ancianita
ancianita's JournalPresident Obama's Speech at COP26
President Biden and President Obama are who we are.
Because of them, the world will follow our lead, for all our faults.
For all America's faults, we are the world's climate leaders.
'America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy' Is a Dangerous--And Wrong--Argument
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-constitution-democracy/616949/The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.
Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The crucial difference was that a republic relied on representation, while in a “pure” democracy, the people represented themselves.
At the time of the founding, a narrow vision of the people prevailed. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. What this generation considered either a democracy or a republic is troublesome to us insofar as it largely granted only white men the full rights of citizens, albeit with some exceptions. America could not be considered a truly popular government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which commanded equal citizenship for Black Americans. Yet this triumph was rooted in the founding generation’s insistence on what we would come to call democracy.
The "narrow vision" is a racist vision. Let it never again prevail.
My son just won a town council seat in Silver City, New Mexico!
Final count for District 2: 266 - 95. It's a landslide! A mandate! He will now head the committee on police reform.
EDIT: I just came across the Grant County news on his entering the race.
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"
What will you answer? "We all dwell together
To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?
~ T.S. Eliot, "The Rook" 1934
We are a community of communities in a time of uncertainty, change, and challenge. For now, the rains are plentiful, the price of copper is good, and home prices are up. Beset with seemingly endless construction, Ridge and P.A. roads are a pleasure to drive and cycle on, and the expanded sidewalk and trail system are starting to connect our neighborhoods, and soon, towns. The continuing work of Silver City, and Grant County, shines as an example to, not only, our state, but also our neighboring states and our country. Just look at all the license plates.
https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/election-coverage/elections-2021
For The Children.
Who hasn't loved David Attenborough's Earth documentaries, right?
Even the act of moving humanity to half of Earth's land base can allow the wild to heal itself in the other half.
To change everything for the children is why we are here.
Check Out This Handy Book of Data, Climate Action Networks and Activist Names Worldwide
Especially the "Action + Connection" chapter that offers checklist frameworks for negotiating, frameworks for decisionmaking on projects.
While leaders work from their vantage point, humans can work from their vantage point and meet at new points where human and moneyed interests converge for win-win coordination.
Just the idea of how to get through this downward slide humans are on in one generation -- that alone is a great goal.
COP26 Watch Day3
Leaders at COP26 Can Take Home Change Models for Their Five Foundational Sectors
The five foundational sectors of civilization -- information, energy, transport, food and material -- are being disrupted at an unprecedented speed and scale. This will be the most disruptive decade in history, and Covid 19 has simply pulled the curtain back on our current fragilities in production and governance.
RethinkX is a non-profit think tank different from those funded by foundations; its founders have been ahead of all current analysts over the last decades.
They are having some impact, and so this post is just to expose that they offer a range of sector model disruptions to hope.
Their model offers ways to disrupt while still building equitable, resilient, healthy and stable societies; it offers charts to explain non-linear change making for leaders to implement as win-win, "clean disruption" changes in their sectors.
They produce books (two examples below) videos (only two of parts 1-7 are posted below) about those books, that broadly summarize their non-linear change models for each sector. COP26 leaders could do worse than try implementing these ideas back home.
If the videos are too much to take in, the book's a better medium for thinking (either its 78-page version or full version).
At least the video series can be slotted away as broad framework reference, if nothing else.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51kJQbpN7IL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Intro: Tony Seba on "The Great Disruption: Rethinking Energy, Transportation, Food and Agriculture"
Rethinking Humanity episode 7 out of episodes 1-7
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
Number of posts: 36,048
