Only two categories today: protest and economy. And as we know, they’re related! BTW: do read the post I put up today, the Rise of the New Economy. It’s exciting!
OCCUPY PROTEST
Here are a few early overviews. Plus stories and testimonials from the vets who held a moving public ceremony to throw away their medals — for the first time since the Vietnam War.
• alternet.org: Protest Roars to Life at Chicago NATO Summit in Face of Violent Police Crackdowns
• truthout.org: Thousands March With Veterans for Peace at Chicago NATO Summit; Police Respond With Brute Force
• dailymail.co.uk: Dozens of vets throw away their ‘shameful’ medals in anti-war protest at NATO summit
• abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=8669857&syndicate=syndicate§ion
• www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ZSyfrUNkU
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This weekend’s Chicago protests have put a much more public face on NATO. Here’s a background piece for NATO. One thing that surprised me: NATO’s decisions are made by consensus! So if one country doesn’t go along with a decision, it can’t happen! No wonder the U.S. started to feature unilateral-wars-with-“allies.”
• globalresearch.ca: NATO Reality Check: Protestors in Chicago Can Fatally Fracture NATO
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Though Chicago took center stage, New York OWS was hard at work:
• alternet.org: 1000 Protesters Show Up at Geithner’s House to Demand Wall Street Accountability
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NEW ECONOMY
In hard times, the underground or shadow economy takes root. Trades, barter, just plain, open-hearted generosity — all starts to gain currency. Life simplifies as costly distractions are replaced by human community, by necessity: we either start to depend on one another, or we try to hoard and hide away.
• the nation.com: Where are the Missing Five Million Workers?
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This isn’t totally related, but maybe it is! You read the story about how Philadelphia is having to downsizing its school system because of “austerity“? Well, maybe that’s a good thing! If you have time, watch this video presentation of one woman’s experience with “unschooling” — that’s where we trust kids to have natural curiosity, and to follow their natures into work and life that’s interesting to them, and therefore most likely productive for society as well. Astra Taylor and her siblings are all very successful in “real world” terms. Plus, she says on the video, ivy league colleges clamor for unschooled kids, since they are self-motivated. Flaunting that fact is, to me, both wonderful and weird. Wonderful, in that it shows how unschooling fosters real education (“educate” from “edu-care”: “to pull out from within”); weird, in that it also cow-tows to the traditional elitist mind-controlling “educational” system.
