Equalogy

Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

Sarah van Gelder, executive editor of YES! Magazine interviewed Rebecca Adamson about how to fix our nation’s little economy screw-up.  She had some pretty profound things to say, I highlighted a few here for you, but I seriously recommend reading the whole interview.

Adamson is a Cherokee, and founder of First Nations Development Institute and First Peoples Worldwide.  She also works with grassroots and tribal communities, sits on the boards of the Corporation for Enterprise Development and the Calvert School Investment Fund, and is an adviser to the United Nations on rural development.

Sarah: When you look ahead at the coming months, perhaps years, of economic downturn, what do you see coming, and what does indigenous experience teach us about what we should be doing?

President Obama assumes that through more spending we can stimulate the financial sector. But why would we want to save something that had no productivity for human life? Until we move away from that paradigm, I don’t hold out too much optimism for the next months, or the next years, or even the next seven generations.

Sarah: So what is an economy for?

Rebecca: The economy used to be about livelihoods and the provision of a household, but we’ve lost that purpose. We have created an economic system with a goal of material wealth, rather than human development.

Sarah: Sharing is hard when people fear that there isn’t enough to go around.

Rebecca: It is an obligation to share. So you design the economic system with an emphasis on sharing.

In modern U.S. society, individual property rights are treated as exclusive. If I own something, man, you can’t even put your foot on it. This ownership paradigm is about excluding people from resources because you’re afraid you’re going to run out.

Sarah: People are fearful because the things that they thought they could count on—retirement, or a job, or the value of their house—turn out to be unreliable. How can we move away from a fear-based system at a time when people have the most reasons to be fearful?

Rebecca: This is where I think indigenous people really hold a key: In their economies, there is a general safety net for all. There is no homelessness or grinding poverty. There is a band of general affluence and well-being which no one falls below.

We keep going into this paradigm of scarcity because fear is good for the capitalistic system. If you want to drive consumption, you’ve got to be fear based.

But God is in the space and silence. That is where it’s sacred. You look up on a starry night, and you feel yourself unfold, and that silence is where God is.

When people are consumed with filling all their space with stuff, and all silence with noise, you lose that sacredness. And then they are driven with consumption, consumption, consumption. The shopping mall becomes the cathedral. There you have capitalism. Even though it might be really good for the bottom line, it’s not good for a society.

We have to go back to the understanding that some things are sacred and cannot be profitized. No one owns Mother Earth. And living, breathing creations cannot be thrown away, or “externalized.” We have to be willing to pay the full cost for everything we use.

She ends with this…

What makes scarcity self-fulfilling? Fear. The more you’re fearful, the more you go out and buy. And pretty soon you run out of money and go into debt, and pretty soon the planet runs out of natural resources and places to put all the garbage.

Maintain the stance of abundance through tough times and through good times by having a spiritual base and good values—by caring about something other than yourself. That’s how you maintain abundance.

Abundance comes not from stuff. In fact, stuff is an indication of non-abundance. Abundance is in the sacred; it’s in the connection of love. We will find abundance through hard times when we find each other.

Amazing.

I’m not as into health care coverage as I should be (considering I’m a new college grad), but I thought I’d present a smattering of blogs and news sites that are telling the truth and making some great points about whether or not abortion will have a future in health care reform.

First the lies:

Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check found Fox News spewing lies about how if health care plans include abortion, providers will be forced to perform them.

Planned Parenthood says, not true.

Current law already protects individuals from having to perform abortions if doing so violates their religious or moral beliefs. There is nothing in any of the health care reform proposals that would change current law or would require an individual health care provider to perform abortions.

Jamison Foser at Media Matters debunks the myth that tax-payers will be funding abortion (or why it shouldn’t matter if they do).

The idea that taxpayers shouldn’t pay for insurance that covers medical services they don’t support is fundamentally incompatible with the very concept of insurance. If every interest group wields veto power over the medical care insurance can cover, insurance simply can’t work. If there is a reason to grant such veto power only to those who would use it to prevent insurance coverage of abortions, reporters like Matthews haven’t explained it. (And, no, public opinion does not present such a reason, as recent polling showing strong public support for women’s reproductive health coverage makes clear.)

Everything I have read so far points out over and over again that the majority of health care plans DO cover abortion, and taking that away, will take away a huge part of women’s reproductive rights.

This summary by Jodi Jacobson of where abortion stands in health care was by far the best on catching me up to speed.  She explains how some republicans can’t make the connection between contraception and fewer abortions, and how some pro-choice democrats will allow abortion to be used as a “bargaining chip” which Jacobson translates to: “Women get thrown off the bus.”

Looking for comic relief in this situation? You won’t get any.  Fox also plans to ban an upcoming episode of Family Guy that deals with abortion.

“20th Century Fox, as always, allowed us to produce the episode and then said, ‘You know what? We’re scared to f–king death of this,’” MacFarlane said.

On the bright side, there is plenty going on in terms of grassroots action.  Here are a few that RH Reality Check reccomend.

Planned Parenthood Action Center

National Women’s Law Center

NARAL Pro-Choice America

National Partnership for Women and Families