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.

How Bike Lanes Slow Drivers And Save Lives

November 5, 2024 Maylin Tu, Next City. Create! Bicycle Lanes, Bikes, Road Safety, Transportation

In 2022, 1,360 people in the U.S. died preventable deaths while riding a bike. One of the most deadly, and most common, types of bike crashes is known as a right hook: A driver turns right directly into the path of a cyclist going straight through an intersection, hitting them or causing them to crash. Researchers at Rutgers University wanted to test if installing bike lanes at an intersection could reduce vehicle speeds, particularly for drivers turning right. Using chalk paint spray, traffic cones and plastic bollards, they installed temporary bike lanes near an intersection in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

The Globalized, Industrialized Food System Is Destroying The World

November 4, 2024 Helena Norberg-Hodge, Counter Punch. Create! climate crisis, Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Local Economies

We can thank small farmers, environmentalists, academic researchers, and food and farming activists for advancing ecologically sound food production methods. Agroecology, holistic resource management, permaculture, and other methods can address many of the global food system’s worst impacts, including biodiversity loss, energy depletion, toxic pollution, food insecurity, and massive carbon emissions. These inspiring testaments to human ingenuity and goodwill have two things in common: They involve smaller-scale farms adapted to local conditions and depend more on human attention and care than energy and technology.

Bioregional Fibersheds And New Fashion Commons

November 3, 2024 David Bollier. Create! Commons, Fashion, Sustainability

Look behind the glitz and glamour of global fashion, and you will find an ecologically harmful, anti-social industry largely unable to shed its capitalist dynamics. Its factories generate huge amounts of pollution and rely on underpaid, abused sweatshop labor. Fast fashion fills up landfills with mountains of cheap clothing discarded after a few uses. To keep consumption and sales going, fashion's relentless marketing machine peddles fantasies of luxury, rail-thin bodies, and sex appeal.

Claudia Sheinbaum De-Privatizes Two Major Oil And Energy Companies

November 2, 2024 Pablo Meriguet, People's Dispatch. Create! Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Big Oil, Claudia Sheinbaum, De-privatize, Energy, Mexico

On October 30, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum made a very clear anti-neoliberal gesture in her morning press conference: the de-privatization of two emblematic Mexican energy companies. Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) will now be fully controlled by the federal government. The government also signed a decree for the Mexican State to regain full rights over passenger railroads. This was achieved through a constitutional reform approved by Congress, in which MORENA has a majority. Although Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Sheinbaum’s predecessor) sent the proposal several weeks ago, the current president takes the most important credit for having concluded the process.

Co-Op Rhody Introduces Equity Into Cannabis-Based Business Model

November 2, 2024 Malikia Johnson, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cannabis, Community, Cooperatives, Marijuana, Racism

Co-op Rhody is a grassroots coalition of worker-entrepreneurs and organizers from local groups such as UFCW Local 328, Reclaim RI, and Break the Cycle Cooperative Hub. It also includes national cooperative and industry specialists who share a commitment to the vision of a worker-owned economy in Rhode Island. We had a conversation with Co-op Rhody members Andre Dev, David-Allen “Bear” Sumner Sr., and Emma Karnes discussing their journeys into the worker cooperative movement, the complexities of implementing social equity in the cannabis industry, and the need for hope that is strategic and withstanding.

Clark Atlanta University Launches New Black Southern Labor Institute

October 31, 2024 Mirtha Donastorg, Portside. Create! Atlanta, Black America, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Clark Atlanta University has launched a new institute focused on labor issues and training a new generation of leaders to help Black Southern organizing and collective bargaining efforts. Jobs With Justice, a nonprofit network of labor unions, community groups and activists, is partnering with Clark Atlanta on the new Institute for the Advancement of Black Strategists, which was announced in late September. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, said policies against organized labor disproportionately impact Black workers because more than half of Black Americans live in the South.

How To Build An Ecological Economy

October 30, 2024 Patrick Mazza, Resilience. Create! Communities, Community, De-growth, Food Security, Green Economy

This is the second part of a scenario for how a city comes together to address the multiple economic, social and environmental crises facing our world. The first part of the scenario is here. It covers how the city creates basic frameworks of life. How it gains control of its own finances and local economy through creating a public bank. How it ensures everyone has shelter through creation of social and community housing. How clean energy is supplied while energy use is reduced through creation of community energy cooperatives. In this part, the scenario will cover how the city develops the basics of an ecological economy not dependent on endless economic growth.

BRICS Grain Exchange Would Depoliticize Global Cereal Market

October 27, 2024 Sputnik, Orinoco Tribune. Create! BRICS, Depoliticisation, Food and Agriculture, Grain, Multipolarity, Russia

Russia proposed creating a BRICS grain exchange that would serve as a new trading platform for the world’s largest producers and consumers of food grains. The measure could help depoliticize global markets and eliminate intermediaries in the form of Western exchanges, according to experts consulted by Sputnik. The dominance of the United States in the world economy did not start with the dollar. After the Second World War, the US became the leading supplier of wheat and corn. As a result, the entire modern infrastructure of the global grain market has been shaped by Washington. Thus, the benchmarks are made by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), and the US dollar is primarily used as the settlement currency.

How Cities Can Bring Some Humanity To The Criminal Legal System

October 26, 2024 Erica Perry, Next City. Create! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Democracy, Legal System, Participatory Democracy

Last month, the state of Missouri executed 55-year-old Marcellus Williams, who spent two decades in prison, despite prosecutors’ efforts to overturn his conviction for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle. The victim’s family and the St. Louis county prosecuting attorney’s office joined Williams’ family, faith leaders and thousands of community members in asking decision-makers to spare his life. But neither their pleas nor revelations of mishandled evidence and racially biased jury selection were enough to outweigh a legal system with disdain for human life. This pattern of unjust sentencing to death is true across America.

When Golf Courses Go Wild

October 26, 2024 Josh Kozelj, The Tyee. Create! Canada, Environment, Housing, Public Spaces, Rewilding

In the fields beside a suburban lake on Vancouver Island, relics from a past life are hidden in plain sight. The land, formerly the home of a nine-hole golf course for more than 50 years, is no longer doused with water every day or mowed at 4 a.m. — yet remnants of its former state still exist. A sand trap now serves as a children’s play pit, littered with Tonka trucks and toys. The fairway, once cut to under an inch, has grass up to shin height and rows of flowers. Old golf greens have been turned into campgrounds. The transformation is par for the course, says Jason Cole, co-CEO of Power to Be, a registered charity that took over the property in Saanich, B.C., seven years ago from a couple who wanted to lease their roughly 80 acres of land.

16th BRICS Summit Opens In Kazan, Russia

October 24, 2024 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Create! BRICS, Gaza, Genocide, Global South, Multipolarity, Unilateral coercive measures, Vladimir Putin

During his speech at the ongoing BRICS summit on Wednesday, October 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his desire to see the grouping play a greater role in global affairs and in resolving regional and international challenges. Putin asserted that BRICS unites “like minded countries, civilizations, and cultures” and “all member states stand for equality, good neighborly relations, and mutual respect, for high ideals of friendship, global prosperity, and well-being.” The 16th summit of the 10-member grouping is being held in Russia’s fifth largest city of Kazan from October 22 to October 24.

Municipalism, Economic Development, And Participatory Democracy

October 23, 2024 Austin Cole, Black Agenda Report. Create! Democracy, Organizing, Participatory Democracy

In this first part of the conversation, Nick lays out his thoughts on a large range of topics: definitions of economic development and how to think about expanding it to serve all people in a more holistic manner; the fallacy of jobs-only economic development programs and measurements; radical municipalism that can form and utilize people-centered institutions; what true participatory democracy might look like; how to make the public sector work for “the people” and why organizers should get involved in local/municipal governance ; and governing from a place of radical inclusiveness, collective wisdom, and a shared responsibility.

‘The Commune Is Nothing New Here’: The Rio Cataniapo Commune

October 22, 2024 Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Indigenous Peoples, Socialism, Venezuela

Early in the last decade a set of communities along the Cataniapo River started to organize themselves to protect the river’s ecosystem and bolster their agricultural and handicraft production. A few years later, in response to Chávez’s call to build socialist communes, 15 community councils in the area came together to form the Rio Cataniapo Commune. Today, approximately 1500 people participate in the Río Cataniapo Comune. They come from various ethnic backgrounds, but the majority identify as Indigenous and some still practice common ownership of land.

Resilience And Regeneration, Disaster After Disaster

October 22, 2024 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! climate crisis, Disaster Recovery, Extreme weather, Hurricanes, Resilience

Long before the winds and the rain and the flooding, there was already so much healing work that needed doing, and some of it was already happening. That’s not really in question. Like the fungi beneath our feet, the work of regenerating, reconstituting and rebuilding never really stops, even in the aftermath of a hurricane or other disaster. But with every tragic deluge, the open wounds of carnage and destruction also open up new lines of sight for others to see who has been doing that work in their community — and then to either join them or bulldoze right over them.

Archiving Ancestral Knowledge To Co-Create New Economic Paradigms

October 20, 2024 Alison R. Guzman, Resilience. Create! Archiving, De-colonization, Education, Indigenous Knowledge, Knowledge

When we think of archiving, the mind might jump to dusty boxes of files, endless rows of cabinets, or shelves weighed down by old papers and books — organized in a way that seems to go on forever. Maybe we even picture the digital world, with its infinite files tucked away in the cloud. Either way, archiving often feels like a dull, lifeless task — far from inspiring or exciting. But here’s the twist: this is exactly the key to it all — the secret behind every colonizing scheme — the meticulous control and management of data, including intellectual property. Reclaming archiving is not just about organizing the past but unlocking potential for new knowledge and endless possibilities beyond colonial modalities of control.

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