Living Democracy, Feeding Hope

Originally published by Earth Island Journal on 10/03/2016 On October 13, 1953, executives from beer, soda, chewing gum, cigarette, and candy companies, as well as the packaging and chemical industries, launched a new organization: Keep America Beautiful. As The New York Times would write a year later, the group called itself “a national public service organization for the elimination of litter.” While the public-facing conceit was that the group would launch a “drive against litter,” the organization was really developed to push back against the environmental movement’s increasing pressure on industry to clean up its act. One of Keep America Beautiful’s early PR successes was coining the term “litterbug” and having it go, in today’s parlance, viral. In the organization’s narrative, the litterbugs weren’t Anheuser Busch or Coca-Cola or Phillip Morris; the litterbugs were you and me. The same year Keep America Beautiful was founded, Vermont passed the nation’s first version of a bottle bill that banned selling beer in non-refillable bottles. The industry lobbied heavily against it, and four years later it was dead. Ever since, soda companies have been lobbying “relentlessly to shift environmental burdens to taxpayers,” explains award-winning author Marion Nestle in her new book Soda Politics . Fighting bottle and deposit bills, which typically place refundable deposits on beverage containers to incentivize recycling and reuse, has been one prominent strategy. Soda companies quickly realized “one-way” cans and bottles can be more profitable: Once sold to a consumer, containers are no longer the company’s responsibility, whereas bottle bills distribute the responsibility. The American Beverage Association, the trade association for the soda industry, naturally calls these bills a “misguided policy choice.” “Bottle bills are antiquated policies that have no significant impact on the environment,” the association wrote in 2015 while lobbying against a Massachusetts bill. That’s a nice spin on the truth: Where bottle bills are now in place, including 11 US states, recycling rates average 60 percent. In some states, like Vermont, they can hit an impressive 97 percent. In places without them, recycling rates can average as low as 24 percent, according to the Container Recycling Institute. Of course, the environmental impact of soda extends far beyond the can or plastic bottle you toss in the garbage. It also includes the resources used to give soda its signature sweetness, primarily corn syrup and sugarcane. Sugarcane production poses a major environmental threat. According to the World Wildlife Fund, sugar plantations destroy biodiverse habitat, and growers often use extensive amounts of irrigation water and chemicals. Then there are the emissions. In 2012, the Sierra Club estimated that carbon emissions associated with production and distribution of Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper’s Snapple Group were 11.7 million metric tons that year, equivalent to the emissions from nearly 2.5 million passenger cars driven for a year. And don’t forget all that water used in soda production. While Coke-funded studies have found it takes “only” 70 liters of water to make every liter of Coca-Cola, independent researchers have pegged the ratio much higher. According to estimates by Marion Nestle based on data from the University of Twente Water Centre in the Netherlands, it takes between 340 and 620 liters of water to produce one liter of soda. This includes indirect and direct water use. In light of all these environmental impacts, it seems reducing waste with simple, proven policy solutions like bottle bills would be something that everyone, even industry, could accept. Instead, soda companies are battling bottle bills in the United States and around the world. Still, environmentalists have been pushing back, and in some cases winning. In New South Wales, for example, Greenpeace activists recently organized to defend a bottle-deposit bill against a well-funded industry campaign to defeat it. Among other actions, Greenpeace staged a banner drop on an iconic 40-year-old Coke billboard in Sydney. Though the police stopped the Greenpeace climbers before they could unfurl their 30-meter banner depicting Coca-Cola trashing Australia, the action gained local media coverage and helped shape the narrative: It’s not the citizens driving the waste problem; it’s Coke. The bottle bill passed this spring. As an avid recycler, one who has even trained my toddler what the blue bins are for, I know we can each do our part. But we can go beyond just tossing our waste into the right bin: We can join together to defend public policy that puts the burden on the real litterbug, corporations like the soda giants and beer behemoths that for too long have shirked their responsibility.

Getting money out of politics gets bipartisan support, so why not go for a mandate? Democracy Spring protesters marched on the US Capitol to protest big money in politics and voting rights restrictions. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images) Despite liberals’ best efforts at self-reassurance and Donald Trump’s poor performance in the first debate, his anti-establishment messaging still holds great appeal for a large portion of our electorate. This is hardly news, but what’s the essential lesson for all of us? That most Americans feel cut out. They’re angry that they have no real voice in our democracy — because they don’t: Political scientists have found it’s even more true than most of us would guess. A groundbreaking 2014 study covering the ’80s and ’90s by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page shows that most Americans have “near-zero” influence on public policy, while that of elite interests is considerable. Of course it’s only gotten worse since. Monday’s debate moderator, Lester Holt, failed to ask either candidate about money in politics, or even reference it. The failure to address this reality hurts Clinton and helps Trump. While she has not been a career politician, as Trump repeatedly suggests, she has been a longtime “insider.” So Trump’s attacks linking Clinton with virtually every ill-conceived policy of the past decades resonates — valid or not. Is Clinton therefore locked in this elite-at-the-expense-of-ordinary-Americans status? Watching the first debate, it sure seems that way. Yes, she embraced cutting-edge progressive family-friendly policies, but she made little effort to dissociate herself from the reviled political class in the pocket of big money. This is strange, because Clinton has done something no other recent president or presidential candidate has — something that perfectly counters Trump’s anti-establishment masquerading: She has taken a clear, strong stance in favor of key democracy reforms that together could actually enhance the power of struggling Americans. She has endorsed publicly financing congressional elections and restoring the Voting Rights Act , and has promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who will allow Congress to regulate money in politics and more. Her platform is so strong that the democracy reform group Every Voice (formerly Public Campaign) made Clinton its first-ever presidential endorsement in its nearly 20-year history. Moreover, her party’s official platform includes one of the strongest sets of democracy reforms in its history. So why not talk about it? No single issue attracts larger bipartisan consensus than getting big money out of politics. A remarkable 85 percent of Americans want fundamental change in the way we fund our elections. And more to the point: What red-blooded American would admit that he or she doesn’t believe that everyone should have an equal say in our democracy? The only way to accomplish this, not to mention a host of other social and political changes many Americans endorse, is to radically reduce the role of money in politics. Trump claims to be an outsider, and thus the best fixer-of-our-broken-system. Yet as Clinton ( and others ) noted, the Republican nominee’s tax plan skews heavily toward the already-rich. But in the debate, she missed an opportunity to point out it also would inevitably give the rich even more influence in politics. By more enthusiastically donning the mantle of fighter-for-democracy, Clinton could win over more of the alienated voters who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic nomination fight, precisely because he made ending the “rigged system” that’s crushing so many of us a top priority. The more Clinton embraces a pro-democracy platform now, the greater the post-election mandate for the already burgeoning Democracy Movement — a movement of campaign finance reformers, voting rights activists, anti-gerrymandering citizens, constitutional amendment advocates and much more. (Skeptical that such a movement is actually forming? See the breadth of one part of it in our Field Guide to the Democracy Movement ). So here is our humble advice to the Clinton strategy team: Showcase your already-endorsed proposals to empower ordinary Americans in our political process. They’re not pie-in-the-sky. More than enough evidence shows that they can work — so why hesitate? The road to democracy reform could also lead to the White House. Originally published by BillMoyers.com on 09/28/2016

Public figures and political organizations are wringing their hands: Do we publicly throw our weight behind a fear-mongering demagogue or do we suck it up and endorse a “career politician” who can’t seem to earn voters’ trust? But what if “endorsement” is a political red herring? “Endorsing” suggests approval, but for a lot of us that option is closed. But, hey, we still have to choose—we must choose because democracy itself is at stake today. By this we mean that Big Money has come to dominate our political system and voting rights are under attack. As democracy itself is in jeopardy, in this election here’s what we strive for: to act strategically—weighing the long-term consequences of the choices available today. We start with the following assumption: that none of the huge challenges our nation faces—from deepening economic inequality to racial injustice to climate change—can be met without core democracy reforms, including restoring the Voting Rights Act and public financing of elections. We also assume that these foundational reforms can’t happen without a broad, deep citizens’ movement pushing, pushing, pushing the future president. Isn’t this what Bernie Sanders tried hard to get us to understand from the beginning of his campaign? He stressed the importance of continuing the fight the day after Election Day . History lessons often help in a crisis, so what can we learn? Consider Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom professor Peter Dreier describes as “ cautious, even conservative “ before being pushed to act. FDR famously declared to a group of activists in the 1930s “You have convinced me, now go out and make me do it.” And so they did, introducing decades of advancement for all classes, especially the poorest. Or, consider the Lyndon B. Johnson era. Before his presidency, Johnson had voted against every single piece of civil rights legislation over his two decades in Congress, notes Ari Berman in Give Us the Ballot. Yet, he pushed through the most important Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction and then the War on Poverty, helping to cut the poverty rate in half in just over a decade. Johnson understood that only citizen pressure could give him the muscle to act against Southern opposition: So he said to Martin Luther King, “Ok you go out there, Dr. King, and keep doing what you are doing, and make it possible for me to do the right thing,” Bill Moyers recounts . It was only after King, John Lewis, and company marched in Selma and met brutal repression, creating a political crisis, that LBJ was able to act. Lesson? Previous voting records aren’t always indicators of a president’s policy positions. Much depends on what we citizens do. This insight focuses the mind on building a powerful citizens’ movement. And when it’s not there, what happens? After President Obama’s election, the activism his campaign sparked fell apart, as we failed to build a powerful citizens’ movement pressing the president and Congress to pass foundational democracy reforms. So, a key strategic question for us: Which candidate today is likely to respond to pressure representing majority opinion on strengthening democracy? After all, 85 percent of Americans want fundamental changes in the way we fund our elections. Some claim that Clinton and Trump are equally as (un)likely to correct our deep “democratic deficit.” We strongly disagree. Clinton and the Democratic Party’s platform declare support for virtually every major democracy reform now pursued by dozens of national citizen organizations. (See the Field Guide to the Democracy Movement ) Reforms include voting rights, removing barriers to voting, public-and-small-donor financing of campaigns, and ending political gerrymandering, as well as beginning the process of a constitutional amendment to establish that only real people (not corporations) have constitutional rights. Trump, on the other hand, has expressed no concrete plan or even desire for campaign finance or voting rights reform. Instead he’s implicitly suggested intimidating voters on Election Day. Of course, legislation isn’t the only thing we have to think about to be strategic. The president has the power of appointment with huge consequences. Most obvious is the Supreme Court vacancy. Obama’s nominee, Justice Merrick Garland, will likely not be confirmed by the end of this year. So either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will shape the ideological composition of the Court for years to come. Vital issues from money in politics to voting rights to environmental regulation all hang in the balance. And then there are cabinet appointments. Often under-the radar administrative positions often dictate significant policy shifts. Think of Ronald Reagan’s cabinet appointments, and, for example, his choice of Anne Burford to head the Environmental Protection Agency. There, she actively diminished the EPA’s power, cutting its budget by over one-fifth and rolling back environmental protections. Given the extreme ideological position of the GOP on climate change, it’s not paranoid to expect a similar tactic if Trump is elected. Or, imagine what New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would do as Attorney General ? Back in April, we both gained a deep sense of the power of united citizens as we marched with Democracy Spring from Philly to D.C. and participated in its historic sit-in for money-out-of-politics, voting reform, and a constitutional amendment. After deep discussion, Democracy Spring took a bold step by advocating that its members strategically vote for Clinton . This is not an endorsement, Democracy Spring makes clear, but part of a strategic plan. At a moment of national crisis, each of us has to make us a choice, asking which candidate’s presidency could give us the best shot at achieving real democracy? As with Democracy Spring, we, too, see only one strategic choice. With Clinton, there is at least hope for building a “movement of movements”—a true Democracy Movement to “make her do it”—that is, to give her the shove and the necessary muscle to follow through on her promises. As Bernie has reminded us, as FDR and LBJ have shown us, the real fight for democracy will begin the day after the election. Being strategic involves one’s own vote, and beyond: It means being able to look oneself in the mirror the morning after the election and ask: Did I do enough to create the possibility for foundational reform? Until November, therefore, we will be doing all we can to register voters, persuade the disengaged to vote, and help get people to the polls on Election Day. We hope to see you out on the streets and at the polls with us. Originally posted by Huffington Post on 09/14/2016

From $2 to $3 trillion—that’s the yearly cost of (mostly hidden) damage done to our natural resources by increasingly capital-intensive agriculture, the UN Food and Agriculture reported last month. So what’s the great news? Just back from the U.K., I can report that an academic center there is making history by promoting the opposite: resource-enhancing farming. While here, in almost all states, funding for public two- and four-year colleges is stuck well below pre-recession levels, a few hours from London the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University is booming! Even jet lag can’t dampen my excitement. I was honored to be a keynoter celebrating the second anniversary of the Center and to—finally—meet my hero, its leader Professor Michel Pimbert . We share a strong passion for democratic, resource-enhancing farming. Likely the largest of its kind in the world, his Center’s 80 researchers and PhD students are developing and sharing knowledge about how to transform a dead-end agricultural path, i.e. industrial agriculture, into biodiversity-rich farming that regenerates local economies and ecologies. Its goal is re-localized food systems that enhance fertility, food security and democracy, as well as help to mitigate the climate threat. Over decades, Pimbert’s many contributions include leadership in creating powerful new forums for farmers to gain a real voice in key choices shaping their lives. Here’s an amazing story that Joseph Collins and I recount about his work with “citizens’ juries” in our new book World Hunger: 10 Myths : “As a part of what some call “democratizing the governance of food systems,” Citizens’ Juries are arising in South Asia, West Africa, and the Andean region of Latin America. They involve several dozen randomly selected citizens, with diverse experiences and views, coming together over several days to hear evidence on a critical issue, to dialogue, and then to arrive at an agreement on how to proceed. “In 2002, in India, a Citizens’ Jury of small and marginal farmers— mostly women—upset a lot of powerful people. It directly challenged the Andhra Pradesh government’s own master plan, backed by the U.K.’s aid agency and the World Bank, to modernize farming in the state via large-scale, industrial agriculture that would push small farmers and pastoralists to cities. The Citizens’ Jury chose a different future: an agroecological pathway based on smallholder, biodiverse farming. “In the end, a female jury member traveled to the U.K. Parliament to deliver the Jury’s verdict to the minister of British aid and the MPs. It created ‘quite a storm,’ reports development specialist Michel Pimbert. The Citizens’ Jury process turned out to be a ‘defining historical moment for the claiming of food sovereignty and participatory democracy in Andhra Pradesh,’ he explained to us.” Now, Coventry University is investing big-time in his Center’s research on agroecology and alternative food networks—both rural and urban—as well as in sustainable water management, community and socio-ecological resilience, food sovereignty, and the right to food and water for all. The faculty I met emphasize participatory and transdisciplinary approaches, combining science and peoples’ local knowledge. Their ambitious research agenda explicitly abets socially just and ecologically sustainable food and water systems. Located in the English countryside, the Center’s home is in new, open-space eco-buildings intertwined with gardens—organic, of course! Its expansion plans will soon include 10 additional activist scholars and researchers from the natural and social sciences, as well as more PhD students from all over the world. Finally, for me a big highlight of the Coventry celebration was meeting the other keynoter, Kumi Naidoo , a South African who recounted his path from imprisonment for anti-apartheid work to leader of Greenpeace International. Now, Kumi heads an alliance of civil-society groups across Africa, which has just launched the Africa Civil Society Centre. Based in Arusha, Tanzania, it is a “dynamic and robust space,” say the founders, where progressive African civil society leaders can convene to strengthen each other as they engage in a range of civic struggles to promote democratic, equitable, and sustainable transformative change in Africa. I cannot recall ever visiting an academic center where so many people, including guests from the community, are as excited about the work and potential contribution to meeting challenges at the heart of our global social and ecological crises. Check out the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience website and get a lift! Originally published by Huffington Post on 7/20/16

Originally published by Food Tank on 07/16/2016 You wouldn’t have known from the farmers gathered in Lobi, in the Dedza area of central Malawi, that drought had seriously depressed harvests. To be sure, they hadn’t suffered the worst of the country’s devastating heat and dry spell. Farmers to the south saw crops wither in their baked fields; some never even bothered to plant. An estimated 8 million people – fully half the country’s people – are now at risk of hunger, according to the World Food Program . The farmers in Lobi were surprisingly upbeat, enthusiastically calling out the crops they were growing to a project manager leading a community meeting. One reason they were happy is that the list of crops didn’t begin and end with maize, the staple for which Malawi is known because of the country’s government-subsidized program to boost local production through the provision of hybrid maize seeds and fertilizers. Under the Malawi Farmer-to-Farmer Agroecology Project (MAFFA) , the farmers in Lobi grow a diversity of food crops, for sale and home consumption. Maize is still their staple, but the list of other crops seemed endless: rice, millet, common beans, soybeans, groundnuts (peanuts), Bambara nuts, potatoes (of many varieties), sweet potatoes (white and orange), cassava, pigeon peas, and even two types of tobacco, a local cash crop. Maize yields were down, as a blackboard chart of local production from the just-concluded harvest showed. That’s not surprising. Maize is a relatively water-intensive crop. Still, all the farmers in Lobi wanted to talk about was their orange maize, which had performed well. Rich in Vitamin A, the native local variety was taking off faster than the project could promote it. Farmers seemed particularly to like its drought resilience, taste, high conversion to edible grain for the local staple, nsima, and how well it grows even without the doses of expensive – or subsidized – inorganic fertilizer required by government-supported hybrid maize varieties. They mostly use compost to fertilize their crops. What seemed more worrisome than the drought, at least for these farmers, were the government’s draft seed policies, which threatened to declare these small-scale farmers’ coveted orange maize seeds unworthy of commercial sale, or possibly even exchange with fellow farmers. Opening Africa to the seed giants Malawi is not alone in pursuing misguided seed policies that would favor commercial plant breeders over local farmers. Indeed, the Malawian government sent its representative to Harare, Zimbabwe last month to meet with other African government officials working to advance such policies across the continent. The Arusha Protocol on Plant Variety Protection is now the leading edge of an international effort, supported by western donor governments, foundations, and of course multinational seed companies, to open Africa to commercial seeds. The initiative comes out of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO), which promotes laws that protect the intellectual property rights of formal sector plant breeders, ostensibly to promote the use of certified high-yielding seeds. In theory, the goal is to ensure the quality of seeds, a real problem in many areas, and encourage innovation in seed development for food security. In practice, of course, such laws can impose a regimen of high-cost purchased seeds on poor farmers, the vast majority of whom can’t afford them. In its most draconian forms, the Arusha Protocol could advocate policies that make the saving and exchange of seeds, from which the vast majority of African farmers live, illegal. Civil society representatives who participated in the Harare meeting warned of the threats to farmers’ rights. Indeed, that is what farm leaders in Lobi are worried about. Malawi’s initial draft seed policy seemed to outlaw seed exchange and local sales unless seeds are certified by the government. In effect, the draft policy would define farmer-saved orange maize seed – the same kernels people make into staple foods – as a grain but not a seed, worthy of eating but not planting. To Mangani Katundu, MAFFA project leader and professor at Malawi’s Chancellor College, declaring something that can be planted to grow such nutritious food somehow “not a seed” was beyond cynical. “How can such a valuable native variety of maize not be a seed?” Thanks to lobbying by farmer groups and other advocates, some of the more severe provisions seem to have been removed from Malawi’s seed policy, which is still under discussion. But the threat remains that the policy will still favor plant breeders, and the multinational firms that employ them, over local farmers. Farmer groups, such as the African Food Sovereignty Alliance , warn that such policies are designed to open the door, eventually, to genetically modified seeds. Lobi lobbies for seed sovereignty Evelyn Njolomole, an experienced farmer from Lobi, certainly did her part to lobby for seed sovereignty. She joined Katundu and the MAFFA team in the capital of Lilongwe in early June, staffing a Chancellor College booth for the opening of the African Union-sponsored Ecosystem-Based Adaptation for Food Security program. The booth featured large professionally produced posters on the orange maize project, offering samples of orange maize flour and other local products. Evelyn would later see herself on the evening television news as she eloquently explained the virtues of their crop to Malawi President Peter Mutharika when he stopped by the booth. His first question, according to Katundu, was, “Does it come from Monsanto?” For his government, in seems, only multinationals can be expected to produce anything of value. Evelyn explained that no, it is actually saved seed from Malawi. She handed him a bag of their orange maize flour. President Mutharika promised he would make nsima with it that night. One hopes he could taste the national pride in each bite.

Originally published on Yes! Magazine on 06/25/2016 Photo Credit: AleksandarNakic / iStock Hope about American politics is hard to come by. Disapproval ratings of both major-party candidates are higher than we’ve seen in decades. Millions are livid about Trump’s lies and let down by Hillary Clinton and her party’s now-exposed bashing of Bernie Sanders . All these responses seem to reflect the utter disillusionment of people across the political spectrum who feel shut out of a political system dominated by wealthy, special interests. No wonder thousands of Americans are supporting third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein and protesting both conventions. In such a challenging time, how do we keep our eyes and energies fixed on our goal of real democracy? Hope is key. It is an essential ingredient for change. Let’s be clear about what hope is not. Hope isn’t a “slightly sappy whistler in the dark,” as the late historian Howard Zinn reminded us . It’s not blind confidence that things will, somehow, work out. No, hope has power. In his book, Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear , Harvard Medical School’s Srinivasan S. Pillay captures it this way: “Hope is not an answer,” but because it stimulates the imagination, it helps us to pose the right questions. By contrast, fear often triggers the wrong questions. Pillay likens hope to a scientist’s hypothesis, organizing us toward solutions. Pillay emphasizes, too, hope’s power vis-a-vis fear: Because “hope seems to travel in the same [parts of the brain] as fear, it might be a good soldier to employ if we want to meet fear.” In this painful moment, what does such hope feel like? Like the journey that it is, “democracy is … becoming rather than being. It can be easily lost, but never is fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle,” said the first African-American federal judge William H. Hastie. On that journey, tapping the true power of hope requires grasping how we got here—identifying the causal flow; only then can we feel confident we’re actually reversing it. Our shorthand version of America’s downward spiral starts with a couple of false and dangerous ideas. First, that a market economy works on its own. After all, Ronald Reagan assured us the market is “magic,” and with magic you surely don’t want to spoil the fun by asking how it works. In real life, however, our fun has been spoiled by not asking. We’ve failed to grasp that, of course, all economies have rules; and in ours, unfortunately, one dominates: The built-in driver of economic decisions is what will bring the highest return to existing wealth. So, no surprise. Wealth begets wealth until we reach the appalling reality of America today, in which 20 people control as much wealth as the bottom half of us. As social epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document in their 2009 book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger , extreme economic inequality, disrupting the social fabric, is associated with elevated violence, poorer health, and many other negative outcomes. The second dangerous idea is that democracy accountable to citizens can survive such concentrated wealth. Throughout American history, big-money interests have converted their economic advantage into political power. But in recent decades, as weakened campaign finance rules swelled the flow of wealth into our politics, some, including the BBC, have referred to America as an oligarchy . As money buys more political power, our economy and democracy become even more a tool for the few over the many. If these big assertions begin to describe our root predicament, where’s the hope? We again turn to Zinn’s wisdom: “Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises…” In that spirit, let’s count every single win, big and small, that our focus and hard work have achieved in addressing this root crisis—the grip of money in politics. As we work to remove that democracy-destroying power, we build confidence and avenues for shaping new rules governing our economy and other dimensions of society so that America works for all of us. There are plenty of such wins to celebrate—even in the past year: Honest Elections Seattle's big victory put in place public financing that allocates to citizens four $25 vouchers they can allocate to candidates of their choice. Maine voted to strengthen their Clean Election Act , increasing funds for candidates who don’t take private money and adding disclosure requirements and tougher penalties. With 70 percent of the vote, Ohio reformed its redistricting procedures to fix gerrymandering and make the process less partisan. Democratic Party leadership agreed on a platform with strong positions on money in politics, endorsing public financing of elections as well as other critical reforms. The platform reflects core demands that Democracy Spring marchers called for in April while marching from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. New York became the 17th state to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. After adopting automatic voter registration, Oregon added 15,000 registered voters in its “motor voter” system in the first 24 business days, compared to an average of only 2,000 per month before passage. In Austin, Texas, the City Council passed tough new disclosure provisions . The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Evenwel v. Abbott that states can include all residents (not just registered voters) when designing state legislative districts—a big deterrent to disenfranchisement. Just last week, after pressure from party activists, the Democrats have begun the process of overhauling its super delegate system . Our list could go on and will likely grow even longer this fall, as some states will have democracy reform initiatives on the November ballot. Since cynicism and despair are among democracy’s worst enemies, let these and other victories stir us to work harder than ever to make our democracy real for all Americans. Of course, hope is not for wimps. It takes courage to move past our comfort zones to speak up, demand reform, and, if ignored, to take peacefully to the streets. It requires that we not allow ourselves to be confused or sidetracked. Courage also demands that we avoid easy, categorical thinking. It means refusing to paint all politicians as uncaring or evil, understanding that although the system is rigged many on the inside would fix our democracy if given the chance. As citizens, our job is to push so hard they have that chance. We can’t let bad news blind us from seeing that Democrats and Republicans are not “equally as bad” on money in politics. Their respective party platforms could not be more different . Whether a Democrat or a Republican gains the White House, our job remains the same: mobilize as never before for democratic reforms and across party lines. In all, hope means refusing to allow any setback or anyone’s cynicism to dilute our own creativity, positivity, and energy. Zinn asks us never to forget: “The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Originally published by Food Tank on 06/24/2017 MAPUTO: I spent another week in Mozambique looking for ProSAVANA, the much-touted, much-reviled Japanese-Brazilian-Mozambican agriculture project that has spectacularly failed to turn Mozambique’s savannah-lands in the Nacala Corridor into a giant soybean plantation modeled on Brazil’s Cerrado region. I was there doing follow-up research for a book. I hadn’t found much evidence of ProSAVANA two years ago (see my previous articles here and here ) and I didn’t find much now. Government officials wouldn’t talk about it. Japanese development cooperation representatives spoke only of pathetically small extension services to a few small-scale farmers. Private investors were scarce. Civil society groups debated whether it is worth cooperating in the wholesale redesign of the program. I wondered why anyone would bother. Like many of the grand schemes hatched in the wake of the 2007-2008 food price spikes, this one was a bust, by any measure. Still, ProSAVANA remains the Mozambican government’s agricultural development strategy for the region. While farmers defend their hard-won land rights, it seems they will have to look elsewhere for agricultural development. I decided to look elsewhere as well. I didn’t have to go far. I arrived in Marracuene, 45 minutes outside Maputo, just after the rainy-season harvest and as the irrigation-fed winter season was beginning. Marracuene didn’t get much rain or much of a harvest due to the drought that has parched much of southern Africa. One farmer in the village of BoBole told me he’d earned barely one-quarter what he had the previous year from farm sales, and almost none of that was from maize, the Mozambique staple. Across the region, production is down, prices are up, and hunger is widespread. In Mozambique, 1.5 million people are facing food insecurity, according to UNICEF , with 191,000 children expected to be severely malnourished in the next 12 months. Diversity the key to surviving drought In Marracuene, the maize harvest was almost a total bust. Fortunately, the farmers there grow a wide variety of crops, for home consumption and for sale. And they have irrigation, rehabilitated from an old colonial plantation, so they have a second season. I saw healthy crops in the fields – cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava. And I saw young maize plants on what turned out to be the association’s collective plots, the small portion of the community’s 250 acres that this 280-member association agrees to set aside and farm collectively. They work it together every Thursday morning. I watched as women, and a few men, prepared fields, watered new plants, and sprayed for pests. Women mostly tend these farms and run the association as well. And the maize they are growing now is for seed, because the summer harvest was so bad that many farmers have no seeds for the next season. They save, exchange and recycle seeds, because they don’t grow commercial hybrid maize, they rely on their own preferred native yellow maize. And they keep their community seed bank just for times like these. In the district farmers’ union office, Mohammed, the Kenyan volunteer who is the local agroecology promoter, showed me small jars of seeds, explaining that this is now all that is left of their seed bank after the drought. The rest is planted on those collective plots. Mohammed was confident they would grow enough maize seed to get farmers back on their feet. This was one self-reliant, climate-resilient bunch of farmers. Many bunches, actually, with 7,000 members in 19 active Marracuene-area associations, all affiliated with UNAC, the national farmers’ union. Their drought preparedness was no accident. ActionAid has been working with the alliance of Marracuene farmers unions, through UNAC, to promote agroecology, conservation agriculture, and climate-resilient farm management. I saw them all during my visit to two of the associations, in Bobole and Popular. I saw careful mulching to hold in water and add organic matter to the soil. I saw intercropping in beautifully prepared raised beds, designed to promote drainage, avoid flood damage, and retain moisture during drought. I saw organic manure-based fertilizer awaiting application in the newly sown fields. (Mohammed confessed that some farmers were mad at him because local livestock farmers used to give away their manure; now they sell it due to the demand the project has helped create in the community.) I saw abundant crop diversity. Self-styled agroecology revolution I was most struck by the communities’ commitment to its native yellow maize. It predated ActionAid’s promotion of alternative cropping strategies. Farmers in Marracuene had simply decided that hybrid white maize offered them no significant advantages over their local saved variety, which produces small cobs but is dependable (if not this year) even under conditions of sporadic rains and limited fertilizer applications. They were apparently so committed to rescuing this local variety that they followed the lead of a volunteer from Brazil, who showed them how to better select seed for purity and performance. As with many so-called “local varieties,” the quality had eroded over time due to uncontrolled cross-pollination with other maize varieties, including hybrids provided by international donors or the government. By selecting the best cobs and the purest kernels from those cobs, growing them out in the fields, then repeating the process, farmers restored the purity and performance of a preferred variety of maize. One they did not have to purchase every year. It’s the kind of participatory plant breeding that is rarely considered when governments and international donors – and the neo-Malthusians predicting the end of food supplies – call for urgent investment in improved seeds. They mean one thing when they talk about improved seeds: hybrid maize sold by national and multinational seed companies. It is part of the new green revolution for Africa that, like the old one for Asia and Latin America, depends on purchased seed every year, from companies such as Monsanto, and heavy applications of inorganic fertilizer, supplied by multinational firms such as Yara. On their own, these do nothing to improve the fertility of soils. Think of a trout pond stocked every year by the authorities so fishermen can catch fish. Give a person a fish, goes the adage, and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish…. Well, teach him to fish from a stocked pond, and he won’t eat for a lifetime, he’ll eat for as long as someone can afford to keep stocking the pond. Teach him to create and maintain a healthy pond that sustains life – then he will eat for a lifetime. The soils are farmers’ ponds, and Marracuene’s were being fed by crop diversity, just the kind of approach promoted in a recent expert report, “ From Uniformity to Diversity .” Intercropping is great for soils, building organic matter, adding needed nitrogen for maize and other crops, and reducing input costs. But it also diversifies risk, including nutritional risk in a drought. Mohammed told me that very little maize came out of the fields in this year’s extreme conditions, despite their drought-tolerant, improved variety. But drought-resistant crops like cowpeas, cassava, sweet potato, and okra survived, providing needed food. Judite Manhica, the tall, strong woman who leads the association, said she didn’t expect a food crisis in her community after the drought. She farms just an acre of land, but she says it sustains her family. Agroecology is by no means the norm yet in Marracuene; Mohammed estimated that maybe 40 percent of farmers are now employing the practices, or some of them. But he shows the patience of a true agricultural extension agent. He said farmers saw their neighbors do well with the new methods and they slowly were coming around. Mohammed said his efforts to introduce drought-tolerant sorghum and finger millet crops hadn’t taken hold, mainly because farmers in southern Mozambique are not accustomed to growing or eating them. But maybe in due time they will. Misplaced priorities I asked if the government was supporting their efforts in any way. Mohammed was charitable, pointing out free bags of organic fertilizer the provincial agriculture department gave them. But he couldn’t name another serious government contribution to sustainable agriculture. Neither could anyone else I spoke with. I’ve seen little evidence, in fact, of any serious agricultural policies aimed at the 3 million small-scale maize farmers across Mozambique who eke out a living, with eroded local seeds, rudimentary tools, no credit, no irrigation, and no extension agents like Mohammed showing them how to put life back in their soils and food on their tables. Instead, their government promotes large-scale foreign investment that threatens their lands and their livelihoods. And the international community, led by the Gates Foundation, pressures African governments to adopt restrictive seed laws that threaten farmers’ rights to save and exchange seed, as they do in Marracuene, while promoting the patented varieties being sold by Monsanto and other seed companies. The day I was in Marracuene, African leaders were gathered in Harare, Zimbabwe, to advance the so-called Arusha Protocol on “Plant Variety Protection.” That is the catch phrase for measures to guarantee the intellectual property rights of commercial plant breeders. The African Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), denounced the effort in a statement . “AFSA is committed to ensuring that farmers, as breeders themselves as well as users, remain at the centre of localised seed production systems and continue to exercise their rights freely to save, use, exchange, replant, improve, distribute, and sell all the seed in their seed systems,” said coordinator Dr. Million Belay. Thus far, the government of Mozambique has dutifully reformed its seed laws to conform, creating obstacles to the kinds of real solutions – to hunger, poverty, and climate change – farmers in Marracuene are creating for themselves.

Originally published on Moyers and Company on 06/15/2016 Photo Credit: Nicholas Kamm /AFP/Getty Images Demanding that Congress remove big money’s stranglehold on our democracy and protect voting rights, we walked more than 100 miles from Philadelphia to Washington, DC this spring with Democracy Spring. The experience changed us. Our energy has never been higher. So what do we do now? Whatever the answer is, we are determined to build on our final minutes of the march. As the Capitol dome came into view, we found ourselves among hundreds, all chanting at full throat, “Whose democracy? Our democracy!” We felt a thrill of recognition: Our democracy. We’d never quite experienced that feeling before. While we’ve found it deeply soul-satisfying to protest injustice and our rigged system, in that heady moment we felt something different: that we were no longer outsiders but owners. With that feeling came a deep knowing that this so-called democracy could actually become one in which we all function as owners, each with a real voice. We felt we were fulfilling a duty to what is ours , not only to propose but to take responsibility for solutions and to insist that we have a hand in shaping those solutions. No, we’re not dewy-eyed! We’re talking about responsibility, which can sometimes be heavy and painful. But it sure feels a lot better than powerlessness and despair. Imagine the moment we learn that a loved one needs our care to heal: Is there anything more satisfying than assuming that responsibility? Today, in a political climate saturated with fear, hate and ugly confrontation, we all need to experience this ownership. The fight is not about taking our country back , but about moving democracy forward: to be more representative, more accountable, more visionary. But harnessing the energy to create a solutions-based movement is difficult. We have to unite our “siloed” issues, from racial justice to climate change, to focus on the mother of them all: our democracy deficit. It’s happening with Democracy Initiative , which brings together dozens of organizations from labor to civil rights to the environment. We also have to let go of the idea that electing one good leader can save us. When a coalition of young people led the charge to elect Barack Obama in 2008, many experienced a positive movement for hope and change. They believed that finally, their government would represent them. Yet just two years later, when Obama needed his supporters the most — during midterm elections when his majority in Congress was threatened — millions failed to show up at the polls. Democracy isn’t built in one election or one protest. The Wisconsin Democratic primary this April is a prime example. The primary ballot included a state Supreme Court race that would determine the court’s ideological balance. Because voters didn’t have a sustained, grass-roots movement actively helping them understand what was at stake, a lot of Democrats who showed up didn’t even mark their ballot for the Supreme Court position. The result? The conservative candidate won handily . Luckily, Democracy Spring taught us a lot about what it will take. It’s not enough to make the intellectual case for reform – say, getting big money out of politics. Too many Americans simply think, “Yeah, right, and good luck with that.” So how do we Americans snap out of our cynicism? In Democracy Spring we identified at least three sources of power that can create and fuel a transformative citizens’ movement. Civil Courage. The power of choosing to walk with fear (of protest and arrest, in this case). We experienced fear as exhilarating energy, rather than as a message telling us we’re on the wrong path. We believe that experiencing this shift translates into “civil courage” — heightened will to step into the unknown for a higher value. This experience leads participants to stay engaged, increasing the likelihood of future commitment. Social solidarity. The power of discovering deep connection with strangers sharing a higher value . Americans suffer widespread loneliness and typically have little or no opportunity for deep sharing with strangers — strangers who, based on our experience, quickly become friends when working toward a common goal. This power arises from sharing knowledge and experience — including telling personal stories and identifying with those of others. The two of us prove the point. We hardly knew each other before the march, but after spending so much time together and talking about our hopes and dreams for the democracy movement, we decided to collaborate well beyond Democracy Spring’s end date. The march also gave rise to two Facebook communities in which marchers — from veterans,to professors, to a former banker — are continuing to find strength. The Thrill of Democracy. The power of shifting from primarily protesting against those in power to experiencing the act of taking power — by assuming responsibility for solutions. Railing against plutocracy is great, but it’s been especially exciting for us to know the march’s specific solutions are doable and grounded in what most Americans want. More than 70 percent of Americans favor small-money, public-matching funds, according to a December 2015 poll . Another survey found that more than three quarters of Americans polled favor a constitutional amendment enabling Congress to limit corporate spending in elections. While Facebook posts, tweets and listserv messages may help facilitate interaction, the thrill of democracy arises in face-to-face encounters — the kind we experienced on our long march full of constant chatter. Taking responsibility for solutions involves ongoing engagement and building a new culture of citizens practicing the arts of democracy — especially dialogue and deliberation. It gains power via small groups connected nationally, sharing stories of our highest dreams and our bitterest losses. This is what movement-building requires. It also needs innovative forms of public action that push us out of our social and ideological comfort zones and involve us with strangers. Why not host, say, a rash of “people’s corners” (inspired by Hyde Park’s Speakers Corner) across the country, with pop-up plays about big money monopoly on politics and what we can do about it? They could include street art and public pledges by officials. (Democracy Spring’s Equal Voice for All Declaration , for example, commits signers to several “pro-democracy, anti-corruption reforms.”) Or what about a citizens’ pledge campaign? People could earn a “democracy badge” for committing publicly, say, to converse with at least one stranger a week about getting big money out of politics and restoring voting rights or demanding that their congressional representatives pledge to support related bills. Keeping alive the thrill of democracy for the long haul of social transformation also requires that together we continue to accomplish even bigger, potentially scarier feats we didn’t know we had in us — including mass civil disobedience that builds on the historic sit-ins involving more than 1,300 of us at the Capitol steps in April. We welcome readers to weigh in with more ideas! Our movement can confirm that democracy activists are not just some “oddball activists,” for all humans have, in addition to our basic physical needs, three requirements to thrive. First, we need to feel powerful (enjoy a sense of agency). Second, we need meaning beyond our own survival. Third, we need to feel connected with others. Simply put, our rigged democracy cannot meet these essential human requirements, while Democracy Spring and the parallel mobilization, Democracy Awakening, enabled us to live all three! We came to see that the success of our movement depends on enabling more Americans to experience the thrill of democracy as we did, and work toward a culture of democracy that meets these requirements for all. To save the democracy we thought we had, we must take our democracy to where it’s never been.

Originally published by San Francisco Chronicle on 05/16/2016 When asked to picture a typical school lunch, most of us think of sad-looking chicken nuggets or soggy french fries. For many of the millions of public school students, that’s not far off mark. To transform what’s on kids’ plates, parents, teachers and administrators have been working for years, battling entrenched industry interests and paltry school budgets. Now advocates have a powerful tool to help them: a new procurement policy that helps put core values at the center of school food purchasing. On May 24, the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Trustees is poised to pass the Good Food Purchasing policy to help usher in a new era for school meals, expanding on and codifying the transformational work already under way. The district would be, after Los Angeles Unified, only the second in the nation to do so. Looking at the policy’s effect in Los Angeles, it’s clear to see the changes it has helped spark. When the district passed the policy, one of its largest suppliers, Gold Star Foods Inc. , was inspired to ask tougher questions of its of bread, produce and poultry suppliers. As Gold Star CEO Sean Leer explained: “The way most school districts purchase, lowest price wins, but it should be more thoughtful. Buying food isn’t like buying toilet paper.” Leer is now able to attribute real worth to the suppliers who align with five values of sustainability, nutrition, local economies, animal welfare and worker rights. Leer also started looking with fresh eyes at his supply chain: What could he localize that wasn’t already? How could he improve the food they offered to students? One answer was produce — and sourcing more of it locally: Before the policy, roughly 10 percent of the produce served in L.A. schools was sourced within 200 miles of the district. Today, from 50 to 72 percent is, depending on the season. That works out to a roughly $12 million redirection of resources to the local economy. Leer found another answer in wheat. Gold Star had been sourcing out-of-state wheat for its 45 million to 55 million annual servings of bread and rolls. Leer discovered Shepherd’s Grain, a company with growers in Central California . “I committed to turning our entire bread and roll line over to Shepherd’s Grain,” he said. Understandably, the bakery Gold Star worked with was hesitant to change a key ingredient like flour, but the bakery made the leap. Today, nearly all of the L.A. school district’s bread and rolls are made from wheat grown in Central California, milled in downtown Los Angeles. Compare that with pre-policy wheat: grown in the Dakotas, trucked to Denver, milled there and shipped to California. “The policy gave us a chance to make this huge change,” explained Leer. “And it didn’t cost any more. In fact, we’ve kept the prices the same for the last three years.” The policy, originally developed by the Los Angeles Food Policy Council , also puts workers at the heart of purchasing decisions — from farmers to delivery workers. Shaun Martinez from the Teamsters union, said: “In school food, margins are extremely thin. Having a policy like this creates a market for people who do good things to actually survive.” The policy has been used to review relationships, too. In 2015, the five-year, $60 million contract with chicken processor Tyson was up for renewal. Before, the contract always went to the lowest bidder. Now the district was seeking poultry suppliers that didn’t employ practices like the unsustainable use of antibiotics. Gold Star received a $20 million contract to provide the district with chicken raised without the routine use of antibiotics. All this sounds so promising, but what arguably matters most is what the kids think. Perhaps that’s best summed up by Maylin Brunall, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles: “School — it’s my fancy restaurant now,” she said, with a big smile. “It’s local. It’s fresh. Everyone is treated fairly, and everyone is happy.” San Francisco has a chance to continue to prove itself as a national leader in school-food reform. The school board trustees can pave the way by approving the new policy.

Originally published by Mother Jones on 05/05/2016 An estimated 27,500 people in Los Angeles, 20,000 in Seattle, and 18,500 in the Bronx: Bernie Sanders is sparking some of the biggest crowds in primary history. For millions across the country, his message is clearly resonating. It’s refreshing to hear someone running for the country’s highest office finally articulate (without any prodding!) core progressive policies: from taking on Wall Street to reforming campaign finance to making college affordable—the list goes on. So it stunned many progressives to hear Sanders attack Philadelphia’s plan to tax sugary drinks; he called soda taxes regressive and came out swinging. Like health advocates across the country, I think Sanders got it wrong: These taxes in fact reflect the progressive values he holds dear. As a resident of Berkeley, California, the first city in the United States that has passed a tax of this kind, and as someone who has been working to sound the alarm on the epidemic of diet-related illnesses for years, I have had a ringside seat at the battle against Big Soda. And I think that if Sanders had firsthand knowledge of the fight, he too might be moved to see these taxes differently. Sanders claims soda taxes will “disproportionately affect low-income and middle-class Americans.” But here in Berkeley, as with other places soda taxes are being proposed, it’s the very communities Sanders says he’s trying to protect that have been at the beating heart of the campaigns. When Berkeley took on the soda tax, the campaign connected people from all walks of life. The NAACP, Latinos Unidos, the entire school board, every single city council member, and dozens of other groups were all united in their support. Across race, class, and age, the community came together against a deluge of Big Soda money to defend a strategy to help take on one of the biggest public health crises of our time. Supporters of these taxes understand they are “regressive” only in the most simplistic sense. As with any tax that could lead to higher prices to consumers, from cigarettes to carbon, one could allege they make the poor pay disproportionately more. In Philadelphia, the 3 cent per fluid ounce excise tax on sugary drinks levied on distributors could raise a $0.99 12-ounce Coke to $1.35 if the tax were passed on entirely to consumers. For a $7.25 hourly minimum-wage worker, that price hike would therefore be a bigger relative burden than for, say, the CEO of Coca-Cola who made roughly $7,000 an hour last year . But it’s wrong to leap from that simplistic calculation to call these taxes an encumbrance on the poor. It’s not like this tax is for something people have to buy—a tax, for instance, on water or fruits and vegetables. No one needs Coca-Cola to survive and, in fact, drinking soda is a key driver of serious illness . Indeed, a study of the effect of a soda tax in Philly found that the potential price increase could reduce soda consumption, preventing 2,280 new cases of diabetes and 36,000 new cases of obesity every year. Over the course of a decade, the levy could save the city $200 million in averted health care costs. That’s yuge! as Sanders would say. Progressives have long understood that one of the ways to take on predatory industries whose products hurt the most vulnerable among us is through consumption taxes—something Sanders understands when he speaks in favor of taxing cigarettes . So maybe Sanders just isn’t hip to the evidence about the harm caused by sugary drinks. And I get it: Many still don’t perceive soda as being as troubling as tobacco. But the science is in. Long-term, peer-reviewed studies have clearly demonstrated the links between sugary drinks and a wide range of illnesses, from diabetes to heart and liver disease to weight gain—not to mention the damage to dental health. Drinking just one or two sugary drinks a day can increase the chances of developing Type 2 diabetes by 26 percent . And reducing soda consumption is increasingly seen as the best first step to halting weight gain. (I experienced this myself when I cut out sugar-sweetened beverages as a cash-strapped grad student. No longer able to afford my habit of multiple Snapple drinks a day, I went cold turkey and dropped 15 pounds. Save for my two pregnancies, I have never gained them back.) We also know the burden of these diet-related diseases is not evenly experienced by race and class—and that’s putting it mildly. I bet the CEO of Coca-Cola doesn’t live in a community where 1 in 2 residents either have diabetes or are on the way to being diagnosed with it, as is the case in many low-income communities nationwide. Consider this shocking fact: According to the American Diabetes Association, African Americans and Latinos are 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than their white peers. In other words, the potential benefits of these taxes will be greater for the communities whose health has been most undermined by soda. The most powerful moments of the Berkeley versus Big Soda campaign were hearing community members describe their direct experience with the costs of diabetes: from forfeited wages because of days spent caring for parents or kids to lifelong health problems including heart disease, comas, infertility, vision loss, insulin replacement, even amputations. (Yes, amputations.) At least 73,000 lower-limb amputations were performed nationwide in 2010 on people with diagnosed diabetes. The economic toll of this rising epidemic cannot be stressed enough. These taxes are beneficial—and reflect progressive values—in another way: Revenues reaped can disproportionately benefit a community’s most at-risk residents. Here in Berkeley, our tax on distributors (one penny per fluid ounce) is on track to bring in $1.5 million annually, which will be used to support health education and diabetes prevention. In Philly, the mayor would use the revenue to fund universal pre-K. The other charge Sanders makes against these taxes is that they are job killers, leading to “ the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs. ” There is no evidence this would be the case. Here in Berkeley, where the soda tax was implemented March 1, 2015, there’s been no indication of jobs lost. It’s perplexing to me that Sanders would embrace an anti-soda-tax stance. His particular volleys—”It’s a jobs’ killer!” “It’s regressive”—are straight from the pages of the beverage industry’s PR playbook. And they echo tobacco industry misinformation that came before them. When cigarette taxes were first proposed, the industry cried foul, too, claiming the poorest people would be most burdened by rising costs, that jobs would be lost. Instead, we’ve seen one of the most positive public health success stories of a generation as smoking rates have plummeted. Sanders argues that instead of soda taxes we should tax corporations more. Today’s effective corporate tax rate, he notes , is just 22.8 percent, down from 31.7 during the Reagan years and resulting in the loss of an estimated $166 billion every year. What progressive would disagree with Sanders here? But I’m not sure why Sanders presents these positions as either/or. Soda taxes are just one tool in progressive toolbox to take on corporate power and address the devastating epidemic of diet-related illnesses. And what a tool they can be. The soda industry knows this. That’s why its trade group, the American Beverage Association, has spent an estimated $64.6 million since 2009 fighting soda taxes, according to analysis from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. (That doesn’t even include this year’s lobbying spend in California’s capital to fight a proposed statewide tax and more going to undermine fledgling efforts in Oakland, California, Philadelphia, and beyond). In Berkeley, a city of 116,000 people, the trade group spent $2.4 million in an onslaught of negative ads, misinformation, and paid supporters. Big Soda even got in-kind donations from Landmark Theaters to play anti-tax ads before movies in local theaters. Despite this big spend and thanks to an incredible community effort—the kind of people power I would have thought Sanders would love—we won, and we won big. (Even San Francisco—where the industry outspent the community 31 to 1, shelling out $9.2 million to oppose the tax— 55.6 percent of voters supported it, with the vote only failing because it fell short of the two-thirds needed there.) I wonder whether things would be different if Sanders had been at the Berkeley versus Big Soda headquarters on election night. There, under the bare bulbs of a cavernous room on the main strip of downtown Berkeley, hundreds stood shoulder to shoulder watching as the election results rolled in—and cheering and hugging as the number of precincts crept up. We stood, a community united, listening to what this campaign had meant to the people at the heart of it: A pediatric dentist recounted how the campaign had transformed her despair at the deterioration of dental health into determined action. A young Latino organizer whose aunt had been hospitalized that very evening from complications from diabetes, shared that the effort had given him a tangible way to use his agony about the illness ravishing his family to make a difference. An African American reverend shared how the grief of losing his 29-year-old son to diabetes propelled him to work tirelessly for the campaign; no other father should lose a son to this disease, he said. If Sanders had been at the Berkeley soda tax HQ on election night, listening to these voices and more like them, I wonder if he, too, would have been brought to tears—and, whether he, too, would have joined in the thunderous applause as the final results came in. Despite Big Soda’s big spending, the people had triumphed. The final tally: 76.2 percent in favor of the tax. Just like the city had done in setting policy precedent by being the first to voluntarily desegregate its schools, and to provide curbside recycling, to create curb-cuts for wheelchair accessibility, now Berkeley had passed the first tax on sugary drinks in the United States. There will be more. Communities across the country are taking up similar taxes, from Philadelphia to Boulder, Colorado, to Oakland. In response, Big Soda will redouble its efforts to confuse the public, distort the science and undermine the credibility of advocates—and they’ll undoubtedly take on the dual mantras Sanders echoed. They have nearly bottomless pockets to do so. (Coca-Cola alone spent $3.5 billion in marketing in 2014.) But Berkeley has shown that strong coalitions can take on even the world’s largest corporate behemoths. It’s a David versus Goliath battle that any progressive should love.

Originally Published on Great Transition Initiative in April, 2016 Thanks to GTI for taking up this issue and doing so with Frances Moore Lappé’s brilliant overview of the issue. She again shows her gift for marshaling a wide range of the most solid research in a way that is compelling and accessible. It is also wonderfully nuanced in highlighting that agroecology is primarily neither a state of mind nor a pure agricultural practice. Rather, it is a process, one in which agroecology itself should be seen more as a journey than a destination. It is something I have been thinking about a lot since attending a conference in Mexico last year hosted by ANEC, a national association of small-to-medium-scale grain farmers. The convening organization cast the issue perfectly, I thought, referring to its own “Integrated Project on Scientific and Traditional Knowledge” and encouraging a “dialogue of knowledge systems,” an inelegant translation of the Spanish “diálogo de saberes.” The stated goal was to bring modern agroecological science into the fields to work with farmers to create more ecologically and—just as important—economically sustainable practices. What was striking about the conference was the mix of people in attendance. On the one hand, we had established agroecology professionals and practitioners from all over the Americas, most notably from Cuba, where such practices are perhaps the most advanced. Many of these experienced agroecologists led discussions on diversified farming, integrated pest management, soil composition, the protection and use of native maize seeds, and the evils of corporate-led industrial agriculture. On the other side of the room (literally)—in one breakout session—were about 100 ANEC members, farmers from different parts of the country, who were often silent in the larger discussion. Why? They were overwhelmingly commercial farmers, well integrated into national markets for maize, wheat, beans, and other staples. Many are now using hybrid seed varieties in monocultures fed by chemical inputs, which is practically the only way to sustain monocultures. These farmers were not returning to native maize seeds intercropped with beans and squash—the famous Mexican milpa—anytime soon. ANEC’s embrace of agroecology is, for them, a challenge, and it entails significant risks. Their farmers depend on farm sales for a living, and they can’t afford the kind of initial yield decrease often associated with a shift to organic practices. They have loans to pay off, for one thing. But their lands are a long way from the agroecological ideal. Like many smaller-scale farmers in the developing world, they are no longer defending traditional agroecological practices. They are on the technology treadmill, and they know it is getting them nowhere fast, but that doesn’t mean they can just get off. In the conference room, we turned the discussion from agroecology as an ideal to agroecology as a transition, and they opened up. Their own experiences illustrated the genius of ANEC’s approach to the issue, which focuses less on an ecological ideal than on the goal of reducing both production costs and dependence on multinational input suppliers. For these farmers, this is what “food sovereignty” means: increased control over their production and their livelihoods. One farmer said that with the help of ANEC’s scientifically trained extension agents, he had reduced input costs by two thirds and, despite a slight drop in productivity at first, had experienced a significant increase in profitability. Slightly lower yields but much lower costs. What practices was he introducing? Some that one associates with agroecology, such as compost instead of fertilizer, and microbial applications to release soil fertility. And some that one doesn’t, such as self-produced hybrid maize seeds that his cooperative could produce for one-third the cost of the varieties sold by multinational firms. Fertilizer applications had been reduced from two to one per season, and pesticide use had declined as well. Soil quality was slowly improving, and he expected further reductions in chemical use. Did he expect he would reduce it to zero? No. Did he care? Not really. This was what the transition toward agroecology looked like on a small commercial farm, and I was impressed at how different it was from the agroecological ideal. For millions of farmers around the world, including many of the farmers who grow most of the food for local markets, this is the kind of transition that needs to happen. Lappé’s characterization of the challenges facing us in agriculture left ample room for such practices, valuing them every bit as much as the crucial defense of native seeds and organic practices. I think many of us always knew there was a zen quality to her work: it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

During our Democracy Spring march from Philly to D.C. to sit-in on the steps of the capitol this week, one of my favorite chants was “Money ain’t speech and corporations aren’t people!” The closer we got to Washington, the more I could feel marchers’ outrage that corporations powerfully influence governance, yet they lack several essential characteristics expected of citizens participating in our democracy. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, many compelling arguments have piled up to challenge the bizarre notion that corporations deserve our constitution’s protection regarding political speech, protection in many ways comparable to that afforded real people. But during the extended thinking time of my 100-mile march, I became increasingly preoccupied with the most obvious objection: Corporations should not hold the political rights of persons because they can’t uphold the basic duties and responsibilities of citizenship expected of most Americans. Here are four: •One: Corporations can’t vote. •Two: Corporations can’t serve in the military to protect us, yet real people may be obliged not only to serve but to be willing to risk their lives for us. •Three: Corporations can’t sit on a jury, while most real people are penalized if they do not carry out this solemn and often-demanding obligation. •Four: And perhaps most important, corporations cannot honestly pledge allegiance to our nation, since they serve instead the interests of their shareholders. Perhaps Justice Stevens captured these points best in his dissent to the Citizens United ruling: ”Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established. ”Democracy Spring cries out against the Citizens United and other court decisions that equate political spending with speech and calls on Congress to begin the constitutional process of passing an amendment effectively reversing these decisions. Three-quarters of state legislatures must also pass the amendment. The proposed amendment would “distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.” It also includes language protecting “freedom of the press.” For immediate relief from corporate dominance in what I call “privately held government,” Democracy Spring also calls on Congress to pass legislation to modernize our voting process, restore and protect voters’ rights, enable candidates to compete for office using small-donor contributions matched by public dollars, and permit legislatures to set spending limits. In all this, point four above—corporations’ incapacity for loyalty to our nation’s wellbeing—is worth special attention. Consider these examples: Today, “corporate inversions” allow companies to avoid billions in taxes needed for our wellbeing by relocating their legal headquarters to lower-tax nations. “They effectively renounce their citizenship,” observed President Obama. In 2012, the Wall Street Journal noted that “at least 60 percent” of U.S. corporate cash stockpiles were held abroad. As The Economist recently noted, U.S. corporations are now collectively stockpiling roughly $800 billion each year, doing nothing with it to benefit our society. At the same time, workers’ share of the GDP nears an historical low. Moreover, let’s not forget that even as American lives are being sacrificed in war, U.S. corporations have been known to show no loyalty to our country. An example is U.S. corporate business with the Nazi regime in World War II. Our founders envisioned a republic of citizens attentive to, and participating in, self-government. Yet, corporate political influence, greatly abetted by Citizens United , crowds out the voices of even our most attentive citizens. Jefferson warned us of the danger. “If once they [citizens] become inattentive to the public affairs,” he once said, “you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves.” On my march from the Liberty Bell to our nation’s capital, I became ever clearer that our republic depends on the engagement of real citizens as equals shaping public matters; and that can’t happen as long as we citizens allow the conflation of spending and speech and corporations to be afforded the political rights of persons. Catching a cab in D.C. after our third day of civic action, my driver Samson, who emigrated from Eritrea 20 years ago, responded to my chatter about Democracy Spring: “Yes, there’s way too much money in politics, and the world needs America to be an example of democracy that works.” Obviously, he didn’t need much convincing. I’ll see him this Saturday at the rally! Please join Samson, me, and thousands more.— DemocracySpring.org ! Originally published by Huffington Post on 04/14/2016