Awhile ago, I listened to a talk between Naomi Klein and Yanis Varoufakis that made a big impression on me. Something I kept coming back to was when Naomi Klein said something to the effect that we need a synthesis of our movements and not more division.
I kept thinking about how divided our society has become over things like COVID, our political perspectives, and numerous other issues. I thought can’t we just live with our differences and come up with some values that we can all agree on, and then work towards them? What if we got a bunch of very different people in a room and…hey, wait a sec! Hasn’t this been done already?
Who else remembers the Leap Manifesto? It was an attempt to do just that. Maybe the timing wasn’t quite right, but it seems very relevant now.
The writing of The Leap Manifesto was initiated in the spring of 2015 at a two-day meeting in Toronto attended by representatives from Canada’s Indigenous rights, social and food justice, environmental, faith-based and labour movements.
Here’s the extensive list of signatories.
Politically, here in the west, things are deteriorating rapidly. At a moment like this, as Naomi Klein says, we need to make sure we have good ideas lying around. This manifesto is full of them.
Around the same time, another fantastic idea called Delivering Community Power made its debut. It’s an amazing way of turning sleepy old Canada Post into a powerful instigator of the kind of economy we want. If our post offices became hubs where small communities could do their banking, have electric vehicle charging stations, and provide high speed internet, wouldn’t that be amazing? And what if the buildings were powered by renewable energy, had a fleet of electric vehicles? And what if, from this hub there was a way of delivering fresh food and checking on the sick and elderly in communities? Imagine how much benefit and how many stable jobs this would bring. Not the Canada Post I know…
Check out the video:
These two initiatives came out of Canada but could easily be adopted by other countries. There are lots more amazing ideas about how to do economics differently.
Here are a few that are lying around that need to be dusted off and given a higher profile:
The Circular Economy, is defined as “an economic system designed to reduce waste and the consumption of resources by promoting the reuse and recycling of products and materials. It is a system where products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, recycling, and composting, rather than being discarded and sent to landfills or incinerators.
In a circular economy, the focus is on designing products and systems that are restorative and regenerative by design, enabling resources to be used in a continuous cycle, with waste minimized or eliminated. This approach aims to decouple economic growth from the consumption of natural resources and the generation of waste, ultimately promoting a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way of living.”
Kate Raworth, who came up with Doughnut Economics describes it as a system that ensures “that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend – such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.”
And, since I started this post by talking about how divided our society has become, we need to turn the tables and use the divide and conquer technique on those who are causing us and our planet harm. Like the rest of society, the people who hold power have differences too, and the more they squabble among themselves the less effective they become.
A recent example of this was the effect created by Tucker Carlson’s interview of Russia’s President Putin. Mr. Carlson considers China the enemy of the USA and believes his country should ally itself with Russia against China. I checked out some of the videos of him walking around Russian grocery stores, and they are so much more appealing than anything I’ve seen in Canada. Oddly enough, I couldn’t find the video of Mr. Carlson showing us around a grocery store in Moscow, but honestly, it was like something out of a fairy tale.
And that’s not all. Here’s what the subway system in Moscow looks like.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but was surprised at the elegance and cleanliness of the system that gets people in Moscow to and from work every day.
Not only do these videos upset the people who want to paint Russia in a certain way, but they crack the veneer created by the constant propaganda we’re bombarded with.
I’m not a fan of Tucker Carlson, but I appreciate the monkey wrench his trip threw into our perceptions of Russia, and the discomfort caused to the purveyors of this image.
When people do things like this, it’s important to circulate their videos widely so people understand how much we’re being lied to.
We need to be on our toes as the western world descends into political and economic chaos. And, as opportunities present themselves, we need to do what we can to bring about the kind of economy and society we want.
Many good ideas
Naomi & Yanis shine a bright light on the outright lies & obfuscation of the truth peddled by legacy media in lockstep wth state propaganda - we need to support & embolden their voices, whilst adding ours, to lead us out of the impending dystopoian world we are facing.