Humanize the Earth!

Hurricane Katrina hits home

Two links to share. The first from Sister Helen Prejean’s Blog: Hurricane Katrina hits home

The second is from my friend Rose Vines. She’s been writing emails to family and friends about her experiences and also posting them at omidyar.net and has not put them into a new blog: My Katrina She works with Sister Helen (so there’s the connection) and evacuated before the storm hit to Baton Rouge and is getting ready to move to Houston in the next few days. She is going to continue writing long after this “story” falls out of media favor.

Help those missing from Katrina get found!

There are tons and tons of people looking for loved ones after Katrina. You can help them find each other by vising this webpage and following the instructions: PeopleFinderVolunteer - Katrina Help Wiki

The idea is to do some data entry into a central place. Please help if you can and pass the word.

The World We Want

Posting these questions again from The World We Want:

• What is your vision of a better world?
• What are the conditions needed to realize it?
• What are the obstacles?
• Based on your experience, what parts of the vision are realistic and what ideas, strategies and plans can make it so?

Here are my original answers. My intention is to answer again. In the meantime, what are your answers?

taking person action

Once again, Michael Herman nails it

What can you do? Who do you know? Everybody knows somebody down that way. Six degrees of separation might mean that we’ve all got a one-in-six chance of being the ones on the front line. And there are going to be more than six shots fired.

We’re all in this together. And last I checked, despite the wobbling, we are still a democracy, which means we are the federal government. All of us. Let’s get it in session! …and get it in gear! This end must be our beginning.

If we build our future now, the forced transition won’t be so painful. Was having a similar conversation with my friend Cynthia about gas prices. Much better to pay $4/gal now (and start to change our behaviour) than to have the government take some action to drive the price back down to $3 or $2 (where we’re a lot less likely to take personal action) and then have $20/gal when we run out.

person to person help

Michael Herman writes:

I still like the idea of friends helping friends of friends. If there’s no admin cost involved, person-to-person, then there’s no need for tax deductibility. Just give, you know, the old fashioned way, without a receipt. Here, for instance, is the campaign for my friend Rose Vines. Her house is a few blocks from the wet side of [this picture]

Rose is my friend too and I’ve given to the campaign. Surely you know someone or know someone who knows someone. Also, moveon has set up http://www.hurricanehousing.org/ for people to offer any kind of housing.

Sept 2, 2005: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day

Andy Carvin posted at omidyar.net about International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. In January, I wrote about disaster relief in the context of crisis of the moment, or long-term engagement? So now I’m still left not really knowing how to help out in New Orleans and still asking the question I asked then:

My question here is not about “the world” or “the media” but for you (this is a silent, answer-to-yourself question). What are you doing in your daily life to reduce human suffering among those around you?

Critical Mass Theater

This is an excerpt from Stopping Them in their Tracks, a longer piece by my friend Travis Hugh Culley:

Critical Mass is much like a play, and in any play there is conflict. How we handle conflict determines whether the ride becomes a comedy or a tragedy. In the eight years that I have been participating in Chicago Critical Mass rides, I have seen both. Some conflicts could have been avoided, and some could not have, but an element of theatricality serves both, protecting the people on the ride, and the meaning of what a Critical Mass is. Let’s look at a CM ride as though it were a piece of theater that broke out of the auditorium. Suddenly is not limited to a stage, or a proscenium. The mass is limited only by its size. It has a message. It has an audience, however part of that audience has a rocket launcher underneath their right foot. They are in cars.

Unable to transcend the gridlock that they are experiencing, many people can and lose their tempers and come pushing through the mass. They see us riding through red lights while they wait for the green, and then another green, and then another green. We have to remember that the time that we cause other people to wait is like a moment on stage, and whoever is holding an intersection should try to take that opportunity to interact with the audience.

The aesthetics of the intersection

It may be helpful to think of intersections like scenes and roads like scene changes because most of the antagonism that I have seen from motorists has happened in the intersections. The people who cork the intersection need to understand that they are doing more than protecting the mass from angry drivers, they are also educating drivers about their alternative forms of transport. Sometimes the best way to settle a potential conflict is to lead the interaction your self. The spectacular aspect of the ride depends on people seeing the sense we have in cycling. Therefore we should be sensible, and make sense to them. Drivers will appreciate an explanation for the delay, however you do it. Hand out flyers, hold your bike in the air, talk about what we’re doing, and thank them for waiting.

There’s no use skirting around this forever: A Critical Mass wants to stop traffic, and it wants to make a spectacle of our passing. We want motorists to consider the sense of bicycling by showing them the beauty, and the FUN of it. I think, if we are going to delay motorists, we’d better give them something to look at. Credit must be given to so many people for their contributions in this regard: the Rats, the Scallywags, the High Wheelers, the Naturists, and so many others for keeping up the spectacle. These theatrics can be thought of as the price we pay for the delay that we bring with us. By corking a major intersection we are creating a passion play of innovators like Christopher Wallace, Johnny Payphone and Al “The Pal”, who can show off bicycles that motorists have never seen before. Whatever virtue they have in the world, in the intersection they serve to make people interested. So bring out the costumes, and the TV bikes, the glow sticks, musical instruments, and whatever else you can bring. Balance your bicycle on your chin, because DUMB ENTERTAINMENT CAN APPEASE AN ANGRY MOB. Therefore, good juggler is essential to the safety of a Critical Mass ride. Bright colors, and flags, make motorists feel wanted. People are all alone in their cars, and therefore they can find themselves very susceptible to flattery this way.

Here’s a tip on keeping an audience–SMILE, even when they are yelling profanities out of their windows. Refuse to engage in a challenge by smiling through it. Drivers will sometimes try to push through a mass, and if they do this remember: FUN! Promise them that if they don’t calm down that another biker will join in them, and they will. If a motorist is pushing into the mass, it is assault, and other bikers will see it happening and come to your aide, but you should not stop smiling. If you hit the car, or break a mirror, your getting someone very upset. In a mass, we are never arguing with motorists, we are only entertaining them.

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