BIG Need Problems LITTLE Solutions
City Hall is Owned by Wall Street Your city’s real power brokers are bankers, insurance companies, real estate developers, universities, and casinos.! They dominate City policy to protect their interests. They define the boundaries of reform. ---The Occupy movement can raise demands upon any City to reduce Wall Street's control, while making City Hall serve social justice, create jobs, and heal the environment. GREEN JOB CREATION: Employ Americans though systems of community-based barter credits and abandoned housing transfer, to manufacture and install residential energy efficiencies, to remove excess paving, to install neighborhood gardens and orchards, and to provide health services.! Accept these credits for part payment of property and sales taxes.! Foreclose abandoned factories, then transfer them to local nonprofit organizations prepared to use them for green technologies and health services. PENSIONS AND SAVINGS: Demand that cities divest pension holdings in insurance companies and student loan banks (like Chase and Wells Fargo), and move City accounts to community-based banks and credit unions. !Endorse a regional stock exchange. REAL ESTATE SALES: Require that transfer taxes go to a community fund for weatherization in lowest-income neighborhoods.! End tax abatements for new construction of commercial, industrial or other business properties. VACANT LAND USE: Require that City-owned vacant land in lowest-income neighborhoods be made available for organic farms, gardens, greenhouses and orchards on long-term lease with first option to buy. BUILDING PERMITS: Allow architectural innovation for earth-sheltered housing, straw bale housing, compost toilets and greywater, etc. FREE CLINICS: Donate City-owned land and buildings to nonprofit groups establishing free clinics and health co-ops according to grassroots standards. DECARCERATE: Decriminalize such victimless crimes as marijuana possession.! END FORECLOSURES: Cease evictions from foreclosed residential properties. IMMIGRATION REFORM: End police collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which harrasses residents of color.
air pollution animal/plant extinctions child abuse child labor corporate greed crime (street & corporate) debt (personal & national) deforestation domestic violence divorce drugs (legal & illegal) farm & soil loss food shortage fuel shortage global warming incinerators job loss landfills media monopoly medical costs oil spills overpopulation ozone depletion pesticides political corruption poverty racism sexism sprawl traffic jams war water pollution weapons sales
barter bicycles bioregionalism citizen diplomacy co-housing compost toilets credit unions farmer's markets health funds hemp fiber independent media land reform local currencies local stock markets military conversion naturopathy neighborhood industry organic farms permaculture precycling proportional voting recycling solar power sweat equity trollies TV turnoff union democracy wind power worker ownership & YOU!
paulglover.org/0304
Time for Millennials to Take Control: The Joy of Revolution
The ultimate revolution creates cities as beautiful as our children, who deserve cities as beautiful as they are. Our parents or grandparents--! baby boomers-- were raised in luxury by hardworking parents.! During the Sixties, boomers rebelled against war, materialism, greed and environmental destruction.! Then most gave up and joined the consumer parade.! Good people, they wanted to enjoy life, raise kids, fly the flag and feel normal.! They committed their lives to mortgages and cars, made investments, bought you hamburgers and vacations.! But their neglect to prepare a new American way of life, after the 1974 oil embargo, leaves you with fewer jobs, higher fuel prices, tougher mortgages, weak dollars, student debt, national debt, crummy cars, narrow ballot choices, poison rivers, bulging prisons, barren soils, costlier food and health care, higher taxes to pay for their old age, no Social Security or Medicare for your own future, and shorter lives.! They've given you everything but a society and a planet.