Links and Launching Points For Action

"We need to remove the Economic Gun pointed at our heads. This is the gun that says, "cooperate with the system, live within it, or you will die, starve, or live in miserable poverty." We must, in short, be able to meet the key material human needs outside the system. The primary ones are food and energy, shelter, health care, health insurance, and currencies of exchange; and there are also media/communication, appropriate levels of necessary transportation; child-care, elder-care, education, and retirement income"
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has a genius, power, and magic in it "
--Goethe

Note #1: This page is under construction. It is mostly however a launching point with links to resources and where possible, to projects you may want to support and lend your energy to.

Note #2: The focus here is deliberately on citizen run a) health insurance and b) retirement income and income security. This is because first, a great deal more resources already exist about other aspects (renewable energy, permaculture, etc) and secondly because we do not have expertise in them. So a few quick links on those topics at the end will have to do; it is by no means an indication that they are not as important.

  • Note #3 There is something critical about retirement income and income security in general, however. We can become wonderfully self-sufficient in food, energy, housing, etc, but we will for the foreseeable future -- not forever but for a long time -- still need some kind of income (or system of credit more generally) to use for acquiring things things we need or desire but which we don't make ourselves. Like a internet access, phone service, etc (the internet too can someday become a de-centralized people's network, but that's a ways off too). Thus while a lot of attention, relatively speaking, is given to self-sufficiency in food, housing, etc, not enough attention is given to the need for some income.

    At the most basic level there are community- or worker-owned businesses/enterprises. But why not facilitate income security for anyone? Do we really want to make "invest in US bonds or in the stock market" the only option for people who have some money? Similarly, should we leave people with skills on their own, so they either join a community/business or else are entirely on their own? Why not facilitate a network of support, a sort of pan-skill, pan-profession, pan-trade community/citizen run meta-guild?

    Another goal on the list, is citizen run retirement income an alternative to Social Security and to Wall Street pensions. But such a project is also a microcosm of "general income security", so once a project is successfully in place for citizen's retirement income/retirement security, we will also have a model for income security for those of us not yet retired.

    Three Key Pieces below

  • New — the Alternatives to Wall Street project.

  • The original Three:

    1. For retirement income, the continued attacks on Social Security, and continued risks of a declining value for the US dollar alone argue for putting a citizen's democratically-run retirement system in place. Not to mention that people quite simply deserve something better, more democratic, more responsive, more "radical" and more warmly communitarian than corporate, or even federal governmental (as if there is much of a difference anymore) retirement security -- phantom security which may not be real. Let's build our own network of income security. See the proposal at Surviving Peak Oil under the "Alternative Economics & Business" section; it is called A Workable Transition to Democratic Retirement Systems.

      Another copy is at the projects listing in EconomicDemocracy.org's Projects Overview under project G-1, linking to here for the direct link to the essay. 

      Update: In summer 2004, I visited Ithaca for a week, and on the
last day I met with Paul Glover, founder of Ithaca Hours (local
currency that is one of the prime models in the US) and the Ithaca
Health Fund (ithacahealth.org) in person at his residence. We
finalized agreement on combining ideas in my essay with his own WISE
(Whole Ithaca Stock Exchange idea. My proposal looks at the retirement
side of the coin, while WISE looks at the community investment side of
the same coin. Glover, one of the most talented community activists I
know of in this country, is willing to spend a good part of a year
launching what I've tentatively called WISE Equity Community Annuity
Notes (WE*CAN) if $20,000 in investments are received. We have $2,200
committed and need to raise another $17,800.  Note: Under this
proposal, the original investors like us have no advantages: every one
has the same vote, one vote, everyone earns the same return on each $1
invested (An outline of WISE is at
http://www.ithacanews.org/wise.html).

    2. Citizens' Health Insurance
      The Canadian and British single-payer national health plans began with examples set by local health funds, which raised public demand for universal coverage as a human right. We seek, however, universal coverage which is owned directly by citizens, rather than by politicians. What government can give it to you (Great Society of '60s), government can take it away (Reagan Revolution to date). -IthacaHealth.org

      Health insurance outside of the corporate sphere; citizen run via local/regional networks, rather than wait for government given health insurance (this is not a contrary tactic; in fact, creating such citizens insurance may be the only way to pressure our corporate-influenced government to actually create national health insurance which, we might otherwise never, as decades of struggle suggest.

      The Ithaca Health Fund is open to anyone anywhere in the US and anywhere in the world. See especially Unique and Growing as a good first place to start -- a nice over view of the Ithaca Health Fund.

    3. Democratic Mass-Media We already have democratic or "alternative" media, but we don't have mass-media, that is democratic media with an audience size in the many millions.
      Creating democratic mass-media..is absolutely critical. How could roughly half the U.S. voting public vote in 2004 for the most criminal (towards others) and insane (bad for Americans, too) regime in memory? When you are brainwashed (it's hard to think of a softer term here) or given a radically distorted picture of the world, and you are convinced that 1+1=15 then one can see why it happened. It's not that Americans knowingly support the horrible, but rather that unless we have a really democratic and free media, no matter what Bush does -- he can even kill a baby live on TV with his bare hands -- the American people (or half or them or many) will believe he did it to save us from evil (or some other insane "1+1=37").

      See EconomicDemocracy.org's Projects Overview under "The Revolution Will Be Webcast (project B) but readers are strongly encouraged to first read the synopsis. The projects overview page links to other key strategic vision essays like "On Funding" (Project F). As the reader can surmise, the Projects Overview page represents most of the last 5+ years worth of analysis activist strategy pieces by EconomicDemocracy.org