In 2009-10, I was lucky enough to learn about Participatory Budgeting as a way to promote real democracy. I was doubly lucky to learn from the first PB project initiated by a U.S. municipal official, the 49th Ward of Chicago where Alderman Joe Moore and his wife, Barb Moore, spearheaded the process. Evanstonians know the […]
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I first came across the term “funded sovereignty” in a book by Native American scholar, Barbara Alice Mann. Her 2000 book, Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas, is an eye-opening read for anyone who believes in the ideals of the U.S. It is also sanity-inducing for anyone who’s been disappointed in the implementation of those ideals. Mann’s book […]
Last month I was asked to draft an editorial for a local magazine (Our Evanston) on sustainability and local foods. It was to be the back-end of a friendly deal — an ad for the Wild Onion Market (a local food co-op) in the winter issue followed by a local foods editorial in the spring issue (to […]
OK, I admit it. I am confused about the current women’s movement. On Jan. 21, 2017, I was glued to my computer, watching the livestream of the Women’s March from Washington, DC, periodically flipping to scenes of Women’s Marches in cities around the world. Two months shy of my 66th birthday, 66 years of lifelong […]
DEDICATED TO MY PARENTS, who pulled the plug on our household television (c.1956) and never looked back. I was 5 or 6 years old, probably in first grade, with an older sister (8-9), younger sister (2-3), and one still to come. Unfortunately, I never got to delve into their deep reasoning. Nor were they particularly […]
It turns out that The Money Question was a common topic of civic conversation in colonial U.S. and early U.S. history. In 1913, the adoption of the Federal Reserve Act, which privatized the U.S. money system “permanently”, seemed to put an end to public discussion about The Money Question. INTRODUCTIONI first learned about The Money […]
An article in the Fall 2021 newsletter (The Kit) of the Evanston Township High School Alumni Association spurred me to reflect on the process of creating a community project, in this case the 12-year old Edible Acre Pilot Project, an urban agriculture project at ETHS. This blog consists of three accounts of the birth and […]
Happy 2022, all. A reminder that this is an ELECTION YEAR and that the Illinois primary is later than it used to be: June 28, 2022 (instead of in spring). The filing deadline is March 14, 2022. The general election is Nov. 8, 2022. It looks like most of Evanston’s elected officials are running again […]