INTRODUCTION: ! POWER: You need it.! Power decides who lives well and who struggles. Power decides what is legal and what's a crime. And ultimately, power decides who lives longer and who dies sooner. !!! What is power?! Who has it?! How did they get it?! How do you get it from them?! Can you share it?! How do you use it? !!! This book describes how to confront abusive power successfully.! But protesting greed and injustice is just a start. We champion the creative actions anyone can take to make American communities strong again, to set good examples for this nation and its states. We’ll look at visions, too. You can’t fully take power unless you know where you want to take it.
Big Problems Need Bold Solutions
Whether Left-wing or Right-wing, Americans are united. We all want a secure job, more money, good sex, reliable health care, lower energy costs, pleasant housing, healthy food, smart schools, safe streets, vacations, retirement, respect. We also agree that our country has serious problems. We’re fed up with wasted taxes, rising prices, high crime, drugs, layoffs, foreclosure and debt, costly insurance, endless wars, corrupt bankers and politicians, traffic jams, rotting bridges, crumbling schools. Fifty years ago America stood alone on top of the world. Americans had most of the world’s best jobs and cars. We had the strongest money-- our wages bought the coolest toys, warmest homes and cheapest food. The minimum wage bought six gallons of gasoline. We lived longest of any people. Today many other countries have more manufacturing jobs and stronger money for better quality goods, better education and health care, tastier food and longer lives. That’s because Wall Street has sent our jobs overseas and shifted taxes from corporations to us. So career bureaucrats are laid off; young professionals with good jobs study budget cuts; college students wonder who's hiring; retirees count pennies. Those of us determined to restore America’s greatness can’t wait for Congress or governors. It’s up to us to take control of jobs, money, and health care.
Prepare for the Best
The United States of America is full of wonderful people, including you, and every problem here can be fixed. This sounds ridiculous, of course, to those flooded by tragic TV news. Or struggling to live amid gunfire. Or fighting City Hall or depression or illness or landlord or bank or boss. Even so, every American neighborhood will be revived. Grassroots networks are forming to bring tens of millions new jobs and billions of fresh cash to our nation’s roughest places. We have the humanity, technology and wealth to make America work again, and that you’re essential. Liberals and conservatives need to climb from ideological trenches to embrace a national project that makes life easier for us all. My book declares respect for healthy national pride and specific conservative values (family, community, personal initiative, small business and efficient government), while promoting specific liberal values (mutual aid, social justice, nonviolence and green economies). As usual, the future will be different. Peak Oil, global
warming, de-industrialization, the declining dollar, population growth and limits to U.S. military power are combining to end cheap fuel, cheap food, cheap homes, cheap consumer goods and cheap land.Americans are now forced to build a far better world because the alternative is a far worse world. Mere competent management of decline will not carry us safely beyond severe change. Normal is gone.
“Rebuilding America’s cities, suburbs, and farms will fully employ the next ten generations of construction workers, scientists and artists.” The good news is that modern challenges require us to rebuild America, entirely. Every stick and brick. All skills can serve new plans and technologies. The better news is that rebuilding America’s cities, suburbs, and farms will fully employ the next ten generations of construction workers, scientists and artists. We will fill factories, too, making modern tools that cut our costs of housing and fuel. We’ll thereby cut crime to a fraction, since jobs fight crime. We’ll empower the poor to prove their capabilities, while generating trillions of dollars of profit. We’ll erase the national debt. We’ll restore national pride. The best news is that rebuilding America will create cities that are a joy to live in, whose children are happy and safe. Earthquake-proof, tornado-proof, flood-proof, droughtproof, nuke-proof, famine-proof. And beautiful. Our cities will be the model for the world.
“Such an orderly process will take decades, requiring trillions of dollars investment for peace rather than war.” Imagine that, 20 years from now, America’s regional economies enable everyone to work a few hours creatively daily, then relax with family and friends to enjoy top-quality local healthy food. To enjoy clean low-cost warm housing, clean and safe transport, high-quality handcrafted clothes and household goods. To enjoy creating and playing together, growing up and growing old in supportive neighborhoods where everyone is valuable. And to do this while replenishing rather than depleting the planet. Looking far enough ahead, towards the adulthood of your children, there will be little oil but we will be warm. There will be few cars but we will go faster to places more delightful. The most secure housing will be built substantially underground. Cities will grow much of their own food.
“This is not capitalism, not socialism, but mutual enterprise.” Pretty wild, right? But entirely realistic. Not a pipe dream. Another world is happening. Amid the worst daily news, thousands of organizations and businesses, millions of homeowners and tenants are preparing the harvest. Many know they are part of a movement seldom noted by media; others work alone. Some take large risks; others go slow. Rather than stare at gloom, they fix it. They see a future that works. Therefore this book suggests a 200-year plan that unlocks America’s more festive destiny. It answers such questions as "What jobs are being created?," “How will we live,” What are the tools of such a future?,” and “How do I get started?” This book looks at challenges, next steps, and effective examples. It introduces practical techniques you can use to both confront and build, to promote the America you prefer. Most examples feature my own initiatives during the past 40 years, inventing programs that shift power to communities.