Location: Nationwide:
Website: www.thenextsystem-.org
It’s time for everyone who cares about our troubled country to face the depth of the systemic crisis we now confront as a nation. We must step back from the daily fray and ask: How do we actually get on a path to the kind of society—and world—we’d like now and for future generations? We must begin a real conversation—locally, nationally, and at all levels in between—on how to respond to the profound challenge of our time in history.
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending,” Lincoln said, “we could better judge what to do.” Today’s answer to Lincoln’s charge is grim. If one looks at “where we are” among advanced democracies across more than a score of key indicators of national well-being—including relative poverty, inequality, education, social mobility, health, environment, militarization, democracy, and more—we find ourselves exactly where we don’t want to be: at or near the bottom.
The challenging realities of growing inequality, political stalemate, and climate disruption prompt an important insight. When big problems emerge across the entire spectrum of national life, it cannot be due to small reasons. When the old ways no longer produce the outcomes we are looking for, something deeper is occurring. We have fundamental problems because of fundamental flaws in our economic and political system. The crisis now unfolding in so many ways across our country amounts to a systemic crisis.
Today’s political economic system is not programmed to secure the wellbeing of people, place and planet. Instead, its priorities are corporate profits, the growth of GDP, and the projection of national power. If we are to address the manifold challenges we face in a serious way, we need to think through and then build a new political economy that takes us beyond the current system that is failing all around us. However difficult the task, however long it may take, systemic problems require systemic solutions.
The social pain arising from the economic crisis, the steady unfolding of the climate calamity, and many other deeply troubling developments have made it possible to pose the question of large-scale system change in a serious fashion in the United States. Yet, despite this new space for a debate about fundamental change, challenges to the system have until recently been constrained by a continuing lack of imagination concerning social, economic and political alternatives. It is said that the existing system is the only possibility, one we must accept and work with—that, as Margaret Thatcher famously insisted, “There is no alternative.” But she had it wrong.
The good news is that the inability of traditional politics and policies to address fundamental challenges has fueled an extraordinary amount of experimentation in communities across the United States—and around the world. It has also generated an increasing number of sophisticated and thoughtful proposals for transformative change. Together these developments suggest that it is possible to build a new and better America beyond the failed systems of the past and present. Indeed, new terms have begun to gain currency among diverse social movements and activist communities—an indication that the domination of traditional thinking has already started to weaken. Thus we encounter the sharing economy, the caring economy, the solidarity economy, the restorative economy, the regenerative economy, the sustaining economy, the resilient economy, and, of course, the new economy. There is talk of the need for a great transition. Several of these approaches already have significant networks and thoughtful research efforts underway. New thinking by creative scholars and members of the labor movement and community-oriented advocates is also contributing to the ferment.
It is time for Americans to think boldly about what is required to deal with the systemic difficulties facing the United States. It is time to explore genuine alternatives and new models—“the next system.” It is time to debate what it will take to move our country to a very different place, one where outcomes that are truly sustainable, equitable, and democratic are commonplace.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Avaaz
Location: International
Website: www.avaaz.org/en/
Avaaz is a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.
A transnational community that is more democratic, and could be more effective, than the United Nations.
— Suddeutsche Zeitung Avaaz—meaning "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages—launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.
Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. Our model of internet organising allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force.
The Avaaz community campaigns in 15 languages, served by a core team on 6 continents and thousands of volunteers. We take action -- signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing "offline" protests and events -- to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform the decisions that affect us all.
Previous international citizens' groups and social movements have had to build a constituency for each separate issue, year by year and country by country, in order to reach a scale that could make a difference.
Today, thanks to new technology and a rising ethic of global interdependence, that constraint no longer applies. Where other global civil society groups are composed of issue-specific networks of national chapters, each with its own staff, budget, and decision-making structure,
Avaaz has a single, global team with a mandate to work on any issue of public concern--allowing campaigns of extraordinary nimbleness, flexibility, focus, and scale.
Avaaz's online community can act like a megaphone to call attention to new issues; a lightning rod to channel broad public concern into a specific, targeted campaign; a fire truck to rush an effective response to a sudden, urgent emergency; and a stem cell that grows into whatever form of advocacy or work is best suited to meet an urgent need.
Each year, Avaaz sets overall priorities through all-member polls (See 2013 poll results here), and campaign ideas are polled and tested weekly to 10,000-member random samples—and only initiatives that find a strong response are taken to scale. Campaigns that do reach the full membership are then super-charged by, often, hundreds of thousands of Avaaz members taking part within days or even hours.
Avaaz staff write email alerts to the Avaaz community the way that an aide briefs a president or prime minister: we have just a moment to convey the vital information the reader needs in order to decide whether to get involved, and the campaign hinges on that decision.
To make that moment of attention count, it's the job of staff to find ways that a few minutes, multiplied across huge numbers of people, can make a genuine difference on something that matters.
Staff work with partners and experts to develop effective, member-driven campaign strategies; summarize them through clear and compelling alerts; and, if the Avaaz membership chooses to proceed, makes sure that the campaign is carried through—delivering petitions and members' messages, arranging member-funded ad campaigns, or whatever else is required.
In other words, Avaaz staff don't set an agenda and try to convince members to go along with it. It's closer to the opposite: staff listen to members and suggest actions they can take in order to affect the broader world. Small wonder, then, that many of our most successful campaigns are suggested first by Avaaz members themselves. And leadership is a critical part of member service: it takes vision and skill to find and communicate a way to build a better world.
We focus on tipping-point moments of crisis and opportunity
In the life of an issue or a cause, a moment sometimes arises when a decision must be made, and a massive, public outcry can suddenly make all the difference. Getting to that point can take years of painstaking work, usually behind the scenes, by dedicated people focusing on nothing else. But when the moment does come, and the sunlight of public attention floods in, the most crucial decisions go one way or another depending on leaders' perceptions of the political consequences of each option. It is in these brief windows of tremendous crisis and opportunity that the Avaaz community often makes its mark.
In any country or on any issue, those moments might come only once or twice a year. But because Avaaz can work in all countries and on all issues, these moments can crop up several times in a week.
Our member-funded model keeps us independent and accountable. Because Avaaz is wholly member-funded, democratic accountability is in our DNA. No corporate sponsor or government backer can insist that Avaaz shift its priorities to suit some external agenda—we simply don't accept funds from governments or corporations.
Instead of fragmenting, we grow—united by values, movements, coalitions, and organizations often fracture over time into many smaller pieces—or spend more and more of their time trying to hold warring factions together. At Avaaz, we recognize that people of good will often disagree on specifics; instead of straining for consensus, each of us simply decides whether to participate in any particular campaign.
But underlying Avaaz campaigns is a set of values—the conviction that we are all human beings first, and privileged with responsibilities to each other, to future generations, and to the planet. The issues we work on are particular expressions of those commitments. And so, over and over, Avaaz finds the same thing: that people who join the community through a campaign on one issue go on to take action on another issue, and then another. This is a source of great hope: that our dreams rhyme, and that, together, we can build the bridge from the world we have to the world we all want.
Website: www.avaaz.org/en/
Avaaz is a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.
A transnational community that is more democratic, and could be more effective, than the United Nations.
— Suddeutsche Zeitung Avaaz—meaning "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages—launched in 2007 with a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.
Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change. Our model of internet organising allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force.
The Avaaz community campaigns in 15 languages, served by a core team on 6 continents and thousands of volunteers. We take action -- signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing "offline" protests and events -- to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform the decisions that affect us all.
Previous international citizens' groups and social movements have had to build a constituency for each separate issue, year by year and country by country, in order to reach a scale that could make a difference.
Today, thanks to new technology and a rising ethic of global interdependence, that constraint no longer applies. Where other global civil society groups are composed of issue-specific networks of national chapters, each with its own staff, budget, and decision-making structure,
Avaaz has a single, global team with a mandate to work on any issue of public concern--allowing campaigns of extraordinary nimbleness, flexibility, focus, and scale.
Avaaz's online community can act like a megaphone to call attention to new issues; a lightning rod to channel broad public concern into a specific, targeted campaign; a fire truck to rush an effective response to a sudden, urgent emergency; and a stem cell that grows into whatever form of advocacy or work is best suited to meet an urgent need.
Each year, Avaaz sets overall priorities through all-member polls (See 2013 poll results here), and campaign ideas are polled and tested weekly to 10,000-member random samples—and only initiatives that find a strong response are taken to scale. Campaigns that do reach the full membership are then super-charged by, often, hundreds of thousands of Avaaz members taking part within days or even hours.
Avaaz staff write email alerts to the Avaaz community the way that an aide briefs a president or prime minister: we have just a moment to convey the vital information the reader needs in order to decide whether to get involved, and the campaign hinges on that decision.
To make that moment of attention count, it's the job of staff to find ways that a few minutes, multiplied across huge numbers of people, can make a genuine difference on something that matters.
Staff work with partners and experts to develop effective, member-driven campaign strategies; summarize them through clear and compelling alerts; and, if the Avaaz membership chooses to proceed, makes sure that the campaign is carried through—delivering petitions and members' messages, arranging member-funded ad campaigns, or whatever else is required.
In other words, Avaaz staff don't set an agenda and try to convince members to go along with it. It's closer to the opposite: staff listen to members and suggest actions they can take in order to affect the broader world. Small wonder, then, that many of our most successful campaigns are suggested first by Avaaz members themselves. And leadership is a critical part of member service: it takes vision and skill to find and communicate a way to build a better world.
We focus on tipping-point moments of crisis and opportunity
In the life of an issue or a cause, a moment sometimes arises when a decision must be made, and a massive, public outcry can suddenly make all the difference. Getting to that point can take years of painstaking work, usually behind the scenes, by dedicated people focusing on nothing else. But when the moment does come, and the sunlight of public attention floods in, the most crucial decisions go one way or another depending on leaders' perceptions of the political consequences of each option. It is in these brief windows of tremendous crisis and opportunity that the Avaaz community often makes its mark.
In any country or on any issue, those moments might come only once or twice a year. But because Avaaz can work in all countries and on all issues, these moments can crop up several times in a week.
Our member-funded model keeps us independent and accountable. Because Avaaz is wholly member-funded, democratic accountability is in our DNA. No corporate sponsor or government backer can insist that Avaaz shift its priorities to suit some external agenda—we simply don't accept funds from governments or corporations.
Instead of fragmenting, we grow—united by values, movements, coalitions, and organizations often fracture over time into many smaller pieces—or spend more and more of their time trying to hold warring factions together. At Avaaz, we recognize that people of good will often disagree on specifics; instead of straining for consensus, each of us simply decides whether to participate in any particular campaign.
But underlying Avaaz campaigns is a set of values—the conviction that we are all human beings first, and privileged with responsibilities to each other, to future generations, and to the planet. The issues we work on are particular expressions of those commitments. And so, over and over, Avaaz finds the same thing: that people who join the community through a campaign on one issue go on to take action on another issue, and then another. This is a source of great hope: that our dreams rhyme, and that, together, we can build the bridge from the world we have to the world we all want.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism
Location: International
Website: www.cau.mit.edu
The MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism’s objective is to become the world’s pre-eminent cultural center about the design of metropolitan environments, by articulating methods and projects to integrate separate disciplinary agendas in architecture, landscape, ecology, transportation engineering, politics and political philosophy, technology and real estate through a most eloquent design culture on scales ranging from the complex infrastructural intersection, to that of a neighborhood, on to the scale of an entire regional system.
Urban environments are being planned, designed, constructed, and retrofitted at an unprecedented pace and scale, which often precludes a rational, thoughtful process.
Global economic forces have eclipsed standard paradigms of post-World War II urban expansion and ideas of incremental urban development. New megacities are being built all over the world in record time and often without standard protocols or procedures of the established design and urban planning professions.
c Pressing cultural and environmental concerns are demanding new levels of accountability as we measure ecological performance, energy use, mobility and density relationships, and the deployment of dwindling resources.
These and other factors challenge the intelligence and efficacy of new urbanization forms and existing conventions and typologies for development. We have entered into a new era or urban growth whereby the rules have changed and paradigms of urbanism desperately need recalibration to meet today’s global challenges.
The MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism’s mission comes from four working principles:
- Challenge pre-conceived professional roles and find solutions to real world problems.
- Embrace large-scale design and planning.
- Embrace technology in the design and planning of city form and function.
- Commitment to deliver real world projects and clear paths to solve pressing urban design, architectural, and environmental problems.
MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism is framed by six over branching areas of research:
- Territorial Design
We have entered an era of a new scale of design. Whether it is the immensely large-scale development projects underway in areas such as the Gulf and China, or the reconstruction and retrofitting of nation’s existing infrastructure. This presents a disciplinary challenge for designers, as existing techniques are not necessarily suitable or scalable.
The formal and figurative features that we can logically conceive and think of the very large scale need to be reimagined. Research must urgently address and develop new elements that are critical in the instrumentarium of the large-scale designer.
- Changing Systems
As our environment undergoes changes, our cities and their corresponding systems will need to adapt. Urbanism for a changing climate is first and foremost a question of rigorous systems analysis.
In part this is achievable through the integration of so far disconnected disciplines. In so doing, new opportunities arise for analysis such as through connecting datasets that have remained compartmentalized within each specialization.
- Durable Suburbia
The trend we need to expect, hope for, and actively plan for in future urban change of western cities, concerns the gradual densification of our suburbs. Our suburbs are becoming more intensely developed, putting pressure on the existing infrastructures, and as they age, they become progressively dense and more mixed in terms of class, culture and program.
This suburban transformation poses considerable challenges to the existing infrastructure and current mobility systems, and requires a re-think of domestic as well as retail culture in the suburban sphere.
- Resilient Infrastructures
Designing infrastructure for one single purpose is a strategic mistake; instead, such large investments, which are to service society for generations, can be made to serve a variety of different agendas - including not only transportation, but also real estate, ecological diversity, and public space, among others.
Furthermore, a sound infrastructural design permits utility in a variety of completely different circumstances. This is not a call to make infrastructural investments more complex and expensive; but to make them more intelligent and open-ended.
- Technological Urbanism
The steam engine, the car, the elevator, and the AC unit have in common that each contributed to a dramatic transformation in the form and configuration of cities.
We must look to new emergent technologies and their potential impact on the design, planning, and construction of our cities. We must examine the next generation of disruptive technologies and the influence they will have on the spatial order of cities.
- Ideal Cities
Ideal cities have, throughout history, provided templates, forms, and figures of our collective imagination, through which we conceive of, plan, and direct ourselves towards our common future.
It is important that this discursive tradition remain active and that we continue to formulate ideals, hopes, and especially, the forms that correspond to them.
Website: www.cau.mit.edu
The MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism’s objective is to become the world’s pre-eminent cultural center about the design of metropolitan environments, by articulating methods and projects to integrate separate disciplinary agendas in architecture, landscape, ecology, transportation engineering, politics and political philosophy, technology and real estate through a most eloquent design culture on scales ranging from the complex infrastructural intersection, to that of a neighborhood, on to the scale of an entire regional system.
Urban environments are being planned, designed, constructed, and retrofitted at an unprecedented pace and scale, which often precludes a rational, thoughtful process.
Global economic forces have eclipsed standard paradigms of post-World War II urban expansion and ideas of incremental urban development. New megacities are being built all over the world in record time and often without standard protocols or procedures of the established design and urban planning professions.
c Pressing cultural and environmental concerns are demanding new levels of accountability as we measure ecological performance, energy use, mobility and density relationships, and the deployment of dwindling resources.
These and other factors challenge the intelligence and efficacy of new urbanization forms and existing conventions and typologies for development. We have entered into a new era or urban growth whereby the rules have changed and paradigms of urbanism desperately need recalibration to meet today’s global challenges.
The MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism’s mission comes from four working principles:
- Challenge pre-conceived professional roles and find solutions to real world problems.
- Embrace large-scale design and planning.
- Embrace technology in the design and planning of city form and function.
- Commitment to deliver real world projects and clear paths to solve pressing urban design, architectural, and environmental problems.
MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism is framed by six over branching areas of research:
- Territorial Design
We have entered an era of a new scale of design. Whether it is the immensely large-scale development projects underway in areas such as the Gulf and China, or the reconstruction and retrofitting of nation’s existing infrastructure. This presents a disciplinary challenge for designers, as existing techniques are not necessarily suitable or scalable.
The formal and figurative features that we can logically conceive and think of the very large scale need to be reimagined. Research must urgently address and develop new elements that are critical in the instrumentarium of the large-scale designer.
- Changing Systems
As our environment undergoes changes, our cities and their corresponding systems will need to adapt. Urbanism for a changing climate is first and foremost a question of rigorous systems analysis.
In part this is achievable through the integration of so far disconnected disciplines. In so doing, new opportunities arise for analysis such as through connecting datasets that have remained compartmentalized within each specialization.
- Durable Suburbia
The trend we need to expect, hope for, and actively plan for in future urban change of western cities, concerns the gradual densification of our suburbs. Our suburbs are becoming more intensely developed, putting pressure on the existing infrastructures, and as they age, they become progressively dense and more mixed in terms of class, culture and program.
This suburban transformation poses considerable challenges to the existing infrastructure and current mobility systems, and requires a re-think of domestic as well as retail culture in the suburban sphere.
- Resilient Infrastructures
Designing infrastructure for one single purpose is a strategic mistake; instead, such large investments, which are to service society for generations, can be made to serve a variety of different agendas - including not only transportation, but also real estate, ecological diversity, and public space, among others.
Furthermore, a sound infrastructural design permits utility in a variety of completely different circumstances. This is not a call to make infrastructural investments more complex and expensive; but to make them more intelligent and open-ended.
- Technological Urbanism
The steam engine, the car, the elevator, and the AC unit have in common that each contributed to a dramatic transformation in the form and configuration of cities.
We must look to new emergent technologies and their potential impact on the design, planning, and construction of our cities. We must examine the next generation of disruptive technologies and the influence they will have on the spatial order of cities.
- Ideal Cities
Ideal cities have, throughout history, provided templates, forms, and figures of our collective imagination, through which we conceive of, plan, and direct ourselves towards our common future.
It is important that this discursive tradition remain active and that we continue to formulate ideals, hopes, and especially, the forms that correspond to them.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
Location: Great Britain
Website: www.thersa.org
The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce): an enlightenment organisation committed to finding innovative practical solutions to today’s social challenges.
Through its ideas, research and 27,000-strong Fellowship it seeks to understand and enhance human capability so we can close the gap between today’s reality and people’s hopes for a better world.
Bringing great ideas to global audiences, cutting across traditional political battle lines, carrying out cutting-edge research and development projects, undertaking practical innovation itself and by mobilising the talents and commitment of its 27,000 strong Fellowship:
in this way the RSA is becoming the kind of organisation this century urgently needs.
The Society was founded in 1754, was granted a Royal Charter in 1847,[1] and the right to use the term Royal in its name by King Edward VII in 1908.
Charles Dickens, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, William Hogarth, John Diefenbaker, Stephen Hawking and Tim Berners-Lee are some of the notable past and present members, and it has today more than 27,000 Fellows from 70 countries worldwide.
The RSA's Medal winners include Nelson Mandela, Sir Frank Whittle, and Professor Stephen Hawking.
The RSA Medals, named Albert Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal and the Bicentenary Medal, are still awarded. The RSA members are still among the innovative contributors to the human knowledge, as shown by the Oxford English Dictionary which records the first use of the term "sustainability" in an environmental sense of the word in the RSA's Journal in 1980.
Website: www.thersa.org
The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce): an enlightenment organisation committed to finding innovative practical solutions to today’s social challenges.
Through its ideas, research and 27,000-strong Fellowship it seeks to understand and enhance human capability so we can close the gap between today’s reality and people’s hopes for a better world.
Bringing great ideas to global audiences, cutting across traditional political battle lines, carrying out cutting-edge research and development projects, undertaking practical innovation itself and by mobilising the talents and commitment of its 27,000 strong Fellowship:
in this way the RSA is becoming the kind of organisation this century urgently needs.
The Society was founded in 1754, was granted a Royal Charter in 1847,[1] and the right to use the term Royal in its name by King Edward VII in 1908.
Charles Dickens, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, William Hogarth, John Diefenbaker, Stephen Hawking and Tim Berners-Lee are some of the notable past and present members, and it has today more than 27,000 Fellows from 70 countries worldwide.
The RSA's Medal winners include Nelson Mandela, Sir Frank Whittle, and Professor Stephen Hawking.
The RSA Medals, named Albert Medal, the Benjamin Franklin Medal and the Bicentenary Medal, are still awarded. The RSA members are still among the innovative contributors to the human knowledge, as shown by the Oxford English Dictionary which records the first use of the term "sustainability" in an environmental sense of the word in the RSA's Journal in 1980.
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