tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6211744021233576442024-02-07T08:37:44.470-05:00DisPolemicWhen the truth hurts, Do you lie, or stand accountable?Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.comBlogger159125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-28602314555447943982022-05-03T21:00:00.001-04:002022-05-03T21:00:50.490-04:00<div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Originally published September 27, 2020 on <i>Medium</i><br /><br />
<div class="" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;"><h1 class="pw-post-title io ip iq bn ir is it iu iv iw ix iy iz ja jb jc jd je jf jg jh ji jj jk jl jm gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="4725" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: sohne, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.016em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0.6em 0px -0.27em;">The Era of Democracy Has Closed.</h1></div><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="354e" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">Democracy is the luxury of elites who have plenty to share between them, who feel they are safe to share their power. Then, who is “elite” in this “democracy” can be defined (grudgingly) to include non-property owners, non-men, non-whites, non-cis-gender, the non-wealthy, even non-nationals! <em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Who is elite, and for whom democracy operates, can be defined to be an </em><span class="jp ir" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;">entire nation</em></span>, as long as the <em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;">actual</em> elites feel ok with sharing. But then when sharing seems to interfere with holding onto power, so also do the customs and expectations of “democracy” seem unnecessary. All they need is a little army to scare the bejeesus out of the rest of us.</p><figure class="ko kp kq kr ga ks fo fp paragraph-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; margin: 56px auto 0px;"><div class="kt ku dq kv cf kw" role="button" style="box-sizing: inherit; cursor: zoom-in; position: relative; transition: transform 300ms cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0.2, 1) 0s; width: 692px; z-index: auto;" tabindex="0"><div class="fo fp wr" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 4825px;"><img alt="" class="cf kx ky" height="164" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*ok4PBBEpbSLElY-jimelvA.jpeg" style="box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 692px;" width="700" /></div></div><figcaption class="wq bm fq fo fp ws wt bn b bo bp co" data-selectable-paragraph="" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #757575; font-family: sohne, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 10px; max-width: 728px; text-align: center;">Some folks helping to clean up a homeless camp. copyright Stephen Marshall.</figcaption></figure><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="dc0c" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">Fortunately for the elites (a selection of those with power, money, and lacking humanity), as the Non-s proliferate and demand shares of the fruits of a democratic society, some regular folks freak out. As they see their vaunted freedoms, their nest-eggs, and their privilege, having been premised on the captivity and social slavery of some of these Non-s, drains away from their own debt slavery and low wages, they get less willing to share. They see all these OTHERS, all these Non-s, gathering around, and they see Non-s not accepting their captivity under the knee of the police, they see the water rising around them, in many cases very literally, while their bosses and their role models escape in their yachts, sometimes literally, and they see the value of their wages going down, and their health care getting too expensive to use, they see their homes going on sale, and they feel ground down by the need to keep multiple jobs to pay their bills, and they’re not better off than their parents, and they’re feeling super-stressed, and when they don’t understand why they are feeling all these things, when they look for a reason for this stress, the words of a demagogue are soothing.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="c590" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">Don’t practice humility, don’t be vulnerable, don’t ready yourself to take responsibility for the crimes of your kith and kin, don’t ask “What can I do better?” <em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Blame everyone else. </em>Blame the OTHER. Blame the Non-s. Blame for your embedded guilt for the acts of genocide and slavery of your ancestors, blame for your embedded guilt for having what you need, everyone else. But don’t blame the elites. Don’t blame them with the bullhorn. Don’t blame them with the checkbooks.<span class="jp ir" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;"> Don’t blame them who can do something about it. </em></span>They have what you want. And why would that include democracy for everyone else?</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="8152" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">And while some people freak out because the Non-s are coming for their share, the Non-s might have some pent up rage, and hate at them who hold them away from full humanity, freedom and access to the privileges of America’s promise. So there might be some tension in the air. And danger of riots.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="dd59" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">And if we get Donald Trump for another term, it may be a very long term, it may be the terminal term, not just because he has so cleverly crafted his rhetoric and used his powers of manipulation, but because his actual constituents, his favorite people, tell him, “Naw, we don’t really want to share anymore. We’re done with this farce.”</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="f69c" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">I think they think they won the argument. How is it that “democratically” controlled town boards cannot set building standards for the residents of their towns, so that when fires rip through, those houses will not be destroyed? I think that they’re happy with a democracy that will kill itself on the altar of personal freedom and prefer to die in an inferno. If a scientific fact cannot be accepted by the democratically elected Congress, and that Congress cannot write legislation to fight global warming, and the government can’t govern and can’t promote the domestic tranquility, and allows the government to rule without regard for the Constitution, by Jesus, the job of democracy has been done!</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="da24" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">Because who needs democracy, when you’re only ever asking “Where’s mine?”. All you really need is to be in the army of the elite. Now how do we get rid of these pesky “democratic” customs?</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="0c29" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">So Americans have fought for the rights of democracy, they have grown to think that democracy is a real thing, an American custom, something indelible, something indestructible. But as more folks reach for it, it becomes more and more of a nuisance for the oligarchs. They like their privilege and the idea of privilege doesn’t sound bad to them, and they know that the real effect of the machinery of democracy is to limit privilege (democracy is contrary to the rights of property, because the electorate can vote them away, says the Cato institute, so we’re better off without it), so the time has come to demolish democracy. They’re tired of sharing power with Non-s and even their army, and they’ve convinced their army of disillusioned its only because of the Non-s that their lives are at risk. Never mind the Oligarchs have been systematically squeezing the workers since the founding of the republic. Never mind the real progress for the American worker and the American middle class was made by unions at the expense of the oligarchs. The Oligarchs know they have won the war of rhetoric. Now all that remains is to disassemble the machinery of democracy.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7e90" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">How do we preserve the remnants of Constitutional democracy we have? how do we claim the democracy we want? We don’t do the things we have always done. We don’t just go the voting booth and vote for the lesser of two evils. (We must do that first). We must redefine what democracy means. We must do things the Oligarchs won’t like, won’t allow, and will use their power of the bullhorn to drown out.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="078a" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">We must march and strike, occupy the streets, and shut down the economy. We must end the monopoly of the media held by rich elites who use it to appeal to our brothers and sisters in the heartland, who use it to denounce our hopes for justice and a truer democracy, who use it to appeal to fear, and divide us. We must march and strike for solidarity of the people against the Oligarchs.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="65c2" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">We must make sharing an explicit requirement of OUR democracy. We must write into law policies that damages extreme wealth, that eliminates poverty, that push everyone, each and every Oligarch and every bit of white trash and every lost soul and every Non toward the center of the American wealth spectrum. We must guarantee that every person can find a way to get what they need, and never be in fear of want. We must decide that hoarding political power, wealth, food, opportunity, and ecological services, is no longer morally acceptable. We must reinvest in the communities of the oppressed, so they can raise themselves up. We must guarantee radical equality.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ea7f" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">For one of the first steps in this march toward the New Democracy, the rich can give their money to brain trusts for the New Democracy, can spend all of their money building new housing, new schools, and Green Economy infrastructure. The rich can use their privileges to demand that the privileges rigged into the system, be disassembled, so that everyone can be paid for the work they do what they earn when they do it. The rich can demand that their taxes be raised until their money dwindles to the wealth of a middle class family, so that middle income people feel their burdens are shared by those with much more. So we can all have health care, all can have affordable housing, all parents can have the child care and education for their children that a only a well paid professional class of caregivers can produce.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ed56" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">We must in fact begin to rebuild the role of America and the World, and declare that thenceforth, the wealth of America is the wealth of the world, and that democracy is the promise of humanity and of life on Earth, not just of America. We must declare that in the democratic world order, the creatures matter, and the protection of habitat is the justice that extends to even the voiceless.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="512e" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">We can begin this march by committing ourselves to the maxim “I can only be safe myself if I am safe for you.” And then to march the slogan, we must stop hating on each other. This lesson from the prophet Jesus redounds brilliantly to this moment. We must listen to those who oppose us, we must listen to those who have served the Oligarchs, and we must embrace them as members of the clan of common prosperity and common sacrifice. We must respect the rights of everyone to disagree, and if someone still hates, we may simply put boundaries around the hurt they can do. We must remember we are all capable of fascism, and to keep the brilliant eye of compassion awake.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="d0ac" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">We must give up on our own personal importance. We must re-imagine our own personal value as the value we derive from the happiness and survival of everyone we know — including those we hated on. <span class="jp ir" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;"><em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Please stop hating.</em></span> Time is running out. When you are staring into your own death, do not your priorities get reset? When you are staring into the death of your planet and all that you love, could it be time to reset how we, as humans, do things?</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ca3e" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">In fact, every other path leads to global flood and global inferno, leads to the planet purging us, and all of life as we know it, in a great raging fever. Maybe now is the time to try something new. Maybe the era of democracy has closed. Maybe the era of the New Democracy has opened.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="edf7" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">It’s merely up to us.</p><br />
<br /><br />
</span></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-63650300620794745862022-05-03T20:58:00.000-04:002022-05-03T20:58:11.942-04:00Hardin’s Tragedy<span style="font-family: Georgia;">Originally published on <i>Medium</i> on October 23, 2020<br /><div class="" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;"><h1 class="pw-post-title io ip iq bn ir is it iu iv iw ix iy iz ja jb jc jd je jf jg jh ji jj jk jl jm gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="4411" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: sohne, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: -0.016em; line-height: 40px; margin: 0.6em 0px -0.27em;"><em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em;">Recently I read an article by </em><a class="au km" href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em;" target="_blank"><em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Matto Mildenberger, writing in Scientific American,</em></a><em class="kl" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em;"> about Tragedy of the Commons. Inspired, I read Hardin’s commentary for myself.</em></h1></div><figure class="ko kp kq kr ga ks fo fp paragraph-image" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8); font-family: medium-content-sans-serif-font, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; margin: 56px auto 0px;"><div class="kt ku dq kv cf kw" role="button" style="box-sizing: inherit; cursor: zoom-in; position: relative; transition: transform 300ms cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0.2, 1) 0s; width: 692px; z-index: auto;" tabindex="0"><div class="fo fp kn" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 1200px;"><img alt="" class="cf kx ky" height="467" role="presentation" src="https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*FG5b-GWBxQqmHFcU0WaxPQ.jpeg" style="box-sizing: inherit; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 692px;" width="700" /></div></div></figure><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7952" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">Garrett Hardin in his commentary <a class="au km" href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit;" target="_blank">The Tragedy of the Commons, (1968)</a>, argues that because selfish rational actors will by default damage interests that are shared in common spaces and resources — the commons — civil society enacts regulations to restrain or control their use. He extends this argument to populations — saying that Earth, a finite space, is a commons, which Darwinian and genetic logic tell us will be filled by those with the least concern for sharing that commons, and that therefore governments are justified to control populations. (China’s one child policy emerged around 1980; Wikipedia).</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="03fe" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">In some ways Tragedy of the Commons is a snap shot of modern political thought, a freeze frame of the philosophical logic of its time. Having grown up in the 1960s, I recognize much of its thought, having been assaulted with it and suffered the accusation of being selfish. That logic assumes the validity of the rational actor model of human beings, and with the rational actor in mind, projects the consequences for humanity, life and Earth, which are dire, if population levels are not controlled. The irony of his analysis is that he would be correct, if the rational actor were a correct model of human nature. But he is wrong about the rational actor as a necessary standard of human behavior, and wrong about the need for governments to set limits on populations.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="b982" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">Tragedy of the Commons is a strange mix, to me in our times, of progressive thinking, neo-liberal thinking, fascist thinking and communitarian thinking. He worries about environmental pollution and the infringement of private noise on public spaces, hence communitarian. He uses that logic to defend population control, hence fascism. He defends regulation for the common good, hence progressive. Since his premise is and remains, throughout his logic, the rational actor, we hear a neo-liberal. But because of the cross-category thinking, the logic of this piece can’t be placed in a box that we would recognize today. Garrett Hardin himself is accused of being a fascist, eugenicist, and Islamaphobe, and I won’t defend him. But we do hear him arguing for preserving the health of the environment and the right of governments to regulate the market place. He also does not defend the right of individuals to do whatever they want to — he just expects them to. Maybe he believes that is right. Significantly, he wants to protect the commons.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="feaa" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">But the flaw in his logic leads to a flawed conclusion. People do not act and think in the manner of the rational actor, unless they are trained to, as in American economics education classes, and on the battlefield of American capitalism. And government programs that seek to directly reduce population, in a tragedy of the commons mind set, are not necessary. The Earth is finite, and as the number of humans increases, conditions for us collectively grow worse. But population isn’t the only cause or the only problem that needs to be addressed. The mal-distribution of wealth and global warming are also existential issues for humanity, and hunger, poverty, wild habitat loss, and disease are compelling needs for us to address. The best solution for all of these problems is education, access to resources, and the freedom to demand change from national and international leaders.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="7758" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">But the progressive logic of how to live together fails if we slip back into the rational-actor mode of thinking. The rational actor does not care about the impacts of their own behavior on others, and if we cannot count on people to care about each other, all bets are off. Our communities and our lives only succeed if it is an embedded assumption that we are all members of communities, where we all matter, where we will all get our needs met, where we must protect others to protect ourselves, and when we share, we do not lose.</p><p class="pw-post-body-paragraph jn jo iq jp b jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka kb kc kd ke kf kg kh ki kj kk ij gj" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="6e05" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #292929; font-family: charter, Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.003em; line-height: 32px; margin: 2em 0px -0.46em; word-break: break-word;">This logic is as inevitable to me as Hardin’s logic was to him. By removing the premise of the rational-actor we are able to deploy the community-human model, and if we do this, we might be able to build a world in which human freedom is properly balanced with conscience and the health of the commons. Those who deride this model are those who learned their lessons in economics classes, learned the lessons of survival in the hyper-competitive American capitalist state, and stand to gain in their short term thinking. There is nothing we can do to change them, but we have an essential fact on our side: the rational actor model is a fabrication, but the community-human model is real and the subject of sociological study. People around the globe are conscious, care about each other, and when they are presented with a need, will help each other. Communities which assume this construct can succeed anywhere. Be careful not to put a label on it, many who call themselves conservative are community minded too.</p><br />
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</span>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-20826962838438555572022-05-03T19:46:00.003-04:002022-05-03T19:48:37.848-04:00Sharing equals security<div><span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">date of original publication April 6, 2017. Posted to Vermont Digger. </span><br /><div><br /></div><div>The Trump era is not of Trump's making. The financial stress, promised to us as conservatives, finally in charge of the purse strings after fighting the New Deal for 80 years, rewrite the social policy priorities of our country, will destroy many of the gains against poverty we have made, and leave millions of Americans and 100,000 Vermonters in a Social-Darwinist gutter. I can't bring myself to imagine the picture that results.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course we enter what is for us a new world. Where we are no longer Post New Deal. We are now Old Deal. That very old deal. Where privilege begets privilege and all of the gains, which have been made to bring people out of poverty and improve the health of every person, are under threat. Where democracy, which made the elites subject to law and the will of the people, of central concern to those who wield power, is at risk. And because climate change can reset the entire course of life on Earth, and what we choose will determine how that unfolds, the future of humanity and life is in play, and this is a civilizational moment. Do not take this choice lightly.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we face the impacts of the “conservative” vision in our individual spheres of interest, I hope that everyone will speak loudly and as one voice, that the problem is not that there isn't enough money, that the problem is not that our group deserves money and the other group does not, but that the problem is that those of privilege, those who are in control of the wealth, are unwilling to share it. There is plenty of wealth to do what we need to, but the people who control the wealth also control the people who write the laws and govern the people. We must set them straight. They are not entitled to hoard the wealth that the community produces.</div><div><br /></div><div>The idea that wealth is created through investment is not wrong. But the work is not done by the investor. The entire community, working as an enterprise, including the law, the labor, the natural legacy of the community, and the social fabric, is needed, and that the law is written so that the investors reap the rewards and are able to accumulate that wealth for personal hoards, while others live with too little to meet their needs, is a mistake in the structure of the economy. Such a harvest of the wealth by the wealthy undermines the vigor of that economic engine, and damages the lives that are its purpose. Wealth must be circulated, and the needs of the people met, or the society will fall ill, decay, and destroy itself. We are witness to this process now.</div><div><br /></div><div>Americans seem to regard the acquisition of wealth as the best way to create personal security, and the right to get wealthy as an intrinsic right of self-care. It is the core of the American Dream, and there are so many flaws in this logic</div><div><br /></div><div>1) Wealth in a silo is inherently insecure. Every person, no matter how wealthy, depends on the health and well-being of everyone else and the community to be safe and comfortable. If you do not share, you are a target. You resort to guns, increase oppression, become callous to the loss of life, witness the destruction of our planet and discover the meaninglessness of your own life.</div><div><br /></div><div>2) Wealth in a silo ignores the eternal human strategy of sharing to ensure community well-being. People instinctively reject selfishness on the part of others. If you have nuts, meat, land or money, you are expected to share. Sharing creates long-term stability and security for everyone, and hoarding (including wealth) is damaging to the community. Imagine I have caught game and I hoard it. Before I can eat it, it rots. Others have not enjoyed the benefit of my catch, nor have I.</div><div><br /></div><div>3) The most secure and stable societies, in which everyone gets their needs met, value sharing. Wealth is not required to have a rich and meaningful life when the entire community is healthy. When the social fabric is healthy, there is no poverty no matter how little wealth there is.</div><div><br /></div><div>4) Wealth disparity in itself is a signal of decay. (See "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Picket.) Social, political and economic sustainability is reduced by increasing wealth disparity. We can improve our chances of social and cultural longevity and sustainability by creating institutions which enforce the circulation of wealth from the wealthy back to the poor and marginal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Since the normal functioning of the economy transfers wealth from the poor and marginal to the wealthy, measures that transfer the wealth back to the underprivileged merely balances the system. The question we are compelled to ask is whether we will allow those who are privileged and control the wealth to continue to increase their wealth forever, leaving the rest of us to become poorer and poorer, more and more desperate, and the society ever more divided and combustible, or we will decide that the well-being of the community and its members is important, that living in one community in which everyone is valued is important, and find ways to capture the wealth of the society to correct its ills.</div><div><br /></div><div>The change we must make in our thinking is from "wealth=security" to "sharing=security." When we achieve illusory security through wealth, we divide our fates from the fates of our fellows, and make the world less stable. When we decide that the entire society must be secure and healthy to promote personal security and wellness, then sharing is the logical course of action. We must all be asking, “How can we make the community and its members healthier and more secure?” And be prepared to support those strategies with the wealth of our communities.</div><br />
<p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: Merriweather, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1.25em; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><br /></p>
</span>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-3272579271864064422022-05-03T19:18:00.002-04:002022-05-03T19:18:22.297-04:00A silent thought<div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">May 3, 2022</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I have neglected my blog because life whirls around me and my efforts fly centrifugally away. I write and my words are lodged in a notebook, a letter, a journal, any where but without a thought of this repository. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Perhaps I will change this. Perhaps I will fly another year before I land on this page again. Perhaps I will devote my time to a website or academic papers. But Dispolemic is the home of my writing. Perhaps I will try to bring unkeyed writing to the electronic page. <br /><br />I am going to take a chance and deposit a coin of my time from five years ago. Let's see if the silent audience even notices. <br />
<br /><br />
<br /><br />
</span></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-25363246583970233712021-11-06T21:14:00.001-04:002021-11-06T21:14:30.628-04:00Responding To An Advocate of Municipalism<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">thank you for the synopsis. I wondered why you were so eager to engage me in conversation, and your essay does explain your motivation. I suspect that something like this provides the best strategy for freedom and agency against the abuses of state police power and the interests of capital accumulation, and there are many of us searching for better, more effective ways to rebalance the equation. <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I thought you might be interested in this book review, which my browser offered for recreational reading. (Firefox Pocket, if you're familiar with it.) <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/early-civilizations-had-it-all-figured-out-the-dawn-of-everything?utm_source=pocket-newtab">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/early-civilizations-had-it-all-figured-out-the-dawn-of-everything?utm_source=pocket-newtab</a></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">It offers a sense of the fluidity of the project of maximizing freedom and agency with least harm. I don't think Municipalism is wrong, but sometimes the route to a goal isn't a straight line. I've engaged with many idealistic and ideological struggles, and have never had the satisfaction of persuading anyone at scale. Mostly I found myself in an echo-chamber, or completely alone. Consider the travails of Lao-Tzu, who tried to impart his philosophy to war lords across China (he wanted them to take care of their peoples), only to die without having persuaded even one. The model of change I follow is more organic. Ever keeping the largest vision in mind - maximum freedom with least harm - I engage the project that interests me, and keeps me engaged in the community, and by the small moments I am able to produce, move the world toward justice and kindness. <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I suspect this is not helpful to you, but I will develop one more idea. When I was a teenager, I encountered the Born Again Christian movement, and later the Jehovah's Witnesses, who with many others, wanted to deliver paradise, if only everyone would believe. My answer to them was "You'll never persuade everyone, so why would I join you?" <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">But humanity is guided by that Pole star, equality. We are not seeking unfettered impulsiveness, we want that balance of freedom and accountability which fosters life. I assume you are also guided by that pole-star. So there may be a formula and there may be many formulas. The way we get there is by experimenting, and it's mostly a contingent process, I think they call it heuristic, where the agent of change doesn't make the change but (a-la Lao Tzu) tries to shape the change that finds them. <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I believe, feel, that we are doing that here in our mutual aid society. We are collectively working toward something like what you are proposing, but you won't get everyone to make the leap of faith before they have arrived there on their own. I have worked as an advocate for the homeless for years, but my greatest impact has come after the emergence of the mutual aid group, completely without my making any effort to create it. It happened, and it has strengthened my voice. <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Don't go big, seek change in the margin where your efforts will affect how people behave. Test your ideas by advancing them and seeing how people respond to them. Look for ideas that are appealing, and develop them. You may find that the growth is not in others, but in yourself. <br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I hope this explains why I have not been responsive to your appeal. I apologize for any disappointment I have imparted. I encourage you to continue the development of your ideas, but remember to ask yourself, "How does this help others solve problems they are trying to solve, in this moment?"</div> </div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">.<br><div><i><a href="mailto:Stephen.Alrich.Marshall@gmail.com" target="_blank">Stephen.Alrich.Marshall@gmail.com</a></i></div><div><i>802-922-1446</i></div><div><a href="http://Dispolemic.Blogspot.com" target="_blank">Dispolemic.Blogspot.com</a></div><br><div><i>.</i></div></div></div></div></div></div></div> Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-71867843770932201632021-02-09T15:47:00.002-05:002021-02-16T06:52:40.598-05:00The Funnel of the Constitution of Knowledge rejects the Conservative vision<span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">Mr. Rauch is brilliant and well published. Here are links to three websites which have printed this article. </span></p></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><a href="https://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/2018/09/the-constitution-of-knowledge.html">https://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/2018/09/the-constitution-of-knowledge.html</a></span></p></span><span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/book/the-constitution-of-knowledge">https://www.brookings.edu/book/the-constitution-of-knowledge</a></span></p></span><span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><a href="https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-constitution-of-knowledge">https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-constitution-of-knowledge</a></span></p></span></blockquote><span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">and here is a link to the book by the same name. </span></p></span><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Knowledge-Jonathan-Rauch/dp/0815738862">https://www.amazon.com/Constitution-Knowledge-Jonathan-Rauch/dp/0815738862</a></span></p></span></blockquote><span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12pt;">I place in the public record my response: </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Dear
Mr. Rauch, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
read your article, the Constitution of Knowledge with the deep satisfaction of
finding the sublime truth of our current cultural moment, because it explained
so much, and portends so much. Alas this moment was marred when you spun on your
rhetoric to claim that, somehow, it is unjust for conservatives to be excluded
from academe, because, you say, they must be part of the engine of the constitution of knowledge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I’ll
grant you that to some extent intolerance is being shown, by students and by
faculty, when conservatives are excluded from campuses. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I have seen it, and attended meetings where the protests were organized. The young people who
want to deny to conservative speakers the right to speak are angry. We might ask why they are so angry, for what it is that they petition. And listen. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Because you just finished explaining to us that the college campus is the
epicenter of the institutions that engage in the vetting of knowledge and the constitution
of knowledge. It is there that critical thinking and the methods of legitimate investigation
are taught. Have you asked yourself whether the engine of the production of truth
has not, perhaps, rejected the conservative ethos, for reason? This would of course
be uncomfortable for you, as a conservative, but in the interest of truth, is
this not a legitimate question? </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">This
indeed would seem to be the hinge on which your complaint turns: are the
reasons for excluding conservatives from college campuses legitimate (that the
conservative vision fails to provide an inclusive path toward truth, right
action, a safe and healthy Earth), or are the reasons spurious (that people are
viscerally repulsed by the affect and effects of conservative speakers and
their policies, or they are engaged in propagandistic control of speech)? I
would grant you that being socially ostracized for conservative perspectives,
as some students claim, exists and is repugnant, if you will grant to me that conservatives,
by espousing the prerogatives of wealth and the rights of power, and American
exceptionalism, do all the heavy lifting of alienating the students and
intellectuals who are engaged in the constitution of knowledge. Because they
see the pursuit of wealth power and national exceptionalism as a death sentence
for the planet. They have a right to exclude conservatives under the principles
you espouse in your article. The funnel of knowledge is rejecting the
conservative vision for the future.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
am old enough to have watched generations of conservative political leaders and
intellectuals espouse property over people, wealth over environment, xenophobia
and racism over a shared membership in a democracy, dance with fancy logic and slight
of tongue, or outright lies, to preserve the rights of oil companies and coal companies to work
workers in unsafe environments, pollute and add CO</span><sub style="font-family: Garamond, serif;">2 </sub><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">to the atmosphere,
threaten precious wilderness with logging and oil development, build industry
in the poor and the colored and the native lands, and dodge responsibility for
any of the effects. So while I have an emotional and intellectual interest in sharing
the stage with (I am an inclusivist) anyone who respects the imperative of inclusiveness,
my sympathies are with those who would exclude those who argue for the
privileges of power and wealth. I am fed up with the crocodile tears from the right.
The Conservative movement has argued itself off the stage. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">The
right knows its arguments are not winning with the American people, despite 75
years of think tanks, organizing, publishing, propaganda, and political victories.
It knows that in a fair election with universal enfranchisement, it cannot win. It knows that without the army formed with the propaganda of Fox news, Rush Limbaugh and NewsMax, it would not have a constituency at all. It knows that as the boomer generation dies off, so also will conservative vision
for the future. This complaint of conservatives being kept off university
grounds sounds to me like so much bellyaching over losing control of the
narrative. Sure conservatives want to be part of the conversation, but that isn’t
a privilege granted to everyone who enters the funnel of knowledge. It would be
such a joy and such</span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">an amazing gesture
if the conservative movement were to be honest with us and itself: it has lots
of brainpower, lots of logic, and lots of echoes, with which to convince itself
that it is correct, but it is out of step with the best interests
of humanity and the planet, and the young people professionals and intellectuals
of the engine of the constitution of knowledge know this. And that is why conservatives
find themselves poorly represented on campus, and in the media – except for
those that it builds – where it produces not knowledge, but religion, conspiracy
and propaganda. Thus it is excluded from campus. Fair is fair. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I
respect the moderation you seem to bring to your essays, the arguments of
moderation you bring to the debate. But am I wrong you call yourself a conservative? No? Then you align yourself with many of the worst actors in American history. I
suggest you change your label, and cease to defend this one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font-family: Garamond, serif; font-size: 12pt;">You
might have noted that despite a certain facility with words, I am really a
nobody. Therefore I can say what I say, because I look up from below. </span></p>
</span>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-47084297405494336682020-12-31T10:22:00.000-05:002020-12-31T10:22:16.012-05:00Economic Policies to Address a Downturn<div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I am subscribed to Research Gate, a web-based self-publication journal. Occasionally I visit and today I got engaged in a thread <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_socio-economic_policy_is_appropriate_for_the_period_of_slowdown_in_economic_growth">https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_socio-economic_policy_is_appropriate_for_the_period_of_slowdown_in_economic_growth</a>)</span> that asked <br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><div style="text-align: left;"><i><b>What socio-economic policy is appropriate for the period of slowdown in economic growth?</b></i> (Dariusz Prokopowicz, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw)</div></span><div><br /></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><div>In a comment stream with 506 responses, this one by Martha Pantoja is representative: </div></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><div style="text-align: left;">In a period of economic slowdown, expansionary monetary and fiscal policies should be applied to boost public and private spending and consumption, which in turn stimulates investment.</div></span></div></blockquote><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">I do not want to engage the minutia of these macro-economic policy solutions. The argument is inadequate on its face. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Georgia;">
<br /><div>While macro policies employed by governments and institutions must be correctly adjusted (the topic of so many comments here), we must take heed of the premise which seems to pervade these analyses. There is very little discussion of how to support individuals, families and communities to utilize these expansionary policies, or indeed how to survive during the downturn, or how to structure the economy, wealth distribution, or resource accessibility. They seem all to suppose that economic growth cures all ills, and that the invisible hand of the market place automatically distributes resources where they are needed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Since growth is cyclical and constrained by the bio-physical limits of the Earth, there must be downturns and periods during which macro policies have failed and other systems must be in place. Since resources follow wealth, they in fact do not automatically allocate according to need, and the economy must be structured to improve access to resources at all times, including especially non-peak low-growth, non-growth periods. </div><div><br /></div><div>The idea that growth must be fostered because in growth there is more wealth to be distributed would be valid if in fact the poor were getting richer and the richer were getting poorer. However, even if the bottom incomes are rising some bit, most increases in wealth are allocated to those who are privileged to already control some wealth, and the flow of wealth increases most with the amount of wealth already in possession (due to exponential return on non-encumbered wealth: poor people cannot afford to invest in growth securities and benefit from exponential growth, but those who are already wealthy can). Therefore the remedy of fiscal and monetary stimulus is inadequate. The economy must in the first place be engineered to ensure that money flows to those without market leverage or high demand skills. The goal is not to make everyone rich, but to stabilize and ensure the distribution of goods that are necessary for health and opportunity. </div><div><br /></div><div>The concept of Carrying Capacity predicts that, in the absence of planning and care, there must be pain as populations increase to the margin of resource availability. This pain is universally experienced by the poor, allowing the already rich and thriving to consume and reduce the resources that could be allocated to the poor, without suffering any consequences. This is highly ironic because the response of all humans to insecurity is to have more children, not fewer (contrary to Malthus; consistent with the demographic transition), resulting in more suffering. Since insecurity, and suffering, are concentrated among the poor, extremes of population growth are also concentrated there. However, strategies such as education and access to contraception are very effective ways to help poor people escape the cycle of suffering that results from having too many children, and focus on economic well being. However these strategies require government and institutional action. </div><div><br /></div><div>The primary focus of policy makers therefore must be to promote not growth but stability of access to resources. Another view of the stability of access to resources is "justice". In fact these are distributive policies, which seek to "bake in" fairness, to obviate the ages-old pattern of the rich harvesting the bounty of the land while the poor must do the work, without getting the benefit. Growth does not inherently increase access to resources, and therefore policies promoting growth do not either. Policies that promote justice, the distribution of resources, and the security and stability of access to resources are the proper policies to alleviate the effects of downturns.</div>
<br /><br />
</span></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-17611329071417751082020-10-18T15:17:00.000-04:002020-10-18T15:17:04.684-04:00Burlington on the Cusp of Trump’s (hoped for ) Defeat<div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Georgia;">
</span><h3 class="western">
</h3>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">My
community development textbook identifies three configurations of the
political culture which define the kind of development which is
possible. </span>
</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">-
No-Growth, led by a cohort of financial interests, who prefer to
maintain the status quo. It holds the power and operates to keep
people and groups with needs out of the political decision making.
This arrangement conspires to keep participation low. </span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">-
Pro-Growth, led by a cohort of financial interests, primarily the
rentier class, who profit from increasing pressure on the supply of
real estate to raise rents and increase the extent of rental
properties available for new rentals. Since you must own property to
have the cash flow to buy property, this model tends to enrich a few
even as the rest of the community is ground into low income
employment and poverty. It holds the power and operates to keep
people and groups with needs out of the political decision making.
This arrangement conspires to keep participation low. </span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Smart
Development, led by no one and everyone, it depends on the culture of
the community that insists on inclusion and participation. Decisions
are made in public meetings and infused with listening. There aren't
any closed door meetings, and groups with a grievance are heard and
included. This arrangement shares the power of community decision
making, and operates to increase participation. </span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">This ideal
vision is enacted in many American cities, along with the corrupt
forms listed first above, and is, I would argue, what we are striving
for. But we must keep our eyes on the ball. Since we have a
distinctly not machine Council at this moment, Burlington is not
solidly in the pro-growth camp, but the mayor is clearly a growth
oriented administrator, using the power of his office to make deals
and promote the profit making interests of the business class,
bulldozing any resistance and shutting out voices of contrary
interests. And we must watch our councilors for slippage. </span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Each of
these systems possesses its own homeostatic equilibrium, that it is
difficult to escape from. Burlington, prior to Mayor Sanders, was a
machine city. Sanders' election instituted some changes that moved
Burlington toward the Smart Development vision, but the shift wasn't
complete. <i>To complete that shift is our higher mission. </i></span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Although I
do worry about a Trump coup, at the root of our crisis of civility
and radical anger, marginalization of some groups and enhancement of
privilege for others, is the failure of the American system to
include everyone - including people whose imaginations lean toward
fascist, socialist or just criminal - in its prosperity in times thus
due, and the costs in times of loss, in short, to promote a vision of
a shared destiny. I don't trust the Dems to do the right thing, but
our interests do not align with taking power and effecting certain
policies at the expense of others. Our interests align with those who
share our vision of an inclusive culture that engages everyone,
brings everyone into the conversation and promotes solutions which
maximizes well-being, opportunity, diversity and participation across
all fields of expression. We need to support political leaders who
understand that vision, are willing to take chances to increase the
franchise of participation, who are motivated by a vision of a
community where everyone feels they can find a safe and legal way to
make a living and lead the life they want to. The Dems will fail us,
the Progs will fail us, but individuals will step forward and no
matter their party, we must advance them and hold them to the promise
of our vision. </span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;">
</span><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">
One of the failures of previous Progressive
administrations was that they fell into the no-growth mode. They
built very little housing, and allowed voices of resistance to take
priority. A healthy city doesn't exclude business interests and
rentiers from its decisions, secondly because this would inspire
sabotage, but firstly because it would violate the principle of
inclusion. A healthy city allows organic growth without prioritizing
growth. A healthy city does not call for stasis, it promotes
thoughtful change. Until we are able to institute
property-ownership-in-common, and set up a coop-model and
employee-ownership model of every different kind of business, so that
private profit making isn't the primary model of economic activity,
we'll need to work with these groups - the vision of an inclusive
city simply does not tolerate exclusion of them. The key difference
is that an inclusive city is one in which private wealth accumulation
is not the reason and cause of all decisions. It is simply one of the
normal features of living, which occurs in many ways. We need to
normalize business activity as not an evil, but as an activity that
is sometimes conducted in evil ways, and whose evil ways must be
ended. What these are then become a matter of agreement in an
inclusive community. We must promote the marketplace of ideas, and
let the best ideas surface, always with our eye on the prize - a city
that is peaceful because the people are happy and able to live full
lives as members of a community that loves them, which they are able
to love in return. </span></span>
</p>
</span><br />
<br /><br />
</span></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-73652992517230499362020-10-14T14:38:00.001-04:002020-10-14T14:38:37.685-04:00My Statement To Charter Change Committee, City of Burlington, Vt.<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br> </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Every status - banker, landlord, tenant, advocate, lawyer, owner, renter, homeless - is a category we engineer into our laws. We can change those laws to ensure that everyone is protected equally and to maximum well-being. By requiring a reason to evict, the law would only be telling property owners "you can't do this for emotional reasons (you don't get along with your tenant), or on a whim. If you must have a substantial reason, your rental business will not be harmed, your business will be more stable, the community your properties are in will be more stable, and the lives of your tenants will improve." Moreover, such a requirement reminds us that being a property owner isn't just to benefit you - you are renting to human beings who need the services you are offering, and once you do rent to them, you must afford them the justice of never evicting them without them having already done you harm. To demand that dignity is not such a huge ask, as these are members of your community. To require a just cause for an eviction is simply to give the tenant the dignity of calling their rental their home. </div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">.</div></div></div></div></div></div> Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-12142727671512048012020-09-27T17:49:00.004-04:002020-09-28T16:54:47.614-04:00The Era of Democracy Has Closed. Long Live Democracy.<div><p class="gm gn et go b gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg hh hi hj el cr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ee87"> </p><p class="gm gn et go b gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg hh hi hj el cr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="ee87">Democracy
is the luxury of elites who have plenty to share between them,
who feel they are safe to share their power. Then, who is "elite" in this democracy can be defined
to include non-property owners, non-men, non-whites, non-cis-gender,
the non-wealthy, even non-nationals! <i class="hk">Who is elite, and for whom democracy operates, can be defined to be an </i><b class="go hl"><i class="hk">entire nation</i></b>, <span class="hk">as long as there is enough to share,</span> and as long as everybody is ok with sharing. Correction: Capitalist Democracy is a luxury of elites. </p><p class="graf graf--p" name="dc0c">Unfortunately, as the Non-s proliferate and demand shares of the fruits of a democratic society, some folks freak out. Their freedom, wealth and privilege having been premised on the oppression of some of these Non-s, and they get less willing to share. They see all these OTHERS, all these Non-s, gathering around, and they see the water rising around them, in many cases very literally, while others escape in their yachts, sometimes literally, and they see the value of their wages going down, and their health care getting too expensive to use, they’re losing their homes and jobs and they’re not better off than their parents, and the for-profit system is stripping all the value out of their paychecks and they’re feeling super-stressed and when they look for a reason for this stress, the words of a demagogue are soothing. Don’t practice humility, don’t be vulnerable, don’t ready yourself to take responsibility for unspeakable horrors, don’t ask “What can I do better?” <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Blame everyone else. </em>Blame the OTHER. Blame the Non-s. Blame for your embedded guilt for the acts of genocide and slavery of your ancestors, blame for your embedded guilt for hoarded wealth, everyone else. But don’t blame the elites. Don’t blame them with the bullhorn. Don’t blame them with the checkbooks.<strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em"> Don’t blame them who can do something about it. </em></strong>They have what we want. And why would that include democracy for everyone else?</p><p class="graf graf--p" name="8152">And while some people freak out because the Non-s are coming for their share, the Non-s might have some pent up rage, and hate at them who ain’t willing to share. So there might be some tension in the air. And danger of riots. </p><p class="graf graf--p" name="dd59">And if we get Donald Trump for another term, it may be a very long term, maybe the terminal term, not just because he has so cleverly crafted his rhetoric and used his powers of manipulation, but because the conditions under which democracy, and sharing, are possible, are collapsing from our self-serving neglect of our democracy.</p><p class="graf graf--p" name="d05d">How is it that democratically controlled town boards cannot set building standards for the residents of their towns, so that when fires rip through, those houses will not be destroyed? If this is democracy, democracy is about to kill itself on the altar of personal freedom to choose to die in an inferno. If a scientific fact cannot be accepted by the democratically elected Congress, and that Congress cannot write legislation to fight global warming, what good is democracy? Correction: capitalist democracy. <br /></p><p class="graf graf--p" name="da24">Because democracy doesn’t work when you’re selfish, when you’re only asking “Where’s mine?”.</p><p class="graf graf--p" name="8f09">Meanwhile, autocratic China is able to declare — credibly — that it will be net carbon zero by 2060. Meanwhile, research I have read informs China policy makers on how to preserve ecosystem services by reducing sprawl. I hate the genocidal aspect of the Chinese government, I hate their brutal methods of restraining population growth, but it may be the autocratic Chinese government that saves most of the people of the capitalist, individualist west from their own self-annihilation. But only if the Chinese succeed soon enough.</p><p class="graf graf--p" name="7e90">How to avoid both of these possibilities? How do we avoid both democratic-hedonistic self annihilation, and autocratic assimilation? We have to do things I don’t count on us to do. We have to share: political power, wealth, food, opportunity, the benefits of trust and caring. Radical equality. The rich have to give their money away, have to unwind the privileges rigged into the system, to make the system work for everybody. They have to pay very heavy taxes, so we can have health care, affordable housing, The best child care and education for every child in America and the World. We have to live by the maxim “I can only be safe if I am safe for you.” We have to stop hating on each other. We have to listen to those who oppose us, who want to hurt us. This lesson from the prophet Jesus redounds brilliantly to this moment. We have to vote for leaders who will act in the best interest of the country and the world, we have to ask ourselves “Which candidate is the best for everybody?”. </p><p class="graf graf--p" name="d0ac">We have to give up on our own personal importance. We have to re-imagine our personal value as the value we derive from the happiness and survival of everyone we know — including those we used to hate on. <strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Please stop hating.</em></strong> Time is running out. When you are staring into your own death, don’t your priorities get reset? When you are staring into the death of your planet, could it be time to reset how we, as humans, do things?</p><p class="graf graf--p" name="ca3e">Because every other path leads to Global Flood and Global Inferno, leads to the planet purging us, and all of life as we know it, in a great fever.</p><p class="graf graf--p" name="a3d4">Pop-quiz! List everyone you know. Include yourself. Imagine a car careening at this huddled group, and one person could stop that car by standing in its path. Would you step forward?</p><p class="gm gn et go b gp gq gr gs gt gu gv gw gx gy gz ha hb hc hd he hf hg hh hi hj el cr" data-selectable-paragraph="" id="042d"> </p></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-82747275834126276582020-09-08T18:27:00.006-04:002020-09-08T18:27:45.403-04:00Stephen Marshall, Who am I? <div><span aria-hidden="false"><div class="yd-post__body color--black"><p> </p><p>Assignment for CDAE 351 <br /></p><p>Who
I am, right now, is entangled with the volume and complexity of the
work we are expected to do. I am wondering whether this was a good idea
after all. But I will fight, I will muster any energy I can find, to do
the work. </p><p>I grew up in a post-WWII development neighborhood in
Yonkers New York, that was mysteriously free of black or colored folks
(whom I met on the bus to the YMCA summer camp), which was safe and gave
the illusion that somehow the world would keep going as it was. When I
learned about the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the idea of the
collapse of American democracy formed in my mind, I thought it was
inevitable, given enough time, but not in my lifetime. Not understanding
the injustice and inequality supporting the world that I lived in, or
the depravity of the human soul, the promise of American democracy
seemed perfect. I would never see its end. There was genocide and
racism, but placed in my consciousness as side shows, that I could
safely ignore. </p><p></p><p>But then there was the Vietnam War
("American War" to the Vietnamese), there was poisoning of the planet,
overuse of resources, there was the Civil Rights movement, and invisible
to me, the crass pursuit of personal wealth at the expense the lives
and health of other people. There was the rise of the xenophobic,
demagogic, racist politics of the Republican party under Newt Gingrich
and his successors, then the continuing genocide and betrayal of the
native Americans, and police brutality to support institutionalized
racism, then global warming, and then there was Donald J. Trump.
Apparently the liberal world order is fragile, apparently there are many
people who feel they are getting shafted and that the liberal world
order is to blame. Apparently the collapse of American democracy is
possible, and it may occur within my lifetime. Apparently the "liberal
world order" was a front for privilege and an excuse for doing nothing
to help other people lift themselves out of poverty. </p><p></p><p>I
imagine a world in which WE, humanity, turns toward helping each other.
In which WE decide to arrange the economy and our relationship to the
planet to provide means of survival for every person, and minimize harm
to the planet. "I can only be safe if I make the world safe for you." In
which every day our leaders are driven by the question, "How can I make
the planet and my community safer, more healthy, more verdant and
sustainable, today?" </p><p></p><p>Human beings have an instinct to
address danger: the tribalistic impulse. When in danger, gather your
people around you and put up defenses. A skilled manipulator, a
proponent of the inequality and injustice that caused that danger, can
take that fear and use it to destroy the last remnants of your impulse
to share the American promise, can use it to destroy the hope of
generosity and cooperation promised by the hypocritical liberal world
order. </p><p></p><p>There was always inequality and it never
mattered who was in charge, because the laws are always written to
protect the wealth of the wealthy and drive the middle class into
poverty. Democrats used a hypocritical allegiance to African Americans,
poor people, and labor, to systematically hold onto their privilege,
they used the promise of "growth" to defer justice, just like the
Republicans. Republicans, without nuance or shame, disavowed any policy
that would reduce the capacity of business to concentrate wealth for the
few, and motivated their electoral base with the illusory notion of
"freedom" and the right to get wealthy. By declaring for the right of
each individual to act in their own interest, the Republicans have given
Americans no opportunity for collective action except that which they,
the Republican elites, would find useful. The Republicans have set up
Americans for only one form of unity: the unity of war against other
Americans. </p><p></p><p>Everyone is justified to be angry. The
elites at universities, in government, in corporate boardrooms, have
systematically deprived us all of a sustainable, just world, in service
to their personal aggrandizement. Democracy in America was a hoax, just
as the promise that "growth" will lift everyone out of poverty is a
hoax. As a leftie from the '60's, I have been waiting a long time for
the revolution. Revolutions are ugly and can't produce justice or
sustainability. But justice wasn't, isn't, going to happen on the path
we are on. Somehow, WE have not learned how to manage our affairs to
make the world safe for everyone. </p><p></p><p>In ecological
economics, we talk about cooperation and how to achieve it. As if the
world is full of individualistic, self-fulfilling "rational actors" who
don't know how to cooperate. But that is wrong. Those "individuals" are
forming into a massive human action. We better get our heads out of our
butts. Our current theory does not explain this. </p><p></p><p>So
you can see what my interests are in a broad sense. I have been trying
to understand what is worth fighting for, for my entire life. Science,
anthropology, history, have informed my quest. At its root is the
question, "How can I explain everything I am observing so that these
beliefs and actions make sense relative to each other?" So my
explanation does not depend upon someone else being wrong or the demon
in my universe? So that we all emerge with a logical and purposeful
intent, even if our concepts of the universe are in conflict with each
other? </p><p></p><p>I read Paul Collinveux's <em>Introduction to Ecology</em>
in 1988, and became fascinated by the r-K description of population
growth. This dynamic, the variable strategies of rate of growth or
sustainable maintenance, I thought explained a lot of human behavior.
Also in my bundle of interests is the problem of Carrying Capacity.
(Although I am an avowed liberal, the knowledge I propose to create
could be used to justify genocide. But to me, it demands a just world,
which makes conscious choices, allocates resources fairly.) This
knowledge would help us to bring humanity into balance with the planet,
could not operate without justice. That is what I care about. </p></div></span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
<br /><br />
</span></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-7135145987008439872020-09-08T15:59:00.000-04:002020-09-08T15:59:21.946-04:00"Natural Sciences and Social Sciences", For Graduate class Research Methods<div>The
distinction seems so obvious I'm not sure I have anything to add.
Science is a method of investigation. It puts evidence and rationality
ahead of instinct and emotion. Science declares that there is a universe
that is real and potent apart from the desires or needs of any human.
Socio-religious knowledge puts human needs and desires at its center.
Science recognizes that the universe is knowable but not perfectly
knowable. Socio-religious knowledge expects the universe to be knowable
and seeks to find a moral order that is absolute. Science posits that we
can know what is real and true, if we are willing to observe, take
evidence, and form our models from these observations and this evidence,
if we are willing to let ourselves be wrong. Socio-religious models
depend on the need of humans for explanations where the only evidence is
contingent, emotional and instinctive, and since that knowledge is
created under threat of not surviving, it cannot be wrong. <span aria-hidden="false"><div class="yd-post__body color--black"><p></p><p>The
greatest distinction is between socio-religious reasoning and
scientific reasoning. Religious ideas are always produced as an answer
to the contradictions found between the existing vision and the current
circumstances (Karen Armstrong, <em>A history of God</em>, 1993).
Scientific ideas are produced to address contradictions in evidence. So
the critical difference is that while all reasoning is driven by the
quest to explain human experience, pain, death, birth, creation and
loss, scientific reasoning is limited to using models built from
evidence that can be observed by any observer. Many, probably most,
people can't step aside from the evidence of intuition and emotion, and
their knowledge is cultural. It promotes survival. (When it stops
explaining, when survival cannot be secured through it, its holders will
become more and more erratic and desperate.) The activity of Science is
engaged without the certainty that it will be useful or consistent with
prior knowledge. </p><p></p><p>The paradigmic natural science is
physics and the earliest employers of the Scientific method were
studying the physical world. Copernicus, Galilei, and DeVinci, and
before them Islamic scholars and the Greeks of classic Athens, are
exemplars of this method, who studied the physical world. The success of
the method of observation (such an astounding privilege to study the
world without expecting your knowledge to have immediate utility!) set
the pattern for later investigators, including biologists, medical
practitioners, and social scientists. </p><p></p><p>Social
scientists are people who study the person and processes of the same
subject that would create socio-religious knowledge. They reflect on
questions held by all of their subjects, but the evidence they use must
be empirical, based on repeatable observations. They investigate a
universe, human relationships, structures, arrangements, cultures,
institutions, that are amorphous and changing, and their results could
threaten someone's access to wealth. They can never create a unified and
final theory of all things social, in contrast to physicists, who can
hope for a near approximation of a perfect model. They hope to provide
some insight that will help reduce the misery that people create for
each other, but the evidence of the social scientist, carefully gathered
through methods that seek to eliminate the bias of emotions and
culture, are not understood by the majority of people who are trying to
survive with their wits and culture. All of the dangers the scientific
method overcomes pushes back against the efforts of the social
scientist. Thus anti-vaxers and Q-anonymous. </p><p></p><p>The
State of Vermont, and the people of the state, fit the pattern of the
liberal vision: a free press, secure and popularly accessible ballots,
use of data to make decisions, transparency wherever possible in
government, and the commitment of its leaders to that liberal vision.
Social Scientists are welcome and esteemed here. The elite conspiracy to
hoard wealth exists, but it is less prominent. There are good people in
government and our communities who protect the liberal traditions of
openess, democracy, public trust, and a commonwealth. Here, the evidence
of the Social Scientist is welcome, even if they do rely on a
socio-religious construct that esteems them. </p><p><br /><br /></p></div></span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">
<br /><br />
<br /><br />
</span></div>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-13492057802315096012020-07-18T17:04:00.000-04:002020-07-18T17:04:31.658-04:00Burlington Mayor Solves Homeless Camp Problem by bulldozing it under pretense of building a shelter. <div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: .2in;">
On Tuesday I learned
of a plan to build the low barrier shelter in the Sears Lane
campground. Later in the day, Jay Diaz of the ACLU sent a photo of a
poster announcing the meeting in the Lakeside Commons on Wednesday
evening.On Friday we learned just how far the planning had advanced, behind City Hall doors. </div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
The original poster
for the meeting announced that it would be a “Discussion about what
is happening on Sears Lane and a vision for the future that is both
compassionate for people in need of help and for neighbors who expect
civil order and laws to be respected.”Demagogic language if ever there was. </div>
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</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2.2in;">
If you are familiar
with the Sears Lane Camp Parking lot, you will know there are several
residents with trailers, campers and lots of stuff. The project calls
for about 26 steel storage containers, which have been converted into
housing and other facilities, to be placed in the lot. I have not
seen a plan to show where those units would be, or whether they would
displace the residents who are there now. But on Friday, July 17,
engineers from a construction company visited the site and told
residents that the plan was to bulldoze the entire site, wooded
portion and parking lot. End of Sears Lane Camp.
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
Whatever the word
“discussion” might have implied, there wasn’t any. Joan Shannon
introduced the topic, and introduced Kevin Pounds, director of ANEW
Place, who described for the audience the Low Barrier Shelter that
has been proposed for the Sears Lane camp parking lot. Apparently the
solution was in hand even before hearing the concerns of the area residents. Members of the
audience shouted out their complaints as the presentation went on,
and it became evident that the purpose of the meeting was to
introduce a development project as a solution to the issues the
community was experiencing, not to listen or discuss. When the Mayor showed up, Councilor Shannon yielded the
mike to him and he also pitched the project. When he was ready for
questions, I raised my hand.
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
I rose to speak and
took the mike. I observed that Councilor Shannon and the Mayor had
conflated the solutions the community needed with the development
project the Mayor has in mind, entirely bypassing more obvious
solutions. Instead of talking with the community about creating
policies to address their issues (security, trash, xenophobia), the
mayor took advantage of community distress to build support to
bulldoze the homeless camp. (Though he never said as much, we learned
yesterday that this is exactly their plan.) Thus instead of a
conversation that might have allowed the citizens to vent their
frustrations and concerns, and instead of creating an opportunity for
healing, the development project was used to obviate any conversation
and cause a festering of the worries of the neighborhood. The
development project allows the mayor to say “We have addressed the
needs of the neighborhood” without actually giving the members of
the neighborhood a chance to express themselves. This emotional
stuff might be a little stressful for him. Or just inconvenient.
</div>
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</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
The Mayor needs a
location for the Low Barrier Shelter, since the South Winooski site
is no longer viable. But why here? Kevin tells me that there are
sewer and water lines under the lot and that zoning and permitting
are low barriers. But apparently the Mayor wants to bulldoze the
existing camp. He wants to end once and forever the use of the camp
by homeless folks, further forcing those who have no place to live
into the shadows. He hasn’t sent anyone to negotiate with the
campers, or offered the campers any services, and he hasn’t even
threatened to close the camp if they don’t clean up. This group of
homeless folks isn’t even on his radar. They are a blight and an
obstacle. They figure nicely into his calculations, for how to move
this project, by letting the community demonize them.
</div>
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</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
This of course is
interesting because in effect the mayor is proposing to bring thirty
to forty homeless folks into the camp where now there are 4 or 5.
Kevin Pounds tells me that none of the neighbors of the North Beach
Campground have complained about that low barrier camping project,
implying that we can expect equal docility toward this project, but
there is a significant distinction that alters the chemistry. This is
a neighborhood that has to be pitched, and promises made to. What if
it all goes bad?
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
But obviously the
Mayor wants the community to support the project, because if there is
opposition, this is where it would come from. Here, in the Lakeside
neighborhood, he can sell the project as a solution to their
perceived problems.
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
He wants residents
of the city to believe that he cares about homeless folks, but he
funnels the whole question into whether there is enough housing and
shelter. He wants to move them off the street and out of the
abandoned lots. His “caring” does not include communication,
negotiation, trash pickup, porta-johns, or other services. Better to
cast the homeless as a problem to be removed, not people with
problems to be addressed.
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
When I discussed the
project with Kevin Pounds, he didn’t seem to need to evict the
campers, but, from Miro's POV, that's the whole point. And right now
he's feeling lucky because he gets to use a development project that
serves the homeless to evict the homeless. Playing us against
ourselves.
</div>
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</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
We need to
disaggregate the solution from the problem. The humane solution to
the problems presented by the Lakeside neighborhood is to recognize
independent homeless camps and to provide services. Not everyone
wants to be housed and not everyone can be. So just make sure their
living conditions are healthy!
</div>
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</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
If ANEW Place were
to operate the Sears Lane camp as a camping shelter, my vision for
the camp would be fulfilled. The Mayor's plan calls for the entire
lot to get shut down. This might make the Mayor and his business
constituency happy, but it does not respond to the needs of either
the campers or the Lakeside neighborhood.
</div>
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</div>
<div style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.2in;">
The Mayor knows
there is a fuse on this plan. He is acting quickly. It is imperative for us to decide whether and what we will do.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia";">
</span></div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-57493650696937779952020-05-01T17:53:00.000-04:002020-05-12T08:50:24.639-04:00Winter Images of Sumac <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<div class="gmail_default">
As I described in my previous post, Sumac is ready to harvest before the spring leaf-out. These
eight images display various features of the sumac in winter, which is harvest season. I can post other images for other seasons as they come up. <br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">
These images may be distributed with courtesy of notice, may not be given in exchange, and must include this notice in its entirety, copyright 2020 by
Stephen Marshall. Please write to comments. </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<div class="gmail_default">
<br />
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixVWqEVHn-XEr6aRFI_ezy7hKhP6PN3O482ofaHgAHQdAlG9BK_h-mID52-GkjYHpsER6iD73d0dJm0ESWO8qhGkkr4gVeNqOOaWltQgrODopbc-b_K79d003M9MV2MYOvJQlYgNJZgIpD/s1600/RhizoidFormMaleSumac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixVWqEVHn-XEr6aRFI_ezy7hKhP6PN3O482ofaHgAHQdAlG9BK_h-mID52-GkjYHpsER6iD73d0dJm0ESWO8qhGkkr4gVeNqOOaWltQgrODopbc-b_K79d003M9MV2MYOvJQlYgNJZgIpD/s400/RhizoidFormMaleSumac.jpg" width="147" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: start;">demonstrates the <br />male plant in winter</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
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<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKP0HXKBh9XTuZspoFIWwsA5VZBke_SWv1BDraT8xZcC9r5KQ-NhzygYaatYgehzduk7II4SeyQ0okGN4eAKQRVxe2dqhk0R_bWub3N1OpfRptJCIlg-NtiMh0Rt7RAKivL73dhqaQ8x5M/s1600/RhizoidalFormFemaleSumac01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKP0HXKBh9XTuZspoFIWwsA5VZBke_SWv1BDraT8xZcC9r5KQ-NhzygYaatYgehzduk7II4SeyQ0okGN4eAKQRVxe2dqhk0R_bWub3N1OpfRptJCIlg-NtiMh0Rt7RAKivL73dhqaQ8x5M/s400/RhizoidalFormFemaleSumac01.jpg" width="341" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Female plants with fruit of the year's labor.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_orkX5vwh9MXINkMHz-k6YxIltalCV6MPYei_sVx2oIGnsx3rz9N6Ao8ipyIjHtmq854lygJXP1dYAmYS3DYmpFCNUdu2DYVgqMax-NstdKgOvDUn8waO0TxEf4rKFF2igsE8iI_lpUP1/s1600/RhizoidToDendriticFormMaleSumac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_orkX5vwh9MXINkMHz-k6YxIltalCV6MPYei_sVx2oIGnsx3rz9N6Ao8ipyIjHtmq854lygJXP1dYAmYS3DYmpFCNUdu2DYVgqMax-NstdKgOvDUn8waO0TxEf4rKFF2igsE8iI_lpUP1/s400/RhizoidToDendriticFormMaleSumac.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">male plants in the rhizoid form developing <br />into dendritic form</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5lJc2GOWaDSg-iT2zGg_2-S8slGI9hy5uEuI3ijSbEqXUou8wvmPSH05RAnqA8_qbE6E5aVWn8y5uZ58b5NypZgk3ODM38TlZDZtHjbahq5f9IIjGFaEkXApBIm4FKNWywVmD7Agg_VZW/s1600/DetailMaleSumac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5lJc2GOWaDSg-iT2zGg_2-S8slGI9hy5uEuI3ijSbEqXUou8wvmPSH05RAnqA8_qbE6E5aVWn8y5uZ58b5NypZgk3ODM38TlZDZtHjbahq5f9IIjGFaEkXApBIm4FKNWywVmD7Agg_VZW/s320/DetailMaleSumac.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Detail of male flower stem at end of winter</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFzB2ObL6F61ms4PuaKq27fpsII8ZI_0JHJ3PDmkyl8REccjQ48OWnlY-tT4SVLa2XetuuM21MvzwUu_rICong4KINpxqSVtVgS7tCZ6ZecCYuFWaqe0Qt457ynp0MVgyHOguA73dHvNY/s1600/CurrentYearWithPriorYearDrupesSumac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFzB2ObL6F61ms4PuaKq27fpsII8ZI_0JHJ3PDmkyl8REccjQ48OWnlY-tT4SVLa2XetuuM21MvzwUu_rICong4KINpxqSVtVgS7tCZ6ZecCYuFWaqe0Qt457ynp0MVgyHOguA73dHvNY/s1600/CurrentYearWithPriorYearDrupesSumac.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Current year drupes with remnants of <br />prior year drupes</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp7kE8oQ8TyoK5swUE9jhdppMiePwqKKOcMH5zOgjU7Dpn8y7JhRZUnLCF0ytAzYTYBdUBQd9dy4yYJZ3u7z0-8A-27dwCF0COjPakJFTjP-iU_OO8Jx19TwC1F91emJXTGuYUhFXjf5qE/s1600/StaghornFormSumac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp7kE8oQ8TyoK5swUE9jhdppMiePwqKKOcMH5zOgjU7Dpn8y7JhRZUnLCF0ytAzYTYBdUBQd9dy4yYJZ3u7z0-8A-27dwCF0COjPakJFTjP-iU_OO8Jx19TwC1F91emJXTGuYUhFXjf5qE/s400/StaghornFormSumac.jpg" width="381" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Eponymous "Staghorn" pattern of growth</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaWBtQ5HsGblSt8UPOtuXB-NoqQr5ADOAvjB_bWcrFzeNjUkR7ATTX6U1GfEyz52ODTzBj8X7893N8mlf6XFKWxlkXKAmkDfQ5m18jbShmOCPRAWcTR3zXkMGHWMpUjHoH8Lf8kqbuw4JV/s1600/SumacReachingForTheSky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaWBtQ5HsGblSt8UPOtuXB-NoqQr5ADOAvjB_bWcrFzeNjUkR7ATTX6U1GfEyz52ODTzBj8X7893N8mlf6XFKWxlkXKAmkDfQ5m18jbShmOCPRAWcTR3zXkMGHWMpUjHoH8Lf8kqbuw4JV/s400/SumacReachingForTheSky.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Drupes held high to the sky</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OMri-S5-zUT9HFEXGAnie7Plrul2SQKhQfFCic8yrJ7mNmsbLWBN59S_osBfPUpfq_ChFuaT1lMD7kp1qoqmuJr34d55z2PMUsCtaScuSuf6md0wj38XXM2irGkxUb6AllqBvN-V12Ra/s1600/DrupesMonopolizeStemSumac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OMri-S5-zUT9HFEXGAnie7Plrul2SQKhQfFCic8yrJ7mNmsbLWBN59S_osBfPUpfq_ChFuaT1lMD7kp1qoqmuJr34d55z2PMUsCtaScuSuf6md0wj38XXM2irGkxUb6AllqBvN-V12Ra/s640/DrupesMonopolizeStemSumac.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: small; text-align: start;">Looking carefully, viewer can see that each drupe is on the end of its stem, to maximum elevation. </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br /><br />
<br /><br />
<br /><br /><br />
</span>Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-6625114203459541372020-04-01T12:09:00.000-04:002020-04-05T20:50:44.028-04:00Staghorn Sumac, Harvest in Winter Fruit<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I discovered
sumac tea about nine years ago. I was visiting a family whose yard
was over run with sumac and they had started cutting it down. Whereas
the drupes (sumac produces a cluster of densely packed seeds) are
usually at the ends of branches high in the air, in this case I was
able to easily gather all I wanted at waist height. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Following
recommendations, I broke up the drupes, put the seeds in a large jar,
filled it with water, and allowed it to soak over night. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was stunned. It
was so delicious! and yet I had never known anyone, personally, who had tried it. I vowed to
popularize sumac tea, and set about to learn all I could. I began to
look for stands) whose
owners I could contact and from which I could arrange to collect. This endeavor was
surprisingly difficult, but I learned a lot about sumac.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuomyGsje1T-4a21jwa4H-JwjT5cYhxhzeh8icBR8NV3gZBiHYIP3XGnUsxgF2tHjDkbCoMKqqDzo-BdtFyk5Abqe_oINF00npiCuRnWQqonBos1JqXniWs1lqsJlLL7Wp_4l4v0ax68RL/s1600/Drupes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuomyGsje1T-4a21jwa4H-JwjT5cYhxhzeh8icBR8NV3gZBiHYIP3XGnUsxgF2tHjDkbCoMKqqDzo-BdtFyk5Abqe_oINF00npiCuRnWQqonBos1JqXniWs1lqsJlLL7Wp_4l4v0ax68RL/s320/Drupes.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drupes propped up for visibility (S.Marshall, 2013)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“But isn’t Sumac
poisonous?” No Grasshopper, you needn’t worry. There is a poisonous variety
of Sumac with berries, which are white, not red. Our
variety is called staghorn, produces a seed cluster that is dark red
and fuzzy, and has no berries. No subtle discernment is involved, the
difference is quite obvious. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhz_ZB-qfUeRnqdBVH9X2rJjRltChAvRLrtXe_NsJ3Qy1LrIcI3Z0gtEPoxhwgd1KmCuAeHNULYG_8znwrTWvyIqFE9KIRtuliZPKZDGB0piJThBLjddAf3Q6WGmGWxU7H4CZbSNG5mEaA/s1600/SumacGrove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhz_ZB-qfUeRnqdBVH9X2rJjRltChAvRLrtXe_NsJ3Qy1LrIcI3Z0gtEPoxhwgd1KmCuAeHNULYG_8znwrTWvyIqFE9KIRtuliZPKZDGB0piJThBLjddAf3Q6WGmGWxU7H4CZbSNG5mEaA/s320/SumacGrove.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rhizoidal Growth pattern</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sumac, up here in
Vermont, grows in two forms, the rhizoid form and the dendritic
(tree) form. They seem to have distinct genetics, even though they
are known as one species. I cannot prove this, but I suspect an
epigenetic adaptive mechanism. In any event, the tree, which
provided the seed source of
the sumac in that family’s yard, grew to 50 feet. However, when
the plant begins to send out roots, and begins to grow new sprouts from the roots, it takes on a form called rhizoidal, a little like
a field of grass, except the stems are an inch or more in diameter at
the bottom, and spaced a foot or more apart.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There was
something else odd about these two forms of sumac. In the vast
majority of cases, the rhizoid produced small drupes, about two
inches in diameter and 4 to 7 inches in length. Again, the drupes
being at the end of the stalk, high in the air, it was difficult to
harvest these drupes. In contrast, the drupes produced by the
dendritic form were at times three inches in diameter, and would grow
to 8 or 10 inches in length. This is why I think there are two
genetic forms, but there’s nuance. The rhizoid form of the sumac
that were cut down in that yard produced large robust drupes, like
the tree nearby. And I have found rhizoid stands with these large
drupes. I don’t know that I’ve seen a tree with the small drupes,
but the large drupes are definitely delivered by both patterns of
growth. I traveled around Addison County Vermont for a couple of
years, and at first I wanted the difference in size to be a result of
their local conditions. But if this were true, the size of the drupes
would vary continuously across the entire range of sizes. But they
did not. The variation was bimodal. Hence I wonder if the
species has two varieties.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is important
for you when you go to search for sumac drupes to turn into tea. You
can search for the large drupes. They are better in other ways.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is an
insect, or perhaps a mite (it is very small, and I have not taken it
to a lab), which feeds on the sap of the sumac plant and favors the
warm safe enclosure of the drupe (I’m inferring). They tend to
favor the small drupes. Or perhaps the small size is a result of the
loss of plant energy to the arthropod. This bug also explains some of
the popular aversion to sumac tea. One Vermonter I spoke with told me
his family didn’t like sumac because it had all of that insect
detritus in it. This is a significant barrier. It is possible to
produce good tea with these drupes, but the thought of it is
disgusting. But again, there are strategies to over come this
obstacle, which I will review when I tell you about making tea. It’s
important to realize that not all drupes are infested with this bug.
They have to disperse, and presumably when sumac colonizes new soil
(they are a pioneer species), they do not have the bugs, and if you
find them, you will have sumac in its pristine form. On the other
hand, my experience is that the larger drupes tend not to be infested
so often. So that is what I look for when I want sumac!
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnenFBmJB3gxS0ik2PoFV8UYq4edrZ34B2uH_Z-Cm9hudQwWoT5oRBihMoIH15RYRW7oM6cOtylLKO6gsvP9wbvmFt7-0385UAi4RDzeE56nRcLVT9qZY9NZI4vN2cWOSN26LsUkkJHlaA/s1600/SumacTrees.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnenFBmJB3gxS0ik2PoFV8UYq4edrZ34B2uH_Z-Cm9hudQwWoT5oRBihMoIH15RYRW7oM6cOtylLKO6gsvP9wbvmFt7-0385UAi4RDzeE56nRcLVT9qZY9NZI4vN2cWOSN26LsUkkJHlaA/s320/SumacTrees.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sumac Drupes high in the air</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is another
very significant factor in the collection of sumac. The species is
called “staghorn” for a reason. The drupe stands tall at the very
end of the branch on which it grows, or perhaps near the end of the
branch. If you have found a tree, you will wonder how to collect the
drupes without cutting down the tree. If you have a yard and your own
sumac, you can cut it down to chest height, to collect the drupes,
because they will grow back, and next year the drupes won’t be out
of reach. I have tried cutters on the end of a pole, which was very
expensive of my time. The best thing might be a ladder, though I have
not had one to use. On this point, it is up to your ingenuity.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Staghorn sumac
has a unique ecological niche, which explains some of its superb
qualities. One year I began watching the growth and development of drupes from their first appearances in the spring. The flowers were a
pale green (it doesn’t want any attention at this point), and
gradually grew pink over the summer and red late in the autumn. But
ripening did not follow the usual pattern of a fruit that ripens in
the fall and is ready to be eaten. Sumac is still not ripe in
November, when it is still green inside of the drupe. It’s
essentially ready late in December, but the best time to harvest is
late in the winter.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What is the point
of this? Sumac’s unique strategy is to provide an over-winter food
to birds. A berry would not be suitable to this strategy, because
berries have water in them, which would be frozen and suck heat out
of the target customer, the over-wintering birds. Instead, the seeds
are produced with a fuzz which is suffused with this plant’s unique
formulation of nutrients. And in this form, it lasts all winter.
Indeed, drupes can be found which, sheltered from rain, are two and
three years old, and still suitable for making tea. I recently made
tea with drupes that I have kept in my closet for three years. It had
no mold, and had lost only some of its flavor.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the
reason for sumac’s amazing properties. A plant whose strategy for
propagation is to feed birds over winter must formulate it’s
nutrient offering to persist over a significant period of time.
Hence, it is hypothesized that the staghorn sumac contains a rich
variety of anti-oxidants, starches, and other substances, which
preserve the fruit, and do not age or grow stale (the sparse
literature is ambiguous about the nutritional contents of the
suffuse). Sumac may be the only fruit engineered by nature to persist
as a viable food across such a span of time. (Grains and beans are
easily preserved for this length of time, but nature did not engineer
them to be viable as <i><b>food</b></i> for this span of time.) The
current attention to antioxidants gives sumac a special nutritional
value. It may be the richest source of antioxidants in nature. I
can’t prove that.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Collecting sumac
can be impossible if you try to do it with leaves on the plant. Since
it remains fresh all winter, the best time to collect it would be a
warm day in January or February, but definitely before the leaves
come out.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some people worry
about the nutrient broth being washed away by rain, and if you find
drupes from the previous year, the exposed portions of the drupe will
have been rinsed by rain to a point where the drupe turns grey. But
this fruit is engineered (by nature, through natural selection) to
provide a tasty treat to the birds who might stop by for a meal, all
winter long! I don’t worry about rain damaging the drupes before I
collect them in their first year. The prize is a large drupe without
the detritus of arthropods. If a little rain has fallen on them, they
are still abundant with nutrients. Here is a piece done by Vermont
Public Radio, with some great photos:
<a href="https://www.vpr.org/post/foraging-vermonts-surprisingly-scrumptuous-sumac">foraging-vermonts-surprisingly-scrumptuous-sumac.</a></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So you found some
Sumac to harvest, and you have at least three large drupes. I get a
big pot (two or three gallons), add a gallon or two of water, and
heat it to 150 degrees (use a thermometer). I do not have the science to prove this is
the best protocol, but it works great for me. (If you want to
experiment, bear in mind that you want the nutrients to dissolve in
the water, not get cooked, and high temperatures will cook them.)
Now, you could just add the entire drupes to the hot water, but I use
another method, described below. Using a porous fabric (my favorite I
stripped from a large hi-fi speaker) to hold the drupes, I dunk them
until the water turns a dark red, in about a minute, and then I
remove the drupes. I now have sumac tea.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An option, which
I prefer because I want to unpack the seeds and expose every side of
them to water, is to break up the drupe. This can be done by hand,
which is work and will make your hands stronger, but I prefer a piece
of hardware cloth or kitchen bread rack with 3/8 or ½ inch pitch,
which provides an easy way to break up the drupe. Like grating a
carrot the long way, I scrape the drupe on the wire mesh, against the
direction of the stems, and the seeds quickly fall through. I use a
large rectangular cake pan to catch the seeds. However you do this,
be watching for the detritus of the arthropod inside the drupe. An
advantage of breaking up the drupe in this way is that as soon as you
see the brown stuff exposed, you can stop grating, leaving the
detritus attached to the stem for convenient disposal!
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But suppose you
weren’t so lucky and you could only collect some of the smaller
drupes. You will find some that are free of bugs but frequently are not. You have two strategies. Use a screen, to separate the
seeds from their stem, which allows you to collect seeds without
disturbing the bug stuff inside. Or, you could dunk entire drupes in
the hot water. The seeds are so densely packed that there is
typically no danger of the bug stuff inside coming in contact with
the water before you are finished steeping your drupe. But <i>you</i> must
be careful. I don’t think there is any actual danger from this
stuff, but it’s gross. And if you wanted to make tea for sale, you
would have to answer questions from food safety people. So consider
your goals and the condition of the drupes, use your judgment,
consider the preferences of your consumers, and do what feels right
to you.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you wanted to
propagate sumac, you could find some plants that you like and
transplant them. They are pioneers and will grow easily in disturbed
soil. I don’t know, but it is possible that all you need is a few
pieces of root. If you have the idea that you want to grow from
seeds, you want to consider this: it may be necessary for seeds to be
digested by birds to activate them. I was once offered hundreds of
seedlings – which were growing in a pile of pigeon poo. I couldn’t
use them, but I was intrigued by the idea that the seeds, produced by
a plant that uses a strategy of attracting birds in winter to
disperse its seeds, need to be digested by the birds, in the same way
that some plants will only grow after a fire. Maybe someday I will be
able to experiment.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That’s my
accumulated wisdom on the subject of Staghorn Sumac. Oh, one more
thing. I always thought the flavor would be great to add to other
beverages, beer for example. A month ago, I made a batch and added a
kombucha starter. Do you want to know what was better than Sumac tea?
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sumac is known in
the literature to have huge tannin levels in the bark, and sumac tea
that is steeped for too long will acquire the bitter, sickening
flavor of tannin. That is why we only steep for a minute, two at
most. Meanwhile, why do they say that Kombucha cannot be made with
herbal tea, but must be made with <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia_sinensis">Camellia
sinensis</a> </i>teas? Sumac, apparently an “herbal” tea, may
have some of the secret mojo needed to make Kombucha, and that mojo
may be tannic acid. Any food chemists who want to look into this? If
you want to make Sumac Kombucha, add some sugar (all Kombucha
requires this), let your tea cool to room temperature, add the
starter, and let it ferment for a month. Get the details by reading
about how to make Kombucha.
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.15in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So experiment.
There is information out there and you can look it up. One article I
found very informative was from the Pakistan Journal of Nutrition,
2009, called <u>Comparative Study on the Chemical Composition of
Syrian Sumac and Chinese Sumac</u>, by Kossah, Nsabimana, Zhao, Chen,
et al. Sumac isn’t an easy fruit to harvest and use, but it is
highly rewarding.
</span></div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-44411052161533338802020-03-18T10:44:00.001-04:002020-03-18T11:00:03.888-04:00#SAVEVERMONT #SPREADTHISFASTERTHANTHEVIRUS<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<i>Guest writer, Stanton Eddy</i></div>
<br />
Wait a Vermont Summer Minute! We CAN do something!<br />
<br />
WE CAN SAVE VERMONT!<br />
<br />
Future Headline: "How in the world did Vermont do it?"<br />
<br />
We can save incredibly large amounts of lives of our loved ones and our friends' loved ones.<br />
<br />
We can drastically shorten the time our businesses will be shut down and our kids out of school and ourselves out of work!<br />
<br />
But we MUST do the following immediately! Go ahead and post this everywhere you can, but DO NOT stop there! You MUST also EMAIL all your Vermont contacts that you have, plus your Legislators and the Governor!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://governor.vermont.gov/contact-us/message" target="_blank">https://governor.vermont.gov/contact-us/message</a><br />
Why immediately? Have you heard about all those other countries, and even now some of our beloved fellow states, who did not start soon enough? Hospitals completely overwhelmed, having to choose who they can save and who must die. Vermonters DO NOT want to have to make that choice. Other countries and states started mandating Shelter in Place much too late. And we are only a few short weeks behind before the same happens to us.<br />
<br />
We heard "Groups no more than 250." Then it changed to no more than 50. Then no more than 10. Do you see the pattern? You know what's next. In NYC and elsewhere, no groups allowed at all. Shelter in Place. Everything is shut down. And for these places, it will last a very long time, with great destruction to businesses, and astounding amounts of unnecessary loss of life. <br />
<br />
Vermont must do this now. We love Vermont and we love Vermonters. We cannot wait for our Governor and Legislators, they are waiting far too long, and by then it will be too late. <br />
<br />
You will be affected. Your family and your friends' families will be affected. So do this right now: SHELTER IN PLACE. Go out only for groceries and medical needs and essential workers only. No visits from anyone. Force your children and adult children to do this also. Force your parents too! Go out and get food only when you really start to run out. Food will be there. Only one person should go get it. Then get home, sanitize, and shelter in place.<br />
<br />
We can only avoid catastrophe if ALL VERMONTERS do this! And we CAN do it! But you must spread the word. Spread it faster than the virus.<br />
<br />
And after, when we see on the national news that they are searching for how VERMONT was able to so successfully minimize the damage to businesses and families, and our elderly and fragile made it through, and what should have been an inadequate number of respirators and hospital beds were somehow able to manage to save so many more lives than other states and countries…<br />
We can all say that WE VERMONTERS did our part to Save Vermont!<br />
<br />
Don't waste a minute. It took me less than an hour to write this, then create my SAVE VERMONT email group and select all my Vermont contacts. Cut and paste this email, it will take you less than a half hour, and you will then be saving MANY VERMONTER'S LIVES! Vermonter's inboxes should be flooded immediately with this email, from all their Vermont friends and family. I promise you that you have nothing better to do than save the lives and businesses of your fellow Vermonters. Including your own.<br />
<br />
If I'm wrong about any of what I've written, I will change my name to Mr. Frickin' V.T. Idiot. I absolutely promise.<br />
<br />
If we try this and it doesn't catch on, at least we can all say we didn't sit on the sidelines. We tried to Save Vermont.<br />
<br />
And if it works, we will all tell the National News in unison that we Vermonters DID THIS TOGETHER! Because we care about every family, business, health care worker, and person in Vermont.<br />
<br />
Violate company email policies and EMAIL this to EVERY VERMONTER you know. <br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: rgb(0 , 0 , 0); display: inline; float: none; font-family: "pt serif" , sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.55; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Remember these Vermont sayings as you get started immediately:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<span style="background-color: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: rgb(0 , 0 , 0); display: inline; float: none; font-family: "pt serif" , sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.55; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: rgb(34 , 34 , 34); display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"You can't keep trouble from coming, but you don't have to give it a frickin' chair to sit on."</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<span style="background-color: rgb(255 , 255 , 255); color: rgb(0 , 0 , 0); display: inline; float: none; font-family: "pt serif" , sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.55; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"Vermont is our cow. But we have to do the milking."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
With much love for all my fellow Vermonters. And you are a Vermonter if you are in Vermont at this very moment.<br />
<br /></div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-86583464639748053242020-03-17T08:29:00.001-04:002020-04-06T08:04:00.638-04:00The Covid Opportunity<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto">
The recession of 2008 resulted in a major transfer of wealth from low and middle income people to rich people. We must insist on specific measures to place the burdens of economic distress on those who have wealth to spare. Cancellation of rent and mortgages for those who are unpaid over the recession is one way. Another is to channel aid through unpaid workers, so there is no cause to evict or foreclose. </div>
<div dir="auto">
<br /></div>
<div dir="auto">
There is an important principle here: the response to the mortgage crisis was to give money to the banks, which proceeded to foreclose on all the people who couldn't pay mortgages. Had they given money to the mortgage holders, home owners would have kept their homes and the banks would be paid and survive. We need to ensure that the recession does not result in the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. </div>
<div dir="auto">
<br /></div>
<div dir="auto">
This apolitical disease exposes a plethora of social inequalities and vulnerabilities. It provides a rare moment when the vulnerability of one group is shared by all groups. This moment therefore is a unique moment to transcend divisions and do what is right for the health and safety of all. Health care for all, abundant and inexpensive housing. </div>
</div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-16886690999524974802020-01-29T20:09:00.003-05:002021-01-21T19:15:20.563-05:00Safe Parking, Safe Camping, Proposal to the Vermont Legislature<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Given
that the lack of a consistent, private dwelling place to support life
functions, recreation, relationships and employment is traumatic and
problematic, for any member of the community of Vermont, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Given
that the state sees a persistent stream of persons without permanent, stable housing, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Given
that the quantity of housing has not been sufficient to accommodate
everyone who lives here, and </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Given
that the cost of housing exceeds the available funds of many Vermont
households, </span>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in; text-align: left;"><span face=""candara" , sans-serif">It seems self evident that many persons are forced to live outdoors, to
endure the elements and dangers to their persons and property, and </span></div></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Given
that if there were enough affordable housing, living outdoors would
not be necessary, </span>
</div>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in; text-align: left;"><span face=""candara" , sans-serif">It
seems further self evident that persons so compelled depend upon the
compassion and efforts of the community, state and local governments
to provide safety and minimal services to maintain any semblance of
normality, dignity and hope of a better life. </span></div></blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Therefore
it is requested and proposed, </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in; margin-left: 0.4in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">That
the State require all municipalities to create plans to protect the
safety and dignity of those forced to live outdoors; </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in; margin-left: 0.4in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">That
the State set standards for these plans, and create a method of
review of these plans. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Writing
such a plan: </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">The
foundation of such a plan is an assessment of the number of homeless
persons in the various categories of homelessness, both as a
proportion of the statewide count and through direct assay of the
town's residents. The plan would be based on a reasonable compromise
between these numbers. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Rural,
suburban and urban areas are not likely to distribute the homeless
population proportionally, and the nature of homelessness varies
dramatically across these community types. Moreover, the costs of
planning for and accommodating a small and evanescent homeless
population might be a burden for very low population towns. A few
strategies are proposed to relieve this burden: </span>
</div>
<ul>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">The
plan detail for each “provision” (below) may be scaled to the
needs of the town, with appropriate evidence and testimony, and as
agreed to by state reviewers. <a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blogger.g?blogID=621174402123357644#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Town
plans may be consolidated into regional plans. A consolidation plan
that includes all community types would be expected to provide more
opportunity for efficiency in the delivery of services. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">A
town might rely on a standard plan or template created by the state
or regional planning commission, </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
“<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Best
practices” will provide guidance. </span>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">The
environment in which homelessness occurs is complex, thus such plans
must address: </span>
</div>
<ul>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Where
someone who is without housing can rest and reside without danger of
being told to leave. There must be a viable, useful and specific
alternate location. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">What
the police response to encounters with the homeless wil be, and
training in relation to. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Provision
of sanitary facilities, and disposal of surplus property and trash,
including cleanup of abandoned camps. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Assistance
for medically endangered persons (example: insulin). </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Protection
and recovery of vehicles and property contained within. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Approach
to non-permitted constructed housing. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Provision
of and engagement with social services. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">How
the municipality proposes to address persons not compelled to live
outdoors, who choose to. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Procedures
for giving notice when a campsite must be moved. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Best
response when criminal activity is discovered. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">Public
review of the plan and the town's fidelity to it. </span>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">This
proposal recognizes that persons are already camping and parking
across the state, and rather than devise an entirely new system,
proposes to add protections and employ existing services, to ensure
that, when campers, parkers or other non-housed person is discovered,
they can remain where they are or there is a location to which they
may viably go. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">This
proposal contemplates State level review, but does not propose how.
Some combination of human services, economic development, public
safety, and advocates is suggested, and the Vermont Council on
Homelessness might be the logical seat of oversight. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif">The
intent of this proposal is to give rest and comfort to those who are
homeless, by asking towns to address the concerns listed here, and
commit to “best practices”. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.05in;">
<span face=""candara" , sans-serif"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blogger.g?blogID=621174402123357644#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a>The
homeless population for purposes of making this assessment should
include all of those who live on public property or without
permission on private property, generally: outdoors on the ground,
in tents, in cars, campers or trailers, places of public
accommodation such as an ATM or stairwell, and in abandoned
properties without facilities. Housing which is unsuited to human
habitation but is located on property owned or rented by the
resident would not be included for purposes of plans to protect
those who are forced to live outdoors. Protections for the housing
marginalized are in order, but not under this proposal</span></div>
</div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-68374178177845021602020-01-29T17:12:00.001-05:002020-01-29T17:12:39.997-05:00Address to the joint Committees of the Vermont Legislature, January 19, 2020<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia";">
<br />
I do not sit before you armed with piles of facts and figures, prepared to speak to specific legislation. I come before you to share my insights as an advocate who listens to, serves, and lives with those known as “homeless”. Since the day, at the age of 15, that I protested the abuse my father heaped on my brother, I have identified with the powerless, and fought to bring safety and dignity to them. Thus I come before you today, to address a specific source of danger and harm, in the relationship between the community of the unhoused, and the larger community. <br />
If you attend our vigil later, you will hear my lyric portrayal of what it feels like to live unhoused. Here and now, I want to put before you the abject danger into which our society is plunging. <br />
When young, old and middle aged lose the safety of their domicile with regularity, from illness, relationship disruption, and the failure of families to cohere and provide mutual support, <br />
When opioid dependence and alcoholism plague the bodies and minds of so many, <br />
When fear and stigma of those who dwell on the street is rising, <br />
we are not facing a momentary, transient glitch in the functioning of our society and community. <br />
We are confronted by the effects of the broad and pervasive social policy that underwrites our law and economy; <br />
We are confronted by the consequences of our choice to privilege private wealth and ambition over the collective well being. <br />
Not to say You are able to change these rules unilaterally; they are written at a federal and global scale, and come to us from human nature and history. <br />
But you and we suffer the rot those rules promote: You and we, are the tree whose limbs are green and appear healthy, while the trunk rots from inside, and you, and we, must address that rot, because it affects you, and us. Homelessness isn’t just a problem, it’s a signal, And I am here to ask you to look at homelessness this way. <br />
Recently in Burlington tensions have been rising between some who panhandle and use alleyways to eliminate waste, and the businesses nearby. The panhandling has grown aggressive, and the mess offensive. With some hand-wringing, and much real desperation, more privileged members of the community ask “What are we going to do?”. What if we do not look at this behavior as something to be corrected? What if we ask “What are we doing wrong?”. To this I would answer: raise the floor on the quality of life. Start by installing or opening bathrooms which can impart to the entire community the dignity of a place to eliminate waste in a socially acceptable way. These street practices are signals of rot, and if you want to arrest the rot, start by insisting on the social solidarity which provides dignity to the lives of those so situated. <br />
Another way to arrest the rot of social indignity and loss of safety is to accommodate those who resort to living outdoors with policies I call “Safe Parking, Safe Camping.” You will have before you my brief of such a policy. It does not represent the only approach, but as an activist in the homeless community for four years, this is what I think will work. Essentially, the strategy is to recognize, in some form that is legal and provides safety to those who cannot afford housing, what already exists: people living in campers, cars, and tents, or sleeping on church lawns and in ATM booths. Already in some ways and in many communities, people are allowed to rest in peace, but in many ways and communities, they are not, and I am here to ask you to insist on safety and dignity for those who must live outdoors. <br />
I am asking you to require every town to create a plan that provides “Safe Parking, Safe Camping”. I would give them a year to create a draft, a second year to evaluate their plans, a third year to implement them. The social and cultural challenges are significant; we are seeking to address the causes of social rot, we cannot expect instant changes. <br />
I would also like you to pass the Homeless Bill of Rights, these are obvious measures to combat the rot that is signaled by homelessness, but after reading again the Homeless Bill of Rights, I don't think Safe Parking, Safe Camping fits as a "right". To state it as such would place a precipitate burden on towns, forcing them to respond without due planning or guidance. I think a separate bill, addressing public safety and accommodation of folks living desperately, would provide more time to listen, and find locally meaningful solutions. I think many municipalities do not have a problem because they are not hassling people, so their planning would be nominal, but in many others people who cannot find a place to live cannot get a good night sleep. <br />
I do not want to create, under present conditions, a network of identified, specified homeless camps. I want to recognize current responses to the loss of housing, and bring them into relationship with the law and the communities in which they are. I want to add a layer of safety, and allow the practice of these policies to guide us as we respond to changing conditions. Allowing and expecting towns to write plans forces them to think about the most vulnerable, and consider their needs in the conduct of municipal business. It invites innovation, and allows us to discover "best practices", through the multiplicity of solutions from the multiplicity of towns. <br />
Thank you for considering my testimony. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</span></div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-50719923696281964552020-01-29T16:59:00.002-05:002020-01-29T16:59:15.228-05:00Address to the Vigil, Homelessness Awareness Day, Vermont Legislature, 2020Yea! I love you! <br />
<br />
Thank you for coming to our Vigil for the homeless, my friends. <br />
Thank you, legislators, advocates and esteemed guests, <br />
Thank you to the fourth graders who chose homelessness as their topic to study, <br />
for standing with the community of those we call homeless.<br />
Thank you, Especially, those of you who are without housing, <br />
Who are here today. <br />
You made a special effort to get here, and this vigil is for you.<br />
<br />
We are here today to think about, feel about, and remember, you, <br />
the Vermonters who in their daily lives have to ask<br />
“How will I stay safe today?” <br />
“How will I keep my possessions safe?” <br />
“How will I eat today?”, <br />
“Where can I park my car so it won’t get towed away?”, <br />
“How can I get my car out of impoundment?”. <br />
“How can I get my children to school?” <br />
“Where will I sleep tonight?” <br />
We are here today to remember you. <br />
Because being Homeless is a condition of desperation, <br />
And we want better for you. <br />
<br />
So let us remember, <br />
People who pay into the engine of profit <br />
– those who rent and those who pay mortgages – <br />
are given permission to claim a space as their own. <br />
But if you can't work, and if you can't pay, <br />
If you refuse to work two jobs, <br />
just to give all your money to a landlord or a bank, <br />
If you can't manage your life, wracked as you are by trauma,<br />
or living in the misery of mental illness, <br />
If you are broken, and have no resources, <br />
Or if you have been driven from your home by domestic violence,<br />
You can't get that permission. <br />
<br />
So you sleep in places that aren't your own. <br />
You sleep in public, on a sidewalk or in a parking garage, <br />
where someone who is cruel can kick you, or worse, <br />
where someone also desperate can steal your few possessions, <br />
where someone, too privileged to see themselves in that huddle on the ground,<br />
might complain to the police; <br />
You sleep in public, in a car where you worry about being rousted from the depths of sleep, <br />
You sleep in a dumpster that is warm, yet deadly, <br />
You sleep scrambling from couch to floor from friend to friend. <br />
<br />
And the question "Where can I sleep, that is safe?” <br />
hangs like a cloud over the entire day, <br />
because there is no place for you to rest, <br />
that is your own.<br />
<br />
Your community does ASPIRE to house you in hard-wall housing. <br />
But if your community had the will, a sufficient will, to build that housing, <br />
a sufficient will <br />
to make that housing affordable to people living on Social Security,<br />
or a minimum wage job, <br />
if your community had the will to produce housing, <br />
That someone working from her car <br />
Or bouncing from couch to couch,<br />
could afford,<br />
if your community had the will to produce housing a drunk or an addict would want, <br />
then we could put everyone in hardwall housing, <br />
then we could impart to all of you the dignity and safety <br />
of your own locked door,<br />
and then the sidewalk, lawn, ATM booth, tent or broken-down camper, <br />
would not be part of our continuum of housing. <br />
<br />
But they are, <br />
And living outdoors, under bridges, in tents, cars, campers, and dumpsters, <br />
Sleeping on a blanket thrown on the ground,<br />
are solutions we resort to, <br />
are solutions in our continuum of housing, <br />
and are solutions we, your community, need to plan for : <br />
<br />
With safe places for camping, parking, and bedding down. <br />
With enough safe, humane, shelters, <br />
For adults, couples, dog owners, youth, <br />
For she or he fleeing domestic violence, <br />
For the addicted, the person in recovery, that person with social anxiety, or disability, <br />
For the LGBTQ person, the traumatized, the mentally ill. <br />
<br />
So let us write a homeless bill of protections<br />
that guarantees safe parking and safe camping,<br />
in every community across the state of Vermont, <br />
Let us write a homeless bill of protections that can comfort you, <br />
as you search for that safe place to sleep each night.<br />
<br />
Thank you! <br />
<br />
[this proposal serves as an accountability device. The protection of human rights isn’t always comfortable. But the protection of human rights may compel the just solution that is also preferable.] <br />
<br />
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-81980275643723529232019-11-07T08:38:00.001-05:002019-12-01T09:46:11.936-05:00Proposed Address, Statehouse Vigil for the Homeless, 2020, Draft 3.2<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">To the assembled, thank you for standing with the community of those we call homeless. Especially, I want to thank those of you here who are without permanent, stable housing, for coming today. You made a special effort to get here. This vigil is for you, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. <br />
We are here today to think about, feel about, and remember, the Vermonters who in their daily lives have to ask “How will I stay safe?” <br />
“Where will I sleep tonight?” <br />
“How will I keep my possessions safe?” <br />
“How will I eat today?”, <br />
“Can I get my children to school?” <br />
“Where can I park my car so it won’t get towed away?”, <br />
“How can I get my car out of impoundment?”. </span></span></span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
Homelessness is a condition of desperation. People who pay into the engine of profit – those who rent and those who pay mortgages – are given permission to claim a space as their own. <br />
People who can't work and can't pay, <br />
people who refuse to work two jobs just to give all their money to a landlord or a bank, <br />
people who can't manage their lives, wracked by trauma,<br />
or living in the misery of mental illness, <br />
people who are broken and have no resources, <br />
people driven from their homes by domestic violence,<br />
can't get that permission. <br />
So they sleep in places that aren't their own. They sleep in public, in a car where they worry about being rousted from the depths of sleep, <br />
They sleep on a sidewalk, where someone who is cruel can kick them or worse, <br />
where someone also desperate can steal their few possessions, <br />
where someone too privileged to see themselves in that huddle of blankets might complain to the police, <br />
They sleep in a dumpster that is warm, yet deadly, <br />
They sleep scrambling from couch to floor from friend to friend. <br />
The question "Where can I sleep, that is safe?” hangs like a cloud over the entire day, because there is no place to rest, that is their own. </span></span></span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
But how is this worse than being evicted, with no place to move to? <br />
How is this worse than having a job you can’t get to because the car is broken down?<br />
How is this worse than going without insulin because it’s too expensive? <br />
How is this worse than losing a spouse, getting sick, being foreclosed, and finding no help to stay in your home? <br />
How is this worse than enduring the blows of a violent partner, because that place is the one place you know to stay warm? <br />
those without housing usually had housing, and those with housing are often in fear of losing their housing, so where is the boundary between the housed and the unhoused?<br />
Indeed, we see the unhoused and the housed on the street, as one, and call them all “homeless”, <br />
But we don’t see the many who are sleeping in an unheated shed, <br />
in a wrecked camper, <br />
on the couch of a friend, <br />
in a tent in a hidden patch of woods;<br />
we don’t see the many elders and working people who struggle to pay their rents, and face evictions, <br />
we don’t see those who work 100 hours a week and spend all of their money on a motel room, <br />
We don't see the that person who could work and wants to, but cannot for lack of an ID, <br />
we don’t see those who live in a cold damp moldy basement, <br />
we don’t see those who pay their rents to a landlord who won’t repair the leak in the roof, <br />
remove the moldy sheetrock, <br />
abate the lead paint, <br />
repair the plumbing, <br />
or respect privacy. <br />
we do not see the young mother or father trying to care for their children and struggling to keep them while the department of children and families wonders whether they can. <br />
We don’t see the 31% of single mothers living in poverty. <br />
We don’t see the families and retired desperate for fuel to heat their homes. <br />
When we see the homeless on the street, we see only a few of the one half percent of Vermonters who are unhoused, out of more than 10% of Vermonters who earn less than $15,000 per year, <br />
we see only a few of those whose lives are tossed about on the stormy seas of bad luck, <br />
poor education,<br />
poor health,<br />
poor choices,<br />
unhealthy families or families who abandoned them,<br />
whose lives took that bad turn and landed them on the street.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
We hope that getting the unhoused housed is sufficient to correct their deficits. <br />
But it is not, because the help is often not quite enough, <br />
Because you don’t qualify for help<br />
Because your id was stolen, you can’t take the job you were offered,<br />
Because you can’t afford child care, <br />
Because the owner of the apartment you rent won’t repair the plumbing or remove the moldy sheetrock, or fix the drafts in the door, <br />
Because throughout your life you have tried to be self-sufficient, and yet you couldn’t earn enough to pay your bills, keep the electric turned on, keep the car in repair, repair your teeth, or stay safe.<br />
Because the message you got was “You don’t matter”. <br />
Poverty is structural, and homelessness is structural.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
They are products of laws and policies that assume that every individual person has the health, the education, the serenity, and the opportunity, to sustain life and health and pursue ambitions, <br />
They are products of custom that assumes we do not need community support to flourish. <br />
They are products of culture that does not care about people without power or money. <br />
Poverty and homelessness are forms of Economic Injustice.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
Let us remember that communities create wealth, through investment in education, roads, health care, and the social fabric that supports meaningful human lives.<br />
and that when a few get rich, they are harvesting the value created by communities, by the collective effort of many people. <br />
and even as those communities grow poor, it is not the fault of those who live there, it is the fault of the law that does not capture that wealth for public goods.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
Thus, It is the engine of profit that captures this wealth, <br />
it is that levy on the meager earnings of the common waged worker, which is demanded by every for-profit landlord and bank, <br />
it is our reliance on property and housing as a source of wealth, <br />
that drives the cost of housing ever higher, ever more beyond the means of those who sell their labor, <br />
and it is this engine of profit that must be turned toward the dignity, safety and development of the entire community, through selective taxation of the bads and spending on goods. <br />
We cannot allow our private drive for wealth to oppose our shared well being, lives, and our communities. <br />
We must strive to preserve and strengthen our democracy. </span></span></span> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "corbel" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
So let us change the rules of participation in our society, <br />
Let us provide a living minimum wage. <br />
Let us provide universal, single payer health care, <br />
Let us require parental leave rights, <br />
Let us provide affordable quality childcare. <br />
let us give the youth who loses her mother to jail a second chance to arrive to adulthood with safety and dignity, <br />
Let us license landlords and make their right to operate conditional upon their properties passing health and safety inspections, and let us fund those inspections. <br />
Let us tax high-end mortgages and rents, to pay for the infrastructure to build affordable housing and rentals. <br />
Let us make foreclosure painful for the banks, <br />
Let us create enough housing to make it a buyer’s market. <br />
Let us pass a homeless bill of rights, <br />
Let us put a cap on impoundment fees, <br />
Let us fund free public transit for those eligible for SNAP, <br />
Let us provide DMV identification to anyone who can’t afford the fees. <br />
Let us create enough shelter so no one ever needs to fall asleep in a doorway! <br />
Let us provide enough shelter so that no one fleeing domestic violence is forced onto the street.<br />
Let us recognize a right to a safe place to park, <br />
to pitch a tent, <br />
or to throw down a blanket, <br />
let us install sleeping pods <br />
in every town in Vermont! <br />
Let housing NOT be a commodity, from which to extract profits and to increase private wealth, <br />
Let housing exist to house people and build communities. <br />
let housing be a social utility, socially regulated, a source of personal security and stability, elemental to community and meaningful lives. <br />
Let us reduce the cost of housing by reducing our dependence on property as a source of wealth<br />
Let us create a quality of life floor below which no one needs to go. <br />
Let us build a strong safety net for all Vermonters, rich and poor alike, <br />
so that being rich isn’t required for a safe and dignified life. <br />
Let our public policy drive everyone toward the middle class, <br />
Where everyone can have a meaningful life. <br />
Let us build a just economy. For the sake of us all. </span></span></span> </div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-31189150048039260522019-10-22T10:28:00.000-04:002019-10-22T10:28:29.424-04:00Tiny House Fest Link Compendium. <div>
<br /><span style="font-family: "georgia";">
</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Stephen Marshall: Centrality of
Community</div>
<a href="https://dispolemic.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-tiny-house-movement-wedging-open.html">https://dispolemic.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-tiny-house-movement-wedging-open.html</a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">SHELTERFORCE:
Seattle opens and plans multiple tiny house villages. Low Income
Housing Institute manages 2200 beds. </span>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" id=":3no">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://shelterforce.org/2019/03/15/tiny-house-villages-in-seattle-an-efficient-response-to-our-homelessness-crisis/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">https://shelterforce.org/2019/</span></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">YouTube:
LIHI's Sharon Lee explains their project</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCzBi-TLKu0" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">City
of Seattle: Civic details and news on permitted villages</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/city-permitted-villages" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">http://www.seattle.gov/</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">Unauthorized
camps</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/unauthorized-encampments" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">http://www.seattle.gov/</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">GOVERNING:
Seattle Tiny House Village Closed, Others remain open </span>
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<a href="https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/tns-seattle-tiny-house-home-homeless.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">https://www.governing.com/</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">CURBED:
10 Tiny House Villages</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.curbed.com/maps/tiny-houses-for-the-homeless-villages" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">https://www.curbed.com/maps/</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">Washington
Post: Six Examples of Tiny House Projects</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/tiny-houses/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">https://www.washingtonpost.</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">DesMoines
Register: Where to put Tiny Houses? </span>
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<a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2019/05/23/tiny-house-village-homeless-raises-questions-iowa-leaders-joppa-editorial/3666729002/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">https://www.desmoinesregister.</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">CBS
Denver: Tiny Houses Lovett community must move. $900 per month rent</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xwJvrWRRxg" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?</span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Opportunity
Village, Eugene Oregon, self governing, Great images, discussion,
</span></span>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgDiS7Q-FUw" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?</span></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;">D<span style="font-size: small;">ATELINE:
LA activist builds tiny houses but city won't allow them to be sited.
</span></span>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhFKPZqFd3o&t=4s" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Liberation Serif, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">https://www.youtube.com/watch?</span></span></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
DesMoines Register: Text only, Joppa
Village</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lIO8RB_5utsMT8fC_T2lyvhX5T4nhLYh">https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lIO8RB_5utsMT8fC_T2lyvhX5T4nhLYh</a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Nashville</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xkPwAMIARyqdt174ZJRfrA5I4IsY6HMR">https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xkPwAMIARyqdt174ZJRfrA5I4IsY6HMR</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Seattle Lake Union</div>
<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rdGqD3hxQIcqQxEBLfuSgKjIakK5GExQ">https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rdGqD3hxQIcqQxEBLfuSgKjIakK5GExQ</a><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Seattle True Hope Village</div>
<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cQL6wfxOIwgt2PtUpWYdxEA0OFh7s86t">https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cQL6wfxOIwgt2PtUpWYdxEA0OFh7s86t</a><br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia";"><br />
<br /><br />
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</span></div>
Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-18546759999413267612019-10-21T20:15:00.000-04:002019-10-21T20:26:43.731-04:00morality as an adaptive strategy to correct undesirable behavior<div dir="ltr">
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The theory being actively debated is whether morality is a system designed to promote cooperation. Recent work on the disgust reaction and how it activates moral thinking challenges this model. A more generalized model explains how both models agree. </div>
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To say that morality is a factor in decision making isn't precise enough. We need to identify the somatic-cognitive experience that is moral thinking, and place it in a behavioral framework. When we say that something is immoral, the mind-body is reacting to it negatively, communicating that the behavior or condition is unacceptable, deserves social opprobrium, should be punished, banished or destroyed. When we say that something is moral, we are applauding it and encouraging its spread. Some of these responses are internally directed, toward choices the active agent might make, and some of them are directed at the behaviors of others: morality can be used to promote behaviors, or even control the behaviors of others. </div>
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But in principle, what could be called the moral response is an adaptive, instinctive, response to a situation which demands an automatic, unreflective, unequivocal judgement or behavior. The disgust response fits easily into this pattern. But how does cooperation fit? </div>
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Cooperation is itself a survival strategy, and where disgust helps the active agent avoid harmful pathogens, Cooperation helps the active agent produce helpful behaviors. Because cooperation is so adaptive, a somatic-cognitive response that produces cooperation would also be adaptive. Sometimes cooperation produces joy. Sometimes we cooperate because it is just the right thing to do, in the absence of a somatic reward. Cooperation may be easy to produce, under some circumstances, but isn't always easy, and may need some help from emotions, training, and-or morality. </div>
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So what is the difference between joyful cooperation and moral cooperation? In the former, the payoff is immediate: the result is that both or all participants are better off as a result of cooperation. In the latter case, the payoff is not immediate, and may go to someone else in the community. "Moral" cooperation improves the community or other individuals, while the active agent pays the cost in health or energetic expenditure. But if there is a short term cost to the agent, there is a long term benefit of maintaining cooperative behavior as a norm of the community. Because of the danger to the active agent, in health and energy, more may be required to motivate the agent, and this is the somatic-cognitive force of a moral precept, whether learned or instinctive. </div>
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So the moral somatic-cognitive experience is one which produces, in the agent, acts which are contrary to the "rational" choice (that one which would conserve health or enhance private material gain), in service to the greater good. It is an adaptive, instinctive, response to a situation which demands an automatic, unreflective, unequivocal judgement or behavior, which the agent is frequently unable to explain, except by saying "it was the right thing to do". </div>
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Thus responses to a wide range of conditions, including pathogenic disgust, Haidt's "purity", and the imperative to cooperate, are all supported by invocations of "morality". In this case, we might sense that "morality" is just a catch-all category of responses whose ultimate causes are not given to us. They are adaptive and we just have them. </div>
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Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-3481684429388318402019-10-21T10:49:00.001-04:002019-10-26T09:03:54.367-04:00The Tiny House Movement: Wedging open the Conversation about Housing and Community
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
tiny house movement</span></b><span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
surges on the wave of increasing inequality, as we seek ways to maintain
stability and dignity. It is a laudable and profound assertion of modesty in
the face of a consumerist society which tells us to build bigger, eat more, own
more. But as we build smaller to maintain our personal dignity and autonomy,
and to join with like-minded fellows to reduce our individual impacts on the
planet, let us not forget the inequality to which this modesty responds.
Suppose we were to somehow re-balance the distribution of wealth. Would we
prefer to reclaim it for personal enrichment, or designate it to solve
problems?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lest we forget, huge fractions of the
American populace are laced with disappointment because the engine of wealth
has left them and their communities behind, and believing that more money
equals more security, for them the answer is: I want it in my bank account.
(Neo-liberal economists enable this response: instead of correcting the flaws
in the economy and devising schemes to distribute wealth, they insist that
growth will provide the wealth and everyone will get a share. Since we are
given no choices, we depend on the truthfulness of this claim. And it is a
lie.) But as participants in the tiny house movement, as participants in the
economy, we can designate our surpluses to solve problems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Here, I think, is where we need to remember
that material wealth is not the definition of happiness or well-being. Humanity
evolved as peoples with little to no clothing, and a few tools to build minimal
shelter and to hunt and gather food, using cooperation as its principle
strategy, and these societies, anthropologists tell us, were in no sense
miserable. "Poor" societies the world over today provide security and
happiness to their members, because the horizon of self-interest includes an
entire community. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">These communities persist until
colonialism, war, and the Neo-liberal world order, destabilize them and the
local ecology of sustenance, forcing people to turn to more narrowly
self-seeking behavior.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As Americans, more even than Europeans, our
ecologies of sustenance are so unstable and siloed that our horizons barely
escape the outer walls of our dwellings. Do we know our neighbors? Do we rely
on them to maintain a share of labor needed to keep the community safe and fed?
Do we assist each other with childcare? Do we teach our children to love the
place in which they live, to build relationships and build their community, or
do we teach them to follow a dream and start a life far away? Do we teach them
about responsibility to the greater good, and about community service? Do we
teach them it's okay to let someone else win? Do we teach our children to take
care of each other, humanity and the planet? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">As human beings, we are creatures in search
of reciprocity, where we find safety and prosperity. And reciprocity requires
long term relationships, economic stability, housing stability, provision of
education and health-care services, and systems to assure safety. These are the
services naturally provided by community. Provide equal access to these facets
of community, and you have the beginnings of meaningful, and sustainable,
lives. To provide those services, the wealth, the energy, the material and
spiritual products, of that community, must be captured and directed at those
services.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But let us also remember this: Wealth is
not produced by individuals alone. Wealth (the sum value of products that
support life) is produced by individuals working in and supported by
communities. Communities, therefore, are entitled to a portion of that wealth
sufficient to build infrastructure, provide services, and maintain the
integrity of the social fabric. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Candara","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The profound misunderstanding of the modern
world is that stuff matters, that technology matters, that innovation matters,
that economic growth and money in the bank are sufficient in the search for
well-being. They do not, they are not. Deeper thinkers than myself have noted
how much of material consumption, substance abuse, and mental illness, is
driven by the loneliness and emptiness we feel, from the absence of a greater
good, of reciprocity, friendship and community. What matters is the fabric of
relationships we have, the quality of that fabric, and the balance of
responsibility and freedom provided by that fabric, and whether by
participating in it we can privately experience our unity with it. Innovation
and new institutions will be necessary to create this world, but innovation,
wealth, and stuff, by themselves, are not sufficient to provide human
well-being. It must be directed at doing the work of healing and sustaining the
people, the families, the communities, and the planet. This is the opportunity
that the Tiny House movement creates.</span></div>
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Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-621174402123357644.post-39924683767036836332019-10-04T08:42:00.000-04:002019-10-26T09:15:58.847-04:00Our Continuum of Housing <div dir="ltr">
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Homelessness is a condition of desperation. People who pay into the engine of profit (renters and mortgage holders) are given permission to claim a space as their own. People who can't work and can't pay, people who refuse to work two jobs just to pay, people who can't manage their lives, people who are broken and have no resources, can't get that permission. They sleep in places that aren't their own. They sleep in public, in a car where they worry about being rousted in the depths of sleep, or on a sidewalk, where someone who is cruel can kick them or worse, where someone also desperate can steal their few possessions, where someone too privileged to see themselves in that huddle of blankets might complain to the police. The question "Where can I sleep, that is safe?" hangs like a cloud over the entire day, because there is no place to rest, that is their own. </div>
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Some who are homeless are luckier than others. They find a place to camp. A well hidden camp increases safety, but can still be discovered, possessions can still be stolen, the tent can still be destroyed, and the person is still not there by permission. But it is better than sleeping in an ATM booth. </div>
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So, have you watched as locations used by homeless campers have been cleared, razed or developed? Just here in Burlington, the waterfront, the clover leaf, Pine Street. Or just declared off-limits, like 311 North Ave. The camp site is progressively harder to find. </div>
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The Champlain Parkway project will displace numerous homeless campers. As such, the good of the community might be greater if the parkway is built, even after the bad of uprooting homeless camps is subtracted, but where will those campers go? How will the City compensate for the bad of evicting settled, quiet, unobtrusive, campers, people who are hiding to escape notice? Has the City designated locations, where campers can set up tents and expect the protections of police patrols? </div>
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As the City pursues its development projects, it forces homeless folks more and more onto the street, into doorways, into church yards. For the first time in Burlington Vermont, tents have cropped up on church properties and bundles of blankets taken residence on church lawns. The time has come for the City to develop plan to help the homeless find homes, places to camp with permission, with police protections, with services, like trash pickup. The homeless are not such because they live outdoors, they are such because they don't have permission to call a place "home", a place they can claim a right to live in. The City can correct this flaw in our thinking by providing safe places to camp. </div>
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The aspiration to house everyone in hard-wall housing is laudable. If we had the will, a sufficient will to build that housing, a sufficient will to make that housing affordable to people living on Social Security or a minimum wage job, then we could put everyone in standard hardwall housing, and we could impart to everyone the dignity and safety of their own locked door. </div>
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But we don't have that will. Even as we in the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance build up our coordination, new housing comes on line, and some of our long time homeless get housing, more folks turn up as homeless, more folks are recruited into homelessness. Do we see a national plan to build millions of units of housing, as we did after WWII? Do we see HUD pumping millions of dollars into Vermont to subsidize infrastructure and new housing? Until these things happen, we need to recognize softwall housing as a part of our housing continuum, as part of the solution to homelessness, and something we need to plan for. Camps and shelters are solutions we resort to because we don't have the affordable housing that would make them unnecessary. We could do the homeless the dignity of recognizing these solutions as part of our plan for housing. </div>
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Stephen Alrich Marshallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15600459126366081751noreply@blogger.com0