Community

Best Practices For Jail Support

December 9, 2014 Mutant Legal, www.pdf.com Resist! Community, Prison

Jail Support is both tracking arrestees as they move through the arrest and arraignment process and providing comfort to arrestees when they are released. It is a way of showing solidarity with arrested activists and a way of taking care of friends and community. Jail Support is not a chance to stick it to the man. When fellow activists are in custody our behavior outside the precinct can affect how quickly they are released. This means that it is best practice to comply with reasonable requests from officers, such as moving slightly farther away from the precinct, and it is will often makes things go smoother to be calm when talking to desk sergeants or court officers.

Plan To End Cycle Of Native American Poverty

November 11, 2014 Ariel Schwartz www.fastcoexist.com Create! Community, Finance and the Economy, Native Americans

Native American reservations are hotbeds of poverty and alcoholism, with residents often struggling to find employment or basic housing. On many reservations, residents often do what they can to leave. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation, is emblematic of the situation. Some 55% of residents travel 50 miles each day to work—and those are just the residents that have jobs. Poverty is so dire that it's not uncommon to find up to 20 people living in a trailer with two or three bedrooms. A community regenerative plan, led by Nick Tilsen, a young member of the tribe, is aimed at changing all that. Tilsen and his Thunder Valley Community Economic Development Corporation are trying to build an entirely new "regenerative community" on 34 acres of empty land on the reservation. Tilsen's ambitious plan for a sustainable community consists of a number of affordable single-family residences, lofts, townhouses, and co-housing spaces; a daycare center; onsite wind power; an aquaponics greenhouse, and other amenities that residents don't currently have access to.

Beyond Police, Chicago Residents Band Together To Curb Street Violence

October 17, 2014 Panyin Conduah, www.wagingnonviolence.org Create! Chicago, Community, police brutality, Police the Police

As a highly segregated and economically unequal city, Chicago has long had high rates of violence, particularly in the neighborhoods with the most poverty and least access to resources. While the city government has responded to the violence by increasing the presence of police, many community members like Brooks have sought ways to deescalate the violence without involving the police or the criminal justice system. Earlier this year, Brooks spoke with other Chicago residents on his radio station and quickly realized he was not the only one that desired change in Chicago. Thus, the community-led initiative was born as part of the church’s broader Project Help Others Obtain Destiny campaign, known as Project HOOD. By the beginning of the summer, the initiative had accumulated 150 core volunteers. Male volunteers walk the blocks of the south, east and west side neighborhoods during three-hour shifts every Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. and from 9 p.m. to midnight. Female volunteers work as mentors on the streets Saturday afternoons from noon to 3 p.m.

How To Protect Communities From Climate Change

October 15, 2014 Kit O'Connell, www.mintpressnews.com Create! Climate Change, Community, Environment

After disasters like Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy, groups like Common Ground and the Red Hook Initiative received national media attention for offering more effective support to victims than large groups like the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Red Cross. This was possible because grassroots groups relied on pre-existing community ties while also embracing new technologies like social media, as in the case of groups like Occupy Sandy, a community that was built and organized to help the victims of this storm to recover. And while Wall Street reopened two days after Hurricane Sandy made landfall, millions of residents spent much longer in the dark. Even climate change researchers were victims of the power outage.

The Long Road From C.J. Peete To Harmony Oaks

October 15, 2014 Kerry Reckdahl, www.community-wealth.org Create! Community, Housing, New Orleans

By the time her organization landed a contract to do work in New Orleans, Sandra Moore had felt the city’s tug for more than a year. Moore is president of Urban Strategies, a nonprofit community development company that often partners with developer McCormack Baron Salazar, which specializes in mixed-income and affordable redevelopments. Urban Strategies got a contract in early 2007 to provide services for residents from C.J. Peete, a shuttered New Orleans public-housing complex. When she thought of New Orleans, Moore vividly recalled images broadcast during the wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Orleanians were pleading for water, medical help, and long-delayed buses to take them out of the devastated city.

Parents Of Kids Murdered By Cops Confront NYPD

October 3, 2014 Amy K. Nelson, www.animalnewyork.com Organize! Community, Law, NYPD, police brutality, Police the Police

It was around 7:30PM when Margarita Rosario took the microphone at the Sunset Park rec center, turned to a table that seated five police officers and told the story of how her son had been murdered by NYPD cops. “My son, Anthony Rosario, had 14 bullets in his back, face down on the floor,” Rosario said. “Now who is the criminal? My son? Or [the police officers]?” Rosario, three others parents whose children had been killed by the NYPD, and hundreds of residents in this diverse community, came together at an old gymnasium on Wednesday night for a town hall on police brutality.

Haitian Tourism Project Leads To Damage And Repression

September 17, 2014 Other Worlds/Solidarity and Resistance Collective for the Population of Île-à-Vache and translated Nathan A. Wendte, www.truth-out.org Resist! Community, Environment, Haiti, Tourism

“Destination Île-à-Vache” is a government-driven tourist project planned for a small island off the northern coast of Haiti, Île-à-Vache. Plans include an international airport, golf courses,1,500 hotel bungalows, agri-tourism, and “tourist villages” which will include boutiques, restaurants and even a night club. Groundbreaking on the project occurred in August, 2013, without the inclusion or participation of the community. Once the construction on the road began in late 2013, the community began to peacefully protest and formed a local group in December, 2013 called KOPI (Collective for Île-à-Vache). In response, the government has coerced, repressed, and intimidated the population. A leader of the resistance movement has been a political prisoner - imprisoned without charge or trial – since February 24, 2014. The details of some of these acts are included in the declaration below.

Policies For Community Wealth Building: Leveraging Resources

September 13, 2014 The Democracy Collaborative, www.democracycollaborative.org Create! Community, Democracy, Finance and the Economy

Fostering resilient communities and building wealth in today’s local economies is necessary to achieve individual, regional, and national economic security. A community wealth building strategy employs a range of forms of community ownership and asset building strategies to build wealth in low-income communities. In so doing, community wealth building bolsters the ability of communities and individuals to increase asset ownership, anchor jobs locally, expand the provision of public services, and ensure local economic stability. Effective community wealth building requires rethinking present policies, redirecting resources, breaking old boundaries, and forging new alliances. Over the past few decades, despite limited government support, new and alternative forms of community-supportive economic enterprises have increasingly emerged in cities and towns across the country as an important counter-trend to the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth, income, and opportunity.

Making Community College Free For All

September 11, 2014 Yessenia Funes, www.alternet.org Create! Community, Education, Tuition

“It won’t, by itself, eradicate poverty,” Hass says, “but I think it’s a very positive step in the right direction of not only reducing poverty but also meeting the needs of employers who are trying to find qualified people for jobs.” Several of Mississippi’s community colleges already offer free tuition, but state Rep. Jerry Turner won’t stand for “several.” He wants to make all 15 of the state’s community colleges free. Turner authored a bill that proposed that idea, and though it died in committee earlier this year, it’ll be up for discussion again in January. Alabama and other states neighboring Mississippi are also looking into the idea. David Baime, senior vice president for government relations and research for the American Association of Community Colleges, expects efforts that address the cost of college will grow. While he thinks these policies are positive, Baime worries about the less well-prepared students and the part-time students who work and will be excluded by full-time eligibility requirements. “Sometimes, the students who are sort of on the margin are left behind,” Baime says. Kell Smith, the director of communications and legislative service for the Mississippi Community College Board, says full-time requirements encourage students not only to complete school but to complete it in a timely manner.

Local Communities Are Taking Control Of Their Power Supply

September 4, 2014 Evan Halper, www.latimes.com Create! Climate Change, Community, Energy, Power, Sustainability

Sonoma County, which enticed Americans to forsake factory-made food for artisan wines and farmers market produce, now wants consumers to reconsider another everyday commodity. New on the menu: locally curated energy. The county is at the forefront among eco-minded communities plunging into the power business nationwide. Impatient with the pace at which states and the federal government are confronting climate change, communities from the coast of Massachusetts, Cincinnati, Chicago and Boulder, Colo., have begun taking steps to elbow aside big electricity companies and find green power themselves. Sonoma County now offers tens of thousands of ratepayers energy that is significantly greener — and slightly cheaper — than that sold by the region's utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Customers who want 100% local renewable power can pay extra and get every kilowatt they use from a geothermal plant in the region's hills. "This follows on the heels of the whole local food movement," said Chris Mann, chief executive of Guayaki, a maker of yerba mate teas. The company's headquarters — complete with indoor skate park — is in the bohemian town of Sebastopol, which has designated itself nuclear free. Guayaki opted to go 100% geothermal.

Love Me, Ferguson, I’m A Liberal

September 1, 2014 Douglas Williams www.jacobinmag.com Educate! Community, Ferguson, Liberal, Protest

“Outside agitator.” These words were spoken by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett when asked about the Freedom Summer voting registration drive in 1964. They were also uttered by Alabama Governor George Wallace when he was asked about the protests in his state’s largest city, ignobly labeled “Bombingham.” Bull Connor referred to Martin Luther King, Jr. as one, even though his church was in the state capital, Montgomery. These two words were also uttered by Thomas Jackson, the police chief in Ferguson, as he tried to describe why his mostly-white police force could not stop the protests occurring in the nearly 70 percent black city he was charged with patrolling. All of these men were segregationists, anticommunists, and purveyors of state-sanctioned violence against African Americans. But now you can also find some prominent liberals using the term, ostensibly in relation to the activities of small pockets of anarchists and the Revolutionary Communist Party in the city. Both the Daily Beast and Gawker have run pieces on the RCP in the same spirit, Gawker even going as far as to call them “despicable” for “trying to drum up even more tension.” Justin Glawe writes in the Daily Beast that: And while police have rightfully been criticized for their heavy-handed approach to the protests that have gone on since Brown’s death, the intelligence they’ve gathered regarding some of the more riotous protesters has been correct. Those who wish to do physical harm to law enforcement are small in number, and subversive in tactics.

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