Category: poverty

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Green Business, Peace and War, Politics, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

While the GOP lines up to see who can be more crazy and out-of-touch and unintelligent than their competitors, the Left is strangely quiet. Haven’t even heard rumblings of candidacy from Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has set the bar for leftist challenges in the past two presidential elections.

And this is odd, because Obama has failed the Left, despite being elected on a platform—dare I say a mantra—of “change.”

Yes, he can claim a number of significant accomplishments—one blogger found Obama’s legislative accomplishment rate was an astonishing 96 percent—but on most of the issues that really matter, his record does not inspire:

WAR:

We’re still in Iraq, where five US soldiers lost their lives this week. And we’re way deeper in Afghanistan than we were, with about 100,000 troops on the ground. And we’ve deployed in Pakistan and Libya. The only real move toward peace was Obama’s recent speech on the Israel-Palestine conflict

HEALTHCARE:

All that energy into the pathetic and complicated Obamacare compromise! Not only was single-payer not “on the table,” but even the wimpy public option was taken off the table. What was left?  A gift to the insurance industry and not much else. I want a candidate who will propose a one-sentence health reform bill: “All US citizens and legal residents are eligible for Medicare from birth.” If we need to phase it in, start by moving eligibility to age 55, then 40, then 20, then zero over a period of years.

ENERGY/ECONOMY/ENVIRONMENT

I lump these three together because the solution integrates across the disciplines: A massive, Marshall-plan-style initiative to get OFF fossil and nuclear energy sources in ten to twenty years, replacing them with sources that are both clean and renewable (with special attention to deep conservation that reduces the need for energy by 50 percent or more). We’d use government loans to jumpstart the effort, bring the price of conversions down, and front the money for homeowners, tenants, farmers,  and business owners to get systems in place—with the loans repaid out of the energy savings. This would boost the economy, create hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of jobs, get people out of poverty, put them back to work, remove our biggest reason for starting wars—and drastically reduce our carbon footprint, all at once!

The candidate who can articulate this vision, who can claim the unfinished mandate that Obama promised and didn’t deliver, has a pretty good shot at galvanizing the American people—if they can be convinced that these changes are actually possible.

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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 Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

(This is Part 2 of my report on the Sustainable Foods Summit. If you missed Part 1, please click here.)

And some insights that I knew already, but appreciated the reminders—most of which were echoed by several presenters:

  • Yields, quality, and taste of organics have improved a lot in the last couple of decades—often due to technology innovations that allow packaging more quickly after harvest and longer shelf life.
  • Private-label supermarket brands have moved from their original positioning as generic, low-quality price-leaders to elite niche brands.
  • The best sustainability initiatives combine multiple benefits and create wins for multiple players in the supply/consumer chain (examples include a new packaging process that lowers energy use, costs less, delivers fresher food, and reduces worker risk…a commitment to ship product on trucks with full loads…ways to turn wastes into inputs for a different process, closing the loop and reducing both pollution and cost).
  • The lack of definition for “natural” causes problems.
  • Turning cropland from food production to energy production has unforeseen consequences. For example, the much-heralded corn ethanol movement a few years ago resulted in higher food prices both in the developed markets and, critically, in developing countries where the increases led immediately to greater hunger problems—and ultimately, did not have a positive impact on the energy picture.
  • Just because other people tell you a positive initiative is impossible doesn’t mean it is. Many “impossible” goals turn out to be quite possible, once buy-in spreads through an organization or its customer base—even sourcing from small farms to serve food at big cafeterias.
  • People have a wide range of reasons for going green—from committed environmental or hunger activism to personal and family health.

Although organized by Europeans—they also do one in Amsterdam—most attenders were American or Canadian, with a handful from Latin America (including one presenter who’s part of a large family-owned sustainable sugar plantation and mill in Brazil). It looked to me that about 180 people attended. The conference had only one track, which means everyone got to hear from all the presenters—a nice change.

Despite all the questions that have no consensus answer yet (see Part 1), there was a lot of agreement:

  • GMO is a major threat to organic growers because of its ability to infiltrate and contaminate organic fields.
  • Only 3rd-party certifications (as opposed to self-declaration by a grower or an industry trade group) give the consumer something to trust in, but there’s a problem of certification clutter and oversaturation, leading not only to consumer confusion but also a burden on growers and suppliers trying to comply with and document multiple certifications—and of course, very crowded packaging labels. This is likely to shift as more comprehensive certifications (for example, covering both organic and fair trade) start to come on the market.
  • The best certifications cover not only growing methods but also working conditions—and their attention covers not only the absence of chemicals, but also positive steps to rebuild soil, spread health, etc.
  • The range of practices considered “sustainable” is quite wide, and ultimately the consumer has to decide what’s really important—but any definition of sustainability has to include an adequate livelihood for the growers and their workers.
  • Sustainable products may originate locally, or from far away, though the later can have a pretty big carbon footprint.
  • Sustainable products need sustainable packaging. Many companies have drastically reduced their packaging through careful redesign.
  • Both to save money and to reduce environmental impact, many farmers and producers are moving at least partly toward green energy sources.
  • In the end, sometimes you have to make choices. You may not be able to get organic, local or fairly traded, biodynamic, minimally processed, and appropriately packaged all in the same product—so you do the best you can and help the world reach the point where you can get all the desired attributes without having to choose among them.
  • The sustainable foods industry has a responsibility to make an impact on issues around hunger, poverty, and the economic viability of indigenous suppliers.
  • Sustainability is a process, a journey of many steps. And while all of us need to start taking at least some of those steps, even those who have been on the path a long time still can find ways to improve.

Shel Horowitz is the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and writes the Green And Profitable/Green and Practical monthly columns.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice

Today is another Blog Action Day for social justice, and today’s topic is water. My slant on this, as someone who writes about environmental issues, is that access to clean, safe water is both an environmental and a justice issue. And that the easiest way to promote safe, clean water around the world is for us resource hogs in the developed countries to be much more careful not to squander the good water we are privileged to have.

Here are some facts provided by Blog Action Day (emphasis added):

1.      Unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation kills more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Unclean drinking water can incubate some pretty scary diseases, like E. coli, salmonella, cholera and hepatitis A. Given that bouquet of bacteria, it’s no surprise that water, or rather lack thereof, causes 42,000 deaths each week.

2.      More people have access to a cell phone than to a toilet. Today, 2.5 billion people lack access to toilets. This means that sewage spills into rivers and streams, contaminating drinking water and causing disease.

3.      Every day, women and children in Africa walk a combined total of 109 million hours to get water. They do this while carrying cisterns weighing around 40 pounds when filled in order to gather water that, in many cases, is still polluted. Aside from putting a great deal of strain on their bodies, walking such long distances keeps children out of school and women away from other endeavors that can help improve the quality of life in their communities.

4.      It takes 6.3 gallons of water to produce just one hamburger. That 6.3 gallons covers everything from watering the wheat for the bun and providing water for the cow to cooking the patty and baking the bun. And that’s just one meal! It would take over 184 billion gallons of water to make just one hamburger for every person in the United States.

5.      The average American uses 159 gallons of water every day – more than 15 times the average person in the developing world. From showering and washing our hands to watering our lawns and washing our cars, Americans use a lot of water. To put things into perspective, the average five-minute shower will use about 10 gallons of water. Now imagine using that same amount to bathe, wash your clothes, cook your meals and quench your thirst.

So…not to leave you sunk, here are a few easy and cheap/free ways to use less water:

Don’t run the water unnecessarily! Whether washing dishes or brushing your teeth, think about low-water methods. For those dishes,  clean the insides with a
soapy sponge and then only turn on the water (at modest force) to
rinse. For tooth brushing, wet the toothbrush, turn off the faucet, brush, wet again to rinse–you’ll use teaspoons instead of gallons.

Unbottle yourself. Save bottled water for places where tap water is not safe to drink. Bottling water consumes vast amounts of water (several times what’s actually in the bottle), energy, and plastic (much of which ends up in landfills). And lots of bottled water is nothing more than expensive public water supply water anyway. In much of the developed world, filtered tap water tastes as good as many bottled brands and has a far lower environmental and financial footprint.

Eat less (or no) meat–see #4, above. As a 37-year vegetarian, I can tell you that the wonderful cuisines of the world opened up to me when I stopped eating meat. I eat healthy, tasty, nutritious food, and I don’t miss the stuff I used to eat.

Sign the Blog Action Day UN Water Rights Petition:

 

(For more water saving tips, please see my e-book Painless Green: 110 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.)

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People, poverty, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , ,

This time of year, we spend an astonishing amount of time dealing with food: harvesting from our garden, making salads, cooking, preserving, giving or occasionally selling surplus…but it is SO worth it!

Long before we had a garden of our own, I’ve been an advocate of local community food self-sufficiency. Not that a neighborhood or village would grow all its own food, but even the most urban could grow some vegetables and herbs, some berries.

Food is a basic necessity, and as such should be a right (ditto for drinkable water and health care, among other things). But in many poor communities, there are few gardens and not even any supermarkets. Rooftops, vacant lots, and even windowsills could change this—and in the process, empower residents, break down barriers, form friendships, save people money…and introduce folks to the absolute joy of eating fresh organic produce grown right where you are.

Yesterday, I made a batch of pure tomato sauce: no oil, no water, no herbs, no onions or garlic, just fresh ripe garden tomatoes, cooked in their own juice for several hours, until the sauce was about a third of the original volume, and had a flavor so royally rich you’d think it was made of 24-karat gold. Today, it was Dina’s night to cook. Earlier today, she went and got a couple of pounds of green beans out of the garden (along with another 40 full-size and 125 cherry tomatoes, enough corn for our lunch, celery, eggplant, edemame, zucchini, and I forget what else). She cooked the beans lightly for a few minutes in my super-intense tomato sauce and served them over couscous. WOW! Served with a salad of our own cucumbers and tomatoes and lettuce from our local CSA farm, plus some Turkish olives and feta cheese, it was a fabulous dinner.

Today, I made another batch of that good sauce (most of which we’re freezing for the winter), a batch of zucchini pickles, and a batch of dried tomatoes. Dina processed the leeks for freezing. I confess, we’re putting in a couple of hours a day. It really helps that I work at home and that Dina doesn’t have to go teach at the university in the summer. Seems like every break I take from the computer I am dealing with food. But come January, when the produce you can buy is almost inedible, we will pull some of our bounty from the freezer or from the dried stash in the pantry, and we will enjoy locally grown meals almost as good as those we’re feasting on now.

It’s an experience that should be shared widely. I feel very sorry for those people who’ve never had a REAL fresh tomato. Comparing it to a supermarket tomato is like comparing a perfectly aged French triple-cream gourmet cheese with Velveeta.

And I feel grateful not only to live in a place where we can have a garden, but in a time when consciousness of local organic and fresh foods is high, and where food is helping people know their neighbors and boost their nutrition.

Yes, a tomato can change the world.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Editor’s Note: Sometimes I like to post things to stimulate controversy, and thus I’m running this guest post by Alexis Bonari, critiquing one of the sacred cows of the sustainability movement: fair trade certification.

From my own point of view as a consumer, I look to Fair Trade certification for many products, especially chocolate. I am all-too-aware of the use of child slaves to harvest cacao, particularly in the Ivory Coast, and as a lover of chocolate, I don’t want to be a party to that. Fair Trade labeling is my assurance that the cacao was grown honestly.

I also disagree with Bonari’s two points:

First, there’s nothing, to my mind, inherently evil about mechanized farming, as long as it’s done sustainably. Many Fair Trade products are also organic, and that’s a big step in the right direction. Systemically, of course, we should be looking at how we power our tractors and all the rest of it. And we can all look for ways to increase our “locavore” quotient by consuming products (including food) created locally. But I do believe there is a place for imports in the mix, and in fact, in my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, the section on “Local as Green” is followed immediately by one called “Global as Green.”

And second, Far Trade (while far from perfect) certainly does provide a wedge against poverty. Farmers in Fair Trade co-ops are demonstrably better off than most who sell through conventional channels and who have no choice but to accept a pathetically low bid. Remember, too, that economic leverage varies a lot from country to country, and differences can be orders of magnitude. There are many parts of the world where an income of $25 or $50 a day puts someone in the upper half of the population, but it may only cost a few cents to cook a meal.

I’ll turn the floor over to Alexis now—but I’d love to know your thoughts. Please add your comment below.
—Shel Horowitz

Marketing Honesty: Is Fair Trade Really a Fair Deal?

By Alexis Bonari

The Fair Trade label has become a marketing boon for many companies. Soon, even Nestlé’s Kit Kat bar will be made from Fair Trade sources.

Essentially, the term Fair Trade refers to the following business model: companies pay craftsmen and farmers in developing countries an increased wage for goods that are traditionally produced in that region. These goods are produced with an eye to minimal environmental impact. Examples of Fair Trade goods are: bananas, honey, cotton, wine, handcrafts, coffee, sugar, and tea. As of 2008, the annual amount of revenue generated by Fair Trade goods amounted to approximately US$4.08 billion worldwide.

While the popularity of Fair Trade goods is almost certainly a byproduct of good intentions on the part of consumers, is there a downside to the Fair Trade industry?

The problem is twofold:

1. Unsustainable Markets
While incentivizing the production of local crops and handcrafts may temporarily short-circuit the cycle of poverty in certain communities, it does nothing to address the problem of supply and demand. First world countries lead the global economic market by producing technology and mass-produced products. India, and other developing countries experiencing economic growth, are educating their people and encouraging them to adopt mechanized means of production and farming.

Fair Trade workers are being incentivized to continue producing the very same products that are keeping them in poverty. A comprehensive solution would encourage education and new business ventures.

2. Perpetuation of a Toxic Cycle
Simply put, Fair Trade policies perpetuate a system that denies the citizens of developing countries control over their own businesses. Under the banner of Fair Trade, foreign companies are offering them pennies on the dollar that a citizen of the US or a member of the EU would make for the same service.

Fair Trade is a case of inaccurate marketing. The consumer is convinced that they’re working toward eradicating poverty in the Third World. In reality, Fair Trade could potentially hurt the very people it intends to help.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is a passionate blogger on the topic of education and free college scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Editor’s note: I like to say that my blog “covers the intersections of ethics, politics, media, marketing, and sustainability.” But I think this may be the first post in six years of blogging that touches on all five.

Levi’s “Go Forth” Ad

Chris Brogan’s blog brought my attention to a Levi’s ad called “Go Forth”—one of the most thought-provoking ads I’ve ever seen.

“A long time ago, things got broken here. People got sad, and left. Maybe the world breaks on purpose—so we can have work to do.” The young girl narrator says this, and a bunch of stuff about the pioneer/frontier spirit.

The ad shows a lot of images of a distressed town, Braddock, Pennsylvania—but also images and especially narration of hope and achievement. The people in the ad are not professional actors, but Braddock residents, apparently.

How I reacted

To, me this ad was about a company wanting to make a difference in a town. Yes, I noticed everyone was wearing Levi’s—but I didn’t pick up a message that I should buy its blue jeans. I got the message that it’s my job to make a difference in the world, no matter what I happen to wear.

Now, I confess—As an entrepreneur motivated more by creating social and environmental change than by making a monetary fortune, I am exactly who this ad is directed at. And I was fascinated. I took the rare step of typing in the link that was displayed on the video to find out more: Levisgoforth.com.

[Side note: In my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I attack the conventional wisdom that you need seven or more touchpoints to create action. I argue instead that if you match message to market exactly, even a single impression may be enough. In this case, I took action immediately, on my first exposure.]

The Shocking Call to Action

Fully expecting a corporate rah-rah site about how Levi was helping communities, I was rather shocked to find a third-party site about the project, and one that was fairly critical of the company (click on the Go Forth and Facts pages). The site is anonymous, though there is a contact-the-site-creator link, which brings up an e-mail address for someone named Brett. Obviously, this link was added later, and not by Levi’s.

Apparently, Levi’s made a one-time million-dollar investment in the community, which is being put to good use creating artist spaces and the like. The effort has the active support of the mayor, but apparently is somewhat controversial in town. But the site attacks Levi’s for treatment of workers, shipping all its manufacturing jobs overseas, and environmental violations, as well as for trying to make the problems go away with a one-time infusion of cash. It says, “We all want to see Braddock Prosper we just have different solutions” (punctuation and capitalization are from the original).

What’s really odd to me is that this third-party intervention is the only call to action. Why didn’t Levi’s have one of its own? They get me all worked up with a feel-good surge of “I can do something,” and then utterly drop the ball.

If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know I’m not usually a fan of image-only advertising (though I’ve seen it serve some powerful purposes, even on campaigns I’ve been involved with). I believe strongly in having a call to action. That is particularly true when you use such deep emotional hooks as this ad does. Why leave people with no place to go? Why not harness that energy?

A Different Reaction

I asked my wife, novelist Dina Friedman, to view the ad. Although she teaches in a business school, she’s not an entrepreneur. But like me, she is an activist. Her reaction was quite negative: “They’re trying to tell me that their blue jeans are a way out of poverty. If they want to show corporate responsibility, why not run an ad highlighting what they’re doing for this community.”

How About You?

View the video. visit the go forth site. And tell me what you think. Please post your comment below.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Energy & Sustainability, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Carmen, Costa Rica: A banana tree is a graceful thing, especially when it gets old and tall. Thousands of acres of bananas may look beautiful, but to me, the vast plantation was the most depressing place I saw in Costa Rica.

Carmen is a company town. Both Del Monte and Chiquita have facilities there, and the banana fields stretch for miles, broken only by thin strips of border plantings separating the fields from the roads and from each other, or by the drab company houses and the packaging facilities.

Most of our trip around Costa Rica has involved protected wilderness areas, and we’ve seen what bananas look like in nature; they grow a few here and there amidst the astounding biodiversity of the rainforest. Thousands of trees in orderly rows would not be found in nature.

A nearby organic farmer told us that this kind of monoculture requires enormous amounts of pesticides and herbicides. Not so good for the planet in this country that prides itself on its eco-consciousness.

That claim is somewhat at odds with what we observed and heard. Yes, the country has done a great job on land preservation, putting aside 25 percent of the country as protected areas. But we saw a lot of people applying pesticides (usually not wearing protective gear) on the fields along the roadsides. We saw almost no organic products in the stores. And a coffee merchant told us that hardly anyone rows organically because the yields are too small (something that’s even more true on a biodiverse farm, where farmers have to harvest different crops in small amounts and develop markets willing to take those small amounts). My guess is that in such a humid climate, it’s really hard to keep the pests down. Even the much smaller banana farms we saw protected the fruit from animals and insects with blue plastic bags (which then make it much easier to harvest the fruit, too.

And then there’s the matter of conditions for the workers. We met someone who had interviewed some of them, and she told us the spraying is done aerially and the workers are unprotected. They work 11-hour shifts with no break and get paid strictly on piecework.

I understand now why I once heard an interview with Barbara Kingsolver, promoting her wonderful locavore book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about eating locally. She said, “some of my friends gave up meat to make the world better. I gave up bananas.”

I’ve been buying only organic bananas for a few years; I think I need to find a source for bananas that are not only organic, but fair trade. The way they are grown commercially is not sustainable, and doesn’t make me feel very good.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A self-styled “Don Quixote,” Juan Del Rio ran for County Board of Supervisors in a conservative district near San Diego. These are his reflections just before the election (he lost, but the Democrats cumulatively got enough votes to force a November vote).

Guest blog by Juan Del Rio

May 28, 2010

Dear friends and supporters,
There’s a great write-up about my campaign on the front page of today’s La Prensa (Click here to read it). Daniel Muñoz compares me to Don Quixote – he even says I look the part! I’ll take that as a complement. These days, as I watch the devastation in the Gulf of Mexico unfolding, exacerbated by the deceit and greed of multi-national corporations and the failure of our government to protect us and our planet, before, during and after this man-made catastrophe, I think we will need an army of thousands of Quixotes to fix the mess we’re in.

As we move into the final week of my first foray into politics as a candidate, I have my doubts about “fixing the mess” via our election process. This experience has given me a more realistic perspective about how our democracy works, a new respect for those few who go into the electoral battle for the right reasons and a heightened disgust for the deceitful machinations used to manipulate the outcome of our elections. Here are some of the lessons I’ve reluctantly learned over the past few months:

Lesson #1: Elections have little to do with qualifications to perform the job. 

One might think that the job of running our county would require someone well-versed in urban planning and social services, who understands and cares about the present and future ramifications of decisions on human beings and the environment, and who has the proven ability to quickly size up a situation and to propose fair and viable solutions. But that’s not what wins elections. In order to win an election, a candidate must have money, time, connections, charisma and public speaking skills. Actual experience, qualifications and genuine concern are helpful but not essential.

During the course of my career in public service, I have been appalled by the pervasive incompetence of most of our elected officials. Government is supposed to exist to serve the people, but decisions are more often made based on what will advance an official’s political career than what’s the best solution. I understand now why so many unqualified people occupy public office. A campaign should be a job interview where voters get to evaluate which candidate is best qualified to perform the task, but that’s not how it works – see Lessons #2 -4.

Lesson #2: Campaigns cost gobs of money and how you get that money may be limited by the law, but not the true spirit of fairness.

There are only two ways to get the funding you need for a campaign – put in your own money or beg other people for contributions. If you are a working-class person who is running for office because you think you might be able to do a better job than the lying, scheming, arrogant slimeball who is currently in office, the first thing you need to do is to find people willing to give you the money to finance your campaign. Unless they share your altruistic motives, you’ll be hard-press to convince anyone to invest in wistful windmill chasing. That’s why I strongly support Prop 15, which would be the first step toward public campaign financing.

Needless to say, since I am campaigning to represent the needs of the poor (including unemployed and under-employed workers), I haven’t raised much money. I’m painfully aware that my supporters’ $5 contributions are a stretch for them and their faith in me keeps me going, but it won’t cover the cost of yard signs, or mailers, or much else. You might have noticed that there is no candidate statement for Juan del Rio in the Sample Ballot – that’s because it costs $1,310 to have your statement listed (in addition to the $1,430 filing fee). That was my first tip that the odds are decidedly stacked against a candidate who has an intimate understanding of what life is like for the majority of citizens. If you have a few dollars to invest in this campaign, it would really help in these final days. Please send your check to Juan del Rio for Supervisor 2010, 6675 Linda Vista Rd. #2, San Diego, CA 92111 (include your occupation and employer if your check is $100 or more!)

Lesson #3: Campaigning is a full-time job.
If you are a working person who needs to work a full-time job to pay the bills (or like myself, a person holding down two jobs just to make ends meet) you probably shouldn’t even consider running for office. I haven’t had the luxury of time to walk precincts, and to make things worse, many interviews and events are scheduled during the 9-to-5 workday, so participation means the loss of a day’s pay. I can’t help but wonder if these things are planned this way to cull the working class from public life. In any case, I now appreciate the personal sacrifice candidates and their families make to run for office. I think I’ve come a long way in my public speaking skills and I really enjoy talking to voters, especially when I have a conversation with Spanish speakers who are delighted to talk with a bilingual candidate. I can see where this would be much easier if I was retired or wasn’t trying to keep up 2 jobs.

Lesson #4: Anything goes – except, it seems, honesty.
Judging by some of the trickery going on with Ron Roberts, you’d think elections were all about winning and keeping the people in power who will preserve the status quo. Every day I get another slate mailer in my mailbox that makes me furious. These are designed to look like they come from the Democratic Party. They have titles that say “Voter Information Guide for Democrats” and “Democrat Election Guide”. They have almost all Democratic Party candidates featured, so it’s easy to think that the mailer is coming from the Democratic Party. One even said: “OFFICIALLY Featuring Every Statewide Candidate and Proposition Endorsed by the CA DEMOCRATIC PARTY”! The catch is that the Supervisor’s race is NOT a “Statewide” race, and it’s not even a partisan race. So the fact that these mailers all have Ron Roberts listed as the candidate for Board of Supervisors, implying that he is: 1. a Democrat and 2. endorsed by the Democratic party, is as close to outright fraud as you can possibly get without getting arrested. Unless a voter is actively involved in politics, they probably won’t realize that they are being deliberately misled. That’s what money buys you in politics. But what does it say about Ron Roberts, that he has to resort to such fraudulent, deceitful practices?

Remember all that stuff they taught in civics class about how even a poor kid can grow up to be president… that a democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people… that we have a say in our government… As I said, this has been a very enlightening experience and I think Mr. Muñoz nailed it; I do feel a bit like Don Quixote! If you live in District 4, you can vote for this windmill-tilter of San Diego – Juan del Rio.

Warm regards,
Juan del Rio

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