Follow-up to Desmond D'Sa visit

Last Thursday's Thoreau Center Brown Bag speaker was Desmond D'Sa, the chairperson of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) in South Africa who was here to talk about the work of the alliance and its plans for the future. His visit to the San Francisco Bay Area was hosted by the International Development Exchange (IDEX), which promotes sustainable solutions to poverty by providing long-term grants and access to resources to locally run organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. D'Sa helped found the SDCEA in 1995 as an alliance of community organizations addressing the environmental and human rights issues caused by the largely unrestricted expansion in Durban of industry and oil refineries. Through vigilant pollution monitoring, information sharing, education, community empowerment, and government lobbying, the SDCEA has had numerous success over the years, although major problems remain, namely climate change and the need for grassroots mobilization to strengthen the movement for climate justice. For a full rundown of his visit to the area, see this report prepared by IDEX.

What I read this week

Here are some reports, investigations, and other long form pieces that I encountered this week, which I'm sharing here just in case you missed them:

The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), released a preliminary report summarizing the conclusions and recommendations from an interdisciplinary workshop of leading marine scientists held earlier this year. Their assessment of the state of the oceans and marine life is a grave one with increasing chances of extinctions as a result of overexploitation, habitat loss, and climate change. Their proposed solutions emphasize urgent action to realize CO2 emission cuts, improved fishery management, and development of marine reserves. Look for the full report later this year. (http://www.stateoftheocean.org/index.cfm)

A yearlong investigation by the Associated Press (AP) on federal oversight and the nuclear power industry finds that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly weakened or not enforced existing standards in order to keep aging reactors in operation - “Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes — all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP's yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110620/ap_on_re_us/us_aging_nukes_part1)

Meanwhile, a report from Ernst & Young commissioned by the Solar Trade Association predicts that prices of solar panels by 2013 will fall to half of what they cost in 2009, suggesting that large-scale installations could by cost-competitive with fossil fuels earlier than had been assumed. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/20/solar-panel-price-drop)

Not surprisingly, an internal investigation by Transocean finds that BP is largely responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year. (http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Public-Report-1076.html)

In food systems, a new report from Oxfam International, Living on a Spike, examines the impact of the rise in global food prices through 2010 and 2011 on the people most directly affected by them. Speaking to people in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Zambia, the research shows how these prices rises have worked to perpetuate inequality and how people respond not simply by consuming less but also through political activity. (http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/policy/living-spike)

Another report on food systems, Appetite for Change, published by the think tank SustainAbility, is critical of the food industry for its lack of vision and failures to meet its own goals on the sustainability front. It calls for drastic changes in the way the industry, as well as consumers and governments, mange the world's food supply. (http://www.sustainability.com/library/appetite-for-change)

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released the The State of World's Midwifery 2011: Delivering Health, Saving Lives. Based on data from 58 countries in all regions of the world, its analysis finds that the world lacks some 350,000 skilled midwives -- 112,000 in the neediest 38 countries surveyed -- to fully meet the needs of women around the world. The report explores a range of issues related to building up this key health workforce, and the website presents additional information including detailed country profiles. (http://www.unfpa.org/sowmy/report/home.html)

Closer to home, the Foundation Center released Key Facts on Bay Area Foundations, showing that grantmakers in the nine-county Bay Area awarded $3.1 billion in 2009, a 77% increase over 2000, with priority going to education and the environment. The assets of these foundations rose 34% during the same ten years, despite a steep decline in 2008. (http://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/research/pdf/keyfacts_bayarea_2011.pdf)

And here at the Thoreau Center:

The International Forum on Globalization published Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against a “Nuclear Revolution” - “a rigorously researched and compelling rebuttal to every single misleading claim the nuclear industry and government boosters have made about its viability, sustainability, and safety.” (http://www.ifg.org/news.htm#nuke)

The Social Venture Network announced the 2011 SVN Innovation Award finalists, recognizing the most promising social ventures and innovative entrepreneurs working to create a more sustainable world. Lots of interesting ideas there. (http://www.svn.org/index.cfm?pageId=1130)

And Tides launched their 35th Anniversary Poster Design Contest and reports on their first Tides Learning Community event, Harvest of Empire: Community Briefing on Immigration, held at Demos in New York City in May. Also available as a podcast. (http://blog.tides.org/2011/06/20/listen-harvest-of-empire/)

Thoreau Center Brown Bag - Rights-Based Approach to Environmental Justice

Presenter: Desmond D’Sa
Wednesday, June 22, 12:30P to 1:30P
Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability

The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) is organizing across the historic racial divisions of its communities to speak out for environmental justice at local, national, and international levels. Begun in 1995, SDCEA is a democratic coalition of members of communities who have come together to bring higher environmental standards to the industries and communities that cohabit South Durban.

SDCEA takes a rights-based approach to environmental justice and works to empower community members, especially women and youth, to engage in environmental issues and fight against man-made climate threats.

Desmond is currently the SDCEA Coordinator, and a coordinator of the Right2KNOW Campaign, a national campaign against the draft secrecy laws such as the Protection of Information Bill and the Media Appeals Tribunal. Desmond is a tireless campaigner and also serves as the Coordinator for the Durban Social Forum and sits on a number of activist boards and church organizations. As a key organizer and leader of the South African climate justice movement, Desmond is uniquely positioned as a spokesperson for grassroots organizing currently taking place in Durban to protest the upcoming UN summit on climate justice, in November/December 2011.

Brown Bag Events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Contact Us | Transit Directions | Newsletter

New Exhibitions in Thoreau Center Galleries, June 16 through August 12

Exhibition dates: June 16 through August 12, 2011
Opening reception: Thursday, June 16, 5:00PM to 7:00PM

The two new exhibits are:

Constructs

In the Seed Gallery of Photograph Art, photographer Tony Maridakis displays his nocturnal images drawn from iconic structures such as the Presidio Battery West and DeYoung Museum.

synthesia natura

Bay Area artists Cathy Richardson and Anneliesse Vobis will construct a science lab in the Thoreau Gallery. Their exhibition explores fascinating forms of calcification as a result of environmental degradation, expressed through books, assemblage, digital media, and video.

Library Closed June 10 to June 17

The library will be closed June 10 through June 17, so that the librarian can go to the annual Special Librarian Association conference in Philadelphia to tell other librarians how important sustainability is and to learn how to leverage taxonomies for greater effectiveness. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have items due during that week, just return them when the library reopens. If you have items due before that week, please think about returning them when the library reopens as well. If you do need to get into the library, contact Bruce DeMartini. Meanwhile, here are a few items we have added to the collection recently, some of which you might recognize because their authors spoke here at the center recently. If interested, you have until 3:00 pm this afternoon to check them out. Have a sustainable week!

Jay Walljasper and On the Commons. All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. (2010)

Veteran journalist Jay Walljasper is a fellow at and online editor for On the Commons, a commons movement strategy center connecting organizations, community leaders, and individuals with new ideas, practical solutions, and each other to create change. Their collection is an introduction to the broad range of ideas and activities of individuals and groups highlighting the importance of understanding and strengthening protection of the commons - those lands, waters, and other resources that belong to everyone. With success stories from communities around the world, it demonstrates how new thinking about our shared values relates to the economic, political, and cultural problems facing the world today.

Mark Brilliant. The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978. (2010)

UC Berkeley Professor Mark Brilliant examines California's history to illustrate how the civil rights era was a truly multiracial phenomenon that was shaped and complicated by the presence of not only blacks and whites, but also Mexican Americans, Japanese Americans, and Chinese Americans, among others. Focusing on a wide range of legal and legislative initiatives pursued by a diverse group of reformers, Brilliant analyzes the cases that dismantled the state's multiracial system of legalized segregation in the 1940s and subsequent battles over fair employment practices, old-age pensions for long-term resident non-citizens, fair housing, agricultural labor, school desegregation, and bilingual education. While civil rights historians have long focused on the Southern experience and recently have turned their attention to the North, this work advances a new understanding of civil rights history that more fully reflects the racial diversity of America.

Rebecca Solnit. Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. (2010)

Learn to see the city in a new way in this atlas "of principal landmarks and treasures of the region, including butterfly species, queer sites, murders, coffee, water, power, contingent identities, social types, libraries, early-morning bars, the lost labor landscape of 1960, and the monumental Monterey cypresses of San Francisco; of indigenous place names, women environmentalists, toxins, food sites, right-wing organizations, World War II shipyards, Zen Buddhist centers, salmon migration, and musical histories of the Bay area; with details of cultural geographies of the Mission District, the Fillmore's culture wars and metamorphoses, the racial discourses of United Nations Plaza, the South of Market world that redevelopment devoured, and other significant phenomena, vanished and extant."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind. (1958)

From the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, this collection originally published in 1958 continues to be one of the most popular books of poetry in the United States, with more than a million copies in print. Unconventionality, satiric bite, and lyric beauty illuminate themes that resonate today.

Thoreau Center Lunchtime Speaker: Mark Brilliant, UC Berkeley

The Color-Line Problem

Presenter: Mark Brilliant, Professor of History, U.C. Berkeley

Thursday, May 19, 12:30P to 1:30P

Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability, Presidio Building 1014


Join us for an engaging discussion about the history of race and civil rights reform in California. This talk presents an overview of Mark Brilliant's book, The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978.

The book taps California’s civil rights history to reveal how the Civil Rights Era was truly a nationwide and multiracial phenomenon. Brilliant examines how California’s multiple “race problems” shaped and complicated the multifaceted efforts of civil rights reformers. While civil rights historians have long set their sights on the South and, more recently, turned their attention to the North, advancing a “long civil rights movement” interpretation, The Color of America Has Changed calls for a new understanding of civil rights history that more fully reflects the racial diversity and accompanying civil rights complexity of America - a civil rights history that is as "wide" as it is "long." Mark Brilliant is Assistant Professor of History at UC Berkeley.

Events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Contact Us | Transit Directions | Newsletter

Thoreau Center Brown Bag: Organizing for Change with On the Commons

Guests: Julie Ristau and Ana Micka, Co-directors of On the Commons; Jay Walljasper, veteran journalist and author with On the Commons of the new book All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons.

Wednesday, May 4, 12:30P to 1:30P

Pacific Room at Tides, Thoreau Center for Sustainability
Lunch provided

Please join the leadership of On the Commons for lunch and lively conversation that explores the commons as a new paradigm and approach to organizing for change.

RSVP by May 1 at office@onthecomons.org
Sponsored by Thoreau Center for Sustainability

Across the U.S. and around the world, people are rediscovering and reclaiming our commons - those things that belong to all of us - as a means to shape a just and hopeful future for our communities and planet. The Luncheon for Commoners will fill you with stories of inspiration and a hearty discussion of the emerging commons movement. Please join us!

From the publisher:

All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons is a wake-up call that will inspire you to see the world in a new way. As soon as you realize that some things belong to everyone—water, for instance, or the Internet or human knowledge—you become a commoner, part of a movement that’s reshaping how we will solve the problems facing us in the twenty-first century. Edited by award-winning journalist Jay Walljasper, All That We Share is an indispensable introduction to fresh ideas that touch all of us.

Brown Bag events are free informal mid-day learning sessions hosted at Tides. Friends, neighbors and colleagues are welcome. Visitors, please sign in at the front desk.

Contact Us | Transit Directions | Newsletter