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There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.’ —Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’
PROPHETIC WORDS OR AN AGE-OLD OBSERVATION of the way change, by necessity, is initiated, that is, breakdown serves as accelerant? In America at Risk: The Crisis of Hope, Trust, and Caring by Purdue sociologists Robert Perrucci and Carolyn Perrucci (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), systemic cracks are painfully dissected—with true and actionable enlightenment, hopefully, to follow. The Perruccis’ thesis:
“We believe that the decline of hope, trust, and caring is the unanticipated consequence of the major transformation over the last thirty years in the kind of goods and services produced in America, in the technology that is used in production, and in the people who are involved in the production process. We call the composite of these changes the new economy.”
Their take on our current collective cachexia, all part and parcel of the “new economy,” makes for compelling reading, and the slender book (including index and notes it’s a mere 160 pages) offers up an array of solutions that deserves further exploration, certainly before we move from Cohen’s “Anthem” to Gibbons’ Decline and Fall … (for instance, from Gibbons: “If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honor”—just plug in “terrorists” in place of “barbarian conquerers” and “America” in place of “Rome,” and wait for the cookie to crumble). Read More »
LET’S JUMP RIGHT IN—there’s no time to waste when you’re myth-busting in a tumultuous age of run-amuck uncertainty.
#1 You should never, ever, ever use the word “green” in your name, tag line, PR or marketing materials.
There is nothing wrong with using the word “green”—if you mean it. Sure, it’s particularly ubiquitous these days and already attached to a multitude of businesses, products, ideas, publications, groups, etc., but it still connotes a space and position and way of thinking that resonates with the public. Co-op America changed its name to Green America, and it’s working out just fine for them. If you attend a Green Festival, you kind of know what to expect—and attendance, and spirits, are high. Don’t make your usage bandwagonesque, tenuous, forced or misleading (let’s call this “fuzzy quasi-green”), resulting in reverse marketing that’ll bite you deservedly in the butt, whether you’re wearing green jeans or not. Read More »
THE BLUE GREEN ALLIANCE IS AN ORGANIZATION WHOSE TIME HAS COME. With unemployment hitting a 26-year high of 10.2 percent (up from 9.8 in September) and Christina Romer, chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, proclaiming, “Having the unemployment rate reach double digits is a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done,” it is indeed time to get to work in novel ways that can bust us out of the torpor and downright moribund climate which surround us, and are dragging so many of us down.
Traditional methodologies and paradigms, and let’s throw in the $787 billion spending package, have thus far not done the trick—far, far from it (okay, the spending package has helped but it is not close to enough). Organizations like the Blue Green Alliance (BGA), on the other hand, are shuffling the deck and dealing new cards, even as they continue to establish credibility and put in place dependable means to get things done—”mission accomplished!” is not something they’ll probably shout anytime soon, but again they’re building that house with a canard-spouting chorus of naysayers over their shoulders, and these things take time—and there’s no time to lose.
Let’s take a closer look at this national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations (not the odd bedfellows they at first seem) dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy. Remember, in the words of Cicero, “Freedom is participation in power.” And freedom, as defined, should include the ability to find and maintain a livable wage in a healthy environment. Read More »
There is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in.’ —Leonard Cohen, ‘Anthem’