When trauma is triggered, our neocortex ― the part of our brain that gives us the ability to reason, think through consequences, solve problems and take in and process new information ― becomes disengaged. We begin operating from the less evolved part of our brains: the limbic system (responsible for emotions) and the reptilian complex (responsible for survival instincts). When …
Many Americans Are Convinced Crime Is Rising In The U.S. They’re Wrong: But their fear makes everyone less safe
By Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Five Thirty Eight, Aug 3, 2020 Will you get robbed this year? How would you rate your chances? Over 10 years, from 1994 to 2004, the national Survey of Economic Expectations asked respondents to do just that. People estimated their risks for a whole host of bad-news life events — robbery, burglary, job loss and losing their …
Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money
By Jeff Madrick, NY Times, July 31, 2020 THE SYSTEMWho Rigged It, How We Fix ItBy Robert B. ReichBREAK ’EM UPRecovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big MoneyBy Zephyr Teachout One of the mysteries in politics for decades now has been why white working-class Americans began to vote Republican in large numbers in the 1960s and 1970s. After …
The Violence of Racial Capitalism Hurts Us All
In LA Progressive, July 2020, by Pam Spritzer, excerpt In addition to physical force, Dictionary.com defines violence as “an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws.” When black people carry “Stop killing us” signs, Kelley recently explained, they are demanding an end not only to police violence, but also “the violence of poverty, the violence of a health …
With BREATHE Act, Movement for Black Lives Seeks Sweeping Legislative Changes
With the BREATHE Act, Cullors said she is hopeful the bill will gain support and build upon the change the movement has produced since it first began seven years ago. “We are calling for the federal government to be creative in identifying new approaches to dealing with harm and violence in our communities as well as developing investments into building …
To make companies moral, make the employees the owners
01-11-19 Fast Company WORLD CHANGING IDEAS by Marjorie Kelly: To make companies moral, make the employees the owners: Having stockholders can offer confusing incentives for business owners with a mission–but not if those stockholders are employees who believe in the mission, too. In the minds of many entrepreneurs, taking a company public, with shares trading on a public stock exchange, …
Tackling evictions, housing and the prison-to-homelessness pipeline: Formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. Half move directly to shelters in some places
Formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population, according to a Prison Policy Initiative report. In New York City alone, over 54% of individuals who are released from prison move directly into the shelter system. Criminalized people live in a perpetual state of insecurity, Lucius Couloute, sociologist and assistant professor at Suffolk University, said in …
PUSH Buffalo’s local clean energy jobs training led to community ownership and more community services: Let’s stop parachuting in experts and listen to locals who are working to fix long-term problems, tenaciously untangling the knot of inequity and injustice
Time Magazine, by MARK RUFFALO and RAHWA GHIRMATZION JULY 9, 2020. Mark Ruffalo is an actor and the co-founder of The Solutions Project, which supports climate justice organizations like PUSH Buffalo.Rahwa Ghirmatzion is executive director of PUSH Buffalo. As the COVID-19 pandemic and police-brutality protests heat up metaphorically, we can’t forget that the Earth is still heating up literally. Because of systemic racism, these crises are hitting communities …
BREATHE Act
REPS. AYANNA PRESSLEY AND RASHIDA TLAIB ANNOUNCE THE BREATHE ACT, CALLING FOR DEFUNDING POLICE, REPARATIONS, AND UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME by Selena Hill July 10, 2020 In wake of the nationwide calls to end police brutality and systemic racism, two progressive members of Congress are throwing their support behind a bill that proposes to overhaul the criminal justice system. Drafted by the …
Possibilism against the givenness of things – when things fell apart, re-ordering society according to new principles
Possibilism against the givenness of things—those were the forces pitted against one another in France from 1789 to 1799. The French revolutionaries were an assortment of unexceptional persons in exceptional circumstances. When things fell apart, they responded to an overwhelming need to make sense of things by ordering society according to new principles. Those principles still stand as an indictment …