Democracy Blast

Guerilla gardening

 

You might remember having read about seed bombs in a previous Democracy Blast--those balls made out of compost and clay that encase wildflower or other seeds.  They are designed to be thrown into barren or neglected open spaces by guerilla gardeners who want to share the greenery.

Well, those guerilla gardeners are acting locally and thinking globally: sprucing up their own neighborhoods and sharing their stories online.  At www.guerrillagardening.org you can read about secret gardeners who sometimes plant in the dead of night in Italy, Romania, Sweden, Austria, France, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, England, Canada, Ireland, Germany, and of course right here in the USA. 

Is there a barren place near you that would benefit from guerilla gardening? 

To discuss guerilla gardening, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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The “spaces between places”

In all cities there are spaces that are “leftover” areas of pavement—vacant, city-owned (but unmaintained) street stubs, dead ends, and alleys.  These unused spaces are called “unaccepted streets” by Departments of Public Works. 

"If you look at the unaccepted streets, it is like heat map of all the areas with health problems, pollution issues, and neglected spaces," says Nicholas de Monchaux,

an assistant professor of architecture and urban design at the University of California, Berkeley. With his students, de Monchaux developed the project Local Code, which maps and analyzes the unused spaces and recommends site-specific designs. Their hope is to convert streets into green spaces, “particularly in the underserved neighborhoods in the shadows of freeways, where unaccepted streets are abundant.”

“When we examined all the leftover spaces in San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Minneapolis — we found the same thing to be true in every city,” de Monchaux says. “You had a whole archipelago of city-owned lots lying fallow. In New York they add up to the size of Central Park and Prospect Park together. It’s a massive untapped resource...” 

 What about unused areas of pavement in your town?  Could you create a better use for them?

To discuss the Local Code efforts, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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Are you doing Earth Hour?

 

Last year people across the world in 88 countries--in 4000 cities and towns--made a simple statement about climate change: they turned off their lights for one hour.  It was the single greatest mass action the world has ever seen. Were you one of those people? 

 

While turning off your non-essential lights for one hour at 8:30-9:30 pm local time on Saturday, March 27 will not make a huge difference in your carbon footprint, the effort is meant to “send a strong message to our political leaders that we want them to take meaningful action on climate change.” 

Want to see the lights go out? Watch this video for the surprisingly moving sight of  international landmarks going dark.  

If you’re ready to learn more or to join in the action, visit The World Wildlife Fund’s www.myearthhour.org.    

To discuss Earth Hour, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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The wealth gap and you

We all know that some people in our country have a great deal of money, while others do not.  And most of us are okay with that, according to recent research by behaviorial economist Dan Ariely, who asked 10,000 people these two questions: 

* What do you think the wealth distribution in the U.S. is? 

* And what do you think is the ideal wealth distribution?

 

The study showed that Americans dramatically underestimate the wealth inequality in our country. In other words, fewer people than we expect have more money than we think they do. 

When asked to estimate, people--whether Republicans or Democrats, low income or high income--suggested that the upper 20 percent own only 68 percent of the wealth.  And when asked what amount would be ideal, they say 33 percent.   

The reality is that the top 20 percent of the people in America have about 85 percent of the wealth.

In a recent interview, Ariely stated “The main lesson for me from this whole study is that when we look at the political arena, we ... have this huge polarization, and yet when we ask people a question that is not tainted by saying Republicans or Democrats -- it's just formed and here are the numbers, and what kind of society do you want to live in -- the answers come out quite close. And for me ... the optimistic outcome of all of this is ... we're much more similar to each other than the political arena plays out how it looks like.”

To discuss wealth inequity, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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Where is your money going?

 

We’re coming into tax-filing season, and you may be interested in taking a gander at just where your money is going to.  Check out an amazing visual representation of our nation’s spending at /www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/.

Since 2004, designer Jess Bachman has been creating and updating a poster to depict the president’s annual budget request--distilling the information into circles that are proportional in size to their spending totals.  The graphic even tracks percentage changes from the previous year. 

Bachman says "It took me a few years to understand the complexity, redundancy, and general obfuscation the government uses in the budget process, then I had to make sense of it all to the viewer."

Has he succeeded? Take a look and see for yourself.

To discuss death and taxes, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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Food stamps in your county and state

The New York Times offers an interactive map of the United States showing rates of food stamp usage. While across the nation, 11.5% is the average number of people receiving food stamps, the areas in dark blue in the map show rates of 50% and above. By rolling your cursor over the map, you can see data specific to each county--including your own.

The data was collected in June 2009, and reveals that “The number of food stamp recipients has climbed by about 10 million over the past two years, resulting in a program that now feeds 1 in 8 Americans and nearly 1 in 4 children.”  

An accompanying article states that “More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.

Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.”

What’s your experience of food stamps in your county?

To discuss food stamps (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), click on the “Comment” link below.  

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Corporations = humans; sky = limit

The Supreme Court decided last week that corporations have First Amendment rights that allow them to spend as much as they choose for ads in political elections, providing they don’t give directly to a candidate. This ruling, which passed 5 to 4, overturns a century-old law that placed limits on political campaign spending by special interests. 

The New York Times states that “The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted.” 

Those worried about the influence of unlimited amounts of corporation money coupled with no restrictions on when their ads can be run, might take heart in knowing that the justices agreed that Congress can require corporations to disclose their spending and to run disclaimers with their advertisements.  

As Susan Liss of the Brennan Center for Justice explains, “In Britain there is a law that requires disclosure of corporate political expenditures to shareholders, with specific numbers, and also requires pre-approval by shareholders before corporations spend their money on elections. And that system seems to have actually limited the amount of money that corporations have contributed in British elections.” 

What do you suppose the odds are that the current Congress would pass such measures? 

To discuss corporate political spending, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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Where to donate: Charity Navigator

If you’re responding to the natural disaster in Haiti or looking for a charitable tax write-off, you may be interested in independent information on charitable organizations.

CharityNavigator.org rates charities based on their organizational efficiency and organizational capacity. It currently rates charities responding to the crisis in Haiti, as well as its usual listings, including an Alphabetical Listing as well as: 

   

10 Most Requested Charities

10 Charities with the Most Consecutive 4-Star Ratings

10 Most Commented Charities

10 Least Reviewed Charities with High Ratings

10 Highly-Rated Charities with Low Paid CEOs

10 Super-Sized Charities

10 Slam-Dunk Charities

10 Charities Drowning in Administrative Costs

10 of the Best Charities Everyone's Heard Of

10 Charities Routinely in the Red

If you are able to, it’s a good time to give.

To discuss donating, click on the “Comment” link below.  

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Talking about money

 People are talking about money: you’ve probably already heard about the MoveYourMoney.info campaign, or seen its clever “It’s a Wonderful Life” mashup video.  Here’s the idea: move your money from the big banks to “smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis.”  The site helps find a local bank based on your zip code, and reports that since its campaign began on Dec. 29, daily traffic has more than tripled on a credit union finding site.   

Another popular (populist?) idea is microfinancing, which takes the loaning and borrowing away from banks and allows those with means to make small loans to those in poverty.  While Muhammad Yunus, who received a Nobel Prize in 2006 for his work, initially focused on third world nations, he expanded his vision to include America, and has inspired similar endeavors.  In addition to Yunus’s Grameen Bank, microfinancing sites include Prosper, Loanio, Fynanz Inc, and the Lending Club.

If you’ve been complaining about those banks that were “too big to fail” and which now seem reluctant to loan out the money they’ve received from US taxpayers, there are ways to put your money where your mouth is. 

To discuss microfinancing, click on the “Comment” link at the bottom of the Blast.  

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Are you in debt?

Meet the blogger of the site FinanciallyFlawed--One Mom’s Quest to Stop the Cycle of Crippling Debt.  She has just started her blog, and has just started digging her family out of credit card debt of nearly $37,000 and student loans that top $138,000+.  She explains how she and her husband racked up the debt, outlining their specific mistakes and the lessons learned from each.

Having taken the brave step of telling the world just how much they owe, she now intends to publicly work toward becoming debt-free, one day and one blog at a time. An early accomplishment: cutting up the credit cards. Log in to watch her progress, cheer her on--or become inspired to tackle your own “debt mountain.”

Or check out how the average U.S. consumer spends their paycheck. Trent, who writes the SimpleDollar is intrigued enough by this image that he intends to offer tips and info on each of the 21 items that make up the average budget--promising at least ten tips for each item, one a day for the next three weeks.  Like the FinanciallyFlawed Mom, he also spells out his earlier money errors that led to his personal “financial armageddon.” 

If you’re in debt, maybe you’ve made getting out of it a New Years resolution...if not, it’s not too late to do so.

To discuss debt, click on the “Comment” link at the bottom of the Blast.  

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