519 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2024
    1. To effectively combat the roots of fascism, it is crucial to integrate both horizontal and vertical decentralized decision-making structures.

      for - commons - new definition - pathological conservatism - new definition - benign conservatism - new definition - beneficial conservatism - adjacency - citizen assemblies - cosmolocal - community organization - horizontal and vertical decision-making as cosmolocal - Fair Share Commons - FSC - pathological conservatism - hypocrisy of modern conservatism that cannot acknowledge first nations - TPF as a vehicle for citizen assembly in each ward and district of a city - to - Youtube - Trump won, now what? - Roger Hallam - to - Substack article - - A global history of societal regulation - metacrisis, polycrisis - role of the commons and cosmolocal coordination - Michel Bauwens

      adjacency - between - citizen assemblies - cosmolocal - community organization - citizen assemblies - horizontal and vertical - Fair Share Commons - FSC - town anywhere - TPF - one per city ward or district - progress traps - wicked problem - pathological conservatism - deep conservatism - ECOnomy is a subset of ECOlogy - Modernity has many forms of shallow, pathological conservatism - Indigenous and first nations peoples practice deep, beneficial conservatism - adjacency relationship - One of the biggest progress traps is pathological conservatism when - a technology has become popular and ubiquitous but an unintended consequence becomes exposed - In that case, incumbents who profit from the established supply chain will defend it at great cost, even if the harm it causes becomes increasingly obvious. - They will do this until it reaches a point that the harm is so great that it can no longer be defended. - Often, great harm is done before that point is reached, if it is reached. - Misinformation, gaslighting and fascism can emerge as a form of pathological conservatism in an attempt to preserve the harmful aspect of the status quo. - Fossil fuels, internal combustion engines and the climate change they cause are an example of this, creating a wicked problem in which those trying to solve the problem are also contributing to it - Citizen assemblies are a bottom up response and counterweight to centralized power that is driving pathological conservatism - In contrast to the pathological conservatism, environmental awareness is a practice of benign and beneficial conservatism - the conservation of our natural environment - In fact, many who call themselves conservatives and nationalists are hypocritical because - if they went further in their conservativism logic, they would have to acknowledge the first nations people who came before them - The natural resources that were part of indigenous peoples lives for millenia that colonialists have built their entire fortune on represents even greater degree of conservatism, yet the hypocrisy is that - modern conservatives often cannot acknowledge this reality of a deeper form of conservatism as it threatens their false entitlement - This brings into question their claim of practicing conservatism - pathological conservatives act as if the ECOlogy is subordinate to the ECOnomy when in fact, the ECOnomy cannot exist without a functioning ECOlogy - citizen assemblies can be implemented in each ward and district of a large city - On top of these, Fair Share Commons and community cooperatives can be built as formal structures to drive specific projects - In order for participatory democracy to work effectively requires education on Deep Humanity and conflict resolution, otherwise risks low resiliency due to internal conflicts and derailment of vision - In order to scale, it requires both horizontal and vertical components or organization. This implies a cosmolocal strategy: - horizontal decision-making with local group is local, whilst - vertical decision-making with non-local groups based on broader issues is cosmo - A global Tipping Point Festival that employs social tipping point theory to emerge a global network of citizen assemblies / commons assemblies / people's assemblies in each ward and district of a city to relocate healthy power back to the people

      to - Youtube - Trump won, now what? - a love-based approach to replace power-based approach for dealing with fascism and polarization - Roger Hallam - https://hyp.is/wUDpaKsAEe-DM9fteMUtzw/www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiKWCHAcS7E - Substack article - A global history of societal regulation - metacrisis, polycrisis - role of the commons and cosmolocal coordination - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/wlywbqkTEe-ROXfhSmA3bA/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/a-global-history-of-societal-regulation

  2. Oct 2024
  3. Jul 2024
  4. Jun 2024
    1. In his 1926 work, The Meaning of a Liberal Education, heargued that education’s task is to “reorient the individual, to enablehim to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, toplace him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals.”

      Is it possible to be above one's own system of beliefs and ideas? Doesn't the system make them a product of it? Evolving from a base at best?

      The idea sounds lovely, but is it possible anthropologically?

    2. As Leon Fink wrote of that period,“education ranked . . . high on the agenda” of Progressive intellectu-als and reformers. Considering the logic of reformers he added: “Ifthe people were to seize their democratic birthright for the greatergood . . . they must engage their higher faculties of reason” and be“schooled in sense of civic duty.” This would make them a “demo-cratic public.”8

      Check Fink to see where the seeds of this idea of linking education and democracy sprouted...

      TL's references for this:<br /> Leon Fink, Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 13–14; Robert B. Fisher, “The People’s Institute of New York City, 1897–1934: Culture, Progressive Democracy, and the People” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1974), 1, 9; Hugh S. Moorhead, “The Great Books Movement,” (PhD diss. University of Chicago, 1964), 110–111.

    3. Thosebarren times caused A. J. Liebling to designate Chicago “The SecondCity” for its lesser achievements in relation to New York City.
  5. May 2024
  6. Apr 2024
  7. Mar 2024
    1. John Adams,heralded the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, asan earlier and stronger model for an American patrician-patriarch.

      This adds additional weight to the concept of "city upon a hill" which was highlighted in a speech by John Winthrop.

  8. Feb 2024
  9. Jan 2024
  10. Dec 2023
    1. This interconnection of the individual SoNeCs with the other SoNeCs connectsabout 700 households. This is important for joint decision-making on issues that affect several neigh-bourhoods
      • for: recommendation - SONEC - fractal city strategy

      • recommendation: SONEC fractal city strategy

        • For everyone in Living Cities Earth group, we can each start SONECs in every ward of our respective city.
        • For my city of Cape Town, there are 150+ wards
        • There are neighboring rich, middle class and disenfranchised communities
        • One of the major projects will be to develop working relationships between the disenfranchised and neighboring middle class or wealthy communities
        • Indyweb / Indranet people-centered, interpersonal open learning system can be employed
    2. The basic SoNeC framework is designed with European values, e.g. tolerance, mutual respect,non-discrimination, solidarity and gender equality in mind.
      • for: SONEC - expanding globally, Global North South sister city program

      • comment

        • For globally expanding SONEC, it is also important to consider other cultural values outside the European lens and to also address the structural inequalities of colonialism
        • For a globalized SONEC, one suggestion is to create a sister city program based on reparation from colonial injustice and integrating a climate justice component
  11. Nov 2023
      • for: regenerative cities, living cities, urban permaculture, Pocket hoods, relocalization, Mark Lakeman, Portland villages, people-oriented city-villages, city-village, pocket neighborhood, communititecture, urban planning, urban planning - city villages

      • summary

        • Mark gives a tour of his work at his company, Communittecture in applying permaculture principles to redesign communities in urban environments.
        • The central focus is designing based on commons principles of actually creating lived environments where healthy socialization is a primary design objective.
        • The design involves creating common areas that residents can share, from common food gardens to many mini-parks and recreation areas where families can gather.
        • The modern community has alienated socialization, creating groups of juxtapositioned strangers. There are two different design categories:
          • retrofitting existing neighborhoods
          • designing greenfield new neighborhoods
      • reference

  12. Oct 2023
    1. these villages are so old, they are  working on the old patterns. And the old pattern,   which is the pattern that I am promoting, is  that land management is based on the watershed
      • for: redistrict cities - based on watersheds, watershed - urban permaculture, urban climate action, climate action - urban scale

      • summary

    1. Bangladeshs Hauptstadt Dhaka ist von der Erhitzung besonders schwer betroffen. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit von Hitzewellen hat sich verdreißigfacht. Der Verlust von Grünflächen führt zu Hitzeinseln. Viele Bewohner:innen wurden von Folgen der Klimakatastrphe in die Stadt getrieben. Arbeitende mit wenig Einkommen leiden besonders unter Hitze und Verdienstausfall. Interview mit Bushra Afreen, Kopruduzentin des Films Moshari, die jetzt chief heat officer für Nord-Dhaka ist.

      https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/03/only-rich-can-bear-heat-dhaka-bangladesh-battling-extreme-weather-climate

  13. Sep 2023
      • for: futures - food production, futures - water production, desalination, ocean solar farm, floating solar farm, floating city
      • title: An interfacial solar evaporation enabled autonomous double-layered vertical floating solar sea farm
      • author: Pan Wu, Xuan We, Huimin Yu, Jingyuan Zhao, Yida Wang, Kewu Pi, Gary Owens, Haolan Xu
      • date: Oct. 1, 2023
      • source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1385894723041839?via%3Dihub#f0005
      • comment
        • Since this simple design integrates fresh water and food production, it can be integrated as a module for a floating city.
  14. Aug 2023
    1. contacting your city council members running for office yourself donating to projects like black space and getting involved in zoning board meetings that could help change the density and makeup of the 00:20:08 communities where you live
      • for: zoning, city council, re-zoning, low carbon city, walkable city
    2. according to project drawdown's walkable city solutions the 00:17:09 factors that make cities and neighborhoods most walkable include density of homes workplaces and other spaces wide well-lit tree-lined sidewalks and walkways safe and direct pedestrian Crossings and connectivity 00:17:22 with mass transit this can be applied to the suburbs as well
      • for: project drawdown - walkable city, walkable city
    1. the victims that suffer under over consumption over 00:10:38 depletion and environmental degradation they don't really have a say so we want a fair World At Large we need to start with Fair countries and with Fair countries the prerequisite is fair cities what's needed here too is direct 00:10:51 mechanisms by which they're people can have their voices heard can hold Elites accountable and fundamentally have an opportunity to partake in the designing of the rules of the institutions and of 00:11:05 the outlying sort of overarching structures of their cities and therefore we move from cities to countries and countries to the World At Large
      • for: TPF, cosmolocal, community as building block, city as building block, W2W, quote, quote - Brian Wong, citizen assemblies, bottom-up strategy
      • paraphrase
      • quote
        • the victims that suffer under over consumption over depletion and environmental degradation don't really have a say
        • so we want a fair World
        • At Large we need to start with Fair countries
          • and with Fair countries the prerequisite is
          • fair cities
        • what's needed here too is direct mechanisms by which
          • the people can have their voices heard
          • can hold Elites accountable and
          • fundamentally have an opportunity to partake in the designing of
            • the rules of the institutions and
            • of the outlying sort of overarching structures of their cities and therefore
          • we move from cities to countries and
          • from countries to the World At Large
    1. the way we think about a decentralized city is that it's not all in one place um and so if you know you think about cities being built around the dominant technology of the 00:10:37 era uh for the past century that was cars we want to build cities around the dominant technology of this century which is the internet and blockchains and we think how that works is that people will be connected through this 00:10:51 mesh network online and through the dow but then they will actually live in you know physical locations that are spread out all over the world you can think of each of those as like a neighborhood in the city
      • for: definition, definition - decentralized city, decentralized city, network city, definition - network city, question, question - decentralized city, question - network city
      • definition
        • decentralized city
        • network city
          • a virtual city united by rules of governance for its members via the internet but with physical buildings and infrastructure all over the planet. Each physical location is considered a neighborhood of the decentralized or network city
      • questions
        • does this mean that each networked city is really only defined by its membership and virtual governance framework?
        • these physical settlements would still have to abide by the bylaws of the actual physical location (ie. ward or district of a city) they are located in
      • for: city DAO, decentralized city, intentional community, intentional communities, Jonathan Willis, Cabin DAO
  15. Jul 2023
    1. You cannot hopeto bribe or twist,thank God! theBritish journalist.But, seeing whatthe man will dounbribed, there’sno occasion to.—Humbert Wolfe, epigram from The Uncelestial City (1930
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1_RKu-ESCY

      Lots of controversy over this music video this past week or so.

      In addition to some of the double entendre meanings of "we take care of our own", I'm most appalled about the tacit support of the mythology that small towns are "good" and large cities are "bad" (or otherwise scary, crime-ridden, or dangerous).

      What are the crime statistics per capita about the safety of small versus large?

      Availability bias of violence and crime in the big cities are overly sampled by most media (newspapers, radio, and television). This video plays heavily into this bias.

      There's also an opposing availability bias going on with respect to the positive aspects of small communities "taking care of their own" when in general, from an institutional perspective small towns are patently not taking care of each other or when they do its very selective and/or in-crowd based rather than across the board.

      Note also that all the news clips and chyrons are from Fox News in this piece.

      Alternately where are the musicians singing about and focusing on the positive aspects of cities and their cultures.

    1. In der Liberation bezweifelt der Architekt Albert Levi, dass der Plan der Stadt Paris für die Klimaanpassung ausreichend sein wird, um eine unerträgliche Erhitzung und insbesondere die Bildung von Urbanen Hitze-Inseln zu verhindern. Geplant sind 60 Hektar zusätzlicher grünräume, die Entsiegelung von 30 bis 65% aller Parzellen, ein Verbot von Hochhäusern und des Fans von Bäumen. Levi kritisiert, dass die Verdichtungspolitik der vergangenen Jahre nicht gestoppt wird und eine Intensivierung des Tourismus geplant ist. Der Artikel verweist auf wichtige Dokumente zur Vorbereitung der Klimaanpassung in Paris. https://www.liberation.fr/idees-et-debats/tribunes/paris-face-au-rechauffement-climatique-mauvais-plan-20230630_FEFN6PDVJJCXJK2NYAFIE2YZFU/

  16. Jun 2023
    1. Henry Grabar schillert in einem neuen Buch ausführlich die Folgen des parkens für amerikanische Städte. In den USA wird mehr Fläche für das Parken als für das wohnen verwendet. Allein um Houston in Texas herum wurde in den letzten Jahrzehnten eine Fläche, die dem Land Belgien entspricht, versiegelt. Die verkehrsemissionen sind der größte Teil des enormen amerikanischen treibhausgasausstoßes. Das Buch behandelt gründlich alle Aspekte des Themas und stellt Alternativen vor.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/26/paved-paradise-book-americans-cars-climate-crisis

    1. Vergaberecht, Langsamkeit der Verwaltung und Unterfinanzierung des öffentlichen Verkehrs sind haupthindernisse bei der Umstellung einer Stadt wie Wuppertal auf klimaneutralität. Interview mit dem grünen Wuppertaler Oberbürgermeister Schneidewind, der zuvor das Wuppertal-institut geleitet hat. https://taz.de/Gruene-Politiker-ueber-Wandel-der-Stadt/!5938576/

  17. May 2023
  18. Apr 2023
  19. Mar 2023
  20. Feb 2023
  21. Jan 2023
    1. Weread, for example, of Philistine incursions into the hill country, toMichmash in Benjamin (1 Samuel 13:23), and the Rephaim Valley nearJerusalem (2 Samuel 5:17–22). It was in one of these border disputes thatthe city at Khirbet Qeiyafa was conquered and destroyed.
    2. Ekron was destroyed in603 BCE by the Babylonians.
    3. Gath was destroyed at the end of the 9th centuryBCE by Hazael, the Aramean king of Damascus
    1. Moreover, green urban ideas can spread virally on the web and often are the result of city interactions (a new network, CITYPROTOCOL, has become a global promoter of best practices). The bike-share idea began decades ago in Latin America, but today is a popular option in hundreds of cities on every continent.

      !- example : Cosmolocal organizations scaling city impacts - CITYPROTOCOL - https://cityprotocol.cat/ - The City Anatomy, an analogy to the human anatomy and its dynamic physiology, offers a common language describing the city ecosystem as three key system elements: - a set of physical structures (Structure); - the living entities that make up a city’s society (Society); and - the flow of interactions between them (Interactions).

  22. Oct 2022
  23. Sep 2022
    1. A curb cut is authority granted to you by the owner of the road (often the state government) to make a physical change to your property and the road to allow customers access. Curb cuts alter the properties of traffic management at a block-by-block engineering level.

      Definition of "Curb Cut"

  24. Aug 2022
  25. Jun 2022
    1. Lois Weber<br /> - First woman accepted to Motion Picture Director's Association, precursor of Director's Guild<br /> - First directors committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences<br /> - Mayor of Universal City<br /> - One of the highest paid and most influential directors in Hollywood of her day<br /> - one of first directors to form her own production company

      See also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Weber

    1. This isn't fantasy, anymore; it really happening. The floating city has six integrated systems: #zerowaste and #circularsystems, closed-loop water systems, food, net-zero energy, innovative #mobility, and coastal habitat regeneration. These interconnected systems will generate 100 percent of the required operational energy on-site through floating and rooftop #photovoltaicpanels.

  26. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. Every morning now brought its regular duties—shops were to be visited; some new part of the town to be looked at; and the pump-room to be attended, where they paraded up and down for an hour, looking at everybody and speaking to no one.

      For a comparative analysis of Northanger Abbey's and Pride and Prejudice's depictions of the city in relation to contemporary ideas of the city "as moral pollution," see Celia Eason's essay, "Austen’s Urban Redemption: Rejecting Richardson’s View of the City." Easton shows us how characters like Isabella Thorpe and Mr. Bennet defy contemporary ideas that women were helpless in the city or that remaining ignorant of the city proved morally useful, respectively. As Catherine's character will prove, knowing how to navigate the city and its traps is essential for any young woman.

      Citation: Easton, Celia. "Austen’s Urban Redemption: Rejecting Richardson’s View of the City." Persuasions, no. 26, 2004.

  27. May 2022
    1. Accordingly, to allow for a peaceful solution, payment in the form of reparations or a substantial commitment to support the global hyper-response burden on the part of the Western world may hasten a geopolitical shift toward an era of cooperation around the shared threat.

      A bottom up approach can be tried instead in which trust bonds are automatically stronger - form citizen sister city groups between the global north and the global south of each state as well as local north and local south within each city

  28. Apr 2022
    1. Humans’ tendency to“overimitate”—to reproduce even the gratuitous elements of another’s behavior—may operate on a copy now, understand later basis. After all, there might begood reasons for such steps that the novice does not yet grasp, especially sinceso many human tools and practices are “cognitively opaque”: not self-explanatory on their face. Even if there doesn’t turn out to be a functionalrationale for the actions taken, imitating the customs of one’s culture is a smartmove for a highly social species like our own.

      Is this responsible for some of the "group think" seen in the Republican party and the political right? Imitation of bad or counter-intuitive actions outweights scientifically proven better actions? Examples: anti-vaxxers and coronavirus no-masker behaviors? (Some of this may also be about or even entangled with George Lakoff's (?) tribal identity theories relating to "people like me".

      Explore this area more deeply.

      Another contributing factor for this effect may be the small-town effect as most Republican party members are in the countryside (as opposed to the larger cities which tend to be more Democratic). City dwellers are more likely to be more insular in their interpersonal relations whereas country dwellers may have more social ties to other people and groups and therefor make them more tribal in their social interrelationships. Can I find data to back up this claim?

      How does link to the thesis put forward by Joseph Henrich in The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous? Does Henrich have data about city dwellers to back up my claim above?

      What does this tension have to do with the increasing (and potentially evolutionary) propensity of humans to live in ever-increasingly larger and more dense cities versus maintaining their smaller historic numbers prior to the pre-agricultural timeperiod?

      What are the biological effects on human evolution as a result of these cultural pressures? Certainly our cultural evolution is effecting our biological evolution?

      What about the effects of communication media on our cultural and biological evolution? Memes, orality versus literacy, film, radio, television, etc.? Can we tease out these effects within the socio-politico-cultural sphere on the greater span of humanity? Can we find breaks, signs, or symptoms at the border of mass agriculture?


      total aside, though related to evolution: link hypercycles to evolution spirals?

  29. Feb 2022
    1. So to attract newcomers, towns have attempted a dizzying array of stunts and initiatives.

      Have they considered consolidation? Abandon three or four cities to aggregate into one?

    2. Then, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln pulled the ultimate Manifest Destiny power move with the Homestead Act.

      When pushing through ideas like the Homestead Act of 1862, one needs to additionally consider the long arc of history and plan for secondary level changes in decades or centuries hence. It may have been an economic boom for 50 years or so (and shouldn't giving away all that land account for something like that?) but what happens when that economic engine dies from lack of planning?

      Could the land and space be given back to indigenous peoples again? Could it be given to immigrant populations which might have different economic drivers for their lives and concerns?

  30. Jan 2022
  31. Nov 2021
  32. Sep 2021
    1. re had evolved, which the propagandists of discipline regarded with dismay. Josiah Tucker, the dean of Gloucester, declared in 1745 that "the lower class of people" were utterly degenerated. Foreigners (he sermonized) found "the common people of our populous cities to be the most abandoned, and licentious wretches on earth

      Such brutality and insolence, such debauchery and extravagance, such idleness, irreligion, cursing and swearing, and contempt of all rule and authority ... Our people are drunk with the cup of liberty.

      This sounds eerily like some of the same sorts of fears, uncertainties, and doubt that middle America has about our bigger cities. Though I'll note that broadly they feel like they're the party of "liberty" now.

      This is an interesting data point in the long-running contention between the city and the countryside that seems to dominate large swaths of human history.

  33. Aug 2021
  34. Jul 2021
    1. Anita: Of those occasions immigration never picked, and never gave them to them... Chicago's a sanctuary city.Rodolfo: No, Chicago's a sanctuary city, yeah. That's why I don't understand why I was picked up. The day I got picked up, I was driving to work. I parked my car and out of nowhere a Ford truck, it was unmarked truck, they didn't even have the DHS seal on it. I didn't understand it, because I even told them all, "Isn't this a sanctuary city? Can you guys do this, is this against my Constitutional rights? I'm not that sure, not that well-educated in that aspect of it, but here, give me a book, I'll read it and I'll tell you what it is. I'm not stupid bro." That's why they separated me from the other people I was with, because it wasn't only Mexicans that I was with. I was with somebody from... I was with two Somalians.Rodolfo: They were brothers actually, two Somalians. I told everybody, "Man, don't sign anything, don't talk, don't say anything. Just tell them you want a lawyer and that's it.” I remember they told me, "Shut up," and they put me in a different cell, because I kept on telling everybody not to sign anything. Yeah, that's what I didn't understand—I didn't understand how they were able to go get me, but as I understood then and now, obviously federal laws are always gonna trump state laws. That's in the door, that's why you still see the dispensary in Colorado get raided, because it's a federal offense, and not state offense. I was literally a federal walking broken law.Anita: That's sad.Rodolfo: That's the way I saw it. Even though I'm cool, I'm all right and in Chicago, a sanctuary, but that's only state. They can come and just tear the place up into whatever they want because they're the government. And we can't do anything about it because I'm not from here.Anita: I'm gonna have to go in another room, can we pause for a second?Rodolfo: Yeah.Sergio: So, after you were detained, how was your experience? What happened?Rodolfo: After I was detained, I've got to say my experience going through the immigration, it was something I had never experienced in my life. I mean, I was never deprived of my freedom. And it wasn't because I committed an actual crime. I didn't go and take somebody's laptop, or I didn't go into a store with a loaded gun and ask for money. No, it was one of the most horrible experiences I've ever been through. It was more their idea of housing me because I'm not from there or it was...Rodolfo: [Pause]. I remember when I first got picked up, they took me to Wisconsin—I'm sorry, they took me to Rock Island, Illinois—for processing. That was the processing center.

      Time in the US, arrests, detention

    1. Anne: Were you living in that rural area before you left?Juan: No, before I left, I was living here in Mexico City, but not in the center. I was living in the outside of the center, where they were barely making houses. In a way it is, as well, rural parts because the conditions that we lived in weren't the best. We did have a roof over our heads and we did have food, but things could have been better when I was younger.

      Mexico before the US, Mexican childhood, Memories

    1. Anne: Yeah.Ben: Them shelters can't possibly hold all them people, they can't. And so, all these people running around—they're running around the monument right now—laying there around. I see them laying around, the same people laying on the streets. But here in Mexico City, it's not that bad. You go to the border and the border cities where all along the Texas border, those are main dumping grounds for ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. All these border detentions that are on the border states, they're daily buses are driving and dumping people off. Detentions from up north, they wait until they fill up a plane, or planes, then they ship them. But here, they catch. It's every day they're dumping people. And there’s gotta be something done about that. I think that there's assistance for just about any and everything else. I do think that it would be in the best interest of the government to assist deportees that are coming back. It would probably save them a lot of money—it'd probably save them more to get them home and give them a little bit of cash, give them a bus ticket home to where they're from, and it would be a lot less expensive than all the chaos that's going on right now.Anne: Seems that the US also has really ignored the whole problem, the families that they're breaking up.Ben: Yeah.Anne: You've thought about that, in terms of US policy, ways that they can eliminate the hardship that your family is going through because you're here?Ben: Yeah.Anne: I mean not just the financial, emotional but everything. And it seems like it’s not even in the equation.Ben: Yes, that's true, that's not even in the equation. [Pause]. That's tough. But yes, I think [Pause] that [Pause] they're not looking at individual cases when looking at this immigration issue. I mean if they really, if the immigration person were really doing their job, then the judge did his job and really take the time to look at each individual case, some of these separations wouldn't happen. But they're not doing that, to me they're just trying to pile up numbers. I know many a case where…Just an example, one gentleman, taking care of his family, has residency, he's a legal resident. One DWI and it's over with, he's gone.Anne: He's a legal resident?Ben: A legal resident. One DWI and that's it, he's gone. And I've known of others that had up to three and they're still there. I know some that have felonies and they're still there. Then one DWI, that's not being fair. The biggest injustice I think is going after all these Dreamers and using the information that they filled out on their DACA paperwork to go track them down. I agree that there has to be some type of people should be picked up, but they're not chasing those people. They're going for the easy numbers because, you know what? Those guys they don't have paperwork where they can go pick them up, they’re not going to school here, going there. It's harder to catch them, so you know what? We can drum up 10-15,000 people right here, beef our numbers up. We got the addresses, let's just go get them.Ben: And that's kind of what they're doing, not really doing their job. Just to say that “We're doing something.” With 9/11, I remember that they, within the first few days, 20 something hundred arrests that they were attributing as terrorist arrests. But you know who they were picking up? They were picking up Mexicans most of them. It was not 20 something hundred Middle Easterners. But regardless, they were numbers. They had to show that they were doing something. But that's that [Chuckles].Ben: The US, there's a lot that they could be doing, because they can deport 100,000, but they know they gotta replace those 100,000 for the workforce. One thing I know is I know the ins and outs of labor in the US. That is one thing that I do know. And I do know that there's unwritten policies that look the other way, look the other way while we get this done. We need this done, look the other way. Hurricane Katrina was one, we had immigration, immigration was about the only police patrolling the area at the time and they weren't bothering anybody—it was hands off until they get this cleaned up. And once all the toxic clean-up was out of the way, then they started to enforce, but still not full force again.Ben: So, there's a lot to the government, part to blame there. Instead of locking them up, they should really create some type of labor program.Anne: People can come and go.Ben: People can come, instead of coming across and, to me, instead of somebody going to work over there and pay $6,000 to a coyote, they could pay $1,500 at a processing center to apply and get placed in a job by the US government legally. But you know what? US government don't wanna do that, because they want to keep them costs down. And so, does private business, they need to keep them costs down. It's like, would you like to pay $30 for a Big Mac? [Laughs].Anne: You’re saying that McDonald's is just using a lot of undocumented and paying them really?Ben: Well the whole concept of migrant labor, the migrant labor force, is to keep the cost of products down and housing as well. If it wasn't for migrant labor and this underground labor networks that are operating, a $250,000 house would've probably cost you a million. And a lot of people wouldn't be able to, a lot of people can't afford a $200,000 house [Chuckles].Anne: No. Well I thank you very much.Ben: Thank you all for coming, coming to help us out and spread the news.Anne: You’ve probably been asked this question, but do you consider yourself an American? A Mexican?Ben: You know, honestly deep inside, American. That's how I've always felt. But right now, after this happened, it's like have you ever, there was a book called The Man with No Country, are you familiar with that?Anne: Yeah.Ben: That's, when I was deported, that's the first thing that, that's what came to my mind, The Man with No Country, not here, not there, not accepted here, not accepted over there. And when I got here it's like, no paperwork, no drivers, no identification, and I had a harder time getting a driver's license, getting my voter registration—which is the main source of ID here—the toughest time here then I did getting ID in the United States. And I was illegal in the United States and I was able to, anything I needed, I could get over there. And here, I'm here, I had a hard time. It took me a few months.Anne: It's really too bad.Ben: Yeah. Kind of rough. I don't know if it had been easier here, in the big city, but over there it was pretty rough, hard getting around.Anne: Well, I wish you the best of luck.Ben: Oh, thank you—Anne: I think that you're, you think you're going to be fine, so I think you're going to be fine. And you must be very proud of your family, they seem really great.Ben: Oh, I am, they're going, they're moving forward, that was the purpose of heading that way.

      Reflections

  35. Jun 2021
    1. Anita: How old are you Ivan?Ivan: How old? I'm twenty-seven years old.Anita: You were born in Mexico?Ivan: Yes. I was born in Mexico.Anita: Where in Mexico?Ivan: In the city of Mexico.

      Mexico, before the US, Mexican childhood

  36. May 2021
    1. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter--set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call 'the proles'. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
  37. Mar 2021
  38. Feb 2021
  39. Jan 2021
    1. (c) The warning for annual and special City meetings shall, by separate articles, specifically indicate the business to be transacted, including the offices and the questions to be voted upon. The warning also shall contain any legally binding article or articles requested by 10 percent of the registered voters of the City. Petitions requesting that an article or articles be placed on the warning shall be filed with the City Clerk on or before the filing deadline set forth in 17 V.S.A. § 2642(a)(3). (Amended 2005, No. M-7, § 4; 2007, No. M-5, § 2; 2017, No. M-10, § 2, eff. May 30, 2017.)

      Barre City

      Referendums

  40. Dec 2020
  41. Oct 2020
  42. Sep 2020
  43. Aug 2020