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.

CPC Charts Path To Achieve An Advanced Socialist Society By 2050

July 22, 2024 People's Dispatch. Create! Belt and Road Initiative, China, Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping, Socialism, Xi Jinping

The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held in Beijing from Monday July 15 to Thursday, July 18. It adopted a resolution listing a set of reforms with the objective of deepening the modernization process in the country in the path to complete building an advanced socialist market economy in China by the year 2035 and an advanced socialist society by 2050. Chinese President Xi Jinping who is also the general secretary of the CPC presided over the meeting attended by 199 members and 165 alternate members. Each elected Central Committee, the highest decision making body between two party Congresses, holds seven plenums or meetings during its five year term.

Five Ways Permaculture Must Change

July 22, 2024 The Last Farm, Resilience. Create! Environment, Food Security, Invasive species, Permaculture, Science

I’ve been a permaculture enthusiast for over 25 years. It has influenced my thinking about ecology, subsistence, and the role of human beings in our biosphere. I have experimented with countless techniques, read dozens of books, and learned a wealth of things from other practitioners. I regard it as an overwhelmingly positive experience. That said, there have always been aspects of permaculture that haven’t sat right with me. This is made somewhat complicated by the fact that there are different strains of permaculture which lean in different directions; some I have more affinity with than others (I’m oriented towards science rather than mysticism.)

Capital Has No Borders; Why Should We?

July 21, 2024 Maurizio Guerrero, In These Times. Create! Capitalism, Immigration, Joe Biden, Open Borders, Worker Rights and Jobs

Elia Velásquez fled the violence and poverty that plagued her native El Salvador in the 1990s. “I saw how my family was suffering, so I said to myself, ‘If I leave, I can work and help them,’ ” the 55-year-old hotel worker in Washington, D.C, tells In These Times during a phone interview in Spanish. “That would be better for them.” El Salvador was deep into a fratricidal civil war, partially instigated and funded by the United States, that left the country in shambles when it ended in 1992. Velásquez came to the United States and initially worked in a packaging facility in the Washington, D.C., area. There, workers did not even get “a glass of water” from the managers, she says.

New Green Bank Is Powering A Net-Zero Development With Affordable Housing

July 21, 2024 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. Create! Affordable Housing, Energy, Housing, Minnesota, net zero, St. Paul, Urban Design

For nearly a century, Hillcrest Golf Club was home for golf aficionados in St. Paul, Minnesota. Opened in 1921 on land that was originally home to the Dakota people, the 110-acre course was designed by the brother of pro golfer Harry Vardon, grandfather of the modern golf swing. Over the course of its storied existence, the property was bought by Jewish businessmen as a haven for Jewish golfers facing antisemitism and survived challenges from caddy strikes to a fire that engulfed its clubhouse. In 2017, its owners sold the property. Two years later, as owners struggled to find a buyer due to soil contamination issues that would complicate redevelopment, it was purchased by St. Paul’s Port Authority.

Climate Activists Score Major Win In Campaign To Electrify DC

July 20, 2024 AbShepherd, Resilience. Create! climate crisis, Climate Justice, Electrification, Extinction Rebellion, Fossil Fuels, Victory, Washington D.C.

Last month, Extinction Rebellion D.C. scored a major victory for the End Methane, Electrify D.C. campaign: the D.C. Public Service Commission dismissed corporate utility provider Washington Gas’ application for the third phase of their $12 billion fossil fuel pipeline replacement project dubbed Project Pipes. The commission also partially approved a petition to investigate Washington Gas’ leak reduction practices. This victory is a major milestone in the fight to shut down a fossil fuel project that would lock D.C. into decades of planet-warming emissions while poisoning the city’s residents, especially the communities that are most marginalized and underserved.

Canada Makes An Unprecedented Push For Multifamily Housing

July 19, 2024 Akielly Hu, Scheer Post. Create! Canada, Housing, Sustainability, Urban Design

For more than a century, zoning ordinances rooted in segregation have encouraged the construction of single-family homes, often at the expense of apartment buildings and other structures that promote urban density. Beyond contributing to a mounting housing shortage and spiraling prices, such policies have contributed to sprawl and dependence upon automobiles. Canada has decided to try something different. The government has taken the unprecedented step of offering provincial governments billions of dollars in infrastructure funds with one catch: To receive it, they must require cities to abandon single-family zoning laws and allow the construction of fourplexes.

The Transformative Power Of Urban Recipe’s Food Co-Op Model

July 18, 2024 BobJones, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Atlanta, Cooperatives, Food Coop, Food Security

It is 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, and the warehouse at 970 Jefferson Street in Atlanta is humming with activity. A forklift loads a pallet of cereal boxes. Two men are setting up a line of folding tables. Several people casually sort a box of bananas into grocery bags. Fog escapes from a walk-in freezer as someone rolls a dolly filled with boxes toward the line of tables. Five or six people walk in from the bus stop with rolling grocery carts. In the center of the bustling warehouse, JoAnn Crowder stands behind a desk with her clipboard, quietly orchestrating the hustle. For the last 24 years, JoAnn has spent almost every other Monday morning here.

‘People’s Cooling Army’ Is Giving Tenants Free Air Conditioners

July 18, 2024 'Lucas Frisancho, Next City. Create! Air Conditioning, Chicago, Heat, Housing, Tenant Union, Unions

Perhaps the most basic demand of a tenant is that the living space they pay for is, in fact, livable. Yet as extreme heat becomes the norm, organizers claim that for many low-income Chicago renters, this basic condition is not being met. An initiative called the People’s Cooling Army, launched by the All-Chicago Tenant Alliance, aims to provide and install free repaired air conditioning units for low-income tenants in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, Garfield Park and Hermosa. “Tenants across the city have been left to bake in hot apartments,” organizers announced at a July 8 press conference. “Tenants across the city have been asked to live in apartments where they could not sleep, where they were always covered in sweat, where their children were unsafe.”

New Virginia-North Carolina Intercity Rail Line Starts Construction

July 16, 2024 Dan Zukowski, Smart Cities Dive. Create! North Carolina, railroals, Transportation, Virginia

Richmond and Raleigh are among the five busiest train stations in the Southeast, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority said in a Feb. 28 press release. The S-Line project is among the two states’ ambitious plans to expand intercity passenger rail. Last December, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded grants to the North Carolina DOT from the federal Corridor Identification and Development Program for seven corridors. Three radiate out from Charlotte, three from Raleigh, and one would connect Asheville and Salisbury, North Carolina. “The roads are just as congested as they were before [the COVID-19 pandemic],” said Mike McLaughlin, chief operating officer at the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, speaking about the growth of rail ridership in the region.

Urban Farms Are A Lifeline For Food-Insecure Residents

July 15, 2024 Kimberly Izar, Next City. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Security, New Jersey (NJ), Urban Agriculture

In Montclair’s Third Ward is a tiny farm with big community value. In the summertime, Montclair Community Farms transforms its less-than-10,000-square-foot lot into a space with something for everyone: a garden education program for children, a job training site for teens, and a pop-up produce market for Essex County residents. “People really love being here,” says Lana Mustafa, executive director of Montclair Community Farms. “It’s really developed into something really beautiful and productive and community-oriented.” On a breezy afternoon in early June, bunches of lettuce, bok choy, parsley, and garlic scapes begin to sprout and ripen. Some are even ready to harvest. Mustafa and her team are preparing inventory for their Monday farmers market, where several dozen shoppers use their SNAP or WIC benefits to buy fresh produce.

A Coastal Revolution In Hospital Food

July 14, 2024 Tim Lydon, The Tyee. Create! Food and Agriculture, Health Care, Hospitals, Indigenous foods

As executive chef and director of traditional foods at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Amy Foote brightens patient menus with healthy Indigenous foods, including moose, salmon, fiddleheads and more. “Traditional foods connect patients to their land and culture, which can help with healing,” says Foote amid the clattering pans and hissing pipes of the hospital’s large kitchen. Incorporating traditional foods is no small task for a hospital serving over 5,000 meals daily to patients and their visiting families. But the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, which runs the hospital, is investing in the cause. As part of that, says Foote, its food service recently went “self-op,” meaning it no longer contracts out.

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.

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