Dear Common Dreams Readers:
Sarah van Gelder
Sarah van Gelder is co-founder and editor-at-large of YES! Magazine, and author of The Revolution Where You Live: Stories from a 12,000 Mile Journey Through a New America. Follow her blog and connect with Sarah on Twitter: @sarahvangelder
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, July 20, 2017 To the Millions Who Have Stood Up to the Trump Administration: Thank You The Republican health care bill is dead. Good riddance. The bill was so harsh that even Donald Trump called the House version “mean.” And yet, this legislation was stopped at a time when Republicans control both houses of Congress and the presidency. How? The answer is ordinary people, acting... Read more |
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Views Sunday, July 09, 2017 Our Best Shot at Meeting Paris Goals? Make Energy Public Mayors across the country have vowed to deliver on the goals of the Paris climate accord in defiance of President Trump’s decision to back out. But how can they, realistically, when the national government is questioning climate science and promoting coal, fracking, and pipelines? "When a local... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 22, 2017 Wage Love to End Debt’s Stranglehold Debt is an age-old means of shaming and controlling poor people. The practice is so commonplace, we hardly notice it. For many, going into debt is the only way to get an education, buy a home, or survive a medical emergency. Shaking off that debt can be impossible for those living on low-wage and... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 16, 2017 Small-Scale Farming Could Restore America’s Rural Towns Boarded-up business districts. Abandoned warehouses. Barns and homes covered by tarps slowly collapsing into the earth. It was startling how often this scene repeated as I drove through the rural areas of the Midwest, South, and West on the road trip that resulted in the book The Revolution Where... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, February 22, 2017 To Survive, the Democratic Party Needs to Stand Up to Wall Street and Global Corporations With the attention of the nation riveted on the Trump train wreck and on the historic Women’s March, one lesson of this moment is getting lost: The Democratic Party lost an election to one of the most unstable, lewd, and unqualified candidates ever to run for office. If we are to get through this... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 19, 2017 Big Trump Protests Are Fine, But Here’s a To-Do List for Lasting Change As the Trump regime rolls out, the need for building local power becomes startlingly clear. Many will march in the Women’s March on Saturday, and that promises to be an important statement against normalizing the Trump administration. But after the big events are over, what next? National... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 28, 2016 It Wasn’t All Bad: 5 Signs of Positive Change in 2016 It was a year blown up by the election results. There are now two very different 2016s—the one before and the one after we learned that Donald Trump would become president of the United States. Trump’s administration won’t get us where we need to go. Before Nov. 8, most assumed that Hillary Clinton... Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 22, 2016 How to Face a Trump Presidency: Resist, Reconnect, Renew It’s the solstice, the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. I awaken in the dark and check for news about Standing Rock and about the Trump transition team. It’s almost an epic pairing: the Native Americans, withstanding water cannons and pepper spray, camped out in below-zero blizzards... Read more |
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Views Saturday, December 10, 2016 How Standing Rock Has Changed Us At the Oceti Sakowin camp there were celebrations into the night when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision was announced. Fireworks lit up the sky, which is normally dominated by police searchlights, and there were songs, prayers, and dance. And tears. The decision to halt work on the Dakota... Read more |
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Views Friday, December 02, 2016 The Many Ways to Help Standing Rock The timing couldn’t have been more awful. The day after Thanksgiving, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the Standing Rock Sioux tribe that people camped at the Oceti Sakowin Camp would be considered trespassers on that federally managed land after Dec. 5. With thousands of people, it is the... Read more |