It's The Little Things...

"All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small." - Lao-Tzu

We finally made the switch from regular laundry detergent made from petrochemicals to soap nuts (actually, soap berries). We have yet to actually try them but will likely be doing our laundry for the first time with them tomorrow, so look forward to a report on how well they worked for us. I would ultimately like to grow our own soap berries, but we're looking at waiting anywhere from two to seven years before a tree produces the fruit, and we don't have a definite permanent or even long-term residence right now with graduate school still in the scenario for each of us for years to come. Even still, if I'm going to buy something to wash my clothes that comes from somewhere else, I would rather take the naturally grown product that uses no petrochemicals than the conventional petro-based detergents. My hope is to eventually switch from a washing machine to doing laundry by hand in the tub, but for now we're taking small steps and acclimating.

We've also taken smaller steps toward replacing electric appliances with human-powered versions. We found a hand-crank food processor that we're going to try. It's plastic, which isn't great, but at least it doesn't require electricity to run. We need to get a better hand mixer to replace our poorly designed one, but otherwise I actually enjoy using it because it gives me a little bit of a workout in the process and is a bit cathartic (although frustrating with our current poorly designed mixer). My hope is to find human-powered ways to do things while still using appropriate technology to do them efficiently.

We've started buying a little more local food and hope to increase this. In conjunction, we've agreed to limit our meat consumption (which has big negative environmental impacts and is an expensive part of the food budget) to no more than three pounds a week and try to find other ways of getting complete proteins from plant-based sources. If we can stretch out meat effectively through stir-frying and other creative meal preparation, we can return to more ethical, humane, and healthy meat purchasing practices that support the local, non-corporate farms even on a very limited budget.

All of this and more isn't much now, but we hope it will add up. We're going to try square foot gardening to grow food. We're also going to try canning and other non-refrigeration preservation techniques to tackle our biggest energy drain: refrigeration. This will be a challenge as renters, but not impossible. Suggestions and advice are always welcome!

On Corporate Power, Rights of Nature, and my Advocacy Work

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey

I had the great fortune of having to read Ted Nace's book Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy for my Political Economy and Sustainability course in graduate school. I really appreciated how Nace laid out the corporate legacy and history in both America and our English roots. So much of the Revolutionary War and the original hope for our new nation was to reject corporate power and restrict rather than enable corporations. That our Constitution doesn't even mention corporations was an alternative to the original discussion around outright banning them. Originally corporations were restricted to very specific charters that could be revoked, couldn't own stock in other corporations, and were more place-based.

Over time in our nation the corporations have found ways to use the Constitution (such as in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in which railroad tied Supreme Court justices granted corporations personhood based on a perversion of the Civil War amendment meant to give freed slaves (well, male anyway) equal protection and due process) to give corporations more rights and power than the people. Nace gives great insight into the how and why of this rise of corporate power.

I also recently attended a Daniel Pennock Democracy School session in my state where I learned more about the history and consequences of the rise of corporate power and how to work against it with rights-based and place-based organizing. I strongly recommend if you can attend a session, or if you need to organize to fight corporate power in your community consider arranging for a Democracy School. The instructors did a great job of presenting more of the how and why, but also the consequences for the people and the rich history of how corporate power and even our Constitution are contrary to the principles upon which our nation was originally founded.

What I have come to recognize is that for all of the social justice and sustainability work that I would like to do or am doing, a couple of the root causes are corporate power (the excesses and reckless abandon of corporations has a devastating impact not only on our communities but our environment, which is an important part of our community) and the lack of defining law to check corporate power and spell out inalienable rights of nature in a way that the community can defend against abuses against nature. I'm hoping to rework my Theory of Change and really return again to focusing on corporate power as a root cause while also trying to deal with specific symptomatic issues, as well as adding rights of nature as a crucial core advocacy responsibility. I need to consider my personal actions, too, that enable corporations to thrive and continue repressing and how I can reduce my contribution to the problem while I find ways to help build defining law that can return our nation to one that sees the inherent harm in corporate power and restricts rather than recklessly permits corporate power to be the rule of law.