companies can influence their vendors, their customers, and other stakeholders to take many more sustainability steps: from convincing UPS to use biodiesel trucks in the fleet to biodegradable paper from their label supplier.

Award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and seven other books, Shel Horowitz writes and speaks on driving success through environmental sustainability, business ethics, cooperation (even with competitors), attitude, and extreme service. He is the founder of the international Business Ethics Pledge.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, language, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Bad enough that Arkansas State Senator Kim Hendren called Chuck Schumer ‘that Jew’–but even worse is the anti-Semitic trash talk from so many readers of the New York Daily News story about it.

Eeeew! In 2009, we should be better than that! In fact, that kind of racist crap should have been unacceptable in 1809. No matter what ethnic or racial group is being denigrated, the message needs to go out that this is unacceptable. I’m not blaming the Daily News for having an open comments page, but I wonder about these narrow-minded bigots who are posting.

Mind you, I’m one Jew who does NOT believe in “Israel right or wrong.” But I do believe in treating every person civilly, and in condemning racist behavior.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with

Fascinating. Paul Smith demonstrated a real-world example of how to use Twitter for powerful real-time research–in product development, marketing, or journalism.

He posed a question on behalf of a client who wanted to launch a Green product that would be made in China, and how that would be received by consumers–and posted several responses at the above link.

I’ve used Twitter to drive traffic to a survey, but this kind of direct and immediate feedback may be even better–because it’s much more human, not to mention faster. Who knew a year ago that Twitter could be used for market research?

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Peace and War, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with ,

The news is terrible again: Dreadful violence in Gaza and Iraq, charities bankrupted by the Madoff scam, military forces massing on the India-Pakistan border, an open homophobe giving the invocation at the Obama inauguration, tough times for industries from publishing to retail to manufacturing, rampant poverty around the world (of material goods, housing, medical care, educational opportunity, and more) and a finance and foreign policy team that sure doesn’t seem a lot like the “change” mantra we were promised before the election.

And yet, this lyric from “Tommy” keeps playing in my head: “I have no reason to be overoptimistic…but somehow when you smile, I can brave bad weather!”

Yes, I know–the next part of the Tomm7 story is no cause for optimism. Neither is the world around us today.

But as 2008 draws to a close, I am still optimistic. I think the generation that is living now will fix the climate change problem. I’m hoping the generation of my future grandchildren might be able to do something about war and poverty.

I think the potential exists to transform the world we live in into something beautiful and powerful, to stake the claim on the rightful heritage of all people. But it will take all of us working together.

Decades ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that all of us deserve four freedoms:
1. Freedom of speech and expression
2. Freedom of religion
3. Freedom from want
4. Freedom from fear

It’s still a pretty good list. Freedom from want and fear includes freedom from environmental catastrophe, hunger/poverty, or war. What can each of us do to help the world achieve this?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, People Helping People, Politics

Calling it the worst fraud in history (far worse than Enron), Democracy Now released the shocking news that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had known there were serious problems around Bernard Madoff for nine years!

Are you as sick and tired of this as I am? Enron fell apart in 2001. Michael Milken was indicted in 1989–that’s almost 20 years ago! And now we find out that Madoff, former head of NASDAQ, took the whole financial system for an astonishing $50 billion, suckering investors in with the promise of outrageously good yields and wiping out numerous good charities–the same week we find out Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich actually had the chutzpah to try to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

Have we learned NOTHING since the Milken days?

If you’re all riled up about business scandals, about banks and industrialists coming to Washington to coax billions of our tax dollars out of the government while doing nothing either to change the over-lavish lifestyles or to pump credit back into the system, if you think these companies should get a clue before they come looking for a handout and the government should get a clue before it hands out our money without any oversight, if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired–there are a few things you can do. They’re easy, they take almost no time, and they could make a difference.

First, tell Obama’s transition team what you want to see the next administration accomplish. It’s the first time I can remember a newly elected president making a conscious and thorough effort to tap the wisdom of the general public.

Second, sign the Business Ethics Pledge and help create a climate where the Milkens, Madoffs, Kenneth Lays, and Blagojeviches of the future won’t find anyone to listen to their crooked Ponzi schemes and extortionate rackets.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics-International, Ethics: General, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Apparently, a lot of players in the international adoption world have been a little too glib about where these babies are coming from, and some children have been stolen from their parents to be adopted by people in the Northern hemisphere.

Even though it delayed and may have prevented her adoption, one adoptive mom, Jennifer Hemsley, got too suspicious. Her courageous battle with the system and great personal/family/financial hardship in order to do the right thing are a model of how to behave in an ethically cloudy situation, even if the outcome is the opposite of what you’re striving for.

Medical reports seemed obvious forgeries, without letterhead or doctor’s signature. And during a critical hearing, Hemsley said, her Guatemalan advisers tried to pay a stranger to pose as Hazel’s foster mother.

“Todd and I felt a lot like, ‘Gee, is this really happening?’ Maybe we should just look the other way and keep plodding along, because every time I tried to tell someone, nobody cared,” Hemsley said. “I couldn’t look the other way. I just couldn’t turn my head.”

Ricardo Ordonez, the Hemsleys’ adoption attorney, denied any fraud and vowed to clear his name by producing the birth mother for new DNA tests. Another court hearing is pending.

If the Hemsleys had walked away, as hundreds of other Americans did after problems surfaced, Hazel would likely have been abandoned or reoffered for adoption under another false identity, Tecu said. Instead, Jennifer Hemsley stayed with Hazel for months, draining more than $70,000 from a second mortgage on their home and paying for a trusted nanny.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, People Helping People, Politics

Nelson Mandela was the first black president of South Africa, who came to power after decades of an oppressive apartheid regime that enforced a horrible climate on its people of color–the vast majority of its population. Mandela himself was imprisoned for 27 years.

When Mandela and the African National Congress came to power, it would have been easy to conduct Nuremberg-style trials and punish the transgressors. But instead, South Africa established an official Truth and Reconciliation Commission; he handled the need to change with love. The Commission thoroughly investigated many of the old regime’s criminals, but did not punish them–instead using the trials to create healing rather than division.

While it’s easy to imagine taking a good deal of satisfaction from seeing the rogues of our rogue state–Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzales…and especially Rove and Cheney–on trial and facing long prison terms, from the point of view of healing the country and actually accomplishing a progressive agenda in these already-difficult times, it may make sense to have the trials but have them under the banner of truth and reconciliation, and let their consciences (such as they are) or the Higher Power they call claim to believe in, be the ones to punish them.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics: General, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media

Does your skin crawl every time you hear Ann Coulter, William Bennett or some other radical-right wingnut savor the pleasure of saying “Barack HUSSEIN Obama”

Did you take pleasure in learning the famous story of World War II Denmark, when the Nazis ordered all the Jews to wear yellow stars–and the King of Denmark proudly pinned one on, as did many of his countryfolk?

Well, we’re not alone. Mark Hussein Gordon, of sonomacreative.com, has set up a Facebook group called Hussein is my name too! All you have to do is join, change your middle name in your profile, and remember to change it back after the election, and you can show solidarity both with Barack and with the Arab and Muslim communities by being Hussein for a couple of weeks.

I think this is brilliant. And I thank Robin Hussein Blum for drawing it to my attention.
Shel Hussein Horowitz

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