By Frances Moore Lappé

Cultures live or die not because of their natural endowments but according to whether their ideas sustain life. ("It's the ideas, stupid!")

Ideas either serve life or not. And unfortunately for our species' chances, our idea of democracy-our shorthand for the system we use to shape society and solve problems-itself is life-stifling. Accepting the idea that democracy equals elections plus a market economy, we do not question an especially peculiar notion: that a market driven by a single rule, that of highest return to existing wealth, can return benign outcomes for all. We cling to this nonsensical belief-that in a game of Monopoly all players win-even as it so concentrates wealth that it leaves almost a billion of us without the means to eat.

A legal battle over corporate claims to be treated as persons with accompanying constitutional rights has been going on for over 100 years in the U.S. At stake is the ability of corporations to use "free speech" and other rights accorded to citizens to exercise enormous power over the political process, and to intimidate citizens who challenge them on environmental and other issues.

Today was another amazing day of presentations at the ACE conference!....

Unlike other conferences that I'm used to attending, you don't have to choose from workshops at the Association of Cooperative Educators. There is only one track, and everyone is on the same one.

I actually ended up being very glad that it was arranged this way, else I might have missed out some very important information and stories.

At conferences it is always refreshing to meet great and inspiring people who are creating the change the world needs. Listening to the brass band on Saturday night and chanting "no bosses" was invigorating and refreshing. Thank you to all I had the pleasure of meeting.

San Francisco Community Congress: background and update

(EDITOR’S NOTE: A very interesting grassroots development happening in SanFrancisco: The San Francisco Community Congress.The goal is to “devise practical, locally actionable proposals to shape and direct future policy affecting the local economy and the provision of critical human services.”  Their mantra, “another San Francisco is possible.”  If the devil is in the details, then this appears to be the beginning of a premier Solidarity Economy project.

Our task is both to experience and to conceive the concrete, that is to say, reality in its fullness and wholeness.
--R D Laing, Politics of Experience

-Zizek, at #OccupyWallStreet

 
"Lost my job, found an occupation!"

- sign at #OccupyWallStreet

A core operating principle and some corollaries for the Occupy movement