Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:24:42 -0500 From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: C of C: socialism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Socialism: More Than Ever -- A Compelling Need Socialism. The pundits keep up the drum beat that it's outmoded, discredited, and defeated. But socialism has been a vision and a movement for hundreds of years. It's still around and will remain a vibrant and increasingly urgent issue for decades to come. Socialism is global, but it is also as American as cherry pie, with deep roots in the nation's history and traditions. It is embodied in the hearts and the exertions of many who believe in a country and world anchored on fairness, on genuine democracy of citizen participation, on equality and justice for all regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, on freedom to learn and to be enriched by a growing culture, on living in peace, on sharing in the ownership and control of wealth created by the majority, and benefitting >from an equitable distribution of income and property. Socialism will always be around because capitalism, despite its noisy self-congratulations, is making life increasingly harder for the working majority. The Dow Jones may be soaring, but Mary and John Jones are having a rough time. Every upward surge in the stock market in today's global economy reflects another "downsized" worker, another leveraged buyout and shuttered business, another union-protected industrial job shifted to a low-wage, environmentally lax country. New technologies, instead of making life easier for working people, are eliminating jobs by substituting machines for bank tellers, telephone operators, machinists, and many others. Unemployment may be down, but real wages have declined 16% since 1973. Millions today have to work two, even three low wage, non-union, no-benefits jobs to barely compensate for rapidly disappearing work at decent wages. The United States now embraces the most unfair distribution of wealth and income in the industrialized world. The average net worth per household of the top one percent is now $7,875,000; the net worth of the bottom one per cent is $900! Bill Gates's $40 billion is more than the combined worth of 40% of the nation's households! We are now at a watershed: each succeeding generation is worse off than the preceding generation. Democracy is our most treasured tradition. But it is sullied by the domination of politics by big money. Corporations get their tens of billions in "welfare" at the public trough while schools, health services, and housing needs go begging--and the poorest and most vulnerable are scolded for allegedly leeching off the taxpayers. No wonder that aFrom [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sun Dec 13 17:16:01 1998 Received: (from root@localhost) by dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA20850 for futurework-outgoing; Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:13:05 -0500 Received: from top.monad.net ([EMAIL PROTECTED] [204.97.16.3]) by dijkstra.uwaterloo.ca (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA20588 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:12:58 -0500 Received: from top.monad.net (nsv1-5.keene.monad.net [208.0.183.223]) by top.monad.net (8.8.8/What) with ESMTP id RAA23150; Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:12:06 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 17:14:21 -0500 From: Steve Kurtz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ECOL-ECON <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, gaiapc-list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: sustainability: Improving community participation Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk This is a valuable resource, in my opinion. There are many others, but some are very specific or highly technical, others superficial. The internet is only as useful as we humans make it. Steve -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: WWW: Environmental sustainability: Improving community participation The practice of involving people and building environmental partnerships requires not only a specialist knowledge of the particular area (agriculture, biodiversity, etc.), but also skills in a diverse range of areas from information management through to conflict resolution and collaborative problem solving. The NRM_changelinks web site http://nrm.massey.ac.nz/changelinks/ has been designed as a practical resource for natural resource managers, NGO's, scientists, academics, community leaders and others working to help communities identify and adopt more sustainable environmental practices. The site provides a guide to a range of information, tips and techniques in fields such as sustainable development, adaptive management, participatory monitoring and evaluation, conflict resolution, partnership development, collaborative problem solving, decision support, action research, information management and collaborative/organisational learning. It also shows how the application of these areas are interlinked in practice. Collectively these approaches are suitable for those working in a wide range of areas such as rural development, conservation, biodiversity, water, agriculture, etc. Another section in this site shows how to make the most of the Internet for sharing information, networking, decision support and learning. A guide is provided for those who are interested in developing their own web presence ... particularly aimed at showing how this can be done easily and at very little cost. Links are also provided to international job opportunities in the area of environment and development. Willy Allen