Sustainability, activism, urban planning, and our world, viewed through the lens of local action.
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Posts by: Rhonda Winter
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Rhonda Winter in In the U.S. 2 days ago
We were just in beautiful Portland, Oregon this week to meet up with Zachary Shahan, another editor in the Important Media network. After walking around sunny downtown, admiring the city’s progressive urban planning, and pouring over books at Powell’s, we visited a local bakery, Voodoo Doughnut. Becky Striepe, the editor over at eatdrinkbetter.com, had suggested the place, effusing that the vegan donuts totally blew her mind.
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Years earlier Cedar had lived in Sanctuary City, back when the region was an oasis of bicycles, free universal health care, community gardens, composting, barter and shared resources. Tom Ammiano and Harvey Milk were co-mayors of the town, and they governed very wisely. The public enthusiastically participated in an open transparent political process; important decisions were made with much collective input, respectful intelligent debate and thoughtful consideration. Clean renewable energy came from the sun and tides, beautifully painted murals adorned neighborhood alleys, and all immigrants were welcome.
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My friend Keith Knight just drew this poignant comic about his beloved uncle Owen and the birthday that they share today; it’ is really touching. My mother also died last year; I always carry some of her ashes around with me on my adventures as well.
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According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are over 31 million people presently unemployed; and from the economic desperation that I have seen around this nation, those seem like very conservative estimates. This is a very disturbing animation of just how rampantly unemployment has spread across the United States in… Read More…
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Economist Dr. Vandana Shiva explains how the World Bank and the IMF are complicit in the food crises across the globe. Through the structure of their debt relief, these organizations pushed developing countries to stop growing staple foods, and to instead grow cash crops and commodities, like flowers and lettuce, for export to unstable international markets.
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OlyKraut is a good example of how to transform what inspires you into something real and sustainable that makes a difference. By utilizing local available resources, they show that it is possible to create a small responsible business which can help to grow a local food system.
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Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman’s column is particularly insightful this week. He provides a clear analysis of the unsustainable direction where our nation’s economy and infrastructure has been headed; it isn’t a pretty picture. Krugman explains how decades of anti-government rhetoric and massive tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of the populace have helped… Read More…
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Legalization of cannabis has been a very hot topic across the country, especially as a potential tool to help revitalize our nation’s sagging economy. In California, an initiative to legalize, regulate and tax pot, Proposition 19, is on the ballot in November. Recent polls show the proposition is leading with the support of 52% of… Read More…
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I came across this window when I was walking on Valencia Street in San Francisco last month. I thought about the increasingly grotesque inequities in the distribution of wealth in the United States, and how destabilizing that is for our economy. CEO’s getting paid 600 times more than their employees? That is incredibly fucked up…. Read More…
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The amount of toxic petroleum that the BP oil spill catastrophe spewed into the Gulf of Mexico is now estimated at over 170 million gallons. This makes the disaster the worst oil spill ever in history, greatly exceeding even the devastation wrought by the horrific Ixtoc spill in the Gulf in 1979, which lasted for… Read More…
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Last week the FBI just released its massive files on Howard Zinn, whom they began spying upon in 1949. Not sure why the eminent historian merited 423 pages of monitoring by our federal government; it seems to me like a grossly misguided use of resources. Perhaps this insightful quote of his helps to explain why… Read More…
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In the spirit of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “War is Over (if you want it)” protests four decades ago, a disparate band of activists is now tackling our dysfunctional corpulent capitalist infrastructure. “Capitalism Is Over! If You Want It: Summer of Tough Love”, is a series of interruptions/actions by artists from around the world… Read More…
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The sun’s rays were beginning to break through the river mist as Haskal J. Lonesome finished digging his way to the edge of Beaver, Washington. For several days he had traversed the moss-draped rain forests, and floated for part of his journey on a broken branch, as it drifted for miles down the waters of the Sol Duc River. Haskal’s thick moist pelt shivered in anticipation when he finally entered the perimeter of the village.
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As we first reported yesterday over at FailDrill, massive geysers of oil spewed into the air and ocean in Barataria Bay on the coast of Louisiana on Tuesday, after a tugboat ran into an offshore drilling wellhead. The area is part of a network of ecologically sensitive estuaries and bayous that have been already battling… Read More…
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Last week Louisiana Judge Martin Feldman, who recently inexplicably overturned the Obama Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium, issued a statement flatly refusing to recuse himself from this case, even though he is heavily invested in offshore drilling and British Petroleum. Dr. Rachel Maddow highlights this, as well as just how incredibly pervasive the influence of the… Read More…
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In an ongoing effort to help strengthen our local food system and eat more sustainably, we recently subscribed to OlyKraut’s seasonal CSA. Now every Thursday we get a new delivery of fresh organic locally-made sauerkraut deliciousness from the burgeoning women-owned company. So far the spicy curry kraut is my favorite, but there are still many… Read More…
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Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment of Sanctuary City, a fictional apocalyptic serial that appears regularly in Ecolocalizer. Read the previous chapter here. Each day was hotter than the one before it. Blistering new temperature records were broken every week, as the parched planet, blanketed in increasingly thick layers of pollution, continued to swelter… Read More…
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Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of Sanctuary City, a fictional futuristic serial that appears regularly in Ecolocalizer. Read the previous chapter here. Castor canadensis “We, the North American beavers, Castor canadensis, are what is known as a ‘keystone’ species. Unlike your kind, we play a critical role in maintaining the health, structure and… Read More…
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Louisiana Judge Martin Feldman, who inexplicably lifted the ban on offshore drilling last week, is significantly invested in BP, Transocean, and many other companies that are directly involved in offshore drilling. The U.S. District judge’s dividend checks are directly dependent upon the case that he decided to benefit oil companies. Isn’t this supposed to be… Read More…
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Editor’s note: This is the third installment of Sanctuary City, a fictional futuristic serial that appears weekly in Ecolocalizer. Read the previous chapter here. Chemical Dispersants & Acid Rain At the beginning of the apocalyptic oil spill disaster, the criminal British Petroleum cartel flushed billions of gallons of untested chemical dispersants into the Gulf of… Read More…
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The disastrous oil spill in the Gulf has just taken a step toward the worst possible case scenario today. After a robotic submarine smashed into one of its vents, BP was forced to remove the containment cap that was capturing 25,000 gallons of petroleum pollution a day. This Enviroknow chart illustrates the estimated tremendous increase… Read More…
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Editor’s note: This is the second installment of Sanctuary City, a fictional futuristic serial that appears weekly in Ecolocalizer. Read last week’s chapter here. The planet’s oceans turned into acid. The seas had already absorbed so much carbon dioxide from our pollution that their acidity levels had increased threefold in just the few years that… Read More…
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This insightful cartoon about BP’s horrific oil spill by David Horsey really captures how I have been feeling lately. I still see spewing as well.
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This toxic petroleum wave was breaking on the shore in Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from BP’s catastrophic oil spill. The accumulated crude on the coastline was six inches deep. Image is by AP photographer Dave Martin.
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Editor’s note: Sanctuary City is the first installment in a fictional futuristic serial that will appear weekly in Ecolocalizer. June 23, 2011 The constant rain outside muffled her fractured thoughts; as she started reading her favorite newspaper column, “Ask the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill“, she heard a familiar song faintly playing somewhere far away. Kurt… Read More…
