Inspiration Boost

Check out Craigslist Joe on Netflix Streaming, iTunes or DVD (to name several) to recharge your sense of community, faith in humanity and sense of hope. It is also a real adventure.

Joe writes in his first blog post on Craigslistjoe.com:

This is my very first blog post. My brother Michael suggested I start one, which was suggested by two of his friends Dan and Alex. 

My name is Joseph Garner. I’m the director and “Joe” of “Craigslist Joe“. 

The response to our documentary has been overwhelming. The film premiered on August 2, 2012, and has screened in over 20 cities in the U.S., Canada, and soon in many more countries around the world. The film is also on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Hulu, Netflix, and more. 

We live in a very interesting time right now where we have access to film, music, art, science, history, and pretty much anything else we could want to look up, with the simple click of a button. We have more ways to communicate and connect with each other than ever before. 

I have been blown away by the incredible support our film has received via email, facebook messages, tweets, instagram photos, and more. Your stories are so inspiring. I will do my very best to respond to all of your messages, so keep ‘em coming. 

Here’s a few links you may find useful…
www.craigslistjoe.com
www.facebook.com/craigslistjoe
twitter: @craigslistjoe
instagram: @craigslistjoe 

much love.
joe.

Small Spaces etc. - Micro Minimal

This week the most minimal of small spaces to date. The first is called One-Sqm-House. This one square meter (10 square feet) dwelling is an architect's prototype. This clip is via Alex at Tiny House Talk, whose tag line is "small spaces more freedom."

When I first saw this I thought of past competitions for architects and designers to produce temporary, emergency and homeless shelter.

The examples below are from one of these competitions 5 years ago. I've since lost the proper links to the source. Whoops.

There is a kind of hierarchy within the homeless population.  There are those who have found temporary shelter within homes of family or friends, those who have an RV or car, those who have vouchers for temporary shelter and those simply fending for themselves on the street.  Despite the most common picture of a homeless person being like the Banksy illustration at the beginning of this post or the guy above, it is women with children who are in fact the most vulnerable of homeless population. 

The Babes of Wrath are two women, Diane Nilan and Pat LaMarche, who travel around the country and work with homeless children and families. You can follow their EPIC Journey (Everyday People In Crisis) here. They are interviewed here on the Young Turks.

Recently the homeless were counted in San Diego County, a local girl mounted a blanket distribution project for the homeless in memory of her uncle and housing strategies for lowest income has presumably been the subject of several years of General Planning Update citizen participation. 

Aternet is currently running a series on the poor. Part 1's recent article, 2 Years in Jail for Sitting on a Milk Crate? The Shocking Ways America Punishes Poor People Living on the Street (Hard Times, USA) haunted me. I know from experience how few places there are to sit while walking in Encinitas. We aren't alone. Laws all over the country are designed solely to target the homeless. There are better solutions. 

Part 2 is titled Hard Times, USA: Would You Consider Thinking Differently About Poverty and Poor and Homeless People? A huge number of Americans feel vulnerable every day of every week, their future unknown. What are you going to do about it? Both of these are really excellent articles and are recommended. The rest of this powerful series Hard Times USA is at Alternet this month.

There is one simple response (as the video illustrated) for what is the most important thing one could spend money on for the homeless? Houses. Simple but not easy to incorporate in our community dialog.

Small Spaces etc. - One by One by One

In a beach community accessory units are no surprise.  And, it is important to survival for many that these homes remain a part of the shadow economy because local, state and national laws emphatically impose constraints that do more harm than good for actual people, especially the most vulnerable of the working class and middle class.  This is a look at the great need that these small spaces satisfy and leave the legal constraints for another day. From Grist a quick peek at a couple of options, but the original post shows a whole range for living large in small houses.

Jon and Ryah Dietzen moved from their 1,500-square-foot home to a 400-square-foot cottage with two toddlers. They made the move for its financial freedom, but the benefits didn’t stop there. “We realized after a few months how much time, freedom, and peace we were gaining by not collecting and spending our time taking care of more ‘stuff,’” Jon Dietzen told me. By choosing a smaller house, they found a better balance between work and home life.

Here is the “before” shot.

A lot in a small space: kitchen island, living room, and a bedroom behind a curtain.

Small homes combat neighborhood decline brought on by shrinking household sizes. Adding people can revitalize a neighborhood, allowing schools to stay open, giving neighborhood businesses more customers, making transit service cost-effective, and saving on infrastructure costs. Infilling neighborhoods with backyard cottages helps add more people to a neighborhood, without altering its character. 

As homeowners build small dwellings, they provide lower-cost housing within the existing fabric of their neighborhood, with no government support necessary. Vancouver’s planning director, Brent Toderian, sees this as the essential value of the trend towards small homes: “[It’s] about ordinary people. Thousands of individual homeowners can do it, one by one by one. It’s publicly propelled, not corporate-propelled, densification. It’s gradual. It’s discreet. It’s green.” [ed.emphasis]

Now that many cities have figured out backyard cottage rules, they face a new challenge: dealing with homes even tinier than the typical accessory dwelling. Some cities’ regulations set minimum size requirements for dwellings. Others say a recreational vehicle can’t count as an accessory dwelling unit, which means “you can camp in your little house, but not live in it,” writes Dee Williams. Tiny houser Lina Menard suggests that “people should have the right to a tiny house as long as it accommodates their needs and desires.” But for people to exercise that right, cities will have to rethink the zoning rules that stand in the way of tiny homes.

Dee Williams is well known to many since the uploading of the following video clip in 2008 and shown in the corporate media many times since.

Dee Williams decided to rethink her American Dream after building a school in Guatemala and having a close friend get cancer made her reevaluate her priorities. “He was getting sicker and sicker, and I didn’t have the time or the money to really throw myself into helping him. I was spending a lot of time and money on my house. So the house was the easiest thing to try to get rid of,” Williams told Yes! magazine. So she sold her 1,500-square-foot Portland home and built an 84-square-foot tiny home for $10,000. Now she lives without a mortgage, giving her the time and money to invest in her friends and community.

Via Grist

Whoops! this became a 2 for 1 post day by accident. Accidentally got some posting dates wrong. Enjoy.

I Have A Dream - I Have A Drone

captured on the internet . . .

If M.L. King Jr.'s assassination knocked the wind out of the human movements of his lifetime, let's think about going directly "back" to him for the most effective way forward. Below comes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last book of essays, “The Trumpet of Conscience,” 1968: This from “Nonviolence and Social Change”:

"…Of course, by now it is obvious that new laws are not enough. The emergency we now face is economic, and it is a desperate and worsening situation. For the 35 million poor people in America—not even to mention, just yet, the poor in other nations—there is a kind of strangulation in the air. In our society it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man of a job or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he has no right to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society. Now, millions of people are being strangled that way. The problem is international in scope. And it is getting worse, as the gap between the poor and the ‘affluent society’ increases.

The question that now divides the people who want radically to change that situation is: can a program of nonviolence—even if it envisions massive civil disobedience—realistically expect to deal with such an enormous, entrenched evil?

…I intend to show that nonviolence will be effective, but not until it has achieved the massive dimensions, the disciplined planning, and the intense commitment of a sustained, direct-action movement of civil disobedience on the national scale….

…The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.

Beginning in the New Year, we will be recruiting three thousand of the poorest citizens from ten different urban and rural areas to initiate and lead a sustained, massive, direct-action movement in Washington, D.C. Those who choose to join this initial three thousand, this nonviolent army, this ‘freedom church’ of the poor, will work with us for three months to develop nonviolent action skills. Then we will move on Washington, determined to stay there until the legislative and executive branches of the government take serious and adequate action on jobs and income.

A delegation of poor people can walk into a high official’s office with a carefully, collectively prepared list of demands. (If you’re poor, if you’re unemployed anyway, you can choose to stay in Washington as long as the struggle needs you.) And if that official says, ‘But Congress would have to approve this,’ or, ‘But the President would have to be consulted on that,’ you can say, ‘All right, we’ll wait.’ And you can settle down in his office for as long a stay as necessary.

If you are, let’s say, from rural Mississippi, and have never had medical attention, and your children are undernourished and unhealthy, you can take those little children into the Washington hospitals and stay with them there until the medical workers cope with their needs, and in showing it your children, you will have shown this country a sight that will make it stop in its busy tracks and think hard about what it has done.

The many people who will come and join this three thousand, from all groups in the country’s life, will play a supportive role, deciding to be poor for a time along with the dispossessed who are asking for their right to jobs or income—jobs, income, the demolition of slums, and the rebuilding by the people who live there of new communities in their place; in fact, a new economic deal for the poor.

…I have said that the problem, the crisis we face, is international in scope. In fact, it is inseparable from an international emergency that involves the poor, the dispossessed, and the exploited of the whole world.

Can a nonviolent, direct-action movement find application on the international level, to confront economic and political problems? I believe it can. It is clear to me that the next stage of the movement is to become international.

National movements within the developed countries—forces that focus on London, or Paris, or Washington, or Ottawa—must help to make it politically feasible for their governments to undertake the kind of massive aid that the developing countries need if they are to break the chains of poverty. We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism. Americans in particular must help their nation repent of her modern economic imperialism.

But movements in our countries alone will not be enough….So many of Latin America’s problems have roots in the United States of America that we need to form a solid, united movement, nonviolently conceived and carried through, so that pressure can be brought to bear on the capital and government power structures concerned, from both sides of the problem at once. I think that may be the only hope for a nonviolent solution in Latin America today; and one of the most powerful expressions of nonviolence may come out of that international coalition of socially aware forces, operating outside governmental frameworks.

…In practice, such a decision would represent such a major reordering of priorities that we should not expect that any movement could bring it about in one year or two. Indeed, although it is obvious that nonviolent movements for social change must internationalize, because of the interlocking nature of the problems they all face, and because otherwise those problems will breed war, we have hardly begun to build the skills and the strategy, or even the commitment, to planetize our movement for social justice.

…In this world, nonviolence is no longer an option for intellectual analysis: it is an imperative for action."

Source: Commenter DrJack37 within Common Dreams post

Editor: 43 years later, the numbers of poor, displaced and exploited have skyrocketed - otherwise little has changed.

Gleaning

In this season of food drives, here is a challenging idea for Encinitas to consider in all the growing seasons to come. Gleaning. The video below speaks to Ventura County and their Food Share Program.

What do we have in San Diego County? We have Senior Gleaners with an emphasis on grocery store shelves in this coastal area. It would be good to hear what exists now and what might really fit well with our community goals and community future. Sounds like this is a wonderful start. And, boy do we have seniors. Encinitas seniors appear to be a vigorous and involved lot.

"The Senior Gleaners of San Diego County are working to enhance the food-giving capacities of local agencies, most of which run out of food on a monthly basis. Senior Gleaners is divided into three main working groups in the county , South County, North County and the Coastal area. Each area has a team of workers who volunteer to pick, sort, gather and deliver up to 100,000 pounds of food to area agencies monthly. Only agencies that qualify under federal poverty rules (and have a 501-c-3 nonprofit status) are eligible to receive the food. Growers contact team leaders when they have crops that are over-ripe or too costly to pick; certain grocery stores offer edible food that cannot be sold and packing sheds have crates of food that is not suitable for the marketplace but safe to eat."

The Gleaners from Hunger In California on Vimeo.

On another local note, how about gleaning urban neighborhoods where homeowners with more fruit trees than they can manage could contact Encinitas gleaners to harvest and distribute this foraged fruit?  What about involving the young? vets? women in particular? What about future plans to plant many fruit and nut trees in Encinitas Urban Forest for this kind of public use? The right entrepreneurial spirit could do a great deal here.

Waste is our easiest target for eradicating ills - be it insufficient food, energy, money, goods or services - or the existence of litter and pollution.

Homeless Among Us

Update: Earlier I reported the CRC as the Del Mar event sponsor. From the Coast News,

"The Alliance for Regional Services (ARS), a collaboration of North County agencies and philanthropic organizations that combine resources to provide better services for the homeless at a cheaper cost, hosted the event for the second year in a row."

Councilwoman Barth and soon to be Councilwoman Shaffer are both involved in Community Resource Center (CRC) activities. Barth has put out a call to find volunteers for the Holiday basket effort and Shaffer just finished donating her campaign volunteers donations to CRC.  Today I read about the recent event at the Del Mar Fairground to provide services to the homeless.

The CRC is a part of countywide efforts to go beyond charity. From an article last May in NCT:  

"The group's main focus has been its winter homeless shelter program, but two weeks ago, alliance members held a workshop to expand its vision and mission.”

"How do we identify emerging needs and gaps in services, and create solutions for those?" Stump said the group also wants the alliance to be seen as an advocacy group for North County, becoming more strategic than reactive. “

At Our Mayor post, Hand Back the Keys to the Car, I wrote about public sentiment being likened to a thoughtless teenager, a brat when I read the article's comments.  It is time to bring humanity back into our common cultural language.  If we pay attention to the most vulnerable of our communities, we'll be able to identify and strengthen our resilience to the ongoing stresses for all: debt, disease, unemployment, mental health, family discord and political importance.

Bureau of Labor statistics (though somewhat improved) aren't that wonderful in this long-running recession looks particularly bad for marginalized voters of color, women and teenagers. Most everyone, whether well off or struggling, knows someone whether a relative, co-worker or friend who is in some dire straights.

As a community it would behoove us to bring this reality into our discussions of local economic transitions.  More minimum wage employment in national chain businesses are the death of communities.  How do we wean ourselves off this desperate dependency? It's not a simple answer because the old models are broken.

The following video via Treehugger is a brain tease and a design highlight in looking at commerce and storefront design much differently.

When Curro Claret was commissioned by Camper to redo one of their Barcelona shoe stores, he decided to let a group of people in risk of social exclusion have a go at it. The result of this open design project is a very positive one. Together with Arrels Fundació, Curro Claret and the group of ex-homeless people designed and built a new shop interior almost exclusively from recycled materials.

.

You Are Not A Loan.

 Rolling Jubilee Website:

A bailout of the people by the people

Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.

Learn more or contribute.

77.5% Of US Households Are In Debt

62% Of All Bankruptcies Are Caused By A Medical Illness

Student Tuition Debt Is Over $1,000,000,000,000

1 In Every 7 US Citizens Are Pursued By Debt Collectors

The Ratio of Household Debt to Income Is 154%

40% of Indebted Households Used Credit Cards To Pay For Basic Living Expenses

A couple of the many videos available on the Rolling Jubilee website.

Taking Treats from Toddlers = False Toughness

Presidential debate Wed. from Romney,

"I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I'm not going to -- I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That's number one."

PBS released a statement in response to Romney and the GOP's ridiculous desire.

"We are very disappointed that PBS became a political target in the Presidential debate last night. Governor Romney does not understand the value the American people place on public broadcasting and the outstanding return on investment the system delivers to our nation. We think it is important to set the record straight and let the facts speak for themselves.

The federal investment in public broadcasting equals about one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Elimination of funding would have virtually no impact on the nation’s debt. Yet the loss to the American public would be devastating.

A national survey by the bipartisan research firms of Hart Research and American Viewpoint in 2011 found that over two-thirds of American voters (69%) oppose proposals to eliminate government funding of public broadcasting, with Americans across the political spectrum against such a cut.

As a stated supporter of education, Governor Romney should be a champion of public broadcasting, yet he is willing to wipe out services that reach the vast majority of Americans, including underserved audiences, such as children who cannot attend preschool and citizens living in rural areas..." [read the rest here]

Getting rid of PBS may not seem like a big deal to many in the grand scheme of things, but the GOP's desire to cut its funding points to a tactic they frequently use: cut financially trivial programs to give the false impression that they are making the tough choices to reduce the debt and boost the economy at the same time they are protecting the largest drags on the economy -- tax breaks for the rich, wars, big oil etc.

Via Dependale Renegade
Cupcakes included because they are irresistible.

Expanding Beyond Capacity to Sustain

 ". . . what happens when you force human communities, families, ecosystems to kneel before the dictates of the market."

This is one of the quotes from a profoundly disturbing interview of Chris Hedges by Laura Flanders of Grit TV, titled "The Absurdity of American Empire."

Encinitas is clearly not a part of a sacrifice zone discussed in the book being reviewed, yet we have the same fissures out of sight but threatening our lives.  We do share the nationwide problem of "the invisible - banished from our consciousness." Said another way from another source,

"The fabric of our nation is being torn apart. MANY familiies are struggling so badly, either due to low-income wages (against rising cost of living prices), or a substance dependency issue brought on by the depressing nature of our times, or a health issue. Then there are the families broken up due to the race-based War on Drugs, and the families broken up due to the hunts for "illegal" aliens, and the families headed by overworked single Moms..."

Keeping the larger picture in view, despite the utter lack of conversation in the Encinitas political community of these monstrous national and international problems via empire is one great freedom seized by we bloggers, unfettered by power systems. (And, respectfully, there is a tradition of local elections being non-partisan.) We are a progressive blog with liberal opinions.  That's the point of creating a space where minority voices can be heard and further explored. These voices have been disallowed, marginalized or ignored in our council chambers, the press and existing blogs. Presumably those who are unable to hear or process anything outside his or her world view aren't hanging out here anyway.

Denial, religiosity, fantasy thinking and other ways to anesthetize are all around us. We are soaking in it.

Tuesday is Dues-day: Gen. Plan Woes A Lifetime Ago

Tuesday is Dues-day. The dues are schooling yourself on how our local governance is organized, who are the players, what are the screw-ups, where is the money and what things get reported? 

You’re a citizen, an advocate for democracy with this first step, paying attention. 

General Plan Update - Just a Reminder

"General plans are often called a city’s constitution…a statement of who we are and what we value as a community.

The State of California requires all cities to adopt a general plan that includes required elements – Land Use, Housing, Circulation, Resource Management, Noise and Public Safety. The city also included an optional element – Recreation and Public Health is also proposed. The plan also states community goals for how the city should grow (or not grow) in the future.

There’s not been a comprehensive review and update of the General Plan since it was written over 25 years ago. A variety of state laws, court rulings and new issues such as sustainability and climate change have made it difficult to simply “tweak” sections and maintain internally consistent policies throughout the plan."

Twenty-four years ago when the first General Plan for Encinitas was written, a local news source, The Beach News, precursor to The Coast News published an article with the local citizen's key concern in the title, "Will high-priced housing run residents out of town?" Twenty-five people showed up for the meeting organized to by city officials to question the future of the new city of Encinitas.

When the question and answer session opened, a resident stood up and said he makes $25,000 a year at Scripps and felt he doesn't make enough money to continue living here in the new city of Encinitas. "Are we outpricing ourselves out of living here?" he asked on the discussion of new developments planned for the city. 

"I think this is a potential problem, he added.  "The character of he community comes from those non-classical types of people who live here.  I want to keep these people here."

Another resident agreed, explaining that she had spent the last several weeks apartment hunting for a friend.  "A two-bedroom apartment costs from at least $600 to $1,000," she said. "People who are just starting out are being forced to move to San Marcos because they can't find reasonable housing here."

Twenty-four years later it seems that particular strategy, if it was one, worked.  Wish we had the figures on the numbers of people who were forced to move due to an inflated housing bubble, rising costs, upzoning or low paying jobs, especially for young people starting out.  

A couple of years ago the city website had a demographics section for visitors to see Encinitas at a Glance. (Click to make larger) Activists have asked (with little success all year) where the city statistics come from and have gotten a mix of answers when the question is addressed - creating an almost continuous cycle of number crunching challenges.  Density, density, density - building height and El Camino Real being unacceptable for more density seem to be the constant themes despite affordable housing being the ostensible theme.  

The original community group would have understood the line I read this week. 

"The economy’s only valid purpose is to serve life," David Korten Yes! Magazine.

Conversely, one from the ERAC gang was quoted as saying, "The General Plan purpose is to drive profits."

What is the overall mission?  These two statements couldn't be more opposite. What is community character without talk of the diversity of populations, incomes and outlooks? Where do the teachers, bank clerks, dental hygienists, nurses, tree trimmers, Scripps worker and line cooks live?

You can see in the chart above that the glut of jobs available are low wage jobs.  How many of in this labor force can even live in this city? Everywhere I go I ask the food server, grocery clerk and store clerk, "Do you live in Encinitas?"  Very few answer yes.  

The city worker jobs aren't even listed.  How many of those are in the range of former fire chief Muir, Patrick Murphy or other Department Heads?  Truth is, most Encinitas city staff can't afford to live in Encinitas.  And given how out of date, one can only surmise from published facts nationwide, the numbers of low income, unemployed, underemployed and falling incomes for the middle class mean more Encinitas jobs and homes and travel requirements are under deep stress. The anticipated stress in the next twenty-four years with climate change, overwhelmed resources and economic decline haven't even been touched!

Yet, the city council and the workshops focused on density and building height.  Why can't we challenge the city council majority, city staff, ERAC, GPAC, Encinitas Right to Vote group and all City Council Candidates regarding our mismatched labor market and housing market.  We can ask, as some have been doing continuously, for the most current and accurate population statistics, housing statistics and labor statistics. 

A city of millionaires is not what most Encinitas voters want. You don't have to be a liberal to know that outcome is a dead community. 

Dedicated to Labor Day weekend. It used to celebrate so much more than meat on a grill and sales. Something vital is missing.

The Story of Change

From Annie Leonard - Story of Stuff Website:

I used to think the truth would set us free. Like many who care about the environment, I spent years thinking that information would lead to change. So I wrote reports, gave speeches, even testified before Congress.

Some things changed. Sadly, the big picture didn’t.

For a long time I couldn’t understand why. Now I’ve realized that it isn’t because we don’t have enough data, white papers or experts to tell us we’re in trouble. The problem is we’ve forgotten what it takes to make change.

My new movie, The Story of Change, argues that’s partly because we’ve gotten stuck in consumer mode. 

She continues:

I’ve come to see that we have two parts to ourselves; it’s almost like two muscles – a consumer muscle and a citizen muscle. Our consumer muscle, which is fed and exercised constantly, has grown strong. So strong that “consumer” has become our primary identity, our reason for being. We’re told so often that we’re a nation of consumers that we don’t blink when the media use “consumer” and “person” interchangeably.

Meanwhile, our citizen muscle has gotten flabby. There’s no marketing campaign reminding us to engage as citizens. On the contrary, we’re bombarded with lists of simple things we can buy or do to save the planet, without going out of our way or breaking a sweat. 

No wonder that faced with daunting problems and discouraged by the intransigence of the status quo, we instinctively flex our power in the only way we know how – as consumers. Plastic garbage choking the oceans? Carry your own shopping bag. Formaldehyde in baby shampoo? Buy the brand with the green seal. Global warming threatening life as we know it? Change your lightbulb. (As Michael Maniates, a professor of political and environmental science at Allegheny College, says: “Never has so little been asked of so many.”)

Now, all of those are good things to do. When we shop, it’s good to choose products without toxic chemicals and unnecessary packaging, made by locally-based companies that treat their workers well. But our real power is not in choosing from items on a limited menu; it is in determining what gets on that menu. The way to ensure that toxic, climate-disrupting choices are replaced with safe and healthy alternatives – for everyone, not just those who can afford them – is by engaging as citizens: working together for bigger, bolder change than we could ever accomplish as individual consumers.

Look back at successful movements – civil rights, anti-apartheid, the early environmental victories – and you’ll see that three things are needed to make change at the scale we need today. 

First, we need a Big Idea of how things could be better – a morally compelling, ecologically sustainable and socially just idea that will not just make things a little better for a few, but a lot better for everyone. Millions around the world already have that idea: an economy based on the needs of people and the planet, not corporate profit.

Second, we need a commitment to work together. In history’s most transformative social movements, people didn’t say “I will perfect my individual daily choices,” but “We will work together until the problem is solved.” Today, it’s easier than ever to work together, online and off. 

Finally, we need all of us who share that Big Idea to get active. We need to move from a place of shared concern, frustration and fear to a place of engaged citizen action. That’s how we build the power to make real change.

We have to aim high, work together and act boldly. It’s not simple, and it won’t be easy. But history is on our side. Let’s get to work to make the kind of change we know is possible.

posted by Annie Leonard
July 17, 2012

Number of the Day

1,975: The number of charges filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that Walmart discriminated in pay and promotion decisions on the basis of gender.

In related news: "Walmart's outsourcing of jobs is driving down wages at American factories, according to a report from the National Employment Law Project." Walmart's garbage employment policies underscore the speciousness of waxing rhapsodic about "job creators" without any kind of qualifications about what kind of jobs are being created.

Walmart's increasingly expansive presence across the nation creates retail jobs—but does so at the expense of US factory jobs. (Not to mention the jobs lost at the smaller and/or independent retailers Walmart drives out of business.) Meanwhile, the jobs Walmart creates lack protections, benefits, and equal pay.

[Encinitas] needs fewer jobs like the ones Walmart is creating, and more like the ones Walmart endeavors to destroy to maximize profits. Source

Invisible Ones, The Other Mothers

Some thoughts today for hidden moms in our neighborhoods and communities.  These various lines of work below are filled with the absolutely most vulnerable among us.  They haven't spoken up in the blogs here, or many other public places even though we know they are everywhere working really hard for very little pay.  There are so many more not even noted, like restaurant, child care and hospital workers.  Traditionally the last two centuries have shown, if a job category or field is considered women's work the pay, benefits and working conditions will be inferior.  Let's not forget these hidden workers, any of these people who often directly affect our personal and professional lives in the most basic ways.

Domestic Servants

Encinitas has a very wealthy proportion of its population who have domestic servants.

Mothers in Deportation Facilities and Prisons

Private prisons remain secret places where children are incarcerated, families are separated and they are largely phantom places for the public at large. This is a small town in Florida. California prisons and relocation centers are criminal crowded. A portion of our population lives in terror of these places.

Hotel Maids

Encinitas relies on tourism and the hospitality industry.  This is back breaking seasonal work for pennies on the dollar. "I don't mind working hard, I do mind being abused."

Warehouse / Temporary Workers

  "The first step is awareness," an e-commerce specialist will tell me later. There have been trickles of information leaking out of the Internet Order Fulfillment Industrial Complex: an investigation by the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call in which Amazon workers complained of fainting in stifling heat, being disciplined for getting heat exhaustion, and otherwise being "treated like a piece of crap"; a workampers' blog picked up by Gizmodo; a Huffington Post exposé about the lasting physical damage and wild economic instability temporary warehouse staffers suffer.

And workers have filed lawsuits against online retailers, their logistics companies, and their temp agencies over off-the-clock work and other compensation issues, as well as at least one that details working conditions that are all too similar. (That case has been dismissed but is on appeal.) Still, most people really don't know how most internet goods get to them. The e-commerce specialist didn't even know, and she was in charge of choosing the 3PL for her midsize online-retail company. "These decisions are made at a business level and are based on cost," she says. "I never, ever thought about what they're like and how they treat people. Fulfillment centers want to keep clients blissfully ignorant of their conditions."

 "There's no time off on Election Day. "What if I want to vote?" I ask a supervisor. "I think you should!" he says. "But if I leave I'll get fired," I say. To which he makes a sad face before saying, "Yeah." If they are aware how inhumane the reality is. But awareness has a long way to go, and logistics doesn't just mean online retail; food packagers and processors, medical suppliers, and factories use mega-3PLs as well. And a whole lot of other industries—hotels, call centers—take advantage of the price controls and plausible deniability that temporary staffing offers.

"Maybe awareness will lead to better working conditions," says Vinod Singhal, a professor of operations management at Georgia Tech. "But…" Given the state of the economy, he isn't optimistic. This is the kind of resignation many of my coworkers have been forced to accept. At the end of break, the workamper and I are starting to fast-walk back to our stations. A guy who's been listening to our conversation butts in. "They can take you for everything you've got," he says. "They know it's your last resort."

"Just look around in here if you wanna see how bad it is out there," one of the associates at the temp office said to me, unprompted, when I got hired. It's the first time anyone has ever tried to comfort me because I got a job, because he knew, and everyone in this industry that's growing wildfire fast knows, and accepts, that its model by design is mean. He offered me the same kind of solidarity the workers inside the warehouse try to provide each other at every break: Why are you here? What happened that you have to let people treat you like this? "We're all in the same boat," he said, after shaking my hand to welcome me aboard. "It's a really big boat."

This story ran in the March/April 2012 issue of Mother Jones, under the headline "Shelf Lives."

Farm Workers 

One can't live in California without some sense that farm workers exist.  There are probably so many stories we could learn from in some of our Encinitas neighborhoods and these would open up some important bridge possibilities.

Tell-A-Vision

Here is a vision (overheard) for tonight's pit neighbor against neighbor Public Workshop 1 - Housing Element Edition - for participants to place 10 dots each, representing a total of 1,300 multifamily units, on a map.  This typical election year bread and circuses exercise is for the pretense of community input.  It is a rigged game that finds low income Encinitans who'd love a well designed, affordable housing approach close enough to employers, shopping and transportation to eliminate the cost of an automobile or the high cost of gas (and carbon dioxide emissions) for commuting.  Even the predominantly single family home owners aren't happy with this rigidly defined housing element's future scenario.

So, rebel.  In this vision you place your dots in the Pacific Ocean. This particular slant on the dumb map exercise says several things, including the message that we aren't stupid.  Many citizens have watched bread and circus exercises again and again and know the hours of general plan update workshops, council meeting statements, ERAC and open house sessions are essentially just for show.

Now there is a 21st century vision with a community extension on the water, with specially designed floating housing. Can you picture diving and working to preserve kelp beds and sea life?  Cultivating nearly extinct fish stock, maintaining deep water wind turbines, wave turbines and solar panels all working to produce alternate energy.  Yes, decades to develop but worth the effort of engaged work.  Gone the day of SDG&E central plants.  Some may talk doomsday, some wail about a changing status quo, but there is a place for the visionary notions of simply looking at our problems differently and coloring outside the lines.

Oh, and people who want to remain in their single family homes in a suburban setting a drive away from separate commercial centers or their respective work places can do that too.

This week's Tell-A-vision edition brought to you without advertisements of any kind.

Booga, Booga – The Poor Are Going to Get Ya

This is about housing in Encinitas and some pretty hysterical accusations, reactions and forecasts of doom. Eavesdropping, talking, listening, fishin' and observing over the last several years of the General Plan Update (GPU) has been instructive.

To be fair, well off individuals are pretty low priorities on my anxiety index. All that comes along with institutionalized privilege is at the fingertips of these people to help them cope.  I don’t wish it on people, but I don’t worry either. I have compassion for the struggles that are life itself.  Losing some money becomes a relative measure.

Entitlement, in my observation, means all the businesses and commercial owners who believe profits need to be guaranteed. The “newest arm” of the GPU, ERAC (erase) was concocted by the council majority to give the El Camino corridor business, developer, construction, real estate group along with several residents and others input into the process. A recent meeting speaking about affordable house brought these “dog whistle’ phrases; "that kind of zoning," "those people," not "them" in areas that already have nice houses” and similar.

“The ONE representative of affordable housing at this housing element meeting tried to say that there are benefits to "that kind of zoning" and that diversity adds value, and the senior commission representative pointed out that we do have a lot of seniors and more expected, and they need to live somewhere.”

Bootstraps Boys, the Ownership crowd can stop this kind of input in a flash and they did. All the thinking is short-term, status quo without a whiff the next 20-40 years where reboot gets real. Everything becomes a goal of economic return and rewarding current property owners to enable them to maximize their return when they sell their holdings. Recall at the Sept. 19, 2011 orchestrated General Plan outrage parade when amongst so much hyperbole; Dan Ukkestad claimed the whole purpose of the General Plan was to drive profits. Really?

That’s completely backwards. If you have a city like Encinitas where nobody earned the year round moderate temperatures or the ocean or the sunshine or the beauty of nature the Bootstraps Boys can’t claim any of those things. A community that provides adequate housing and work opportunities and a safe healthy way to live and get around with ease to a wide swath of people with a wide swath of skills and interests is a bonanza for business and a council doesn’t have to bargain away tax money, land or zoning changes to woo them from the outside. And healthy towns encourage local over national businesses. Business will spring up because business goes where there is a healthy workforce AND market because owners want to live here too. Employees are customers and taxpayers, as these three aren’t mutually exclusive labels. With a livable wage, employees are the market and so much more.

But, to go further with what a General Plan entails, Melissa McEwen explains,

“My present concern is with the working poor, and the way they are regarded by the architects of the Ownership Society. Those men—and they are indeed almost all men, most of whose lives have been dictated by inherent privilege and family connections, which we're not meant to note while admiring their shiny bootstraps—believe quite firmly, and without seemingly a trace of irony or compunction, that one gets what one deserves in life.

[. . . ] If you want to live in a capitalist society that gives you the opportunity to get nasty rich, then we can't all be wealthy. And if you want to be the kind of person who doesn't pump your own gas, or make your own sandwiches, or clean your own house, or manicure your own fingernails, or drain your own dog's anal glands, or build your own car elevator, then there are going to have to be people who fill all those jobs.

[ . . . ] People who honorably dedicate their time, energy, and talents to jobs that might not pay well are indeed entitled to something—to not work their whole lives only to find themselves poverty-stricken, or hungry, or homeless after one small (or not small) medical crisis. And if we're not going to ensure that every job comes with a livable wage, access to affordable health care, and retirement benefits, then we've got to provide a robust and well-funded social safety net.

I don't think that's asking for much, in exchange for a lifetime of providing service to their chosen vocation.

Though I grant it's certainly easier to scream BOOTSTRAPS! and carelessly assert that people who don't have everything they need just aren't trying hard enough.

Funny how the Grand Advocates of Hard Work are always the ones making the easy arguments.

The poor are simply people without enough money. A great deal of energy in planning and working around the obstacle of limited funds means more money and time must be spent at tasks, travel and adaptation for survival. Unlike the people of privilege, every single day is fraught with potential disaster. One disease or medical emergency can plunge a person, a family into utter destitution – on top of the emotional devastation that comes with such an ordeal. Even so, the poor are blamed for their own condition, accused falsely and punished for a system they have not created. I know because I’m poor. I also know because I know privilege. This last is so much easier.

Images: Mobile homes were not a real thing in the real world. This was a set for a play in Europe some years ago, but a popular image on the Internet. McMansion from Canadian magazine Ad Busters.