2nd Artists for a Green New Deal event: Thursday 8/22 at 7 pm

Hi! Just wanted to post again to invite DMS folks to the second meetup of the Artists for a Green New Deal educational calls at the Anita Martinez Rec Center this Thursday August 22nd from 7-9 pm. (the Anita Martinez Rec Center is also a really beautiful building, just fyi)

This will be the second call in a series of national educational calls for artists about the Green New Deal, organized by national grassroots arts collective “U.S. Department of Arts and Culture”, and the local meetup is being hosted by the NTX Democratic Socialists of America Ecosocialist Working Group.

Here’s the Facebook event for the local meeting: https://www.facebook.com/events/481910569038552/

More info on this call series can be found at https://usdac.us/gnd

Here’s a description of the second call from the USDAC website:
Call #2: SCIENCE FACTS & SCIENCE FICTIONS

What will happen if we don’t take action on climate change? The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report presents different visions of the future depending on the action and policies that we take. These visions range from an equitable utopia to a fascist dystopia. Join us to learn about the science behind climate change predictions, and to hear stories of creative leaders who imagine with their hands, creating the best case scenarios for a just climate future through their visions and community work.

Guest Presenters:

  • Kali Akuno and Shambe Jones, Cooperation Jackson
  • Demetrius Johnson, The Red Nation
  • Ananda Lee Tan, Climate Justice Alliance
  • Carrie Marie Schneider, Artist
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Where does “I vomit on your post”, fit into the “be excellent” that we promote. Smiley face, frowny face, sure. But vomit? BTW, this isn’t directed at the vomiter, but is a a question to our community.

Edited to add this: Is there a way to flag an emoji as we can a post?

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So now expressing an opinion is not excellent?

Where is the outrage for poop?

No outrage. Im xpressing my opinion that an emoji vomit on someone’s post is not what I consider to be excellent. Right up there with saying F*** you to someone. That’s my perception. It’s also why I said it was a question I was asking our community. You answered my question with a question. :slight_smile:

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What an exciting project! Are y’all going to invite local artists to create something in our area?

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Well, we’re starting out by bringing local artists and community members together to talk about the GND – where we go from there is sort of up to what everyone together decides. :smiley: I’d love to see some collective projects coming out of this, though.

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but-why

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“Equitable Utopia to fascist dystopia”
I thought that according to the Demicrats, we were already a fascist dystopia under the current administration.

Eco-socialism (wikipedia)

Merging aspects of Marxism, socialism, environmentalism, anarchism and ecology, Eco-socialists generally believe that the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, inequality and environmental degradation. Eco-socialists criticise many within the Green movement for not going far enough in their critique of the current world system and for not being overtly anti-capitalist. At the same time, Eco-socialists would blame the traditional Left for overlooking or not properly addressing ecological problems. Eco-socialists are anti-globalisation. Joel Kovel sees globalisation as a force driven by capitalism – in turn, the rapid economic growth encouraged by globalisation causes acute ecological crises.

Eco-socialism goes beyond a criticism of the actions of large corporations and targets the inherent properties of capitalism. Such an analysis follows Marx’s theories about the contradiction between use values and exchange values. As Joel Kovel explains, within a market economy, goods are not produced to meet needs but are produced to be exchanged for money that we then use to acquire other goods. As we have to keep selling to keep buying, we must persuade others to buy our goods just to ensure our survival, which leads to the production of goods with no previous use that can be sold to sustain our ability to buy other goods. Eco-socialists like Kovel stress that this contradiction has reached a destructive extent, where certain essential activities – such as caring for relatives full-time and basic subsistence – are unrewarded, while unnecessary economic activities earn certain individuals huge fortunes.

Agrarian socialism is another variant of eco-socialism.


While I do think the environment is important, I can’t say I agree with eco-socialism

There is more going on IMO

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I would say there’s a straightforward contradiction between capitalism and its imperative to expand, and the finite resources on our planet. It’s also not too mindblowing to me to consider that humanity has passed through many different forms of social organization, and that just as feudalism was overcome by capitalism, which was superior to feudalism, our species will continue to progress and evolve. I’ve always liked this old essay by Naomi Klein (although she’s just sort of generally anticapitalist; I don’t know if she claims the label “socialist”): https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/

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If the Green New Deal passes, which it won’t lol, every American will need to work more in order to pay for the complete rebuilding of every building. Not to mention, how will we get to makerspace without a gas running vehicle? Mark rides a bike but also takes a bus. How about planes?

I’m gonna do a Let’s Keep America #1 art show devoted to fossil fuels, beef and skyscrapers!

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I’m not familiar with the group that made this, but I don’t find anything to disagree with here – I work with plenty of anarchists, and for all that there’s this weird impulse to call “socialism” “whenever the government, any government, does something – and the more the government does something the more socialist it is” revolutionary socialists have always had a critique of the state.

Kali Akuno, who’s one of the folks speaking on the call, is part of a group called “Cooperation Jackson” in Mississippi which is primarily organizing co-ops and community controlled institutions separate from the state. CJ did get one of their folks elected mayor, but then found that putting one person into one position in a capitalist state, they just wind up being enlisted by that state to enforce all that state’s existing laws (just as if Bernie were to be elected – though it might be a step forward – he would also inevitably wind up bombing or droning other countries just like any other president). So Kali Akuno has a strong critique of electoral politics – and a lot of what Cooperation Jackson does looks very much like that person to person small scale (or what a tradition I was taught by calls “socialism from below”) building up of a community of love.

A gift should be given willingly with love raising both people up. When people make laws requiring gifts and donations, it isn’t gifts and donations any more, it is forced “love” which isn’t love at all. There has to be a revolution of mind first else any system will fail.

Most of the resources on earth are owned by the one percent – landlords and CEOs. We would not require the working class to work more, we would simply require them to keep all they create.

And we’ll get to Makerspace on public transit, and build our cities oriented towards public transit, such that we no longer have to spend a miserable 40 minutes to two hours on backed up highways to get anywhere. :slight_smile:

When socialists build cooperatives, they only keep what they produce – the difference between that and capitalist production is precisely that no one is taking away from anyone: the resources like factories, machines, etc are owned collectively and everyone keeps all the value they create, instead of their surplus value going to the capitalist who owns the “means of production”.

Q: So many questions

A: And only one answer.

Q: Wealth allows people to shove people around, in spite of how the other person feels. In fact, those that control those resources are able to kind of deny their own feelings.

A: Go back to that. “Wealth allows people to shove others around.” For example?

Q: Tell them what to do. Not take them into consideration – their feelings – their circumstances.

A: If you have a direct connection to Source Energy… let’s say there is a wealthy person and never mind how that person got there… let’s say, massively wealthy person. And let’s say that you or someone else is there, not wealthy.

Wealth discounted, both have equal access to the abundance of the Universe.

And the one who has the wealth somehow got in alignment with it and the one who doesn’t have it is not yet in alignment with it. They could be in alignment with many other wonderful things but for the sake of this example, they are not in alignment with the wealth.

So our question to you is, “How is it that the one who has allowed the wealth has in any way deprived the one who doesn’t have it?”

Q: It seems to be, that’s what we’re taught. That it IS competition. It IS scarcity. That there are only so many resources. For one to win the other must lose.

A: So what happens – as this one who wants wealth and doesn’t have it – looks at this one who has wealth and pushes against this one; condemns him, doesn’t like him, gathers statistics, looks at negative aspects… now this one holds himself in vibrational discord with wealth and blames the one who has it, for his lack of it. Even though this one who has wealth is in no way depriving the other.

It is his attitude toward it that is cutting himself off from it.

You see, we understand how the myth, the lie, the misunderstanding – is perpetuated, because most people are not accustomed to looking at their vibrational state of allowance. Instead they are looking at conditions.

So they see a wealthy person and they see a poor person and they say, “Well we should even this out.”

There are governments that have come and gone – communism doesn’t do very well, and even the socialism that is part of your world –

You could take all of the wealth that exists and distribute it evenly among points of consciousness…

Now that would be tricky because you would have to decide.

Does the black man get it?
Does the Mexican man get it?
Does the Chinese man get it?
Does the Japanese man get it?
Do the women get it?
Do the children get it?

In other words there would be all that arbitration of all that messy history that you all have. But let’s just say that you divided it up equally and every human that exists – even the one that was just born, just born, oh that one too, that one too, that one too, that one too, that one too, that one too, that one too, that one too, that one too…

oh, this is going to get very tiring… Let’s say they have to be one. That will make it easier. One or older. Oh, there. There. Birthday. Birthday. Birthday. Now we’re in trouble again…

So the wealth is evenly distributed among everyone…

It would not take twenty years before it would have redistributed back into pockets again where there is poverty and wealth because it is accumulating to the attitude – to the vibrational countenance – and to nothing else.

A person who has wealth and expects wealth, expects wealth. And gets wealth.

Q: I get that.

A: In other words, it’s sort of nice to be born into it because you begin picking it up early on and so you’re more likely – unless those around you have condemned you for it – and then you might push against the idea of wealth because you don’t want to be hated by your friends, and you might deprive yourself of it.

Q: So the attitude of the wealthy is their own business?

A: Just as the attitude of the impoverished is their own business. And both are getting exactly what they feel.

And the injustice – for those like you who are looking in on it – feels like, “Well, that person should give more to that person.” But what that person has discovered is that, giving something to someone that they are not a vibrational match to – it doesn’t stick. In other words, you will hear them say, “It’s like putting it down a rat hole.” It does not change their life experience.

Haven’t you noticed even with the welfare system in your nation – that the more you give the more they think you should give and the less appreciative they are of what they have received? And the more dis-empowered they become?

It is a cycle that is not working.

Your taxes get higher as you pay for things that others would like to do for themselves.

Anytime you give to someone something that they have not naturally attracted you say to them with a very loud message,

“I do this for you because I see you cannot do it for yourself.”

So the beating of the drum of dis-empowerment continues.

Q: So then what is the role of parenting in children where they come in, dependent?
What role do you play in that child’s life so the family isn’t a “welfare system”?

A: You watch for evidence of their own ability to attract. And you compliment them every time you see them receive something that they wanted. And you do not talk about the things that are not going so well. And little by little, you watch for opportunities to say to them, “I am one of the vortexes – especially in your early years – through which your well-being flows, but you do not need me as a vortex because you have your own vortex. And you are worthy. And well-being should always flow to you. And I – as your parent – anticipate that wonderful things will always flow to you. Watch for evidence of them. And whenever it looks like they are not flowing to you and that they are flowing to someone else, try if you can, to get a sense of the attitude of the one that they are flowing to. And try to duplicate that attitude. Try to become expectant of the things that you want to flow into your experience.”

Q: And resources are unlimited – in spite of what society says?

Resources are not only unlimited, they are increasing proportionate to the desire that is exuding.

And that is the unbalance that you are – on some level – feeling. Because billions of people are launching rockets of desire and Source Energy is answering. But not all of the billions are in the place of allowing.

And so those who have figured out how to get into the receiving mode, are receiving, perhaps, an inordinate amount. No one can receive something that someone else deserves. But we can see how it would look unfair.

Haven’t you ever met someone who says, “Things just go my way. Things always go my way. I’m just the luckiest person. I don’t know. It’s always been this way for me. And every time I turn around, good things happen.” And if you are not in that place, you just want to kill them!

It just doesn’t seem right! “Well how about sending a little luck MY way!” you say begrudgingly – amplifying the vibration that is keeping your luck away from you. “I HATE you for the luck that is coming to you! IT’S ROTTEN that you get all of those wonderful things! IT STINKS that you get them!”

You drive down the street. You see the car that you’ve been dreaming for, and there is a TEENAGER driving it! And you say, “His father got that car for him! And HE is not deserving like me!”

And we say, “Apparently it’s the other way around. He’s got the car!”

You cannot receive vibrationally, something that you are not a vibrational match to.

And so, you want to bless those that are finding abundance. And in your blessing of them and their abundance, you will become abundant too. But in your cursing of their abundance, you hold yourself apart from it.

It is a law. It is a powerful law.

— Abraham-Hicks
Boulder, Colorado June 12th, 2004

Most of the money is also owned by them. So we should ditch that too? The public transit will run on what? And cost how much to convert? Instead it will definitely take two hours to wait on the side of the street for the big yellow bus, go to the transit station, stop at every stop before it makes its destination to makerspace? I never sit in traffic because of real time traffic on my map.

I have real time traffic on my phone as well, and I’ve never found a handy way to just not sit in traffic during rush hour, but I’ll take your word for it.

We’re constantly building new highways, it’s most of what TXDOT does. Out here in North TX we’re constantly navigating construction sites on our way to work. Instead of many highways for single person cars, which require maintenance and endless expansion, build a few main rapid transit lines. Build high speed rail. Also, as I say, build densely and build beautifully, things which are convenient to transit, instead of building sprawl and building things that are cheap and ugly and don’t last. Stop and go on a bus or train is also much more pleasant than stop and go in a car – you can read all the way from start to finish, instead of having to drive the stop and go traffic yourself.

And even without considering what fuel the trains would use, a single vehicle carrying many people is immediately more efficient than many small vehicles carrying people by ones and twos. But as for what fuel we use – I have nothing against nuclear power; a comrade of mine has spent a good part of his life studying nuclear power and makes a convincing argument for its use.

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