Still #FeeltheBern? You’re Not Alone

Half past noon on Sunday, June 19, the People’s Summit ended. The Bernie Sanders photo collage was folded up, the round tables broken down, the hall cleared of the roughly 3,000 conference-goers—including nurses, social activists, and volunteers—who had just spent three jam-packed days networking and strategizing.

“No one came in here with a big ol’ plan.”

National Nurses United (NNU), a union of nearly 185,000 nurses that endorsed Bernie Sanders, hosted the People’s Summit in Chicago, along with grassroots organizations like People for Bernie and the Democratic Socialists of America. Their goal was to facilitate connections between organizers, urge Sanders’ supporters to answer his call that they run for office themselves, and to strategize for the Democratic National Convention in July and beyond.

Speakers like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawai‘i) and author Naomi Klein addressed ways to capitalize on the momentum of Sanders’ campaign, now that he no longer has a path to the nomination. It remains to be seen what concrete steps activists will take, but one thing’s for sure: Bernie supporters aren’t giving up.

As RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of NNU, said in her closing speech: “No one came in here with a big ol’ plan. The nurses, we’re going the distance with Bernie. We’re going to the DNC. We’re going to fight on our issues. I don’t care what they have to say, we’re going in there together, right?”

Meet six people from the summit who are still feeling the Bern—even if that now means supporting the 74-year-old senator’s ideas, rather than his campaign for president.

Still #FeeltheBern? You’re Not Alone

Half past noon on Sunday, June 19, the People’s Summit ended. The Bernie Sanders photo collage was folded up, the round tables broken down, the hall cleared of the roughly 3,000 conference-goers—including nurses, social activists, and volunteers—who had just spent three jam-packed days networking and strategizing.

“No one came in here with a big ol’ plan.”

National Nurses United (NNU), a union of nearly 185,000 nurses that endorsed Bernie Sanders, hosted the People’s Summit in Chicago, along with grassroots organizations like People for Bernie and the Democratic Socialists of America. Their goal was to facilitate connections between organizers, urge Sanders’ supporters to answer his call that they run for office themselves, and to strategize for the Democratic National Convention in July and beyond.

Speakers like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawai‘i) and author Naomi Klein addressed ways to capitalize on the momentum of Sanders’ campaign, now that he no longer has a path to the nomination. It remains to be seen what concrete steps activists will take, but one thing’s for sure: Bernie supporters aren’t giving up.

As RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of NNU, said in her closing speech: “No one came in here with a big ol’ plan. The nurses, we’re going the distance with Bernie. We’re going to the DNC. We’re going to fight on our issues. I don’t care what they have to say, we’re going in there together, right?”

Meet six people from the summit who are still feeling the Bern—even if that now means supporting the 74-year-old senator’s ideas, rather than his campaign for president.

One Hopeful Thing About the Brexit Electoral Rebellion

The world is abuzz over Brexit, the United Kingdom’s decision to exit the European Union (EU). Is it a victory for freedom, democracy, and national integrity? Or is it a racist retreat into xenophobia and isolationism? Will the EU itself survive or is this the beginning of itsdisintegration? As I reflect on these questions, I realize they raise essential issues that have profound implications far beyond Europe about how we set and manage boundaries.

We are only beginning to come to terms with the reality that we are a global species dependent on one living Earth. Consequently, we now must deal with a far greater degree of interdependence than ever before. We have only begun to recognize, let alone address, the implications of the boundaries within which we manage these relationships.

This lack of understanding is evident in the shallowness of the public debates about Brexit and international agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). These debates center on national boundaries and a choice between extremes. Should national boundaries be erased, as the European Union does with trade, migration, and investment? Or should they be marked by impenetrable walls with armed guards at designated entry points, as Donald Trump proposes?

Let’s start with basics. Life’s ability to self-organize depends on boundaries. At the lowest system level, a living cell manages a constant flow of water, information, nutrients, and energy within itself and in constant exchange with its environment. To maintain the integrity of its internal processes and its essential exchange with its environment—including neighboring cells—it must maintain a permeable and managed cell wall. If that wall becomes either impermeable or is breached in ways that imperil the cell’s integrity, the cell dies.

The need for permeable, managed boundaries repeats at each system level. For the human body, the skin manages the boundary; natural barriers such as mountains, shorelines, and deserts manage the boundaries of ecosystems, and the atmosphere manages Earth’s boundary with outer space.

In New York, Republicans and Democrats Join Forces to Overturn Citizens United

Earlier this month, the United States came one step closer to enacting its first constitutional amendment in 24 years.

A bipartisan majority of New York’s Senate and Assembly issued letters to Congress on June 15 calling for a 28th amendment. Both Republicanand Democratic versions of the letter demand the new amendment say that corporations “are not entitled to the same rights and protections as natural persons under the Constitution,” which moves the country toward overturning the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United.

In the four years since Citizens United, outside spending on Senate races nationwide more than doubled.

That decision has resulted in a great expansion of “outside spending,” meaning spending by political action committees and nonprofits rather than by candidates’ own campaigns. In the first four years afterCitizens United was passed, outside spending on Senate races nationwide more than doubled to $486 million. Across all campaigns, super PACs have spent more than $1 billion on races since 2010, with more than 60 percent of that amount coming from fewer than 200 individuals and married couples.

This month’s letters make New York the 17th state to call for a constitutional amendment on money in politics. The development comes after more than three years of grassroots campaigning, led by the consumer-rights advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.

A constitutional amendment requires approval by a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate, or a constitutional convention called by at least three-quarters of state legislatures. Both are daunting notions. But activists hope that if enough states show support for the amendment, Congress will answer the call of their constituents.

Nationwide, 80 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats oppose Citizens United, according to a 2015 Bloomberg poll.

“This continues to be an issue that cuts across the political spectrum,” says John Bonifaz. He is president and co-founder of Free Speech for People, a group that advocates a 28th amendment and was founded the day of the Citizens United decision.

Nowhere has that bipartisan support been clearer than in New York. According to Bonifaz, it’s the only state to date where a legislature not completely controlled by Democrats has supported overturning Citizens United.

Thousands Moving Money to Black-Owned Banks

inger Solange Knowles, sister of pop star Beyonce, recently announced that she was moving her dollars to a Black-owned bank. Last month, Knowles posted on her Instagram account—where she has over a million followers—“I’m proud to say I made that step today. Time to literally put my money where my mouth is.”

Her post included a list of the Black-owned banks in the United States. There are 22 of them. In addition, there are 318 credit unions with African American designations to also choose from.

Calls to “bank Black” generated nearly a million dollars of new deposits for Citizens Trust Bank.

Over the past several weeks, the movement to #BankBlack has grown, partly in response to the recent police shootings of Black men and boys, and celebrities like Knowles have spotlighted the movement, calling for unity and a focus on rebuilding Black communities—dollar by dollar. There was a similar campaign that grew out of the Occupy movement five years ago to get money out of big corporate banks and into local banks. Millions of dollars were reportedly moved into communities as a result.

In July, calls to “bank Black” generated nearly a million dollars of new deposits for Citizens Trust Bank, which has branches in Georgia and Alabama. Rolling Out Magazine reported that more than 8,000 people each transferred at least $100 into Citizens Trust in five days. A week later, several Houston-area rappers joined the movement by transferring their money to Black-owned banks. They opened their accounts at Unity Bank, the only Black-owned bank in Houston.

National Bankers Association chairman Preston Pinkett III credits the Black Lives Matter movement for generating the attention and focus on economic empowerment. “The Black Lives Matter movement is a complement to an emerging economic empowerment movement that is engulfing Black communities all over America,” he told the Philadelphia Tribune.

Buy Low, Sell Never: Why Not Just Buy the Entire Coal Industry?

I recently drove across the West, mostly on two-lane roads and through towns where campaign signs aren’t about a candidate but a mineral. “Coal Keeps The Lights On,” says a sign repeated throughout northwestern Colorado. That same idea is found at the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana or in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

Coal is not on the ballot, but many in the rural West want it to be. And some, especially Republicans, are eager to oblige, claiming that it’s an Obama-led war on coal that’s destroying jobs and forcing coal companies into bankruptcy.

If there was ever a need for a new narrative, it’s coal.

Here are three previous ones.

The first story is a bit boring but important: Natural gas replaced coal as a source of electricity in the United States. It was a dramatic shift, a near market collapse for coal. The industry had a desperate plan to stay in business by increasing shipments to China, but China’s consumption of coal was decreasing too. Folks in port cities in the Northwest and California oppose the by-product of dirty coal dust. Tribes in Washington state cite treaty fishing rights (salmon need clean water) to prevent construction of a new coal shipping terminal.

The second story is the industry’s chaos: Corporate bankruptcy. Rural job losses. An industry that is present in zombie form, still mining and shipping coal across the West to generating stations or to ports in British Columbia. People are still working, but it’s the living dead. There is no future for coal.

The third story is the climate imperative: There should be agreement that the world needs to quickly move beyond coal, if not most carbon.New data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines nearly 90 percent of the world’s coal as “unburnable.”

So how do we incorporate these three stories into a new narrative? The answer is telling all three at the same time. As long as the story is only about the climate, there are hundreds of families across the West who will dismiss any story that leaves their paychecks and prospects on the line.

Stephen Kass, a New York attorney who works on climate issues,suggested in the Washington Post recently that the U.S. government should buy the entire coal industry and shut it down. He said climate “savings” could help pay the cost of condemning coal power plants.

We could do more than that. We could also buy coal that is still in the ground. Buy low. Sell never. This is the perfect time to buy the entire coal industry because prices are so low.

The U.S. Just Surpassed the Number of Breweries We Had in 1873

The watts of electrical current drawn by a charging phone: 3.68 1

Watts drawn by a fully-charged phone that is still connected to an outlet: 2.24

Watts drawn when a charger is left connected to an outlet: 0.26

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Percent chance of being bitten by a venomous snake in the United States: .00002 2

Percent chance of being struck by lightning in the United States: .000083

Percent chance of a woman in the U.S. experiencing physical violence by an intimate partner: 33 4

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Percentage of non-white speaking-role characters in 2014’s top 100 films: 27 5

Percentage of minority Hollywood writers in 2014: 12 6

Minority percentage of U.S. population: 38 7

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Percentage of waste Germany recycles and composts: 65 8

Percentage of waste South Korea recycles and composts: 59

Percentage of waste the United States recycles and composts: 35

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Estimated net migration of Mexicans into the United States, 1995–2000: +2,270,000 9

Estimated net migration of Mexicans into the United States, 2009–2014: -140,000

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Number of U.S. breweries in 1873: 4,131 10

Number in 1932: 0

Number in 1985: 110

Number in 2015: 4,269

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Average price of a Big Mac (U.S. dollars) in Switzerland: $6.44 11

Average price in the United States: $4.93

Average price in Turkey: $3.41

Average price in Peru: $2.93

Average price in India: $1.90

Average price in Venezuela (though the Big Mac is temporarily off the menu due to a bread shortage): $0.66 12

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Global median percentage of people who believe it is important that religion is able to be practiced freely in their country: 74 13

Global median percentage who believe it is important that women have the same rights as men in their country: 65

Global median percentage who believe it is important to have freedom of speech without state censorship in their country: 56

#IamtheGigEconomy: Love Being Your Own Boss or Desperate for a Traditional Job?

Other times, you want your freedom. In the years before James Trimarco became an editor at YES!, he did everything he could to avoid having a traditional job. He worked for temp agencies doing factory and warehouse jobs. He took seasonal jobs on political campaigns or fundraising efforts, edited people’s Ph.D. dissertations, and refinished the floors in their homes. He says it was all about staying as free as possible so that he could focus on his activism during those years: the peace movement and local struggles for affordable housing in New York City.

Without knowing it at the time, people like us have been part of the mass migration of Americans out of traditional employment. Some of that migration has come from people trying to break free and focus their time on things that matter—their children, art, health, or community. For others the move has been less voluntary, as businesses ramp up profits by replacing traditional jobs with contracts with no benefits and no guarantee of work tomorrow.

All told, we’re at the point where roughly 40 percent of American workers are in some part of the vast, complex world of the gig economy. They’re contractors, freelancers, temps. They’re seasonal. They’re paid under the table. Only a tiny minority work for the app-based companies like Uber that get so much of the gig economy press these days. But that sector is growing fast.

Tell us about your gig life in the comment section below or use #IamtheGigEconomy.

Tired of Waiting for Corporate High-Speed Internet, Minnesota Farm Towns Build Their Own

Seven years ago, Winthrop, Minnesota, population 1,400, decided it needed an internet upgrade.

Most local residents were served by companies like Mediacom, whichConsumer Reports consistently ranked among the country’s worst internet providers. Slow connection speeds made work difficult in local schools and businesses, but farmers outside of town, who increasingly rely on connectivity to do business, experienced the worst of it.

Fourteen miles from Winthrop, in Moltke Township, population 330, one soybean- and wheat-farming family reported its sluggish DSL connection often made it impossible to upload reports to business partners.

Organizers in Winthrop knew they were too small to fund a major internet infrastructure-building project on their own, so they reached out to other neighbors, the town of Gaylord, population 2,305.

And the towns attracted 25 more municipal allies. 

Today, in this sparsely populated swath of Minnesota, a grassroots, member-owned cooperative spanning more than 700 square miles and four counties is poised to expand high-speed broadband access—without relying on federal funding. After seven years of development led by local leaders and volunteers, RS Fiber, now in its first phase of construction, is expected to deliver high-speed broadband internet to more than 6,000 rural households by 2021. And unlike companies like Mediacom, the co-op is owned by local customers who have a say in rates and how it’s operated.

As #BankBlack Moves Money, Black Credit Unions Are Ready

When Ervin Gardner joined other Black bankers a couple of weeks ago to strategize ways to make credit union services appealing to a younger generation, he was encouraged when the conversation turned to building unity and economic empowerment in Black communities.

“The bottom line is economics,” said Gardner, board member of the Chicago Post Office Employee Credit Union. People in leadership, those making decisions—policy, financial, and otherwise—respect unity and money.

“If African American financial institutions can grow, our issues and grievances can be addressed,” Gardner said, citing lack of investment and inequities in resources for Black communities as well as police abuse.

Gardner and more than a hundred African American credit union professionals and volunteers were attending the annual African American Credit Union Coalition convention, which coincided with a renewed national campaign to #BankBlack as a constructive response to frustrations over discrimination and disempowerment in Black communities.

While the number of Black-owned banks is down to only 22, there are 318 Black credit unions uniquely positioned to invest in their communities. The goal of the convention was to determine how to reach younger customers and increase membership and deposits to credit unions, both of which have been falling in recent years.

In July alone over a million dollars shifted to Black banking institutions—and therefore Black communities.

Black buying power is over a trillion dollars and projected to be $1.4 trillion by 2020. Neilsen reported earlier this year that the rate of “Black people making more than $75,000 a year [is] growing faster in size and influence than Whites in all income groups above $60,000. And as African American incomes increase, their spending surpasses that of the total population in areas such as insurance policies, pensions, and retirement savings.”

Impressive numbers that have big marketers paying attention. But here’s the problem:

Not many of the current $1.2 trillion in spending dollars circulate in Black communities for long. And if money doesn’t stay in a community, it’s not going to benefit that community. In fact, according to Brook Stephens’ book Talking Dollars and Making Sense: A Wealth Building Guide for African-Americans, the lifespan of the dollar in Black communities is about six hours, compared to 28 days in Asian communities, 20 days in Jewish communities, and 17 days in White communities.

So Gardner’s sine qua non for respect—unity and money—is lacking in the Black community. That’s why the current #BankBlack movement is critical. And why credit unions—small community financial cooperatives owned by the folks who have accounts—can be powerful.

Can Workers Get a Fair Deal in the Gig Economy?

More and more businesses are exploiting what is known as the “1099 worker loophole”—hiring workers as “independent contractors” instead of as regularly employed workers. In some cases, companies have laid off all or most of their regular workers and then hired them back, but as independent contractors.

In some cases, companies have laid off all or most of their regular workers.

Merck, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, has been a pioneer of this strategy. In 2008, when it came under pressure to cut costs, it sold its Philadelphia factory to a company that fired all 400 employees and then rehired them as independent contractors. Merck then contracted with the company to carry on making antibiotics for them, using the exact same employees.

And it’s not just Merck. Arizona public-relations firm LP&G fired 88 percent of its staff and then rehired them as freelancers working out of their homes, with no benefits. And Out magazine, the most-read gay monthly in the U.S., laid off its entire editorial staff and then rehired most of them as freelancers, with lower salaries and no benefits.

By hiring contractors instead of regularly employed workers, businesses can reduce labor costs by as much as 30 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s because they don’t have to provide health care, Social Security, paid sick leave, or even workers’ compensation after an injury.

Now from Silicon Valley comes an intensification of this economic trend: the so-called “gig economy.” Companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Upwork are allegedly liberating workers to become “micro-entrepreneurs,” who are “able to seamlessly integrate work with life,” as TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque put it in the Huffington Post. In reality, these workers have ever smaller part-time jobs (called “gigs” and “micro-gigs”), with low wages and no benefits or job guarantee, while the companies profit handsomely.

The gig economy treats a worker’s labor like just another ore to be fed into the company machine. Workers are paid only for the exact minutes they are producing a report, or designing a logo, or cleaning someone’s house. It’s as if a star quarterback got paid only when throwing a touchdown pass, or a chef was paid by the meal. There’s no annual or monthly salary. It takes us back to the days of the piecemeal, patchwork economy, which was more prevalent in previous centuries.

These new ways of working are crying out for regulation.

The prototype for the new digital company is Upwork, which is based in San Francisco. Its mere 250 regular employees use technology to oversee 10 million contractors and freelancers all over the world. A vast range of workers can be found on Upwork, including architects, engineers, lawyers, website and app designers, translators, software developers, and logo and graphic designers. U.S. workers bid for jobs alongside workers from India, Thailand, Philippines, and elsewhere. The workers auction themselves off, underbidding each other in a global race to the bottom. Upwork represents a new low in globalization, taking the logic of NAFTA and free trade, and intensifying it on a virtual shop floor.

Maybe the Gig Economy Doesn’t Have to Mean Oppressed Workers

When I learned the YES! Magazine editors were planning an issue on the “Gig Economy,” I was skeptical. I saw the trend toward contract work, piece work, and a lack of long-term employer-employee commitment as a sign of system breakdown and abuse of corporate power. The editors saw positive aspects I had missed. However, we need serious public conversation and policy action to make sure the positive aspects win out over the evident power imbalances and potential for exploitation.

Our editors estimate that 40 percent of American workers are now in the gig economy. Gig workers accounted for nearly all U.S. job growth since 2007—and for the job recovery from the 2008 financial crash. The flexible hours and short commitments of gig work can be liberating. But too often, gig workers are poorly paid and get no benefits.

The trend toward gig work raises fundamental questions: Does it combine with a breakdown in traditional family relationships to signal a permanent move away from committed relationships in both the home and workplace? Or might it be a transitional step toward deeper, more equitable relationships in family, community, and workplace life?

In the early United States, family and community were the primary units of production and consumption. With the help of neighbors, we produced food, clothing, and shelter from our own local materials, raised our children, and cared for our elderly. Money had only a supplemental role—if any.

Then came the industrial revolution. Those who left the land for the factory became dependent on money for the essentials of life. Established family and community relationships were disrupted. Corporations became the primary units of production.

This created new opportunities for some. Most, however, were forced to labor long hours in sweatshops for starvation wages. A long and often brutal struggle for worker rights followed.

Is the gig economy a step on the way to ever-more-poorly compensated and vulnerable employment?

After WWII, supported by strong unions and worker-friendly government policies, members of the White middle class in America enjoyed a period of good jobs with sufficient income and benefits for the husband to provide money to support himself, his wife, and their children. Women organized home and community life and raised the children.

Then women began to demand access to the jobs that gave men greater status, choice, and opportunity. At the same time, corporations were using automation and foreign outsourcing to eliminate the jobs to which women sought equal access.

As a growing pool of workers competed for a shrinking number of good jobs, unions lost political power as union-busting corporations gained it. Wages fell. Benefits were weakened for full-time employees and eliminated for others.

Soon it took two overstressed adults to earn sufficient income to meet the basic needs of a family with children. The stress led to family breakups, single parents raising latchkey children, and an aging population lacking family support.

We now see the rise of the gig economy. Some workers prefer gig work to a steady 9–5 job because it gives them the flexibility to spend time at home with their children, care for aging relatives, grow their own vegetables, pursue an artistic passion, go back to school. For some it is win-win—if their pay is adequate to their needs. For others it is isolating, demeaning, and exploitative.

Is the gig economy a step on the way to ever-more-poorly compensated and vulnerable employment? Or is it a viable, desirable path for many to take toward more caring, committed, and enduring relationships? What can we do to make it more the latter? These are pressing questions largely absent from our political and social dialogue.

I would love to hear your experience: Has gig work helped you build community or left you isolated and vulnerable? Do you have ideas about how to make this powerful trend part of the transition to a living Earth economy that works for all? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below or on the YES! Magazine Facebook page.

How Voters With $25 “Democracy Vouchers” Might Overtake the Super PACs

Election reform advocates are closely watching Seattle to see whether it becomes a viable model for getting big money out of local politics. Last year the city approved a “democracy vouchers” program, which will publicly fund local candidates through small donors, requiring limits on campaign spending.

Starting in 2017, all registered voters will receive $100 in vouchers from the city government to spend in $25 parcels on their preferred candidates for city office.

If they are successful, the power of the small donor may overtake that of the super PAC. 

Since then, two states—Washington and South Dakota—are putting similar programs on this fall’s ballot. Other local governments are considering donor matching programs, in which donations are paired with an extra chunk of public money, much the way New York City has practiced for nearly 30 years.

While their methods may differ, local movements like these share the common goal of cutting big-money influence in elections in a post-Citizens United America. If they are successful, the power of the small donor may overtake that of the super PAC.

New York’s democratic roots

In the wake of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, when public interest in government accountability was high, the federal government and a handful of states adopted public-financing systems in which public money would match campaign donations 1-1 or would be issued to candidates in a grant system. But these programs eventually fell into disuse because taking public money required a candidate to adhere to spending limits, which became unrealistic as campaign costs skyrocketed.

New York City is considered the leader of the modern public-financing movement with the system it adopted in 1988.

In a continual effort to lift the influence of small donors, the city initially matched donations to citywide candidates dollar-for-dollar for a donor’s first $1,000. In the 2001 elections, it shifted its formula to give a 4-1 match for the first $250, and in 2009, it used a 6-1 match for the first $175.

This is now known as a “supermatch system,” and has since been adopted by Los Angeles and, most recently, Montgomery County, Maryland, located in the Washington, D.C., metro area.

New York City is considered the leader of the modern public financing movement with the system it adopted in 1988.

Studies show that in New York City, the supermatch system improved both participation and diversity, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. City Council candidates receive donations from a wider geographic area and more ethnically diverse neighborhoods than before, said Brent Ferguson, attorney at the Brennan Center’s Democracy program.

Why We Need Tiny Colleges

We are experiencing the rebirth of smallness. Farmers markets, tiny homes, and brew pubs all exemplify our love of smallness. So do charter schools, coffee shops, and local bookstores.

Smallness allows us to be more human.

Small is often (but not always) more affordable, healthier, and sustainable, but its finest characteristic, the one that turns charm into love, is that going small allows us to be more fully who we are. Smallness allows us to be more human.

In higher education the trend is mostly in the opposite direction: Universities with 20,000 or 30,000 students are considered “mid-sized”; a “small” college is one with a few thousand students. The nation’s largest university, Arizona State University, has 80,000 students on campus and aims to enroll another 100,000 students online.

At the other end of the spectrum is a handful of colleges that have fewer than a hundred students on campus and no online courses: colleges such as Sterling College; Thomas More College of Liberal Arts; and Deep Springs College. These colleges are so small that they can only be called “tiny.”

Tiny colleges focus not just on a young person’s intellect, but on the young person as a whole. Equally important, tiny colleges ask, “How can education contribute to human flourishing and the well-being of the world?” And they shape a college experience to address that question. They replace concerns about institutional growth with attention to the growth of students as fully developed, vibrant participants in their communities.

I have had the privilege of teaching at three different institutions of higher learning during my career—a small liberal arts college and two mid-sized public universities. I have had many excellent students and wonderful colleagues. I have also been profoundly disappointed in each of these institutions, and in many of my colleagues, especially when it comes to helping students and preparing them for the many responsibilities of adulthood. Administrators focus on the business of running a university, and most faculty focus on their scholarship and teaching their discipline. Little deliberate attention is given to how students mature as individuals and social beings.

Young people need an education that will provide them with meaning, hope, courage, and zest.

Having just retired from teaching at a public university, I am now returning to my hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona, to establish a tiny college—Flagstaff College. I am convinced that there is a need for another type of education, one devoted to helping students come into their own and into this beautiful and troubled world. Young people need an education that will provide them with meaning, hope, courage, and zest, as well as information and skills. Large institutions, I believe, are particularly ill-suited to this type of education.

Call for Submissions: Science for the Public Good

If we think of science as curiosity in thoughtful action about the world and how it works, then all humans are born scientists. How can we push that curiosity even further into the public realm and turn it into a tool for advocacy and social change?

Some subjects we’d like to explore in the Spring 2017 issue of YES!:

Scientists as advocates: At the Paris climate talks we heard scientists raising their voices in defense of climate science and then going further—advocating for policies that could save the planet. What is the history and reasoning for keeping science out of advocacy in the first place? How can scientists become even greater allies in activism around climate and environmental justice?

Every person a scientist: There are some powerful examples of citizen-led science-based activism; the water poisoning in Flint, Michigan, is one example. Public Lab teaches people to investigate environmental concerns using inexpensive DIY techniques. Any impacts to report from their work? Crowdsourced research on animal migration shifts and sea changes in coastal areas—how are citizens engaging more as students and caretakers of their physical world? Who are the citizen scientists doing amazing work?

Overcoming bad history: For many communities of color, scientific research has been something done to them, not for them or by them. How can communities and researchers overcome a history of exclusion and concerns about unethical research and find a way forward as partners? The Community-Based/Tribally-Based Participatory Research (CBPR/TPR) model used at University of Washington, where the researchers worked with the tribes, may offer a new paradigm.

Your DNA is everywhere: Inexpensive genetic testing is allowing people to learn more about their ancestry. What implications does this testing have for our understanding of racial and ethnic identity—and what does it mean in the struggle for racial justice? And the explosion in available genetic information, data that can offer us new insights about health and genetics that could potentially benefit many or be a tool for corporate instead of public gain—what are the ethics? Who owns the data? What’s up with the big Iceland genetics project to decode DNA for a massive population? What can we learn from that experience about the politics of privacy in this new era?  

Corporations out of science: How do we make sure publicly funded research benefits the public? When drug companies make buckets of money off pricey drugs that were developed initially because of publicly funded research, something’s wrong. But there may be a solution: National Institutes of Health can shorten the wait for generic versions of drugs—if they can find the political will. How do we solve the “other” drug money problems—drug companies funding their own research and distorting outcomes to maximize profits? How can we ensure public-funded science is done in the public interest—and reflects the needs and health concerns of a broad range of people? Are there ethical models for corporate-funded research?

Why Bicycle Justice Isn’t a White Guy in Spandex

enna Burton moved to Oakland, California, in 2007. She was tired of the cost and hassle of driving, and the thriving bicycle culture in the Bay Area inspired her to get on a bicycle for the first time since she was 9. She loved it and took to it in part because in Oakland, and especially in her activist circle, it was a normal way to get around.

There weren’t that many other people on bikes who looked like her. 

But her friends from back home thought it was a strange choice to make. And she noticed one thing right away—there weren’t that many other people on bikes who looked like her. Even though 28 percent of the city’s population was of African descent, the few other Black people she did see on bikes were mostly using them as a last resort, a far cry from her own exuberant choice.

It was up to her, she decided, to create a space for more Black folks to try out bikes and develop a bicycling culture. She invited her friends to join her on a weekend ride. The response was enthusiastic, but only two showed up. They had a great time on the ride, and she decided to try to build more momentum.

In 2010, Burton and a core group of organizers officially launched Red, Bike, and Green. “It’s bigger than bikes” is one of the group’s slogans. The three points of their mission make this clear: They promote and use bicycles as a tool to help Black people be healthier and more active, to save money and support Black-owned businesses, and work to reduce pollution and other environmental factors that disproportionately affect Black folks.

RBG began in earnest with a monthly ride that coincided with the city’s First Fridays arts walk. In diverse Oakland, the art event was predominantly White, and Burton’s group of dozens of young riders took delight in riding through it with their Black Critical Mass. The group soon established a second monthly ride, held on a weekend and paced for families. Over the winter, they held indoor events to socialize with each other and prospective new cyclists. A main focus from the start was to create art around RBG, developing a strong visual identity for the growing community.

Meet the Farmworker Who Helped Win Rent Control in California’s Wine Country

After his single mother suffered an injury, Gervacio Pena Lopez left school in Mexico and made four attempts to enter the United States in search of work to support his family. He eventually found a job pruning grapes in Sonoma County, California. It was punishing labor that earned him $3.35 an hour and left him so exhausted he chose sleep over meals.

Indigenous and immigrant workers regularly see their skills devalued.

Today, he is a landscaper, laborer, and board president of the Graton Day Labor Center, a worker-led day organization that advocates for the rights of domestic and day laborers. He has studied liberation theology, marched with the United Farm Workers, taken on the powerful wine industry, and fought for rent control—and won.

For Pena Lopez, who is Mixteco and whose grandparents farmed, farmworkers bring millennia of traditional ecological knowledge, passed down intergenerationally, about how to live in balance with the land and each other. Yet, indigenous and immigrant workers regularly see their skills devalued, their knowledge discounted, and their labor exploited.

Brooke Anderson of Climate Workers and Davin Cardenas of the North Bay Organizing Project recently sat down with Pena Lopez in Sonoma County, California.

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Brooke Anderson: Gervacio, I know you as a very committed leader in social movements here in the North Bay, but tell us a bit about your life before arriving here.

Gervacio Pena Lopez: I was born in Santiago Naranjas, Oaxaca, in 1967. It was the year they captured and killed Che Guevara. My mom was a single mom. At first, she just worked in the house, taking care of the house and of us. But that didn’t pay, so she’d clean clothes for other families or sell tortillas. Later, they’d recruit people to work the fields in Sinaloa picking tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, and everything that gets exported to the U.S. My mom would make us food and then climb up on a truck to go to work every day so that I could study.

Anderson: How was it that you decided to come here?

“This isn’t work. It’s torture.”

Pena Lopez: Everything was going well for me in school. I wasn’t thinking of coming here. But my mom got in an accident. She was injured by a nail. I was still in school, but I thought that I should be the one who should go to work so that it would not be difficult for my mom or my siblings. So in 1986, I tried four times to cross the border but they threw me out. I was deported to the San Quintin Valley in Baja California. But by 1986, I finally arrived here. The only work available was pruning grapes. But since I had not previously worked in Mexico, I wasn’t able to bear such hard work here. The first few months that we worked the grapes, I’d leave at night so tired that all I could do was sleep. Even though I was hungry, I’d say “I’d rather rest than eat.” All my bones hurt. It was difficult for me to adjust. I’d say to myself, “This isn’t work. It’s torture.” We worked nine hours every day for $3.35 an hour.

Davin Cardenas: How was it that you decided to get involved in social movements here?

Pena Lopez: I only came here to work. I didn’t want to get involved in anything, but once when we were picking grapes, they fired my cousins and me from a ranch. We were ready to start picking when they gave us a piece of paper that we had to sign saying that they would pay us 80 cents per bucket of grapes. We didn’t want to sign it because we wanted a dollar. Everywhere else was paying a dollar already. “No, you’re crazy,” said the owners. “If you want to work, you have to sign it.” We’d already heard of the United Farm Workers Union and Cesar Chavez that defended farm workers. So I started to march with them.

A New Economic Vision That Mixes Together Occupy, Amish Culture, and Startups

t feels we are in a time of increasing cultural polarization, marked by the refugee crisis in Europe, the staunch divide of U.S. domestic politics, and the growing disenchantment of millennials with traditional institutions. Now, as we fall victim to the cultural bubbles we live in—the walled echo chambers of opinion that make up our social networks—we need to be able to bridge divides, to communicate across subcultures. Now, more than ever, we need to navigate the world with a certain “cultural promiscuity” and to think outside the silos of traditional disciplines, belief systems, and sectors.

In the same way we can splice a gene, cultures are also capable of becoming more hybrid. 

As someone engaged in social change interventions around the world, I have been flirting with diverse subcultures for some time. I see reality through multidimensional lenses, from Marxist diagnosis and feminist provocation to self-organizing facilitation tools like the Art of Hosting and Dragon Dreaming. All play a role in the communities I serve and the projects I work on.

But this wasn’t always the case. With a background in anthropology, I was trained to approach communities and cultures not as traditions to be spliced and remixed, but as entities to be observed, respected, and preserved. Only recently, I’ve come to see culture as a dynamic and living organism, capable of being “hacked,” of being “mashed up” and remixed. In the same way we can splice a gene, cultures are also capable of becoming more hybrid; for example, elements of hacker culture can become implanted in local government.

How Americans Build Wealth in 10 Charts (And What Race Has to Do With It)

This infographic is part of a special report. Banking on Justice: The Bankers Doing Civil Rights Work in the Mississippi Delta.

The World’s Biggest School Meal Program Is Keeping Local Farmers in Business

Nevertheless, they are among 45 million students benefiting from the world’s biggest universal school feeding program, whose meals are helping keep Brazil’s small farmers on their land.

Family farmers and cooperatives have seen their fortunes rise as a result of the program, which guarantees them a local market and has helped to expand formal land rights nationwide.

“Incomes have increased significantly because of it,” said Amanda Venturim, agricultural adviser to a cooperative of 56 small farmers outside Brasilia.

“The government makes a contract with us beforehand, so farmers know how much food they need to produce and how much they will receive,” said Venturim, standing beside vast grain elevators on the dry savannah that surrounds the capital.

The cooperative has been selling food to the government for school meals for three years, she said, enabling farmers to invest in new equipment and to retain control of their land.

Local preferences

First developed in the 1950s, Brazil’s school feeding initiative has expanded rapidly over the past decade or so as part of a successful push for “zero hunger” in Latin America’s most populous country.

About a quarter of Brazilians receive free meals under the program.

Brazil has about 5 million small farms, according to the U.N.’s Centre of Excellence Against Hunger in Brasilia. These farmers are some of the prime beneficiaries of hundreds of millions of dollars of government spending on school meals.

A 2009 law stipulates that authorities must spend at least 30 percent of their school meal budget on produce from smallholder farmers.

At the elementary school in south Brasilia, nutritionist Sumara de Oliveira Santana said the law is helping farmers to stay on the land because it encourages local production.

About a quarter of Brazilians receive free meals under the program.

“Smallholder farmers and local producers have priority when we buy food for the schools,” said Santana as she supervised several dozen rowdy students during snack break.

For their part, the kids were not too concerned with the details of land politics.

“Pineapple is my favorite fruit for a snack,” said Anderson Souza, 7. “For lunch I like meat, but I don't know where all the food comes from.”

Landed farmers

Most of Brazil’s food—about 70 percent of what’s consumed in the country—comes from small farmers, according to the U.N. About three-quarters of these small farms are owned by farmers who have official land title deeds, according to government data.

Access to a guaranteed market through the feeding program allows small farmers to keep control of their land, Venturim said.

Farmers say they now know roughly how much they will be earning each year and can apply for credit and other government support due to their participation in the initiative. It means they don’t have to migrate to cities in search of work, unlike many farmers in the developing world who leave their land in the hopes of earning more in the city. The program also helps farmers make decisions on investing in new seeds or technology because they can plan ahead on what crops they will grow by partnering with nutritionists like Santana.

Unique link

Across Brazil, more than 1 million small farms have no formal land title deeds, according to official data. These farmers simply occupy the land where they produce or live in settlements with no formal title, but even they benefit from the program.

Having a direct relationship with the state through the school feeding program helps small farmers and cooperatives to gain formal ownership over their land.