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Modeshift

Chronicling the American Transition

Flip: In Time for Earth Day, A Sustainability PrimerApril 18 2008

The University of Michigan Center for Sustainability Systems just posted this very good online interactive primer on how we use resources. This is a clear and concise check on our excessive use of resources, and a strong way to get kids engaged. It’s also a keen deployment of design and online interactivity. Nice work Michigan. 

 

 

The Dream Reborn, Onward to New Governing CoalitionApril 2 2008

Two weeks ago, at the Take Back America conference in Washington, Majora Carter took a moment to explain the motivation behind The Dream Reborn, a celebration this weekend in Memphis that honors the life and marks the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

“The work now is solutions-based,” said Carter, who founded and directs Sustainable South Bronx, a seven-year-old non-profit environmental and economic development organization in New York. “We’re applying our knowledge, our research, our advocacy to places to help people participate in this new economy.

“We are on the cusp of something so huge,” she added. “We’re activating the green economy to transfer wealth and the capacity to participate to include poor people. We’re reaching across the traditional lines. It’s a very big change and a very big opportunity for everybody.”

The Dream Reborn is not likely to attract the media — mainstream and new — that it deserves. But in

Majora Carter and the Green Energy EconomyMarch 18 2008

WASHINGTON — Last week in Pittsburgh, Van Jones, the 39-year-old founder of Green For All and one of the people who introduced the idea of “green-collar jobs” to both Democratic presidential candidates, brought more than 600 veteran union and environmental organizers to an awed hush. His address on the potential of the green energy economy to produce millions of jobs and a pathway out of poverty for disadvantaged inner city residents was a tour de force in mixing statistical analysis of global climate change, projections of industrial revenue in the developing wind and solar industries, and social justice metaphor and emotion.

Today, during the Take Back America conference here, an even larger audience heard from Majora Carter (see pix), the executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, a seven-year-old green advocacy and economic development group that has produced a new riverside park, promoted and installed green roofs,

Take Back America, The NarrativeMarch 17 2008

WASHNGTON — The Hip Hop Media Lab, an online non-profit that introduces low-income kids to the possibilities of making money with their creative talent, is a partner this week in producing the annual Take Back America conference. So is MoveOn.org, Living Liberally, Netroots Nation, and USAaction. This is the sixth edition of a three-day fest designed to introduce liberal America to some of the movement’s new icons — the New Organizing Institute, Hip Hop Caucus, and One Hood, among others — and to pay homage to some old ones — Jesse Jackson was in attendance today.

To be sure, the conference affirms earnest goals that would make America better. Those include ending the war, winning the 2008 presidential election, burying freemarket conservatism

Van Jones; An Economy For Problem SolversMarch 14 2008

PITTSBURGH — On the day after he buried his father, Van Jones, arguably the most thoughtful and dynamic young leader in the American environmental movement, addressed the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference this morning. Jones, who bore his grief in occasional tears, told the more than 600 people in the room that this gathering was such a seminal event in the construction of a new green/labor/business governing coalition in the United States that his father wanted him to be here.

“He had some principles,” said Jones, who is head of a new California-based group named Green For All. “He stood up for the little people. He was born in abject poverty in Memphis. He joined the Air Force when he was 17-years-old in the middle of the Vietnam War so he could send a check to his mother. He had some principles. He came from the generation that had dogs sicked on them. He was in Memphis when Dr. King was killed and I was in utero. He had some principles. And the most fundamental of them was to stick up for the little people. Don’t leave anybody behind.

“My father got out of poverty,” Jones continued. “He could have bought a big house and could have left the c