Moving Monday: Bring in a new Civilian Conservation Corps for a new United States of America

I have a hope, for which many have called me a dreamer, of one possible way our society could look, maybe in 40 years, or maybe even sooner, if we all wanted it to happen. 

A new CCC for a new USA could lead, or at least help start, the way. With a new sort of education.

It involves four main phases, broken down into smaller goals, with the ultimate hope being to build a world as safe and free for creative human endeavor as possible.  For every human being on this planet.  This post is mostly about a small part of Phase I, but other posts have begun, and will continue, to explain the remaining phases and the overall idea.

The first phase involves building empathy, and bringing each one of us to see each one of our fellow human beings as … a human being.  Each one meriting humane treatment, and human dignity.

That empathy building phase was Phase 0 (yes, I’m a computer scientist by first training, so I start with 0…).  Phase I is meant to go from the years 2015 to 2030, building a movement to strengthen some of our most crucial and obviously key pieces of our social infrastructure, which are in the public domain.  During this period, one of the ways that we can both build conceptual support and also literally build our physical infrastructure that needs support, is by borrowing an idea from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which worked during the Great Depression to create jobs while educating young (white) men at the same time.  What we want to do now, is to educate, facilitate service, and build a community-service frame of reference, while also upgrading our public infrastructure, just as FDR did in the 1930’s via his program.

Bringing back an updated version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), or Roosevelt’s Tree Army, as it was popularly known, could provide a stepping stone between the empathy-building work that must always be on-going, and the support-building work of bringing our society to a consensus on the needed support for the most basic of our public social infrastructure institutions, like Public Libraries, Public Transportation, Public Education (especially in the financial and legal areas, where so many consumers fall prey to financial predators, and end up in debt due to lack of knowledge), and Public Health.  These four systems under gird our entire societal structure, and need support perhaps the most urgently, in return for which we potentially get the most payback for all members of society.  While we do the difficult work of building the necessary consensus to get there from here, a simpler step might be to bring back some form of the CCC, updated to be far more inclusive, and used as both a means of providing employment to young people, and also to educate them, much like the Gap Year in Europe.  But instead of having our new high school graduates backpack around the country, they could be sent to work in urban public library branches, light-rail and subway/Metro stations, local urban public schools, or inner city health clinics.  As they rotate from one part of the country to another, say, monthly, they learn first-hand of the conditions in places they are not from and have not lived, while serving communities they have never met, working alongside peers from different walks of life, and seeing a side of their native land that they did not grow up with.  In short, learning the realities, and different perspectives, of this large and diverse nation of ours.

The rest of the ideas are here, with a warning that they will be rearranged and better explained in future posts: (My hope, in 2014, was that the precautions/programs described below, particularly the TinyHouse/Bedsit on an acre/person with free basic food, would prevent child abuse, by giving all human beings at any age once capable of reaching the stove and cooking an egg, permission and power to get the hell out of Dodge if necessary…)

The Adulthood Challenge  is Phase II of a four phase program of Equality and Health for All, which I’ve been modifying since 2014.

Action Items:

1.)   Look up the CCC, preferably finding two different sources;

2.)   Share your findings with two friends on FaceBook;

3.)    Find your Senator’s local office address;

4.)    Write a letter to your Senator, email it, and then snail-mail it to the local office;

5.)    Share your letter on FaceBook, and treat yourself to a healthy reward!!

6.)   Accept the thanks of all of us who work for kindness and safety, Sibling in Arms.

Gratefully,

Let’s #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail and support these four key parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

Moody Mondays idea: Fully Inclusive Equality via The Four Freedoms Movement

How can we get to a world in which every human being is safe: fed, clothed, sheltered, educated and cared for so that every person can contribute the most fully to Humanity?

per Covey: starting with The Eventual End Goals of The Four Freedoms Movement (allowing each person to contribute fully):

Phase IV

(With 40-60 years of steps in between…)

1. Each child, at birth, receives half a hectare of land, non-alienable. The person may rent, lend or swap the land, but always remains the owner of the land or the swapped parcel. Where ever the location, it should have a well and be arable. (This way, at a minimum, every person on the planet will own at least 1/2hectare of land, free and clear, with no way to lose it…)

2. Beans, Rice, local Greens, and enough fresh drinking/cooking water, and fresh or filtered salt water for bathing for every individual person;

3. Free Bedsit or Tiny House for each individual person, accessible from the time a child can safely (independently) cook an egg;

4. Each family should have a book in the local public library, containing the autobiography of every adult in the family (which means that each person needs free time and the means to write his or her autobiography).

5. Each ADULT is both:

1. trained to serve in the national protection forces (police or military), and
2. prepared to rotate, if called upon, into a limited time term of either Jury Duty, city, state, or federal level government duty as a local/state or federal Representative or Senator, Governor, or cabinet member. A system of sortition could gradually replace elections for the House of Representatives and state assembly lower chambers, followed by the upper chambers and executive level elected positions via IRV/Ranked Choice Voting, as the national educational system evens up in quality across the country.

Getting there from … some point in the future:

Phase III: The Three Universals:

Free access to all levels of

1.) universal higher or trade-craft education,

2.) universal basic income, which the use of local currencies may help with,

3.) and full universal health care, for every person, are the three key parts of Phase III, which comes after:

Phase II, which is: taking the Adulthood Challenge

1. Each person, as a child, must learn to swim (or at least float).
2. Each child must learn emotional/psychological self-defense and physical self-defense to the greatest extent possible, in a Gandhian context, as well as financial self-defense.
   (1 and 2 are part of the pre-Adulthood pre-requisite criteria:)
3. Then, each child may decide to remain a Pre-Adult, having all basic human needs met, but being barred from undertaking Phase IV adult roles, such as serving in protective or governmental positions.
4. After passing prerequisites 1 and 2, and deciding to test for Adulthood, any Pre-Adult may choose to attempt The Adulthood Challenge, of teaching some person a needed and difficult skill, such as speaking a language from 0 words, or teaching someone to read, beginning with the alphabet. A task, in other words, that ordinarily averages 2-3 years in the classroom setting.

Phase II is about both a new rite of passage into a new form of adulthood, and also about forming a culture in which “each one teach one” is taken seriously as a duty to humankind.

The current stage is Phase I:

Phase I involves both a preparation period for the coming stages as well as an on-going process of empathy-building, while actively building full support for our key publicdomaininfrastructure.

Action Items in support of literacy and inclusivity that you can take right now:

1.) Download two differently sourced documents about sortition,

2.) Read a page,

3.) Share your thoughts on that page,

4.) Write a novel that imagines a safer and kinder world than we have now, and tells a good story, that might make a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Let’s #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail and support these four key parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

Study Saturdays, gullible or not, and what’s belief got to do with change and health, anyway?

Remember how inspiring the slogan “Yes, We Can,” became? It had to do with belief: if you do not believe a thing to be possible, for most people, you will not attempt it (and even those of us who throw ourselves into the breach still do so in the hope that our disbelief is wrong…): belief and hope are intertwined with mental health and healing, are they not?

Here is a gathering of thoughts from my study of my earlier journal entries, to see if I’d changed:

–

A classmate at Annapolis told me that they’d taken out the definition of ‘gullible’ in the dictionary and replaced it with my photo one day. I was furious, because shipmates aren’t supposed to bilge each other, and that to me was bilging.

But I want to believe that a better world is possible, a kinder world:
Perhaps the Universal Declaration of Human Rights would be a good ‘summation’ of what I want to see in the world?

[An aside: what I personally want may be quite different from what others want, of course. I would personally like to see a world where every person is free to travel anywhere, and where every person has a key to a very small flat -consisting of one room, well insulated, with a small kitchen, a bathroom with a shower, and a bed. For free, with absolute lifelong rights. Also free would be brown rice (or similar equivalent grain), green leafy vegetables, and dried beans. That is the bare minimum that a person needs to live, and that (along with free Public Library borrowing rights and Health Care) should be totally free without question to every person at all times. Whether they work or not, deserving or not. No paperwork, no hassles. But for anything else a person may want, above this (deliberately quite Spartan and barebones) minimum, a person must contribute to society -i.e. work.  That is what I would like to see eventually, not going into political views…]

I look back 20 years on, now I see that I’ve always been accused of being gullible and naive, yet to be gullible, I think, is not from foolishness or stupidity, but from a stubborn refusal to believe that anyone could be dishonest.

Read, Write, Run, Teach !   ShiraDest,   16 February, 12016 HE

(update Edit from 2008 LJ entry: Yet every time I’m taken in by those who talk of dedication to ideals, and every time, I have wanted to believe. I went to Cambridge, as I came back to Bath, expecting nothing, yet finding other dedicated souls in places I had not looked before. Perhaps it is the expectations, desire to believe, desperation for drive, which brings the disappointment. Perhaps it is not only drive, not even a little rest, but mostly detachment that helps one fulfill full potential, live up to that long grey line. To be able to report with pride to those who have gone before us that we lived up to our calling.
No, work and determination must play the largest part, along with reflection.

(maybe this is why my fellow JROTC cadet Mahlon called me “overmotivated” all those years ago… I wonder if that’s why Monica and the other kids assumed I was dating my Tanzanian running partner at the DC Army National Guard youth camp, and Dawn thought I was dating my friend Shedrick from the NAI flight camp; wonder if their perceptions have changed over the years, despite little contact;)
Yes, hearing what you want to hear and believing it…
(But it’s hard to say ‘No, you are not being entirely truthful’…)
Read, Write, Dream, Teach !

ShiraDest
22 February, 12016 HE

–

 

  More on my continuing striving with self- study next Saturday, friends:

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different reasons to study your thoughts.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, if you feel safe enough.

3.) Share your thoughts a book from your GoodReads reading list on self-reflection,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that explores, tells a good story, or otherwise makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

National Public Libraries: Learning languages to bring books, literacy, and possibility to others: …

The National Library of France, aka La Bibliothèque nationale de France, provides online access to classic books which are in the Public Domain. Assuming that one has access to the internet, and also has a device on which to read the eBook, this can be a huge boost to literacy, and also to hope. Hope for education, and hope for young women, who see a strong and highly intelligent role model in the heroine of 1001 Nights, who weaves stories within stories intriguing enough to save both her life, and the lives of the young women of her kingdom.

Reading novels in general builds empathy, which builds hope, and helps people to pull together in mutual aid.

Books, film, and other forms of media, like comic books, aka graphic novels, and music all have a strong effect on how people view the world. So, here are some Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Download some public domain version of the 1001 Nights,

2.) Read a page,

3.) Share your thoughts on that page, perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a novel that references a classic book, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Other ideas welcome on how to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail, starting with improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:

1. #libraries,

2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,

3. #UniversalHealthCare, and

4. good #publictransport

Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 ShiraDest

5 October, 12020 HE

Astérix: Learn a language to bring freedom to others: Phase I…

In Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, the Druid Panoramix, of that unconquerable village shared with Astérix the Gaul, came away with a scroll from the Library of Alexandria. Could it have contained what we see in the image above? Unlike Queen Cleopatra, we do not have to speak ten languages, but studying at least two or three can help widening one’s perspective. Or simply communicating with fellow workers.

FDR’s Four Freedoms, particularly freedom from fear, are echoed in this funny, but informative French film. From fear of being fed to Sacred Crocodiles to fear of losing face, languages and learning play a key role in this film, as in our real world today. Languages and libraries can also play a key role in moving us from our current world situation to one in which every human being is free from fear. Here is one proposal for how I hope we could move on, from #publicdomaininfrastructure as phase I, to phase IV’s #freeRoomAndRice for every person.

Phase I, already coming into motion, involves both humanizing all people in the eyes of one another, and building up existing infrastructure that contribute most directly to our long-term democratic institutions. The arts and media have been effective, historically, in sculpting ways of seeing the world, and in bearing witness to events. This is important for building empathy. Films like Astérix..Cléopatre, books like the Harry Potter series, and TV series like Babylon 5 all help. But our institutions also need support, in order to support us over the long haul.

Events over the last four years have shown us all the importance of 1.) both public education and also of adult education in the local community, as well as ongoing availability of 2.) free legal and financial advice. These sets of needs all come together in 3.) the institution of the Public Library system, as does one other: 4.) the public health system. Public health relies heavily on the assumption that both basic health education and current information are accessible to the entire population. Thus, all four parts of our infrastructure: transport, libraries and early education, adult continuing education (especially free financial and legal), and access to health care, impact all of us at all income levels. So, the hashtag #publicdomaininfrastructure was created to pull together those specific issues as a way to focus on a reduced set of areas that could have a higher impact on the lives of many people. In doing so, energy and time are freed up to allow more constructive solution sets to be created to all of our problems. Once transportation and knowledge are established in support of general health, ways of funding our remaining critical policy needs can be found, starting with reducing the needless and crushing collections burden many face for medical and student debt. Once reduced, these burdens then allow time and energy for more apprenticeships, tutoring, and ways of educating ourselves that allow for far more cooperation and community building.

Phase II can then begin to lay the groundwork for new ways of seeing ourselves and our responsibilities toward one another. More to come on Phase II soon (in about 10 years or so)…

More ways of supporting the requisite empathy, which must exist first in order for our society to care enough to pull together in mutual aid, include books, film, and other forms of media, like comic books, aka graphic novels, and music. All of these media have a strong effect on ways that people view the world, and so, here are some Action Items in support of #PublicDomainInfrastructure that artists can take over the next ten years or so:

1.) Write a novel that both tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

2.) Write blog posts pointing folks to non-profits that offer pro Bono legal aid and free financial education for those most needing it, such as The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation, in South Carolina.

3.) Draw or caligraph something helpful on your COVID-19 face mask, in favor of Universal Health Care.

4.) Write songs or music that get people thinking about public transportation, like the song ‘Walkin to New Orleans’ by Fats Domino

Other ideas welcome on how to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail, starting with improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:

1. #libraries,

2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,

3. #UniversalHealthCare, and

4. good #publictransport

Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

Astérix: Learn a language to bring freedom to others?

In Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, the Druid Panoramix, of that unconquerable village shared with Astérix the Gaul, came away with a scroll from the Library of Alexandria. Could it have contained what we see in the image above? Unlike Queen Cleopatra, we do not have to speak ten languages, but studying at least two or three can help widening one’s perspective. Or simply communicating with fellow workers.

FDR’s Four Freedoms, particularly freedom from fear, are echoed in this film. From fear of being fed to Sacred Crocodiles to fear of losing face, languages and learning play a key role in this film, as in our real world today. Languages and libraries can also play a key role in moving us from our current world situation to one in which every human being is free from fear. Here is one proposal for how I hope we could move on, from #publicdomaininfrastructure as phase I, to phase IV’s #freeRoomAndRice for every person.

Phase I, already coming into motion, involves both humanizing all people in the eyes of one another, and building up existing infrastructure that contribute most directly to our long-term democratic institutions. The arts and media have been effective, historically, in sculpting ways of seeing the world, and in bearing witness to events. This is important for building empathy. Films like this one, books like the Harry Potter series, and TV series like Babylon 5 all help. But our institutions also need support, in order to support us over the long haul.

Growing up without a car showed me the importance of having transportation. Living in Europe showed me how efficient a railway system can be. Events over the past 3.5 years have shown us all the importance of both public education and also of adult education in the local community, as well as ongoing availability of free legal and financial advice. These sets of needs all come together in the institution of the Public Library system, as does one other. The public health system relies heavily on the assumption that both basic health education and current information are accessible to the entire population. Thus, all four parts of our infrastructure: transport, libraries and early education, adult continuing education (especially financial and legal), and access to health care, impact all of us at all income levels. So, the hashtag #publicdomaininfrastructure was created to pull together those specific issues as a way to focus on a reduced set of areas that could have a higher impact on the lives of many people. In doing so, energy and time are freed up to allow more constructive solution sets to be created to all of our problems. Once transportation and knowledge are established in support of general health, ways of funding our remaining critical policy needs can be found, starting with reducing the needless and crushing collections burden many face for medical and student debt. Once reduced, these burdens then allow time and energy for more apprenticeships, tutoring, and ways of educating ourselves that allow for far more cooperation and community building.

Phase II can then begin to lay the groundwork for new ways of seeing ourselves and our responsibilities toward one another. More to come on Phase II soon…

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:

1. #libraries,

2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,

3. #UniversalHealthCare, and

4. good #publictransport

Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 ShiraDest

May, 12020 HE