#PeoplesClimateMovement in demanding #climateaction
I’m joining the #PeoplesClimate Movement on Oct 14 to demand bold #climateaction from our leaders. Will you join me?
#PeoplesClimateMovement
#climateaction
Today – Support NYC bill abolishing grand juries in police killing cases at press conference
This message from Lawrence Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress. Sounds like an excellent event to support.
Friends,
Assemblyman Charles Barron is going to have a press conference tomorrow 11:30 am to announce that he is going to introduce a bill to abolish grand juries in cases that involve the killing of unarmed civilians by police in the State of New York. He has invited POP to participate. I am asking that as many members, friends and supporters of the People’s Organization For Progress as possible attend this press conference, stand with him, and show our support for this piece of progressive legislation. The press conference will take tomorrow, Monday August 17 2015, 11:30am at New York City Hall, near 250 Broadway in New York City, New York. Get there early because it takes time to get through the security at the gate of the park in which the City Hall is located. The press conference will start promptly at 12 noon. Assemblyman Barron is sponsoring this bill because too often grand juries fail to indict officers who have killed unarmed civilians when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing. Also, I am proposing that we call for the introduction of similar legislation here in New Jersey. As you know Assemblyman Barron was a strong supporter of the Million People’s March that was recently held in Newark, NJ and has been a supporter of POP over the years. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend so I need as many of you there as possible to represent the organization and show our support. Thank you. Power To The People!!!
Thousands join mayor’s Occupy the City rally on Saturday to support Newark, youth & to stamp out violence
Led by Rapper-activist-actor Common joined Mayor Ras J. Baraka, the Newark Municipal Council and actor-rapper-activist Common, thousands of Newark residents united to “Occupy the City” on Saturday, August 8, meeting at a designated location in each of Newark’s five wards at 3:30 pm and marching to the City’s historic downtown “Four Corners” at Broad and Market Streets for a huge anti-violence and community support rally.
Building on the success and support from Newark residents during his “Occupy the Block events, Mayor Baraka hosted the “Occupy the City” event to unite residents against despair, violence, and crime in Newark and to promote love, hope and empowerment. “Occupy the Block” is a community engagement tool modeled after the historic “Occupy” movement, which advocates the social disruption of harmful or ineffective social constructs. Marchers wore purple t-shirts specially made for the occasion.
Iran nuclear deal recognizes sovereign energy rights but creates careful bomb proliferation monitoring
On the eve of it taking effect, Truthout shares Amy Goodman’s report on the Iran nuclear deal that has been negotiated by President Obama.
JAVAD ZARIF: Let me begin by expressing my appreciation to everybody, to those who started this process and those who have continued this process in order to reach a win-win solution on what, in our view, was an unnecessary crisis, and open new horizons for dealing with serious problems that affect our international community. I believe this is a historic moment. We are reaching an agreement that is not perfect for anybody, but it is what we could accomplish, and it is an important achievement for all of us. Today could have been the end of hope on this issue, but now we are starting a new chapter of hope.
Best leadership video: how to build a movement in 3 minutes aka Dancing Guy
You need followers to make a movement. The Dancing Guy leadership video lesson shows that people actually follow other followers, thereby saving the original leader from being a “lone nut”. At the same time, this makes the first few followers leaders in their own right. Especially, the first follower.
So remember to enjoy the heck out of everyone that jumps on your bandwagon 🙂 – they’re making you the leader you want to be.
Derek Sivers shared the first follower lesson at a Ted Talk in 2010.
POTUS will lead in reversing climate change & healing the world
Speaking via live feed from the White House today, a visionary President Obama announced his administration’s new Clean Power Plan, which has been created to reverse climate change and help heal our world of the effects of global warming. The President joined Pope Francis in calling for global citizens and industry leaders to make immediate and sweeping changes in how we live, work and do business.
“There is such a thing as too late, when it comes to climate change,” the President commented, and pointed out that 14 of the hottest years in over 100 years of recorded history have occurred in the past 15 years.
Thanks to Iko’s designer, kids can build their own hands using Lego
Carlos Arturo Torres is a believer in fun and childhood now living in Chicago. In 2014, as a student at Sweden’s Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, he also became the creator of Iko – “a prosthetic arm for children that also acts as a platform for creative Lego projects.” Iko responds to signals traveling through its wearer’s arm nerves to move, pick up and manipulate objects and it’s got a great grip.
Torres explains,
sometimes a functional element is everything (a kid needs), but some other times it might be a spaceship, or a doll house, or a telescope, or a video game controller, or a swim fin. What if kids could use their imagination to create their own prosthetics, their own tools according to their own needs? Learning. Creating. Being kids.
Obama at Georgetown on breaking the cycle of poverty. Real talk.
At the Georgetown University #PovertySummit President Obama made some very real comments, tying his own background to modern society’s challenges in the areas of education and social investment; access to jobs, internet, transportation; mentoring, youth, fatherhood, families and community:
I am a black man who grew up without a father, and I know the cost that I paid for that. And I also know that I have the capacity to break that cycle, and as a consequence I think that my daughters are better off … For me to have that conversation does not negate my conversation about the need for early childhood education, or the need for job training, or the need for investment in infrastructure or jobs in low-income communities…
Get what you need: ask, release and focus on gratitude
Need keeps you stuck
As long as you need something, you will not have it. The energy of your need pushes away the reality of whatever you seek.
Instead of focusing on what you need, focus on what you have. Because somewhere in whatever you have is the pathway to whatever you desire.
That’s why gratitude is so empowering. Gratitude shines a bright light on your resources and possibilities, and enables you to make good use of them.
Focus on what you have, and on what you can do. No matter what you seek, no matter how far away it may seem, there is something you can do right now to move yourself closer.
What makes Tesla, Amazon and Apple strong is their 100% commitment to moving forward
Matt Asay writes a wicked analysis of why Tesla, Amazon and Apple work so dang well and have become such powerful forces in our society. Matt posits that it’s their common commitment to jump into the future whole-hog – no holding back – and he makes a great case for his opinion.
I noted that the automobile industry had been working on electric vehicles for years, but that’s not quite true. What the industry kept foisting on us were half-baked compromises—you know, hybrid cars that looked like hamsters (Toyota Prius) and felt like they were powered by them, too.
Slavery in New York
Slavery in New York was a New York Historical Society Exhibition in 2005-6.
New York Slavery (1 of 14 chapters – follow links) is the doctoral dissertation of Dr. Vivienne L. Kruger. MA., M. Phil., Ph.D. circa 1985. Dr. Kruger can be contacted at newyorkslavery@yahoo.com
Hat tip to Elizabeth McGrady for the Kruger find.
Feel-good social analysis fails to show how real change happens
I always shoved it to the back of my mind when my friends in Baltimore – I live about 45 minutes from the city – almost uniformly would tell me they either did not like or would not watch the show. People were hostile toward The Wire for a multiplicity of reasons. Some felt it was like gangster rap for a more sophisticated audience, glorifying black-on-black hyper-masculine street violence while selling itself as somehow more literate and ennobling to consume. My friend Mark once pissed me off fiercely when he told me that my favorite show was “NWA for people who read The New Yorker.”
Gay rights advance in Ireland and are defended by a Vermont mom
There's a big gay rainbow over Dublin, if that's not Jesus giving the Yes vote I don't know what is pic.twitter.com/p38LKtLgOv
— Karl (@karltims) May 22, 2015
In honor of Ireland’s historic vote to allow same-sex marriage throughout the country, Truthout’s Senior Editor William Rivers Pitt shared this fabulous Letter to the Editor from a Vermont mother addressing the community of neighbors that began tormenting her son from age 6, mercilessly bullying him and calling him a “fag” because he didn’t walk and have the same interests as other students. In 2000 Sharon Underwood wrote:
Let evildoers fade into obscurity while we celebrate heroes
The day after the surviving Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death last Friday, May 15 2015, Boston Globe writer Kevin Cullen reminds us to let the evildoers fade into the obscurity of history, while we focus on the heroes. Kevin asks, “How do we forget the Tsarnaev brothers? How do we write them out of the narrative, so that the legacy of the attack on the Boston Marathon focuses on those worth remembering?”
…the Tsarnaev brothers made choices, too, and they actually had much, much more time to make them. They spent months listening to the jihadi propaganda that promised them paradise if they murdered innocents. They spent more months preparing their bombs, preparing their minds, dehumanizing the strangers they would kill and maim.
Thriving local economies means more health & resilience
Walmart and Target say they help communities overcome health issues and the ill effects of poverty but the reverse is true.Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s Stacey Mitchell writes about the difference between communities with thriving local economies and those dominated by Big Box retail giants:
… study found that counties dominated by a few big firms have … less engaged citizens than those in which economic activity is dispersed across many locally owned businesses. “We find that residents of communities with highly concentrated economies (ed note: where big box stores predominate) tend to vote less and are less likely to keep up with local affairs, participate in associations, engage in reform efforts or participate in protest activities at the same levels as their counterparts in economically dispersed environments (ed note: where small businesses proliferate)…”.