Project Do Better (fka Baby Acres) and Human Rights as Justice

This post  introduced the idea of Project Do Better, going on to begin the rough draft of my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: A possible Vision for Making Society Suck Less, in 60 Years.   (Thanks, once again, to Violet for her guest post!)  The overall goal has been to lay out a roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, so, I am turning, this week, to the introductory chapter, Chapter 0, of the book, in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met.  This book lays out one possible path for getting to that point.

Introduction part II: Peace and Justice

 

   Peaceful change revolves around various types of justice.  Social justice is perhaps the first type of justice that comes to mind, but economic justice, both of outcome and of opportunity, and also climate and other sorts of justice count heavily when considering the factors involved in building a just society.

 

  Social justice is one of the more obvious types of justice, or more visible, in terms of how we human beings treat one another.  The basic human rights to dignity, equal treatment under the law, and equal access to resources as seen in the right to due process, competent legal representation, etc, have been the focus of civil rights activism and litigation, most prominently in the 1960s, but reaching much farther back than that, in the United States (Jones, Stayed on Freedom’s Call, P. 20). Cooperation between many oppressed groups over time has led to a variety of policies aimed at addressing mistreatment of vulnerable people in public venues, often based on visible characteristics such as race, gender, etc.  The right to associate and travel, live in safe areas, access social venues, etc, has often been addressed, however, without actively acknowledging the fact that the realistic exercise of these rights is dependent upon the actual ability to pay for access to these rights, as most of our venues in the US require some form of entrance fee, or payment.  What often goes unaddressed, and ignored, is the right to economic justice that forms the bedrock of one’s ability to gain access to nearly all of these rights, in practical usage.  Yet, this lack of acknowledgment and action is not due to lack of warning.  Many have pointed out over the years that providing social justice, without providing economic justice, is paying mere lip service to the ideal of a just society.

 

   The calls for economic justice as part of social equity in the United States go back far, but a convenient start might be the most well known of those calls, from the 1960s.  In 1963,The March on Washington was a march for “jobs and freedom” as part of the long struggle to end Jim Crow, implemented both as social segregation, and also as economic segregation.  The economic part of Jim Crow, preventing most Negroes from working in most professional job positions, was the true motor of inequality, leading to both the formation and enforced permanence of a deliberately poverty-stricken underclass constantly obligated to accept any jobs offered by the dominant members of society.  The codification of this system based on skin color meant that even after the end, de Jure, of social Jim Crow, the majority of the members of that underclass remained stuck in the position of living in substandard housing and having to accept the lowest paying of jobs because the dominant culture had not changed, even when the laws did.  Thus, the legal ability to attend the same cinemas, the same schools, and the same concerts did not grant the financial ability do take advantage of these new rights.  Jim Crow was still, economically speaking, alive and well despite new social justice laws.  Many observers, from Dr. King himself, who called for a Citizen’s Income just a few years after that famous march (King, Where Do We Go From Here, 1967), to Joseph Stiglitz, to Steve Pressman, to Thomas Piketty, have continued to point out that economic inequality both hampers all forms of justice for vulnerable groups.  They also argue that economic inequality exerts increasing pressure toward injustice on all groups, from the dominant down to the most vulnerable, in that society.  Thus, social justice and economic justice must really be considered one: two sides of the same coin.

 

A society which would like to consider itself just toward all of its members, and indeed attempts to provide social and economic justice for all groups, would still be missing something crucial, if social and economic justice were the only types of justice to be considered.  While public goods such as libraries, health care, transportation, and education may be considered part of the social or economic spheres, these systems are also part of a set of pieces of social infrastructure which work in our society both as common touch stones, and as common points of concern.  Each person needs access to information, and to community level places for gatherings and  entertainment, provided by local libraries.  Each person needs health care, and the health of every resident in a society affects every other resident, from the hospital system right down to the sewage and water treatment systems.  Transportation is a concern that touches every resident as well, whether driving in a private car, or riding on a trolley, and the culture and education of every resident of a society inform how those modes of transportation will be used, or abused.  Yet, information and communication systems, sanitation, transportation, and even schools all impact the local environment, and also pull resources from the local environment.  And, as many Native American Tribal councils, like that of the Black Hills, in South Dakota, can confirm, not all lands are treated with equal care.  Thus, climate and land or commons based justice must also be considered, as part of the foundation of any just society.  Hence, social, economic, and commons based justice must all form part of any discussion or offering of a potential vision for a just society.  Those three fundamental forms of justice must also then be made tangible by codifying specific examples of what that might look like.  One offering of an example was given to us by a president who saw the need to end both segregation and to list necessary freedoms.

That is the rough draft of the first part of my introductory chapter. 

 

Action Items:

1.) Share two different sources related to visions for a better world.

2.) Share your thoughts on how Commons Justice (or bad) can affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

tells a good story, and makes a difference.   Once published, please consider donating to your local public library.

***************** 

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows, Lupin, or $…

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Stories

 

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, Chapter 1, part IV: The End (Goal)

This post finishes the rough draft of  Chapter 1 of my non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres.  This is all of outline section IV, chapter 1, end of chapter 1.

This section is about 1100 words long, as I wanted each chapter section to be.

And still again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter One, section IV:

(section III was last week…)

IV.

 

chapter 1,  IV:  Where the Final Stage fits into the whole Vision

 

IV. A.

 

The first stage of this project, #publicdomaininfrastructure, lays the crucial initial groundwork for the final stage.  To quote S. Covey, one should “begin with the end in mind.”  This principle led to the imagining and creation of four distinct stages for the project, with each stage separated by 15 years.  But the idea for the final stage came first.  The end goal of this project is to build a plan that would implement all 4 of FDR’s stated freedoms, in a phased in program that builds a movement across about the next 60 years or so.  Thus, the concept of a set of safeguards, involving both physical and cultural infrastructure, began with enough for all, and followed a process which many will recognize as reverse engineering, to trace a workable path from a time in the future in which all come into this world with enough to have a basic start in life, to the present day, in which we have many problems to solve before such a path can become fully viable.  That is not to say that the path is impossible, nor that that path will be easy, but with enough empathy, and with enough cooperative and critical thinking, we can make it work.  The first requirement in that problem-solving pathway from here to there is the implementation of a robust and fully safe and accessible set of critical infrastructure systems, which starts in Phase I, and prepares the way for Phase II, always with the end goal in mind.

IV. B.

The infrastructure upgrades in the first stage make space for the beginning of crucial cultural upgrades which start in the second phase.  Those cultural changes in Phase II make further space for larger infrastructure and cultural upgrades in the third stage, which sets the stage for the final goal to become reachable, in Phase IV.  But without the initial preparation, on the part of every Adult in society, it will be more difficult to attain either the knowledge or the critical thinking skills needed to move forward to the third stage.  The prerequisites to the Adulthood Rite of Passage provide a baseline for minimal skill sets that allow everyone to understand and debate a wide variety of ideas in a manner that can be both civil and efficient.  Those skills will be necessary to the empathetic consensus-building work of progressing through the third stage, and preparing for the fourth and final stage.  Working on the assumption that every human being is entitled to security of life, limb, and person, the work of those who accept the Adulthood Challenge will be to take an active and immediately measurable part in the building of a new education infrastructure that ensures that each person has all of the resources needed to defend every human being financially, emotionally, and physically, including oneself.  From that point, a variety of new possibilities opens up, including both those possible soon to be universally accessible tools and resources in the third stage, and those possible future universally accessible tools and resources in the fourth and final stage.

 

IV. C.

As Phase II built a cultural platform for further progression, so the Three Universals of Phase III will open up space on that platform for tools that will allow us to finally answer the challenge laid down by President FDR.  With most of the basic needs of even those born with no  boat to be lifted by President Kennedy’s rising tide able to be met by the end of Phase III, only one remains.  Freedom from Fear cannot be achieved without housing security.  Housing security cannot be achieved without some way of guaranteeing a minimal level of safe housing regardless of market fluctuations.  Thus, as will be expanded upon in Chapter 5, either a small parcel of land, or a Tiny Home, bedsit, or other means of assuring basic housing, is necessary to each person.  Land has always been seen as a means of granting of freedom and security.  With just a bit of land, and a very basic shelter on which to put it, Phase IV completes the work of ensuring that each person can contribute in the way that best fits that person, from a place of basic human dignity, rather than starting from a hole, as the most vulnerable in our society currently do.  With full basic health care, even basic food like beans, rice, and greens, and safe, clean and reliable public transportation, we can alleviate the fear and encourage the contribution of every member of our society.  Some specific tools for finding the land, housing, and food that can ensure the creativity released when all are freed from fear will be discussed in Chapter 10.

 

IV. D.

During Phase IV,(With 40-60 years of steps in between…), we hope to see:

1. Each child, at birth, receives one acre 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 one acre of land, free and clear, withno way tolose 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, is the work of this project.  Chapters 2-5 will show what this world could look like, while chapters 7-10 will show both suggested/possible paths to get there, as well as examples of previous or current implementations of parts of these suggestions/projects/programs.

The first stage, envisioned as a fifteen year period of both public empathy-building and public social infrastructure building, begins the entire process that will lead to the fourth stage, and will now be examined in greater detail, in Chapter 2.

 

— (Next Wednesday: Chapter 2 …)

I’m considering this Rough Draft as the block of clay from which my book will eventually emerge, obviously, and some ideas for phases III and IV are still becoming more  fixed in my mind as I write, so the final version will likely look pretty different from this Rough Draft, and will need updating once I get to the very end.

 

And once again, yeayyy( !!)with regard to audience, I may have at least a couple of comps:  Walden Two meets The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective (by Dr.s Jean and Edgar Cahn, 1964).  I know that lots of people consider Skinner’s writing to be stilted, but I like the tilt of most reviewers, in that the idea is that a community should keep trying policies that members agree upon until they find what works for all of them.

As for genre, I’m still wondering:  Non-fiction,   System Change, Causes, maybe even Inspirational, but I doubt it.

Last week’s installment of this series…

 

Action Items:

1.) Consider some ideas you may have on housing security, or the lack thereof, and how our society move solve that problem in 45 60 years,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

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

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button: ,

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plan Book)! 

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, Chapter 1, part 1D: Are We There, Yet??

This post continues the rough draft of  Chapter 1 of my non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres.  This is the next outline section, chapter 1, section ID.

I just realized that this will finish my first outline section, chapter 1, section I (of IV), but it definitely went over 1000 words, which is pretty normal for me on a rough draft.  I’ll still need to look at the transitions and then cut words, later, but I prefer to make sure that I get it all in there at the start.

And again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter One, section ID:

Phase IV with respect to Phase I and to the entire project:

(section IC was last week…)

ID rough draft:

Chapter 5 will show what the fourth and final stage of this project could look like.  But why, one could ask, must Phase IV come well after Phase I?  Couldn’t we jump straight to the goal, while building increasing support for our  PublicDomainInfrastructure as needed?  To answer that question, we really need to begin at the end, so to speak, with the final goal at the end of the fourth stage of this project being to provide a set of inalienable rights, and connected  responsibilities.

 

The rights would include an acre, or even up to a hectare, of land at birth to each human being, with the GPS coordinates being recorded on each birth certificate as a human  right.  Further, since land is of little use without the knowledge, tools, and work energy to put it to productive use, there would be at least one additional stipulation.  That would be the  xyz of a simple ration of basic food, such as brown rice, local greens, and beans or lentils, enough fresh drinking water, and a basic form of shelter, such as a sturdy bedsit, or a Tiny House.  These rations and rooms would also be “as of right,” as some say, for each and every human being, from birth, and accessible as of the moment the person as a child is able to safely cook an egg unsupervised.

 

Some of the connected responsibilities might include serving, as many Europeans do, in either the defensive services or unarmed civilian sector services such as hospitals or schools.  A commitment to serve a rotation in some form of public service such as local or regional government, for example, could also be a responsibility, if agreed upon by society during this phase.  The crucial point is that getting to this point must also be entirely non-exploitative, non-violent, and non-coercive, if such a society is to be both just and sustainable.  It must be built from the very beginning upon free choice for all, as well as equity and contribution.  But those things do not come unless there is already a sense that there truly is and will be enough for all, and equitable opportunity for all.  Thus, much of the current systemic discrimination must first be demonstrably undone.  The clear changes in our infrastructure, culture, and governance systems as well as outcomes will have to show in absolute terms that society can really be trusted to deliver the inalienable rights as their connected responsibilities are taken up by enough willing citizens.  These changes will neither be easy nor quick, and a certain sequencing will obviously be important, since land availability will depend on openness to new ideas, and yet we cannot have a corresponding opening of borders without more full global development.  This requires both education and tools to be shared far more widely than we see in the world today.  Thus, Phase IV cannot happen without a large amount of preparation, from physical and cultural infrastructure, to education of several kinds, and this takes both time and careful planning.

 

In chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5, we will show the proposed details of what each stage of this project should look like by the end of its fifteen year time frame.  Chapter 6 will lay out some final thoughts on metrics and how one might decide if and how well each phase is progressing at any given point.  Chapters 7-10 will show both suggested pathways to get to each stage, and examples, when available, of previous or current pilots, experiments, or other examples of partial implementation of similar projects or programs.

 

Thus all four parts of PublicDomainInfrastructure are bound together in a crucial knot connecting freedom of speech and freedom of association and worship as integral parts of freedom from fear.   Without first addressing these key issues, little if any progress can be made in other resolving other problems.  This is why these four social infrastructure items (transit, libraries, health care and consumer debt law) that are within our public domain are placed in the first phase, leading directly into Phase II, which we look at next.

— (Next section: Chapter 1, II …)

I’m continuing to work on wording, obviously, and some ideas for phases III and IV are far from fixed in my mind, so the final version will likely look pretty different from this Rgh Draft, and will need updating once I get to the very end.

 

And again, yeayyy( !!)with regard to audience, I may have at least a couple of comps:  Walden Two meets The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective (by Dr.s Jean and Edgar Cahn, 1964).  I know that lots of people consider Skinner’s writing to be stilted, but I like the tilt of most reviewers, in that the idea is that a community should keep trying policies that members agree upon until they find what works for all of them.

As for genre, I’m still wondering:  Non-fiction,   System Change, Causes, maybe even Inspirational, but I doubt it.

Last week was the tenth installment of this series…

 

Action Items:

1.) Consider some ideas you may have on how having a safe place to fall back on, for every person able to cook an egg safely, could help society move forward in 45 to 60 years,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

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

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button: ,

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plan Book)! 

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, Chapter 1, part 1

This post begins the rough draft of  Chapter 1 of my non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres.     The overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter I

I’m still updating the detailed outline for the first chapter, as I revise several versions of the other chapter outlines.  Sorry I have no new words yet.

Last week was the sixth installment of this series…

 

Action Items:

1.) Consider some ideas you may have on how society could look in 80 years,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

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

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

,

 

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plan Book)! 

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and The Two Whys…

This post begins the rough draft of the first Chapter of my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: Making Society Suck Less in 60 Years.     The overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV might look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter I (part 0): why and why

This week I am very tired, and working on getting updating the chapter outlines from their initial 2019 form. 

 

Next week I will continue with the rough draft of the start of my first chapter.  Here is the semi-detailed chapter 1 outline. I tried to use this as the post featured image, but WP kept rejecting it, so I hope that the medical debt image was a decent tie-in of two of the #PublicDomainInfrastructure items.

Last week was the fifth (end of Introduction section Rough Draft…) installment of this series…

(Note to JYP: I’ve been using and expanding this high level chapter outline  until this post, as I’ve finally filled out the chapter 1 outline, realizing that I was trying to pack too much into chapter one! 

Thank you for your feedback: it has really been helping me! –

Shira)

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to FDR’s Four Freedoms speech, and compare it to Ike’s ‘Cross of Iron‘ speech (I wonder how many people were old enough to remember his touchstone reference to the 1896 Cross of Gold speech…),

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how your ideas could affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

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

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

,

 

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plan Book)! 

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Project Do Better, & The Four Freedoms

This post finishes the rough draft of the Introductory Chapter of my current non-fiction WiP, Do Better (fka Baby Acres): Making Society Safer Less in 60 Years.     The overall goal has been to introduce one possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met.  This book lays out an idea, and a potential path for getting us there.

Introduction part III: The Four Fundamental Freedoms and “perpetual peaceful
revolution”

The “four essential human freedoms” that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt listed in his
famous inaugural (?) speech of 1941 are, as the president himself pointed out, a tangible distillation of those Human Rights as a list of freedoms that each both facilitate and require the equitable implementation of the three types of justice mentioned earlier. President Roosevelt put it thusly:

“The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the
world.
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-
everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide
reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in
our own time and generation.
”

The president went on to say that “we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions … The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.”

 That “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.“

These words touched off   The ( https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/08/world-war-ii-the-double-v-campaign/, accessed 2 April, 2021, 15:35 PST …)  Double V Campaign of the modern civil rights era.

While these rights have yet to be fully realized for all Americans, much less all human beings
everywhere, they are, as Roosevelt stated, the start of what any just society must aspire to
guarantee to all of it’s citizens.

That peaceful revolution of which President Roosevelt spoke must make needed changes to the entire set of institutions with which we govern our society so that, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out, “the edifice which produces beggars” is changed into one that produces truly equitable opportunities for all human beings around the world. Clearly, the rebuilding of such a massive edifice as our interconnected web of societal infrastructures, social, economic, physical, and governance-related, requires both time and fore-thought. The task of wrapping up even the most basic of essential human rights into a system capable of guaranteeing that each and every citizen is treated equitably in the light of each of the major types of justice is “a vast project.” Yet is is a project that must be taken on if the promise of those four essential freedoms that President Roosevelt spoke of and Dr. King dreamt of seeing are to be made a reality. It is a project which our founding documents, from the United States Declaration of Independence, to the Preamble to the US Constitution enshrine in law, that “we the people” “are created equal.”

It is equally clear that this is a project which cannot hope to be successful alone, even if
undertaken by an entire generation. The goal of building a just society must be one which is
undertaken and committed to by an alliance spanning multiple generations. From the Framers of the US Constitution, to President Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Noam Chomsky and John Rawls, together with Naomi Klein, members of Black Lives Matter, to the students from the many schools who have experienced mass shooting traumas, generation upon generation has added its voice to the calls for justice, freedom, and human rights for all citizens.

No one community is capable of welding together a system that will be just for all members of society, and no one generation is capable of finishing such a gargantuan task. It is thus incumbent upon all members of society to play a part in contributing to the vision of a just society, whether by putting forth an alternative potential vision of how such a society could function, or by sketching out what some piece of such a society could look like. Changing our societal edifice into one which not only no longer produces suffering, but even encourages the best in all of us, is not a task that even one generation could accomplish alone. We are all indeed in this together, and must do the work, all together. It can be done, if we will it. 

“Yes, we can.”

 

That is the rough draft of the third and final part of my introductory chapter. 

Last week was the fourth installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to The Double V.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how discrimination could affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows, Lupin, Money…

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Term Nonfiction & Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and Human Rights as Equity

This post  goes on to begin the rough draft of my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: A possible Vision for Making Society Suck Less, in 60 Years.   (Thanks, once again, to JYP and Tammy for the title ideas!!)  The overall goal has been to lay out a roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, so, I am turning, this week, to the introductory chapter, Chapter 0, of the book, in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met.  This book lays out one possible path for getting to that point.

Introduction: Empathy-building as an ongoing part of all
4 Phases

Having cited some of the reasoning which led up to the inception of this project, we now delve into the foundational concepts behind each phase. Empathy-building, through various means, is a continual part of each phase, as without empathy, no society can be just or safe or kind.

This vision of one potential just society is based on the ideas that such a society must be defined by its levels of both empathy and of full respect for the Human Rights of every living person. Such rights as the right to equity, the right to help create peaceful change, and to have each of those four freedoms that President FDR spoke about, embody the essence of a just society. But that essence still requires some tangible way to measure the level of justice, change institutions and systems that need changing, and to define specific ideals upon which those justice seeking institutions build, and to what particular ends.

Human Rights must be the starting point for any society which seeks to be a just society.  The application of named rights for each human being in an equitable manner is essential for a
society to be truly just. Some way to measure that application is also necessary. John Rawls proposed a test for determining whether a given society could be considered just, via a thought experiment. While that test will neither be debated nor explained in full here, further exploration of his writings will show that his proposal involved imagining oneself, after having designed a just society, as being given the choice to become part of that society, but without any knowledge of the position in which one, personally, would enter it. Rawls suggested that if a person would not be willing to enter a given society with no knowledge, or under a thick veil of ignorance, as to what that person’s position would be in the society, then that society might not be a just society. For example, no reasonable person, not knowing what position he or she might have, would consent to become part of US society, because if the position of that person turns out to be one of a homeless person, then the lived experience of the vast majority of people who experience homelessness would indicate that entering society in that position would very nearly doom one’s chances in life. Thus, Rawls’ test would show that the current state of American society is not that of a just society. As many have pointed out. Like Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky and others have written many books and articles detailing a variety of critiques of US and other current societies, in terms of the damage that governments of the United States and other developed nations allow to be done in the name of economic competition. A just society must be just for its own citizens, and must also promote the ideals upon which it is founded in its dealings with other societies. On that basis, Chomsky finds that US treatment of other nations is especially unjust, and that injustice is a reflection of treatment withing US society of the most vulnerable communities within US society, as well, such as Black Americans, refugees, and women of all races. So, the treatment of citizens within a just society must also be mirrored by how that society treats those outside of its boundaries with whom it has dealings, as Chomsky points out on page 83 of his book Profits over People: unfairly vilifying and then crushing a nation for the sake of economic competition is unjust not only to those outside of a society, but even to those within the ‘winning’ society, as the reality of such behavior is evident even to small children, when viewed without the coloring of propaganda. The effects within US society, for example, of the embargo against Cuba over the long term, have been to harden views in some quarters against any compromise or opening of discussion on the topic, while others in American society have come to see hard-liners insistent on the embargo as both anti-Cuban and even anti-immigration. Thus, unfair treatment of outsiders by members of even a just society affects all members within that society, causing divisions and even justifying mistreatment of dissenting opinions, rendering that formerly just society unjust in the act. This shows that even a just society would have to have ways of interacting with other societies that set boundaries and spell out ideals to which all connected societies could aspire.

Eleanor Roosevelt, in helping to redact the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, drew heavily on the concept enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence “that all
men are created equal… that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights…” which include the right to be treated with equal dignity to that of every other human being, regardless of momentary state of being, such as poverty or wealth, gender, religion or lack thereof, etc. As crucial as to whom these rights apply, the document defined an international standard of what rights should be considered as basic to all human beings. The right not to be tortured is, for example, a basic human right which applies to each and every human being at all times and under all circumstances. Likewise with “the right to life, liberty, and security of person.”
Certain rights, such as that negating slavery, which is in direct contradiction to the 13th
Amendment to the US federal Constitution, were visionary in their global scope, considering that many nations had not yet completed the rebuilding from the destruction of the second world war, and even that of the first, the Great War. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is thus a fitting starting point for our definition of what, in terms of tangible rights, a just society ought to look like. The definition of those rights does not, in itself, show us all of what a just society looks like, but it is a start, beginning at where we are today, from a documentary and international legal point of view. It shows that to build a truly just society, we do not really have that far to go. With a set of basic human right in place to which everyone around the world has agreed, in principle, we can move on to look at ways in which those rights could potentially be implemented in a way that would be equitable for all human beings on the planet. Given that the current global systems of finance, trade, etc, are clearly highly inequitable, a just society must therefore have mechanisms in place to allow the peaceful changing of the systems of governance, and even of government, allowing citizens within the society to change parts of the system of governing that show themselves to be unjust. Such peaceful revolution, though, revolves around several connected but distinct types of justice, and depends upon the ability of all citizens to make their voices heard in absolutely non-violent, non-threatening, and non- aggressive manners, so that all citizens can feel both heard, and protected.

That is the rough draft of the first part of my introductory chapter. 

Last week was the second installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to visions for a better world.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how good governance (or bad) can affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, 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 -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.   Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The previous lesson 51/67 , and the most recent lesson 52/67…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and Governance Concerns

This post continues to expand on my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: A possible Vision for Making Society Suck Less, in 60 Years.   (Thanks, again, to JYP and Tammy for the title ideas!!)  The overall goal still being to lay out a roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, I am turning, this week, to Phase III.  Just a short overview, mind you, to explain what my thoughts are as I start to work on fleshing the whole idea out for the book.  I realized that any society that could  pass the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance Test would still be connected to societies that might not pass that test, which would be a problem for that just, or even merely less unsafe, society.  A serious problem.

That meant that All HumanKind  would have to be included in both Phases III and IV, since otherwise, large waves of economic migration would be generated from unsafe places, toward any society where security and basic needs were met.  Kind of like now, with the waves of refugees fleeing the on-going wars in various parts of the world toward Europe and the US.

If you follow my blog regularly, you know of a hash tag #publicdomaininfrastructure.  That tag encompasses four basic parts of our social infrastructure system which I think could give the most ‘bang for the buck’ if we devoted more support to them: Public Libraries, Public Health Care, Public Education (for both kids and adults), and Public Transportation.   With those areas shored up, our society then has the foundation for more participatory and inclusive governance structures, that can also scale up to fit in other parts of the world, as those areas levels of development increase, a bit like accession to the European Union.

Phases I and II develop the key basic stepping stones for a just society, building on empathy and critical thinking skills, the four key Public Domain Infrastructure systems, and an educated public able and willing to protect and teach themselves and others how to stay safe emotionally, physically, financially, and intellectually.  That means having systems that support those needs, like health care, libraries, well-rounded educational systems for all ages, and solid mass transit.  We must start by building those foundations in our own country, but they are also sorely needed in every country around the world, as attested to by many NGOs and UN agencies.  And it is with those international bodies that we can work to ensure that those basic health, information access, education and transportation needs are met for all people of the world.

In Phase III, both here and in other parts of the world as they are interested and able, ideas like Participatory Budgeting, Citizens Juries, Ranked Choice Voting or IRV, and local complementary currencies to supplement existing national monetary supplies can be tried and adjusted or abandoned depending on the needs of the community in question.  All of these tools are part of including a wider array of people in the decision-making processes that determine how resources are allocated among people in a given locality.  These tools each depend, however, on understanding the importance of cooperation and acting in good faith toward ones fellow citizens and residents.

So, Phase III would require an expanded world view, and a population ready to reach out to others, to learn new languages, to see through the lenses of other people’s experiences.   Thus, phases I and II are intended to build the necessary empathy, foundational bases for understanding, and then the values and skills for protecting others that could then allow such growth.

“And so, it” began, last week..

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to Good Governance.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how good governance (or bad) can affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.

4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, 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 -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button:

, Vote, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.   Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

March, 2021 CE = March 12021 HE

(The previous lesson 67/67 , and the most recent lesson 1/67…)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Free copies are available at https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, and Public Domain (Social) Infrastructure

This post begins to expand on my current non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres: A possible Vision for Making Society Suck Less, in 60 Years.   (Thanks to JYP and Tammy for the title ideas!!)  The goal is to lay out a roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  I’d love to see other such roadmaps toward a Kinder World, but thus far, I don’t see any fully drawn up plans, so I figured I’d put my ever-evolving roadmap out there for scrutiny.  Part of that map includes posts that I have written before, as I piece ideas I’ve had over the last 10 to 15 years together into one coherent framework.  I hope to offer that framework as one possible vision of what a society might look like that could eventually pass the Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance Test.

This framework started as The Four Freedoms for All HumanKind Movement idea, but then I realized that a movement needs more than one person, so I thought I’d better try to explain it and get some other folks to help me tracing this path, or possible path, forward for our society.

Back around 2011 or so, I had the idea that if we had a modern inclusive rite of passage adapted to our current society, we could build a better definition of what it means to be an adult, and how we figure out at what point that time has arrived, for any given person.  Some sort of definition, and then test of passage, made universal, could be a more satisfactory criterion, or set of criteria, than mere age, whether 18, 21, or 25, as has been in different times and places in American society.  That led me to imagine the Adulthood Challenge, with its various prerequisites and the final test.  That led me to wonder how on earth we could bring such a new ritual into general acceptance as a means-test for adulthood, and what that could mean for those who pass, or don’t.  What sort of society would we have in which some number of 40 or 50 year old persons are not considered legal adults, and what would that mean for such a society?  How do you determine who is reasonably able to conduct the responsibilities of adulthood, and what exactly are those responsibilities, since the state of being an “adult” comes with duties, but also grants rights and privileges denied to children.  And you cannot have a functioning society with absolutely no bar, or you then have to grant driving, governing, and other privileges and other decision-making functions to anyone and everyone at any time, which clearly will not work.  So, the need for some way to decide on the maturity and preparation level of each person in society led me to wonder what levels of preparation, and in what areas, an adult in our society is expected to have, and how one could fairly test that across the entire society.   This, of course, reminded me of the woeful state of our public education system in the US, not to mention other parts of our social infrastructure which are in the public domain, such as library systems, and health care.

That brought me to another problem:  when one has not had access to basic necessities, like health care, information, education, and transportation, as a child, one reaches (assuming one survives long enough) the age of juridic adulthood lacking much of what kids who grew up in less traumatizing or negligent or abusive or poverty-stricken homes generally have.  So, backing up from adulthood, I wondered how we can build, or rather, what would be needed, to build a society that ensured access to those tools for each and every child.  Starting with food, clothing, shelter and health care for kids whose parents either die young and had no other family, or kids who never had adequate parents to begin with.  Clearly, state Child Protective Service systems are not good enough, judging by “foster care-to-prison pipeline” statistics.  (I’ll come back to further ideas about this in future posts as part of Phases III and IV…)

If you follow my blog regularly, you might have noticed that those four basic necessities,  health care, information, education, and transportation, are something I rotate into my posts on a regular basic, under the name of a hash tag #publicdomaininfrastructure.  That is because a couple of years ago, I realized that those four basics had the potential to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, if our social infrastructure systems like Public Libraries, Public Health Care, Public Education (for both kids and adults), and Public Transportation were upgraded.  A lot.  With those systems adequately funded and utilized by the middle classes as well as the poor, you could also get a situation going where people meet and greet and get to know each other more, as well as more attention to the needs of those public goods than merely as a hand-out for those who cannot or wish not to use the privatized version of all of these public goods.    Then I realized that without empathy, you cannot have any of those things.  So, then I began to wonder what a society could look like that met all of our needs, while keeping our freedoms intact, and still allowing each individual person to go as far as that person’s potential would allow, creatively, athletically, intellectually, etc.  Without having to dig out of a childhood hellhole just to get to the starting line.   What various shapes could such a society (indeed, societies) take, and how could you ensure that any and all of those various shapes remained just?

Obviously, you don’t go from where we are now, to a just and safe world for all of us, including women in Africa, in a day.  So, I divided the various parts of ideas I’ve had over the years into four sets, thinking that a movement can surely be built in 15 years or so, and then gave somewhat arbitrary names to each of those sets of ideas, to phase in one after another as part of a path to one possible offering of a vision for a better world.  And the path, or paths, will certainly not be simple, but “another world is possible,” clearly, because we have 6000 years of recorded human history to show us that nearly every possible form of governance has existed, and ceased to exist, on our planet among human beings.  So, I wondered, how we could conceive and plan a set of possible visions for a society that would be just, safe, free, and fair, for each and every human being on this planet.  I wondered why I’ve not seen someone write a book about such an idea, or set of ideas.   Then, I wondered if I should write one, myself.

“And so, it begins.”

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources related to social infrastructure.

2.) Share your thoughts on how a society might be built, in 50-100 years, that is more just.

3.) Write a book, story, post or tweet that uses these thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows, Lupin, or $ Heist

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Term Nonfiction & Historical Fiction

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Room for All, and One Possible Vision

The common good, or the general welfare, includes the Public Domain Social Infrastructure, and much more.    All parts of our world system, must become more fully inclusive for all of us. I have a humble idea for one possible potential vision of what a kinder world could look like, if anyone would like t see the big picture outlined?

My working title:  Do Better (fka:Baby Acres)…

Action Items:

1.) Imagine some possible ideas for what you would like the world to look like in 60 years.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on whether a more inclusive calendar might help, or hinder,  that possible world,

4.) Write a story, blog post or tweet that uses your ideas, and share it here, pleas

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Lupin, La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews…

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Term Nonfiction & Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.