How did American nuns move from the traditional confines of convent life to the social activism that has them under Vatican investigation for being too radical and feminist?  Blame (or credit) Vatican II in the early 1960s, which instructed Catholics to take their religion out into the world and make it relevant. According to Mary Fishman’s new documentary, Band of Sisters, American nuns eagerly took up the call to serve where there is greatest need. That work led them to seeing the causes, not just the symptoms, of injustice.

Going out into the world brought more than just a change from the black and white nun’s habit to ordinary clothing. There were intellectual, emotional, and spiritual transformations too, as the numerous sisters interviewed in the film explain. Many of the interviewees are old enough to have experienced the changes of role and attitude over the decades since Vatican II. Their testimony gives this film authenticity and gentle authority.

The work of Sisters Pat Murphy and JoAnn Persh is one example. Fishman shows them as they prepare to go out into a dark Chicago winter morning to hold a vigil outside an immigrant deportation center. They want the authorities to let them inside to bring support and comfort to the deportees. In successive scenes, we see that they eventually do get inside the center, even though it takes time, organized lobbying, and a change in state law. Their determined action achieves results.

The radicalizing effect of focusing on the physical world and the equality of all humans is most obvious in the scenes where we see nuns running an organic farm and environmental center, or presenting a cosmology that is as much indigenous as Genesis. No wonder they’re in trouble with the church’s patriarchy, even under a new pope. But you can’t put this genie back in the bottle—or the Sister of Mercy back in the cloister.

Valerie Schloredt wrote this article for Love and the Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Valerie is associate editor of YES!

Interested?

• No Room at the Inn? How Occupy Won Over Religion
  Religion is the means by which many imagine and work for a world more just than this one. Last year, Wall Street’s Trinity Church refused to shelter the movement; this year, churches and Occupiers are sharing a very different kind of Advent season.
• A Pastor, a Rabbi, and an Imam Walk Into a Book ...
  In "Religion Gone Astray," three leaders—and friends—from different religions take on violence, exclusivity, gender inequality, and homophobia in some of their scriptures' most controversial verses. What they discovered surprised them.
• Radical Relgion, an American Tradition
  Book Review: “Prophetic Encounters” reminds us that we are part of a long and rich tradition that is more than simply a series of isolated movements for social change.

Photo by Derek Bruff.

Undocumented young people in Georgia are fighting for access to higher education with support from the ACLU and a group of professors who have volunteered to teach college-level courses for free.

Georgia’s Board of Regents adopted a policy in 2010 that prevents undocumented ­students from attending the state’s top five public universities. The policy “is based on a misunderstanding of federal immigration law,” according to a letter from the ACLU to the Board of Regents.

Subscribe to YES! starting with this issue.

Georgia is one of three states that exclude undocumented students from full access to higher education, even when the federal government recognizes the student’s right to be in the United States under Department of Homeland Security regulations. The other 47 states either apply no exclusion policies to such students or require them to pay out-of-state tuition.

Students and professors protested the state’s policy at a March 6 rally on the University of Georgia (UGA) campus. The rally was organized by Freedom University, which provides college-level classes for students who can’t enroll at UGA because of their undocumented status. Named after the “freedom schools” of the civil rights movement, Freedom University was started in 2011 by a group of professors at the request of undocumented students. It operates on the principle that “you can stop me from going to a UGA classroom, but you can’t stop a UGA professor from teaching me,” said Melissa Padilla, a 22-year-old Freedom University student who also serves as a representative on the organization’s board.

Freedom University doesn’t receive official funding, but donations of books and money poured in from all over the country when the group was launched. Every week, volunteers drive students to Freedom University classes. Padilla says that sort of support, and the determination of the students, makes her confident that Freedom University will keep going strong as the legal battle over education for the undocumented in Georgia continues.

Chris Francis wrote this article for Love and the Apocalypse, the Summer 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Chris is an editorial intern at YES!

Interested?

• Housing Crisis on the Rez: Why Haul a Run-Down Shack from the Plains to DC?
  Tribal leaders trucked the battered old home to Washington to show the nation’s leaders what the housing crisis on reservations looks like in person.
• Why Sharing News About Solutions is a Revolutionary Act
  Scary stories of kidnappings and explosions lead our news feeds, but it's the good news that helps break down the myth of our own powerlessness.
• 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.

Click here to find out more and make your bid!

Interested?

• Why Sharing News About Solutions Is a Revolutionary Act
  Scary stories of kidnappings and explosions lead our news feeds, but it's the good news that helps break down the myth of our own powerlessness.
• Is There Inspiration in Your Media Diet?
  Video: At TEDx, YES! magazine editor Sarah van Gelder discusses the “mean world syndrome” caused by excessively negative news coverage, and describes how solutions journalism creates a more balanced—and hopeful—point of view.
• 9 Stories That Will Change Your World in 2013
  2012 was a year of superstorms, mass shootings, debt strikes, and the most spendy election ever. Here’s how last year’s most important stories will shape 2013.

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.

Like what you’re reading? YES! is nonprofit and relies on reader support.
Click here to chip in $5 or more to help us keep the inspiration coming.

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.

Interested?

• Would Smokey the Bear Get Arrested to Stop Fracking?
  When artist Lopi LaRoe used Smokey the Bear imagery to encourage anti-fracking activism, the Forest Service threatened her with a lawsuit.
• What If Your Kids Want to Get Political?
  Using young children as political props is problematic, to say the least. But when they do form their own opinion, it’s important to let them express it.
• Why Sharing News About Solutions is a Revolutionary Act
  Scary stories of kidnappings and explosions lead our news feeds, but it's the good news that helps break down the myth of our own powerlessness.

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.

Like what you’re reading? YES! is nonprofit and relies on reader support.
Click here to chip in $5 or more to help us keep the inspiration coming.

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.

• Would Smokey the Bear Get Arrested to Stop Fracking?
  When artist Lopi LaRoe used Smokey the Bear imagery to encourage anti-fracking activism, the Forest Service threatened her with a lawsuit.
• Gas Industry Report Calls Anti-Fracking Movement a “Highly Effective Campaign”
  A report intended to help the oil and gas industry squash the anti-fracking movement turns out to be full of useful information—and admits that much of what activists are saying is true.
• A Feel-Good Movie about Fracking? YES! Interviews Producer of “Promised Land”
  Chris Moore, who co-produced “Good Will Hunting,” has a new film starring Matt Damon as a corporate salesman trying to open up a small town to fracking. Here, YES! publisher Fran Korten gets Moore’s take on the ideas behind the film.

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.

Interested?

• Radical Investing: 4 Ways to Live on a Tight Budget
  "We have a lovely home, we eat well, we have lots of fun, we’re warm, and we don’t worry about how we’ll keep the lights on." Shannon Hayes on how she has managed to live a fulfilled and happy life without going broke.
• Married with Children? It's Not the End of Individuality
  Sometimes Shannon Hayes finds herself missing the days before she was a mother. But the circle of familial give-and-take love makes the trade-off worth it.
• 4 Lessons for Growing A Family Farm Across Generations
  Breaking our families into nuclear units has an ecological and emotional cost. Could the multigenerational farm remind us where to turn for a viable future?

Photo by Lenneke Veerbeek.

"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.

Interested?

• Survival of the ... Nicest? Check Out the Other Theory of Evolution
  A new theory of human origins says cooperation—not competition—is instinctive.
• 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 11 states and the District of Columbia. If you want to see how political progress is made, look to the local level.
• Boston Aftermath Shows Nation Less—Not More—Afraid of Muslims
  Despite the horrific attacks and media slurs that followed the Boston bombing, the behavior of ordinary people and elected representatives shows improved tolerance of muslims and other immigrants.

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.)

Like what you’re reading? YES! is nonprofit and relies on reader support.
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.

Interested?

• Boston Aftermath: Why the Tragedy Shows a U.S. Less Afraid of Muslims
  Despite the horrific attacks and media slurs that followed the Boston bombing, the behavior of ordinary people and elected representatives shows improved tolerance of muslims and other immigrants.
• Why the TransPacific Partnership is a Scary Big (Trade) Deal
  A super-sized NAFTA, the TPP gives foreign corporations privileges to encourage investment—privileges that can override domestic laws on environmental health and citizens’ rights. Here’s why we shouldn’t let it pass without a fight.
• Newly Released Tim DeChristopher Finds a Movement Transformed by his Courage
  Tim DeChristopher, who was just released from federal custody, is best known as the man who disrupted an auction of pristine public lands. But there’s more to his story than his role as “Bidder 70.”

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.

Interested?

• How to Fight Fracking and Win
  What started as one couple's fight against gas drilling in their local park grew into a campaign to save more than 700,000 acres of Pennsylvania forest.
• Why Fracking Can't Save Us
  The big money oil industry continues to say, "Don't worry, Drive on." But our planet and economies are saying something different.
• Why You don't Frack with John Lennon's Farm
  When fracking hits close to home, Mark Ruffalo, Debra Winger, Yoko Ono, and other big names find common ground with small towns.

Interested?

• How Workers Laid Off from a Chicago Factory Took It Over Themselves
  When their boss tried to fire them, the workers of Republic Windows and Doors occupied the factory. Now they own it as a cooperative.
• Hot and Crusty Bakery Workers Seal the Deal on Unionization
  Back in September, YES! covered the efforts of immigrant workers at New York City’s Hot and Crusty Bakery to form a union. After a series of twists and turns that tested the workers’ persistence, the shop is now set to open in December with a fully unionized workforce.
• Walmart Strikes Fire Up Low-Wage Workers, Despite Setbacks
  They were unable to put a dent in Black Friday sales, but striking Walmart workers brought the plight of low-wage workers to the forefront of the national conversation. Their action has already inspired historic protests by fast-food workers in New York City.

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.

Interested?

• How a Bus Full of Undocumented Families Could Change the Immigration Debate
  This summer, a courageous group of migrants risked deportation in a cross-country trip asking police, leaders, and the public to work toward humanization—not “Arizonafication”—of national policy.
• Idle No More: Indigenous Uprising Sweeps North America
  Idle No More has organized the largest mass mobilizations of indigenous people in recent history. What sparked it off and what’s coming next?
• An Oasis of Community and Support for Latina Moms
  In California, many Latina moms find themselves cut off by domestic responsibilities and language barriers. But with the help of trusted mentors, they’re learning new skills and strengthening their support networks

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.

Interested?

New NYC Subway Ads: “Love Your Muslim Neighbors”
After hateful ads implying that Muslims are “savages” were posted in New York subway stations, a Christian group launched its own campaign.

Barrio Defense: How Arizona’s Immigrants are Standing Up to SB 1070
Beyond the Supreme Court: For immigrant communities in Arizona and beyond, the struggle against draconian laws begins at home.

The Better Angels of Our Nature
Arizona's new immigration law offers a choice between standing up for human rights or looking away while they're eroded. Which side will you be on?

Tim DeChristopher reacts to his supporters upon his exit from the court house after the first day of his trial, 28 Feb 2011. Photo by Ed Kosmicki.

Yesterday, after 21 months in federal custody, climate activist Tim DeChristopher approached the pulpit at his church in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a free man. The First Unitarian congregation rose in uproarious applause, tears streaming down more than a few faces.

This Earth Day, we thank Tim DeChristopher for steering our movement toward the path of courage.

“It’s good to be home,” DeChristopher told the crowd.

During his sermon, he said that he had never expected to change the oil and gas industry alone. “But I thought that I could change people like you, and I knew people like you have a lot of power.”

The story of how DeChristopher landed in prison is well known. On December 19, 2008, he walked into an oil and gas auction in Salt Lake City, where the Bureau of Land Management was auctioning off leases to drill on public lands. When asked if he had come to bid, DeChristopher, somewhat startled, said yes. He took a paddle, labeled “Bidder 70,” and without any plan as to what he would do with it, entered the auction. But then, when he saw a friend across the room break down in tears over the potential loss of wild lands, an idea came to him. He began raising his paddle to bid. By the end, he’d amassed a total of 22,500 acres at a price of $1.8 million.

Tim DeChristopher visits with Salt Lake City bookseller Ken Sanders after his release on April 21. Photo by Beth Gage.

Although the Obama Administration later declared the auction illegal and DeChristopher eventually raised enough money to buy the land he had bid on, two of the felony charges against him stuck. After a trial delayed nine times by the prosecution, he finally received a two-year sentence in July 2011.

But that's the Tim DeChristopher story you already know. What often gets overlooked in this folk hero tale of a man who went to jail for his principles is that DeChristopher didn't want to be the only hero. And so he became one of the most consistent and strongest voices for direct action and civil disobedience in the movement, urging environmental groups to use personal sacrifice as means of becoming more effective.

By showing that people who don’t hold positions of authority can successfully confront injustice, his example helped to build the climate-justice group Peaceful Uprising, changed the tactics of the nation’s most established environmental organizations, and helped shape the mass climate movement, which turned out nearly 50,000 people on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in February.

The time to act is now

It’s important to remember how much things have changed over the past few years in the climate justice movement, which emphasizes the effects of climate change on human rights—particularly on the world’s most marginalized people. When DeChristopher began speaking publicly about his action, the most popular approach in the movement could be described as “Let’s wait until we’re big enough, and act then.”

DeChristopher saw things differently, and he wasn’t afraid to say so. He thought the movement already had the numbers it needed to succeed, if people would step up and act—with the belief that their actions would propel more people into motion and build the movement’s numbers. He began to argue that groups like 350.org needed to stop waiting and start using civil disobedience now.

Bidder 70: This Is What Hope Looks Like
A new documentary about Tim DeChristopher opens today around the country. Click here for more info.

"We hold the power right here to create our vision of a healthy and just world, if we are willing to make the sacrifices to make it happen,” he said at the 2011 Power Shift conference in Washington, D.C. “Mountaintop removal, and climate change, and all the other injustices we are experiencing are not being driven solely by the coal industry, solely by lobbyists, or solely by the failure of our politicians. They’re also happening because of the cowardice of the environmental movement.”

Shortly after the Bidder 70 action, DeChristopher founded the climate justice group Peaceful Uprising, or PeaceUp, with his friend from the University of Utah, Ashley Anderson. Their intention was to radicalize the movement by making civil disobedience more the norm than the exception. “Peaceful Uprising realized something was building,” Anderson said, referring to public understanding of climate change. But the group’s members believed that taking full advantage of that was “going to require revolutionary change.”

PeaceUp aimed to push people to sacrifice their own comfort and take bolder action for the sake of a livable future. That may sound a little austere, but the group managed to make it rejuvenating and joyful by cultivating a supportive community.

Before his imprisonment, DeChristopher continued to speak publicly about the need for escalation. While he didn’t berate 350.org or other climate justice groups, his message was clearly aimed at them. He criticized the movement for focusing on mass gatherings that resulted in statements rather than action.

A movement transformed

Little by little, DeChristopher’s message was catching on, resulting in a series of actions—each one larger than the last—that used civil disobedience. In April 2011, more than 350 climate justice supporters staged a sit-in at the Department of the Interior, and 21 were arrested. Among the participants was 58-year-old University of Utah librarian Joan Gregory, a founding member of Peaceful Uprising who remains active to this day. It was her first arrest.

The demonstrators stormed the building despite a line of guards attempting to block the entrance. Police threatened them with felony charges, but Joan refused to leave. “I knew I couldn’t get up, no matter what it was,” she said. “I couldn’t not take action at that point.”

Get the poster: We Have More Than Enough Power

According to Peaceful Uprising director Henia Belalia, the Department of the Interior action stemmed from frustration over the movement’s lackluster response to the BP oil spill in 2010, as well as Tim’s impending imprisonment. “People were outraged and heartbroken,” she explained, “and they were going to do something about it, rather than just sit with the pain.”

A few months later, in August 2011, DeChristopher’s message came to life in a monumental way. During two weeks of sit-ins launched by the 350.org-affiliated Tar Sands Action, 1,253 people were arrested while protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. It was not only the largest civil disobedience demonstration by the climate movement, but also the largest in decades for any environmental issue in the United States.

“Tim's act helped break civil disobedience out of the domain of radicals and marginal activist culture,” said Tar Sands Action coordinator Matt Leonard. “That openness is a big part of how we mobilized the 1,253 people that were arrested in the Tar Sands Action, and a part of the near-daily actions that have happened on the Keystone pipeline this past year.”

350.org founder Bill McKibben agreed, saying that DeChristopher “was and is a complete inspiration to all of us. His courage permeated everyone's thinking.” While McKibben’s current work does not revolve solely around civil disobedience—350.org has been building a successful divestment campaign over the course of the past year—the mass civil disobedience actions have demonstrated the campaign’s resolve.

In turn, those actions likely provided the inspiration for the Sierra Club’s recent reversal of its 121-year-old ban on civil disobedience. Soon after, club leaders cuffed themselves to the White House gates, again over the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Not just peaceful, but joyful

Peaceful Uprising’s emphasis on community-building is another testament to the lasting impact of DeChristopher’s work. The group strives to maintain an attitude of joy and resolve, with the goal of drawing new members and keeping them in the movement for the long haul by fostering a supportive, fun, community-centered culture.

As DeChristopher often said, “We will be a movement when we sing like a movement.” PeaceUp members have taken those words literally. At actions, its members can always be found singing upbeat, folksy songs, from “If I Had a Hammer” to “Have You Been to Jail for Justice?” Through song, colorful art like its giant paper mache puppets, and the deep sense of camaraderie its members share, Peaceful Uprising has been successfully building a nurturing culture.

Three Tactics for a Stronger Climate Movement
New Sierra Club policies on civil disobedience present an opening for radical groups to experiment with their tactics.

Maintaining a joyful presence is part of Peaceful Uprising’s strategy of merging resilience and resistance. Instead of getting bogged down in campaigns that do nothing but oppose unwanted things, PeaceUp goes a step further and tries to embody the world its members want to create. For example, group members select a “hot spot” and “cool spot” for every campaign—the hot spot representing an injustice members want to stop, and the cool spot representing a positive change that they want to create or bolster.

Peaceful Uprising also models how a small group of committed people with little background in activism can quickly become a powerful force for change. Members have gained experience in legal observation, media relations, jail support, and other elements of direct action, and now serve as a valuable resource for the local community by providing trainings in nonviolent direct action.

The continued influence of Peaceful Uprising in Utah and within the broader climate justice movement testifies to the significance of Tim’s closing statement at his sentencing in July 2011: "You can steer my commitment to a healthy and just world if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow."

And that is precisely what happened, which is why the celebration yesterday and today is not just about one man's release from prison. It's also his influence on the powerful movement that transpired in his absence.

Already, others are taking his place in prison. As Tim mentioned in his sermon yesterday, biologist and author Sandra Steingraber and two other activists were just imprisoned for 15 days after blocking access to a fracking gas storage site in New York to protect drinking water.

This Earth Day, we thank Tim DeChristopher for steering our movement toward the path of courage. With countless lives on the line, it's the path we need to take.

Melanie Jae Martin wrote this story for a special Earth Day collaboration between YES! Magazine and Waging Nonviolence. Melanie writes on environmental justice and transitioning into a sustainable future. Follow her on Twitter at @MJaeMartin.

Photo courtesy of Institute for Policy Studies.

Paying taxes, as tens of millions of us in the United States do every April, evokes many emotions—from gratitude for government programs that feed the hungry to disgust over paying for fossil fuel subsidies and unjust wars. But among a growing number of people, it is also evoking anger over an unequal tax system that favors the 1 percent over the 99 percent.  More and more of us are saying that corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy should pay their fair share.

The good news is that rising numbers of organizations and people are involved in struggles for a more just tax system.  Below we share the contours of three such campaigns, all of them winnable before the next U.S. president is elected.

Corporations: Daily newspaper headlines remind us that corporations are making record profits while their workers’ paychecks have been frozen for decades.  These same corporations complain that the corporate tax rate, pegged at a mere 35 percent, is one of the highest in the world.  And, corporations are lobbying furiously to cut that rate.

Among the things that these corporations don’t tell you is that, thanks to the thousands of loopholes their lobbyists have peppered throughout the tax code, large numbers of them actually pay little or no taxes at all.  Last fall, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) pointed out that 25 of the largest U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more than they paid Uncle Sam.  As a result, the corporate share of overall U.S. tax revenue has fallen to near its lowest share in over half a century.

Perhaps the biggest tax advantage that giant globe-girdling corporations enjoy is that the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and several other offshore “tax havens” charge little or no corporate taxes.  Thanks to clever accountants, such corporations can declare large portions of their profits in these countries with low tax rates and thereby minimize corporate tax payments to Uncle Sam.  In fact, U.S. corporations avoid paying an astounding $90 billion in U.S. taxes a year by taking advantage of these tax havens.  Needless to say, this also puts at a relative disadvantage locally rooted small businesses that have no such tax loophole.

The good news: A coalition of groups called the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Network is rallying support behind the Cut Unjustified Tax Loopholes Act. The bill, introduced by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), would significantly close these loopholes.

Wall Street: Occupy Wall Street was right on the money as it lambasted the casino-like financial activities of Wall Street firms, activities that helped crash the economy in 2008.  Indeed, a huge share of trades of stocks and derivatives in the United States are handled by so-called “high speed” trading firms whose sole purpose is to make money for corporate and individual clients via purely speculative activity that has nothing to do with a productive Main Street economy.

The good news: A set of groups in the United States has joined allies in Europe and around the world to call for financial speculation taxes to curb speculation while raising hundreds of billions of dollars to fund jobs, climate-saving innovations, public health, and the like. In the United States, groups as far-ranging as National Nurses United, HIV/AIDS activists, and climate justice groups have come together behind such a tax, often called a Robin Hood tax.  In early April, activists dressed as polar bears joined others clad in the Robin Hood green to protest a meeting of financial officials in Washington. This is hardly a pipe dream.  Citizen pressure has compelled eleven European Union nations to agree to initiate such a tax as early as 2014.

Individuals: The top tax rate on individuals was lowered from 91 percent under President Eisenhower to a mere 35 percent under George W. Bush.  With pressure from unions and other groups, the U.S. Congress pushed it back up to 39.6 percent for the top 1 percent in early January 2013.  Yet, among the richest U.S. citizens who still make out like bandits are the CEOs of the largest firms.  Thanks to yet another outrageous and gaping tax loophole, corporations can deduct CEO pay over $1 million as long as they can claim it is performance-based—something that it turns out is quite easy to do.  Hence, there is no real check on today’s staggering pay packages that offer CEOs, on average, more than 380 times their average worker’s pay.

The good news: A number of unions and social justice groups are rallying together to close this tax loophole on CEO pay.  Even Senator John McCain favors reducing this perverse ratio.  And, there is an important recent precedent for such action: In Obama’s first term, both the bank bailout and the health care reform legislation included a $500,000 cap on pay deductibility with no performance pay exemptions.

Bottom line: Each of these three fights is winnable as public outrage grows, and as other revenue-hungry governments point the way to sensible tax reform.  To create decent jobs and thriving Main Streets, our local, state and federal governments need revenue.  A fair tax system can deliver that with no cuts in vital government programs.  The United States is not broke; its rules and tax system are simply unfair.

John Cavanagh and Robin Broad wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.

Robin is a Professor of International Development at American University in Washington, D.C. and has worked as an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Congress. John is director of the Institute for Policy Studies, and is co-chair (with David Korten) of the New Economy Working Group. They are co-authors of three books and numerous articles on the global economy, and have been traveling the country and the world for their project Local Dreams: Finding Rootedness in the Age of Vulnerability.

Interested?

• In EU Parliament, a Landslide Vote for “Robin Hood Tax”
  Eleven countries in Europe hope to raise billions of Euros through a tiny tax on financial speculation.
• Nurses Fight for a Dose of Tax Justice
  Before there was Occupy, thousands of nurses were already taking on Wall Street to demand a financial transaction tax.
• Do You Pay Your Taxes? Bank of America Doesn’t
  The latest from a growing international movement to make corporate tax dodgers pay … so public services don’t have to.

Goldman Prize recipient Nohra Padilla at a recycling facility. Photo by the Goldman Prize.

There is a growing global movement to significantly reduce the amount of trash we produce as communities, cities, countries and even regions. It’s called the zero-waste movement, and it received a major boost this week as two of its leaders were awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Nohra Padilla and Rossano Ercolini are two of the winners of this year’s Goldman Prize, which awards $150,000 to each of six grassroots environmentalists who have achieved great impact, often against great odds. On the surface, Padilla and Ercolini seem to have little in common. Padilla is a grassroots recycler—also known as a waste picker—from the embattled city of Bogotá, Colombia. Ercolini is an elementary school teacher from the rustic farmlands of Capannori, Italy.

Though their experiences are different, they share a common cause: organizing to reduce the amount of trash—everything from cans and bottles to cell phones and apple cores—that ends up buried in landfills or burned in incinerators.

What is zero waste?

Here in the United States zero waste is often thought of as a lifestyle choice, if it’s thought of at all. Blogs like Zero Waste Home and The Clean Bin Project attract a readership of thousands through tips on how to buy less, reuse more, and recycle and compost in the home. The popularity of these projects, along with the success of Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, show a growing interest in reducing what we throw into dumpsters.

Zero waste systems are designed with the goal of eliminating the practice of sending trash to landfills and incinerators.

Padilla and Ercolini’s stories show that zero waste is not only a personal choice, but also an organized system that works at multiple levels including the community, municipality, nation, and region. Zero waste systems include:

• composting, recycling, reuse, and education on how to separate materials into these categories;
• door-to-door collection of recyclable and compostable stuff; swap meets, flea markets or freecycle websites to exchange reuseable goods and encourage people to buy less;
• policy change, including bans on incineration and single-use plastic bags, and subsidies and incentives for recycling;
• regulation of corporations to require them to buy back and recycle their products once they are used by consumers (glass soda bottles and tires are examples of products subject to this regulation in some countries).

Zero waste systems are designed with the goal of eliminating the practice of sending trash to landfills and incinerators. Not only is this possible, it’s already beginning to happen. Ercolini’s hometown of Capannori, Italy, has already achieved 82 percent recycling and reuse and is on track to bring that figure to 100 percent by 2020.

Taking on Europe’s incineration industry

Rossano Ercolini is an elementary school teacher. He began organizing against incinerators in the 1970s, when he learned of a plan to build one in Capannori. Concerned for the health of his students, Ercolini began a campaign to educate his community on the dangers of incineration, including how the burning of garbage releases particulates linked to asthma and other respiratory problems.

Rossano Ercolini. Photo by Goldman Prize.

Over the course of the next 30 years, Ercolini led a David-versus-Goliath struggle, with education as his slingshot. In the 1990s, waste incineration was embraced by the Italian government as well as by big environmental organizations, all of whom bought into the premise that it was a safe and effective technology. Big business and the mafia also supported incineration because of the 20- to 30-year lucrative contracts and large government investments it involved.

The conjunction of economic and political interests behind incineration left citizens alone, not only to fight against incineration but also to develop sustainable alternatives. Ercolini worked for several years as a grassroots educator, inviting scientists and waste experts to give workshops to residents on the health effects of incineration and potential alternatives.

As a result, when the residents of Capannori succeeded in defeating the incinerator proposal, they also had gained the knowledge necessary to develop a better way of handling garbage. Ercolini himself was tapped to lead a local, publicly owned waste management company and began implementing a door-to-door waste collection system that maximized the quantity and quality of the recyclable materials recovered.

Soon after, Capannori became the first Italian municipality to declare a zero waste goal for 2020. Since then, Ercolini has helped to defeat 50 proposed incinerators and has also helped the zero waste movement to spread across Italy. Thanks to the Italian network Legge Rifiuti Zero, or the Zero Waste Alliance, and with the support of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, there are now 117 zero waste municipalities in Italy, with a population of about 3 million people.

“Incineration is no longer wanted or needed in these areas,” Ercolini says. “Instead, they have established comprehensive recycling and composting systems guided by zero waste goals. This has helped improve community health and has sparked strong collaborations between communities and local governments.”

Grassroots recyclers unite

Nohra Padilla is a third generation recycler. For decades her family has survived by salvaging plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper scraps, and the like from dumps, curbside trash cans, and collection centers. They made a living by reselling these materials to junk shops and also to businesses, which used them as raw material to create new products ranging from blue jeans to paper.

In the 1980s, Padilla began organizing her fellow recycling workers, creating the first grassroots recycler cooperative in Bogotá. Since then she has helped to form the Asociación de Recicladores de Bogotá, or Bogotá Recyclers Association, where she now serves as executive director. The association includes 24 cooperatives representing 3,000 people. She also played an important role in forming and leading Colombia’s National Recyclers Association.

“Grassroots recycling is a key component of a zero waste system,” Padilla says. Through their network of cooperatives, grassroots recyclers in Bogotá recover 20 to 25 percent of all material thrown away by city residents. This amounts to about 100 times more recyclable material than is collected by the city’s large private recycling companies.

Padilla has shown how recycling can incorporate workers into unionized labor, with a clear agenda to reduce trash and carbon emissions.

In March the association won a milestone victory: Grassroots recyclers are now city employees. They will be paid $48 per ton of material they deliver to collection centers, and will be eligible for government pensions and health coverage.

“After years of battling for recognition from the Bogotá government, we will finally be treated as dignified workers and paid just like any large company would be,” Padilla says. “I believe this is a victory that can be replicated across Latin America.”

Padilla has achieved this success in the face of powerful political opponents, a violent environment for worker organizing, and climate subsidies that cut recyclers out of the picture. In 2009, for example, the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism awarded carbon credits to the Doña Juana landfill gas project. This project threatened the livelihoods of Bogotá’s 21,000 informal recyclers by making it more profitable to landfill waste than to recycle it, and by limiting access to recyclable materials.

Padilla and the Grassroots Recyclers Association worked to mitigate the impact of the project, but faced many challenges in making sure that their community benefits agreement was implemented. In contrast to large landfills like Doña Juana, Padilla and the association have created infrastructure to recycle waste instead of bury it. They raised nearly two million dollars, about 75 percent from outside funds and 25 percent co-financed by the association, to build the biggest grassroots-run recycling center in Latin America.

A future without landfills

The stories of these two organizers show how zero waste movements from around the world share common problems and goals, as well as a need to confront powerful opponents with a vested interest in the business of trash.

Both stories also demonstrate the potential of zero waste organizing to bring people together across issues and sectors. For example, Ercolini has organized at the intersection of food sovereignty and trash reduction, advocating for a “Zero Miles, Zero Waste” approach to promoting local food. Meanwhile, Padilla has shown how zero waste approaches, and recycling in particular, can incorporate previously excluded workers into unionized labor, with a clear agenda to reduce trash and carbon emissions.

Padilla and Ercolini’s work has created a model for building viable zero waste alternatives to landfills and incinerators. The struggles of the Colombian recyclers’ movement, and the Bogotá Recyclers Association in particular, serve as an inspiration to recyclers throughout Latin America and beyond.

Meanwhile, the example of the Zero Waste network in Italy is being copied in many other places in Europe, decreasing the popularity of and need for incineration and sparking the creation of a continent-wide organization that advocates for zero waste.

Interested?

• 10 Tips for a Zero-Waste Household
  A year’s worth of solid waste from Bea Johnson’s home fits in a quart-sized jar. Here's how you can reduce yours.
• Four Steps to Less Wasteful Communities
  The individual actions we take to reduce waste are important. But to stem the avalanche of stuff, we also need system-wide solutions.
• Waste Not: Seattle's Road to Zero Trash
  There’s simply no room for waste in a carbon neutral city. Seattle has a plan to cut its contribution to landfills—and it’s working.