Category: Social and Economic Justice

By Posted on Posted in Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

With the recent dustup over the sovereignty and airspace route of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ airplane, I found myself wishing that Mario Benedetti were still alive to write a poem about it.

Among Latin America’s most famous 20th-century poets, Benedetti was a South American patriot from Uruguay—that is, an enemy of the repressive government that ruled the country for decades—and a great one for skewering the halls of power, especially when they were allied with reactionary governments. He would no doubt have had some trenchant commentary on the US and its allies, and the interference they put up during Morales’ journey home from Moscow, as he did about his own difficulties, as a known friend to Castro’s Cuba, in getting a visa to speaking the US.

I was introduced to his work in a meaningful way by the very accessible translations of Benedetti by my friend and client Louise B. Popkin, of Arlington, Mass. She was a personal friend of Benedetti and worked closely with him to translate a large selection of Benedetti’s poetry, available in a critically acclaimed bilingual edition, Witness: The Selected Poems of Mario Benedetti.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics-International, Green Business, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, travel Tagged with , , ,

I can think of no better way to celebrate July 4th this year than to acknowledge the huge honor my hero and friend Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans in Orange, MA recently received.

Dean Cycon, CEO, Dean's Beans, jamming with musicians in Rwanda
Dean Cycon making music in Rwanda

Dean Cycon is the most ethical business owner I know, and the only person to be a guest twice on the business ethics radio show I hosted and produced for four years, from 2005 to 2009. Dean has done 100% organic and fair trade coffee and cocoa since the day he opened his company, which he located in a depressed area where jobs are scarce. Dean not just funds but also actively partners with people in the villages that supply his coffee to do “people-centered development” projects, led by the folks who live and work in those villages. He also partners with local charities in western Massachusetts to create private label coffee they can sell as fundraisers. Oh yes, and he’s also the author of one of my favorite travel books: Ippy Award gold winner Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Chelsea Green, 2007). And he’s a fun guy who hasn’t let success interfere with his playful spirit.

And now, OMG, Dean Cycon has been awarded one of the most prestigious honors in the world: the Oslo Business for Peace Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize for business. The award judges are actual Nobel Laureates, including microlending pioneer Prof. Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel prize in Economics in 2006, and Prof. A. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel prize in economics in 2001. Dean is one of five honorees, and the only American. All I can say is, he richly deserves it.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Social and Economic Justice, Technology

Many developed countries have embraced the Precautionary Principle, which states that new processes and products have to be proven safe, and if we don’t understand their effects, we wait.

The United States, on the other hand, passed the “Monsanto Protection Act,” which not only utterly violates the Precautionary Principle, but actually removes the court system’s power of oversight over GMO (genetically modified) food safety, even when the products (developed not only by Monsanto but by other agribusiness/chemiculture companies) and  have been found to cause health risks.

This horrible law was slipped into a much larger bill and has the potential to wreak havoc in all sorts of ways—not the least of which is the threat to organic agriculture if their fields become contaminated by windblown GMO seeds (and the further threat to farmers’ livelihoods when Monsanto actually sues the farmers whose fields it contaminates, for using their seeds without permission). Organic farmers have countersued Monsanto, but by logic I don’t understand, the courts have generally sided with Monsanto, ruling over and over again that the chemical giant’s pollution and ruination of organic crops allows Monsanto to collect damages for the illegal use of its products, while denying the organic farmers compensation for trashing their crops.

And now, there’s a threat to US exports: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the entire European Union are among the countries canceling contracts and testing shipments after a Monsanto-developed GMO “zombie wheat” contaminated a wheat farm in Oregon.

Oh, and let’s not forget that many genetic modifications are designed to allow plants to tolerate larger quantities of herbicides whose safety is widely questioned—including Monsanto’s own Roundup.  Yes, in a triple-whammy, Monsanto sells “Roundup-ready” GMO seeds, and then sells the Roundup to spray on those plants, which causes weeds to develop resistance, so farmers respond by spraying even more Roundup. Eeeeew!

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Assault weapons have only one purpose: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest possible time. And yet, the Senate leadership just pulled the limited assault weapons ban out of the new gun control legislation. Apparently they cannot even figure out that we don’t have to put up with them. Either they are too intimidated by thuggish pressure from the NRA or they are actually in favor of people walking down the street with enough firepower to take out a whole schoolyard full of kids. And where is the pressure from honest citizens to regulate these ultradangerous weapons? If Congress has no spine on its own, it needs to find its backbone through citizen pressure for an assault weapons ban.

I see no justification for refusal to control assault weapons in the Second Amendment. On the contrary, I see that regulation actually comes before the right to bear arms. Grammatically, the phrase “well regulated militia” is the focus point of the paragraph—the justification for what follows. It could be restated as “BECAUSE a well-regulated militia is important, citizens may possess guns.” Here’s the complete text:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Seems to me, the Second Amendment actually creates an obligation to regulate weaponry. I don’t see how regulating semiautomatic assault weapons is any more a contradiction than banning fully automatic weapons (which have been illegal for most of a century). And those regulations could clearly include banning weapons of mass murder, background checks, and the rest of it.

Do we really want more Newtowns and Auroras and Virginia Techs and Columbines? Isn’t it time we approached this with some common sense? After all, the government regulates who can cut hair, for goodness sake!

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Greenwashing, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Fascinating profile of Peter Brabeck, Chair of Nestlé, and his crusade for world-wide water conservation and water sustainability. Especially fascinating since Nestlé’s water bottling approach has often gotten the company in trouble with water rights and environmental activists, and has occasionally brought it to court. (In my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I discuss Nestlé being hauled into court in Canada by green activists, on greenwashing/misleading advertising charges.)

These days, Brabeck is saying that 5 liters of water to drink, and 25 for other personal needs, should be the daily right of every human being. But he also says that direct human consumption is the smallest portion of water consumed by humans—just 1.5 percent. The energy and agriculture sectors use far more (and he didn’t even discuss industry in general). He is particularly troubled by “unconventional oil” (such as tar sands), which he says consumes up to 6 liters of water for every liter of fuel, compared with just a tenth of a liter to produce a liter of oil conventionally. Water conservation, he says, is essential—and thus we shouldn’t be using those water-hogging technologies. Of course, there are MANY other environmental arguments against tar-sands oil, in addition to water conservation!

And he notes that when he was born 68 years ago, the world had 2.7 billion people and stayed well within its water budget, using only 40 percent of the renewable water. But now, with 7 billion people on the planet, we’re already exceeding what the planet can renew—and we’re heading to 10 billion.

Note: just because in our daily lives our water consumption far less than what industry and agriculture use, please don’t take that as a license to squander. As individuals, we still have a responsibility to be frugal with the world’s water. Even something as simple as brushing our teeth can be done with about 95 percent less water, just by not letting the water run the whole time—voila, instant water conservation. Wet the brush, turn off the water, repeat as necessary. Use the same principle when washing hands, washing dishes, etc. And when it makes sense (as it does in most of the US, Canada, and Europe), use filtered tap water instead of bottled water. Many people don’t realize how much water consumption is involved in the bottling process—wasting,often, up to three times as much water as actually goes in the bottle.

Go ahead and read the interview. If you’re skeptical about Nestlé, that’s OK. So am I. But I think there’s a lot of wisdom in Brabeck’s thinking, and a wake-up call to the world.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Peace and War, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice

I am going to let others speak for me this time.

President Barack Obama, at the Sunday vigil:

“These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. … Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”

Former US Senator Gary Hart—”Real Minutemen, Rise Up,” on Huffington Post:

Let’s have a new, sober, serious, non-paranoid gun organization whose members are the sane, thoughtful, responsible sportsmen who share the belief of the vast majority of Americans that assault weapons have no place in U.S. society. These mature minutemen also share the belief that state licensing of weapons, checks for criminal and mental backgrounds, and elimination of unregulated gun shows are necessary for a secure society.

We continue to spend hundreds of billions, even trillions, of tax dollars to achieve the elusive goal of national security. The movie-goers of Aurora, the little children of Newtown, were not secure. Those children are just as dead as if al Qaeda had killed them. Killing children is not a political issue: it is a moral issue.

The militia of the Constitution, now the National Guard and Reserve forces, are composed of serious, responsible citizens. Many are hunters and fishermen. They do not require an organization with a central message of paranoia to represent them. They should now form their own organization to speak for them and the great majority of gun owners would join them.

Juan Cole—”Questions I ask myself about Connecticut School Shooting“, Informed Comment

Why doesn’t anyone blame George W. Bush for these mass shootings? He’s the one who led the charge to let the assault weapons ban expire. Why aren’t the politicians in Congress who take campaign money from assault weapons manufacturers ever held accountable by the public?…

What in the world does the 2nd amendment have to do with these incidents? Do they look like a “well-regulated militia” to you? Semi-automatic weapons are the 18th-century equivalent of artillery in terms of their ability to kill. Do you think people should be allowed to have artillery pieces in their back yards, too? Is this some sort of sick joke, that you are telling us our children have to die because the Founding Fathers wanted madmen to have high-powered weaponry?…

Why aren’t there more class-action lawsuits against the people responsible for the proliferation of high- powered weaponry in our society? Lax gun laws and inadequate security checks in Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky and 7 other states meant that they supplied nearly half the 43,000 guns traced to crime scenes in other states in one recent year. The guns aren’t randomly acquired, and they aren’t used or Saturday night specials. They come disproportionately from specific states…

Why doesn’t anyone on television news ever simply give this statistic: In one recent year, there were 39 murders by gun in the UK, but 9,000 in the United States? Why is it wrong to let Americans know how peculiar is the situation Americans have to live in?

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center (from his 12/16/12 newsletter,not yet posted on his website):

The address and phone number of the NRA (National Rifle Association) are 11250 Waples Mill Rd, Fairfax, VA 22030;  (703) 267-1000. Please call…through the week. (In Jewish tradition, “sitting shiva” to mourn the dead takes seven days.). If you get a busy signal, Good! That means many people are calling; please keep calling for as long as you have the time.  When you get through, ask for Wayne LaPierre (NRA’s executive director) and when you reach his office begin reading the names of the Newtown Connecticut dead that are listed above. When you have read some of the names, say that you insist the NRA announce it supports a Federal law prohibiting assault weapons and semi-automatic weapons and supports a Universal Background Check. This should not take more than five minutes. When you have done this, please drop me a note at Office@theshalomcenter.org

George Lakoff, “The Price of Our Freedom,” Huffington Post:

Total registration, just like with cars. An end to automatic and semi-automatic weapons. And an end to blaming massacres on crazies. Gun massacres require guns that can massacre. Eliminate them.

Filmmaker/Activist Michael Moore, in a speech Friday night in NYC:

Other countries, I mean, they have their crazy people, and they have people that—there have been shootings and killings in Norway, in France and in Germany. But there haven’t been 61 mass killings like there have been in this country just since Columbine. Sixty-one mass shootings in this country… We invade countries. We send drones in to kill civilians. We’ve got five wars going on right now where our soldiers are killing people—I mean, five that we know of. We are on the short list of illustrious countries who have the death penalty. We believe it’s OK to kill you when you’ve committed a crime.

And then we have all the other forms of violence in this country that we don’t really call violence, but they are acts of violence. When you—when you make sure that 50 million people don’t have health insurance in your country and that, according to the congressional study that was done, 44,000 people a year die in America for the simple reason that they don’t have health insurance, that’s a form of murder. That murder is being committed by the insurance companies. When you evict millions of peoples—millions of people from their homes, that’s an act of violence. That’s called a home invasion.

Later today I’ll post some resources for helping children deal with grief.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , ,

Apparently, a lot of people who voted for Romney would like to secede from the United States.

OK–let’s put aside for now the clear absurdity of this…the condemnation of the idea by Republican governors…the enormous difficulty of getting a majority of any state’s citizens to go along with it…the likelihood that this is based in crude racism…and the zero percent success rate of state secession movements in the United States.

Let’s just say they really do secede.

Most Southern states extract more money from the federal treasury than they pay in. And many people in the region work at US military installations or government offices. Everyone in the region relies on federal funding to maintain their transportation infrastructure, civil defense/disaster response And then of course there are those getting by with the help of federal assistance programs such as food stamps and Social Security (the ones Romney derided as “the 47 percent”).

In other words, if the secession movement succeeds, the secessionist states are going to take a huge economic hit. Bob Cesca, in one of the links cited above, says the federal government could simply starve them out and have them rejoin without military action. He’s probably right.

But here’s something perhaps more important that I don’t hear anyone saying:

If the Red states secede, Democrats will have a whopping majority in Congress and could actually get a much more humane, people-centered society in place–which the Red states would have to accept as reality when they come crawling back in a few years, IF the US will have them back.

Wouldn’t it be grand to have a country with a European style single-payer health plan…a solar-powered economy with jobs for all…a military designed to actually defend our shores instead of pursue imperialist wars in countries where we have no justification for our invasion (can you say Iraq?)…an education system that values science and knowledge, and prepares the next generation to play a leadership role in advancing society through technological progress…and so on?

So I say…let ’em Secede!

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, General Commentary, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Guest Post by Julie  Gabrielli

It seems we are experts at knowing what’s wrong in the world – whether global problems like climate change and poverty, national concerns like the economy and health care, neighborhood issues like the lady down the street whose dogs never stop barking. Even within our own families, we tend to focus on what’s not working.

What happens when we turn and face in another direction? Not to actively ignore or deny those very real problems. But to focus instead on what we want. Do we ever even ask this question of ourselves or others: what sort of world do we want to live in?

Even then, the answers may come back framed in negatives, such as “I want fewer wars” or “to eliminate racism.” The brilliant Hildy Gottlieb first opened my eyes to this habit.

I tested this out one recent weekend at our neighborhood shopping area, taking video footage of everyday people addressing these big issues. People were quick to cite the problems: education, the economy, global warming, racism, negativity, stereotyping, war. When asked to say what they want, if they could wave a magic wand and fix everything, they were less confident, sometimes even embarrassed. As if talking that way is not an adult activity.

The danger of dwelling on what’s wrong is that we can become convinced that there’s no hope for us. We’re just a doomed species and blight on the planet. I know many avid and dedicated environmental activists who harbor this secret belief deep within their hearts: that the planet will be better off without us.

And why wouldn’t we reach this conclusion, when all we read about and see around us are the consequences of our bad behavior? The mortgage crisis, countries in the Euro zone so deep in debt they threaten to take the whole thing down with them, giant corporations cutting down the boreal forest in Canada to get at the dirtiest, most carbon-intense oil on the planet and then lobbying our government to build a pipeline to cart it to the Gulf of Mexico. Fifty million nonelderly Americans (18.9%) are without health insurance or access to good health care.

This stuff is senseless. Meaning, try as we might, we can’t make sense of it. I wonder if it’s because, as Einstein famously observed, we cannot solve our problems using the same thinking that created them. So why not try a different way? What happens when we focus instead on what we want, instead of what we don’t want? Try it. You may be surprised at what happens.

Why does this matter? you may be wondering. It turns out that we create the future every moment of every day. A positive vision of a future that we want is the galvanizing force that animates the world-changing work of all the people who will be in the film, “I Want America to Thrive.” Even the title speaks to a positive vision. Why not? It’s a surer way to transcending, rather than merely solving, our problems.


Eco-architect Julie Gabrielli has been at the forefront of the sustainability movement in Maryland for over 15 years. She is an artist and writer, always searching for the most effective medium to wake people up to the beauty of our world. To learn more and stay in touch, Like this film on Facebook. 

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, poverty, privacy, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

As a professional marketer and speaker, I look at speeches differently from a lot of other people. I look not only at what the speaker says, but at how effectively the ideas and emotions are communicated: how it impacts the listener. Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention [link to a transcript] gets an almost perfect 9.9 from me. I think when people remember the great speeches of the 21st century, this one has a good chance of making the list. Just as we remember 20th-century orators like Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and Maya Angelou, we will remember Michelle as an orator alongside Barack. People are still talking about Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 National Convention, and about his speech in Cairo early in his presidency. I predict that people will be remembering Michelle Obama’s speech [link to the video] years from now. Why?

  • Without ever calling the Republicans out, she made a clear distinction not only in the candidates’ values, but also in their origins; Mitt Romney constantly struggles to connect with people less fortunate than he, while Michelle Obama gripped the audience with the unforgettable images of Barack picking her up in a car so old and rusty she could see through the floor to the pavement…of his proudest possession back then, a table he fished out of a dumpster.
  • She reminded us over and over again of the hope and promise of the 2008 campaign, and connected this year’s campaign to that same hope, even while the youth who were so inspired four years ago are disappointed in what Barack Obama has accomplished. Her message to youth was clear: we are not done yet, and we are still here for you—but you need to get out there and vote (italics are taken directly from Michelle Obama’s speech):

And if so many brave men and women could wear our country’s uniform and sacrifice their lives for our most fundamental rights—then surely we can do our part as citizens of this great democracy to exercise those rights. Surely, we can get to the polls and make our voices heard on Election Day. If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire. If immigrants could leave behind everything they knew for a better life on our shores. If women could be dragged to jail for seeking the vote. If a generation could defeat a depression, and define greatness for all time. If a young preacher could lift us to the mountaintop with his righteous dream. And if proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love—then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.Because in the end, more than anything else, that is the story of this country — the story of unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle.

  • As my wife, D. Dina Friedman, pointed out immediately afterward, she positioned some of Barack’s liabilities, such as his insistence on building consensus with Republicans who not only won’t reach consensus but who are actively sabotaging his efforts, as strengths:

I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as “us” and “them” — he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above. He knows that we all love our country. And he’s always ready to listen to good ideas. He’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

  • She reached out to many constituencies: veterans, teachers, firefighters, poor people working class people, those with disabilities, single moms, grandparents, dads, people facing serious illness, those in the struggle for women’s reproductive rights, recent grads under pressure of student loans or other crippling debt, those who remember the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, gays and lesbians and those who stand with them in the struggle for marriage equality. And time after time, she reached out to moms and identified as a mom.
  • Above all, her delivery was from the heart. She connected to her audience as a person, a mom, and as an advocate for the best of American values. She was both sincere and enormously likable. Even her little hint of a stammer came across as endearing. She didn’t need props or PowerPoint. My guess is she didn’t even need the teleprompter that no doubt was in her view.

So why do I give a 9.9 and not a 10? I deduct one tenth for staying behind the lectern. That is much more distancing; when I speak, I stand to the side of the lectern, so there’s no barrier between me and my audience, yet I can still see my notes. However, she was able to overcome that distance and connect personally and viscerally with the live audience and those watching from afar. If Barack Obama does win a second term, I think Michelle Obama will deserve some of the credit.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

Los Angeles Unified School District, a massive consumer of single-use plastic, has banned Styrofoam under student activist pressure—the first district in the nation to do so. And the school district superintendent, John Deasy, will put the topic on the agenda of a district superintendent’s conference.

This is great news—but I have to question why the district switched to compostable disposable trays. It’s certainly more ecological, and probably cheaper, to buy a commercial dishwasher and switch to not only reusable trays, but reusable dishes as well. I would think the materials savings would cover the costs of the machine and the employees to run it, as well as create some needed employment.

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