consumption

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Modest alderman in Chicago

Author: Kent Busse

Chicago has some news worth sharing.

This is a link to the newspaper article about an alderman elected on (a) his grassroots involvement, (b) limitation of his own salary ($60,000 instead of $110,000), and (c) a promise to serve at most two terms. It is encouraging to see that modesty is sufficiently appealing to carry an election.

As we improve our interpersonal relationships at the local level, the growing circles of voter gentleness will come together to change the tone of the nation. By practicing modesty we inspire (and require) our leaders to be modest to keep up with our sensibilities.

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Arizona, Immigration, and human kindness

Contributed by Kent Busse
(reserving right also to publish elsewhere)

1. Long ago, somewhere else, a child was born in a place that did not really have room to welcome another child; resources stretched very thin.

2. Not so very long ago, that child reached manhood and migrated to a place that seemed to offer more resources. Lacking certain official papers, he was never offered the earning capacity of the local natives, but he had more resources than he had left behind.

3. Quite recently, the new place also saturated its consumption of resources. The man was considered excessive and burdensome, not welcome to the local opportunities and resources of the new place.

4. Suddenly the government of the new place imposed harsh state measures to make the man doubly unwelcome.

5. Finally, individuals and governments surrounding the new place withdrew their commerce and further reduced the resources in the new place. The new place contemplated retaliatory measures of withholding exports from its neighbors.

In every step, everybody suffered.

1. Did the parents freely choose to bring the child into the world?

2. Did the local natives of the new place understand the humanity of the immigrant man? Did they offer equality?

3. Did the society in the new place attempt to share its burdens among all present?

4. Did the government of the new place search for solutions and provide leadership in organizing the sharing?

5. Did the boycotters put themselves in the shoes of the new place long enough to understand why its residents did what they did?

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If my daughters were young enough to play in a sports tournament in Arizona, I would hope first of all that they would not go with an attitude of superiority. If they entertained any thought of teaching, I would expect them to avoid giving offense or patronizing. Finally, I would send them with the assignment of learning.

Even as I ask the boycotters to temper their judgment, I require myself to temper my judgment of the boycotters. Perhaps the government of the new place would temper its judgment of the immigrant, and the immigrant would temper his judgment of the place he left.

This little story is to give immediacy to the masterfully crafted paragraph of the Peace Resources Committee 2010 annual report that ends with the passage

“The tendency to conflict is part of the human condition. This tendency must be forever tended to as one tends a garden. It requires continual study, testing and reexamination.”
 

 

The story is a thread of situations that require being “forever tended to.” It is told to encourage the reader to find a purpose–to do something–relating to some individual step of the sequence. In doing so, may we recall the motto of the Oxfam America mailings:

Go to the people.
Live with them.
Learn from them…

Start with what they know;
Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders,
When the work is done,
The task accomplished,
The people will say,
We have done this ourselves!
                                   Lau Tzu (700 BC)

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Consumerism and Over-Consumption

Author: Breeze Richardson

 

This afternoon Focus Groups were held around areas of concern that those gathered wanted to explore more direct action around; I choose “Liberating the Earth from Consumerism, Over-Consumption and Greed.”

How can we bare witness to these concerns with clear language that’s inviting, not berating?

There are 5 parts to prophetic witness. One might feel led to do just one; or might feel led to do more:
– speak out (Speak Truth to Power)
– build and demonstrate the alternative
– celebrate what around you that is already good
– take symbolic and practical action
– envision

What does it mean to “live a good life” today? How does an individual answer such a question, and find resources to explore & discover new answers?

Resources:
(a list which is in no way exhaustive, but represented by those gathered)

• Living Witness Project (of Britain Yearly Meeting) – to help Meetings learn how to do this corporately
• Friends Testimonies and Economics (a project of Quaker Earthcare Witness) – learning/teaching about our economic policies in a context of ecological impact
• Quaker Institute for the Future, a research initiative which has just published Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy (2009)
• Quaker Earthcare Witness – demonstrating how we can better live with right relations towards the earth; has many online resources on specific issues
• National Council on Churches (NCC) Eco-Justice Department
• Mennonite Creation Care Network – includes resources on connecting to Mennonite farmers, eco-friendly conference/gathering planning, and other initiatives
• NewCommunityProject.org

One particularly interesting action that caught my attention was the use of a Volunteer Fuel Tax Fund. One participant shared the success of his congregation to implement a voluntary tax each participating church member pays to a special fund, equal in amount to their personal consumption of gasoline (so for example, his family pays 50-cents a gallon). The money raised has refurnished the building: new environmentally-friendly windows, better insulation and low-flow toilets, to name a few. Wall cards accompany the renovations, explaining their funding. (Note: another participant mentioned a Quaker initiative that has begun along these lines, called the “Dime-a-Gallon Project“.)

In the end, we authored two-sentences at the direction of Gathering organizers:

We witness… and lament our participation in our economic system, which has led to catastrophic results: over-consumption, unequal distribution of resources, and the destruction of God’s Creation.

We are called to… return to our communities to speak out about the structural economic injustice around us, reduce our ecological footprint, and seek to live in right relationship with all God’s Creation.