To read the founding statement of the Faith, Economy, Ecology, Transition coalition (FEET), and the list of 80+ signing organizations, please click here.

To sign on to the statement, please click here.

To see a reading of the statement with accompanying photos, click here.

Read and comment on our draft Ecological and Economic Principles.

Finally, to receive an email each time a new article is posted, click on the “follow” button at the bottom right of the screen.

Economists Question if Agriculture is Important

By Pamela Haines, Quaker social justice educator with a concern for economics and the environment

Some leading economists have asserted that, since agriculture accounts for only 3% of Gross National Product, losing that sector would not have much impact on the overall system. This scenario—an economy whose numbers stays healthy without agriculture, while its people try to manage without food—is a mind-bender.
We bend our minds, struggling to make sense of these things, when the answer is right in front of our faces, too simple to see:  they don’t make any sense.  This way of thinking about economics cannot solve our problems.  We’ll have to wade in among the experts, brush past the thick curtains of numbers, and demand that our economic system be based squarely on the needs of its constituent human beings.

Herman Daley of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs does just that by unmasking the errors in the thinking of economists who argue that no one should worry about climate change impacting agriculture, because agriculture is such a small percentage of our economic output.

In support of the death penalty
By Pamela Haines, Quaker social justice educator with a concern for economics and the environment

While I’d never questioned my opposition to the death penalty before, believing that all human life is sacred, I find myself in the position of being willing to allow an exception. Actually, I find myself advocating for it. I’m willing to have a person who exists in the form of a corporation cease to exist.

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the right of corporations to exist as people—to contribute to the political process however they feel inclined, and to the extent that their resources allow. This was an affirmation of a ruling in the late 1800’s that deemed the 14th Amendment, passed to give personhood to formally enslaved African Americans, should apply to corporations as well.

So corporations now have personhood, with all the protection of the Constitution. Not only that, they are essentially immortal. Hardwired for greed, existing for the sole purpose of maximizing profits for shareholders, they seem like unlikely candidates for immortality—yet they have no natural life span. When they engage in activity that would bring harsh punishment to the full extent of the law to any ordinary mortal—as when Massey Coal caused the death of 29 coal miners in the spring of 2010—the corporate person never even faces prison, much less the death penalty.

This can change. A Supreme Court reversal of its ruling that they are people would certainly help. But, with the life of a corporation dependent on its state charter, there are other possibilities. States could move to set limits on the life of a charter and require some indication that the corporation is a responsible citizen before renewing it. And ways could be found to punish corporations, as other people are punished—and not just with fines, the cost of which can be built into their budgets and passed on to consumers.

The equivalent of prison might be trusteeship—replacing the board and top management with public servants, and alerting the shareholders to expect their share of the suffering. But, in the face of an intransigently criminal corporation—one that causes death and destruction—I’d go for revoking the charter altogether and auctioning off the corporation’s assets. I think the death penalty in such a case is the choice that best manifests our Quaker testimonies on equality and integrity.

New Measures of Well-Being Needed

By Pamela Haines, Quaker social justice educator with a concern for economics and the environment

It’s useful to be able to measure things, and there’s something reassuring about things that can be measured.  Economics prides itself on being a science based on measurable data. We measure interest rates and return on investments and median income and consumer spending and stock market activity and profit margins—and we can rely on the accuracy of all these measurements.

The flaw in this system is so fundamental that it’s hard to detect:  in order to have a science of economics, built from accurate measurement, we have to leave out of the system everything that cannot be measured.  Happiness, human connection, sense of purpose, security—since there’s no satisfactory measure for any of these, they have no place in the picture.  Neither clean air nor quiet nor open space nor free time have any measurable economic value, adding nothing to the GDP, while polluting industries, leaf blowers, urban sprawl and long work hours are all part of our nation’s wealth.

We don’t have to throw out measurement altogether, but when we’re dealing with human beings we need a little more humility, and a little more understanding of the importance of that which cannot be measured.

The state of Maryland has developed a Genuine Progress Indicator to measure how development activities impact long-term prosperity, both positively and negatively. And the United Kingdom is developing a way of measuring the subjective well-being of its citizens.

Defining Climate Smart Agriculture

At the 17th Conference of Parties of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban, South Africa this past December, the World Bank touted a Kenyan agricultural pilot project that on the surface seems to promote sustainable agro-ecological farming. The World Bank’s attempts to get African countries to adopt the pilot as an agriculture work program under the negotiations on climate change mitigation failed when small holder farmer organizations, environmentalists and even African agricultural ministers greeted the proposal with caution.

Much of the world’s focus has been on the ways in which agriculture is now, and will further be, affected by climate change. Floods, droughts and unpredictable weather patterns in many parts of the world have made it impossible for farmers to know when and what to plant. Much less attention has been given to the impact that agriculture currently has on climate. Fertilizers widely used to replace soil nutrients are a major a major source of nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions. In many countries, especially those employing industrial farming methods, nitrogen fertilizers have been overused and have contributed not only to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but to soil contamination and water pollution.

The Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project is helping farmers to incorporate more sustainable methods that reduce emissions and promote soil carbon sequestration on approximately 45,000 hectares in the Nyanza Province and Western Province of Kenya. Fertilizers are replaced with agro-ecological cropland management practices (like using cover crops, mulching, crop rotation, compost management, green manure, agro-forestry, organic fertilizer, residue management) and rehabilitation of degraded land. In its design and development, the Kenya Agriculture Carbon Project also recognizes the important role that women and youth play in agriculture and sustainable development, and that one-size-fits-all solutions will not work in the context of agriculture. These aspects of the program resemble the recommendations put forward by over 400 scientists and other experts in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), the most comprehensive analysis of global agriculture to date, commissioned by the World Bank and published in 2008. In terms of food security and equity, agro-ecological practices are embraced by small holder farmers, faith based organizations and development groups as the most promising means to ensure food security, improve the livelihoods of people living in poverty and to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.

The issue that concerned small holder farmers and prevented African countries from adopting the model for the Agriculture Work Program under the negotiations for climate change mitigation is the fact that the whole proposal of Climate-Smart Agriculture was developed around the possibility of developed countries offsetting their carbon via international soil carbon markets. Carbon trading would be set up to go through the United Nations Collaborative initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) in developing countries. The World Bank endorses the program as a way to not only to increase farmers’ yields and reduce their dependence on costly inputs but to provide additional income sources due to payment for the environmental service of sequestering carbon.

Civil society groups present in Durban raised serious questions about the viability of such a program being linked to carbon markets. Firstly, the promised rate of return for small holder farmers is extremely low. The World Bank estimates that the Kenya Agricultural Carbon project will generate $2.48 million in carbon revenues over the 20-year implementation period. Of that amount, the 60,000 Kenyan farmers participating in the project would receive an average of $22.83, or about $1 per farmer per year. On top of this, transaction costs would make it unwieldy. In the first years nearly half of the expected revenues would benefit international consultants and project developers, rather than the targeted communities.

Another area of concern is just how difficult it is to measure carbon sequestration. According to the World Bank, such a project is estimated to sequester a total of 1.2 million metric tons of carbon. Only 60 percent will be discounted because soil sampling is prohibitively expensive, so computer-generated models and farmers’ reports on their practices will be used, making the entire carbon reduction scheme a guessing game. In Durban, African negotiators expressed their doubts about carbon offset promises.

The head of the Africa group, Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, doubted that carbon markets would work for Africa because the majority of African farmers work on fewer than two hectares of land, “which is not enough to sequester an amount of carbon that would be meaningful to sell. We’re very suspicious that offset schemes will lead to a perversion of African agriculture, with farmers farming what is incentivized, and giving up traditional crops.” The African Biodiversity Network’s Anne Maina expressed concern that “soil carbon markets could open the door to offsets for genetically modified crops and large-scale biochar [burning biomass into charcoal dust and burying it in the soil] land grabs, which would be a disaster for Africa, which is already suffering from a land grab epidemic.”

Climate Smart Agriculture rhetoric is framed to make small holder farmers part of the solution to GHG emissions, but African farmers have not caused the problem – rather, the Northern industrialized food system is much more responsible for agriculture’s runaway emissions. Thus, Climate Smart Agriculture aimed at expanding carbon markets onto African soil, shifts the blame and responsibility for addressing climate change from rich countries onto African farmers – the very people least responsible for causing the problem.

Heading into the Durban conference, only nine of 54 African countries’ agriculture ministers supported the Climate Smart approach. In the final hours of negotiation, a compromise was reached, requesting the UNFCCC’s scientific body to consider issues related to agriculture at their next session. This leaves open advocacy opportunities in the coming year to stop carbon traders from laying claim to African soil.

This article was written for the January/February 2012 edition of NewsNotes.

Trying to Understand Climate Change Deniers

By Pamela Haines, Quaker social justice educator with a concern for economics and the environment

I never really tried to understand the folks who deny climate change before. Their resolute refusal to acknowledge reality was just baffling.

But an article by Naomi Klein in The Nation makes it clear. If you are committed to our economic and political system continuing in its current form, denial may be the only possible position to take–since climate change calls it all into question.

Here are some of the things that Klein has to say:

Climate change is a message, one that is telling us that many of our culture¹s most cherished ideas are no longer viable. These are profoundly challenging revelations for all of us raised on Enlightenment ideals of progress, unaccustomed to having our ambitions confined by natural boundaries. And this is true for the statist left as well as the neoliberal right.

Just as climate denialism has become a core identity issue on the right, utterly entwined with defending current systems of power and wealth, the scientific reality of climate change must, for progressives, occupy a central place in a coherent narrative about the perils of unrestrained greed and the need for real alternatives.

Arriving at these new systems is going to require shredding the free-market ideology that has dominated the global economy for more than three decades.

We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending and recognize our debts to the global South.

That means, at a minimum, publicly funded elections and stripping corporations of their status as “people” under the law. In short, climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.

 

By Kathy McNeely, Faith Economy Ecology Program Coordinator, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Following Congressional debates and the statements of presidential hopefuls in 20011 one would believe that the United States is flat-out broke. Though this is the narrative that has dominated U.S. political space, analysts at the Institute for Policy Studies and the Story of Stuff Project, believe that some key changes in tax and spending policies could free up money for building a better future.

In 2007, the Story of Stuff, a twenty minute video exposing the dark side of U.S. production and consumption patterns, raced through schools and faith communities calling people to connect the dots between over consumption, diminishing resources and environmental degradation. With over 15 million views to date, the success of the video project points to people’s hunger to understand the connections and find solutions.

The Story of Stuff Project gave birth to six similar videos pointing to some of the issues underlying the poor state of ecological, political and economic health in which we find ourselves as a nation. The latest video, the Story of Broke, directs attention to some of the poor choices that are made in spending taxpayer’s dollars. In a similar regard, America is not Broke, a recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), challenges the “America is broke” narrative proposing 24 fiscal reforms that would go a long way to make the country more equitable, green and secure.

The military takes the largest portion of tax dollars. The Story of Broke pegs that amount at $726 billion in 2011. America is not Broke recommends ending the war in Afghanistan, reducing the number of U.S. military bases and eliminating programs that are wasteful and obsolete to gain a savings of about $252 billion. According to a study by the University of Massachusetts that sited in the IPS report, for every $1 billion devoted to military production, 11,000 jobs are created; but a billion dollars invested in clean energy, would create 17,000 jobs; while the same $1 billion investment in education would create 29,000 jobs. IPS and other collaborating organizations release a Unified Security Budget for the United States every year which identifies tens of billions of savings that can be made without sacrificing U.S. security including cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, eliminating under-utilized aircraft and unnecessary weapons, pruning back outsourcing and nuclear weapons complex cuts.

Hundreds of billions of dollars go to propping up what the Story of Broke calls “the dinosaur economy,” the economy that “produces more pollution, greenhouse gasses and garbage than any other on Earth – and doesn’t even make us happy.” The government often gives away things that should be thought of as resources available to all. Much of this in the form of subsidies or “freebies,” like grating permits to use public lands for mining or other business activities that tend to contribute to ecological degradation. The Story of Broke recommends reinvesting (for example) “$10 billion in oil and gas subsidies to renewable energy and energy efficient projects,” claiming that with just half that amount solar systems could be installed on over two million rooftops.

While the fossil fuel economy is still going strong regardless of the reality of peak oil – the Institute for Policy Studies recommends taxing pollution in addition to cutting corporate subsidies that harm the environment. While it is difficult to project revenue estimates because consumer and producer activity would likely change in the face of new pollution taxes, a study published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review shows that a modest tax on emissions from fossil fuels alone could raise somewhere between $75 and 100billion per year. Taxing the “bads” of society, like pollution has been a solution offered by Herman Daly and other steady state environmental economists. Such a tax could go a long way to dissuade polluters and to redirecting tax revenue toward public goods.

While the Story of Broke only mentions it in passing, the institute for Policy Studies argues that another key revenue generator could come from taxing Wall Street, corporations and the wealthy. Over the past decades the number of tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations are have been a contributing factor toward the current budget challenges the country faces. In addition to reversing the Bush-era tax cuts for high-income households, the Institute for Policy Studies recommends taxing high-frequency trading which accounts for 55 percent of the equity trades in the United States. A modest tax on the buying and selling of stock could slow down the kind of casino-style speculative trading currently taking place while generating $150 billion per year. Other solutions would include closing the loopholes that facilitate using tax havens to dodge taxes owed in the United States; limiting corporate tax deductions on stock options, a progressive estate tax on large fortunes and the creation of additional tax brackets for people earning more than $ 1 million per year while eliminating the tax preference for capital gains and dividends.

It is definitely time to change the “America is broke” narrative. But to do so we must begin reversing tax policy, curbing subsidies and unnecessary military expenditures. While these solutions are somewhat unpopular as topics in presidential and congressional candidate debates – there’s still an opportunity to take back the political system and make it work for Main Street!

Feminist Political Economy Addresses Inequities

By Julia Wartenberg, director of the Global Women’s Project at the Center of Concern

Millions around the nation continue to suffer as a result of the Economic Recession. While politicians continue to fight over the budget deficit, many are recognizing that the problems our economy is facing are structural. As such a new economic model, one that completely restructures priorities, is needed to ensure that all have the opportunity to flourish.

This month’s briefing paper from the Global Women’s Project discusses the New Economy Movement and the work the Global Women’s Project (GWP) is doing on this front.  In particular, the paper focuses on the need for the New Economy Movement to address current social inequities, namely gender and race. GWP maintains that Feminist Political Economy is a perfect tool for this endeavor.

Feminist Political Economy is a heterodox, contextual economic framework that identifies the power dynamics that exist between women and men as a consequence of their gender roles. It begins with women’s experience in the household, the workplace, the community and the body politic. As such, it recognizes the multiplicity and diversity of women’s experiences as shaped by race, ethnicity, culture, economic class/caste, religion and nationality.

The power relationship between men and women, a result of the male sense of superiority which is rooted and embedded in the cultural and social systems of society, culminates in a hierarchical relationship between men and women. This unequal power dynamic intersects with, mirrors and reinforces other power dynamics embedded in institutions and relationships such as the unequal power relations among racial and ethnic groups, between the rich and the poor, the straight and the gay communities and between the countries of the global South and the North. These power dynamics limit autonomy and agency on the personal level for women and minority groups.

Not only does FPE expose various power relationships (and how these influence our lived realities) but it also elucidates how these relationships have differential economic effects on various members of society. It questions that which is generally rationalized as existing naturally. In this way, FPE seeks to deconstruct and reframe neo-liberal assumptions and refocus economic theory in such a way that it will place human well-being back in the economic equation.

Utilizing FPE, GWP is working to bring social inequities to the forefront of the New Economy Movement discussions. Because FPE studies the economy through a power framework and reframes it to include environmental and social reproduction costs, it provides us with the tools to advocate for a new economy which no longer rationalizes (consciously or unconsciously) current gender, race and class hierarchies. FPE recognizes that gender and racial stratification continue to exist and that these relationships are entrenched in institutions which structure all relationships.

To access the full briefing paper please go to: https://www.coc.org/gwp/new-economy-movement

 

 

Collaborative Consumption Alive and Well  

By Marianne Comfort, Justice Educator, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

The concept of collaborative consumption caught my attention recently, as part of the discussion among the Sisters of Mercy about how to promote environmentally sustainable lifestyles. What a lovely idea to consider sharing things rather than having to own everything that I might need or want – and how countercultural in a society where self-reliance is prized.

But collaborative consumption isn’t just some ideal buried along with 1960s hippie communes. It’s alive and well everywhere I look.

Members of religious orders have been living models of this for centuries. Women and men who take vows of poverty in their service to God and people in need typically don’t own their own houses or cars; they share in the order’s property, rent living space singly or with others and have the use of a community-owned vehicle as needed. Their guide is the sharing lifestyle found in the Acts of the Apostles.

Then I thought of all the ways I’m also participating in collaborative consumption as a single woman living alone.

When I moved to Washington, D.C., I learned of several opportunities to take a room in someone else’s home. I didn’t feel quite comfortable with the idea of living so closely with strangers at this stage of my life, but I did end up renting an apartment in the basement of a family’s bungalow. We share a washer and dryer, wireless Internet connection and heating and electricity expenses that, most likely, would have been greater for each of us individually if we had our own independent spaces. During a post-hurricane power outage, we “borrowed” power several hours a day from a neighbor with a generator to keep my floor dry and our food from spoiling.

A few months ago I donated my car to the local public radio station. Now, in addition to riding the bus and Metro, I’m sharing rides with others to hiking trails throughout Maryland and Virginia and accepting nighttime rides home after weekly volunteering as an English-as-another-language instructor.

I rarely buy books, frequenting the library instead, and there’s an independent video store nearby for renting movies. My mom buys me clothes she finds at a thrift store she volunteers at, and I have a set of beautiful Japanese china she got at a bargain price there. A neighborhood listserve includes regular emails offering giveaway items, or requests to borrow something.

At other times in my life, I participated in community supported agriculture, in which I bought a small share of the harvest of a local farm and then was blessed with some of its bounty – and, sometimes, shared the pain of crop loss in a difficult growing season. I also was a member of Freecycle, a website where people promote items they are looking to give away and others scan for items they need or want. One of my sisters got a new-looking flat-top stove that way.

And there are plenty of options that I haven’t even looked into, like transportation companies Zipcar and Capital BikeShare.

You may read more about collaborative consumption here. And please share ways in which you are participating in this modified consumerism model – or options that you would like to see available but aren’t yet.

Simple Pleasures of the Season

By Pamela Haines, Quaker social justice educator with a concern for economics and the environment

My 16- year-old came down the stairs big with news.  “Look, Ma!” He extended his legs and showed off his new pants–a warm shade of brown, long and loose-fitting as he likes them, of a wonderfully soft wide-waled corduroy.  He was full-to-overflowing with the goodness of life. “They’re perfect!”  His $4 purchase at the thrift store couldn’t have given him more pleasure than the most expensive pair of trousers from the trendiest shop.

Our family has developed a new Christmas shopping tradition over the past three years.  All five of us troop off together to a thrift store whose profits go to fight AIDS.  Each of us has $10.  Our mission:  to find something for each other person that we would take pleasure in giving them at Christmas.

My younger son’s favorite sweater comes from one of those trips.  I still treasure the warm wool house shoes that I tried on and casually pointed out to him. The three boys had a ball last year giving each other suits.  I loved completing my older son’s collection of hard times books:  Hard Times by Charles Dickens, Hard Times by Studs Terkel, My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber.  Butter dishes, salt and pepper shakers, and glass pitchers have helped round out various kitchen collections.  Of course there have been the less-than-perfect choices–we all laughed together over the record that didn’t match its very attractive jacket–but the stakes are just not that high.

The advantages are enormous.  Our oldest doesn’t like Christmas at all and would prefer not to participate, yet feels uncomfortable when we give and he doesn’t reciprocate.  The two younger ones, now 17 and 20, just aren’t into shopping.  (When they were younger I put a lot of energy into helping them make things for each other and their father, but now they’re too big for me to organize them that way.)

For years I have struggled with the way materialism has worked its way into the fabric of Christmas.  I watch people succumbing to the incredible pressure to fork over money they may not have to corporations that have too much, to convince people of a love that’s already there by giving them things they don’t need.  I watch people using up their time, money and emotional energy trying to create a family event that is always a magnet for somebody’s disappointment. I think of the miracle of the birth of a baby and wish we could find a different way.

Our little trip to the thrift store is one response.  We have fun together in both the buying and the giving.  The playing field is level–no one can wow the others with expensive gifts.  Our $50 goes to a worthy cause.  We have to notice the love–because the gifts in themselves just don’t have that much value. We have more money to give away.

I’ve taken a different tack with my family of origin and my in-laws, where the inclination to buy hangs on but the joint thrift store expedition isn’t possible.  I’ve asked them to give money in my name instead, and tried to model that in creative ways myself.  One year I donated money to a group that buys chickens for Haitian farmers, and gave everyone a virtual chick.  My sister responded in kind, giving me a virtual llama (actually she found a little ornament to symbolize the real thing).  It was such a delightful surprise.  Nobody had ever given me a llama before!
Another year I found a group that supported little independent projects like one where women in India were given a goat, promising that they would give kids to their neighbors.  I drew on all my artistic talents to paint a picture of a goat standing on top of the world as the card for my gift that year.  Last year I gave money for blankets in Afghanistan and olive trees in Palestine. I made everybody little candy shoestring trees and candy people tucked into scraps of wool blanket along with the card.  Since my nieces and nephews are still young, I’ve tried to give some token besides the card, tried to put myself into the gift in a way that is accessible to them.  But I know that they don’t need more stuff, I know their knowledge of my love is not dependent on what turns up under a Christmas tree.

Both familes are responding in kind more and more.  I’m so happy when I get a note from one of my siblings or in-laws saying that money has been given in my name to something that I care about.  I feel valued.  I feel seen.  Rather than getting more stuff that I don’t need, I get a connection to people who really do need–and that’s what I lack more than anything else.

Advent Vision of a New Economy

By Marianne Comfort, Institute Justice Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas

It may be no coincidence that I attended a talk by Gar Alperovitz and Ralph Nader in the middle of Advent.

Alperovitz, author of a book calling for democratizing the economic system, and Nader, the renowned consumer advocate, spoke at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., about laying the foundation for gradually transforming capitalism. And that might take decades, they said.

We need more than corporate reform, which wouldn’t change the basic power structure, they said. And the country isn’t ready for revolution, they added.

Instead, they’re calling for individuals and local institutions to build up an alternative system of cooperatives, public utilities, community banks, land trusts and neighborhood corporations.

That’s certainly something to ponder during this season of pregnant waiting, as we read scriptures reminding us of God’s promises of peace and justice and those who said “yes” to God’s plan for bringing that vision to birth.

Am I – are we – willing to invest in what might be some of the steps toward a whole new economic system that we might not live to see? Can I look at joining the local food co-op as more than getting a 10 percent discount on my groceries each month? Will I move my money from an out-of-state bank with a branch behind my workplace, to a regional credit union that might be less accessible to me, because of a vision of the benefits of community-based financial institutions? Will I become a member of a community supported agriculture farm to share in the bounty and the risks of the harvest, and to have a closer tie to the growers of my food?

Right now, these might seem like disconnected consumer decisions that have no overall community impact. But Alperovitz illustrated how putting together some of these alternative business models with a little bit of economic planning at the local level can begin to “democratize wealth,” as he calls it.

He talked about a strategic effort to create jobs and wealth in underserved neighborhoods of Cleveland through worker-owned cooperatives that are linked together under a partnership with city government, the Cleveland Foundation, Case Western University and two healthcare facilities. Evergreen Cooperatives now consists of an industrial laundry, solar panel installation and greenhouse food production – whose clients include the above partners as well as other institutions and businesses.

It’s in the desperate cities of the Midwest, which have lost manufacturing jobs and whole industries, where many of the opportunities for a “new economy” are emerging. But Ted Howard, founder, along with Alperovitz, of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, said there are some beginning discussions among universities and hospitals in the Washington, D.C. area about designing an initiative similar to the one in Cleveland.

While Alperovitz shared a vision of a so-called new economy, Nader was more like the prophet crying out in the wilderness against the current system and our complicity in it by not taking back the power that is ours.

We shouldn’t be asking just for crumbs like an extension of unemployment insurance or an expansion of  Food Stamps (now known as SNAP), he said. “Corporations’ power comes from our belief that we have no power,” he said.

He listed all the public resources that we as citizens own through the taxes we pay: government research, the airwaves and public lands, to name just a few. Yet corporations benefit most from these, he said. “People should get residuals of all the profits going to wealthy corporations,” he said, and he cited the share of oil revenues that Alaskan residents receive each year as an example of what that could like on a larger scale.

Pushed by questions from audience members, Alperovitz conceded that the design of a new economy requires addressing racism, environmental concerns, climate change and imperialism that comes from an expansionist mentality. He suggested creating a theory, then designing practical projects from it and, finally, building politics around it to change who owns the capital.