Dear Friends near and far. If you've received this it means that you are on either my "progressives" mailing list or my Mailchimp Newsletter list. I have moved to a platform called Buttondown, which has wonderful tech help that I need.
I will be posting every week or so in one of 3 types of my writing and hope you find at least one of them worth your reading. They are: 1) my Good, Hopeful, Inspiring - and sometimes humorous - Newsletter (this being #27); 2) my personal reflections, titled "Bitter Fruit, Sweet Nectar", in which I share some of my journey through my 79 years in this body: as an mother-grandmother-author-photojournalist-speaker, practical visionary and social activist; and 3) my views on critical and timely issues - including childbearing, birth, attachment, brain development, adoption and abortion, suicide, trauma and healing. I attempt to weave a big picture and show how seemingly isolated issues are actually all interconnected...such as how birth practices directly shape political decisions about the environment, climate disaster and the 6th Great Extinction.
NOTE: I am hoping that you might consider my efforts to be worth a couple of dollars a month. All my writing will be FREE to you. And, if you feel so moved, you will be able to donate $1, $2, $5, or any amount. I will be grateful for any donation. Click here to pledge a donation.
With Love and best wishes for your finding ways to stay hopeful and in the struggle to create a better world for all
Suzanne Arms, Boulder, Colorado, USA
P.S. Almost all of the photos I add to my writing are mine.
Suzanne's Good, Hope & Inspiring Newsletter Issue #27
“Almost without exception, everything society has considered a social advance has been prefigured first in some utopian writing.”
- David L. Cooperrider, often considered the father of Appreciative Inquiry
*And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
*- Anais Nin, diarist & novelist
*Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope.
*- Noam Chomsky, philosopher, cognitive scientist, social activist
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From The Sum of Us, a nonprofit
Millions of trees!
Over the past 40 years, farms in Niger, Africa, have grown 200 million trees, across millions of acres of dusty, drought-prone land. They’ve massively boosted their crop yield. How? By using a traditional farming technique in which tree stumps are left to sprout new growth and crops are planted around them.
Niger, the world’s least developed country, was once covered in trees. But colonialism ruined that – pushing farmers to hack out tree stumps and create neat lines for crops, starting a vicious cycle of deforestation that led to near-barren soil.
But in the 1980s, when a farmer came home too late to dig out his tree roots before the rainy season, he found his crops did much better – helped by the fertilization of falling leaves, and protected from the wind. Word spread from farmer to farmer, and a new movement was born.
sumofus.org
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Several excerpts from the fine political analyst, Heather Cox Richardson’s *Letters from an American
*January 30, 2023
The Biden administration has new border enforcement measures providing migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela a legal path to obtain a two-year visa so long as they have a U.S. sponsor and a thorough background check. The new system will admit up to 30,000 migrants a month.
February 10th
About Brazil’s new (and also former) President, known as Lula… and his meeting with U.S. President Biden at the White House today. (Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, you may know, was an ally of former president Trump, staged a coup against Lula following the recent election where Bolsonaro lost (Note: and he’s currently hanging out in Florida, hoping to score a U.S. tourist visa.) In their meeting, Biden and Lula emphasized democracy.
Through an interpreter, Lula noted that Brazil had “self-marginalized” under Bolsonaro, rejecting the world and turning inward. But, he said, “Brazil is a country that people enjoy peace, democracy, work, and Carnival, and samba, and a lot of joy. This is the Brazil that we’re trying to reposition in the world.” He called for making sure no more right-wing insurrections undermine both the U.S and Brazil’s democracies, as well as fighting racism “so that we can guarantee some dreams for the youth.” He called for protecting the natural world to combat climate change, and creating a world governance to enable us to work together against existential threats.
“This is not a government program,” Lula said. “This is a faith commitment of someone (Lula) that believes in humanism, someone that believes in solidarity. I don’t want to live in a world where humans become algorithms. I want to live in a world where human beings are human beings. And for that, we have to take care very carefully what God gave us: that is the planet Earth.”
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As reported in The Nation (thenation.com), a precendent-setting victory resulting from another ACLU court case in the U.S.! Feb. 8, 2023
The American Civil Liberty’s Win Against Censorship in the Classroom
At the end of 2022, a federal judge blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop W.O.K.E. Act) in Florida’s state’s colleges and universities.
The judge’s order came from a lawsuit that ACLU filed on behalf of 7 instructors and 1 student in higher education institutions across Florida to challenge the Stop W.O.K.E. Act [a recently passed, vicious law that limits the ways concepts related to systemic racism and sex discrimination in the U.S. can be discussed in teaching or conducting training in workplaces or schools.] The ACLU argued that the Stop W.O.K.E. law is unconstitutionally vague, and that it intentionally discriminates against Black instructors and students.
NOTE: The ACLU is fighting many battles, including the banning of books in libraries and schools. Thank you, ACLU!
So that we can offer some relevant facts for our Republican friends/colleagues (our conservative relatives are possibly the most difficult folks to engage in a meaningful discussion) about U.S. Social Security and Medicare…
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More from Heather Cox Richardson's musings
Feb. 11, 2023
Since U.S. House Representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), led Republicans in shouts of “Liar!” when President Biden said in his State of the Union address that “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” Republicans have been swamping social and news media with accusations that Biden was lying.
In the speech, Biden continued: “That means if Congress doesn’t vote to keep them, those programs will go away.”
In fact, Biden’s statement was true. It was based on Florida senator Rick Scott’s 11-point plan, released in February 2022, which promised, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” (It also promised to “sell off all non-essential government assets, buildings, and land, and use the proceeds to pay down our national debt,” without defining “non-essential.”)
Since Republicans won control of the House, the extremists have also said they would not approve a clean debt ceiling increase without spending cuts. The history of Republican calls for cuts to Social Security runs long and deep, but let's just look at what they've said since 2020:
1) Trump vowed to make cuts in his second term; former vice president
2) Mike Pence last week called for “modest reforms in entitlements,” including privatization!
3) Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson has called for moving the programs to annual funding so they would have to be renewed every year… and
4) the Republican Study Committee, which includes more than 150 Republican House members, has called this year for raising the age of eligibility from 66 or 67 to 70 for Social Security and from 65 to 67 for Medicare.
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A positive reminder, as reported by Michael Moore in his RUMBLE**Unprecedented wins in the U.S. mid-term in Michigan**
In Michigan last November we had a record voter turnout for a midterm election. The voters created a full Democratic sweep of Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State and both the Michigan Senate and the Michigan House of Representatives. This completed a Democratic trifecta for the first time in Michigan in 40 years. In addition to this, the voters in Michigan has sent a majority Congressional delegation to DC (7-6), also for the first time in many years. This is in addition to Michigan’s two Democratic U.S. Senators.
And, on top of all of this, voters in Michigan codified the absolute right to abortion into the State Constitution and overwhelmingly passed two other ballot proposals enhancing voting rights and tracking the money politicians raise in Michigan’s elections.
Please listen to a couple of Moore’s series of 12 short podcasts, “Being Blue in a Sea of Red” (i.e. being a liberal in a mostly Republican voting state) that started on Christmas day. Part cheerleader, part serious uncle, he offers reminders of how to both stay optimistic and take action. I particularly like #3 in the series. And, in podcast #1 Moore shares how, years ago, he won an election in his overwhelmingly red county.
Blue Dots in a Red Sea (Ep. 1) - Michael Moore
Listen now (14 mins) | Our Next “Impossible” Blue Tsunami Task: How to Win When You’re Blue in a Red State (12 mini podcast episodes for the next 12 days!)
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From The Conversation online news source
Jan. 28, 2023
The Biden administration finalized a rule on Jan. 25, 2023, that restores “roadless protection” to more than 9 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in SE Alaska, which keeps it free from both road-building and logging. The Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world and the biggest U.S. national forest. It is 26,000 square miles (roughly the size of West Virginia) and covers most of southeast Alaska. In the Tongass are thousands of watersheds and fjords, and more than a thousand forested islands.
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We should all be interested in how the human heart and brain are “wired” either for creativity, cooperation and peace…or defensiveness, aggression and violence. That is one of the 2 reasons that drive my passion to transform how we bring babies into the world and how we care for childbearing women. This means addressing not only the great inequities in care and access to good care that are related to race and class, but also to the power structure that has taken birth out of the home and into the hospital, taken it from the hands-on practice of midwifery and herbal wisdom and allowed it to be dominated by doctors, medicine and surgery.
So, today, I want to recommend a book to you if you have any interest in the politics of birth and midwifery or know if anyone who does.
Written by an extraordinarily gifted and indefatigable Canadian midwife and social activist who studies childbearing around the world, practices and teaches internationally and has a broad and deep understanding of the forces against true midwifery and biologically-based birth practices. Her name is Betty-Anne Daviss and she has written a number of valuable books with the help of medical anthropologist-researcher Robbie Davis-Floyd.
This, her newest book, is titled, Birthing Models on the Human Rights Frontier: Speaking Truth to Power.
And that’s exactly what it is and what it does, and what it will inspire you to do.
How to describe this amazing book! A rich, and richly illustrated – with color photographs – compendium of current knowledge and wisdom about childbirth, midwifery, human rights, social justice, and more. Presenting models from around the world that are effectively challenging the status quo. And the personal stories of courageous women and men standing up to unjust systems of maternity care make it compelling reading.
Please buy this book and gift it to any aspiring (or practicing) obstetric nurse, PA, obstetrician, nurse practitioner or midwife you know…AND recommend it to every instructor or professor of sociology, anthropology, human biology, feminism, psychology… anyone who wants to understand the “big picture” and is passionate about the state of the earth and all beings, and social justice. I could go on… I’m hoping some of you will get the book for yourself and perhaps get together with a few friends to discuss the issues Daviss raises.
If we hope to create a less violent and more equitable world, we must begin with making childbearing safe and protected for all women and babies. And that requires an understanding of the core differences between the modern hospital-based obstetric model for birth and the biologically-based midwifery model.
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More from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, because I feel her daily offerings are so worthwhile
January 28, 2023
13 male members of the U.S. House of Representatives have formed The Congressional Dads Caucus. Ironically, the push to create the caucus came as a result of the Republicans’ long fight to elect a House speaker, when 2 of the Representatives were photographed taking care of their small children as they waited to vote. One of them, Jimmy Gomez of CA, stated the obvious: "Why am I, a father, getting praised for doing what mothers do every single day, which is care for their children?"
The caucus will fight for 1) a national paid family and medical leave program, 2) affordable and high-quality childcare, and 3) the expanded Child Tax Credit (which has cut child poverty by nearly 50%). The new Dads Caucus will work with the caucus of mothers, “Moms in the House”, which formed in 2019.
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Excerpts from NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof*’s surprisingly hopeful wrap up for 2022:*
“Our planet may be in better shape than you think…[and] broadly speaking, much is going right and this may still be the best time ever to be alive. Where 2022 excelled particularly was in technological strides.
Solar power capacity around the world is on track to roughly triple over the next five years and overtake coal as the leading source of power globally. Technical improvements are constant – such as M.I.T. researchers’ developing a way to produce thin and flexible solar panels that can turn almost any outdoor surface into a power source.
There are parallel breakthroughs in batteries. Batteries… one of the most exciting frontiers of technology, making remarkable advances crucial to storing green power. Likewise, nuclear fusion as an energy source… Green hydrogen is also gaining ground and could be useful for shipping and energy storage.
The upshot is that we are in the midst of a revolution of renewables that may soon leave us far better off. If things go right, we’ll be able to enjoy cheaper, more reliable and more portable power than ever before. Truly cheap energy, whether from solar or fusion, could be transformational: For example, it could run de-salination plants to provide the fresh water that we’re running out of.
To be clear: Climate change remains an existential challenge. What’s new is that if you squint a little, it is now possible to see a path ahead in which we manage – barely – to avoid calamity.
And of course, technology is not taking leaps just in research labs but is filtering down to improve individual lives. I’m writing this on the family farm in Oregon with the help of our new Starlink internet service that is beginning to empower rural America (and has been a game-changer for Ukrainians, as they humble their Russian invaders).
Remarkably, preliminary estimates suggest that global child mortality continued to fall during the pandemic. A child is now about half as likely to die by age five as in the year 2000, and one-quarter as likely to die as in 1970.
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In-depth reporting can make a difference!
This, from The Nation Weekly (a reliable online independent news source)
January 20, 2023
Just two weeks after an expose appeared in The Nation, The Kennedy School at Harvard University reversed its decision to refuse to allow Ken Roth (who was head of Human Right Watch for two decades) to pursue a fellowship at the Carr Center of Human Rights. The reason Roth’s fellowship was initially vetoed was his criticisms of Israel. The article prompted a huge outcry, including among Harvard student group, alumni and many human rights organizations.
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What May Be the Most Important Green Technology…
from The Guardian
Nov. 24, 2022
by George Monbiot
“Precision fermentation” is a refined form of brewing, a means of multiplying microbes to create specific products. It has been used for many years to produce drugs and food additives. But now, in several labs and a few factories, scientists are developing what could be a new generation of staple foods.
The developments I find most interesting use no agricultural feedstocks. The microbes they breed feed on hydrogen or methanol – which can be made with renewable electricity – combined with water, carbon dioxide and a very small amount of fertilizer. They produce a flour that contains roughly 60% protein, a much higher concentration than any major crop can achieve (soy beans contain 37%, chick peas, 20%). When they are bred to produce specific proteins and fats, they can create much better replacements than plant products for meat, fish, milk and eggs. And they have the potential to do two astonishing things:
The first is to shrink to a remarkable degree the footprint of food production. One paper estimates that precision fermentation using methanol needs 1,700 times less land than the most efficient agricultural means of producing protein: soy grown in the US. This suggests it might use, respectively, 138,000 and 157,000 times land than the least efficient means, (which are) beef and lamb production. Depending on the electricity source and recycling rates, it can also enable radical reductions in water use and greenhouse gas emissions. Because the process is contained, it avoids the spillover of waste and chemicals into the wider world caused by farming.
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Some musical inspiration, because we need it, don’t we?
Rhiannon Giddens singing “I shall not be moved”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ8RIHTNGV4
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Co-Op City, a model community in the Bronx
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/bronx-co-op-city-winning-census...
Co-Op City is the world’s largest cooperative housing development. Located on the eastern edge of the Bronx, in New York City, it has its own schools, power plant, newspaper, and even a planetarium. It was built in 1966 by The Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and United Housing Federation to provide affordable middle-class housing in New York City. From the beginning, it has embraced a social justice mandate that includes ethnic diversity and a sharing of resources. Today, it houses over 15,000 families in 35 buildings on 320 acres, 80% of which is kept as open space.
Today Co-Op City is 60% black and more than 27% Hispanic. The brains behind Co-op City was Abraham Kazan, who grew up on the Lower East Side of NY City and was acutely aware that substandard, cramped, and airless tenements negatively impacted residents’ health and morale.
Almost 60% of the folks living in Co-Op City are renters. The average rent for a 2-bedroom apartment is $1575 per month.
In 2022 the cost to buy an apartment in Co-Op City was between $13,500 (for a basic one-bedroom) and $29,250 for a three-bedroom with 1.5 baths and a balcony. Monthly carrying charges – heat, water, electricity, maintenance, including 24-hour reception/security in each building, property taxes AND mortgage interest (if there is a mortgage) range from $646 to $1,394.
Of Note: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor grew up in Co-op City.
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Extraordinary news from the world of science…
*Reported in *The Conversation** online newsletter
Dec 14, 2022
For a brief moment in December, within a large metal sphere at a lab in California, scientists recreated and controlled the power of the Sun. Using the most powerful lasers on Earth, for a few billionths of a second, a team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility was able to fuse a few types of hydrogen together, the same reaction that produces energy on stars. What sets this experiment apart from all that have come before it is the amount of energy released was greater than the amount of energy contained in the lasers.
Carolyn Kuranz, a nuclear engineering professor suggests that that people in the future may look back and think of this moment as comparable to the first flight of the Wright brothers.
This experiment shows that fusion is possible, not just in theory, but in reality. There are still a number of scientific, technological and engineering hurdles to be overcome before fusion will produce electricity for our homes.
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Hopeful news from Peers online news service’s Inspiration List
An Election Upset That Could Change Louisiana’s Climate Trajectory
In the mid-term elections, first-time political candidate Davante Lewis beat a corporate Democrat for a seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission. Now, for the first time, the 5-member board which regulates utility companies and plans renewable energy investments has a pro-climate majority, which can push forward the Louisana’s first-ever climate action plan, to institute net-zero state emissions by 2050.
Lewis ran on a platform that included 1) a “Ratepayers’ Bill of Rights” to end service disconnections and excessive late fees, as well as enforce restrictions on how much investor-owned utilities companies can profit from consumers; 2) pushing the state utility commission to facilitate the Louisiana Climate Action Plan’s goal of 100% renewable electricity by 2035.
State utility commissions will play a pivotal role in determining how billions of federal dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act will be channeled into renewable energy investment. Lewis’ win opens a path for the state’s small but influential utility commission to play a big part in improving Louisiana’s climate trajectory.
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‘It’s like a place of healing’: the growth of America’s food forests
The Guardian May 8, 2021
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/08/its-like-a-place-of-healing...
America’s biggest “food forest” is just a short drive from the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson. Food forests are a gardening technique or land management system, which mirrors and works with woodland ecosystems by incorporating trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals that produce human food. This creates a living system with numerous benefits including wildlife habitat, resilient biodiversity, an abundance of food and medicinal yields, carbon sequestration, increased urban tree canopy, local food security, and an opportunity for community gathering and education.
This one is located in Atlanta’s southside Lakewood community, less than five miles from downtown. Lakewood is a “food desert”, with the nearest grocery store with healthy food options 20 minutes away via public transportation. Most nearby “food marts” offer far more sweets, processed foods, and canned goods than fresh fruits, vegetables and produce.
Food forests are part of the broader food justice and urban agriculture movement and are distinct from community gardens in various ways. They are typically backed by grants rather than renting plots, usually rely on volunteers and incorporate a land management approach that has a focus on growing perennials. They vary in how they allocate food, but they are all aimed at boosting food access and much more. Organizers in Atlanta stress that they directly distribute the food to the neighborhoods that the food forest is intended to support. Other schemes have areas where the public is free to take what they want and use their space for composting, beehives, bat boxes, and herb gardens (where they teach people how to heal themselves with the foods they eat). The one in Atlanta is planning walkthrough retreats and outside yoga. It’s a health and wellness place, and offers much more than free food.
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Why Our Movements Need to Start Singing Again
reprinted from, Common Dreams December 4, 2022
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/04/why-our-movements-need-start...
Social movements are stronger when folks sing. That's a lesson that has been amply demonstrated throughout history. Music is a powerful tool that we have too often neglected in our social grassroots organizing.
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Look at MOMENTUM – momentumcommunity.org – an institute and community of social justice movement organizers to train and support others
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From The Week magazine August 5, 2022
Thirteen-year-old Alena Wicker is working toward 2 separate undergraduate degrees and was just accepted into the University of Alabama Medical School.
And she’s Black. Throughout school this glasses-wearing, dread-haired girl was bullied for her smarts. But not allowing that – or the school work on her plate now – to deter her, she created an organization that offers math and science opportunities for girls of color.
Also in the same issue of The Week is the note that U.S. Republican Representative in Congress from a district in Pennsylvania, Glenn Thompson, declared he was “thrilled to attend” the wedding of his son to another man, despite having just 3 days earlier voted against same-sex marriage!
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Progress has been slow but steady regarding the deadly 2017 Charlottesville VA rally protesting the removal of a Confederate statue:
In November 2021, 9 victims of the Charlottesville violence won a historic court victory against a number of white supremacist groups and their leaders, who planned and perpetrated the violence. They were ordered to pay a total of $26 million in damages.
Recently, a statue of a Confederate general in the U.S. Capitol was replaced by a statue of a civil rights pioneer, Mary McLeod Bethune! And the U.S. military is planning to change the names of 9 Army bases that are named after Confederates.
The FBI has designated hate crimes now “a national threat priority, which is a rare classification…and making the investigation of hate crime the #1 priority within the FBI’s civil rights program.
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A reminder that we all need to be active in the effort to secure abortion rights for all women.
That's all for this issue, folks. If this is your first time reading one of my Newsletters, I hope you like it enough to stay as a subscriber. And maybe tell others about it.
With Love, Suzanne
P.S. I hope you'll take a good look at my nonprofit's website: www.birthingthefuture.org, including all of the films we've just uploaded as MP4s on Vimeo!
