Listening with Empathy I have been trying hard to listen, with compassion and understanding, to my friends who are resistant to getting vaccinated.  My friends are not right-wing conspiracy theorists or Trumpists—they are coming from the wellness community. They are herbalists, anti-capitalists, homesteaders, spiritual people suspicious of mainstream ideology in general and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex in particular, with whom I share many common values and ideals.  To me, the risk of getting Covid-19, especially the new Delta variant, with its attendant risks of lon ..read more

White People Manners 101 I’ve recently posted support for #BlackLivesMatter on social media, and have gotten back a variety of responses, most of them positive, some of them disturbing, many of them expressing the anguish, confusion and doubt many people with white-skin privilege are feeling in this moment.  I hear both “I’m ashamed to be white,”  “What can I do?” and “How do I talk to my black friends?”  And on the other side, I hear, “All lives matter” and “Why must we be divisive?” I’d like to encourage everyone who is not, in this moment, a member of a targeted community, to ..read more

Winter Solstice: The Light Begins to Return  It’s also the holiday season—a time to enjoy friends, family, and feasting. And yet this year it’s also the time of intense political stress. The Democrats are finally holding the occupant of the White House accountable, more and more corruption is coming to light, and the Republicans are almost certain to acquit him. Meanwhile, the Arctic is melting down, and our window for addressing the devastation of climate change is rapidly closing. How do we get through these times and stay sane, and energized enough to actually do something about the s ..read more

Originally published in December 1999 in Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising It’s been two weeks now since the morning when I awoke before dawn to join the blockade that shut down the opening meeting of the WTO. Since getting out of jail, I’ve been reading the media coverage and trying to make sense out of the divergence between what I know happened and what has been reported. For once in a political protest, when we chanted “The whole world is watching!” we were telling the truth. I’ve never seen so much media attention on a political action. However, most of what has been ..read more

All summer, I’ve been traveling and teaching regenerative approaches to our current environmental and social breakdowns, showing people how we can redesign our way of living to meet our needs while healing the environment around us. It’s been an inspiring but very packed trip, with few days when I haven’t been working or traveling, and no time to write long, reflective pieces. And meanwhile—the Amazon in burning. Fires rage across Africa and the tundra, and instead of responsible global leadership, we have a collection of white supremacist, misogynist, blustering sociopaths making the situ ..read more

The Leaves Are Changing, and Congress Can Too! It’s October—the month before what may be the most crucial elections of our lifetime. The November midterms will determine whether the Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate, and whether there is any hope of defeating the racist, misogynist agenda and massive corruption that Trump represents.  Climate change is ravaging the planet, inequality is growing and being enforced with rampant brutality, and so many of us are reeling from the traumas re-stimulated by the Kavanaugh hearings! We need everyone to stand up and use our power t ..read more