Saturday, December 12, 2009

LIFT ON SEP PROGRAM FUNDING BAN

See also:  http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0419.html and 1000 Feet

ADVOCACY AND ACTIVISM DO WORK:  The Media Awareness Project, Drug Policy Alliance, and other advocacy groups can claim success in their recent campaign that disclosed the restrictive fine print in the original spending bill to appropriate federal funds to needle exchanges, including a letter writing campaign.

StoptheDrugWar.org posted breaking news just after 2:00 today that in a Saturday morning Subcommittee vote, the Senate Committee endorsed a spending appropriates bill that would lift a 21-year old ban on federal funding of Needle Exchange Programs, WITHOUT the restrictive language preventing SEP's within 1000 feet of "just about anywhere" --see Drug Policy Alliance news release ; See Dave Borden's take here.

In a second major victory, Congress also lifted their restriction on a medical marijuana bill that was passed by D.C. voters 10 years ago, but held from becoming law by Congress.  This is a two-fold victory, in that it also sets a precedent for Congress to ease on the "micromanagement" of the District residents.   After a long wait, DC residents will finally have access to medical marijuana.

CARETAKERS, NURSING HOMES OR PARK BENCHES...what will happen to aging baby boomers?

CARETAKERS, NURSING HOMES OR PARK BENCHES...what will happen to aging baby boomers?

SOURCE: "BABY BOOMERS: The Angriest Generation" by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.


At 38, I underwent an unsuccessful heart valve replacement; some years later, I have only progression of organ failure and perhaps five difficult years ahead of me. I live alone in a modest 2 bedroom condo in a depressed area of Houston. I have two healthy college age children, who are heirs to their late father's significant estate. Well, lets just say, they are not poor...but this is just a footnote for situational reference.

A few years ago, my father passed at 72 after a lengthy illness, and my sister was his primary caretaker. She devoted much time, energy, and love to taking care of him, as each of his daughters would have. It is a natural progression of life to care for your elderly, infirm, or otherwise disabled parents...or at least it used to be.

Though I'm still some years from septuagenarian, and some would even say still young, somehow when I look to my children for support, I am accused of being selfish and completely out of line, and mostly, like Suellen in the linked story, am admonished by my peers...not for care--taking, but for needing care taking! How dare I ask these college age heirs to take time out of their young lives to come visit mom once in a while and take out my trash, let alone expect them to modestly supplement my poverty level monthly social security check with silly things like food, medicine, electricity, water, or clothing! As my own future, which cannot predict the date of my death, but worse, prognosticates steadily progressive incapacitation, I fear both inescapable incarceration in a nursing home or isolation and homelessness. Being cared for in the loving arms of an extended family is not an option for me.

And as their own elders, my own peers--nay, my own sisters, admonish me for expecting my children to help me, los jovenes blindly believe that it is not their duty, and what the heck are you talking about anyhow? What do you mean, take care of your parents? Isn't it YOUR responsibility to take care of ME?

Yes, darlings...I am legally obligated until you turn eighteen, and morally endowed with the instinct to do so for the entirety of my life.

I mean, the concept of child-helping-parent is a totally unacceptable idea to them! What they should call it is simply “love”. Yet I am not alone in this limbo of generational mores and conventions. I understood that when, while recreationally perusing interesting legal briefs, I came upon a Texas Statute that defined a reciprocal relationship between parents and children. Basically, the civil law upheld the obligation of an adult child's duty to care for his/her disabled, elderly, and even impoverished parent, in the same way that a parent must provide for their child's needs.

Unfortunately, the remedy is one that few parents would take: Suing your offspring for support. It certainly is beyond my moral, emotional, and physical capabilities.

The "greatest generation" of WWII era made us believe that we were entitled and would have a gold watch and a comfortable retirement, and we foolishly believed their unsustainable social structure. That was theirs alone, perhaps the last generation to conquer the 20th century American Myth that prosperity would grow with each generation.

The angriest generation? How else could we be, and yet ironically, a great many of us came into adulthood during the days of peace and free love, protesting against our War Monger fathers, conquering civil rights, and making technical leaps that changed the way we communicate. Yet after all these accomplishments, we find ourselves robbed of our financial future by the nation's public social structure, and disregarded and denied by our friends, family, and communities.

I am a baby boomer and I am angry!

Friday, December 11, 2009

ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE: Bioregionalism

Bioregionalism and Ecosystem Management:

Healing Man’s Relationships with Nature

Bioregionalism is a viable ecosystem management praxis because it combines the romantic aspect of conscious human awareness of nature as a nurturing, cooperative, and healing force, with the rationalistic tools of practical application. It is an ecological discourse that seeks to define and inform. The definition of ecosystems by their biological nature and the importance of informing the human species about their environment are both underlying premises of Bioregional success: Before the correction of any environmental problem can take place, the ecological system– the bioregion–must be fully understood Since Bioregionalists believe that ecosystem destruction is directly related to the activities and philosophies of man, equally important to the Bioregional philosophy is an examination of human impact on ecosystems. Armed with information and understanding, the praxis of Bioregionalism is completed with the implementation of a holistic vision of place-based living and global environmental consciousness. Only then can we begin to restore man’s relationship with nature .

Bioregionalism is a body of thought and related practice that has evolved in response to the challenge of reconnecting socially-just human cultures in a sustainable manner to the region-scale ecosystems in which they are irrevocably embedded. --Doug Aberly, Interpreting Bioregionalism: A story from many voices

…a place or community, linked to nature, and with which residents identify in historical, cultural and material terms… --Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Bioregionalism, civil society and global environmental governance

“…nothing short of total transformation…” --Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize winning poet


“…a decentralized, self-determined mode of social organization; a culture predicated upon biological integrities and acting in respectful accord; and a society which honor and abets the spiritual development of its members.” --Jim Dodge, Living by Life: Some Bioregional Theory and Practice
.

Defining Bioregionalism

Bioregionalism is a combination of green romantic and rationalist theories. Romantic Bioregionalism promotes the fundamental reconciliation of a historically adversarial relationship between humans and nature, into a cooperative and consciousness enlightening experience. Rationalistically, Bioregionalism is an environmental management system in which attention is placed on the particular biology of an area. Using the ecological distinction of the geographic zones, bioregions are created based on environmental criteria such as watershed, biotic shift, land form, and even vertical elevation. Proposed bioregions have also included such intangibles as “spirit places” (such as Mt. Shasta or the Red Rocks of Sedona) and the “human” sense of place (you are where you think you are). Humans and their cultures are also seen as part of the natural biological elements of the bioregion, which places humans in a new relative position to nature: Egalitarianism and communitarianism rather than hierarchy and domination. A goal of Bioregionalism is to promote synergy between the cultural, space-place identity of a person’s home territory and the natural ecosystem of that same territory.

Once a bioregion is defined and made tangible in the human belief system, the next step involves the creation of some form of governance. Solutions to this complex issue range from the subtle reorganization of existing administrative systems, to the radical global replacement of current political, economic and social institutions. Ultimately, Bioregionalism involves the interconnection of the resultant web of synergistic, regionally governed home-places, in a promotion of global sharing of experiences and information.

Ecosystem Management

The importance of place in human culture is not restricted to environmental discourse: Place is also an important concept in geography. A “sense of place” is what defines an area on a human cultural scale; it is what makes a place memorable. Socially, it is what makes a geographic location a home, what gives it character. This character is created through cultural influence, physical landscape, and relative location . Bioregionalism can use this established social and geographic paradigm to reach its goal of eliminating human domination over nature. The introduction of the home-place bioregional axiom is an important aspect to the part of Bioregionalism that seeks a cultural harmony with the earth and an altruistic conscience that has transcended the anthropocentricity of industrialism.

Human Destruction of Ecosystems

The deleterious effect of human cultures on ecosystems is well documented and thoroughly debated common knowledge. Environmental destruction is the resultant combination of political, cultural, and social schemes that are themselves dependent upon biologic and geographic systems. Responsibility for global environmental degradation considers a range of relationships between humans and the environment. At one end of the spectrum, man is a parasite to natural systems and laws and thus is the culprit of environmental damages as he drains nature for his own purposes. The opposite archetype considers nature as an adversary to be conquered, and places man’s domination over natural forces as the entity responsible for ecological destruction. In contrast, Bioregionalist philosophies, like the Green Romantic discourses, place man as part of the ecosystem rather than a foreign force that is either a dependent biological entity or an independent master-species. Although the romantic aspects of Bioregionalism may be difficult to achieve, in order for this ideology to prevail as a viable ecosystem management scheme, this change in human belief systems must take place. Changing the thinking of six billion minds seems a daunting task; however, history has shown that global paradigmatic changes can and do occur.

Indigenous Ancestral Generations

During the gestation of Bioregionalism as an ecological discourse during the tumultuously environmental 70s, writers Peter Berg and Gary Snyder called for the rise of “indigenous activist-cultures”. This axiom is rooted in understanding an ecosystem’s physical characteristics and the management techniques used by ancestral and surviving indigenous cultures to successfully sustain their home-places. It requires comprehensive knowledge of ancient cultural traditions, and the problematic ability to adapt these methods and traditions on the modern environmental complexities of ecosystem management. Indigenous activist-cultures believe that the future sustainability of the world lies in the adaptation of these early practices of original inhabitants and their surviving indigenous populations. By using the genetic and environmental management systems that indigenous ancestral generations used, Bioregionalists believe that sustainable ecosystems will emerge that are ecologically unobtrusive .

Governance and Bioregionalism

Kirkpatrick Sale, writing for the Sierra Club’s 1985 publication Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision, claims that politically, Bioregionalism is “connected to anarchist, utopian socialist and regional planning traditions.” Under these traditions, Bioregionalism offers an alternative paradigm of the human relationship to nature based on: 1) division of the earth into natural, nested regions; 2) self-sufficiency within the bioregion; 3) decentralization of governance; and, 4) the integration of urban, rural and wild ecosystems.

Political ideologies of Bioregionalism run from anarchy to a global interconnection of governance. Yet these two seemingly opposite ideologies can be combined into a nested ecosystem governance such as heteronomy. Heteronomy has been proposed as an appropriate Bioregional organizing principle that allows for distinct functional jurisdiction across one or more social, political and ecosystem boundaries.

Bioregionalists encourage identification with the natural ecosystem that is an individuals home-place, rather than any ethnic or national identification. The rationalist aspect of Bioregionalism sees the discourse as a political program concerned with economic and governing institutions. Here, Bioregionalism would attempt to reconcile these political, cultural and economic boundaries to better fit the ecosystems in which people live. This is not a new idea: According to John Dryzek, some administrative agencies have considered redefining their jurisdictions according to bioregions instead of state or county borders. At this level, Bioregionalism is not necessarily radical; however, Bioregional radical elements would go beyond the reorganization of field offices to the replacement of current government with administrative, legislative, executive and judicial institutions defined by bioregions. In this aspect, Bioregionalism is the epitome of ecosystem management. The ecosystem becomes an all-important aspect of human life -- politically, culturally and socially defining who we are and where we are.

In his article, Bioregionalism, civil society and global environmental governance, Ronnie D. Lipschutz deliberates the issue of ecosystem governance. His answer to the poor fit between governmental jurisdictions and natural bounds is the world wide incorporation of Bioregionalism. This process could take place through a nested system of governance and regional jurisdiction, in which networks overlap into social, political, economic, and physical places .

A Brave New Bioregional World

Author Jim Dodge’s forceful commentary on bioregional government borders the Lockian philosophy of a duty to revolt. After a stinging list of American political and social foibles, Dodges writes, “It seems almost a social obligation to explore alternatives.” As frightening as radical philosophies and social revolutionaries may seem, the ends of the Bioregionalist vision are harmonic, peaceful, and inclusive.

Bioregionalists envision a world where technology is unobtrusive and ecosystems are managed in a cooperative effort with nature. The world is restored to a natural condition and re-inhabited by a new human consciousness. The world carries a “healthy and spare population of all races, much less in number than today.” Government in Bioregionalism is democratic and participatory. Economically, the Bioregional world seeks to achieve a cooperative self-sufficiency, with locally manufactured and maintained technology.

Bioregionalism is a radical ecological discourse. It calls for fundamental changes in the political and social institutions of the world. It also calls for a deep paradigmatic realignment with nature. The whole “plot” of the story of mankind, is based on an adversarial relationship with nature. Domination of nature is the ruler by which we measure our success as humans. Human culture has romanticized this philosophy since the beginning of recorded history. As the second millennium comes to a close, this logic from which we have created an entire civilization is called into question – or even more drastically, is touted as an erroneous belief.



WORKS CITED

Aberly, Doug. Interpreting bioregionalism: A story from many voices. rpt by rpt. by D. Schlosberg for NAU. (1999)

Dodge, Jim (1981) Living by Life: Some Bioregional Theory and Practice. rpt. by John Dryzek and David Schlosberg (eds.) (1998) Debating the Earth: The Environmental Politics Reader. New York: Oxford Press.

Dryzek, John S. (1997) Saving the world through new politics: Green Rationalism. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. New York: Oxford Press.

____________. (1997). Saving the world through new consciousness: Green Romanticism. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. New York: Oxford Press.

Lew, Alan (1999) Geography: Place and Space. Geography USA. Coursewise: Madison, WI.

Lipschutz, Ronnie D. Bioregionalism, civil society and global environmental governance. rpt. by D. Schlosberg for NAU. (1999)

McGinnis, Michael. (1999) Bioregionalism is about place-based living and thinking. Author critique of Bioregionalism. www.amazon.com accessed 11/2/99.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Marijuana Policy Project -- Support a courageous and sensible solution to Arkansas overcrowded jails

Beyond the issue of whether or not marijuana should be legalized, decriminalized, or made a non-jailable offense, Arkansas Senator Randy Laverty suggests that the issue of overcrowded jails also reflects how our judicial and penal systems treat violent and non-violent offenders.

SEND A LETTER:
Marijuana Policy Project -- Support a courageous and sensible solution to Arkansas overcrowded jails


Stop the War: Begin the Healing