Category Archives: Uncategorized

Permaculture in Palestine

The olives are flowering on my land in California right now, just as they are in the olive groves of Palestine. In a few weeks I’ll be heading there to coteach a permaculture course at the Marda Permaculture Farm on the West Bank, together with Klaudia van Gool from England and Murad Al-Khufash, who runs the demonstration farm and who is bringing the tools and insights of permaculture to Palestine...we need to raise five thousand dollars to support the costs of the course and to make it available for Palestinians who suffer many economic privations under the Occupation. Donate online here: http://www.thefarm.org/etc.
Also posted in Earth Activist Training, Palestine, gardens, permaculture | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

My State of the Union

During Obama’s State of the Union message, I was scheduled to give a talk at Northern Arizona University on “Women Taking Action: Using the Insights of the Feminist Movement.” As part of it, I decided to write the State of the Union as if Obama were suddenly possessed by the spirit of the nurturing, caring, [...]
Also posted in climate change, sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Now That The Election is Over…

Organizing after an Obama victory is like bicycling with the wind at your back, instead of peddling into a stiff head wind. I’ve lived and organized through the victories of Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush, and believe me, this is better! And we have a lot of organizing to do.
Also posted in Occupy movement, climate change, political activism | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

Emerald City–Some Milestones

Our Emerald City Green Entrepreneurs Training is going strong—here’s some highlights of our first three weeks.
Also posted in Bayview Hunters Point, Fifth Sacred thing movie, gardens, life passages, permaculture, social justice | Tagged | 3 Comments

Emerald City–Starting a Green Entrepreneurs Program in Bayview Hunters Point

We are finally starting our new Emerald City Green Entrepreneurs Program—a collaboration between Earth Activist Training, our program that combines permaculture, spirit and activism, and Hunters Point Family, which runs programs for youth and young adults in Bayview Hunters Point, the San Francisco neighborhood with the highest rates of poverty, crime and violence...In the afternoon, we have our first real hands-on project, starting seeds and making soil mix. And they all dive into the work—once we hand out gloves! Actually putting your hands into the dirt will be another long-term learning process. I find it enormously sweet to watch these big, burly guys so seriously and delicately planting the tiny seeds of collards.
Also posted in Bayview Hunters Point, Fifth Sacred thing movie, gardens, life passages, permaculture, social justice | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Travels and Occupies

But even more than troubles with the cops and city authorities, the biggest challenges the Occupy movement faces seem to be internal. How do we make decisions together? How do we resolve our own conflicts within our groups? Once we’ve said “We are the 99%”, how do we set standards of behavior and say what is okay and what is not? Once we’ve renounced force and coercion, how do we enforce those standards when we do set them?
Also posted in Occupy movement, collaborative groups, political activism | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

The Truth About Lisa Fithian

What do you do when a friend is slimed by Fox News? If you respond, do you simply feed the venom? But if you don’t respond, do their lies stand, unchallenged? Or is it a badge of honor to be called out by Fox, however nasty it feels?
Also posted in political activism, social justice | 11 Comments

My Day–The Short List

Something is happening. Occupations are springing up all over the place. One of the young women organizers told me she’d passed on my consensus download to someone about to start Occupy Mississippi! There are union folks here from Wisconsin, displaced stockbrokers from New York, laid off policy wonks from here in DC, affable former corporate managers from Texas, ex-cons from the ‘hood here in DC, a lot of homeless people, and students who’ve woken up to the fact that they are debt-slaves. What will happen if ordinary folks all over the country get addicted to having a say in the decisions that affect their lives?
Also posted in climate change, political activism, social justice | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Thanks for Making our Kickstarter Campaign a Success!

Our Kickstarter campaign for The Fifth Sacred Thing movie is over—and thanks to the incredible, generous support we’ve received, we did fantastically well, raising $76. 327 from 1431 donors! That puts us in the top fifty of most-funded Kickstarter campaigns.
Also posted in Fifth Sacred thing movie | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

A Tale of Many Meetings

When we crunched the numbers, we realized that our original Kickstarter goal was too low. We’re grateful to have reached it, and it’s probably just enough to let us squeak by, but in reality we need more to keep the project moving forward in a way that’s sustainable. That’s why we’ve upped it our real goal of $100,000. And we are deeply grateful for anything you can contribute to that end.
Also posted in Fifth Sacred thing movie | Tagged | 5 Comments