Category: Social and Economic Justice

By Posted on Posted in language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with ,
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Editor’s Note from Shel Horowitz: this was originally published on Seth’s blog under the title, Where Will the Media Take Us Next? I am a long-time reader and fan of author and teacher Seth’s daily blog (and thrilled that he gave me a terrific endorsement for my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World). I have often linked to his blog posts on Facebook, and sometimes corresponded with him. This one struck me as one I wanted to share on my own website. Used with his permission. And now, here’s Seth.

Where Will the Media Take Us, by Seth Godin

Since the first story was carved on a rock, media pundits have explained that they have simply given people what they want, reporting the best they can on what’s happening.
Cause (the culture, human activity, people’s desires) leads to effect (front page news).

In fact, it’s becoming ever more clear that the attention-seeking, profit-driven media industrial complex drives our culture even more than it reports on it.

Thoughtful people regularly bemoan our loss of civility, the rise of trolling and bullying and most of all, divisive behavior designed to rip people apart instead of moving us productively forward.

And at the very same time, reality TV gets ever better ratings. So much so that the news has become the longest-running, cheapest to produce and most corrosive TV show in history. Increase that exponentially by adding in the peer-to-peer reality show that is social media, and you can see what’s happening.

Imagine two classrooms, each filled with second graders.
In the first classroom, the teacher shines a spotlight on the bullies, the troublemakers and the fighters, going so far as to arrange all the chairs so that the students are watching them and cheering them on all day.

In the second classroom, the teacher establishes standards, acts as a damper on selfish outliers and celebrates the generous and productive kids in the classroom…

How will the classrooms diverge? Which one would you rather have your child enrolled in?

We’re not in elementary school anymore, and the media isn’t our teacher or our nanny. But the attention we pay to the electronic channels we click on consumes more of our day than we ever spent with Miss Binder in second grade. And that attention is corrosive. To us and to those around us.

The producers of reality TV know this. And they seek out more of it. When they can’t find it easily, they search harder. Because that’s their job.

It’s their job to amp up the reality show that is our culture.
But it’s not our job to buy into it. More than anything, profit-driven media needs our active participation in order to pay their bills.

It’s an asymmetrical game, with tons of behavioral research working against each of us–the uncoordinated but disaffected masses. Perhaps we can find the resolve to seek out the others, to connect and to organize in a direction that actually works.

The first step is to stop taking the bait. The second step is to say, “follow me.”

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics: General, language, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

This thought-provoking and mercifully brief article in the Atlantic explains why DT fanatics refuse to face his evil.

Go and read it. I’ll wait. And yes, I know it’s almost a year old–but it’s still completely relevant.

It makes so much sense to me! It’s not that DT’s ardent followers can’t see the criminal behavior, the looting of the public treasury, the constant lying and bullying, the attempt to accuse someone else of whatever it is he’s accused of today. It’s that they define corruption very differently than the rest of us to.

Of course, if this is accurate, it poses a big challenge for activists. When facts don’t matter at all because ideology is paramount, it’s really hard to change people’s minds. 

I think it can be done, one conversation at a time. And those conversations have to be handled very carefully. They have to:

  • Respect the other person as a person (that means no name calling, among other things)
  • Seek common ground even when it’s hard to find
  • Avoid making the other person feel diminished, stupid, heartless, etc. and at the same time, not condoning the diminishment or insult of others (in the form of prejudice

This is a huge challenge. I recognize that. I’ve had some of these conversations. Van Jones has had some.

Van Jones, activist, speaking in 2015. Photo Credit: Department of Labor, Shawn T Moore

I’m deeply inspired by groups that facilitate dialogue between groups of peope who are opposite sides of deep divides. That could be Better Angels bringing together Left and Right in the US–or Combatants for Peace bringing Israeli and Palestinian former combatants together on speaking tours. Or dozens of other groups.

How do you find hope and opportunity while in dialogue with people you ardently disagree with? Please post in the comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Ethics in Government, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, travel Tagged with ,

I like to travel, but this trip is not about fun. I’ll spending the next few days in the grueling Florida summer heat and humidity, outside the gates–and the 30-foot wall recently built to prevent the kids from seeing their supporters–of a private “detention center” (prison) holding more than 2000 children whose only “crime” is coming to this country–usually because their lives are in danger at home. [Clarification: when we got to the site, we discovered that the fences, covered with cloth mesh to block the view, are “only” about 8 feet high around the compound for 13-16-year-olds and about 12 feet around the separate, windowless building holding 17-year-old detainees. By standing on stepladders, we were able to make visual and verbal contact with the younger groups.]

Since January, 2017, we’ve seen appalling abuses: children in cages, children torn from their families, families denied the right to even apply for asylum.

I am putting my body out there to say No. Enough! I’ve joined a Jewish affinity group from western Massachusetts, and six of the eight of us are sitting in the departure lounge in the Hartford airport.

This is the initial post on the blog I set up for our affinity group:

This blog will cover the actions of a small group of Jewish activists from the Northampton/Amherst area of Western Massachusetts (and one from Eastern Massachusetts) who came together as an affinity group to protest the jailing of innocent migrant children.

We are appalled at the gratuitous cruelty of the current US government and its private enablers such as the operators of the prison we’ll be protesting at. As an example, we’ve heard that they raised the height of the fence of the prison where we will be witnessing, just to block the incarcerated children from seeing the protests and taking comfort from them.

We are horrified that at least five children have died in custody nationally in the past few months. And our hearts are torn open that these thousands of children have been wrenched from their families. There is no good reason for this cruelty.

We choose to act as Jews, in the spirit of Tikkun Olam (healing the world) and the Biblical injunction, “Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdof” (Justice, Justice, shalt thou Pursue). We are not a religious group, and we have as many interpretations of what it means to be a Jew and a Jewish activist as we have members.

Our first action is to participate in a Jewish–themed Father’s Day protest at a private prison in Homestead, Florida for a few days in mid-June. Members of our affinity group, Western Mass Jewish Activists for Immigration Justice, will use this space to post photos and writings about our time there, announce public events back home where we’ll share what we witnessed, etc.

This is part of a much larger ongoing presence in Homestead. You can read about it on the Witness: Tornillo. Target: Homestead page, just by clicking this link.

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Dear Donald, whatever happened to “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? Your grandfather was an immigrant. So are two of your wives.

The cruelty and meanness of your administration do not make us stronger. They make us criminals.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, censorship, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Events, General Commentary, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized Tagged with ,

The LGBT Pride March in Northampton, Massachusetts has happened every May since 1982. Northampton, an artsy college town on the Connecticut River with a population under 30,000, has mostly been a haven for lesbians and gays (and more recently, for trans, bisexual, and gender-queer folks) for decades–but there were some major bumps along the road, such as the arrest of several gay male Smith College professors in 1960. Another bump occurred in 1983, as you’ll read below. And at one point someone tried to shut down the event because it was too big and the person tried to claim that the town was overwhelmed. But the March marches on.

I marched in the first Northampton Pride March, served on the organizing committee for the following three years (1983-85), and have marched every year I’ve not been traveling except for one year when a friend’s daughter was becoming Bat Mitzvah. I haven’t counted but it’s probably at least 32 of the 38 years.

The first year, there were about 500 of us, many covering their heads with paper bags for fear of retribution—and many others did their best to avoid cameras. We were met with a couple of thousand curious gawkers and maybe 100 very loud, very hostile counterprotestors from the local Baptist church. We considered it an enormous success. The next year, I think we had about 1000, and about 20 counterprotestors.

But later that year, a sitting at-large City Councilor ran for re-election, and won, on a platform of “I will stop the gay rights march.” Also around that same time, lesbian activists started receiving anonymous death threats over the phone. We demanded and received a mass meeting with the then-mayor and county District Attorney, where we demanded a statement condemning the violence. The mayor shilly-shallied around for an hour, until the DA, a quiet guy named Mike Ryan from an old Northampton family and someone with a strong passion for social justice, finally blurted out, “I’ll give you a statement.” Once he had cover from Mike, the mayor agreed as well. Eventually, someone was convicted for the harassing phone calls.

Pride Day kept growing from there, and after a few years, there were no more counterprotestors. In the 1990s, 10-12,000 was fairly typical, if I remember right. Then in the past few years it started to grow much larger.

The first several marches started at Bridge Street School and marched up Main Street to Pulaski Park. Later, as the crowds got too big for that little park, the direction was reversed. For many years now, it starts at a staging area in a big parking lot behind Main Street and heads down Main and Bridge to the 3-County Fairgrounds, which are enormous.

Part of the Elizabeth Warren contingent marches past the Northampton parking garage #Nohopride2019. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Part of the Elizabeth Warren contingent marches past the Northampton parking garage #Nohopride2019. Photo by Shel Horowitz.

This year, it didn’t even fit into the staging area and spread into several surrounding streets. By the time it reached the Fairgrounds, gathering up so many of the bystanders along the way, it took over an hour and a half for the whole march to pass by.

The Springfield paper estimated 35,000, but I think they were counting the march as it left the staging area. At least 10,000 waited for us along the whole length of Main Street, watched the parade go by, and then joined in. The Gazette said 30-40,000, and I think that higher number is more accurate.

Back in the early 1980s, we were considered curiosities, even in liberal Northampton. Even as recently as 1991, the first publication in the Gazette of a same-sex wedding announcement sparked an outrageous article in the National Enquirer headlined “Lesbianville, USA.”

But for a decade now, the contingents have included dozens of school groups from kindergarten through college, the occasional daycare center, banks, churches and synagogues, real estate agencies, hospitals…every type of business you can think of. People come with their kids, same- or different-sex partners (as usual, I was there with my wife, D. Dina Friedman), grandparents, pets…and homemade or store-bought rainbow apparel.

The first person I saw that I knew this year was Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz, who was officiating a wedding on stage at the rally that followed the march. He didn’t just show up to do his bit, but marched with the rest of us. He posed for a picture but my camera didn’t cooperate. But I snapped this unposed one while he was talking to someone (possibly State Senator Jo Comerford—I couldn’t tell from the back). Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse was also in attendance, as was former Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins. Holyoke City Councilor and staffer for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential run Jossie Valentín organized the Warren contingent.

Those first years were about anger, vulnerability, and claiming our right to be part of the community. Now, it’s a celebration. Much less activism and much more a great big day-long party with the march, the rally, and various dances and cultural events in the evening. The hotels, restaurants, and retail businesses downtown are packed.

This is how far we’ve come! From fringe to totally normal. The legalization of same-sex marriage was certainly a factor in normalizing the LGBT community, but acceptance was permeating through the local culture long before that. I’m convinced that when someone from a conservative culture sits on e.g. a PTA committee with a same-sex parent, and they both realize they want basically the same things for their kids and their community, those barriers break down.

I’m proud that Northampton has been in the vanguard of this movement (a movement I first got involved with in 1973, before I ever heard of Northampton). While I haven’t lived within city borders since 1998 when I moved across the river to Hadley, it’s still my community, I’m there several times a week, and I can see it from the hill behind my house.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Environment, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

I recognize the political difficulties of impeaching with a hostile Senate. Until the Republicans–as they did when Nixon was president–find their outrage, impeachment will fail in the Senate, and removal for incompetence under the 25th Amendment will fail in the Cabinet.

However, what the mainstream Dems continue to ignore is the political cost of NOT impeaching–and the political opportunities in calling out the GOP hypocrisy.

Marching to Impeach the 45th President
Marching to Impeach the 45th President

Yes, I know: the failed impeachment of Bill Clinton came back to bite the Republicans, hard. But the situation with Bill Clinton is not analogous, because Clinton’s trial was caught up in lying about one incident that had nothing to do with the way he governed, and the whole country knew it was a railroading. This does not excuse Clinton’s consistently icky behavior nor his lying about it–and if the Republicans had been smarter, they would have gone after stuff like the pay-to-play scandal that involved donations to the Clinton’s foundation. That really was a corrupt and impeachable offense. Lying about Lewinsky seems pretty tame by comparison.

But all of those moral guardians who were so quick to impeach back then are strangely silent about a man who stole the election, lied at least 9451 times since taking office (as of April 3, 2019), reeks of financial corruption, has been accused by 20-some women of sexual misbehavior (let’s remember that Clinton’s Lewinsky lie was about a CONSENSUAL act, although the original impeachment investigation that turned up that story came out of allegations of harassment that deserved a full investigation), has no idea how to govern, engages in hate speech constantly, has destroyed important ally relationships, and oh, yes, colluded with at least one foreign government.

How the Democrats Can Capture the Conversation

The Democrats have a moment to seize. This is our time to hammer home the idea that a crooked, venal, incompetent president in service to foreign powers and big corporations has no right to be in office, and the Separation of Powers principle gives Congress a moral obligation to enforce our right to a better government.

Just as Republicans were so quick to pillory Hillary Clinton for using private email servers (just as her Republican AND Democratic predecessors did), beating this message into our heads until it became part of the culture, so the Democrats must make reining in the runaway criminal in the White House part of the culture. And, considering that several key members of the current administration have also used private email servers–and, unlike Hillary, they can’t plead ignorance or precedent–hold these same Republicans accountable for their sudden strange silence when it’s a Republican who gets caught,

John Bonifaz and others have identified at least 10 different categories of impeachable offenses. Any one of these would justify starting impeachment proceedings. All 10 at once make it imperative.

The Democrats have to follow through on that moral obligation. Their messaging needs to focus on such talking points as:

  • The threat to our democracy, to our very Republic, from a president who is beholden not to the American people but to his corporate pals (Koch Brothers in particular) and foreign governments–not just Russia, but Saudi Arabia and Israel, at least, plus cozying up to dictators in places like North Korea and the Philippines.
  • The sheer magnitude of corruption oozing from DT and many of his past and present cabinet members, unprecedented even in the “swamp” of Washington
  • The scary parallels between DT’s patterns of speech and action (including his un-American demand for unquestioned loyalty, attacks on the judiciary/press/racial, religious, and cultural minorities, threats of violence, to name just a few) and the dictators who have risen as our enemies: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein–and thus, our patriotic duty to remove this man from power before he turns the country into a fascist dictatorship (interestingly, in researching these connections, I came across DT’s repeated passionate defense of Saddam and Libyan strongman Kadhafi during the 2016 campaign)–much as he has continued to defend other of dictators, including Putin, Duterte, and Kim Jong Un, among others.
  • The wisdom of our Founding Fathers in spelling out a process to determine whether a president has acted illegally, and removing that president from office if found guilty, right in the Constitution
  • Their responsibility and duty as members of Congress to the American people to protect us from these numerous criminal behaviors by upholding the Constitution

This could build on the momentum of 2018 and give people reasons to vote FOR Democrats, rather than simply against DT or Republicans in general. This is the sort of issue that can turn someone into a lifetime supporter.

Consequences of Failing to Act

OK, those are the positive motivators. Now, let’s look at the baggage Democrats will carry if they continue to let DT get away with the rampant criminality and incompetence:

  • Far too many progressives will sit out the 2020 election, feeling that the Democrats are just “Republican Lite.” (Yes, I’m intentionally using the low-calorie, low-substance advertising non-word, instead of “Light”.)
  • Democrats lose the moral high ground and lose momentum, maybe even find themselves facing a serious third-party challenge that would culminate in DT’s re-election (since we don’t have Ranked-Choice Voting in national elections in the US). This would likely hand DT a majority in the house again and set progressive politics back years, even as the climate clock is ticking.
  • The message to the Republicans will be “we don’t care enough to engage you over these crimes. Go and do whatever evil you want.”
  • Especially if re-elected, DT will be emboldened to do even more criminal acts, encourage even more race and ethnic divisiveness, stock the courts with even more extremist judges, roll back environmental and human rights protections even faster,  follow the footsteps of those dictators even more closely.

The message the Democrats must put forth is that we do care, we will hold him accountable, and we will keep the promises we made to represent everyone in the district. To get there, we progressives need to create a scenario where the Democrats see both the need to remove DT, hold him accountable for both his criminal behavior and his disastrous policies, and undo as much as possible of his anti-life, Profit Uber Alles legacy–and see the consequences to their careers and their party, as well as to the Constitution and the governed, if they fail to act.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Gratitude, Innovation, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

One of Seth Godin’s recent posts was a fascinating look at framing problems. He cited nine factors that make it easier to address them.

Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

Riffing on two of the nine, I wrote him this letter (I’ve done some minor editing for clarification since sending it to him):

Non-chronic–rationalization is our specialty, and the reason we learn to rationalize is so that we don’t go insane when faced with long-term, persistent issues. We bargain them down the priority list.  

Solvable–see that earlier riff about rationalization and chronic problems. If a problem doesn’t seem solvable, we’re a lot less likely to stake our attention on it.

Maybe this is one key to why I haven’t yet really made a full transition to marketing myself as a consultant at the intersection of profitability and solving *chronic* problems such as hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. I have done some messaging on these problems being solvable even though they are millennia-chronic, other than climate change, which is only 200 years old as a major problem. But maybe they still feel too big and scary for most people to see themselves as part of the solution. 
And yet, in our brief lifetimes…

A lot of the progress is very recent, and I think much of the credit goes to the eight UN Millennium Development Goals (adopted in 2000) and their successors, the  17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (adopted in 2015),

So here’s the question: What advice would you give me in marketing my consulting, speaking, and writing to a population that is so shut down about solving these massive problems that they don’t see the progress we’re actually making? (And may I quote your answer in the blog?)

Shel Horowitz – “The Transformpreneur”(sm)

<End of my letter to Seth>

I got back a one-sentence reply agreeing that we’re making progress and noting that the progress happens more easily when we tell those stories.

So, here’s your opportunity to go where Seth doesn’t go. Let’s get a nice discussion going on how we can convince people that we can–and should–solve long-term, systemic, chronic problems. Please leave your comments.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

What irony! Donald thinks Rep. Ilhan Omar should resign over tweets he says are antisemitic.

Effigy of "the Donald," photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC

Just for the record, I am a Jew and I was not offended by her tweet “It’s all about the Benjamins,” about AIPAC’s support for the Israeli government and its frequent mistreatment of its minorities. Criticism of Israel, or of Israeli influence in US politics, is not antisemitism any more than criticism of any US president is antiamericanism. However, I can see where some people would read into it a “trope” that reinforces stereotypes. I don’t agree with them, but I see their point—and so does Rep. Omar, who apologized quickly and meaningfully.

But Donald has tweeted, spoken, and written hundreds of insults against Muslims, Arabs, Mexicans, disabled people, women, journalists, refugees…and that’s not a complete list. Donald has also been very quick to defend white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers, from his pardon of Joe Arpaio to his claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” when a white supremacist deliberately drove into a crowd at a rally in Charlottesville, killing one person and injuring several others. It’s worth pointing out that Donald has repeatedly trashed and stereotyped Jews—with multiple examples in this article, and that doesn’t even mention the infamous incident about only trusting short men in yarmulkes to count his money (smearing blacks as not trustworthy AND reinforcing anti-Jewish stereotypes in a single three-sentence remark).

So here’s my question to Donald: If you think Omar should resign over a single ambiguous remark, why haven’t you resigned after a lifetime of hate speech?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

So many times, I’ve seen smart people saying we should not impeach or invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment (the Constitution’s presidential removal clause). Here’s why I think we should.

The United States Constitution

It’s true that Pence has both worse ideology and better political skills—and a Pence presidency could be extremely scary. I hope Mueller takes him down too, and that’s a real possibility.

But if he is sworn in after impeachment, he will be very, very careful. He will have to be seen as the unifier, and he will have to walk very carefully to avoid falling into the pit he created by his own actions, his own complicity. I think he will be quite cautious. And if he is not sworn in, the next in line is the very competent and moderately liberal Nancy Pelosi.

There’s also the issue of precedent. It says something very disturbing about our “democracy” that we have allowed this man to um, “serve” while continuing to break law after law, while telling 8158 lies in his first two years in office—6000 of them in 2018, while lining his own pockets, etc.

The possibility of a maniac like DT in office is why we HAVE the impeachment, emoluments, and removal-for-incompetence/incapacity clauses. We damned well better use them if they are anything other than ink on paper. Not using them forfeits our rights as citizens and makes it harder to challenge the next incompetent narcissist. I wonder: would this presidency have even been possible if GWB had been impeached for his incompetence, the actions of his competent but evil henchmen like Cheney and Rumsfeld, or for the fraudulent justifications for the Iraq war—or if the Democrats had fought hard enough in 2000 to prove that the election was fraudulent and should be overturned, thus preventing the GWB presidency in the first place?

Interestingly, the 25th Amendment requires the Vice President’s active cooperation. Here’s the full text of Section 4:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Of course, Pence has made no secret that he’d love to be President. And any sane person would avoid overmuch loyalty to DT, who has shown over and over again that while he values loyalty in others, he has seemingly none of his own to distribute other than to Vladimir Putin and Russia—an alliance that goes back decades. If DT thinks you’re crossing him, he throws you under the bus with no hesitation. Even if you were his personal lawyer, fixer, and close confidante for many years. Thus, it wouldn’t be a shock if Pence cooperated with—or even initiated—a 25th-Amendment removal proceeding—IF he thought he could get away with it without repercussions from DT or his base.

In short, a legal maneuver to get DT out of office (and perhaps behind bars) is well justified, even though it will only succeed if several Senate Republicans desert him. Because they will, if a people’s movement demands it and they’d rather not lose their own jobs.

In other words, just because the GOP made a bad strategic decision to embrace the devil doesn’t mean we’re stuck with him. If they see the public swinging strongly against DT, they’ll abandon the sinking ship—but they need to hear from their constituents, loudly and often. They could have reined DT in early and firmly but they didn’t want to annoy his “base”—which as a result thinks those members of Congress are weak and don’t care much, and therefore continue to push the envelope on making very bad behavior acceptable. It’s time to push back and demand accountability for letting an incompetent maniac sack our democracy, burn bridges with our allies, collude with our enemies, and lash out at those who can’t defend themselves.

The faster the Republicans move, the easier it will be to re-cage the monster.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Peace and War, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Surely, we can build a better future with technology instead of focusing on autonomous drone delivery of a latte 9 blocks away in San Francisco.

—Seth Godin, December 31, 2018

On New Year’s Eve, Seth Godin riffed on an ambitious list of 23 problems we can focus on solving. A few of my favorites:

Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.

1. High efficiency, sustainable method for growing sufficient food, including market-shifting replacements for animals as food
2. High efficiency, renewable energy sources and useful batteries (cost, weight, efficiency)
8. Useful methods for enhancing, scaling or replacing primary education, particularly literacy
12. Gene therapies for obesity, cancer and chronic degenerative diseases
13. Dramatic leaps of AI interactions with humans
14. Alternatives to paid labor for most humans
15. Successful interactions with intelligent species off Earth
17. Cultural and nation-state conflict resolution and de-escalation
18. Dramatically new artistic methods for expression

Seth’s list fascinates me because it uses technology as a jumping-off point to solve social problems. Most of us don’t think of technology that way; too often, we think of technology only in terms of lifestyle issues (I don’t even want to label them as problems). Go back to the quote at the very top of this post to see what Seth says about that!

I’m one who does think of technology this way. I’ve written frequently about using technology to turn hunger and poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change into abundance, peace, and planetary balance.

And like Seth, I think we actually can solve these huge problems. As he writes,

[This list seems ridiculous until you realize that in the last few generations, we created vaccines, antibiotics, smartphones, GPS and the Furby].

Not to mention viable solar power, conflict resolution based on deep listening, the ability to access the world’s entire written or pictorial knowledge base from devices the size of a watch, a vast increase in the quantity and quality of organic food…

So I let Seth’s list percolate in the back of my brain for a week.

Here are a few I’d add:

  • Peace: no more armed conflict as a way to settle grievances, anywhere—and this means diplomats must be trained deeply in nonviolence theory and practice, using not just academic but also empirical hands-on problem-solving and creative thinking
  • Nonviolent, respectful conflict resolution taught from preschool through college as a required subject, and reinforced through adulthood in the media, the court system, and government—among other things, that means no longer glorifying actual or threatened violence or presenting it as a way to solve problems in film, TV, or literature
  • New tools for genuine democracy: governments at all levels from village to planet that work for the benefit of their entire population while minimizing any restrictions on personal freedom to act in any ways that don’t harm others, that are based not in who pays the candidates the most but in how each government unit can benefit its population (including the non-humans) and the ecosystem (macro and micro)—this also means ensuring that votes are free and fair, honestly and accurately counted, and allow all citizens to participate
  • Two-way or multiple-way communication with many plant as well as animal species—maybe even with bacteria—not just by a few outliers, but as other languages people could study
  • At least 50 percent urban community food self-sufficiency: even our most paved-over spaces, like New York City,  should be able to supply 50 percent or more of their own food, using rooftops, windowsills, traffic islands, public green spaces, etc. (This will require cleaning up pollution using plant-based filtration, first—and ending sources of ongoing pollution from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, buildings, and powerplants)
  • Complete conversion to clean, renewable, non-fossil, non-nuclear power sources within five years for new construction or manufacture, and fifteen years to phase in the conversion of existing buildings and vehicles
  • Elimination of all forms of slavery, including not just sex trafficking (Seth’s #3), but also sweatshops, child slaves picking cocoa beans in Africa, prison labor at far below minimum wage…
  • Speaking of prison—isn’t it time we had more humane ways of dealing with criminals and sociopaths?
  • Exploration of space in ways that honor the ecosystems, not to rape and plunder their resources but to expand our knowledge, develop laboratories for alternative ways to design a society, and perhaps find other intelligent life forms we can communicate with and learn from, as Seth notes in his #15 and #23
  • And because not everything has to be so ambitious and grandiose, making email useful again. Figuring out a way to eliminate spam while letting legitimate messages through, even if people write about subjects like marketing or cancer of a the mammary system using the b-word, but keeping the real junk out. That’s actually pretty ambitious, because the only way it’s likely to get done is with a huge leap in artificial intelligence technology—in other words, this is one application of Seth’s #13.

Like Seth, I’ll ask, “What’s on your list?” Please leave a comment whether it’s your top few or a longer list. If comments are closed (which they do automatically after a certain time), write to me at my contact form, https://greenandprofitable.com/contact/, and use the subject, Blog Comment: Seth’s List. I’ll get them posted here.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Branding, Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Customer Service as Marketing, Democracy, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,
We hear lots of talk about being customer-centric—but then we see far too many examples of companies that DON’T walk their talk. I still remember seeing a sign inside a Blockbuster Video store, maybe 20 years ago, talking about their empowered employees. I went up to the counter clerk and asked permission to snap a picture of the sign; I wanted to use it as a positive example in the customer service section of the marketing book I was writing—and the clerk said I’d have to call corporate headquarters. What kind of empowered employee is that? I was so disgusted I never set foot in another Blockbuster.
Most companies will need to make three shifts at the same time to become truly customer-centric. All three are challenging but bring very big returns.
  1. Create a culture where employees feel valued and listened to—where what they do makes a difference. Empower them not just to fix customers’ problems but to harness their own creativity to create preemptive change. IN the trenches every day, employees often have the best ideas for improving things. But they will only share those ideas if they think management will pay attention and that they won’t get punished in any way. No matter how crazy an idea may seem, give it a full airing. Often, you can modify it to be practical, and implement those pieces. Consider implementing a reward system for any idea. The reward doesn’t have to be monetary. It could be as simple as naming the employee with the best idea, or with the most ideas, Employee of the Month. However, if the idea saves or makes the company a big pile, the originator should get a money reward too. For hierarchical companies, this means letting go of command-and-control and making line employees feel that management really wants their ideas—which can be discussed in public meetings/assigned to study/IMPLEMENTATION committees and NEVER dismissed out-of-hand by a manager either 1:1 or in public. This takes training, of course.
  2. Really listen to your customers. Don’t just wait for them to complain. Go out and ask them what they love about working with you, and what they’d like you to improve—and why.

    A woman on a customer service call, taking handwritten notes
    A woman on a customer service call, taking handwritten notes

    Treat this seriously and publicize the way their suggestions become innovations (including honoring them by name, if they consent). Not only will this show how responsive you are, it encourages more people to jump in with their own ideas.

  3. Align your company with a higher purpose. If people feel that you’re making both a difference and a profit, they will become much more enthusiastic Employee turnover drops while productivity goes up, customer retention increases, and you might even become a media darling. For instance, can you identify, develop, and market a profitable product or service that actually helps turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, or catastrophic climate change into planetary balance?
  4. Bonus tip, because I like to overdeliver: shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. Replace “yes, but” with “yes, and”: expand the possibilities, build off that suggestions until you’ve co-created something wonderful. Then go implement it!

Need help? This is what I do in my consulting, writing, and speaking. I’m really good at finding opportunities for almost any company to “do well by doing good” (old Quaker saying): to find profitable niches that make the world better, and to create the products and services to fill those niches. Here’s my contact info. Want to learn more? Drop by https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ and have an explore.

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