Because People Matter

Action Alert: Don't let Senator Steinberg rush a bad decision on water!

by Dan Bacher

Below is an urgent action alert from Friends of the River to make phone calls and emails to Senator Darrell Steinberg to urge him not rush into the kind of potential policy disaster that created California’s unsuccessful and costly experiment in energy deregulation! The link is: https://secure2.convio.net/fotr/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=225

After you make your phone call and emails, please sign the petition against the peripheral canal on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) Website at www.calsport.org.

Please send this to everybody that you know! We must stop Steinberg's attempt to fast track water legislation that will lead to the construction of a peripheral canal or tunnel, a government boondoggle costing $23 billion to $ 53.8 billion.

Daniel Singer Millennium Essay 2009

Annual prize for best essay on a selected topic

By Muriel Strand

The Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation annually recognizes an original essay that helps further socialist ideas in the tradition of Daniel Singer. Singer, a writer and journalist who passed away in 2000, was for many years the European correspondent for the US magazine The Nation. Singer’s last book was Whose Millennium? (1999), a polemic against market fundamentalism and the rule of capital.

Daniel Singer’s ideas can summarized as follows:

Let Progressive Secretary Write For You

Alternative for busy citizens

By Cathy Hodge McCoid

Progressive Secretary is a cyberspace organization that sends letters to Congress about peace, death penalty, women’s right to choose, poverty, ecology, racism and other concerns. Its focus is on the current progressive agenda and on making email lobbying easy.

With a membership of 4000 people, Progressive Secretary revolves around two Quakers, Jim Harris—the California computer guy—and Pat Murphy—the Florida letter writer—living at opposite ends of the country.

Growing Sacramento’s Future

Gardens yield green that’s better than money

By Kim Glazzard

With the continuing escalation of national and global economic challenges, many Sacramentans not only wonder what the future holds, but also at what point they may need to worry about having money for basics such as food to feed their families. Sacramentans are blessed, however, to be located in the middle of one of the most abundant agricultural meccas of the country (if not the world), at the confluence of two rivers and with a climate which supports a nearly 365-day growing season. They are in an ideal position to take control of their situation and turn the treasure of Sacramento’s rich river-bottom soil into food for their dinnerplates.

At the forefront of a movement to see vegetables pave the front, side, and back yards where grass is traditionally grown, the City of Sacramento, Organic Sacramento, and the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition are spearheading a large-scale movement

What To Do With All Those Extra Cucumbers!!?

Share by gleaning and trading locally

By Karen Hansen and Muriel Strand

Gleaning—the ancient practice of picking over farm fields after the harvest—is making a comeback. Joe and Chris Miller’s fields at a Colorado farm were picked so clean in one day last November that a second day of gleaning was canceled Sunday after 40,000 people showed up the first day.

There are Gleaning Projects all around the nation.

Ask a Socially Responsible Therapist

by Shauna L. Smith

Why do activists get busy and disappear from our groups?

Dear Shauna,

I want to know your thoughts about activist burnout. It seems as if many of our groups are in trouble, often held together solely by the sheer force of will of one organizer. Fewer and fewer people are real participants or come to events.