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Bleg: Beyond/Beneath the Nation-State

21 Sep

Two days ago I put up a post in which I asserted, by the time-honored method of pulling it out of my arse, that

in the long run, more and more political action which shift to cities and thereby ‘hollow out’ the increasingly sclerotic system of nation states which governs the earth and the global level. In a century the nation states will be husks of what they are now and most of the world’s civic business will be conducted by shifting coalitions of cities and regions.

I’m interested in exploring that notion.

Very.

Anyone have ideas, suggestions for things to check out, etc.? Any relevant science fiction?

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In that post I cited, as examples,

  • the Second Vermont Republic, a group of citizens who want Vermont to secede from the USofA,
  • the Transition Town movement, folks who are adamantly apolitical but who, in anticipation of peak oil, are working toward local self-sufficiency in food and energy and all that that implies, and
  • Mayors of Peace, an international organization of cities seeking to end nuclear weapons by 2020.

What else is there like that, where “like that” is interpreted generously? Continue reading →

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A Garden State of Mind

20 Sep

Though I watched my mother tend to her flower gardens, I even helped her weed, and each Spring I looked for the irises to bloom, I didn’t become a gardener. For one thing, I never owned a home with grounds for a garden, though I could certainly have planted gardens in the house I rented in Cropseyville, NY, for two years or so. But I never had any such inclinations.

Thus it comes as a bit of a surprise to find myself tending plants, pruning them, a bit of weeding, and a bit of watering. I like it.

But what’s it about, this gardening thing? Here I’m thinking as an evolutionary psychologist, you know, the folks who believe that we’ve got Stone Age minds we’ve got to harness to operate the Modern World. And I agree with them, in a way.

Our Stone Age ancestors didn’t garden, nor do our primate relatives. We all forage and eat plants, and we also do a bit of hunting for animal flesh, humans more so than other primates. We’ve got ‘instincts’ for those things. But we’ve got no gardening instinct.

Nor for that matter, do we have instincts for quantum mechanics, archery, basket weaving, hopscotch, square dancing or bowling, among many other things. So how does our Stone Age mind do such things?

Obviously we’ve got to construct routines for these various purposes. Continue reading →

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Political Connections: Lafayette to Montpelier

19 Sep

On the one hand I’m involved in projects in my neighborhood (Lafayette in Jersey City, NJ), most notably a community garden, but also an anti-litter campaign, and I’m looking to do something with music. On the other hand I just got back from a trip to northern Vermont where I was part of a five-state aggregation of nine musicians that provided music for a conference on Vermont independence, which means Vermont seceding from the United States and establishing itself as a sovereign nation once again (Vermont was a republic between 1777 and 1791).

What do these two spheres of activity have to do with one another? What are the connections?

Some People Links

There is, of course, the fact that I’m involved in both sets of these arenas. I live in the Lafayette neighborhood of Jersey City and am working to make it a better neighborhood. Lafayette’s my home.

I traveled to Vermont at the behest (when was the last time I used that word?) of Charlie Keil, an intellectual and musical compatriot. Charlie is an anarchist, as am I, and a pacifist, ditto. We were both conscientious objectors during our years of draft eligibility. And we’re both musicians.

In particular, Charlie is interested in getting more people to make live music and he’s interested in what he calls a 12/8 Path band, which is a strolling brass band at home in 12/8 time. We’ve played many demonstrations together in New York City, including a large anti-war demonstration prior to the invasion of Iraq and an anti-nuclear demonstration where Japanese and out-numbered everyone else.

But, how’s that get us to Vermont celebrating the future independence of Vermont? Simple, really. Charlie believes in “small is beautiful” and I’m OK with it. Breaking the USofA into a number of smaller and more flexible states seems like a reasonable thing to do. That’s something advocated by Thomas Naylor, an economist and an activist for Vermont independence. It’s Naylor who brought Charlie to Vermont and I came along.

Me and a bunch of other guys. Since this post is about connections I could legitimately talk about these others. But I won’t. For one thing, that could easily go on and on and on as I start moving out along those networks. For another, I don’t know much about most of them except that they’re good and versatile musicians, which I learned from playing with them, some of the for the first time in Vermont. But I’ll mention one, trombonist Steve Swell, who’s sympathetic to Charlie’s politics and mine. You can track his musical links through his Wikipedia entry. Also, Steve’s loosely familiar with my neighborhood as he went to college in Jersey City. Continue reading →

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Celebrating the Future Independence of Vermont, at the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier: Toward a Politics of Jubilee

16 Sep

I spent Friday, 14 September in and around the Vermont Statehouse. Sometime back in the mists of history past some good Vermont citizens decided that, in the face of the cancerous growth of the American state, that Vermont folks of conscience and caring had to organize and urge their fellow Vermonters to secede from the Union. And so the Vermont Independence Party (VIP) was born.

And Friday was their third state-wide convention, with visitors from several other states as well. This convention was organized toward the reading of The Montpelier Manifesto, listing 29 grievances against the Federal Government of the United States of America and urging secession. The conference was held in the House Chamber of the Vermont Statehouse, for it seems that, by law, Vermont citizens have the right to occupy use the statehouse when it is not otherwise in use.

I was there with the Northeast Irregulars, a contingent of the New York Path to Peace, organized by Charlie Keil. We brought musicians from Jersey City, New York City, Connecticut, and Vermont. At least.

Here’s some photographs of that glorious day. I apologize to all those who were there for the celebration but not in these photos.

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That’s Charlie Keil on the right and Jack Lazarowski on the left. Jack and his wife Linda put Charlie and I up for the night. Thanks, Jack and Linda!

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Julie Buck and Rob Williams at the podium on the House Chamber. They were co-chairs for the event. Continue reading →

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Four Point Plan to Change the World, or at Least the USofA

7 Sep

Ha!

This is going to be quick and crude.

Some Assumptions

I’m making many assumptions, including: 1) Limits are near, 2) Science and technology cannot change that, and therefore 3) the American Century is over. 4) Recognizing and accepting 3 is the chief stumbling block to major political change. It’s a matter of mythology, symbolism, and emotional investment, not rational principle and reasoned argument.

Until this symbolic problem is overcome the reasoning behind 1 (limits), 2 (tech won’t work), and 3 (hegemony gone) is invisible.

The Hegemony Myth

So, how do we create a new mythology to replace that of American Hegemony? Good question. I don’t know.

I do know that, after Japan was defeated in World World II, some Japanese managed to shed the old imperial mythology which had Japan at the center of the world. One can see that process of mourning in, for example, three manga by Osamu Tezuka: Lost World, Metropolis, and Next World. That the Japanese had lost the war was an inescapable fact, and so many Japanese could find their way to a new mythology. Those Japanese grieved for their lost Japan and, out of that grief, managed to create a new one.

Nothing of comparable finitude has happened to America. The recent financial disaster was a shock, and it has had permanent repercussions, but it isn’t the equivalent of having several major cities incinerated, two by atom bombs, and enduring a military occupation. Before that, there was the terror bombing of 9/11. That too was shocking, but American responded to the shock by doubling down on the old mythology and thereby walking into two unwinnable wars half way around the world. Continue reading →

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Downsize the State: Nothing Succeeds Like Secession

4 Sep

The good people at the Second Vermont Republic are at it again, helping to organize The Third Statewide Convention on Vermont Self-Determination, with a keynote address by Morris Berman (Why America Failed).

The convention will be held in the Vermont State House, Montelier, VT, on Saturday 14 September, 2012, from 9AM ro 4PM (party afterwards!).

Occupy Secession has this to say:

Only in Vermont would it be possible to hold a statewide convention on political independence in the House Chamber of the State House, where the Governor, the Lt. Governor, Council of State, Congressional Delegation, and the vast majority of the members of the State Legislature are all unconditional apologists for the American Empire and vehemently opposed to Vermont separatism. Yet that is precisely what is about to happen in Montpelier, Vermont on September 14th. Not only that, it is the third such convention, the other two having been held in 2005 and 2008. There is no charge for the use of the most prestigious venue in the entire Green Mountain State, because it happens to be the People’s House….

At the end of the meeting convention delegates will be invited to consider endorsing The Montpelier Manifesto calling for the rejection of the immoral, corrupt, decaying, dying, failing American Empire as well as its rapid and peaceful dissolution. Not unlike the 1963 Port Huron Statement issued by the Students for a Democratic Society, The Montpelier Manifesto is aimed at all citizens of the United States, not just those living in Vermont. Continue reading →

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Michelle Obama and the Stealth Transition: Gardens Across America

31 Aug

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The way I see it, the smart money is on First Lady Michelle Obama, not to do a Hillary and go for the Big One in a later Presidential Ritual Contest (aka election). No, to do an Eleanor (Roosevelt) and have a major effect on the nation while her husband does the military strut.

How, pray tell, will she do this? you ask. With her garden, says I, with her garden.

Veggies for Health

As you may know, she’s very much interested in gardening, in particular, growing vegetables. She’s set up a garden on the Whitehouse lawn, grown veggies, had them served in the Whitehouse and has recently published a book on gardening and nutrition.

That’s her angle on gardening. Vegetables are good and good for you. They’re essential to a proper diet, and a proper diet is necessary to prevent childhood obesity.

Her interest in and commitment to gardening is deep, predating her husband’s nomination:

“Back then, it was really just the concept of, I wonder if you could grow a garden on the South Lawn?” Michelle Obama says. “If you could grow a garden, it would be pretty visible and maybe that would be the way that we could begin a conversation about childhood health, and we could actually get kids from the community to help us plant and help us harvest and see how their habits changed.”

She was a city kid from Chicago’s South Side who had never had a garden herself, though her mother recalls a local victory garden created to produce vegetables during World War II. One childhood photo included in the book shows Michelle as an infant in her mother’s arms — the resemblance between Marian Robinson in the picture and Michelle as an adult is striking — and another depicts a young Michelle practicing a headstand in the backyard.

… After the election, she broached her idea to start the first vegetable garden on the White House grounds since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in the 1940s.

Since the garden’s groundbreaking in 2009 — just two months after the inauguration — she has hosted seasonal waves of students from local elementary schools that help plant the seeds. Groundskeepers and dozens of volunteers weed and tend the garden. Charlie Brandts, a White House carpenter who is a hobbyist beekeeper, has built a beehive a few feet away to pollinate the plants and provide honey that Michelle Obama says “tastes like sunshine.”

So, the First Lady has a garden on the Whitehouse lawn and she’s preaching the garden gospel. Good enough.

Gardens in the Transition

The thing is, regardless of why a family or a community decides to grow a vegetable garden, the moment they start doing so, they’re also participating in the Transition Movement. By that I mean the movement started by Rob Hopkins in England and that now has groups all over the world: Continue reading →

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Curators’ Statement: Spontaneous Interventions – Design – Architect Magazine

29 Aug

Cities have always been built by their citizens. For millennia this was literally so and our cities have grown though myriad forms of participation and creativity into a brilliant synthesis of the ideas and actions of millions. The exponential growth of the modern city has also inadvertently estranged us from a role in shaping it. For many, the city seems just too big, too intractable, too inaccessible. But around the world, scores of people and organizations are intervening directly in their own environments, bringing incremental improvements to their streets, blocks, and neighborhoods. These acts of micro-urbanism, of informal urban design, are characteristically small in scale, and often temporary—the opposite of the qualities we traditionally associate with good design—yet their power resides not so much in their forms as in their impacts, in their immediate ability to infuse places with value and meaning.

via Curators’ Statement: Spontaneous Interventions – Design – Architect Magazine.

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Happiness: Has the Gallup Organization been Hanging Out in Bhutan?

27 Aug

As you know the government of Bhutan has adopted Gross National Happiness as the appropriate measure of national well-being (rather than, say, oh, gross national product, GNP):

Like many psychological and social indicators, GNH is somewhat easier to state than to define with mathematical precision. Nonetheless, it serves as a unifying vision for Bhutan’s five-year planning process and all the derived planning documents that guide the economic and development plans of the country. Proposed policies in Bhutan must pass a GNH review based on a GNH impact statement that is similar in nature to the Environmental Impact Statement required for development in the U.S.

The Bhutanese grounding in Buddhist ideals suggests that beneficial development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.

That’s Bhutan, but I don’t live there and chances are you don’t either. But yesterday, just as I was coming out of my afternoon nap (one of the keys to my personal happiness, BTW) I got a phone call from a young lady who identified herself as being with the Gallup polling organization. She asked me if I’d be willing to answer a few questions and I agreed. Continue reading →

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Let us fight no more forever

25 Aug

Late in 1877 the Nez Perce nation fought an asymmetrical war with the United States of America. For over three months Chief Joseph led 800 companions in a battle against the United States Army as they made a thousand-mile flight to Canada that stopped 40 miles short. On October 5, 1877 Chief Joseph surrendered, uttering these words:

Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are – perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my Chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

Joseph and his people were not treated well in surrender. Alas.

But it is not the Nez Perce that I’m thinking about today. Continue reading →

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