The question is how. The citizenry is very good at naming what is wrong, and poor at working on what is right.

I believe in research and development as a tool for developing local sustainable economies. It's raining today or I'd be out painting the prototype.

"Replacing human beings with robots" is a tougher issue. I have a solar tracker that I'm developing. I don't see inherent issues with robots, except that to be human is to exercise and our cars take that human privilege away from us.

For once in my life I recommend a Newsweek magazine article, on the declining creativity in the next generation of kids. I can't tell if it's the schools beating the creativity out of kids with skill and drill, or if it's the boob tube and video games, but it's wrong. Also wrong is making the kids fat and diabetic, hopping vast numbers of them up on Ritalin, and putting them into giant bullying machines, gang recruitment centers that we call schools. Run for school board, you can actually win.

The action may well be local. In my somewhat conservative area, we support public libraries, we support the Conservancies which preserve land, we support farm markets, we support millages for senior citizens, we support the arts in so many ways, we support bike paths, we support community gardens, we support food co-ops, we support keeping four chickens (without roosters) within the city limits, for Chrissakes! In the sorry state of Michigan most requests for higher taxes were approved, not rejected. The screw-ups wind up in Washington, the people who want to accomplish something stay home.

This is one of the best and most useful pieces posted on CD. That is because Grace gets to the heart of the matter we need to change our values and rebuild from the bottom up. We should be past protest, past the endless analysis of how stupid the right is and on to doing something about it beyond keyboarding and appealing to the owning and political class to make it better. Go out and organize your neighbors! We in the belly of the beast are least clear because we keep watching mainstream media and voting for one of the parties of the plutocracy. No body left to do it for us. Time to do it for ourselves.

Grace Lee Boggs, This is a clear mandate of what we need to do and what not to waste our time doing. Thank you for pointing out King's going beyond his "Dream" speech. And thank you for pointing out Malcolm's clarity.

"If Not Now, When?" The only way that real change is going to take place is to quit having babies. We need to cut the population by one half or more. All else is just temporary.

The only way we will ever make real change is to drop all the stupid labels the powers that be give us to define ourselves and just consider ourselves as working class American citizens. What works to our benifit and what doesn't. It's so effin simple that it will never happen.

When then indeed.

The question is 'How'.

The only values the rich and powerful care about are monetary ones ( their own.) Beyond these values they care about nothing & no one.

Ms. Boggs is famous for her clarity of vision. Let's get busy following her recommendations not arguing about what to do first.

While over population of the planet is a big issue, just stopping having babies is not the answer for our ecological woes. We must change our sources of power to stop the pollution and our sources of food long before any reduction of population would have any effect.

We are in a real emergency, and most people in the US have their heads in the sand, hoping that things won't get too bad for them, while they think it's too much trouble to recycle. Even so, those who recycle at their houses deserve praise, but most businesses, including apartment building owners, do not. So much of what we do is a drop in the bucket compared to the real scope of the changes needed.

More troubling than apathy is that most people have been propagandized over the last 35 years to believe that they have no power over government or corporations, so they don't try to make any changes. The more militant among us need to show them that by various actions to oppose corporate and government practices we can create a lot of change that will show the others that change can be done.

There are so many ways we all can thwart the corporate state, so let's do them all, both opposing it and creating positive changes, and spread the word.

good article...when?

Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...worldwide, unanimous rejection of the modern world...cessation of property ownership, industry and electricity...individual engagement in local sustenance, resource management, governance and defense...

I've been thinking about it.

Since our communities are cash poor but skill and time rich maybe we should start parallel gifting economies or barter economies. How about tokens that can only be spent within the community.

How to get around the IRS is the problem.

Dear Editor:

Speaking of "change", Grace Lee's misspelled surname in the headline is a glaring error that needs to be changed.

It bogles the mind!
__________________________________

Thanks for the correction. [3:10PM edit]

Speaking of farce

I just got a rather curt response back from a woman whose work I respect a great deal. In her first email, she told all about her travels, her adventures to and fro Europe, back home again, then to Milwaukee, all over the globe she trots as an "environmental activist." My letter back to her asked if "environmental activists" could do their work without using so much gasoline and jet fuel. Can environmental activists focus their efforts locally, creating and using a vast network all from their home base?

She said jetting and driving around aren't the problems and judgmental purism isn't the way. According to her, the problem has more to do with our personal journey to create a world where people can have their deep desires honored.

OK. I'm with her on that. And maybe she's right, the wars, the empire, etc. are all far more important, waste far more energy. But for some reason "environmental activism" juxtaposed with jet fuel and gasoline made me flinch.

I am seeing progressive movements, environmentalism, etc. all compromised by our desires. We're spoiled, we don't want to give up a thing.

Grace hasn't been outside in a while, apparently.

Over 60% of the country is fat or obese.

That is a country that simply does not give a f**k anymore - about themselves or anything else.

We've become passive, stupid and scared - the perfect storm for collective slow suicide. And anytime a potential 'revolution' leader pops up, Big Corporate Government and Media crush him/her.

Sorry, but the only thing that might save us is a huge disaster. Not the World's Worst Ecological Disaster in History - been there, had no effect. No - we need something that takes out millions.

Then, maybe - just maybe - the revolution in thought might begin...

never as an educator, cheered, "success for all" or NCLB. in fact I left my career behind......miss the "kids". ah.

(My comment is not related to what's being discussed here, all of which is true, serious, intelligent and sad. I'm almost as old as Ms Bloggs and have seen almost as much criminal behavior by our government. I wish I could be as optimistic as she is.)

Doing research for a section of a book I'm writing for my grandchildren about the 20th century (and me), I read the Declaration of Independence today. Here's what it says about King George III's iniquities (just three of the 27 accusations):

1.He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
2. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.
3. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury.

For King George substitute our Federal Government of the post- WW2 era. And here's what it says about our remedy:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends (Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

For an entertaining illustration of why traditional forms of activism is ineffective, Derrick Jensen tells us the plot of the "original" script of Star Wars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwhL4Lc1VNo

For a "Radical Revolution" we need the "revolutionary overthrow" of the U.S. and global "free market" capitalist market system called Capitalism.

Organized labor, with millions of members and millions in dues-money available. must call for a break with both pro-business Democratic and Republican Parties. A call for the foundation of new, anti-capitalist socialist political party must be made NOW! A new party to represent the social and economic interests of the vast majority of society, of humanity, for the economic interests of working people.

Nothing less than an end to Capitalism, that enriches a tiny minority at the expense of everyone else, will be sufficient to end the crises of human survival today. End Capitalism and transition to a global socialist economy to end wars for profit, to stop global warming, to stop the destruction of public education, public health, or to stop the destruction of the environment, the planet and it's peoples.

Read daily the World Socialist Web Site. http://www.wsws.org

The revolution starts from the ground up.

Ignore the capitalists, forget politics, create a parallel new world from the ground up.

I lost my job as a special ed teacher for being Politically Incorrect at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. I said in a teachers meeting in response to the question, "How can we raise the academic level of our students? My response was, "We should try to raise the economic level of the neighborhood.? (Lynwood, California ) Next day I was called into office and told I wouldn't be rehired. When I asked why the response was that I was Politically Incorrect. That was in 2003. Never got another teaching job again and I was in a field where they were begging and offering extra money for Education Specialist or Special Education teachers. Biggest problem I felt as a teacher was the creativity of teachers was taken away. No Child Left Behind left every child behind.

I agree with numbers 1, 3, and 4.
But you lost me when calling for a cessation of technological advance...Humans can't stop screwing with things it's imbedded into our very existence...and therefore it's both illogical and highly ridiculous that you would even suggest it.

The best you could hope for is a more responsible use of technology.

AND You only want corporations to stop giving jobs to other countries
What about stopping the corporate ownership of our democracy?

I found your list of demands both asking for too much and not enough
I don't know whether you're naive or an extremist.
If I had to sum up my feeling for this article in a word: weird.

From the article: "LET'S START THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX!"

How does TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE grab you?

As Bob Dylan sang, "When you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose."

Even the MSM gets it. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/righteous-right-leads-us-straight-to-wwiii-2010-08-24