"We design apartments that are too small, condos that have no privacy, communities with no access to green space, schools without safe walking paths and natural playgrounds, hospitals that are completely mechanistic and inhuman, universities without daylit classrooms and adequate natural retreat spaces, and office buildings with no connection to nature at all. Our builders, developers, engineers, and architects have convinced us that we cannot afford any other option."
"Contact with nature nurtures us into a state of relaxation that supports our health and the development of our intelligence, sociability, and creativity.
When we remove contact with nature from our world, we live a circumscribed existence that increases levels of anxiety and fear and compromises creativity. Social tensions arise when we are too crowded without the relief provided by parks and waterways.
As developers, designers, and builders, we need to ensure that buildings are connected to natural light, views, and sounds. We need to build communities that are garden-based with real links to waterways and to wild nature. We need to redefine the postindustrial city; we need to rewild it."
https://independentmediainstitute.org/how-the-built-environment-is-damaging-childrens-connection-to-nature/
"Contact with nature nurtures us into a state of relaxation that supports our health and the development of our intelligence, sociability, and creativity.
When we remove contact with nature from our world, we live a circumscribed existence that increases levels of anxiety and fear and compromises creativity. Social tensions arise when we are too crowded without the relief provided by parks and waterways.
As developers, designers, and builders, we need to ensure that buildings are connected to natural light, views, and sounds. We need to build communities that are garden-based with real links to waterways and to wild nature. We need to redefine the postindustrial city; we need to rewild it."
https://independentmediainstitute.org/how-the-built-environment-is-damaging-childrens-connection-to-nature/
Independent Media Institute
How the Built Environment Is Damaging Children’s Connection to Nature - Independent Media Institute
As we reduce the areas of wild nature in our cities because of development pressure, we increase our fear of it, and we reduce our children’s time in the remaining areas of wilderness. By Teresa Coady The following excerpt is from Teresa Coady’s new book “Rebuilding…
"We had seen the very least of the night’s brutality, itself but a sliver of the repression that the Mexican state routinely exercises against journalists, activists, and anyone who dares to challenge it. Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists—by some counts, the most dangerous non-war zone. Five journalists have been killed this year alone; at least 130 have been murdered since 2000. For all its infamy, though, the logic of violence against Mexican journalists is often opaque to outsiders, and I struggle to explain it myself. It often works like a spiral. The state—by which I mean the police, the military, and paramilitary groups—or perhaps not the state, but another group of shadowy interests, understood under the heuristic of organized crime—tortures and/or disappears and/or murders someone. Activists, friends, and family members turn out to protest the violence against that someone, until the same thing happens to them. A journalist covers the new violations, and they, too, become a victim—then the activists who protest for them, the journalists who write about them, and so on."
thebaffler.com/latest/conspiracy-of-silence-wattenbarger
thebaffler.com/latest/conspiracy-of-silence-wattenbarger
The Baffler
Conspiracy of Silence | Madeleine Wattenbarger
Regardless of who pulls the trigger, the biggest threat to journalists in Mexico remains the state itself.
Mutual aid is a survival technique based on collectivism. [...] There are myriad examples of mutual aid among humans in the modern world: abortion funds, bail funds, grassroots legal and eviction defense, disaster response, and food distribution, among others. But mutual aid can easily be co-opted by the state or nonprofit organizations, turning a potentially power-building social action into another fixture of the neoliberal state.
Another classic example of the state co-opting a powerful mutual aid project is the USDA’s School Breakfast Program, a means-tested program that offers free or reduced-price breakfast for qualifying children in schools that choose to participate. The USDA began experimenting with a free breakfast program in the mid-1960s, but expanded in earnest in the 1970s. What changed? The rapid spread of the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for School Children program across the United States. [...] The Panthers sought donations from local businesses, and members served the breakfast, offering a communal experience.
Some of the clearest examples of successful mutual aid in American history originate in the antebellum and Jim Crow eras. W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1907 work Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans details the structures in which Black Americans collectively strugged for survival. From the Black church as site of planning slave insurrections to the Underground Railroad, people without institutional power cooperated to attempt to survive colossal violence. [...] Free people of color also organized Black mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
How is mutual aid different from charity?
Mutual aid projects often spell out that their work is “solidarity, not charity.” In both cases, people mobilize to provide aid to others; the difference lies in whether peers autonomously share resources or whether individuals interact in a hierarchical structure where elites get to decide who is deserving of help.
How can mutual aid be effective without a strong decision-making structure?
Mutual aid’s greatest strategic strength is its capacity to empower people. Mutual aid projects can offer a chance for ordinary people to “get involved” for the first time. Regular people act, and not just act, but make decisions about how best to help.
Disaster relief provides a good example of how mutual aid can sometimes be more effective without strongly centralized decision-making.
How can mutual aid build political power?
Mutual aid can be very effective when people work independently and without a centralized decision-making structure, but that doesn’t mean mutual aid can’t fit into a structured campaign. [...] There’s no real contradiction between autonomy and structure—if planned carefully and thoughtfully, they can reinforce each other.
What can mutual aid do? What can’t it do?
Mutual aid can help people survive. As we face a global pandemic, alarming income inequality, mass unemployment, and escalating and unpredictable climate catastrophes, working toward collective survival could be a full-time job. [..] It makes sense for organizations—and most particularly, organizations which explicitly seek to build power—to weigh mutual aid projects against capacity concerns.
currentaffairs.org/2020/10/what-is-mutual-aid-and-how-can-it-build-power/
Another classic example of the state co-opting a powerful mutual aid project is the USDA’s School Breakfast Program, a means-tested program that offers free or reduced-price breakfast for qualifying children in schools that choose to participate. The USDA began experimenting with a free breakfast program in the mid-1960s, but expanded in earnest in the 1970s. What changed? The rapid spread of the Black Panthers Free Breakfast for School Children program across the United States. [...] The Panthers sought donations from local businesses, and members served the breakfast, offering a communal experience.
Some of the clearest examples of successful mutual aid in American history originate in the antebellum and Jim Crow eras. W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1907 work Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans details the structures in which Black Americans collectively strugged for survival. From the Black church as site of planning slave insurrections to the Underground Railroad, people without institutional power cooperated to attempt to survive colossal violence. [...] Free people of color also organized Black mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
How is mutual aid different from charity?
Mutual aid projects often spell out that their work is “solidarity, not charity.” In both cases, people mobilize to provide aid to others; the difference lies in whether peers autonomously share resources or whether individuals interact in a hierarchical structure where elites get to decide who is deserving of help.
How can mutual aid be effective without a strong decision-making structure?
Mutual aid’s greatest strategic strength is its capacity to empower people. Mutual aid projects can offer a chance for ordinary people to “get involved” for the first time. Regular people act, and not just act, but make decisions about how best to help.
Disaster relief provides a good example of how mutual aid can sometimes be more effective without strongly centralized decision-making.
How can mutual aid build political power?
Mutual aid can be very effective when people work independently and without a centralized decision-making structure, but that doesn’t mean mutual aid can’t fit into a structured campaign. [...] There’s no real contradiction between autonomy and structure—if planned carefully and thoughtfully, they can reinforce each other.
What can mutual aid do? What can’t it do?
Mutual aid can help people survive. As we face a global pandemic, alarming income inequality, mass unemployment, and escalating and unpredictable climate catastrophes, working toward collective survival could be a full-time job. [..] It makes sense for organizations—and most particularly, organizations which explicitly seek to build power—to weigh mutual aid projects against capacity concerns.
currentaffairs.org/2020/10/what-is-mutual-aid-and-how-can-it-build-power/
Current Affairs
What Is Mutual Aid (And How Can It Build Power)
From the New Orleans DSA brake light clinic to benevolent associations in the Jim Crow South to a disaster relief supply “heist” in Puerto Rico, Cate Root explains mutual aid and its relationship with power.
Whereas the primary functions in the branches of a normal political party would be secretary, treasurer, chair, and so on, these are mere formalities in a Golden Dawn “branch,” which is instead organized around “security.” The Greek term for them translates as “battalion squads;” they are modeled on Adolf Hitler’s Sturmabteilung or Benito Mussolini’s squadrismo.
[...] Pavlos Fyssas was murdered on the night of September 17, 2013. He was stabbed three times (once in the heart) by Giorgos Roupakias, a member of the five-man leadership of the Nikea branch of Golden Dawn, as other neo-Nazis held him down. Branch members had recognized Fyssas at the café. [...] the battalion squad assembled at the offices of Golden Dawn in Nikea within fifteen minutes. [...] They joined with another group of Golden Dawn members who were already there. A radio conversation between the base and police who were present during the attack recorded them saying: “Fifty people with bats, heading to the store called Coralli. Have you received?” But the police did not intervene. They only belatedly caught up to where the stabbing took place, saying it had taken them minutes to run there although it was on the main street just a hundred meters from the café.
Tellingly, as he was arrested Roupakias told the police: “I’m one of yours. I’m Golden Dawn.”
[...] Golden Dawn acted in alignment with the big employers of the shipyard who wanted to get rid of the militant union. Days after the attack, union members at one yard were sacked and replaced with workers provided by a labor agency set up by Golden Dawn.
[...] Golden Dawn MP Lagos had told a meeting in Perama: “We have received complaints about … all these issues with the Egyptians who come here, do whatever they want, sell their fish in the way they want… and generally do not stand accountable to anyone. We tell them that from now on they will be accountable to Golden Dawn.” In other cases, immigrant shopkeepers — victims of arson and violent intimidation — have reported that Golden Dawn members ordered them either to leave the area or pay protection money.
The battalion squads’ campaigns to “cleanse” neighborhoods were both efforts at racist elimination as well as a mafia-style means of self-enrichment extending to the top of Golden Dawn.
Yet it is not the only way in which Golden Dawn’s Nazi ideology is fused with its character as a criminal enterprise. The hierarchical organization of the battalion squads is a material expression of that ideology and its commitment to a conquest of power and elimination of all democratic space.
The Nazi ideology also explains the choice of victims — the overall criminal intent linking together each of many felonious acts: a rapper popular in progressive youth circles, a left-wing trade union leader, and immigrant workers. Other attacks have targeted left-wing social spaces, lesbian and gay people, socialists, outspoken and democratic public figures, and anarchist groups — all of which are identified as enemies of the neo-Nazi organization.
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/greece-neo-nazi-golden-dawn-trial/
[...] Pavlos Fyssas was murdered on the night of September 17, 2013. He was stabbed three times (once in the heart) by Giorgos Roupakias, a member of the five-man leadership of the Nikea branch of Golden Dawn, as other neo-Nazis held him down. Branch members had recognized Fyssas at the café. [...] the battalion squad assembled at the offices of Golden Dawn in Nikea within fifteen minutes. [...] They joined with another group of Golden Dawn members who were already there. A radio conversation between the base and police who were present during the attack recorded them saying: “Fifty people with bats, heading to the store called Coralli. Have you received?” But the police did not intervene. They only belatedly caught up to where the stabbing took place, saying it had taken them minutes to run there although it was on the main street just a hundred meters from the café.
Tellingly, as he was arrested Roupakias told the police: “I’m one of yours. I’m Golden Dawn.”
[...] Golden Dawn acted in alignment with the big employers of the shipyard who wanted to get rid of the militant union. Days after the attack, union members at one yard were sacked and replaced with workers provided by a labor agency set up by Golden Dawn.
[...] Golden Dawn MP Lagos had told a meeting in Perama: “We have received complaints about … all these issues with the Egyptians who come here, do whatever they want, sell their fish in the way they want… and generally do not stand accountable to anyone. We tell them that from now on they will be accountable to Golden Dawn.” In other cases, immigrant shopkeepers — victims of arson and violent intimidation — have reported that Golden Dawn members ordered them either to leave the area or pay protection money.
The battalion squads’ campaigns to “cleanse” neighborhoods were both efforts at racist elimination as well as a mafia-style means of self-enrichment extending to the top of Golden Dawn.
Yet it is not the only way in which Golden Dawn’s Nazi ideology is fused with its character as a criminal enterprise. The hierarchical organization of the battalion squads is a material expression of that ideology and its commitment to a conquest of power and elimination of all democratic space.
The Nazi ideology also explains the choice of victims — the overall criminal intent linking together each of many felonious acts: a rapper popular in progressive youth circles, a left-wing trade union leader, and immigrant workers. Other attacks have targeted left-wing social spaces, lesbian and gay people, socialists, outspoken and democratic public figures, and anarchist groups — all of which are identified as enemies of the neo-Nazi organization.
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/greece-neo-nazi-golden-dawn-trial/
Jacobinmag
Greece’s Golden Dawn Aren’t Just Nazis — They’re Violent Mafiosi, Too
After a trial lasting over five years, tomorrow will see the verdict on murder and racketeering charges against 68 members of neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn. A lawyer representing some of the victims explains why Golden Dawn is a mafia organization — and why…