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St. Paul, Minn, on May 13, 2013: Thousands of people gathered at the state capitol building during the Minnesota Senate debate on a same-sex marriage bill. The Minnesota Senate passed the bill by a vote of 37 to 30. Photo by Fibonacci Blue.

Last week, on the day the Minnesota House of Representatives passed the same-sex marriage bill, the Capitol rotunda was full of emotion: a middle-aged lesbian couple carried "Freedom to Marry" signs; a man with a baby on his shoulders wore a "Freedom to Marry" t-shirt; two young men waved rainbow flags together. Minnesotans are not known for their outspoken nature, but here they were: shouting, singing, and embracing the moment and one another as a hard-fought victory for social change neared.

Last November, voters in Minnesota were given a ballot initiative opportunity to amend our state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. This week, after the bill cleared the Senate, Minnesota made marriage legal for all.

I often find myself so embroiled in policy and politics that I fail to see the change that society is undergoing. Minnesota legalized gay marriage! This is big time stuff—for us, for the Midwest, and for society as a whole. Not only did we do it, but we did it with great speed. How did we travel so far in only six months?

“Vote No” transformed into “Vote Yes,” and somewhere between budget and tax debates emerged a bill seeking the authorization of marriage between any two persons—straight or gay.

We are the only state in the Midwest to have legalized same-sex marriage through legislation (Iowa did so through a Supreme Court decision in 2009); and we're only the 12th state in the United States to arrive at marriage equality. It is said that Illinois soon will follow suit. In the Midwest, we have watched this equality spread across the Northeast, hopeful that our time would come too.  Now, from Minneapolis to Embarrass, Minn. (yes, that's a place), all Minnesotans have the right to marry.

We're a politically vibrant state, with our own brand of politics. From the outside we have at times appeared unserious (see: Jesse Ventura, Michele Bachmann); but inside we are as serious about politics as we are about our Lutheran Churches and Hot Dish potlucks. We vote thoughtfully, and in great numbers—we've had the highest turnout in the country.  We are historically a blue state, but it’s a shade of blue that’s our own: We're equally willing to elect pragmatic conservative governors or send the first Muslim to the U.S. Congress.

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In the 2010 election, the Republican Party of Minnesota was carried into power with the national mid-term movement toward the Right. Minnesota Republicans won majorities in both the House and Senate for the first time in nearly 40 years.

In May, 2011, leadership passed a measure asking voters to amend our constitution with a definition of marriage as “only a union of one man and one woman.” Republicans put the issue to the people, confident that, like every state to precede us when deciding in a ballot measure, Minnesotans would block marriage equality efforts before they could even start.

The amendment failed. On the heels of a massive outpouring of support for a “Vote No” campaign organized by Minnesotans United for All Families, the amendment to ban gay marriage went down, and with it, the Republican majorities. Our ballots protected gays and lesbians from constitutional discrimination and returned control of Minnesota’s legislative chambers to the DFL.

With great change came great opportunity. And, perhaps ironically, the push for the failed constitutional amendment against gay marriage galvanized unprecedented passion and initiative in the movement for it.

Marriage Equality Victories Show How Change Happens,
One Step at a Time
Before 2004, no state allowed same-sex marriage. Today, it's legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia. If you want to see how political progress is made, look to the local level.

Now the marriage supporters were organized. “Vote No” quickly transformed into “Vote Yes,” and somewhere between budget and tax debates emerged State Senator Scott Dibble’s bill seeking the authorization of marriage between any two persons—straight or gay.

Success was never assured. Local media didn’t know which way the wind blew, with one local analyst telling KSTP, a local ABC affiliate, that “a bill legalizing gay marriage does not stand ‘prayer's chance’ of passing this legislative session.”  Governor Mark Dayton said he didn’t want social issues to distract other policy decisions, and Speaker Paul Thissen said he wouldn’t even think of a vote unless they could be assured the votes were there. Year one of our legislative biennium is a budget year, after all, and marriage policy is anything but budget.

But passionate support and vigorous campaigning brought marriage equality to the table anyway. Last Monday, the bill passed in the Senate, 37—30, and it was signed into law by Tuesday.

This story is unique to Minnesota, but the ending is not. Ours is one among an expanding landscape of victories. We are already the third state in the past four weeks—on the heels of Delaware and Rhode Island—to find our way here. And the list will continue to grow even as opponents continue efforts to slow the spread of equality.

But they’ll fail. The push for civil rights takes time, courage, and strength. If those rights are awarded to a few, they will soon be awarded to more. And they are not lightly taken back.

Christopher Zumski Finke wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization. Christopher is the Culture Editor at Hothouse Magazine. He has written for numerous publications in the past ten years in addition to his blog, The Third Ten Million Years, where he writes about politics, pop culture, and the environment. Christopher works in renewable energy policy at Wind on the Wires, a Midwest regional policy and advocacy organization. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and son.

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Noam Gur holds the letter in which she refused conscription. Photo by Oren ziv/Activstills.

When the 19-year-old Israeli war resister Noam Gur attends weekly demonstrations against the occupation of Palestine, the soldiers who suppress the protestors—with tear gas, stun grenades, and occasionally live fire—aren’t just strangers in uniform. Among them are her former high school classmates, who have been conscripted into the Israeli army.

Gur was supposed to serve, too, but instead joined the shministim. This is a Hebrew term meaning high school students in their senior year, who face conscription into the army. But the word is also used to refer to students who publicly refuse conscription on ethical grounds.

“All my friends from high school are in the army,” Gur explains. “Now I see them at demos. It is really weird and complicated.”

With a shrug of her shoulders, Gur describes the process that led to her refusal of conscription. “I found out that what they taught me in school was different from this reality. I went to the West Bank to protests and saw the occupation. I started to realize I didn’t want to serve.”

She is one of many young Israelis who are saying no to the army.

Gur, who has cropped hair and a shy smile, was supposed to be a soldier before she was out of her teens, like most Israeli youth. But instead she served 20 days in prison for refusing orders. Now an anti-occupation activist who supports other young people questioning military service, she is one of many young Israelis who are saying no to the army. They are part of growing number of Israeli movements working to end the occupation from the inside.

Letters of resistance

To understand what it takes to become a shministi—the singular form of shiministim—it’s important to understand the powerful grip of the Israeli military on society. Israel’s occupation of Palestine and aggressive stance toward many of its neighbors requires a highly militarized society. The country devotes almost one fifth of its national budget to military spending, 18 percent of which is paid for by the United States. Israel’s military spending as a percentage of GDP is one of the highest in the world, and it boasts a larger military than any of its neighbors. The country maintains a stash of nuclear weapons and is the world's eighth largest arms exporter.

Meanwhile, children are prepared for compulsory service from an early age by constant military presence in educational settings, including “teacher soldiers” in some schools. Walking through Israeli cities and towns, one encounters streets filled with soldiers carrying M4 and M16 rifles, many of them in plain clothes.

“There is always a military background here,” Gur says.

The army makes it nearly impossible to get a discharge based on conscientious objector status.

While the Israeli army is preeminent in society, it is not invincible. Public draft resistance began in 1970, when a handful of students penned an open letter to then-Prime Minister Golda Meir, in which they explained their refusal to serve in territories seized and occupied in the 1967 war. In 1982, a group of army reservists refused to serve in the Lebanon War, founding the group Yesh Gvul, whose name means “there is a limit.” The movement of letter-writing and refusal by high school seniors grew during the early 2000s, prompting the military to crack down and sentence each of the five shministim from the class of 2002 to two years in prison.

By 2008, when almost 100 people signed public letters resisting conscription, prison terms for shministim had become standard. The army makes it nearly impossible to get a discharge based on conscientious objector status, and many shministim escape conscription only by claiming mental unfitness, often after serving multiple prison sentences. The 19-year-old shministi Nathan Blanc is currently serving his eighth consecutive prison term for refusing army service in protest of second-class rights for Palestinians.

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In addition to those who publicly resist, an unknown number engage in “gray resistance,” quietly applying for discharges on mental, physical, and religious grounds. As of 2008, about half of all potential conscripts did not enlist due to various exemptions, according to Israeli army officials.

Sahar Vardi, a shministi from the class of 2008, wants to encourage this type of resistance. She is a member of the Israeli feminist demilitarization group New Profile, which offers consultation and support to youth questioning military service. The organization reaches 2,000 people who are seeking to resist military service each year, she says.

Saying no to conscription and occupation

Gur, who grew up in Nahariya, a town just north of Haifa, had a sister in the border police in Gaza at the time of her refusal. Despite her family’s objection to her resistance, she penned her public letter in 2012. In it, she explained her unwillingness to serve in an army that has, she wrote, “been engaged in dominating another nation, in plundering and terrorizing a civilian population that is under its control.” After receiving two successive prison terms for refusing orders, she was finally released after claiming mental unfitness.

In a society where graduates are required to participate directly in military occupation at an early age, saying no can be a way of showing another path is possible.

The number of public shministim has been shrinking in recent years, with just three 12th graders, including Gur, publicly declaring their draft refusal in 2012. Yet Electronic Intifada reports that the number of resisters among the Druze, an ethnic minority from the country’s north, is on the rise, with Druze musician Omar Saad publicly refusing conscription last year. Furthermore, New Profile consultants say that the number of gray resisters continues to increase.

Regardless of its size, Israeli anti-occupation organizers insist that the tradition of refusing conscription remains a relevant force, in conjunction with other demilitarization efforts. “Breaking the consensus on occupation is important,” says Netta Mishley, a shministi from the class of 2009. “It allows people to feel more free speaking their minds.”

Gur, who also supports the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment, and sanction of Israel, says that that draft resistance is one tactic among many, and it is difficult to tell how effective it is. Nonetheless, she argues that refusal is important to encourage. In a society where graduates fresh out of high school are required to participate directly in military occupation at an early age, saying no can be a way of showing another path is possible, and retrieving one's humanity in the process.

Sarah Lazare wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Sarah is a writer and organizer in U.S. anti-war and anti-militarist movements, and is a member of The Civilian-Soldier Alliance and War Times. She co-edited PM Press book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War, and her work has appeared in publications including The Nation, Truthout, and Al Jazeera English.

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• Only the People of the United States Can End Israel's Occupation Many progressives breathed a sigh of relief when last month’s Israeli elections set the stage for a centrist coalition and not a far-right one. Yet peace will remain out of reach until the American people pressure the Obama Administration to end Israeli impunity.

Fracking takes place just a few hundred feet from an Ohio apartment building. Photo by People’s Oil and Gas Collaborative.

As rural deposits of fossil fuel grow fewer and farther between, extractive industries are increasingly siting their operations over the next best location: suburban neighborhoods. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the Marcellus shale formation beneath parts of the Midwest and Appalachia contains literally trillions of cubic feet of natural gas—the most accessible of which often lies beneath residential neighborhoods.

Environmental injustice has come as a shock for many of Broadview Height’s mostly white, middle-class population.

Broadview Heights, population 19,400, is just south of Cleveland. The small town seems to typify Midwestern suburbia: tree-lined streets, vaguely familiar housing developments of recent vintage, and a median household income of over $70,000—significantly more than the state average of $45,000. Residents include former Clevelanders seeking a more peaceful place to live, where raccoons, deer, and wild turkey can be seen in their backyards.

But Broadview Heights is in the midst of a transformation. In 2004, the Ohio legislature passed a law effectively stripping local municipalities of their right to regulate the permitting, spacing, and location of oil and gas wells. This led to a spate of small fracking operations cropping up inside neighborhoods, which in turn has led to the flight of some residents. More than 70 gas wells have been drilled here since 2005—in some instances without the notification of residents living just 600 feet away, according to Truthout.

“I think this is a bold move for these companies, to drill in suburbs, but they feel empowered to do it,” says Elisa Young, founder of the anti-coal activist group MeigsCAN in Meigs County, Ohio. “The landmen quietly come in, get all their ducks in a row, and then they tell you, ‘This is a done deal. You can’t do anything about it.’”

Young notes that environmental injustice has come as a shock for many of Broadview Height’s mostly white, middle-class population. For many of them, she says, “It’s their first experience at seeing how these industries really operate.”

New shared experiences

All of this means that Broadway Heights residents are now sharing an experience with the marginalized poor and with the residents of Indian reservations, where people have been dealing with similar situations for decades.

But, not least because the people of Broadway Heights have the means to leave, there are some important limitations to that comparison. “Most native communities really maintain a connection to their land, and there isn’t the ability or desire to just pick up and move when things change,” Young says.

“All it’s going to take is for the energy companies to pick on the wrong person.”

That’s not to say that a connection to the land is unheard-of among non-native people. As a “ninth generation Appalachian,” Young says she was raised with the idea that “every nook and cranny of our family’s land is our history, our heritage. It’s not so easy to walk away from that.”

It’s not just participants in Ohio’s anti-fracking movement who are talking about the new shared ground between indigenous people and middle-class whites. Anna Willow, an anthropologist at Ohio State University, is currently working on an ethnographic study that explores the social and cultural implications of fracking in suburban neighborhoods.

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Based on a series of interviews conducted in 2012, the study focuses on how fracking affects Ohio residents’ feelings about their livelihood and community. While compiling her research, Willow—whose previous work was with Canadian tribal people familiar with industries like mining and logging on their ancestral land—noticed an interesting trend.

“A lot of the statements coming from these interviewees,” she said, “sounded similar to what we’ve been hearing from indigenous groups for hundreds of years now: expressions of fear, vulnerability, and disempowerment as the industries move in.”

New alliances

The spread of fracking into suburbs might seem like a source of despair, but some are hoping that it could lead to bigger and better things by linking groups together into unusual alliances.

Geraldine Thomas-Flurer of the Yinke Dene Alliance, a coalition of tribes from British Columbia that formed in opposition to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline, says that the widespread push against exploitative resource extraction in North America— such as the Tar Sands Blockade, protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline, and movements to stop fracking—has forged collaborations unlike anything that had existed before.

“[The majority of] British Columbia is opposed to the pipeline—indigenous and non-indigenous together,” she said, citing a February poll by Insights West that found 61 percent of adults oppose the project. “It’s the first time in my history that I’ve seen these communities working side by side, and I’m happy about that—we’re not alone in this.”

What’s happening in British Columbia is unprecedented, she says, and bodes well for other parts of the world where similar clashes are taking place. “It’s clear that to fight these industries, everyone needs to speak up and support the movement. It’s not a First Nations issue. It’s a human issue.”

Kari Matsko, director of a grassroots initiative in Ohio called the People’s Oil and Gas Collaborative, agrees. The more people who are directly affected by fracking, she says, the stronger the resistance becomes.

“Regardless of status or demographic, people are experiencing firsthand the effects of this industry,” Matsko says. “All it’s going to take is for the energy companies to pick on the wrong person.”

Peter Pearsall wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Peter is an online reporting intern at YES! and a freelance science writer.

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September 12, 2013
Town Hall
Seattle, WA

We are delighted to announce that Vandana Shiva will be coming to Seattle for YES! Magazine’s 3nd annual celebration and fundraiser. Tickets are on sale now.

The world-renowned Indian biodiversity and global justice activist will share her insights on developments from around the world that will determine the future of food.

The event starts at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall in Seattle. A reception will follow with local drinks, delicious desserts, and live music from Mercy Crow.

Buy your tickets now, and tell your friends. We’ve sold out before, and expect to do so again.

A limited number of tickets are also available for a private dinner with Vandana before the event for  $250 each.

Can’t make it to Seattle?

If you can’t make it to the event in person, you can watch it right here—we’ll post a recording after the event.

And you can show your support with a tax-deductible donation to YES! on September 12th.

All Donations to YES! given on the week of Sept 12th will be matched.

YES! Magazine is nonprofit and reader-supported. We only exist because of you. That’s why a group of generous supporters have challenged us to raise $25,000 on September 12th by promising to match every dollar, up to that amount.

Give online or at Town Hall that day, and your tax-deductible donation will go twice as far!

Volunteer at the event.

We need volunteers on the day of the event to help with setup, tickets, and cleanup.

If you’re interested in volunteering in exchange for a free ticket, call Gretchen at 206/842-5009 ext. 201 or email her at gwolf@yesmagazine.org.

Many thanks to our "changemaker" event sponsors:

 

 

Photo by spirit of america / Shutterstock.com.

I was invited recently to sit in on animal science class at a college that has a strong agriculture program, about 10 miles away from my house. This week, the class was discussing the farm bill, and the students were supposed to be exploring what it meant to them.

Anyone who shops at a conventional grocery store for factory farmed meat or processed foods is taking a government handout.

The discussion was led by my friend Paula, who recently made the choice to return to school and get an agricultural degree. She talked about some of the major points of the farm bill, about how the direct commodity subsidies feed agribusiness, but how small farms such as Sap Bush Hollow derive very little (if any) direct benefit from them. She talked about how, because the Farm Bill didn't pass in 2012, there was a temporary extension on it as part of the fiscal cliff package. The subsidies that aid corn syrup processors and ethanol blenders stayed in place. The programs that benefited small producers—such as new farmers, minority farmers, healthy food markets, renewable energy, and sustainable farming efforts—were suspended. The classroom remained quiet. Passive. Disinterested.

Paula attempted to shake them up. "Guys! This is about you! About us! About what we’re here for!" The room stayed quiet.

She moved on to the next controversial part of the Farm Bill—Food and Nutrition Assistance, which encompasses the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps. Several students began to shift in their seats. Paula put forward some numbers about the amount of money allocated to SNAP. The classroom began to writhe. Tongues clucked. I heard hissing. Paula then mentioned how many people were dependent on SNAP (in 2011, one out of every seven people in this country was getting some form of food and nutrition assistance). And with that, save for a few quiet exceptions, the classroom sprung to life:

"Welfare mothers!"

"They're using food stamps to buy cigarettes!"

"I'm not paying for lazy people!"

"Users!"

"They just waste that money!"

Wow. So many golden educational opportunities....where to begin?

Let's start with ...

1. The meaning of hypocrisy: From the dictionary: The semblance of having desirable or publicly approved attitudes, beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually possess. It seems increasingly popular, in these hard economic times, to toss around accusations about who is draining the public resources. And the people who get public funds most directly under the umbrella term of "welfare" are the first ones to get pelted with stones.

Yet anyone who has driven by the farmers market on their way to buy pork chops for $1.99 a pound at the grocery store, when the local farmer can't produce them for less than $11.00, is dipping from the same pot that holds the food stamps. The farm bill encourages factory farming by making sure feed can be purchased for less than the price of growing it, giving factory farms billions of dollars in cost discounts every year.

A portion of this savings gets passed along to the American grocery-shopping public in the form of artificially cheap food that real farmers (those of us who have to pay for the true costs of production) simply cannot compete with. Anyone who shops at a conventional grocery store for factory farmed meat or processed foods is taking a government handout, not just the "welfare mothers."

2. The meaning of irony: From the dictionary: A figure of speech in which the words express a meaning that is often the direct opposite of the intended meaning. The first farm bill was enacted on the heels of the Great Depression, with the goal of supporting America's farmers and ranchers. That's still the intent. Yet today, farm bill commodity subsidy payments have contributed to such an unequal distribution of market share between corporate and family-scale agriculture, that the only way many small farmers could benefit from the farm bill is through the very nutritional assistance programs that these young agriculturists were spurning. There’s no shortage of small farmers who qualify for “welfare” programs.

3. The meaning of self-defeating behavior: From the dictionary: behavior serving to frustrate, thwart, etc., one's own intention. Here was a group of students training to be farmers and food processors. Many of them will likely want to open their own farming-related businesses some day; or they will return to family farms to pick up where their parents and grandparents left off. Some of them, unable to sustain themselves financially among the land and livestock that nourish their spirits, will have to go and work for agribusiness. If the current economy is any indication, many of them will find themselves with college debt, low wage jobs, and in need of food.

Any way you slice the pie, the Farm Bill affects these students, either because:

• it sponsors (or fails to sponsor) programs that might help them get started on the land or in a food-related enterprise;
• or because the policies of the bill greatly benefit agribusiness, thus making it tougher and tougher for family-scale farms to compete;
• or because it results in a proliferation of processed, crappy foods that pollute our bodies as well as our soil and water;
• or because it provides a food benefit that a number of them will likely need in the near future.

These kids need to understand the Farm Bill. It can help them and it can hurt them. But the only reaction they could muster was venom toward any human being who might have need of food assistance, thus the only action many of them might take would be to cheer if the food and nutrition assistance programs were cut. They're hurting themselves with their apathy and venom.

As we seek to create a workable Farm Bill, we cannot forget that the uncertainty of our neighbors will affect our own well-being.

For that matter, apathy and venom hurt all of us. The food problems, the farm problems, and the poverty issues, effect all of us. Propaganda infuses our daily lives, encouraging us to hate those in need, to judge them as irresponsible leeches on society. This hatred has become a cancer in our culture, poisoning us from the inside, making students like the ones in this classroom, who should be concerned about our nation's food policy, content to see it fail rather than reformed, and to see more people go hungry.

By fixating on the notion that a fellow human in need is threatening to their well-being, these students are playing an active role in promoting the very social inequality that impairs their own futures. As social epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have shown, no matter whether we are rich or poor, the more inequality there is in our culture, the greater our rates of anxiety, depression, and countless other social problems from crime to illness—for everyone.

(For those of you interested in learning more about how inequality contributes to widespread social problems across the classes, I recommend Kate Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson’s book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.)

...Which leads me to the final, and most important, educational opportunity...

4. The meaning of compassion: From the dictionary: A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another's suffering or misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the pain or remove its cause. In truth, I suspect that the venom that came forth from these young people's mouths wasn't truly their own. They probably learned it from someone else. Most of them were too young to have come by such opinions honestly. And I can only assume that it came from people in their lives who are truly fearful, who worry that the resources they need  will be commandeered for someone else's benefit.

A Farm Bill Only Monsanto Could Love
Three provisions in the bill would make it more difficult to regulate the safety of genetically modified crops. Consumers fight back with a flurry of organizing.

We are living in times when the worry about resources, financial or ecological, is very real. And the Farm Bill, for all its inconsistencies and controversies, represents our nation's policy on these fears. As we seek to create a workable Farm Bill and a workable life, we cannot forget that the uncertainty of our neighbors will affect our own well-being. If we are going to be truly resilient, then we must be compassionate about the suffering of those around us, and we must seek ways, both through policy and through our daily individual actions, that will help to rectify this suffering.

That is simply part of being a community. And if we lose that, then we agree to a life of depredation for all and happiness for none, where only a few will survive, and no one truly thrives.

But if we can embrace compassion, then it becomes the foundation for true community resilience; where being a caring citizen and neighbor fuel a way of life where everyone has good, clean healthy food; where they come by it honestly; and where young agricultural students are able to plan a future where they can produce it freely and joyfully.

Shannon Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Shannon is the author ofRadical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, The Grassfed Gourmetand The Farmer and the Grill. Her newest book is Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover's Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. She is the host of Grassfedcooking.com and RadicalHomemakers.com. Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.

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This article originally appeared on Shareable.

Photos courtesy of Jeppe Hein.

Jeppe Hein, a Danish artist known for creating experiential art, has put an interesting twist on park benches by populating the town of De Haan in Belgium with his eye-catching “modified social benches.” The benches, which range from the super-comfy-looking to the seemingly unsittable, are intended to bring people together in unexpected ways and make them more aware of their surroundings.

While they look enough like traditional park benches to be recognizable as something you sit on, Hein’s benches have features that break the park bench mold: tight angles, slopes, missing pieces, loops, dips, closed circles and more. With their unusual shapes, the benches are conversation starters and people magnets and they add a fun touch to public spaces.

Of the benches Hein says, “With their modification, the spaces they inhabit become active rather than places of rest and solitude; they foster exchange between the users and the passers-by, thus lending the work a social quality.”

No choice but to sit...together.

Is it a gazebo or a bench? You choose.

A bench and slide, great for families and hipsters.

The tete-a-tete taken to a new level.

This bench seats many and orders space in the park.

The nap bench.

Cat Johnson contributes regularly to Shareable.net, where this article first appeared. She is a freelance writer reporting on community, culture, music and design. Other venues she's written for include GOOD, the Santa Cruz Weekly, Metro Silicon Valley, and No Depression. Follow her on Twitter at @catjohnson.

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Cards, television commercials, and print ads all trumpet a value system in which mothers look and act in narrowly defined ways, a saccharine world where a hardworking mama’s only wants and needs are a bit of recognition and perhaps a spot of chocolate once a year.

Shen is hopeful that the cards will be downloaded 15,000 times this year; a worthy target for a message in need of wider audiences.

But the reality bears little resemblance to the myth. According to the 2010 census, only 20 percent of households in this country reflect the traditional nuclear family norm, with two heterosexual parents and two children who are their biological offspring.

There are some folks out there who think there’s more to motherhood, and they’re issuing their own set of mother’s day e-cards to get their message out there.

Forward Together, an organization based in Oakland, Calif., recently launched their third annual Mama’s Day Our Way campaign to change the narrative around motherhood and families. Mama’s Day Our Way features an e-card series and outreach campaign designed to shine a spotlight on mamas often left out of mainstream Mother’s Day celebrations, including low-income moms, young moms, immigrant moms, single moms, incarcerated moms, queer moms, and moms struggling with substance abuse issues.

“I am the daughter of Chinese immigrants, raising my own daughters along with my partner and our dog Pumpkin” says Eveline Shen, Executive Director of Forward Together. “I know that if my kids ventured into the aisles at the neighborhood drugstore, they would not find images that reflect our multiracial, two-mom family.”

Radically readjusting perceptions isn’t without its share of hurdles. A May 2 article about the campaign in the New York Daily News generated a slew of negative comments that ranged from bafflement to outright anger.

“The message we want to send is that mamas need more than flowers or a box of chocolates once a year.”

Regardless of what Daily News commenters might say, the popular conception of motherhood no longer matches what’s out there. More than 80 percent of the 12.2 million single-parent families in the United States are headed by a mother. Mothers make up almost two-thirds of all women in prison. Nearly half of all lesbian women under the age of 50 are raising a child. And 1.7 million grandmothers are the primary caretaker for their grandchildren. Yet the dad-at-work mom at home with two kids is still the outdated notion held as standard.

And for all moms, regardless of where they come from, the challenges to raising a healthy family are legion. That’s why the work of Forward Together also seeks to address the structural problems facing moms throughout the country. One component of the campaign, for instance, involves putting pressure on members of the Senate to alter the comprehensive immigration reform package to protect the integrity of family units.

“The message we want to send is that mamas need more than flowers or a box of chocolates once a year,” Shen said. “They need access to health care, a living wage, safety in their homes and on the streets, and self determination over their bodies.”

The e-cards appear to have struck a chord. With greater media attention than in years past, Shen is hopeful that the cards will be downloaded 15,000 times this year; a worthy target for a message in need of wider audiences.

For more information on this campaign and complete listing of all e-cards, visit mamasday.org.

 

 

 

 

Corey Hill wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. He is the Membership and Outreach Coordinator at Global Exchange. Follow Corey on Twitter at @Newschill.

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"If it bleeds, it leads." Ever hear that maxim of journalism? If you want readers, go with the scary, gruesome story—that's what gets hearts pumping and grabs attention. But what grabs our attention can also scare the heck out of us and shut us down.

Remember, what we do and say doesn't just influence our friends, but also our friends' friends and our friends' friends' friends.

Scary news might "sell," but we can also feel so bombarded with the negative that our "why bother?" reflex kicks in. Fear stimuli go straight to the brain's amygdala, Harvard Medical School's Srinivasan Pillay explains. But, he adds, "because hope seems to travel in the same dungeons [parts of the brain] as fear, it might be a good soldier to employ if we want to meet fear."

So let's get better at using hope. It's a free energy source.

Hope isn't blind optimism. It's a sense of possibility—delight in the new and joy in creativity that characterizes our species. So let's break the good-news ban and become storytellers about real breakthroughs. (Below, don't miss my top ten go-to's.) I'm convinced that in the process, we will strengthen our capacity to incorporate and act on the bad news as well.

After all, it's only in changing the small stories that we change the big, dangerous story—the myth of our own powerlessness. Remember, what we do and say doesn't just influence our friends, but also our friends' friends and our friends' friends' friends (yes, research shows it goes three layers out).
That's power! Here are some recent items that have made my day.

1. Renewables ramping up. With news of Keystone and tar sands and coal-crazy China, it's easy to think that renewable energy is going nowhere, but we'd be wrong. Between 2008 and 2012, the U.S. nearly doubled its renewables capacity. And in the first three months of this year, 82 percent of newly installed domestic electricity-generating capacity was renewable. Plus, installed capacity of new solar units during the first quarter of this year is more than double that of same period last year.
   
   Globally, thirteen countries now get 30 percent or more of their electricity from renewable sources. And Germany—with cloud cover worse than Alaska's—gets 21 percent of its electricity from renewables. In 2010, Germany, which is slightly smaller in size than Montana, produced about half the world's solar energy. That could depress you, or, it could remind us of the vastness of untapped potential. In April, at the first Pathways to 100% Renewables conference in San Francisco, I heard scientists declare that there's absolutely no technical obstacle to our planet's reaching 100 percent renewable energy in a few decades.
   
   Abetting the process, the cost of renewables is plummeting worldwide—that of electricity from large solar power plants fell by more than half, from $0.31 per kilowatt-hour in 2009 to $0.14 in 2012.
2. Wind wows. Denmark's wind energy alone provides about 30 percent of the country's electricity, making it the world leader as ranked by the share of a country's electricity that wind power provides. And U.S. wind power? We're second only to China among the world's wind energy producers, with wind power equal to about 10 nuclear power stations or 40 coal-fired power stations.
   
   Growing up in oil-centric Texas, I would have been the last person to predict my home state's leadership. But in the 1990s eight utility companies brought groups of citizens together to learn and to think through options. By the end of the process, they'd ranked efficiency higher than when they began, and the share of those willing to pay for renewables and conservation increased by more than 60 percent. Apparently, the utility companies listened: If Texas were a country, it would now be the world's sixth ranking wind energy producer.
3. Cities, states, countries pledge to go clean: Eight countries, 42 cities, and 48 regions have shifted, or are committed to shifting within the next few decades, to 100 percent renewable energy in at least one sector (like electricity, transportation, or heating/cooling). In California, San Francisco, Lancaster, and San José have officially set their goal at 100 percent renewable electricity within the next decade. And if you're thinking, "Oh yeah, that's just California": Greensburg, Kan., set its goal at 100 percent renewable power for all sectors after the town was wiped out by a tornado in 2007.
   
   Colorado's target is 30 percent renewable electricity by 2020, a standard that's helped spur success—especially when it comes to wind. And Vermont's energy plan is set to get the state to 90 percent renewable energy in all sectors by mid-century.
   
   And whole countries? Iceland already gets 100 percent of its electricity from renewables—three-quarters from large hydro and 25 percent from geothermal. In Costa Rica, it's about 95 percent—mainly from hydroelectric (which it's working to diversify), along with wind, biomass, and geothermal. Costa Rica's sights are set on becoming the world's first carbon-neutral country in time for its 2021 bicentennial. Absorbing more carbon will speed it along, so Costa Rica's forestry-financing agency is working with landowners to plant 7 million trees on cattle and coffee farms in the next few years.
   
   Monaco, Norway, New Zealand, and Iceland are also shooting to become the first carbon-neutral country. And Ethiopia unveiled plans to become a middle-income carbon-neutral country by 2025.
4. Citizens clobber coal. Just since 2005, as part of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, citizens across the country have stopped more than 165 coal plants from opening and successfully pushed for the retirement of more than 100 existing ones. The campaign aims to retire one third of America's remaining 500 coal plants by 2020. And if you're not registering how important this is, consider that coal accounts for more than a third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
5. Forests forever. In India, ten million families take part in roughly 100,000 "forest-management groups" responsible for protecting nearby woodlands. Motivation is high, especially for women, because firewood still provides three-fourths of the energy used in cooking. Working collaboratively with the Indian government, these groups cover a fifth of India's forests; and they're likely a reason that India is one of the few countries in the world to enjoy an increase in forest cover since 2005.

And if you're not excited yet, try these two final tales:

Could Our Deepest Fears Hold the Key to Ending Violence?
Feelings of fear and powerlessness are driving the cycle of violence that surrounds us. To change that, we need to recognize that we need each other to thrive as individuals.

Close to home: Four years ago in Magnolia Springs, Ala., the conservative town government passed the toughest land regulation in the south. It's spending a quarter million dollars on a comprehensive plan to restore and protect its charming river from agricultural chemical runoff. "I'm a tree-hugging, liberal—I mean a tree-hugging conservative Republican! Which I know some people may say is an oxymoron," said Mayor Charlie Houser of this small town near Mobile. Brown pelicans are showing up again, says Houser, and he adds: "Cormorants up in the treetops ... Beautiful sight!"

Around the world: Three-fourths of Niger is desert, and news headlines focus on hunger there. But over two decades, poor farmers in the country's south have "regreened" 12.5 million desolate acres. In all, Niger farmers have nurtured the growth of some 200 million trees—discovering that trees and crops are not competitors but are complementary. The trees protect the soil, bringing big crop-yield increases, and they provide fruit, nutritious leaves, fodder, and firewood. Now young people are returning to villages in Niger, and school kids are learning to care for the trees, too.

Are you willing to step up as a solutions-news ban breaker?

Neuroscientists tell us our brains are "plastic," with new neuronal connections being created all the time, forming new "streambeds" in our brains that shape our responses to life. So isn't actively choosing what shapes our brains perhaps the most powerful ways to change ourselves, enabling us to change the world?

Facing unprecedented challenges, we can choose to remain open to possibility and creativity—not mired in despair. Surely, the latter is a luxury that none can afford. We can create and enthusiastically share a solutions story today, every day. It is a revolutionary act.

Here are my top picks to help you "break the ban":

Small Planet Institute
Yes! Magazine
Solutions Journal
Ecologic Development Fund
Handprinter
Sierra Club
ZERI (Zero Emissions Research Initiatives)
Your Olive Branch
World Future Council
OdeWire: News for Intelligent Optimists

Frances Moore Lappé is a contributing editor to YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. This article is adapted from EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want.

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When 250 workers were laid off by what was then called Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, they arranged a sit-in to protest violations against their union agreements. The second time it happened, they decided to purchase the now-bankrupt company and operate it themselves. The new company is a worker-owned co-operative called New Era Windows, which opens for business today.

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A house relocated from South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation stands in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by the author.

Last month, a new building joined the Washington Monument and the Capitol building on the National Mall. The small, run-down shack had previously housed 13 people, and it was brought to Washington, D.C., from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota to raise awareness about the critical need for housing on reservations around the country.

"It's very difficult to get anybody to leave Washington to see it first-hand, and until you see it first-hand, it doesn't have the impact," explained Thomas Boesen, a Washington-based housing lobbyist who was at the April 17 demonstration.

At 2.8 million acres, Pine Ridge is one of the largest Indian reservations in the country. It's also one of the poorest. Housing is in such short supply at Pine Ridge that multiple families are forced to cram into small trailers, and as many as 18 people have been recorded living in a single home.

North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp speaks with housing advocate Paul Iron Cloud. Photo by the author.

A group of 10 fair housing advocates from the Oglala Sioux tribe transported the house to the National Mall in a demonstration that was dubbed The Trail of Hope for Indian Housing. Throughout the day, curious tourists and student groups wandered by and snapped photos, and in the afternoon North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp stopped by to show her support.

"This is not a way that we would ever expect grandmas and grandpas to live," Heitkamp told a small group of demonstrators standing in front of the house.

The house used in the demonstration was a small, 52-year-old home that had two bedrooms and one bathroom before it was deconstructed and reconfigured so that it could fit on a trailer. With torn screens and crumbling window frames, the small gray structure was the first home built with federal assistance on Pine Ridge. After remaining on display on the National Mall for one day, the group donated the house to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian to be used in a future exhibit.

Red tape holds back the green

Indian reservations have some of the worst housing conditions in the United States, but not all tribes deal with the level of poverty and overcrowding seen on Pine Ridge. According to the Trail of Hope demonstrators, that’s partly because resources are generally not distributed among reservations according to need. The message that the Oglala Sioux brought to Washington is that more money needs to be allocated to the nation's poorest tribes, which don't have enough resources to meet their members’ basic needs.

Acquiring land isn't the problem on Pine Ridge; many families there already own property passed down from treaties. What they need is money to build houses. "We have three or four families living in one house," says Paul Iron Cloud, director of the Oglala Sioux Housing Authority. And those overcrowded living conditions affect everything from public health to education. "How do you think you could study with three families in one house?"

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Click here to chip in $5 or more to help us keep the inspiration coming.

Iron Cloud testified before nine senators on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on April 10 to discuss the barriers to housing development on Indian reservations. Housing funds are tied up in a tangle of red tape that forces reservation housing advocates to compete with other transportation and housing lobbies for money, he said. As a result, Indian housing is often overlooked.

The reconfigured house sits on its trailer on the National Mall. Photo by the author.

Nonprofit organizations and faith-based volunteer groups are increasingly stepping up on reservations to fill the void left by the federal government. One group that is working to improve housing conditions at Pine Ridge is the Oglala Sioux Tribe Partnership for Housing, a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1999 to help tribal members purchase homes. The Partnership helped to organize the Trail of Hope, and the group’s director, Emma "Pinky" Clifford, also sits on the board of directors of the tribe’s Housing Authority. In the 14 years since the Partnership was formed, Clifford says the group has helped more than 100 families to acquire homes.

But it’s never easy, and each home presents unique challenges. Clifford says she approaches construction and fundraising projects one house at a time, often using different strategies to finance each project. If an approach works, the organization will try to replicate it; if not, they’ll try something else.

As I left the National Mall, Clifford handed me a flyer for her latest project, a single-family home that she hopes to complete and deliver by July 2013. A solid foundation and parking pad are already in place, but nothing else. A lumber company from Maine is donating all the building materials, and others will be providing labor and appliances, but Clifford says she’s still trying to figure out how to add electrical, plumbing, and heating systems.

"We have hope," Paul Iron Cloud said, wearing a big black cowboy hat while sitting in front of the house as it stood on the National Mall. "Bringing this house to Washington, hopefully that will show Congress and the people that there is light at the end of the tunnel."

Mark Andrew Boyer wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Mark is a photographer and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in GOOD, Inhabitat, and Mindful Metropolis.

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Editor's Note: When this article was first published in the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine, we noted that marriage equality legislation had passed in nine states. In the few weeks following, laws passed in three more states—a rate that's hard to keep up with!—and we have updated the number to 12.

Photo by Kevin H.

In many areas, progressives feel blocked and on the defensive. But there are, in fact, far more open spaces on the political checkerboard than we often consider. The American system allows for political initiatives that can take the offensive across a range of scales and locations. Some squares on the board are currently closed, but others may be open for doing something interesting. A serious checkerboard strategy could lead to longer-term national solutions as well.

The city-by-city, state-by-state Progressive Era buildup to national women’s suffrage offers a well-known example of a checkerboard offensive. Another involved the state-by-state buildup of work and safety regulations prior to the New Deal. In more recent times, numerous places on the checkerboard have demonstrated how progress on social issues can be made as well, square by square, over time, even in a very conservative era.

Prior to 2004, for instance, no state in the nation allowed same-sex marriage. Today, less than 10 years later, same-sex marriage is legal in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Moreover, broader public opinion is slowly turning in favor of equal rights for same-sex couples. Step by step, further progress is all but certain.

Similarly, fed up with the harsh repercussions of the failed drug war, a majority of Americans now favor legalization or decriminalization of marijuana—and two states, Colorado and Washington, recently voted in favor of legalization. (Many more already permit the use of medical marijuana.)

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Click here to chip in $5 or more to help us keep the inspiration coming.

Just below the surface of public awareness, other important economic and environmental advances have long been developing in cities and states occupying different squares on the board. Although the national press rarely covers state and local issues, the advances include little-noticed progressive policies in support of cooperatives and worker-owned firms, publicly and neighborhood-owned land development, public power and internet delivery, new environmentally sustainable energy strategies, even public enterprise, including publicly owned health care facilities.

Gar Alperovitz on the Cooperative Economy: "I'll Bet My Life On It"

Numerous additional policies operating in various parts of the country could also be turned to progressive advantage and expanded over time—if there were a clear strategic determination to do so (and a lot of hard work). Among others, these include: municipal investing strategies, state venture capital investing, pension and retirement fund investing, move your money and bank transfer efforts, land and mineral revenues for public benefit, and municipal methane-capture efforts. On a larger scale, public banking efforts similar to the Bank of North Dakota and progressive health care reforms similar to those recently adopted in Vermont are being pursued in dozens of states.

Even more important—as the long developing pre- history of women’s fight for the vote, the long developing pre-history of the New Deal, and now the developing state- by-state changes in connection with same-sex marriage and marijuana all suggest—much larger national change is likely ultimately to build upon the experience developed by local and state work done now, square by square, across the national checkerboard.

Gar Alperovitz wrote this article for Love and the Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Gar is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and the co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. His latest book, What Then Must We Do? (Chelsea Green) is just out.

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Originally published on Wagingnonviolence.org.

One of Lopi LaRoe's designs that uses Smokey the Bear to promote environmental action. Image courtesy Lopi LaRoe.

Smokey the Bear thought he smelled a fire in the woods. But as he approached the clearing and saw a giant derrick jutting out into the sky, he realized that what his nose had picked up was the scent of hydrocarbons. It was another piece of evidence suggesting that the increasingly widespread method of oil and gas extraction known as fracking was poisoning the environment. He decided something must be done.

“This is Smokey waking up and saying, ‘Oh you didn’t do that to my environment.’”

At least that’s the way that artist, Occupy Wall Street veteran and environmental activist Lopi LaRoe sees it. But last week she received a letter threatening her with jail time and thousands of dollars in fines for enlisting Smokey to the anti-fracking cause.

In the fall, LaRoe created an image of Smokey that altered his famous invective “Only you can prevent forest fires” to “Only you can prevent faucet fires”—a reference to the phenomenon of flaming taps that occasionally occur near where fracking takes place. The adjustment seemed to her in line with the message of conservation Smokey has come to embody.

One of LaRoe’s designs that features Smokey the Bear. Image courtesy Lopi LaRoe.

“This is the radicalization of Smokey the Bear,” said LaRoe. “This is Smokey waking up and saying, ‘Oh you didn’t do that to my environment.’ Smokey wants to fight the corporations and protect the air and the water and the plants and the animals and the people.”

Her parody went viral. She began printing T-shirts at the insistence of friends on Facebook, but demand quickly surpassed those in her immediate circle of contacts. Soon she was packing Smokey in FedEx envelopes and sending him off to Australia and other far-flung terrains. There are also tote bags and patches with the Smokey meme available at LaRoe’s website. (The tote bags, she advertises, are “great for dumpster diving.”) LaRoe says she’s not out to become rich and the money she charges customers goes toward covering her costs so that she can keep spreading the message of faucet-fire prevention far and wide.

“It spread like wildfire,” she said, grinning ear to ear.

Not everyone is amused. LaRoe received a cease-and-desist letter from the Metis Group, which serves as legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service division. The letter informs LaRoe that Smokey, his character, and his slogan are property of the U.S. government and warns that she has until May 2 to halt the use of Smokey on her “products” and to stop distributing electronic copies of the meme. Otherwise, she faces up to six months in prison and a penalty as high as $150,000.

“Any time anybody uses Smokey’s image for anything other than wildfire prevention,” said Helene Cleveland, fire prevention program manager for the Forest Service, “it confuses the public. What we’re trying to do is keep Smokey on message.” Cleveland added that the 1952 Smokey the Bear Act takes the character out of the public domain and “any change in that would have to go through Congress.”

Despite the warnings in the cease-and-desist letter she received, LaRoe has not ceased or desisted.

Two other entities besides the Forest Service claim joint rights to Smokey. The National Association of State Foresters—a nonprofit organization consisting of directors of U.S. forestry agencies—and the Ad Council.

Remember “This is your brain on drugs”? Or the Indian weeping over pollution? They were the Ad Council’s handiwork. A nonprofit, it describes itself as a promoter of “public service campaigns on behalf of nonprofit organizations and government agencies” with a focus on “improving the quality of life for children, preventive health, education, community well being and strengthening families.” Smokey the Bear was born at the Ad Council, on the desk of abstract expressionist and Marx-influenced art critic Harold Rosenberg, who had a part time job there in the mid-1940s.

The Ad Council’s board of directors is a conflagration of representatives of the world’s wealthiest corporations, including such companies as General Electric, which announced plans last month to spend $110 million on a research lab devoted to the study of fracking, and finance giants such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. On its website, Citibank advertises an “extensive array of deposit, cash management and credit products” for oil and gas drillers, while a JPMorgan Chase subsidiary boasts its “Oil & Gas Investment Banking group covers the complete oil and gas value chain, which includes exploration and production, natural gas processing and transmission, refining and marketing, and oilfield services.”

LaRoe believes that those who claim to own Smokey “don’t care that I’m selling a few T-shirts. They’re out to crush the meme.”

Both the Ad Council and the Metis Group declined to comment for this story.

Despite the warnings in the cease-and-desist letter she received, LaRoe has not ceased or desisted. Instead, she enlisted the help of her own legal counsel, who fired back with a letter to the Metis Group on Friday. In it, attorney Evan Sarzin argues that LaRoe ‘s culture-jam appropriation of Smokey is permissible under the fair-use exemption to exclusive copyright ownership and chides the the Forest Service for attempting to infringe on LaRoe’s First Amendment rights.

Sarzin also points out that this is not the first time the Forest Service has sought to silence environmentalists for appropriating Smokey’s image. In the early 1990s, the Forest Service demanded reparations from the Sante Fe-based conservation group LightHawk after it used Smokey’s likeness in ads critical of the agency’s practice of auctioning off land to timber companies. (The Forest Service, as part of the Department of Agriculture, makes its land available for commercial use.) Unlike LaRoe’s Smokey, LightHawk’s black bear appeared angry and wielded a chainsaw. “Say it ain’t so, Smokey,” read the ads.

Smokey the Bear T-shirts are printed in LaRoe’s studio. Photo courtesy Lopie LaRoe.

With legal funds provided by the Sierra Club, LightHawk sued the Forest Service in 1992 for infringing on its freedom of speech. The court eventually sided with the plaintiffs, noting that “the satirical use of Smokey the Bear to criticize Forest Service management techniques is unlikely to cause confusion or to dilute the value of Smokey the Bear to help prevent forest fires. Thus the Forest Service cannot have a compelling interest in prohibiting such use.”

Sarzin also calls attention to the fact the Forest Service’s own research points to environmental degradation caused by fracking. A 2011 study published in the Journal of Environmental Quality by Forest Service researchers linked frack fluid to the death of 150 trees in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest. Despite their findings, the Forest Service is considering approving fracking leases in the nearby George Washington National Forest. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which opposes the plan, says it represents a threat to local wildlife—including the black bear.

“When we were little kids we were taught that there is this bear out there that wants to protect our forests.”

A report released last month by the the National Parks Conservation Association warns that fracking for oil is decimating the ecosystem surrounding Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named after the Republican president who founded the Forest Service. “Unless we take quick action,” the report warns “air, water and wildlife will experience permanent harm in other national parks as well.” Thus, Sarzin writes, LaRoe’s Smokey meme “is a message that the Forest Service should endorse.”

LaRoe hopes that by gaining publicity she can force the Forest Service to take a stand against fracking. In order to continue the fight, however, she says she needs the support of groups whose mission it is to defend civil liberties or protect the environment to provide legal defense funds—just as the Sierra Club did for LightHawk.

“This about more than me as an artist,” LaRoe said. “This is about everybody’s right to freedom of speech and a healthy environment.”

Her childhood memories of Smokey, she explains, are compelling her to keep raising faucet-fire prevention awareness despite the threat of jail time. “When we were little kids we were taught that there is this bear out there that wants to protect our forests. Smokey is our bear. He belongs to the people.”

Peter Rugh wrote this article for WagingNonviolence, where it originally appeared. Peter is a writer and activist based in Brooklyn, New York.

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Photo courtesy of Think Panama.

NHK Broadcasting, Japan’s equivalent of the BBC, contacted me last month, wanting a statement on the American public’s reaction to the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations.

A super-sized NAFTA, the TransPacific Partnership is a free-trade agreement whereby countries give foreign corporations rights and privileges to encourage investment and global business. The TPP was a major issue during Japan’s recent national elections, when thousands took to
the streets in protest. It was hard for the Japanese journalist to believe me when I explained that there is little awareness of the TPP here in the United States, because our media has hardly covered the subject.

The corporate powers granted in the TPP can override domestic laws on environmental health and safety, and labor and citizens’ rights. Not only that, but multinationals can claim that those domestic laws hamper free trade and sue member countries for millions of dollars. The TPP is
in many ways an attempt to revive the stalled expansion of the World Trade Organization.

At present, the TPP talks include 12 Pacific Rim countries: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and, most recently, Japan. Thailand and the Philippines have expressed interest, and other countries would be allowed to join the TPP at any time.

Although trade deals have potentially huge effects on the economy, environment, and food sovereignty of communities throughout these 12 countries, the TPP negotiations are being held in secret between unelected government officials and representatives from more than 600 of the world’s most powerful corporations. The United States has plenty of interests clamoring for the trade advantages of the TPP, while developing countries like Vietnam see the TPP as an opportunity for economic development.

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But the AFL-CIO, one of the few non-corporate and nongovernmental entities that have access to the text of the agreements, does not support the TPP in its current form because of implications for labor and human rights.

The talks are scheduled to finish by October of this year. Meanwhile, negotiators are lobbying Congress to grant “Fast Track” authority for the TPP. That would mean Congress couldn’t revise the agreements and could only vote “yes” or “no” to the United States joining the TPP.

Leaked documents show how extensive the reach of the TPP would be. It is shaping up as a corporate takeover of public policy that would impact safe food, sustainable jobs, clean water and air, access to life-saving medicines, education, even our very democracy. After 20 years under NAFTA we know the likely impacts for people and the environment.

Can a "Dracula Strategy" Bring the TPP Into the Sunlight?
A highly secretive trade agreement aims to penalize countries that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. Luckily, the growing opposition goes beyond the usual trade justice suspects.

In March, Citizens Trade Campaign organized a letter to Congress signed by 400 U.S. organizations outlining expectations for public involvement and calling for an end to Fast Track. It was signed by, among others, the Sierra Club, Doctors Without Borders, Public Citizen, the National Family Farm Coalition, and state trade justice groups including my organization, the Washington Fair Trade Coalition. Polls show the majority of Americans believe that offshoring jobs and NAFTA-style free trade deals have hurt the U.S. economy, so it’s likely that Americans would be opposed to the TPP too—if they knew more about it.

The next round of TPP talks will be held May 15–24 in Lima, Peru. An International Day of Action Against the TPP is set for May 11, International Fair Trade Day. TPPx-Border, a network of groups in the United States, Canada, and Mexico resisting the TPP, is organizing actions throughout the month of May and beyond, including webinars with Peruvian activists, a TPP action camp, and local community events. Visit TPPxBorder.org to find out how the TPP will impact you—and then take to the streets!

Kristen Beifus wrote this article for Love and the Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Kristen is Executive Director of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, which is dedicated to creating an equitable global trading system.

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A century ago, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie believed that Darwin’s theories justified an economy of vicious competition and inequality. They left us with an ideological legacy that says the corporate economy, in which wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, produces the best for humanity. This was always a distortion of Darwin’s ideas. His 1871 book The Descent of Man argued that the human species had succeeded because of traits like sharing and compassion. “Those communities,” he wrote, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Darwin was no economist, but wealth-sharing and cooperation have always looked more consistent with his observations about human survival than the elitism and hierarchy that dominates contemporary corporate life.

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Nearly 150 years later, modern science has verified Darwin’s early insights with direct implications for how we do business in our society. New peer-reviewed research by Michael Tomasello, an American psychologist and co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has synthesized three decades of research to develop a comprehensive evolutionary theory of human cooperation. What can we learn about sharing as a result?

Tomasello holds that there were two key steps that led to humans’ unique form of interdependence. The first was all about who was coming to dinner. Approximately two million years ago, a fledgling species known as Homo habilis emerged on the great plains of Africa. At the same time that these four-foot-tall, bipedal apes appeared, a period of global cooling produced vast, open environments. This climate change event ultimately forced our hominid ancestors to adapt to a new way of life or perish entirely. Since they lacked the ability to take down large game, like the ferocious carnivores of the early Pleistocene, the solution they hit upon was scavenging the carcasses of recently killed large mammals. The analysis of fossil bones from this period has revealed evidence of stone-tool cut marks overlaid on top of carnivore teeth marks. The precursors of modern humans had a habit of arriving late to the feast.

However, this survival strategy brought an entirely new set of challenges: Individuals now had to coordinate their behaviors, work together, and learn how to share. For apes living in the dense rainforest, the search for ripe fruit and nuts was largely an individual activity. But on the plains, our ancestors needed to travel in groups to survive, and the act of scavenging from a single animal carcass forced proto-humans to learn to tolerate each other and allow each other a fair share. This resulted in a form of social selection that favored cooperation: “Individuals who attempted to hog all of the food at a scavenged carcass would be actively repelled by others,” writes Tomasello, “and perhaps shunned in other ways as well.”

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This evolutionary legacy can be seen in our behavior today, particularly among children who are too young to have been taught such notions of fairness. For example, in a 2011 study published in the journal Nature, anthropologist Katharina Hamann and her colleagues found that 3-year-old children share food more equitably if they gain it through cooperative effort rather than via individual labor or no work at all. In contrast, chimpanzees showed no difference in how they shared food under these different scenarios; they wouldn’t necessarily hoard the food individually, but they placed no value on cooperative efforts either. The implication, according to Tomasello, is that human evolution has predisposed us to work collaboratively and given us an intuitive sense that cooperation deserves equal rewards.

The second step in Tomasello’s theory leads directly into what kinds of businesses and economies are more in line with human evolution. Humans have, of course, uniquely large population sizes—much larger than those of other primates. It was the human penchant for cooperation that allowed groups to grow in number and eventually become tribal societies.

Humans, more than any other primate, developed psychological adaptations that allowed them to quickly recognize members of their own group (through unique behaviors, traditions, or forms of language) and develop a shared cultural identity in the pursuit of a common goal.
“The result,” says Tomasello, “was a new kind of interdependence and group-mindedness that went well beyond the joint intentionality of small-scale cooperation to a kind of collective intentionality at the level of the entire society.”

What does this mean for the different forms of business today? Corporate workplaces probably aren’t in sync with our evolutionary roots and may not be good for our long-term success as humans. Corporate culture imposes uniformity, mandated from the top down, throughout the organization. But the cooperative—the financial model in which a group of members owns a business and makes the rules about how to run it—is a modern institution that has much in common with the collective tribal heritage of our species. Worker-owned cooperatives are regionally distinct and organized around their constituent members. As a result, worker co-ops develop unique cultures that, following Tomasello’s theory, would be expected to better promote a shared identity among all members of the group. This shared identity would give rise to greater trust and collaboration without the need for centralized control.

Moreover, the structure of corporations is a recipe for worker alienation and dissatisfaction. Humans have evolved the ability to quickly form collective intentionality that motivates group members to pursue a shared goal. “Once they have formed a joint goal,” Tomasello says, “humans are committed to it.” Corporations, by law, are required to maximize profits for their investors. The shared goal among corporate employees is not to benefit their own community but rather a distant population of financiers who have no personal connection to their lives or labor.

However, because worker-owned cooperatives focus on maximizing value for their members, the cooperative is operated by and for the local community—a goal much more consistent with our evolutionary heritage. As Darwin concluded in The Descent of Man, “The more enduring social instincts conquer the less persistent instincts.” As worker-owned cooperatives continue to gain prominence around the world, we may ultimately witness the downfall of Carnegie’s “law of competition” and a return to the collaborative environments that the human species has long called home.

Eric Michael Johnson wrote this article for How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy, the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Eric is a doctoral student in the history of science at the University of British Columbia. His research examines the interplay between evolutionary biology and politics.

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Young people participate in Seattle’s May Day march for immigrant rights. Photo by Brian K.

Despite the ominous speculations that appeared in many media outlets prior to the procession and a spate of conflict-obsessed coverage afterward, the largest May Day march in Seattle was peaceful and decidedly riot-free.

Thousands of workers, demonstrators, and supporters took to the streets of Seattle on a sunny Wednesday afternoon to participate in the 13th annual May Day march and rally for worker and immigrant rights. The conflicts with police being widely reported in the media took place at a separate, later event that proceeded from downtown Seattle to the neighborhood of Capitol Hill.

Two Seattle-based groups led the organizing of the march: the May First Action Coalition and El Comité Pro-Reforma Migratoria Y Justicia Social. “For the first time in decades, the U.S. government is truly addressing immigration reform,” said Nicole Ramirez, secretary general of the Filipino youth organization Anakbayan Seattle, at the afternoon rally. “And it’s due to years of persistent organizing by people like us, working with those in our communities, moving the national debate forward.”

Ramirez laid out the organizers’ specific policy requests: “We need to stop deportation,” she said, citing the 1.5 million undocumented immigrants deported so far under the Obama administration. She also criticized the use of E-Verify—an internet-based background check used by employers to determine workers’ citizenship—as well as the federal “Secure Communities” program, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to detain and deport undocumented individuals based on arrests for any offense, regardless of whether they are convicted.

A strong theme of unity was evident in the signs, chants, and slogans of the marchers gathered near St. Mary’s Church in Seattle’s Central District. “Immigration rights are human rights,” one sign read. “Unafraid, unashamed, united,” read the back of a T-shirt. Another sign declared, “This nation was founded by immigration.”

Dozens of police officers accompanied the march along its two-mile course—officers in vans, patrol cars, on motorcycles, on bicycles, and on foot—but there were no incidents of rowdiness or window-breaking. It was a peaceful gathering, as many demonstrators had hoped for.

“We came here to march peacefully,” said Carmen Miranda, a volunteer “peacekeeper” for the event, trained to diffuse any potential conflict within the crowd. “That’s the only way you get voices heard.”

Voices from the crowd

The events began with a rally near Washington Middle School at 1 p.m. Marchers gathered on a sun-soaked grassy playfield, listened to speakers and musical performers, and waited for the procession to start. At 3:30 p.m. the crowd began marching west toward downtown, a throng of thousands chanting phrases like, “Si, se puede!”—Spanish for “Yes, we can!”— “Education, not deportation,” and “Hey, hey, ho, ho, deportation’s got to go.”

Many of the marchers expressed a deep dissatisfaction with the current immigration system. “The current state of immigration is inhumane and hypocritical,” said Sakara Remma, a social justice activist who attended the event with her young son, Majestik. “Immigration reform has to have a more holistic approach, one that’s in the best interest of those affected by it.”

“We can’t have justice for all if we don’t have justice for immigrants,” said Nyongo, a social worker, who gave only her first name. “My parents are immigrants, and I’m here in solidarity with them and to show support for immigrants everywhere.”

Elena Dean, another volunteer peacekeeper, said, “Immigration reform needs to include everyone, no matter what. It’s not a political issue, it’s a moral issue.”

Children march with signs demanding immigration reform. Photo by Kristin Hugo.

Another recurring theme was the idea that families, not individuals, are the real victims of deportation. Mothers of infants are sometimes deported while their child is still being breast-fed, said Miranda. “Deportation tears families apart, sons from fathers, brothers from sisters, parents from their children.”

Pedro Gomez, director of the Washington Latino Borders Alliance, which is based in the nearby town of Bellingham, agreed. “We’re marching for our families here,” he said, “Every single person here is somehow and in some way connected to an immigrant, and we’re here to recognize that.”

Scrawled onto a piece of cardboard, one young woman’s sign read, “F--k weed—legalize my mom.”

It was fitting, then, to see so many families in the crowd—mothers marching with their teenaged daughters, couples pushing strollers along the throng’s periphery, and fathers holding infants aloft on shoulders.

Movements in collaboration

The first of May was a holiday in medieval Europe, where it was called Beltane and associated with rebirth and fertility. The modern holiday, however, begins with the nineteenth-century labor movement. That struggle came to a head on May 1, 1886, when more than 100,000 Americans staged a strike to demand an eight-hour working day.

A drummer performs at Seattle's May Day march. Photo by Kristin Hugo.

Yesterday’s marchers used May Day to draw connections between immigrant rights and other social justice struggles. “We silo ourselves in issues that directly affect our lives, but this movement isn’t about what’s happening inside our own homes,” said Jeff Hedgepeth, grants program officer at the Pride Foundation, a philanthropic organization supporting Seattle’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. “It’s about what’s happening in our neighbor’s homes, other people’s homes, all over the country. We need to support our allies in this fight for equal rights.”

Sweetwater Nanook of the Idle No More movement spoke at the event’s closing rally, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Seattle. “The work that was done today was not for us, but for our children, and the children of our children,” she said. “Our ancestors, our elders were not idle, and neither are we.”

Peter Pearsall wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Peter is an online reporting intern at YES! and a freelance science writer.

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This piece was originally published at the Huffington Post

Photo by Shutterstock.

The idea of fulfilling work—a job that reflects our passions, talents and values—is a modern invention. Open Dr. Johnson's celebrated Dictionary, published in 1755, and the word “fulfilment” doesn't even appear. But today our expectations are higher, which helps explain why job satisfaction has declined to a record low of 47 percent in the U.S., and is even lower in Europe.

Instead of thinking then acting, we should act first and reflect later by trying out jobs in the real world.

If you count yourself amongst those who are unhappy in their job, or at least have that occasional niggling feeling that your work and self are out of alignment, how are you supposed to go about finding a meaningful career? What does it take to overcome the fear of change and negotiate the labyrinth of choices, especially in tough economic times?

Here are six pieces of essential wisdom drawn from some of the best brains in the field.

1. Confusion is perfectly normal

First, a consoling thought: being confused about career choice is perfectly normal and utterly understandable. In the pre-industrial period there were around thirty standard trades—you might decide to be a blacksmith or a barrel-maker—but now career websites list over 12,000 different jobs. The result? We can become so anxious about making the wrong choice that we end up making no choice at all, staying in jobs that we have long grown out of. Psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this the “paradox of choice”: too many options can lead to decision paralysis, and we are like rabbits caught in the headlights.

Then add to this our built-in aversion to risk. Human beings tend to exaggerate everything that could possibly go wrong, or as Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says, “we hate losing twice as much as we love winning,” whether at the casino table or when making career choices. So our brains are not well calibrated for daring to change profession. We need to recognize that confusion is natural, and get ready to move beyond it.

2. Beware of personality tests

Many people are enticed by personality tests, which claim to be able to assess your character, and then point you towards a job that is just right for you. It's a reassuring idea, but the evidence for their usefulness is flimsy. Take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the world's most popular psychometric test, which places you in one of sixteen personality types. Despite its ubiquity, the Myers-Briggs has been widely criticised by professional psychologists for over three decades, partly due to its lack of reliability. If you retake the test after five weeks, there is around a 50 percent chance that you will be placed into a different personality category than you were the first time.

Moreover, according to Marshall University psychologist David Pittenger, there is “ no evidence to show a positive relation between [a person’s Myers-Briggs] type and success within an occupation...nor is there any data to suggest that specific types are more satisfied within specific occupations than are other types.” He advises “extreme caution in its application as a counselling tool.”

So don't let any anyone tell you what you can and can't be on the basis of a personality pigeon-hole they want to put you in.

3. Aim to be a wide achiever, not a high achiever

For over a century, Western culture has been telling us that the best way to use our talents and be successful is to specialize and become a high achiever, an expert in a narrow field—say a corporate tax accountant or an anesthetist.

But an increasing number of people feel that this approach fails to cultivate the many sides of who they are. For them, it makes more sense to embrace the idea of being a “wide achiever” rather than a high achiever. Take inspiration from Renaissance generalists like Leonardo da Vinci, who would paint one day, then do some mechanical engineering, followed by a few anatomy experiments on the weekend.

Today this is called being a “portfolio worker,” doing several jobs simultaneously and often freelance. Management thinker Charles Handy says this is not just a good way of spreading risk in an insecure job market, but is an extraordinary opportunity made possible by the rise of opportunities for flexible work: “For the first time in the human experience, we have a chance to shape our work to suit the way we live instead of our lives to fit our work. We would be mad to miss the chance.”

Ask yourself this: What would being a wide achiever encompass for me?

4. Find where your values and talents meet

The wisest single piece of career advice was proffered 2,500 years ago when Aristotle declared, “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.” And he would surely endorse contemporary research findings showing that those pursuing money and status are unlikely to feel fulfilled: the Mercer Global Engagement Scale places “base pay” as only number seven out of 12 factors predicting job satisfaction.

The best alternative, says Harvard's Howard Gardner, is to find an ethical career, focused on values and issues that matter to you, and which also allows you to do what you're really good at. That might sound like a luxury when there are long lines at job centers. But consider that in the 34 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the social enterprise sector, in which organizations strive not only to make profits but also to improve social and environmental conditions,is growing 250 percent faster than the rest of the economy.

So imagine yourself in three parallel universes, in each of which you can spend next year trying a job in which your talents meet the needs of the world. What three jobs would you be excited to try?

5. Act first, reflect later

The biggest mistake people make when changing careers is to follow the traditional “plan then implement” model. You draw up lists of personal strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions, then match your profile to particular professions; at that point you start sending out applications. But there's a problem: it typically doesn't work. You might find a new job, but despite your expectations, it is unlikely to be fulfilling.

Ask successful career changers how to overcome the fear and most say that in the end you have to stop thinking and just do it.

We need to turn this model on its head. As I explain in this video, instead of thinking then acting, we should act first and reflect later by trying out jobs in the real world, for example by shadowing, interning, or volunteering, testing out careers through experiential learning. Laura van Bouchout gave herself the thirtieth birthday present of spending a whole year trying thirty different jobs—a kind of “radical sabbatical.” She was manager of a cat hotel, then shadowed an Member of the European Parliament, and found that working in advertising was unexpectedly exhilarating.

But don't think that you have to resign on Monday morning to try this. Rather, you can pursue “branching projects”—what organisational behaviour expert Herminia Ibarra calls “temporary assignments"—on the side of your existing job. Disenchanted with banking? Then try teaching yoga or doing freelance web design on the weekends. Such small experiments can give you the courage to make big—and well-informed—changes.

Challenge yourself: What is your first branching project going to be? And what is the very first step you can take towards making it happen?

6. Discover a little madness

Changing careers is a frightening prospect: of those who want to leave their jobs, around half are too afraid to take the plunge. But ultimately, there is no avoiding the fact that it is a risk.

Ask successful career changers how to overcome the fear and most say the same thing: in the end you have to stop thinking and just do it. That may be why nearly all cultures have recognized that to live a meaningful and vibrant existence, we need to take some chances—or else we might end up looking back on our lives with regret.

"Carpe diem," advised the Roman poet Horace: seize the day before it is too late. “If not now, when?” said the rabbinical sage Hillel the Elder. Personally, I like the way Zorba the Greek puts it: “A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares to cut the rope and be free.”

It is only by treating our working lives as an ongoing experiment that we will be able to find a job that is big enough for our spirits.

Roman Krznaric is the author of How to Find Fulfilling Work, published by Picador on April 23, and teaches courses on career change at The School of Life. His website is www.romankrznaric.com.

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A woman mourns at a vigil for a six members of the Sikh community who were fatally shot in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Photo by LJLphotography.

The aftermath of the Boston bombings reminded me of 9/11—but not for the reasons you might think.

South Asian, Arab, and Muslim communities mourned along with our fellow Americans after explosions rocked the finish line in Boston. But we also held our breath for a second attack—not one caused by bombs, but by assumptions and accusations. And, at the same time, we looked around and wondered what, if anything, America had learned in the decade since 9/11.

The American people have subtly matured in their thinking about immigration and the trade-off between liberty and security.

Shortly after the Boston bombings, a tow truck driver at a Seattle gas station asked me where I was from. I’ve been a U.S. citizen for 13 years, but he seemed to be asking something unrelated to my place of residence. I told him I was born in India. His next question was “Did you hear about the bombings?”

Why that progression? Why bring up the bombings immediately after learning this? Was he questioning my allegiances, making some unconscious connection between my dark skin, India, and people who might bomb our nation?

I shrugged it off but was immediately reminded of something that happened at a gas station in Mesa, Ariz., shortly after 9/11. A deranged gunman shot at a Sikh man, in part because of his turban and beard, shouting "I stand for America all the way."

In the wake of 9/11, hate crimes hit Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities like a barrage of shrapnel. After Boston, there were fewer hate crimes, but still too many—enough to strike us all with fear and cause potentially lasting psychological damage. At the same time, the situation spoke of a subtle maturation of the American people in their thinking about immigration and the trade-off between liberty and security.

Just hours after the Boston explosions, Abdullah Faruque, a Bangladeshi brought up in New York City, was beaten up in the Bronx, called a “f--kin’ Arab,” and left unconscious with a dislocated shoulder. Two days later, Heba Abolaban, a Palestinian physician who emigrated from Syria, was out with her baby when she was punched in the face by a man who yelled expletives at her and accused her of being a terrorist. And though fewer incidents took place than did 12 years ago (at least as reported thus far), the sting of prejudice-induced hate felt just as sharp and chilling. Yet again, many communities were immediately deemed suspicious solely because of their race or creed.

Had the FBI relied on the same biases that plagued the media and Internet, the true perpetrators would still be unknown.

Just after 9/11, I started Hate Free Zone Washington, one of many organizations across the United States working to combat hate crimes against Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities in the United States. Within weeks, that work grew into fighting government policies and practices that gave an official sanction to bias and discrimination, like secret detentions and racial profiling.

Thanks to a decade of groundwork, our communities were better prepared this time—they were ready to coordinate with law enforcement to share concerns and information quickly and efficiently. President Obama and even the FBI warned the public against jumping to any conclusions about the ethnicity of the suspects. And yet the assumptions still bubbled up through the cracks of America’s consciousness.

Was the media to blame? The New York Post falsely reported that a Saudi man was a suspect in custody. They went on to splash pictures of innocent bystanders—high school athlete Salah Barhoum and his coach—whose only crime was watching the marathon. CNN incorrectly reported that an arrest had been made of a “dark-skinned male.” Internet “detectives” jumped on this race-driven bandwagon with pictures of alleged suspects, most of them with dark skin.

Had the FBI relied on the same biases that plagued the media and Internet, the true perpetrators would still be unknown. Apart from being discriminatory, those assumptions were downright wrong.

No amount of correction after the fact fixes the damage to real people and communities. Salah Barhoum remains afraid to leave his house because he fears for his safety. The Saudi national whose apartment was raided simply because he was a dark man running from the blasts has to live with the experience of prejudice. And all dark-skinned people have to fear whether they can ever be simple bystanders instead of suspects. Are only white people allowed to watch marathons, take pictures of landmarks, or carry backpacks without being suspects?

But in the end, I am most inspired—as I was after 9/11—by ordinary people who tried to make a difference by helping others and by changing the tone of the conversation. Bystanders carried bleeding victims away from the bombings. Nurses and doctors who were part of the watching crowd rushed forward to help, and one man in a cowboy hat leaped over a fence in order to rescue some of the wounded. Non-immigrant advocates began immediately circulating messages on Listservs, warning others not to discriminate or jump to conclusions and expressing solidarity with immigrant communities who might be attacked.

I’m also cautiously hopeful about the difference in how our government has behaved. While there were attempts by some senators to push for the suspect to be tried as an enemy combatant, these efforts were not successful. We seemed to have learned that swerving to the extreme by giving up due process on some cases ultimately hurts all of us. This time, there were no secret detentions or deportations. This time, the alleged perpetrator will be tried in civilian court. Meanwhile, attempts to derail the immigration reform bill—while not finished by any means—have failed so far. Many senators on both sides of the aisle seem to understand that good policies that protect both liberty and security are our best insurance against hateful acts.

Today, polls say that Americans are less likely to trade civil liberties for security. That may be because they understand that absolute security is impossible and that the sacrifices to our freedoms are too great. It may also be because we’ve learned that our communities and our country are resilient and filled with a hope that continues to trickle through even the darkest of times.

Perhaps we really are learning—though more slowly than we’d like—the lesson that is as true today as it was twelve years ago: when fear wins, America loses. And when we stand up together, as one community bound by the same hopes, dreams, and fears, we take one step forward toward that more perfect union.

Pramila Jayapal is the Distinguished Taconic Fellow at the Center for Community Change and a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Washington Law School. She is also the founder and former Executive Director of OneAmerica, Follow her on Twitter @pramilaj.

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