Must-read article by Eliot Spitzer on how banks defrauded the government into giving a whopping $7.7 trillion in secret loans, with no conditions, under false pretenses. That is half the entire GDP!

And that’s OUR money, folks! Bush’s “regulators” let these deals happen with no scrutiny of the banks, and nobody was scrutinizing the regulators.

“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” (author unknown)

“Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.” (The Talmud)

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A government is finally taking action against Monsanto, which has a long history of abusive practices involving genetically modified crops.

In this instance, the company stands accused of stealing brinjal (a kind of eggplant) and developing GM varieties in an attempt first of all to extract biodiversity riches from the local populace without compensation, and second, to mislead others about whether they were engaging in GM once they had it. In the past, Monsanto has had a particularly disgusting habit of letting its GM crops contaminate other farmers’ fields, including organic growers, and then suing the victims for using its seed without permission. I am glad to see a government finally going after this corporate bully that plays fast and loose with our food safety.

Lots of bloggers have picked up this story, but it doesn’t seem like the mainstream media have paid attention. I finally located a mainstream media report: an English-language public affairs show on French TV covering India’s lawsuit against Monsanto.

Let’s hope this action is the first of many similar actions of governments protecting their people against these outrages.

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Did you know that war has been illegal in the United States—as well as  in Australia, Canada, Czechoslovkia (now Czech/Slovak Republics), Germany, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, Belgium, France, and Japan since 1929—when a 1928 treaty called the Kellogg-Briand Pact went into effect?

I discovered this thanks to a Veterans Day post  by Roots Action, which highlights this section:

The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.

The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

I already made a Veterans Day post, about the grisly mess we left behind in Iraq—but this needs attention. Isn’t it time we—the peoples of these nations—demanded that this law be enforced?

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Today is Election Day in the United States. And something like the 7th week of the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Everywhere movement that sprung up in September.

A good day to reflect on different social change strategies—as someone who’s done both grassroots and electoral politics.

I began to get involved in grassroots movements in the fall of 1969, shortly before my 13th birthday. I marched to end the war in Vietnam, was arrested at the 1977 Seabrook occupation trying to shift society away from nuclear power and toward safe energy, and organized on a whole raft of social justice, environmental, and human rights issues over the decades. I even founded the grassroots community group that saved a mountain. This activism led directly to my career as a marketing consultant; much of my early work in marketing drew on my experience doing publicity for the grassroots groups, and my move toward green marketing in the last 12 years or so is a natural outgrowth of my need to braid together these two stands of my life: the activist and the entrepreneur.

On the electoral side, I’ve been an active volunteer on numerous campaigns, managed a successful City Council campaign, wrote press releases for a successful mayoral candidate—and ran three times for local office.

Nonviolent Action Brings Down Governments

This year, we’ve once again seen massive evidence of the power of grassroots nonviolent activism to bring down governments. In Tunisia and then Egypt, deeply entrenched autocratic governments were forced out. (Libya, which was more of a civil war, lots of violence on both sides, is a different case.) Historically, this pattern has shown itself countless times, though often taking much longer to achieve victory. A few worth mentioning: India, 1930s-40s; South Africa, 1976-94; Poland, Czech Republic, and much of the former Soviet bloc, 1968-1990. And yes, we have to put the 1979 revolution in Iran in this category, showing that active nonviolence can be used toward authoritarian as well as democratic ends.

And this is important to note: activists have to have a plan for victory, and for safeguarding the democracies we fight so hard to establish. I’m very concerned right now that Egypt’s new government will prove just as authoritarian as Mubarak’s.

Also, we have to note that nonviolent organizing doesn’t always work. American protestors opposing World War I accomplished very little (though the feminists of the same period accomplished quite a bit). Tibet is still deeply repressed by China, more than 50 years into the occupation.

The Occupy Movement and the Broader World of US Social Protest

While the Occupy protests owe much to this long heritage of nonviolent action, the demands on Wall Street are different than the demands of Arab Spring. The 99 percenters are not looking to toss out the Obama government. They are simply calling for economic justice. They’ve been criticized in mainstream media for a lack of a cohesive vision, but in this situation, a simple cry for justice may be enough.

While inspired by Arab Spring, Occupy’s real roots are in the issue campaigns in the US going back at least into the 19th century: labor, civil rights, peace, feminism, LGBT, safe energy, and so forth—and decision-making structures, especially, owe much to Clamshell Alliance and other players in the 1970s safe energy movement. All of these movements can point to massive victories—to cultural changes. The kinds of oppressive behavior that were considered normal a few decades back are no longer socially acceptable.

Yet many other movements like these also failed to make a difference. The more people in the Occupy movement who can take the time to study what worked and didn’t work in social movements, the more likely they are to achieve their goals.

Electoral Politics

If the process of organizing in the streets seems slow, the process of moving change forward by electing progressives seems glacial. For every Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan who is able to accomplish enormous structural change while in office, there are dozens of Jimmy Carters and Bill Clintons, hamstrung by budgetary constraints, partisan warfare, and their own desire to please everyone (pleasing no one in the process).

I’m not just talking about presidents. Most people enter Congress, or even local political bodies, out of a desire to do good in the world, and are quickly beaten down by the system (or corrupted by the platform it provides to enrich themselves, their financial backers, and their friends). For every fire-and-brimstone Bernie Sanders, there are dozens in office whose names we don’t even know unless we live in their districts—people who are not making much of a difference.

A charismatic figure like Barack Obama can galvanize support and get elected—but then has to either show real progress, fast, in a social structure that moves painfully slowly and is steered by forces outside the victor’s control, or show how the opposition’s intransigence is a roadblock to progress and press for a larger, stronger governing coalition. So far, Obama hasn’t risen to the challenge, though he’s showing signs of moving in that direction. He could still become one of our great presidents—but in failing to act, he risks becoming a one-term nonentity that dashed the hopes of those who voted for change and didn’t receive it.

Occupy Wall Street actually presents Obama a huge opportunity: to embrace the progressive agenda he was elected to advance, to use the anger of the people in the streets to “have his back” as he pushes for real change, and to negate the arguments of Tea Partiers and other right-wing extremists that his minor reforms are “going too fast.” I doubt he’ll seize the moment, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

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I love this! Recognizing that they need to be part of the solution and not just the agitation, permaculture experts have started some deep green initiatives including graywater recycling–at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, home to the original Occupy Wall Street demonstration/encampment.

Once again, the protests remind me of the remarkable communities we had during the Seabrook occupation and our subsequent incarceration at various national guard armories, back in 1977.

Note: if they can do permaculture in an impermanent camp in a city park, we should be able to do it all over the country and the world in our permanent dwellings.

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This morning, a reporter posted a query on HARO (a free service that matches reporters with story sources) asking,

Were you a protester/activist back in the 1960s? If so, what's
your reaction to the current Wall Street protest and the
off-shoots around the country?

I thought my response was worth sharing with a wider audience:


Hi, Sondra, I went to my first demonstration about the Vietnam war in 1969 and was very active in protests all through the 1970s and beyond. I was arrested at Seabrook in 1977, committed civil disobedience but was not arrested at the Wall Street Acton in 1979, was a peacekeeper for the million-person march for peace in 1982. I probably still attend three to five demonstrations in a typical year, mostly local (Western Massachusetts) –but I did go to massive demos in Washington and NYC to try to keep us out of Iraq in 2002-03. Also, using other methods than street demonstrations, I have been an active organizer for decades. My biggest success was forming a group called Save the Mountain, which generated widespread community support and blocked a particularly horrible housing proposal next to a state park–after all the “experts” said there was nothing we could do.

As it happens, today I’m getting on a bus for an evening conference on sustainability in NYC, and staying over for the night. Tomorrow morning my plan is to go to Wall Street and see how things are going.

As a teenager, I had a poster in my room with a picture of a peace demonstration and the caption, “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest –Abraham Lincoln”–and I guess that pretty much sums up my feeling.

Obama has been a very weak president, falling short on issue after issue about bringing the “change” he was elected to create. He has given us a slower–and in some cases faster (like drone killings)–version of the “new normal” that developed under the illegal government of George W. Bush. No one has even been indicted for the crimes against the people by the Bush government or by the looters in suits in the financial industry. I believe strongly in the power of nonviolent protest, and am thrilled to see a new generation stepping forward, willing as we were to disrupt their lives in order to make a difference. Street protest is certainly not the only approach, and I believe we need multiple simultaneous nonviolent approaches. The country has gotten so topsy turvy and out of balance that I don’t think Richard Nixon would be tolerated by the Republican Party anymore (he’s probably to the left of Obama, if you watch both men’s actions rather than their words), and even their ‘sainted’ Reagan would be too far left to be nominated today. We desperately need an effective Left in this country, and the Occupy movement is stepping up, even if it has not figured out yet how to articulate its mission and goals.

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In the South Bronx, once a deeply distressed urban area of New York City that the cops had dubbed “Fort Apache” because it had been so dangerous, a lot of the comeback has been around sustainability (thanks in no small measure to years of terrific organizing by Majora Carter and Sustainable South Bronx). A new initiative I just learned about creates three wins at once:

  • Cleans up polluted water
  • Creates clean and usable biofuel that doesn’t sacrifice agricultural land
  • Creates jobs and a general economic boost in a depressed area

Read about this triple win here. More and more, I think we’ll be seeing development projects like this. (I know of many others around the country and around the world.) The key is to look at waste from one process and see how it could be used as an ingredient for the next process. Another great example is The Intervale, in Burlington and South Burlington, Vermont, where beer waste becomes a growing medium for mushrooms, which in turn feeds fish. This thinking shift is one of the major principles of true sustainability.

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Ten years ago, 19 criminal thugs seized control of four planes—and the world as we knew it was shed like the skin of a snake, replaced with a new and very unpleasant reality.

On this anniversary, I want to publicly thank the hundreds of brave men and women who unselfishly, courageously faced death and yet still went back into the flaming buildings…wrested control of Flight 93 back from its hijackers and crashed it in an empty field, instead of a major government building…poured into New York and Washington to see how they could help, knowing they were risking their own health, their own lives. Also, the thousands of brave soldiers from the US and elsewhere who have put their lives on the line every day. It is not their fault that we shouldn’t have even been in those wars.

But I also want to remember what might have been. In the vast emotional outpouring following the attacks, we were, for almost the only time in our history other than Pearl Harbor, united as a people. And also, for perhaps the first time ever, we had the sympathy and compassion of the whole world.

It was the first President George Bush who had called, ten years earlier, for “A New World Order, where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.” His son had a chance to make that happen.

What was needed was a powerful, emotional speech recognizing that the old, imperialist model of conduct among nations didn’t work anymore…and seizing this terrible moment as a bridge to world peace, a chance for the world to re-invent itself as something new—as a collaborative body determined to achieve greatness as a place where war is an archaic and never-again-used way to settle disputes, no one starves, everyone can get an education and decent health care, the environment is given a chance to heal, and the enemies of industrialized societies cannot get any traction. I thought at the time that this is what Bush should have done and I still think so.

Not that the perpetrators would get off, though. Bush could have called for an international criminal manhunt to bring Bin Laden and his gang of thugs to justice for mass murder, and the world would have supported it. Especially as the US, coming off the Clinton period of prosperity and massive surpluses, had the resources to fund that manhunt.

What an outpouring of support that would have caused! People of all nations would have embraced Bush as a hero, and more importantly, would have striven to put those magnificent words into practice. The United States would have been seen as giving a precious and lasting gift to the entire world. And Bin Laden probably would have been captured early on, with no negative impact on the people unlucky enough to live in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Instead, Bush told us to go shopping…squandered the surplus in two illegal, immoral, unjust—and extremely expensive—wars (not counting the domestic war on Muslims, Arabs, and poor people)…initiated dozens of repressive practices at home…blew up our credibility in the world of nations by acting as a “rogue state” (turning us into either a hated enemy or a laughingstock, in various parts of the world)…and completely failed in his pursuit of Bin Laden (Obama had to come in and finish that one). And his actions caused so much resentment against the US that it turned Al Qaeda from a tiny cell into a massive terrorist organization spanning many countries. He made the enemy much bigger.

I have always perceived George W. Bush as a small-minded bully surrounded by smart and evil advisors, and I was not surprised that he could not step into greatness. But I’d have loved to have been proven wrong. And how much safer I’d feel today if he had somehow risen to the task. He could have been our greatest President. Instead, in my opinion, he was the worst.

On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, let us think how we can still achieve that world of peace. It will be much harder now—but it is not impossible.

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Even though I’ve been in favor of legalizing marijuana since the 1970s and have been in the environmental movement  just as long, it never occurred to me that the continuing prohibition on pot actually has negative consequences for the environment.

But this fascinating article shows a number of negative environmental effects from the prohibition, ranging from highly toxic pesticides used both by growers and by law enforcement authorities on down to greater energy usage because the plants are often grown indoors and therefore need artificial light. If I counted right, the article offers six environmental benefits of legalizing pot. Who would’ve thunk it?

What are the other arguments that convinced me decades ago that pot should be legal? Here are two different choices that list a few of the main reasons to legalize marijuana, in some depth (the first, and I think better-argued one, is from High Times, the second is from the advocacy group Norml. And here’s a brief list of 101 reasons to legalize pot, some a bit tongue-in-cheek.

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It’s been a great discussion the past few days about whether and when it makes sense to work with companies that don’t share your values. I promised to add my own views after we’d gotten some comments, and thus, this post—which I wrote before receiving any of the comments, but chose to hold back on posting:

Here’s my take, as a long-time peace/environmental activist who also writes about how to leverage social change through business. You have these options:
1. Be a purist and refuse any tainted money or tainted partnerships, defining taint to mean that the company is in some way involved in things you disagree with.

2. “Separation of powers,” where you will work with a company that has dirty hands, but only work on the clean-hands aspects of that company.

3. Use the partnership to actively push the company toward more progressive stances, and eventually to abandon the actions that caused you to look askance in the first place.

I’ve evolved on this issue over time. In the 70s, I’m pretty sure I’d have been a #1. And been out in the streets with the protestors. But that was before I saw how the business world can not only change itself, but become a fulcrum for change in the wider society. These days, I’m at least a #2 and when possible, a #3. I’m even in dialogue with an outfit that does seminars for utility companies—and I told them I would not assist with anything that promoted nuclear (and if they hire me to present, I will definitely be using my bully pulpit to push the #3-style agenda to the utilities attending the conference).

But I do think there might be companies (or governments) whose philosophy is so opposed to mine that I would still be a number 1, still refuse to get my hands dirty.

I also recognize that sustainability is a path, and we are all somewhere on the path. I am not sure you could find a person who is living 100% sustainably. Even my very self-sufficient 90-year-old friend who lives in a mountaintop cabin she and her late husband built themselves, with no electricity or running water, grows most of her own food, and keeps her income below the taxable level—creates carbon emissions with her woodstove.

I think a great example is Walmart. I don’t choose to shop there, because I oppose its policies on labor issues, community development impact, predatory pricing, and a host of other areas. At the same time, I have publicly lauded Walmart, many times, for its groundbreaking, deep, systemic attention to sustainability. And I point out that Walmart is not a company of tree-huggers, but of executives looking to maximize profit. I’m willing to publicly praise Walmart’s ability make and save boatloads of money through enormous initiatives to use less energy and to introduce organic foods/green products to customers who would *never* set foot in a Whole Foods–even while choosing to put my own shopping dollars elsewhere.

I discuss this kind of conundrum a bit in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.

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