City of 2.5 million ends hunger
To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.
-CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL
Moderator’s Note: This shows that it can be done. The new revolutionary organization may be the Local Food Systems Council (sometimes called Food Policy Councils).
…The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000…
Kim Sky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Lerner
Jaime Lerner (born December 17, 1937) was governor of the state of Paraná, in southern Brazil. He is renowned as an architect and urban planner having been mayor of Curitiba, capital of Paraná, three times (1971–75, 1979–84 and 1989–92). In 1994, Lerner was elected governor of Paraná, and was reelected in 1998.
E. F. Schumacher.
…………
Amazing. For me, this sparks off the works of others who came before …
The very important work done by Jaime Lerner, renowned architect and urban planner, and Mayor of Curitiba.
To see a brief explanation of his works see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Lerner
One story that I’ll never forget — from wiki, “As Mayor, Lerner employed unorthodox solutions to Curitiba’s geographic challenges. Like many cities, Curitiba is bordered by floodplain. While wealthier cities in the United States such as New Orleans and Sacramento, have chosen to build and maintain expensive levee systems on the floodplain. In contrast, Curitiba purchased the floodplain and made parks. The city now ranks among the world leaders in per-capita park area. Curitiba had the problem of its status as a third-world city, unable to afford the tractors and petroleum to mow these parks. The innovative response was “municipal sheep” who keep the parks’ vegetation under control and whose wool funds children’s programs.”
And … the following article references a number of books written on Curitiba.
Curitiba: A Global Model For Development, by Bill McKibben
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1108-33.htm
Curitiba did in fact suffer a migratory invasion.
… For me the most brilliant thinker was E.F. Schumacher, with his “Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered”. With his vision, he did address this a well, the human migrations flocking to and fleeing from …
Schumacher wrote many other books well worth the read. (p.s. also a christian)
- The Age of Plenty: A Christian View
5 April 2009, 1:35 pm- Good Work
- A Guide for the Perplexed
- Think about Land
Gerry.Agnosia:
['Ello, sir and madam. I tried e-mailing this message to you through your listed address at "sherrynstan@igc.org", but that address seems to be non-functional at the moment. I've taken the liberty of posting the original message here in the hopes that you may be able to respond at your convenience. I hope this does not interfere with the normal flow of your blog and will understand perfectly if you choose to discard the message if necessary. Thank you.]
‘Ello Mrs. Sherry and Mr. Stan
First: Let me express that I love “Energy War”. I realize I am a few years late, but I must say that even though I am not half way through reading the book I find myself constantly delving through webs of references that have led me from fellow social and energy issues aware writers and activists like Charles Hugh Smith, Mickey Z., Chris Martenson and John Michael Greer to others such as Noam Chomsky, Mark Jones and Tim Wise.
I realize you are very busy people so I will spare you the tiring details of my own journey towards awareness and activism and will try to solicit a few opinions from you in the hopes that you’ll answer them at your leisure:
[1] I am a 20 year old black male currently residing in Durham, NC. I graduated highschool two years ago [a year late due to wasting a year travelling around the U.S. with the Anarchist collective known as CrimethINC... Which culminated in being abandoned in the middle of Minnesota due to inter-group squabbles and a continual personal dislike for what Murray Bookchin would call, "Lifestyle Anarchists"] and have spent much of my time since then working retail and reading everything I possibly could on these issues that matter to me most.
It would so happen that I am now just 5 days from my 21st birthday and after two years of physical, social and professional neglect to the evolution of my mental, emotional and ethical facilities I feel that it is about time to give equal attention to the real and practical use of all of them.
It is with this admission and the realities that I’m forced to face throughout every page of “Energy War” I read that I come to you with a single question — Knowing what you know… About the almost certain drastic scaling back of our society’s current level of consumption and “way of life” within the next 30 to 50, years what careers would you see as most viable in furthering community, professional and educational activism as well as being useful in a worst case scenario? [I ask this with the goal of pursuing personal self-sufficiency as well as fulfilling whatever necessary roles I can within my community whether situations stay as they are or the SHTF.]
Would any particular career pathway in the military be of use in pursuing the same goal for someone who cannot afford college?
Would either of you happen to have any more writers you would suggest for either casual or research reading? I have yet to be disappointed with any I’ve researched through the long webs leading back to “Energy War”.
As always, I’m deeply grateful for the work y’all have done on behalf of greater humanity and wish you many years of peace and prosperity… Especially through the tough times ahead.
STAN: Gerry, I’ll be around Durham today, and live very near there. Send contact info to stan@stangoff.com, if you like. I can tell you happy birthday then.
5 April 2009, 10:16 pmDeAnander:
Another example of blowback — this time, an unintended consequence of the barefaced theft of fish from the southern oceans by first-world factory ships (the global transfer of protein from hungry South to overfed North, commented on by many observers)…
Global Crime Wave? by Michael Klare considers the links between global recession/depression, immiseration, and organised crime.
My point? that the consequences of making people hungry are far more costly and dangerous than the task of ensuring that people don’t go hungry… that is, for the polity at large. But making people hungry is more profitable for the small percentage of bosses (whether “crime” bosses — those who admit to being mafiosi — or regular bosses — those who pretend to be respectable). Depriving peasants of their land, or fisherfolk of their fish, creates a pool of precarity trawled not only by soi-disant “legitimate” businessmen, but by their brothers from below the reputability threshold (and it’s kinda hard to locate that threshold in a world where e.g. Blackwater can exist as an officially registered corporation).
Can we get a bit simplistic here and suggest that Food Insecurity = Crime?
First, that (other than natural catastrophes) the proximate cause of food insecurity is crime, i.e. malfeasance, robbery, coercion, enclosure, profiteering; and second, that food insecurity leaves people uniquely vulnerable to recruitment into openly (or tacitly) criminal enterprises (such as Mexican drug cartels or the US armed forces?)…
And that if we want a world with less crime and violence, we need a world with food security for all?
Sorry if this is a tad incoherent. It’s late and I’m beat.
7 April 2009, 2:27 amDeAnander:
I enjoyed this Bill Moyers interview with Mike Pollan, particularly the micro-documentary in Part II about an urban garden serving low-income “inner city” (aka Black) people in the US. Wish the micro-documentary had been an hour-long feature.
13 April 2009, 1:29 amGerry.Agnosia:
Hello sir,
First, I feel it necessary to apologize for my last e-mail. When I wrote it I had only read the first 50 or so pages of “Energy War”, saw a few lectures by you on Google Video and read a few random blog entries on Feral Scholar.
After my birthday I was discussing what little I knew with the friend who originally introduced me to your work. As I struggled to articulate what was then mind-blowing and revolutionary to me in my discussion with her and showed her my original e-mail to you, she laughed at me and then showed me the side of your works that I had neglected to research further before I sent my letter of survivalist-idiocy to you.
Through her nudging and my research I started to really get into your works and the works of your friends and allies… Insurgent American [especially the"Sabbath as Interruption" post, which made tears well up in my eyes], your other books, Feminism, the works of DeAnander at European Tribune and Feral Scholar, .etc… And just as fast as I started to read and absorb the information I started to cringe and examine my old personal affiliations and beliefs… And how unaware and selfish they were when it came to issues concerning other oppressed groups socially, historically and geopolitically. [Short story... I've given away all of my Libertarian and Survivalist crap and have started looking into what roles I can play in my community... NOW as opposed to in some horrible schadenfreude-filled survivalist macho revenge fantasy, am focusing on skill building and starting to 'deprogram' some seriously f*cked up misconceptions I've built up and carried in recent years...]
So for this, I’d like to sincerely thank you and DeAnander [because her "Packing Lite" series of posts on European Tribune and other writings are pretty damn cool
] for the right reasons this time around — But especially for giving a young fool like me the materials necessary to shake the ‘intellishit’ from his boots and begin a long walk towards a journey of true awareness and purposeful action rather than willful ignorance and paranoia.
21 April 2009, 3:48 pmDeAnander:
@Gerry A
I can’t say how much of your self-deprecation is really justified — perhaps you’re being a bit hard on yourself? but many thanks for telling us (speaking for myself here of course but am pretty sure SG would agree) what every feral scholar and public intellectual (no matter how obscure) really wants to hear… that someone has read what we write, taken it seriously, and found it useful and important in their own journey towards whatever it is we social-changeniks are struggling for. Knowing that the words and ideas have touched someone, somewhere, and empowered them in some way, makes the effort of writing utterly worthwhile. So pls allow us to thank you for such a frank and generous post and for sharing your discovery/introspection process as well as your conclusions. I’m touched — really — by this post of yours, and heartened too. Thanks.
22 April 2009, 1:38 amStan:
Wow. Ditto. Thanks Gerry and De.
22 April 2009, 5:29 amBruce F:
Are you familiar with the work of The Rhizome Collective in Austin? http://www.rhizomecollective.org/
They’re about to be evicted from their building and could use any, or all, kinds of support.
Another related link – http://radicalsustainability.org/rust/toolbox
26 April 2009, 1:49 pm