Humanize the Earth!

Make Your Own Bank

Here’s an awesome article on how to Make Your Own Bank. My summary: Gather the community together. Give each one a card. On that card goes their name and signature. There is also a central register (so each card needs a number, but not as important). If the basic needs for a person are met with $100/month in this group, then each person write “dividend” on the first line and $100 in the “money received” column. The bank ledger writes $100 for each person in the money spent column. Both parties sign both (card and ledger, in this case).

So you want to buy some rice. You go to the rice seller and write “10 kg rice” and in the money spent column, you write $5. The seller writes 10 kg rice and $5 in teh money received column. You both sign both cards.

Holy moley! It’s a bank. And that card is all the money you need. And if you lose it no one else can use it. So they bring it back to you, “I found your money.” And if it’s truly lost, the central bank could figure it out by looking at the other cards (which they’d have to do from time to time to balance out, not sure of the details).

I wonder if this concept could simplify things at all in my housing co-op. We (the co-op) have a mortgage that we’re paying every month and we also have a construction loan and we also have monthly expenses like electricity and garbage collection. So everyone writes a check to the co-op every month. But members also buy things for the co-op. A shovel here, 8 toilets there, etc. These have to get reimbursed somehow. And sometimes someone buys something that only 1 or 2 others have to pay back (the welder, window air conditioners). These cards could save a lot of back and forth with checks.

Totally cool

Marriage discrimination eliminated!!!

Corrigan tells us Gay marriage finally legal nationwide. Too bad he’s talking about Canada. Yes, of course this is great news for Canadians and lovers of human rights everywhere. Just wish we could have some good news on this front in Chicago, Illinois or the US.

Edit: Spain, too! What a week!

Edit: There appears to be something seriously wrong with my template. The previous post (when it was top dog) did the same as this one is doing now, leaving a whole mess of empty space on my screen down ’til the sidebar is done. Anyone else seeing this? Any ideas why?

July 1st, 10am march for Immigrants’ Human Rights

This just in from my friend Manuel:

The community organization called Sin Fronteras (No Frontiers”), activists, radio and tv persons, and some other people are calling for a March against the Anti Inmigrant group called Minuteman, and also we all are trying to fight for the Inmigrants Human Rights, like having the right to have medical care, be able to get drivers license, work legaly, between others.

This will be the next friday july 1 at 10 am . We will be meeting at Ashsland & 31st st. in Chicago. We will march peacefuly untill we get to 43 st. there we will meet some local community leaders and also some local politicians. We will probably write and sign a document, trying to stop this racist peolple from violating our Human Rights.

If you want to do some serching of these racist group, you can search on google, type minuteman, then look on the right hand side were it says: Sponsored Links racist group

(It actually says “Minuteman Border Patrol” but don’t want to give them googlejuice)

edit: Does anyone else see a huge big white space after this post, and the next post doesn’t start until the end of the sidebar? I’ve seen that before with certain formatting of photos, but usually I can get it to go away. This time is a complete mystery to me. Any suggestions?

Frazz on trees and irony

Frazz is perhaps my favorite comic strip. Here’s a particularly good one from a week or so back.

Organize to rid PACE of TVs

I ride PACE suburban bus service about one round trip per week up in Wilmette, either the 421 or the 422. This spring (it’s still spring, remember?) some of the busses had TVs installed. They alternate between silently showing headlines, stock quotes and current weather and loudly blasting advertising with sound included. Aparently PACE started doing this in early 2004 and are slowly phasing this in. I haven’t found anyone fighting this. If you have ideas about how to start a campaign, drop me a comment or trackback. Thanks.

Update: After I wrote this, I posted an item at the Chicago El blog. Quite a few commenters over there are agreeing. No one has volunteered any info about a PACE blog. From the number of commenters, there would seem to be an audience for such a thing. Maybe that would be the way to start.

National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity

Via Mark Dilly and MoxieGrrrl, GodlessGeeks has reissued an article from The Onion on January 17, 2001 entitled National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity. They’ve also added hyperlinks to show what has actually come true. An excerpt:

Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that ‘our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.’

‘My fellow Americans,’ Bush said, ‘at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.’

What even scarier is that we elected him again. Maybe that’s because the Democrats would’ve done the same?

Lathrup Village Home For Sale

Friends of mine are selling their house in Lathrup Village, Michigan. I love the URL. houseinlathrup.com $233,000 3 BD 2 BR Brick Ranch

Fasting for Darfur done

My 24 hour Fast for Darfuris now done. Skipping breakfast wasn’t so unusual so I found myself half-way done by the time it really hit me that I wasn’t going to eat today. I drank a lot of water at work. Part of me wanted to go out and sit in the plaza during lunchtime but I just stayed at my desk and worked. And drank more water. By the time work was done I was feeling hunger in the belly. I often have an afternoon snack and I felt the lack today. This evening I met with a friend which kept my mind off my body, then spent a couple of frustrating hours installing a window air conditioner. Amazing how mundane and comfortable my life is, given that I’m choosing to fast to stop people from being massacred. Something tells me my distractability means that a 2 or 3 day fast might help me get past my usual self and into something else. But I hadn’t planned on tomorrow so I’ll get back to normal and then re-group.

Please take an action today to end the Darfur crisis or improve your own neighborhood, wherever you are.

Fasting for Darfur

I’m not a big “this is a crisis” kind of guy. Or rather, I recognize a lot of situations as crises and I try to take actions in a steady way, without running from crisis to crisis. Quite a large group of people I trust are working hard to stop the on-going genocide in Darfur in southern Sudan. Read about it at Stop Genocide Now, at omidyar.net and at the International Crisis Center. In the Rwanda Genocide, the worst killing happened during a 100 day stretch starting on April 6. In 2005, an international 100 Days of Action started on April 6 to draw attention to the Darfur situation, which includes a rolling fast. Tomorrow (starting in an hour) is my day.

Yesterday I asked what action those calling for action are asking for. I was given various answers. I did some reading and wasn’t happy with what I found in terms of actions:

Contact your elected representative, Write to your newspaper, Post a blog comment, Tell a colleague, Inform yourself about the crisis, Donate to organisations working in Sudan

so I kept at it to find out why we’d perform the above actions. I doni’t want to see the US invade another country, for example. I found a bunch of reasons that seem to make sense to me:

Protect Civilians and Relief Supplies, Implement Accountability in Darfur (sanctions), Build a Darfur Peace Process, Implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between Khartoum and the SPLM, Prevent New Conflict in Sudan

So keep doing the other good things you’re doing in the world and read something about Darfur. Then write something. In your blog. In an email to friends. To your elected representatives. And if you’d like to go further, pick a day to fast, donate what you would’ve spent on food that day to a relief organization and write about that.

The killing can be stopped.

Reading The Gift

Circling back to the Giving Conference that sparked this blog last summer, I finally sat down tonight to really digest the first chapter of a wonderful book: ‘The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property’ by Lewis Hyde. Susan Kerr convened a session about it at the conference. Phil Cubeta loves it. Jill Perkins gave her copy to Chris Corrigan, who blogged it. In the comments, Chris Weaver gifted a copy to me in September.

I tried to read it at least twice. It’s the kind of book I want to savor, quite the opposite from the mysteries and political thrillers that I usually devour whole on trips to and from Africa. So I put it down, first chapter unfinished.

Gerry Gleason, also a Giving Conference attendee, suggested a while back that we read it together and discuss during the Thursday night Humanist Movement meetings at my place. I still couldn’t pick the darn thing up, until tonight.

The essense I find in the first chapter can be shown in a game of catch. For the game to happen, the person with the ball or the frisbee must give it away. The more people there are in the game, the more interesting the lesson. To whom do I throw? The person that’s been without it the longest, of course (not precisely in any accounting fasion, but from perceptions and interests). And as soon as the gift stops moving, it ceases to be a gift and the game is over.

More when I’ve read more or am sparked by something else from chapter 1.