Belgrade, MT, is a good candidate for a community schooling project (teaching the entire community). The overall plan which will involve the City, the Library, the County, schools, State of Montana, many of the NPO's, for-profits and many citizens. The project is to create a large network of supporting organizations and individuals who, together, can create a vibrant educational and community outreach facility, staffed some public employees and with volunteers from all walks of life. One goal is to support this project with public and private resources (money, property, staffing). A strong knowledge ethic needs to be found and nourished in the community members and especially at the officialdom level. Another goal is to empower those who are interested, with valuable skills, especially learning skills, so that their participation in governance is increased and their compensation level is increased. The goal is to “pull” folks toward a high quality of life.

Buried somewhere in the Oregon energy plan is some mention of networking (not sure, but it should have been mentioned). Villages, towns, cities and counties in the UK and Ireland have networked on the issue of transition from abundant, cheap oil, to scarce, expensivie oil. A transition primer is found at: http://transitionnetwork.org/Primer/TransitionInitiativesPrimer.pdf.

We build massive business parks, financial districts and government operations in Downtown San Diego, Kearny Mesa, and the Golden Triangle (to name few). Huge daily migrations of people and their steel wheels converge upon these job knobs. Most workers start their work journey from vast oceans of houses, interspersed with shopping centers, a few malls, convenience and liquor stores, spreading like spores from a mushroom patch. The drive is over narrow ribbons of concrete and asphalt. Thus, the picture of a collection of large dumbbells emerges, with the housing and jobs at each end and the ribbon of highway between the two ends. Despite the best our "modern" planners can give us, metropolitan areas are decried for the traffic congestion, accident rate, crime rate, stress and pollution they cause.

By Jim Miller

Laissez faire, the mantra of the rich, powerful, well-connected, has been used as a drum beat for generations of entrepreneurs who would ride to the realms of riches on the backs of low paid workers. We have witnessed the Enron’s, World Com’s gather in the wealth of stockholders, customers, workers and hand it over to a select few top dogs (some of whom are in jail and other facing prosecution and lawsuits galore). MORE......

Seed by seed. Plant by plant. Peasant by peasant. Community by community, We will reclaim our food freedom. -- Vandana Shiva i

In the 2008 edition of “LOCALLY GROWN” published by the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition (Lynne Fessenden, Editor, www.lanefood.org), Dan Anderson writes Feeding Lane County, an inspirational call to action in support of locally grown food. His pregnant comment: More....

"The Eco Machine is enclosed in a greenhouse kept at a constant 80°F throughout the year. A screen over the glass closes at night to retain heat. Andrew Posner, Operations Manager, performs all the tests required of a small wastewater treatment plant and reports that the system consistently meets its goals: BOD<30, TSS<30, TN<10 as well as state standards for heavy metals.

"We let down our children and our communities when we ceded control of the streets to the car.
Philip Parker flies the flag for a people-first approach to traffic management."

Our local built environment has the power to affect our moods and behaviour. It will suggest certain values and can promote positive feelings. But for the past 50 years the streets and spaces where we live have primarily been designed to facilitate the movement of cars. This has frequently had a negative impact on local communities and affected the way we live.

In general, I agree with Michael Albert's assessment of the current “capitalism” which I've labeled, “Top-down Capitalism” to distinguish it from “Bottom-up Capitalism”.

His solution is:

“More generally, we want no more private ownership of productive assets anywhere in our country. The owners need to be expropriated.”

This solution is all wrong for a number of reasons: More ....

By Jim Miller

The evisceration of rural America over the past 100 years or so has proceeded on several fronts, some simultaneously. There is light at the end of the tunnel and it isn’t a train. Skip to No. 13 below.

“What we are talking about here is a change in the consciousness of all world cultures and organizations therein—including our own. What we are arguing for is an awareness of how we each have personal and cultural traits and perspectives which integrated together have the potential for high productivity and more satisfying life for us all. We are arguing for a restructuring of our current management education and training programs across the country (and around the world) so that right brain as well as left brain skills are taught with equal emphasis and integrated into an overall management curriculum appropriate for the organizations and world society of the future. We have tried to show step-by-step in this book how this can be achieved in a practical way.” p. 91 MORE ....

What we are struggling against is far better organized, financed, and disciplined than we are, and is well on its way toward the creation of a global power structure which is privately owned, but operates through governments, the military/police/prisons and financial institutions. The head of this Global Consortium is Travistock Institute, a collection of the world's most powerful men (no women), headquartered in the UK. These men own and/or control vast empires of wealth and property. They control governments and the banking system. They control commerce and currency. They can create wealth or poverty with a stoke of a pen. Travistock Institute is the champion of the “New World Order”.

--Advance the time about 20 years and watch the thousands of small, highly entrepreneurial folks act like Piranhas eating the cow which fell into the river.

By Jim Miller

-- People taking back their sovereignty.
By Jim Miller

"A precept of the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) mandates that chiefs consider the impact of their decisions on the seventh generation yet to come."
The Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development http://www.7genfund.org/