Complaint Box: Powerless in Brooklyn - NYTimes.com

This has got to be a major topic at the journalism department at BC, right? I never really thought about it this way.

Of the boroughs outside Manhattan, Brooklyn gets the most buzz — as a tourist attraction, a “hipster brand” and an incubator of art and artisanal products. That has provoked a backlash from longtime Brooklynites and others wary of smugness from the borough’s Brownstone Belt.

However entertaining these debates, Brooklynites — and, I dare say, all of us in the non-Manhattan boroughs — share one common problem: we’re essentially powerless. We lack meaningful local government, as well as broad-based media and civic organizations.

Complaint Box: Powerless in Brooklyn - NYTimes.com

Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2011 Shows Agricultural Innovation Is Key to Reducing Poverty, Stabilizing Climate | Worldwatch Institute

In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum in Kenya, more than 1,000 women farmers are growing "vertical" gardens in sacks full of dirt poked with holes, feeding their families and communities. These sacks have the potential to feed thousands of city dwellers while also providing a sustainable and easy-to-maintain source of income for urban farmers. With more than 60 percent of Africa's population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, such methods may be crucial to creating future food security. Currently, some 33 percent of Africans live in cities, and 14 million more migrate to urban areas each year. Worldwide, some 800 million people engage in urban agriculture, producing 15–20 percent of all food.


Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2011 Shows Agricultural Innovation Is Key to Reducing Poverty, Stabilizing Climate | Worldwatch Institute

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund : Why Did Progressive Media Miss This Important Progressive Story?

The gasfracking stuff is gonna get heated here in NY State and its crucial to look at what Pittsburgh did last year to ban it. This article cites the important pieces but also engages in a very important critique of so-called left progressive media. mm


"What would change if We awoke from our century-long slumber and started questioning corporate Constitutional “rights” again? If we began to understand that in fact there is no greater political power in this country than We the People, acting together. We are the Goliaths, if we dare to see ourselves as we truly are. And this is exactly what the good people of Pittsburgh and 120 other towns in four northeastern states are beginning to understand and to act upon. They are relearning their history and discovering that they have the legal authority to govern themselves, regardless of what state government or corporate leaders claim. They have the right to prohibit corporate engagement in whatever ways they deem necessary for the common good. That regardless of whether they are conservative or progressive, rural or urban, they’re tired of being told that there’s nothing they can do to protect their communities and natural areas from corporate harm. Pittsburgh banned corporate drilling for natural gas. Other towns have passed bans on corporate water extraction, corporate mining, corporate factory farms, etc. And all of them have reclaimed their community’s right to self-governance – to design and define their communities’ futures."

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund : Why Did Progressive Media Miss This Important Progressive Story?