eco shenanigans

I hope everyone holds their noses and pretends to vom when they take the "I VOTED" selfies this time around, now that the adrenaline from the Mizeur campaign has dissipated and the progressive movement it was supposed to herald has done very little to influence state politics since. When the wrong people get elected/the wrong policies get implemented, it isn't because not enough people voted. It's because not enough people organized to build the  counterpower  that would allow citizens (not corporations or developers) to direct policymaking. We still buy into the myth of the "good" politician - the idea that when the right person comes along, you just vote and everything changes - or wait until the next messiah comes. But good politicians are shaped by the people who know how to play their pressure points, not inherent goodness.  Here's a meme from CCAN that I just got in my inbox as I was writing this. It's ridiculous, because all this co...

Image: Single Mothers Self Defence at a protest organized by Fuel Poverty Action UK in 2013 This is a really brief response to Brentin Mock's piece on Grist about a recent resolution by the National Policy Alliance, an organization of black politicians, on solar energy. Here's the controversial text from the NPA's resolution: "WHEREAS, net metering policies allow customers with rooftop solar or other DG systems to unfairly profit from exporting excess energy back to the grid while penalizing customers with basic energy needs who cannot afford rooftop solar or other DG systems; and WHEREAS, African American households experience disproportionate levels of poverty, exceeding the national average, and have lower household income than their non-African American counterparts; and WHEREAS, a lack of electric power affordability disproportionately impacts economically disadvantaged sectors and threatens the long term financial stability of our country; …" ...

TW: (sexual) assault In the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard some things about assault within the radical communities I have been a part of over the last few years. Watching from the sidelines makes it difficult to make the right choices about how to react to these situations, and the cliquish nature of rad friendship groups doesn’t help, either. This brief piece is not meant to be an act of finger pointing at anybody or any group in particular, because from past experience I know that the cases I’ve come across recently are far too common in radical circles. I write this as someone who doesn’t know a lot about what’s happened, but in all cases, I’ve noticed a real lack of effective accountability structures, coupled with the expectation that organizations/collectives/cliques are capable of handling these challenges on their own when they clearly aren't. Having good politics and radical vision doesn’t remove you and yours from the very systems of violence and repression that p...

A lot of American friends have been asking me what's up with the referendum, especially now that the media is bombarded with predictions of economic Armageddon in the event of the yes vote. As a graduate of a Scottish university (a result of privilege and circumstance rather than merit, I would say), I have a deep and profound appreciation for the nation and its people. And so while I am not Scottish, I am definitely of Scotland , and it is on these grounds that I write now. Economics My friend Adam Ramsay, co-editor of OpenDemocracy, posted a brief entry in his Independence Blog this morning that captures a lot of the sentiment behind the youth “Yes” vote that is eclipsed in most media coverage of the referendum. I’ve posted it in full below (the bold text is my own emphasis). “When the Better Together campaign talks about uncertainty, it's important to remember this. For a huge chunk of the population, including a significant portion of young people, ou...

A medical researcher friend of mine made a really good point about the Ice Bucket Challenge yesterday, that the largest source of ALS research funding in the world comes through the NIH, which has lost 25% of its funding due to combination of overzealous federal budget cuts and inflation. Why is it that our government is arguing that we can no longer afford this, while simultaneously increasing its expenditure on sending weapons to Israel, on drone warfare, and on building a massive surveillance apparatus that watches the activities of pretty much everyone on the internet? The $23 million (to date) raised through this challenge is literally a drop in the bucket. As part of my job, I review small business expenditures for NIH research grants to a university. The average grant that I review is around $5-8 million dollars. That’s just for one academic study covering about five years of research. We've got a smaller number of subcontracting plans to review this year because th...

I don’t expect everybody in the climate movement to agree with what I have to say, nor do I want them to. Some of what I write and say about the climate movement in the Chesapeake bioregion is deliberately provocative in order to encourage people to think more critically about what we are doing in order to effect change , and about whose interests we are fighting for. A desire for justice isn’t enough: effective strategy is essential, and a multifaceted and inclusive movement is essential to effective strategy. Every social movement needs a few party poopers. I don’t expect or want the climate movement to be only composed of people who think like myself. A spectrum of diverse interests, backgrounds, and strategies is essential for a successful movement. I may disagree with the way that some large organizations approach issues that I care about, but so long as they don’t attempt to overpower other voices with their own in the event of a disagreement (criticism from friends is totally...

[image: Reuters] As another World Cup tournament nears its climax, I’m wondering already what the legacy of these games will be. I’m not talking about the legacy of a bunch of sweaty, oversexed men kicking a ball around. What I’m concerned about is the human rights legacy: the long term repercussions of hosting the Olympics on Brazil, the predicted “death count” (another term for murder ) of up to 4,000 workers in Qatar (1,200 so far) , and whether this time, this tournament, with all the images we’ve seen of protests and violence, soccer fans will do something to end the shock doctrine shitshow that has accompanied it for decades. I don’t write too often, but I’m putting this together because I feel that a history lesson is in order. All the focus on Sep Blatter’s corrupt leadership that I’ve seen in the media (including John Oliver’s oft-linked diatribe on HBO) makes it seem like if we get rid of the man, everything will be OK. But it’s more complicated than that: both th...