roots . ground our understanding
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Economics for Peace Institute
Guild for Social Fieldwork
4.22.20
Earth Day
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Community well-being and ecosystem stewardship are cross-cutting values, that bind people together beyond any polemic.
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Greetings of Spring, Jackie
In celebration of Earth Day - at half a century, what have we learned? Social equity is linked to environment. There is no favored class when it comes to ecological stewardship. If we care for all, the earth can take care of herself.
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First comes deep appreciation for connection to earth, our home. If we don't feel it every day as we make a living, then we have lost our way. It takes stillness. It takes gratitude for home: earth. This gratitude energizes our happy way forward. Return to it often.
Despite advances in organics, natural beauty and recycling in industrial America, the last 50 years has not bode well for cultural diversity across most of the planet. Cultural loss hampers advancement towards a green economy.
For a sustainable economy to prevail, we require information markets that are not mediated by authority or data scavenging technology. We need direct markets run by local people holding the expertise of their own landscapes and places.
In order to process information in the ways humans are uniquely able, we need to restore our capacity for council. We need to communicate beyond our personal spheres of comfort, and that means more than getting comfortable with online video calls.
Towards this practice, join us in participatory conversations that matter starting May 4. Let's practice communicating across the great divide of our own experience. How can we find bridge words to elucidate our common understandings in terms of quality of life, and its counterpart 'pathos'?
Now, more than ever cultures are in disrepair, and require mending. As we strive for a green economy, we require a socially-just and authentic earthly awakening. Prior to allowing electeds to approve another quick fix to climate or loss of habitat or pandemic, let us hold fast to first protecting cultural wisdom embedded in place. Let us make sure it is socially equitable and fair.
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The season of great migration. How do they know where they are going? Geomagnetics, they say. How do we know? Who holds accountable and on what measure? If it is markets, then obviously something is amiss. We need to get control of what we eat on the media feeds. If it doesn't serve your greater knowing, then don't eat it. Focus on building a sustainable economy rather than railing against the one that doesn't work. Give your attention to what is worthwhile. Water it and watch it grow. Be real and create a new economy right where you live and with your neighbors. You don't need market middle people. Do it yourself. Learn to communicate and barter and trade. Be a player in your own economic paradise.
Caring for the web of life is the measure of sustainable. Each action, project and claim must be assessed against that measure of goodness. If it fails this test, then we redesign upfront. We have everything we need to make that work.
Why economics for peace? Peace is a necessary condition in the sustainability equation. Our environmental problems are human-made and relate directly to the ill-advised and inequitable appropriation of resources. To restore the web of life, we need to be aware as individuals, as tribes, as communities, and as regions how we sustain our own production without giving future generations the short end of the stick. In any case, stealing is not people-friendly, earth-friendly, or sustainable.
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Research
by Bioregion
Baseline Indicators of Community Well-Being and Ecosystem Stewardship
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We have a plan!
Our plan is to focus on the essentials.
We work at the nexus where peace and sustainability meet the groundwork of democracy.
As a public policy and research institute, we strengthen local input in decisions that may change for better or worse characteristic resilience in a particular bioregion. This is the groundwork of democracy for a sustainable future.
We must unite our understanding in order to calibrate the claims being made to resolve crisis, disaster or to advance progress for its own sake.
As participants in a sustainable democracy and economy, we need to know where we are going. Landmarks on a vast horizon help us navigate unknowns and such is the future. No one knows the future and if they claim they do, then you know something is amiss.
So we need a way to protect what is most important as we move into the future. Our plan is to ensure through participatory research, a set of baseline indicators of community well-being and ecosystem stewardship as understood by locals in their places - whether urban tenement, gated community or rural countryside.
We are partnering with a local Grange in the Salish Sea bioregion to teach social fieldwork to locals in a three county area. This is a one-year study which we plan to replicate across the country. The Institute's participatory research framework is designed to provide full support to each bioregional study team.
We encourage individuals to self-identify as possible coordinators for their bioregion. We will support team-building for this purpose. Contact us if you are interested in exploring the role of research coordinator, or forward our newsletter to someone who may. Thank you.
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We partner with researchers and community groups to grow a community of social fieldwork researchers through The Guild for Social Fieldwork. Learn more.
Our real world research focus advances participatory methods to protect against bias in design, data collection, analysis and reporting. Participatory research accesses the broad spectrum of human competency to better inform public decisions, than simplistic statistical modeling often devoid of real world observation from the outset. We are where computation meets its match in the interwoven reality of real life experience in the natural world.
We encourage the storytellers, the bards, the contemplatives, the collectors of stories, but with contemporary legitimacy. We encourage thinking over distraction. We are scientists reclaiming authority for the citizen scientist in social research. We are historians, journalists and analysts. We like to talk, and to learn together with everyone. We are empowered by our increasingly unified conclusions built on collective observation of the missteps and mismanagement of our social and ecological trajectory.
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Winesap blossom on Colorado's Oldest Organic Farm, since 1974
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Half a Century of Earth Days
Still hearts flutter. Quiver of spring. Fragrance abuzz. Field of blue holding it true. Staying in quarantine until its green. Keeping it real, stopping it here. Put it in gear – together, and not alone. Shelter together until its fair. United our banner. Equity, peace and earthy sufficiency. Freedom. Liberation. Staying in quarantine until its green! Caring for home. That's economy. Now, let's go! It's green.
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We offer training and workshops
We are all of the same cloth: each person and people has the wisdom to act in a sustainable way, if we to listen to ourselves and each other.
Real local input bridges green, brown, red and blue. We need a little practice is all.
With practice, we may even enjoy participatory conversations that matter – at every level of society and in everyday life. Starts May 4.
In this way, we unite our understanding and ensure sound leadership held accountable by our ability to understand each other.
Contact us to register for weekly one-hour call on Wednesdays, starting April 29 - 4:30pm PST, 5:30 MST, 6:30 CST, 7:30 EST. This call is to build outreach and partnerships. We answer questions and strategize. A reminder email will be sent to you with instructions for a low bandwidth teleconference call.
As a participatory research institute, our working definition of scientific research is "making sense of systematic observation." Ideally, as part of making sense of what is observed, the researcher benefits from conversation with peers. If people are part of the study, they are also part of the conversation. In social research, people – not only the "scientists" or experts – contribute to making sense of the "data." In this way, the research remains unbiased and participatory.
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Bioregional baseline indicators permit the evaluation of project and program plans. This is particularly important in Environmental Impact Statements as required by the National Environmental Protection Act and for Social Impact Assessments following a natural disaster or other emergency. This information is critical to maintaining quality of life and protecting the environment. Other purposes include the evaluation of nonprofit programs, corporate branding claims, regional comprehensive plans and the certification of sustainable business and tourism activity. These indicators are based on real input from local people in a position to know about, or be affected by the project or program. |
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Save frogs. Be practical. DIY.
Wash our hands of false economy.
We plan to build an online marketplace to stimulate local production.
Economy is by definition sustainable and can only occur in markets in which there is the fair exchange of good information.
Your monthly contribution crowd-sourced with others will permit us to hire staff to strengthen local economies from the grassroots. We hope to create lasting green jobs in participatory evaluation. We are developing the budget and capacity to hire. To start, we will hire part-time 1099ers to develop the platform, conduct outreach and provide ongoing technical assistance. Thank you! You can make a difference!
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In order to change an
existing paradigm you do not
struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.
~ Buckminster Fuller
Frog in the kale patch.
At first hint of spring,
the frogs - the neighbors I say - resumed their drum song midway
'tween winter solstice and equinox - on that very day - along the Salish Sea
creative commons © 2020
photopoet.earth
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Roots . Practice
Gather the stories of elders, and others. Who is leaving earth now? Listen now. Appreciate all glimmers of long ago stories.
Gather up fragments and full volumes of day to day life. Let the sounds tune you. Make it real. What did it look like, what did it feel like? What was sustainable then? What wasn't? Learn what they story to you. The elders are a bridge to times long ago. Each story is a gift - unique and precious. Learn now. Listen now. Listen now.
As you gather up stories, reflect on characteristics in your own day-to-day life that connect you to nature as sustenance. Continue this reflection and develop your first go at a baseline of well-being that any new project or proposal in your bioregion must strengthen, rather than weaken.
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Our shared earth. Give a hand!
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