Getting Inspired at Bioneers

There is so much concentrated hope in one weekend at Bioneers, it can get a person like me and thousands of other “reverent, sane people” (a.k.a. environmentalists – Caroline Casey) through the rest of the year.  Here are just a smattering of the amazing things I learned about this weekend:

• restoration on the Loess Plateau in China (John Liu)
• the ways Google Earth is being used to protect coral reefs and indigenous Amazonian lands (Rebecca Moore)
• the design of churches as a metaphoric representation of birth, but administered and controlled by men (Gloria Steinem)
• the Wampanoag had a prophecy, now being realized, that invaders would take their language from them but then help restore their language to them much later (Nitana Hicks)
• fungus is smarter than us, and can do almost anything, from cleaning oil spills to designing transit systems to curing cancer (Paul Stamets)
• slavery is the basis for the modern food production mindset; the first national Food Day is this October 24th (Anim Steel)
• sometimes the best way to solve problems is to make them bigger – expand the parameters; solar PV on just 3% of existing buildings in the US would replace all the energy we now get from coal (Amory Lovins)
• we need to think about intergenerational justice: fairness in the ways that living generations interact with those that will follow us (David Orr)
• almost all of the commercially raised bees in the US meet and mingle in California’s central valley during the couple of weeks that the almond orchards are blooming (the film Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?)
• restoring the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of old-growth cultures,  and this amazing image (Melissa K. Nelson)
• if the history of life on Earth were one calendar year, there wasn’t any sex until September 17th, and fungi got to land a week before plants did in mid-November (Dayna Baumeister)
• a democratically-elected Women’s Parliament was convened in 2009 in India, the world’s largest democracy (Pam Rajput)
• “Co-operators are standing by!” (Caroline Casey)

There was so much else, in the plenary sessions, in the afternoon workshops, and else-when.  I was on a panel called “Education in Action: Leveraging Higher Education for Sustainability,” moderated by Anthony Cortese of Second Nature. In case you missed it, Bioneers sends this:

 If you weren’t able to join us in California this past weekend, or catch the live webcast of the conference, check out archived videos of all three days by clicking here. You can also watch Kenny’s Bioneers 3.0 presentation referenced in the video above by clicking here.

and

There is as much cause for hope as for horror. As David Orr said, “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.”

It’s all alive.  It’s all intelligent.  It’s all connected.  It’s all relatives.

Occupied Lands

I’m mostly hopeful about the promise of the “Occupy” movement.   One of the oft-reported weaknesses of the movement is the lack of a unified message.  But this criticism overlooks the essence of the thing: all of these varied concerns have sprouted from the same root.  Where the less-thoughtful of the media see a bunch of different demands from a disorderly gathering of unkempt kids, I hear varied perspectives on the same core issue.

One unifying slogan – “Human Needs over Corporate Greed” – seems to encompass the bulk of the message.  But not everyone understands immediately that human needs include the long-term vitality of ecosystems (and as little climate destabilization as can be obtained at this late date), health maintenance and health care (not just treating the sick, but providing adequate nutrition, clean air and clean water to all), access to educational opportunities (without being tied into debt) and a commitment to justice and true democracy.

I think, I hope, that this movement is a demand for a NEW SYSTEM in which people can be assured opportunities to do all the work that so needs doing, and a system where their needs will be met while doing it.  It’s okay that we don’t know what this system will look like yet.  What’s clear, what’s being protested, are the things that are most actively blocking the chance for something new to grow.

And already, within the movement, are the critiques.  These are valuable.  These are distracting, yes, but we ignore them at our peril.  As Frank Herbert said, “A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”  One of the most important considerations has to do with indigenous perspectives on the name of the movement:

What “Wall Street” and the U.S. have become — an imperial-colonial power over the world’s economics and the laws that protect it — is a direct legacy of the fraud and violence committed against Native nations.

Perhaps those who now claim to OCCUPY WALL STREET in the name of reforming America’s economy could remember their history and call it something else (see Racialicious’ post for more discussion of the importance of language in opposition). Wall Street is, after all, already an occupied territory.

As are all of U.S. land “holdings” in northern America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean.

Decolonize the opposition!

(especially now that it is OCCUPYING L.A., Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago….)

via Tequila Sovereign: Manna-hata.

Perhaps the movement will find a new and better name as it develops.  I hope that the thoughtfulness, the questioning, is retained as essential to the movement’s well-being.  The importance of the core unifying principle should provide the coherence to prevent disagreements from becoming faultlines.

The people in power (and no, I don’t so much mean elected officials, I mean unaccountable power that comes from concentrated wealth, and the commercial-funded media mouthpieces for such power) want to ridicule what is happening.  They don’t perceive that this is the birth of something new; they only see it as opposing the status quo (which it is), and therefore they link it to older, more familiar terms that were seen as opposition to capitalism (e.g. communism or socialism).  But all of those bear the same underlying structure – the same genes as capitalism - for centralization, domination and short-term thinking.  My hope is that the new generation of activists is a movement away from those old systems of thought.   It hasn’t yet matured into an -ism, and with luck, foresight and courage it may never do so.

I won’t claim to know where this movement is going.  But just the choice speak out, to ask our civilization to change course at all from our headlong rush to ecological and cultural collapse is an improvement, a step away from the wrong direction that just might lead to steps in the right direction.

Save the Knoll

A local site in Santa Cruz is in dispute. Remains attributed to the native Ohlone tribe have been found, with the site dating back about 6000 years. Local Ohlone heroine Ann Marie Sayers, along with local archaeologists, anthropologists and community members, are petitioning the city government to respect the sacred nature of the site and halt “development” work there.

About the Knoll | Save the Knoll - activist site with online petition

Ancient Ohlone Village and Burial Site Uncovered in Santa Cruz - news article