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