Localism

Where is Your Money?

A consideration of public banking

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
~Henry Ford

Cash wall 3

Where is your money?  Well…okay…if you actually had some, where would you put it?  Why? Wherever you store your monetary wealth, do you gain benefit from allowing that storage solution to reliably insure your financial security? Can you trust that solution to work in your best interest?

(more…)

What if We Owned the Banks?

Economic Inequality: Part 3

In June of 2015, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Barclays, among other Libor-rigging giants, pleaded guilty to felony charges related to the [Libor] conspiracy and greed to pay more than $2.5 billion in criminal fines to U.S. regulators.

Protesters and Chase(AP Photo / Edouard H.R. Gluck)

Representing only a single instance of a commonplace practice played out the world over, this corporate criminality instigated the outage of Craig Brandt, an attorney from Oakland, California. He set out to enact an audacious plan. With other individuals, Mr. Brandt endeavored to have the Oakland City Council “take radical action to combat plutocracy, inequality and financial dislocation”. Mr. Brandt wanted to create a city-owned “public bank”.

Recent posts on this blog have explored economic inequality and its ramifications. The post this week continues this series, beginning to focus on potential solutions to what some see as a looming economic catastrophe. As Part 3 our Economic Inequality series, consider this article by Jimmy Tobias: “What if People Owned the Banks Instead of Wall Street?”

(more…)

Free Tea in the South

“Human freedom is not freedom from conditions,
but freedom to take a stand and to face whatever conditions
might confront [us]” ~ Viktor Frankl

Tea Man in Selma_5881-1024x768

Remember the nomadic Giusepi Spadafora, the Tea Man? Instead of going west last fall, it turns out, the Tea Man and Edna Lu (the traveling Tea Bus) went south.  You can read a detailed account of what he has been up to the last few months on his blog.

(more…)

Go West, Tea Man!

 

Ruby Sue and Edna Lu

Traveling the land, this free tea house cultivates community,
health, peace, sustainability, and genuine human interactions.

Follow Edna Lu the Free Tea Bus and her operator,
Giusepi, as they adventure through America.

We introduced our young friend Giusepi Spadafora, the Tea Man, to this community back in January with a follow-up query about possible summer projects for Giusepi and Edna.  As noted in his newsletter below (full text included), he is looking for a place to settle for a bit, perhaps for the winter, to write–somewhere in the southwest. Since some of you live in that area, you might have some ideas.  If so, and especially if you are not familiar with the Tea Man’s lifestyle and more than a decade of Good work, take a look at his newsletter and the links within it.  Giusepi expresses an exemplary lifestyle characterized by small group community coupled with personal responsibility worthy of the idea “We, the People!”  We should support him in any way we can. (more…)