This practical concept has been drafted into a very simple and accessible policy proposal by the British Robin Hood Tax campaign, which is, in their words:

“A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.”

The tax consists of a .05% tax on transactions between financial institutions that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars for social needs.

Check out the very funny campaign video below featuring Bill Nighy as a banker.

For a general introduction to the theory and practice of restorative justice, check out:
Restorative Justice online.

I sat next to an astrophysicist on the flight to South Africa, one who was on a mission to observe the first stars as they formed. How does one look back millions of years to the moments when stars were first coming into being? Well, apparently you just need a very sophisticated radiotelescope in an area with very little interference. My neighbor in the aisle seat, a scientist and professor at Berkeley, was taking advantage of a much larger project called the Square Kilometer Array. By tuning into certain frequencies, this man and his colleagues would be able to gain key insights not just on how stars form, but on the dawn of the universe itself.

In order to understand this project at all, I had to change the way I understand time and space. Here is the thought exercise I was given on that flight: Think of the universe as a balloon. As more air goes into the balloon, it expands. What we experience as time is the expansion of the balloon, moving everything outwards as it goes. Earlier moments in history, like when stars first formed, are really just points that are further out on the balloon. By looking outwards towards those points scientists can capture information that has taken millions of years to travel back to us. This information can then be analyzed, put into equations, and used to fill out our contemporary understanding of the expanding universe, its origins, and perhaps even its future directions.

The balloon metaphor is an imperfect one, but it’s a start. I like it because it challenges me to think about my travels, and my life, in a totally different way. I am not growing older. Time, at least in the traditional sense, is not passing by me. Rather I am moving outwards, with a first-class seat in an expanding universe. Of course, none of us is on this journey alone. All of existence is in it together, at different phases and stages of becoming. Once I landed in Johannesburg I began to enter a new phase in my own unfolding life, one marked by political education and peer learning, by the fruits of other people’s struggles and by my own bonds with a group of trouble makers who call Chicago home.

I was heading to South Africa as part of a restorative justice delegation from the Windy City. Our group brought with it a diverse history of activism, action, and hustling for change. Some of the delegates were working to transform the disciplinary culture of the public school system, others were community leaders deeply rooted in neighborhood life, several had been working for decades to reform the ways our society responds to domestic violence, and many in the group had dedicated their lives to working with young people to shift power in their communities. All of us were practitioners of conflict resolution methods like peace circles, and all of us shared a basic belief in the power of groups to come together to address difficult issues, to deal with the conflicting forces in our lives.

For 2 weeks we meet with like-minded folks in Capetown and Johannesburg, interacting with an incredible array of people, places and projects. We connected with students, principals, teachers turned into police, preachers turned into organizers, community groups, and a whole host of amazing folks. We were there for the 20th anniversary of the release of political prisoners during apartheid (February, 2nd 1990). We were there as South African cities scrambled to ready themselves for the FIFA World Cup. We were there as much of the world heard about the marital and extra-marital exploits of the current ANC leader. We were there to listen to the Soweto Youth Choir, and to hear Hugh Masekela and Sibongele Khumalo perform together live at the Market Theater. But mostly we were just there, riding the balloon together, taking things one van ride and one conversation at a time.

Here is a bit of what we gleaned, first from the new folks met along the way and then from the new ways we began to see each other on the trip. South Africa is incredibly gorgeous, well-resourced, and it is clear why so many wars have been fought over its abundance (oceans, mountains, diamonds, gold, etc.). Apartheid is over legally and politically, but economically there are still fierce and not easily surmountable divisions. The country’s resources are primarily owned by private and corporate interests, who are largely White in a nation where White’s are the clear minority. Maintaining this division of wealth was built into the 1994 agreement between Nelson Mandela and the Apartheid leaders. According to the deal, Black people were to gain political power, but Whites would continue to govern the banks, mines, and other key resources. Meanwhile, real progress has been and is being made. A “revolutionary government” is in power, hundreds of thousands of houses have been built, and the old forms of state-sponsored violence are over. Tomorrow’s battles center around challenges that we share back here in the USA, challenges like creating jobs, moving more people out of slum housing, making neighborhoods more harmonious, and sharing the immense wealth that resides in our borders. In all of these areas, South Africa is still full of tension, full of competing forces that wish to determine the future outcome of the nation. These forces may be less clearly defined than in decades past, but they are certainly still ever-present.

And then there were the lessons learned by our group, interpersonal insights that came from the ways we navigated our own tensions and conflicts. As a collection of folks committed to shared goals back in Chicago, our purpose was not just to see new sights but also to deepen our bonds with one another. We learned about how each other came to the work we do, as well as some of the obstacles and opportunities we have faced along the way. And we learned to face new challenges together. At key moments throughout the trip we committed ourselves to sitting in circle, and to processing the group dynamics that were unfolding. We offered support, confrontation, and feedback, all in a spirit of genuine concern. Having the courage to speak our truths to one another was, for many of us, one of the most valuable dimensions of the journey. When things grew especially trying, this honesty was the force that kept our universe expanding (and thus kept our balloon from popping). Honest loving feedback was the energy that propelled our wild ride and, now that we’re all back stateside, it’s this same energy that will keep us moving forward, outward, and beyond.

I do not know how the first stars formed or what the universe looked like at its birth, but I get the feeling that they were not entirely different from the history of South Africa or the processing of our small delegation. All of these phenomena were full of tension, of conflicting forces, and competing desires. They were moments where things like matter, gravity, light, and pure energy were at odds with one another. I believe that we have much to learn from these moments. And whether the question is the future of a solar system, of a nation, or of a small but dedicated group of trouble makers, the question seems to be how these conflicting forces work things out. The state of such tensions is what separates black holes from suns, oppressive regimes from liberated lands, and disparate groups from serious forces for transformation.

photo: Prisoner and Prison Officer at a restorative justice programme assembly in Pollsmoor Prison, Capetown. source

I recently attended a public lecture given by Andrew Simms, the Policy Director of the new economics foundation, a UK-based think tank that develops new ways of thinking about our planet, our economy and our lives.

You may have heard of Simms and his nef colleagues; they’re the people behind the über-popular and increasingly ubiquitous “Happy Planet Index”, which measures countries based on the size of their ecological footprint, the length of their inhabitants’ lives, as well as their citizens’ declared levels of happiness.

The talk (hear the podcast) presented, in an unconventional way, nef’s guiding principles in rethinking the world as we know it. The ultimate goal was to retool the way Western nations’ economies operate by reducing our carbon emissions, our dependence on oil and the never-ending consumption and waste “treadmill” that propels the first two variables in this equation.

In order to do this, he suggests three ways to move towards a more sustainable planet and more people-oriented economy:

First, we must figure out more robust, yet still realistic, standards that are aimed at gauging people’s well-being and measuring their ecological footprints (the ethos behind nef’s Happy Planet index).

Second, we should place a ban on advertising in our public spaces, a move which, he argues, would further nef’s goals of reducing consumption and waste, as well as promoting happiness – all of which he views as inextricably linked. Simms points to the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paolo as proof positive that this ad-free-zone strategy actually works.

Finally – and this I found particularly interesting – we have the idea of moving towards shorter workweeks. By reducing our labor hours (and again, Simms is specifically talking about Great Britain and the U.S.), we could not only potentially resolve the paradoxical situation we currently face — e.g., the simultaneous societal conundrums of overwork and unemployment – but we could also boost our general level of well-being while simultaneously reducing our consumption and waste, thus promoting more sustainable lifestyles. It’s a call to arms for a simpler life, one in which people would ideally spend more time with their friends and family, learning new skills or doing hobbies.

Decreasing work hours is a concept that has actually been around for a long time. It was one of the driving principles of labor movements during the industrial revolution, during which agitating workers demanded fewer hours to prevent fatigue. It’s also an argument that is being mobilized today to combat the current recessionary unemployment levels– an idea borrowed from the influential 20th century economist John Maynard Keynes, who believed a shorter working week was the “ultimate solution” to unemployment.

A simple way to explain this would be to say that, if 10% of the population is unemployed, we should reduce everyone’s work hours by that same percentage. This would effectively create full employment (particularly crucial in dire economic times), as it would spread out jobs more evenly across the working population while maintaining a desired level of demand; plus, it could bolster the economy, as more people would have disposable income to spend.

This all sounds promising, but is it realistic? Obviously, this quick run-down doesn’t encompass the full extent of Simms’ suggested strategies, but it offers some compelling food for thought. After hearing him out, I did some research of my own and teased out some of what struck me as problematic about what he had to say, much as many of his ideas (particularly the notion of the shorter work week) appealed.

For one thing, Simms’ argument that fewer work hours would reduce carbon emissions and promote more activity spent at home rests on figures from 2008, when “a combination of high oil prices and the financial crisis saw the global economy slow down and the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions fall by half.” It was not just less time spent at work that reduced carbon emission back then; high gas prices played a part as well. I remember this time in Los Angeles when gas prices skyrocketed. There seemed to be no cars on the roads anymore. Traffic was no longer a problem. There were even reports in the news that more people were taking public transportation to work during that time (something out of “The Twilight Zone” for most Angelenos). The question then is, how much of this positive outcome can be attributed to higher prices at the pump as opposed to an increase in carbon-free activity?

Let’s turn now to my motherland, France.

For the past decade, France has been operating on the 35-hour work week (recently altered by President Sarkozy) and the French have also benefited from compensated sick leave, maternity leave and 30 days of paid vacation time. The U.S., on the other hand, is one of the only developed countries that does not guarantee paid vacation time to its employees (for more on this and on the important links between time off, health and happiness see: Yes! magazine article).

Considering all these factors, do the French, with more leisure time on their hands, emit less carbon? Consume less? Are they happier? Not really, according to the Happy Planet Index. On the index of carbon efficiency and well being, les français stand at number 18 out of 30 European nations and comes in at number 71 out of 143 countries worldwide. Granted, the French score much higher on the global HPI than the U.S. does (at 114 out of 143), but in terms of worldwide happiness and carbon footprint levels, they’re trailing behind countries like Guatemala, Colombia and China – countries that aren’t exactly champions of human rights or model countries in the way of social and economic justice.

Related to this, another point I took issue with was the idea that one’s carbon footprint and happiness are directly linked. Perhaps unsurprisingly, carbon emission levels are directly related to income levels (people who earn more also tend to consume more and own more stuff, including bigger houses and multiple cars). By contrast, lower-income populations tend to emit less carbon in their everyday lives, but to connect that particular variable to greater levels of happiness seems to require quite a reach.  I understand his argument rests on the idea that “having more stuff doesn’t make people happier,”  but can the same be said for the opposite? Are the people living in our most deprived areas happier?

Finally, and most importantly, I find this solution problematic insofar as it fails to take into account parameters such as race, class and gender. Reducing work hours would benefit the middle and perhaps the upper classes, but what of lower-income populations and people who cannot afford to work fewer hours? What of those who are disproportionately represented in more precarious and/or insecure jobs that pay less and offer fewer work hours? And would this situation reinforce existing inequalities between those less-well off already and those already privileged who can afford to take time off?

One of the reasons why nef developed the Happy Planet Index was as a criticism against GDP measures, which doesn’t tell the whole story of how people live. Sadly though, the same perhaps may be said of the HPI, which doesn’t show how people who aren’t members of the middle and upper classes live. Perhaps we should find ways to draw up other measures that would allow for a more comprehensive view of how all people live their lives and not just a privileged few.

Photo credits:

Andrew Simms: youtube/actionaidint

French cafe: flickr/mrmystery

sleeping on the keyboard: Flickr / Scott McLeod

As mentioned in my previous post – back to the future of dystopia – with an emphasis on re-zoning sci-fi style.

I can’t cite the direct literary root (or route), though this idea of a walled-off or secret city separate from hostile environs has threaded its way through various science fiction and fantasy novels and films over the years. Tarzan searched for and protected the Lost City of Opar in a few of his adventures. In Robert Heinlein’s novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, an entire planetoid, our moon, is populated with underground colonies containing, among others, criminals and political exiles.

Pissed off with their lot, some of these disparate forces band together for freedom against Earth rule and stage a revolt. Marvel Comics’ Black Panther is the super-hero, warrior king of the scientifically advanced hidden African kingdom of Wakanda. For centuries the one who wears the mantle of the panther has led the people to fight off everything from European colonizers to Dr. Doom.

The notion of the jewel of a city protected from the predatory outsiders is turned on its head in John Carpenter’s 1981 film Escape from New York. In this flick, due to runaway crime in the near future, Manhattan Island has been walled off and turned into a maximum security prison. Black helicopters patrol from the air, making sure no scofflaw climbs out.

Inside a kind of Lord of the Flies meets Clockwork Orange tableau has played out as various sub-cultures exist bumping up against each other amid the trash, crumbling buildings and warring gangs and tribes. It’s World War III between us, the Soviet Union and China, and the President of the United States’ plane is hijacked by revolutionaries, and crash lands in the prison-city. Ex-hero soldier turned bank robber Snake Plissken is sent in and has 24 hours to find the prez. The Duke of New York, leader of the latest gang, the Gypsies, is also on the hunt for the world leader. But the Duke lacks vision, he’s not out to unite the prisoners and fight for their freedom and sovereignty, he merely wants to use the president as a shield for an escape across one of the mined bridges.

The 2004 French film District 13 or B13 for banlieue (borough in English), is set in 2010, and taking its cue from Escape, is about a crime-ridden ghetto walled off from polite French society. Naturally, also like in Escape, a Mad Maxish societal de-evolving has taken place and warring gangs control the streets. One dude, of Algerian descent named Leito, is a protector of his apartment complex against the gangs – which of course causes complications.

Quick and agile like T’challa, the Black Panther, Leito uses parkour, this acrobatic skill of jumping, climbing, leaping and all manner of athleticism to use your physical environment to evade obstacles. It’s not an attack art, like say kung fu, but looks really cool on camera. David Belle who plays Leito, is one of the founders of parkour. The practice also figures as part of the plot of a recent episode of TV’s The Forgotten.

Anyway, Leito has this cop pursuing him all over B13. But they eventually team up to disarm a stolen neutron bomb hidden inside the district. Only it’s a ruse by the bouge-wa-zee and the disarming code the heroes have been given actually sets the bomb off. Neutrons, as any gamer can tell you, destroys people via radiation pulses, but not property. Mass murder equals mass urban development. The B13 sequel, out now in theaters so this is a spoiler alert, seems to be on the armed insurgency tip as the gangs unite against the government.

District 9 on the other hand, is oddly racist while it comments on racism. A massive space ship appears over South African 28 years ago. Like an old car, this ship stalls out in hover position but doesn’t crash. Inside are these aliens the humans nickname prawns because of their lobster crossed with insect-like appearance. Now these aliens have high tech weapons attuned to their DNA, but don’t use them nor seem to know how to pilot their ship. It’s postulated by one of the characters in the film that these aliens are a worker class, with the higher functioning ones bumped off by a virus. Set in our time period, the aliens have long since been relocated and populating in a huge dysfunctional shantytown outside Joburg, Johannesburg. A place so squalid it makes the joints in Escape from New York and B13 look like tony suburbs.

Except for a scientist character and his little boy, none of the prawns, and we don’t learn how do they refer to themselves, have any individuality. Even if they were uneducated workers, they’d form gangs or cliques, some rising to power by sheer dint of Darwinism. They’d have also have used their weapons for big time robberies or you’d see them engaged in some sort of cultural activities, setting up night clubs, sports venues and so forth. If the analogy is supposed to be black folk under apartheid (or Jim Crow for that matter), why not play that out as it did in reality? You would have entrepreneurs, strivers, racketeers and so on. And how funky is it the aliens go nuts for cat food? What’s that about?

Instead of a neutron bomb, District 9 has forced relocation of the aliens happening by the Multi-National United, backed by Blackwater-type goons. One of the uncaring bureaucrats delivering the eviction notices, Wilkus van der Merwe, is exposed to the mysterious ‘Blue Stuff’ (kind of like the ‘Black Stuff’ in X-Files) This liquid slowly and irrevocably turns him into a prawn. The blue stuff is also the go-juice for the space craft the scientist called Christopher Johnson (like in slavery, the prawns are given “slave” names bestowed by the overseers) and his son, aided by the now metamorphosized Wilkus (physically and mentally), eventually escape in the mother ship back to their world.

Maybe in the sequel, we’ll see some mad as hell, parkour executing, big gun bearing, prawns come back to kick some ass, re-zoning alien style.

Democracy is basically a system that lets people make decisions together.

The key to making that happen, besides lots and lots of meetings, is lots and lots of preparation.

The pay-off is: well-informed decision-makers, more effective meetings, and discussions that allow everyone to participate in the conversation.

Making informed decisions together is the ultimate Do-It-Together.

This post offers the first three in a series of faciltators’ tools designed to help you get this done.

SPEED DATE, SMALL GROUP AGREEMENTS, and GALLERY WALL

There are 24 people in our Community Scholars class at UCLA.  Some are students, some are faculty or staff, and some are community leaders and artists.

The purpose of the class is to produce popular education material related to “Green Jobs.”  We spent our four weeks in lectures and discussion with experts about aspects of the problem.  Now we need to break into working teams that will produce popular education products over the next fifteen weeks.  Big commitment.  High stakes for the participants.

To get those decisions started, last week we we had a three hour retreat where we engaged in the following exercises in sequence:

• Speed Date




• Small Group Analysis




• Gallery Wall
  

Instructions for these exercises are provided below, with their purpose and goal,  necessary preparation and materials, and links and images to our experience. 

EXERCISE 1:  SPEED DATE (1.5 hrs)

GOAL

The goal of this exercise is for the whole group to hear what is most important to each individual before making any assumptions or decisions. This is accomplished by each participant having a two minute conversation with every other person.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

Time: 1.5-3  hours depending on the size of the group.

Space: a room with enough space, tables, and chairs to accommodate your participants and the room setup 

Supplies:

• markers
• name tags for participants
• large colored post-it notes
• small group number signs for each small group table
• timer (kitchen timer, stop watch, cell phone)

Handouts: (with links to examples from the Community Scholars class)

• small group instruction handouts
• individual reflection forms
• small group analysis forms

Logistics:

• room set-up plan
• speed date plans for small groups and between small groups

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Prepare Participants

Make sure that all participants start the dating process prepared with what they want to talk about on their “dates.”

Click on the puzzle on the right to see an example of the preparation used in the Community Scholars example.

2. Speed Dates Within Small Groups

In a traditional speed date, there are two lines or two circles of men and women. One line moves to keep the “dates” going, as in this 20 second video:

But in our example, we want EVERYONE to talk to EVERYONE, so we start out in small groups to make sure that occurs.

• As people enter the room, hand each of them a small group instruction handout, and direct them to the table which is marked with the number of their small group.




• When everyone is assembled in their groups, go over the instructions and then start the speed date.




• Every minute, the Facilitator or Timer announces “SWITCH” to let people know to switch roles between who is talking and who is listening.




• Every two minutes the Facilitator or Timer announces “CHANGE PARTNERS” to let people know that it is time to do that.




• Continue in this manner until every person in the small groups has had a date with every other person in their group.

Make sure that whoever is keeping and announcing the time is  prepared to HOLLER.

Remember, there are a lot of people talking in the room at the same time.  They need to hear the instructions to “SWITCH” or “CHANGE PARTNERS.”

So don’t be shy.

3. Speed dates between the small groups.

• Assemble the small groups into paired speed-dating lines, according to your room setup plan.

• When each pair of lines has “dated” everyone in the line, create new pairs of lines according to your speed-dating plan.

Make sure you decide in advance which line is going to move down a seat when the timer announces “CHANGE PARTNERS” and which line will remain seated.

4. Break and Individual Reflection

• When everyone is done “dating”, congratulate the room.
• Give everyone a 10-20 minute break with some refreshments.
• Then hand out the individual reflection form and instruct each individual to record the themes they heard many times.
• Give everyone 5 minutes to fill out the form.
• Then dispatch them to their original small groups for the SMALL GROUP ANALYSIS exercise.

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EXERCISE 2: SMALL GROUP ANALYSIS EXERCISE (15 minutes)

GOAL

The goals of this exercise are:

• to allow every individual to be prepared for a small group discussion;
• for the results of the  small group discussion to be visually available to the larger group; and
• for those results to be produced in a form that can be physically manipulated and reorganized by other people in the next exercise.

Facilitator instructions:

• Make sure every small group has enough copies of the small group analysis forms for every member of the group.
• Make sure that each small group has colored post-it notes that reflect the different components of the discussion. (In our example, the components of our discussion were audience, topic, value, and channel.  You might have different categories.)

Small group instructions:

• Pick a person to record the results of the discussion (the agreements) on one of the small group analysis forms.
• Take turns describing what you heard many times during your speed dates.  You can use your individual reflection form as a reference.
• Identify the areas in which your group members have a high degree of agreement. Don’t spend a lot of time on differences because you are only going to record your agreements about what were the most frequently heard themes.
• Once those themes have been identified, write each one down on a separate post-it note of the appropriate color. Only one idea or theme per post-it note.

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EXERCISE 3: GALLERY WALL EXERCISE (30 minutes)

GOAL

The goal of this exercise is to allow the whole group to organize the discrete pieces of what they heard on their speed dates into larger, integrated ideas and themes.

Facilitator’s instructions:

• While the small groups are meeting,  put category titles up on the large blank wall using post-its of the appropriate color.

• When the small groups are ready, ask all of the groups to put their colored post-its up on the wall under the appropriate heading.  You will not need to track which small group put up which post-its — your goal is to build a collective picture of what everyone heard.

• Debrief the exercise by summarizing what you see and asking the participants to correct you and add more information.

Small group instructions:

• Put the post-its from the previous exercise up on the wall under the appropriate category title.
• View the whole wall as a gallery exhibition for about five minutes as a whole group.
• Then…quietly rearrange  and regroup the the post-its on the wall to turn them into larger ideas or projects

Here are some examples of what our results looked like:

You now should have a pretty strong baseline that was created by everyone in the room for a more refined discussion about your projects or strategies.

QUESTIONS?  COMMENTS?  Post them in the comments below or email info@drpop.org

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I think graphs always speak so much louder than words, so just a quick snapshot in the most comparable format I could find of growing inequalities in the two countries.

On inequality in the UK from The Guardian:

On inequality in the US from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (via The New York Times)

The US retains its role as a world leader… as of 2005, the top 1% in the US held 21.8% of the wealth, and it is perhaps more frightening to look at the other lines. But many of us aren’t so happy about this, as it means we’re generally fighting each other for the little that is left. So what is being done?

In the UK, as in the US, there has been a growing movement for a living wage. It is only a very small step towards the truly just world that I believe possible on alternate Wednesdays, but I will never say that such small steps do not require a most inhuman amount of work by an admirable and massive number of people.

Essentially the minimum wage (only introduced in the UK in 1999, upon which 2.1 million people received a raise averaging 10%!) is the maximum salary that the market says it can afford to pay people. The living wage is the minimum salary that people actually need to live. A bit simplified I know, but they reduce nicely to moral foundations.

The UK living wage campaign (inspired by the US living wage campaign, begun in Baltimore in 1994) is spearheaded by a non-profit called London Citizens, a group closely based on the organizing model of the Industrial Areas Foundation, working to create a broad and powerful coalition of those already involved in churches, mosques, schools, unions and community groups.

The victories have primarily been won in London. One of the main problems has been identified as the widespread, almost ubiquitous, practice of employers outsourcing every job possible (see the brilliant new book co-authored by Jane, Global Cities at Work). This forces contractors to compete amongst themselves and underbid each other in a mad rush to the bottom. So a huge push of the campaign has been to negotiate with large employers (hospitals, office buildings, the Olympic contractors) to only outsource to businesses providing a living wage.

This reminded me a great deal of SEIU 1877’s strategy in the Justice for Janitors campaign. So I asked, and indeed! They were here at the beginning, working with one of the unions involved in the struggle. Governmental authority works a bit differently here in London and so there hasn’t been a push for anything like a city-wide ordinance, but there are talks of a campaign to get any organization receiving Government funding to ensure the living wage.

It’s a small world, and hopeful to know that some of the lessons of struggle are crossing the Atlantic (and Pacific). May that continue and grow.

So to end not a cliche, but on John Cleese (because I’m smitten with him), here is a final graphic from The Guardian. Of course, it’s a load of doom in pretty colors really. The only bright light is the success of civil partnerships. I haven’t anything as pretty from the US, I just know (in my gut) everything is worse…

Storyboards are a way to present the elements of a story in a sequence.  They are used a lot by people who make movies and other media to help them “see” a story and how the pieces work together before they spend a lot of time and money on a project.

When you are working on a team, storyboards are one way to get people, literally, on the same page.  Here is a 3-minute video on how to do that (the written-out version continues below the video).



How to Make a Storyboard from Gilda Haas on Vimeo.

James Cameron has a baseball cap with the letters HMFIC on its crown.  As this is a family-friendly site, I won’t spell out what those letters stand for, but just consider his film Avatar has made a sweet billion dollars worldwide, and I’m sure you can deduce their meaning.  Dr. Pop, aka Comrade Wife, our daughter Chelsea and I saw this wonder in glorious 3D at our damn near neighborhood theater in Culver City.

Like a lot of those who’ve seen the film, the special effects bowled me over from the ten-foot tall blue-skinned Na’vi to the bad ass, escapees from a Halo game, flying death machines of mass destruction the evil corporation wield as they wantonly try to subjugate the paradise planet Pandora.  I was enthralled.  Cameron has talked about having the idea for the film more than a decade ago, but had to wait for technology to catch up to tell the story the way he saw it in his head.  As a kid, he reportedly read a lot of science fiction traveling to school an hour each way in Chippawa, Ontario, Canada.  Well I’m betting he must have stumbled across some Edgar Rice Burroughs’ (of Tarzan fame) John Carter of Mars series of books in all that reading, eh?

In those books the Martians, who call the red planet Barsoom, are a mixed bunch of humanoids that include the ten (or maybe it’s twelve) foot tall green-skinned, four-armed fierce Tharks.  Carter, a former Confederate officer who may be immortal, is kind of magically transported to Mars and becomes a warrior-savior figure there — fighting for justice rather than slavery, so that’s an improvement.  Story elements from Burroughs to the Pocahontas bit are evidenced in Avatar.

I’m not hatin’ on Jim, but as a writer who wrestles with trying to inject originality in his stories, I do have to admit to envy given Cameron didn’t have to stretch when it came to the stock plot and characters in his film.  From the cranky but dedicated scientist, the damaged, conflicted hero, the gorgeous, strong princess, to the one-dimensional villains, we’ve seen them before many times over.  The not-so-subtle subtext of Avatar is essentially the noble natives winning over the expansionist imperialists.  This in turn, according to Patrick Goldstein in his Big Picture column in the January 5, 2010 Calendar section of L.A. Times (and for a big city newspaper, it’s getting awfully thin isn’t it?) has the teabaggers and Palinites all a-twitter.

This is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.  But this intersection of politics and sci-fi, of dystopian to hard-fought utopian visions of the future, are not the stuff solely of other recent big budget movies like 2012 and The Road.  There’s more, and we’ll get to them in my next post.

Five months ago, Brixton, one of the coolest areas of London, adopted its own currency, shown on the right below – the Brixton pound.   (scroll down for photos and videos).

The idea behind it? Helping to maintain a tight and sustainable community by promoting local businesses. The logo says it all: “Money that sticks to Brixton”.

This is how it works:  You exchange your regular British pounds for Brixton pounds at an exchange rate of 1:1 to spend in local businesses who accept the currency. While Bank-of-England-issued money is still accepted in local shops, some businesses incentivize their customers to buy their products in Brixton pounds by offering perks and discounts – more bang for their Brixton buck, so to speak. Brixton pounds can then be converted back just as easily.

By creating a more limited space in which money can be spent, local currencies gain “velocity” (i.e.: “The speed with which money whizzes around the economy, or, put another way, the number of times it changes hands” (definition by The Economistt) as they circulate in the local economy, acting as a powerful tool of reinvestment. According to a study done by the New Economics Foundation, money spent in this type of localized economy actually circulates three times as much as it would if spent in national chains! That means, you are essentially “voting with your wallet”. You decide where your money goes.

Brixton Market

For local businesses, this represents a huge plus as the profit they make stays in the community – as opposed to moving out of the community, up the ladder to high corporate executives of big national chain. This not only creates stronger ties of solidarity within the community, but it also adds value to the services and products sold in the local economy while building a strong local infrastructure.

Brixton shop

In this way then, mom and pop shops are sheltered from the tough competition of chains – who can sell their products at very low prices – jobs are protected in the area, and the community’s sustainability (and survival in these recessionary times!) is assured.

Rosie's Cafe

On top of all of that, Brixton’s local currency is helping keep the uniqueness of the neighborhood alive. About ¼ of Brixton’s community is of African or Caribbean descent. Reggae music blasts through the bustling open air market, as you wander along the stands sporting yucca root, sweet potatoes and plantains all interspersed between Halal butchers, Afro-euro beauty parlors and Vietnamese supermarkets.

fruit and vegetable vendor

It is not the first local currency of its kind. Communities from all over the world have created their own – from Australia, to China, Germany and Argentina. Here are some pictures of what some other international local currencies look like.

Brixton is the fourth community in the UK to print their own money, and there are talks that the city of Amsterdam might take it on as well!

For more information on the Brixton pound, you can visit their website at www.brixtonpound.org

And here are two cool videos from www.debateyourplate.com and the BBC’s Politics Show.

The slowly revolving floor shifts the gorgeous view before your eyes. But apart from saving up for the drinks, how do you get here?

It’s public of course, but that does not make it easy to find. There are three entrances to the Bonventure, but none of them are your traditional grand salon entrance. And two of them are from those secret sky bridges of LA, the one we took joins the hotel to Hope Street past the YMCA. You enter what feels like a back door onto the fifth floor of a dark and massive tower with spiraling stairs and pillars, and street signs to direct you to where you want to go:

Not all elevators go to the top you see, neither do the escalators. In fact, I don’t think there were any escalators on this floor. You have to find the red elevator, the red one! (The vertiginous ride in the glass elevator up the outside of the building for 35 floors and all of Central LA laid out beneath you? Highly recommended.) Any other colour and you will be lost in this vast echoing space.

It has its own stores, its own running water far far down below, it even has its own track and exercise machines where you can sweat in full view.

Built by John Portman and opened in 1976, it is an iconic building. And wandering through it, I couldn’t help but think of Frederic Jameson’s comments in an essay called Postmodernism and Consumer Society. He writes that the Bonventure has no main entry because it does not wish to be part of the city, it wishes to replace it. That it puts you into such a vast space so full of stuff you can no longer get a measure of just how big it is, you lose just how much emptiness is enclosed by these enormous walls of glass. The building toys with your perspective.

He writes that this is a space that takes vengeance on those walking through it, one that forces you to lose your bearings. It transcends us as human beings, and makes it impossible for us to find ourselves within such a context.

Me? I thought it an incredible building, but it did make me feel very small, very lost, very much in desire of a nice drink. So I set off in search of the red elevator, and thought about architecture and its impacts on how we live and see ourselves in the world. And this one almost cathedral-like in how it humbles you, God replaced by wealth, retail, and facilities for showing off while working out…