August, 15 2016, 08:00am EDT
Live Share Grow: A Movement for the 100%
Nationwide
An unlikely trio has just launched a bold new initiative to create greater equality and economic justice. Their story reads like the beginning of a joke (a former multi- millionaire, a man who was once an heir to a meat-packing fortune, and a nonviolent activist walk into a bar), but what they've created is a serious, viable, heart-motivated movement for change called Live Share Grow: A Movement for the 100%.
In a time when the wealthiest one percent of the people has more money than they can spend - and everyone else is fighting over crumbs - this bold new movement invites people to work together to replace an economic system that causes harm, destruction, and suffering; with a culture that supports, affirms, cares for, and uplifts everyone. "Everyday, billions of dollars change hands. Goods are bought and sold. Commerce is part of being human . . . but right now commerce is full of injustice, theft, cheating, and causing harm. We need to change that," says organizer Rivera Sun.
Live Share Grow uses nonviolent action to actively oppose problems . . . and propose solutions. Remembering Dr. King's principle of nonviolence: to be against the injustice, but not against the person, the movement call upon people to take action together to interrupt business-as- usual and invite everyone to change their practices to respectful, sustainable, equitable, and life-affirming alternatives.
The movement asks supporters to engage in five types of constructive actions: supporting local food, giving and sharing, moving your money, participating in change (community, movement, civic engagement), and working on renewable energy and sustainability.
Live Share Grow even audaciously invites the 1% to be a part of the culture shift toward a just, equitable, and sustainable economy. They call upon the 1% to bring themselves and their wealth into this process of change, to divest from businesses and practices that create injustice, and reinvest in projects, programs, and practices that rebuild community wealth.
The movement has four phases planned for the next year: building momentum, issuing the Bold Invitation to Live Share Grow far and wide, mobilizing for nonviolent action in the spring, and escalating throughout the summer of 2017. It's a bold, ambitious movement at a time when such vision and direction is needed.
Live Share Grow uses creative nonviolent action to interrupt business-as-usual; invites the 100% to live, share, grow; points to the viable alternatives, and actively participates in local, sustainable, just, and equitable ways of being in the world.
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
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"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
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"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
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"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
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Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
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