At the conference, John Samuelsen, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, who eight days later would deliver a rousing speech at the Occupy Wall Street protest on behalf of working families, made the simple but meaningful case that people using the transit system should be the people making the transit system. “We have the talent to do to this; we have full-blown engineers now doing signal work because they can’t find jobs,” he said.
Consciously modeled on the Freedom Rides of the 1960s civil rights movement, the Food Rides aim to shine a light on issues of “food justice” — a catchall term that focuses on “ecological and community revitalization and reorganization” as it relates to diet and agriculture. Julio’s workplace travails represented a kind of food injustice — part of a larger system that deepens racial and class divisions, contributes to surging rates of obesity and diabetes, and weakens the traditional relationship between farmers and the land across the globe.
From Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt, to Town Square, USA, thousands upon thousands of people rely on public transportation to take them to jobs, shopping, to the doctor, and so forth. But bus lines are closing in cities across the nation and leaving people stranded in their homes, especially poor people and old people. It’s happening in Detroit, Longmont (Colorado), Washington D.C., and in my neighborhood in Jersey City, NJ.
Three neighborhood associations met at the Monumental Baptist Church last night to make plans on how to meet the crisis. While there is some reasonable hope that the abandoned routes will be taken-up by other providers, it is clear that this is a recurring problem that must be met by sustained action.
What’s happening in your neighborhood? Have any bus lines been closed in the last two or three years? Are bus lines being closed in the near future? What will happen to people stranded by these closures?
How is it that the so-called richest nation on the planet cannot figure out how to provide transportation for ALL of its citizens?
Local is the way to go! More resilient, more reliable.
That’s why a growing number of people who work in the industry are now questioning whether massive, centralized clean-energy projects really are the future. What good are huge solar farms in the desert if you can’t get them wired? Perhaps smaller, distributed sources of clean energy — rooftop solar panels, say, or small turbines — that don’t need fancy new transmission lines are a more promising option.
“It’s long been conventional wisdom that it’s much easier and cheaper to build those big plants,” Allan Schurr, vice president of strategy and development at IBM’s energy and utilities group, told me. “But, when we interviewed customers, we found a strong appetite for individuals having control over their own energy future.” As an alternate model, Schurr points to Germany, where well-crafted incentives for rooftop panels have transformed the cloudy nation into a solar leader. And there’s a lot of untapped potential here: the National Renewable Energy Lab has estimated that we have 661,000 megawatts of rooftop-solar resources here in the United States.
“The Founder’s were right: non-intervention, friends and trade with people, more prosperity, and peace.”
Here’s a clip of an interview with Ron Paul on America Live with Megyn Kelly:
He’s trying to change history, and so are we. He gave this interview after he placed well in the Iowa straw poll, but got little notice in the MSM. Starting at about 1:10 into the video, Kelly asks Paul whether or not the media is ignoring him:
Paul: Sure. Yeah they are, and we need to ask them why? What are they afraid of? Well, we’re certainly in the top tier. We did well in Iowa and we have a good organization. We can raise money.
But they don’t want to discuss my views because I think they’re frightened by us challenging the status quo and the establishment. When it comes to foreign policy, monetary policy, the entitlement system, because my views are quite different from the other candidates. They’d just as soon us not get the coverage that the others are getting and they will concentrate on establishment type politicians.
Kelly: There seems to be a narrative emerging that you can’t win and therefore they’re giving you back of the hand treatment. There was an editorial in The Wall Street Journal that said “He has no chance to win.” This despite the fact that you are 152 votes within the top spot in the Iowa straw pole. In fact out of almost 17,000 votes cast you were a 150 votes or so from number one. But The Wall Street Journal and others that you can’t win. Why? Why do they believe that?
Paul: Well they want to believe it and they want to promote an idea. They don’t want to promote information because they’re having a couple poles where I either came in first or second when you match my name up against Obama. Because my votes really compete.
“I’m trying to change the course of history.”
This would be a reason why the Democrats don’t want me to win either. Because I can compete against Obama. His base is very unhappy with his expansion of the war, and his lack of interest in protecting civil liberties. And therefore they don’t want to hear from me either. But I’ve done quite well. I’m quite willing to match my name up against Obama any time of the day.
Kelly: It’s got to be somewhat frustrating for you. I mean to come in second and be as close as you were to winning in Iowa, not to mention the polling that you’ve been doing, which is fairly good. To have this kind of treatment in the media, does this disturb you?
Paul: Well it disturbs me. I don’t use the word ‘frustrating’ because I anticipate and I know how the system works, and I know what I’m trying to do, because not like I’m just trying to win and get elected.
I’m trying to change the course of history and our history in this country hasn’t been good for the last 100 years, whether it’s our drift into managing an empire, the destruction of our currency, the deficits that have been run up, the climax of the dollar reserve standard. This is big stuff and nobody else is addressing this.
So in spite of the shortcomings of the reporting of this I write if off a bit, because they don’t have any idea about the significance of the idea of the monetary system and what’s going on with the Federal Reserve.
“The peace candidate is always a very strong candidate.”
But the people, grass roots America, are startin’ to wake up. Millions of people are reading about the Federal Reserve and understanding how they bail out their friends. Trillions of dollars. Give a third of all that money they used in the bail-out, give it to foreign banks. People realize this even though the media, generally speaking, they don’t understand it, they don’t ask the right questions. And if they do understand it they don’t want to get the secret out of how the system that we have protects the special interests, the big corporations, the corporatism that runs our society. Continue reading →
Entrance to Liberty State Park (also on the Hudson):
Inside an abandoned building near Liberty State Park:
Communipaw, just South of Grand (my neighborhood):
Communipaw Avenue is on a foot path originally laid down by the Lenni Lenape, who lived here when Henry Hudson landed in 1609. He landed on the shore of what is now Liberty State Park.
I live in Jersey City, NJ, not too far from the waterfront (Hudson River / New York harbor). I’ve been glued to the internet getting up dated information about Irene.
Now, one of the power generating stations in JC has been flooded. They’re closing down for emergency repairs. But I’ve still got power. But if my power goes out . . .
No internet for me.
It’s clear to me that the internet needs to be entirely off the main power grid. I don’t know what that means, technically. If I had a small solar generator & bettery back-up sufficient for my lap-top, that would get my machine off the grid. But, is there wifi in my area? I don’t know, but probably should. If so, is it independent of the main power grid? Don’t know.
But what I do know is that the whole thing, ends-to-ends, needs to be OFF THE GRID.
I’d like to think that the Defense Department has made their communications independent of the main power grid. If anyone has the means and the motive, they do. But we ALL need to be independent of that grid.
If America wants to stay competitive in the world of green energy technologies, it will have to invest in local facilities for manufacturing those technologies. They are not so easy to off-shore as software and services.
“Now I think we’re at a really different moment,” Berger says. “We’re seeing a wave of new technologies, in energy, biotechnology, batteries, where there has to be a closer integration between research, development, design, product definition and production.”
One challenge to moving in this direction may be that our banks, hedge funds and venture capitalists are geared toward investing in financial instruments and software companies. In such endeavors, even modest investments can yield extraordinarily quick and large returns. Financing brick-and-mortar factories, by contrast, is expensive and painstaking and offers far less potential for speedy returns. Berger maintains that for the economy to get “full value” from our laboratories’ ideas in energy or biotech — not just new company headquarters but industrial jobs too — we must aspire to a different business model than the one we have come to admire.
This is a perfect time for a cooperative economy. Considering the disproportionate struggles faced by women and people of color during a recession, the cooperative economy presents an opportunity for all people, to leverage more power by making themselves the bosses, sharing ownership, and taking a collective approach to good management. Many people have already been let down by a top-down corporate or non-profit model in a recession-ridden society. Now is the time to rebuild the system, and build a society founded on justice, dignity, and respect for people and the planet.
Truth and Traditions 