ARTS & FARCES internet

A most remarkable conference, ReVisioning: Building Community for a Sustainable Future, was held this past weekend (26 - 28 April) at Macalester College in my Saint Paul, Minnesota neighborhood.

Following are my notes from the conference. They are incomplete and probably won't make much sense to anyone who wasn't there. I'll try to flesh out the ideas later.

Polly Mann: Taking care of terrorism

Polly Mann is a cofounder of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), a speaker, writer, and tireless activist in many areas of local and national peace and justice issues. Polly's address was only about 30 minutes long and there was no question-and-answer session following. She's a wise woman and I could have listened to her all day.

Terrorism has replaced communism as the Great Enemy.

As the world's largest arms dealer, the United States is in an arms race with itself.

US$800,000 per minute is going to the Pentagon for the next five years.

Polly spoke at some length about the ravages of the depleted uranium the U.S. has used to bomb Afghanistan.

The world doesn't hate us because of our freedoms, but because we deny those freedoms to the rest of the world who have resources that are coveted by global corporations.

Marv Davidov: Introducing Marjorie Kelly

If there's anything progressive going on in the Twin Cities, you can bet Marv Davidov is there. Davidov's rich gravelly voice in public forums has provided a moral compass for me for many years.

The United States has been engaged in a war economy since World War II, marked by a transfer of wealth from workers to multinational defense manufacturers and the already rich.

Marjorie Kelly: ReVisioning the corporation: bringing democracy to our economic system

Marjorie Kelly is a Twin Cities-based journalist and the cofounder/publisher of Business Ethics, a national publication that promotes ethical behavior in the business world. Her latest book, The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy is among the best recent business books.

Our generation's [the baby boomer generation] task is to bring democracy to economics. The purpose of a corporation is to maximize return to shareholders. Corporations do this by paying employees as little as possible. It's our generation's job to make that concept controversial.

We still have an economic aristocracy and we believe the needs of capital come before all other needs.

Kelly spoke briefly in support of the global reporting initiative, a common framework for the voluntary reporting of economic, environmental, and social impact of organization-level activity.

What is the productivity of a stockholder? Stockholders are speculators, not investors. The stock market works like the used car market: proceeds of stock sales go to the previous owner of the stock; less than 1% of "invested" capital goes to the companies that issued the original stock.

Stakeholder empowerment laws have no enforcement provision.

The corporate governance laws regarding the duties of directors need to be changed. Currently most states have laws that read something like, "...the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders...." This needs to be changed by adding the clause, "not at the expense of employees, community, or environment." This is taken directly from Robert Hinkley's "Code for corporate citizenship."

The new corporate paradigm:

• Systems of accountability to groups other than shareholders;
• Employees empowered to impeach a corporation's chief executive;
• Corporations chartered only to serve the public interest.

Panel: Sustaining our civil liberties

Ted Dooley, Alliance for Democracy Ziad Amra, Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Roxana Orrell, National Lawyers Guild

The USA Patriot Act, coupled with individual state versions of the Act's provisions, and Bush's executive orders constitute a power grab by the executive branch under the guise of "safety."

These laws serve to criminalize dissent.

The Minnesota Anti-terrorism Act is currently stalled in conference committee. The Senate bill is mostly harmless, but the House bill is potentially disasterous because:

• It converts generic crimes into terrorism charges if there is "an intent to terrorize";
• Makes it a felony to provide aid to a terrorist, even if you don't know the person you're helping is a terrorist;
• The drivers license provision provides a coding system that can be used to discriminate against non-citizens;
• It contains a provision for roving wiretaps. Roving wiretaps are currently prohibited under federal law, but the House thought it would be a good idea to retain this provision "just in case the federal law changes."

David Korten: Living economies for a living planet

David Korten is the author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World. He is also the president and founder of the People-Centered Development Forum, dedicated to a growing citizen's movement toward a just, inclusive, and sustainable society.

Change will have to come from outside the current system -- from the people.

All of the leaders of the progressive movement are coming from a deep spiritual core. We don't talk about it. Maybe we should.

Our relationship to corporations are based on a false fabric of cultural codes. These cultural codes are taken to be reality, but they are not.

Steps to social transformation:

1. Awakening
2. Living divided no more
3. Forming communities of convergence
4. Building alliances
5. Creating new cultural spaces
6. Building power

The only power money has is that which we give it.

Michael Albert: Participatory economics (and movement building workshop)

Michael Albert is the cofounder of South End Press and Z Magazine. His main activist focus is the creation and nurture of alternative media institutions. His primary focuses have long been developing and popularizing tools for conceptual empowerment and developing and popularizing economic vision and strategy.

Participatory economics overview:

Underling values:

• Equity
• Solidarity
• Diversity
• Participatory self-management

Institutional vehicles:

• Council democracy
• Balanced job complexes
• Remuneration according to effort and sacrifice
• Participatory planning

Markets deny solidarity.

Garbage rises in a competitive environment.

Markets misprice everything because market prices don't reflect true social costs.

Markets reintroduce class division.

Megaphone problem: we preach to the converted because the only people we can reach are those who search for us.

Stickiness problem: we tend to alienate those who have some affinity for what we're doing. We should be able to exert some gravitational force.

Vision problem: the difference between now and 30 years ago is that no everyone knows everything is broken.

Attitude problem: we have a defeatist but elitist attitude. "We're going to lose but we have to 'fight the good fight.'" Hope happens.

Ronnie Dugger: The great reconsideration

Ronnie Dugger edits the Texas Observer, a newspaper that covers issues dealing with race and class and the lives of working people ignored by most daily newspapers.

Ronnie's comments about his recent trip to India were so compelling I took no notes.

Mel Duncan: Entering the heart of my enemy

Mel Duncan is the founder of the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action. His current project is the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

Eight paths into my enemy's heart:

1. Mindfulness: don't just do something, sit there
2. Love: agape, the love of God operating in the human heart
3. Empathy: nonobjectification
4. Interbeing: interconnectedness, commonalities
5. Namaste: I greet the divine within you
6. Dialogue:
7. Forgiveness:
8. Returning good for evil: be humble enough to know that what you're doing might be wrong