Community

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.

Lessons From Social Movements: Six Notes On The Radical Imagination

August 11, 2014 Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven, www.truth-out.org Strategize! Community, Imagination, Movement

As the crisis of austerity deepens, forcing workers and the public to swallow the costs of the global financial meltdown, the need for the radical imagination is more urgent than ever. But what is it, actually? How can we understand the radical imagination as more than a hollow slogan? How can it be a critical tool for building movements to reclaim our world from a renegade form of capitalism rooted in sexism, racism, homophobia, mass incarceration, the illegalization of migrants and the destruction of the earth? These are the questions we ask and seek to answer in our book The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (Zed Books, 2014), which is based on our study of today's social movements. Here are a few key things we learned. The radical imagination is not something that we have as individuals; it's something that we do, and that we do together. The idea of the imagination typically makes us think about our own unique, individual mental worlds. But in a very real way, our mental worlds are shared imaginative landscapes. When we tell stories about our past, present and future or about inspiring victories or humbling defeats, we are crafting such landscapes through dialogue and participant power.

Goals Of The New Way

August 3, 2014 Graham Peebles, www.nationofchange.org Create! Community, Environment, Organizing, Sustainability

Well-informed, well-read, and by nature compassionately optimistic, a dear friend recently expressed our collective concern: “I am more worried about the state of the world now than at any time in my lifetime.” Given the fires raging throughout the world it is difficult to remain hopeful for the future of humanity or the planet. With the Middle East tearing itself to pieces, extremism and intolerance reasserting themselves and far right groups in a variety of countries gaining support, and in many cases political influence, not to mention the worldwide environmental mayhem, man-made climate change (the most serious single issue facing us) and the suffering of billions of people living in suffocating poverty, these are indeed deeply worrying times. However, at the risk of being labelled a deluded dreamer, these are also times of tremendous opportunity. Transitional times of pain and discord, potentially of growth and renewal as we inch forward, stepping cautiously out of the familiar and into the new and undefined, and begin to discuss alternative, more sane ways of living. Throughout the world large numbers of frustrated and angry people have been coming together: peacefully marching calling for change – broad and often undefined, but heartfelt. Others in groups and forums discuss alternative ways of living together, a myriad of sharing schemes have sprung up facilitated by that miracle of the age, the worldwide web.

All Of Us Are Connected — None Of These Words Are Mine Alone

July 19, 2014 Henia Belalia, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Arts, Community, culture, Stories

The act of writing can be just as excruciating as it can be exhilarating — in this case as part of a process to explore interconnectedness and reclaimed histories as tools we can use toward collective liberation. How often I’ve sat in front of a blank page, the words tangled up in my gut, stuck between tears and broken memories. How often I’ve waited for that thrill when the words are unleashed, when the stories I’ve been dying to tell finally come out in narratives that can be heard and seen by those around me. In this era of media stunts, celebrities and executive directors, there’s something fundamental for us to recognize: that none of these words are ever ours alone. I’ve progressively centered more of my organizing and writing on intersectionality, to which many have contributed through their words and actions. There have been many people with whom I’ve worked through entangled ideas and identities, as we’ve attempted to better understand our undeniable connections and what that means within our social justice movements. A comrade organizing in the ‘hoods of New York City recently reminded me to show gratitude, to give credit to those who’ve shaped me along the way. In honor of that sentiment, I owe deep thanks… … to the undocumented sister who shows me bravery with every fiber of her being, with her unflinching integrity, with her every truth that she speaks to challenge the empire’s narrative.

What Can Urban Agriculture Do?

July 7, 2014 Kelsey Kober, www.csmonitor.com Create! Community, Food and Agriculture, Latin America, Urban Gardens

Many major cities in Latin America and the Caribbean are turning to urban farming to address the common problems that they face, such as urban poverty and food insecurity. According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the urban population of Latin America and the Caribbean is now almost half a billion; the region is the most urban in the world. In 2009, representatives from Central American national governments, research institutes, and international organizations met to draft the Medellìn Declaration, which committed them to incorporate UPA, or urban and peri-urban agriculture (the latter refers to commercial farming that supplies a city’s food) to alleviate their cities’ problems. Havana, Cuba, is making use of the technological developments that have arised from the use of UPA. “In Cuba, the biggest challenge was the shortage of inputs, especially seed, fertilizer, and pesticide,” said Graeme Thomas, author of the FAO report. “That has been overcome by a shift to fully organic production.” Havana is well known for their use of organoponics, a farming technology that uses organic substrates. The city, which previously struggled with food rationing and child malnutrition, now boasts 97 organoponic gardens. An estimated 90,000 households are now growing their own vegetables and raising small animals for consumption, and

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