Create!

Along with direct action and other forms of resistance, a transformational movement must also have a constructive program that builds new institutions based on the values that the movement aspires to achieve. These may eventually replace the old systems. From small, worker-owned cooperatives to national advocacy groups, hundreds of thousands of people around the country are working to create democratic and sustainable systems that meet the basic needs of all people.

The Government Is Failing To Meet Refugees’ Basic Needs

July 13, 2024 Sophia Kelleher, Next City. Create! Community, Government, Human Rights, Refugees, Washington D.C.

In the days after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, the U.S. military evacuated tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans to U.S. military bases. But their assistance ended there. “The military bases that were hosting the Afghan families reached out to my family’s mosque, asking for volunteers to bring supplies,” says Yasmeen Zargarpur, co-founder of One Community Social Services. Despite its leading role in the Afghans’ devastating circumstances, the government only offered temporary shelter to those fleeing. My conversations with local organizations and leaders in the resettlement space across Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia revealed a clear pattern of government agencies slacking in sustainably supporting refugees and immigrants arriving to the region — leaving community members to fill that gap.

California Moves To Ban Forced Prison Labor

July 11, 2024 Giuliana Perrone, Inequality.org. Create! Abolition of Slavery, California, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Slavery

If you’re looking for a rare bit of good news, look no further: California is finally taking steps to abolish slavery from its constitution by banning it in state prisons. On June 27, 2024, the state legislature passed the End Slavery in California Act, teeing up a statewide vote this fall on whether to end forced prison labor in the Golden State. As of now though, California remains among the 16 states that allow the forced servitude of its prisoners. California’s Constitution, like the 13th Amendment, bans involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime. This new amendment would remove that exception, often dubbed the “slavery loophole.”

Chicago’s Unique Bike Giveaway Program Is A Win

July 6, 2024 Lucas Frisancho, Next City. Create! Bicycles, Chicago, Low Income, Transportation

When the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) launched its Bike Chicago program in the summer of 2022, the city began working on its goal to promote active transportation and target “mobility hardship” by injecting working-class communities with free access to cycling. Now, a report on the first two years of the country’s biggest free bike distribution program says it’s proven an “effective, cost-efficient model for getting bicycles into users’ hands for transportation” in disinvested neighborhoods. “First and foremost, it’s an incredible program,” says Pete Lauer, program manager at the nonprofit Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC), which promotes equitable and ecological alternatives to car-centric transport.

Union Jobs, At Your Fingertips

July 4, 2024 Stand, Portside. Create! Jobs, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights

Union workers make more than non-union workers, on average by more than 10%. For women, that differences is more than 20%. That’s a crucial pay bump for many working people, not to mention the job security, workplace protections, and earned respect that come with a union contract. These differences can be life changing. Wanting a union job is one thing — but finding a union job is another. Enter the Virtual Union Hiring Hall, a collaborative project between the Presidents’ Organizing Initiative (POI) housed at the Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council (MLK Labor) and Partner in Employment (PIE).

Lessons Of Desert Oases For Eco-Resilient Transformation

July 3, 2024 David Bollier. Create! Deserts, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Global South, History, The Commons

To the Western mind, the presence of lush oases in the middle of deserts is a strange aberration, almost a dream. What moderns fail to appreciate is that oases are actually deliberate human creations, socio-ecological examples of commoning. Colonial powers may see oases as a miraculous fantasy, but locals realize that their cultures of interdependence over the course of millennia have made oases possible, enabling them to collect and sustain natural flows of water in arid climates. Safouan Azouzi, a scholar of the commons, grew up in Gabès, Tunisia, where as a boy he lived within ancient traditions that sustain oases in the desert.

St. Paul Is Erasing $100 Million In Medical Debt

July 3, 2024 Melvin Carter, Next City. Create! Debt, Healthcare, Medical Debt, Minnesota, St. Paul

We all deserve the right to access life-saving medical care without being trapped by staggering costs that leave us unable to pay for our housing, food and other basic needs. Over the next year, 43,000 residents of Saint Paul, Minnesota will receive a letter in the mail telling them that their medical debt – the crippling hospital bills that have been hanging over their head for years – have been paid off. Using federal pandemic relief funds, left over from the city’s response to COVID-19, to erase medical debt for our low-income neighbors is not a move without controversy: Critics, including some residents and elected officials, have argued that dealing with residents’ medical debt isn’t the role of government.

Under-Resourced Neighborhoods Can Be Incubators For Future Entrepreneurs

July 2, 2024 Walter Mendenhall, Next City. Create! Chicago, Class Struggle, entrepreneurship, Illinois, Low Income, Youth, Youth Workers

In 2016, I walked into a school’s career day on the west side of Chicago and met a great young man. This honor roll student played basketball and was respected by his peers. But despite these wonderful qualities, he sold drugs to pay for the things he desired. He was one of thousands of young Black men in Chicago who have the ambition, intelligence and leadership acumen to become successful, legitimate entrepreneurs but have no idea how to find that path, let alone follow it. There are tens of thousands more like him in cities across the country. Some put their entrepreneurial drive and leadership skills to destructive, and illegal, use.

A Plea To The Next Government From Young People

July 2, 2024 Jadzia Tedeschi, DeSmog. Create! Activism, climate crisis, Education, Youth

Labour, which is likely to win the next general election, has just published its disappointing manifesto. While we should not look to the next government for an answer to climate breakdown, it is especially unfortunate that Labour is backing out of preexisting promises to provide adequate climate education. If the leaders of today cannot provide the far-sighted direction we need, let’s at least make sure those of us who are to inherit this tormented world have the tools to navigate it. As a woman in her twenties who has worked to promote mainstream climate action with the Climate Majority Project for the past two years, here are my thoughts on the kind of education we need in the coming decades

Putting America Back On Track: A 21st Century Public Rail System

July 1, 2024 Maddock Thomas and Adam Barrington, Public Rail Now. Create! Public ownership, Railroads, Report, Workplace Safety

As America grapples with the everlasting impacts of the derailment in East Palestine, OH., Public Rail Now and Railroad Workers United released their latest report entitled "Putting America Back on Track: The Case for a 21st Century Public Rail System." Authored by Maddock Thomas, a Stone Fellow from Brown University and recipient of the North American Rail Shippers Association scholarship, this report presents a compelling argument for transitioning the United States' rail system to public ownership. Drawing on historical precedent and rigorous analysis, it makes a compelling case for overseeing our rail infrastructure in the same manner as our interstate highways, inland waterways, and airports.

Popular Health Mobile Clinic Brings Health To Communities In Zambia

July 1, 2024 Peoples Health Dispatch, People's Dispatch. Create! Cholera, Health Care, Mobile Health Clinic, Zambia

The World Health Organization defines cholera as a “disease of poverty”. It thrives in conditions of poor hygiene and sanitation services, overcrowding, malnourishment, and weak public health services. A third of the Zambian population has access to basic sanitation services, while a quarter have access to basic hygiene services. With at least 60% of the Zambian population living in poverty in 2022 (up 5.6% since 2015), cholera is endemic, and from October 2023 to March this year, it killed over 700 people. Cholera, more accurately, is therefore a disease of inequality. Born from this deadly cholera crisis and its roots in social inequality, the Popular Health Mobile Clinic has assisted more than 3,000 patients since its inception in January this year.

Restoring Nature Is Our Only Climate Solution

July 1, 2024 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. Create! Carbon sequestration, climate crisis, Environment, Infrastructure

Climate change is a huge, complicated problem. Therefore, many people have an understandable tendency to mentally simplify it by focusing on just one cause (carbon emissions) and just one solution (alternative energy). Sustainability scholar Jan Konietzko has called this “carbon tunnel vision.” Oversimplifying the problem this way leads to techno-fixes that actually fix nothing. Despite trillions of dollars already spent on low-carbon technologies, carbon emissions are still increasing, and the climate is being destabilized faster than ever. Understanding climate change requires us to embrace complexity: not only are greenhouse gases trapping heat, but we are undermining natural systems that cool the planet’s surface and sequester atmospheric carbon—systems of ice, soil, forest, and ocean.

Why Housing First Failed In Canada

June 30, 2024 Laurence Braun-Woodbury, Canadian Dimension. Create! Canada, Decommodify, Homelessness, Housing, Housing First

Every day more Canadians are being pressed into homelessness. Shelters are overflowing. Tent cities are ubiquitous. Diseases more commonly associated with refugee camps have popped up with alarming frequency in inner-cities across the country. The numbers are devastating: up to 300,000 Canadians will experience homelessness this year—a substantial increase from the 235,000 who were homeless in 2016. Cities are scrambling to find solutions; sanctioned encampments, increased shelter capacity, forced removal by police. Nothing is working. It’s a crisis the federal government has been trying to solve.

Ensuring Low-Income Communities Get Their Share Of Green Energy

June 30, 2024 Erica Sweeney, Next City. Create! Clean Energy, Environment, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act, Low Income

Low-income communities and people of color are more likely to live in areas affected by flooding, poor air quality, and extreme temperatures, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And, these negative effects of climate change are intensifying. To help find solutions, the Justice Climate Fund strives to ensure that the communities that need it most benefit from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a federal program providing billions of dollars from the EPA for clean energy and climate projects. The Justice Climate Fund is an initiative led by the African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs and the Community Builders of Color Coalition, a national network of dozens of financial institutions and advocacy groups led by people of color.

A Practical Prescription For Taxing Our World’s Richest

June 29, 2024 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Tax the rich, Taxes, wealth inequality

Ever wonder why the divide between the world’s richest and everybody else keeps getting wider? Gabriel Zucman, one of the world’s finest young economists, has just produced a report that riffs on one key reason: Our super rich pay next to nothing in taxes. Just how close to nothing? This close: Over the past four decades, the world’s “ultra-high-net-worth individuals” have seen their fortunes increase, after taking inflation into account, an average 7.5 percent per year. How much annually have these rich paid in taxes? They’ve been paying, Zucman calculates, an effective tax rate “equivalent to 0.3% of their wealth.”

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