This year we had a particularly good apple crop, more than we could eat in any form, so when we found ourselves between crops for our staples (kale and chard), we took a bushel or two of granny smiths and winesaps down to the nearby community-supported farm, and traded. The aroma of fresh wine saps is subtly intoxicating, which added to the stark contrast: while something called the economy was going through its vertiginous descent – trillions of dollars disappearing overnight – there we stood, chatting with our neighbors as we exchanged real apples for real greens. Our produce was as solid and as local as the strange events of Wall Street were remote and abstract.

The meltdown, who or whatever caused it, is of course a disaster; but some disasters are opportunities. Shortly before the devastating events of 9/11, someone on the President’s team famously complained that it would take “a new Pearl Harbor” to galvanize the country into accepting their agenda of militarism and domestic authoritarian control. They got their disaster, and made thorough use of it. And maybe now we have ours. The economic meltdown should be telling progressive-minded people that the time has come, not to shore up the old, top-heavy system that turned the wealth of the country into a vast gambling operation and exploited people and planet alike, but to create an economy that endures. Though we do not object to some stopgap measures to save innocent people from the worst of the damage, more importantly we call for shift to an economy of scale in which, as E.F. Schumacher said long ago, “people matter.” The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. are ringing in my ears: “We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.”

Every component of such an economy is already there: the community supported farm up the road, local currencies, ‘natural capitalism,’ sustainable farming practices, ‘closed-loop’ manufacturing — all the way out to ‘capitalism with a human face’ in the Mondragon cooperatives of Northern Spain — or even the ‘gift economies‘ that render money itself once again irrelevant. They have been there all along, but the general public never hears about them or is made to understand that they are the economies of the future, as well as the past.

We do not have to reinvent the wheel: we only need to reassemble it.

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Krishnammal Jagannathan, known as  “Amma” (“Mom”) spent some days with Gandhi and sang songs at his independence protests. After marriage, she joined Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement to walk tens of thousands of miles for the landless. In 1959, she hosted a visiting Martin Luther King, Jr.  In 2008, for holding the beacon of Gandhian legacy into the 21st century, 82-year-old Krishnammal received the Opus Prize and the Right Livelihood Award and she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On November 11th 2008, we hosted Amma for lunch at the Metta Center, and then she joined Michael and Joanna Macy ⎯author of the term “The Great Turning”⎯ for a stimulating panel discussion (footage from which will be used in Metta’s upcoming feature film Weapon of the Brave). Continue Reading »

Founded in 1982, Search for Common Ground works to transform the way the world deals with conflict – away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative problem solving. They work with local partners to find culturally appropriate means to strengthen societies’ capacity to deal with conflicts constructively: to understand the differences and act on the commonalities. Find out more about Search for Common Ground here.

Metta is very pleased to have made a training video for our courageous friends at LaOnf, the network that is attempting to bring nonviolence to Iraq. It can now be seen with Arabic subtitles thanks to Mubarak Awad, Sarah Hashimi, Carolina Dabbah, and others for making this possible.

CharityFocus is a radical inspiring organization which is challenging the current prevailing paradigm of “having more”. Its conception was started by this idea: “Let’s serve without any strings attached, just for the sake of giving.” When they started in 1999, their work was to empower nonprofits with web-based technological solutions but that work soon expanded into effectively organizing and motivating hundreds of inspired volunteers. By 2003, they were also providing web-services ranging from a portal to create your own fundraising website to a banner-ad service that promotes inspiring messages to a viral acts-of-kindness game. In 2006, they launched a gift-economy print magazine. Today, the work of CharityFocus regularly touches thousands of lives in a myriad of different ways. From its very inception, though, the focus of CharityFocus has been on the inner change that comes when people take the opportunity to act selflessly. No matter how many non-profits are served and how much excellent work is performed, their emphasis will always be on the volunteer experience. CharityFocus strives to be an incubator of compassionate action by enabling everyday heroes — people just like you and us — with the opportunity to serve. Visit the revolutionary website of CharityFocus here.