“Everybody thinks they will be killed soon, the situation for those alive is miserable. If you don’t die in the war, the poverty caused by the war may kill you, which is why I think the only option left for me is to join the peace convoy.” - Abdullah Malik Hamdard, Afghan peace walker
This is the question that all anti-Trump individuals and groups are asking today, loudly and regularly. They are hoping of course for a positive answer, but they are not sure they will get one.
Almost twenty years ago I made an eleven-day canoe journey down one of North America’s grandest rivers, the Grand River in Labrador, Canada. Our guides were four indigenous elders who had grown up traveling the river. We listened to their stories. We ate porcupine and goose and salmon. The trip ended at Muskrat Falls, where we hauled our canoes up a trail that had been used for generations by the region’s indigenous people. Today, Muskrat Falls is the site of a 12-billion-dollar mega hydroelectric project; the falls no longer exist.
This is the fifth year in a row that nearly 1,000 migrants have died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean. Nearly 48,000 asylum-seekers and migrants have reached Europe’s shores in the first six months of 2018. Many of them passed through Benin on their way to Europe.
The indigenous seeds are bred by farmers for renewability, diversity, nutrition, taste and resilience. Wherever farmers have reclaimed native seeds as a commons, they have reduced costs, increased incomes, become debt-free and are not driven to suicide.
Source: The Guardian Unlimited
Most of our mainstream political discourse on “fighting inequality” has revolved – for years now – around the more narrow goal of eliminating extreme poverty. Few of our elected leaders ever dare suggest that maybe we ought to think about eliminating extreme wealth as well. Even the mere idea seems a laughing matter.
Congressman Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, knows all this from personal experience. Earlier this year, in a talk to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Ellison suggested that the time has come to start contemplating the notion of a “maximum wage”.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019