damage profitability.! Foremost, our liberal allies can withdraw money from stock markets and move it into regional economies and local banks-- especially into special funds for weatherization, solar power, local farms, microlending. The largest stockholders of medical insurance include Microsoft, Google, Apple, Chevron, Exxon, Cisco Systems, Pfizer, Merck, Bank of America.! Such divestment is necessary for ending medical apartheid. Members of LUV do not petition Congress.! We do not send them our signatures; we send them our medical bills. We enclose these with the note, "You voted against expanding Medicare, so you pay it."! Likewise we send our medical bills to HMOs with the note "Your company lobbied against expanding Medicare, so you pay it."! Millions of such letters yearly will clog the system. When your family, friends or community are being violently squeezed by greed, it's impolite to be polite.! So here's more LUV member action: ! We ask our labor union friends to demand pension fund divestment from unsurance companies. ! We ask our friends abroad to divest from American stocks until America respects our lives. ! We ask drivers and truckers to boycott Chevron and Exxon, which fatten on unsurance stocks. ! We turn off TV channels and cancel newspaper subscriptions when media tell us we aren't worth the money. We'll seek news that strengthens us. ! We!refuse to vote for anyone who voted against our health. There are more millions uninsured than in AARP. ! We encourage family and friends not to enlist or reenlist until America defends our lives. By paying taxes we get a free army. We should get free medical care, too. With bases in 150 countries, our military no longer defends the nation; it offends the world. ! We!take our ailing friends to clinics tending the rich and we will not leave until tended. When challenged, we invoke the "necessity defense"-- breaking existing law to prevent greater harm. ! We invade insurers' offices, and conferences, and golf courses. ! At the same time, we’re building a new American health system.! We will demand the right to start regional memberowned health co-operatives which develop low-cost accident plans according to strict standards of affordability, transparency and democracy.! These will provide the genuinely nonprofit infrastructure upon which national insurance can contain costs. We will start local health co-ops that compete with health unsurance, even where in violation of laws made by insurers. We invoke again the necessity defense. ! More member-owned community health clinics ! More medical schools and greater emphasis on preventive, family, and holistic care Permit doctors to practice in any state Permit Independent Nurse Practitioners in all states End corporate bribes to legislators and regulators ! Shift budgets from prisons and war to clinics and jobs.! We're better served by creating jobs fixing our schools and bridges, and by building 150,000 new free clinics. ! Clean water and air.! Since health is more than pills and surgery, we're an environmental movement. Our actions will be nonviolent but as extreme as our situation. Is this class war? Yes. We didn't start it but we'll finish it. As billionaire Warren Buffett says, "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." More info: luvpower.org
CONTROL OF
EDUCATION
Today, some college majors address the ecological significance of their field. There are degrees in urban sustainability, urban ecology, sustainable design, regional environmental economics, permaculture, Green MBAs, and so on. Academia has begun to respond to the demands of the next generation for a clean and healthy world., but the process is too slow. Most universities and colleges still major in corporate servitude. Most curricula are less relevant to the urgencies of rebuilding civilization so we live well with less fossil fuel, reliant more upon neighborhoods than corporations. Architecture still teaches styrofoam modeling of energy-wasting headquarters, using professional jargon, Chemistry still emphasizes invention of new toxins-- compounds that compound corporate control while degrading public health. Agriculture, horticulture and nutrition teach reliance on these. Engineering, business, electronics likewise typically promote centralized tools, rather than tools that empower communities. Psychology features management of the poor rather than manipulation of the greed syndromes of the rich. And much of academia functions as a large ingrown toenail. Academics study one anothers’ studies of one anothers’ studies, without risking failure in the real world. Rather than learn, think, and then do; they think about thinking and call it learning. While action without theory can be reckless, theory without action is worthless. Commitment to democracy requires spreading knowlege broadly rather than hoarding it. Worst of all, universities charge high tuition and dump debt onto students because big buildings, big bureaucracies and big salaries must be maintained. Overpriced textbooks add to the burden.
Student Debt:
Years ago I told my students that I believe they have no moral obligation to repay student loans. Intelligent nations provide free university education so their youth will be better citizens. The corporations they would repay have stolen their futures, by destroying America's industrial and financial base, while draining MediCare and Social Security. Therefore, rather than worry about loan repayments, graduates have a greater moral obligation to do with their lives what is best for themselves, their families, communities, the nation and the planet. Ordinarily we are obliged to honor contracts. This contract, however, chains students to decades of debt servitude which they must repay often by doing work they dislike and which damages communities and nature. When the alternative to signing such malicious contracts is having no college education, it is a contract made under duress and should be broken. Both education and health care are rights to be enjoyed by all, not just the rich.