The Complete Piece

This Sustainability Piece can be viewed in its entirety on this link in two rather long parts.

http://tata-23.livejournal.com/

Connection, Here at Home, Perhaps.

"To lose the sense of the sacredness of the world is a mortal loss.

To injure our world by excess of greed and ingenuity is to endanger our own sacredness."

 From Ursula K. Le Guin's notes regarding the below.

"Those who think to win the world

by doing something to it,

I see them come to grief.

For the world is a sacred object.

Nothing is to be done to it.

To do anything to it is to damage it.

To seize it is to lose it."

Lao Tzu, from the Ursula K. Le Guin rendition

of the Tao Te Ching.

Tonight is the New Moon. This is the final chapter of this project.

Connection

We need to garden more. Grow food. Touch the land directly with our hands. Get some soil under our fingernails. Become intimate with the food we eat. Know where it comes from and how it grows. Know the seasons again. Become dependent on them. Become dependent on the Earth and ourselves and not some store to provide us with our nourishment. Even if it’s just a few pots on a roof, grow tomatoes. Grow herbs. Know the plants and their cycles. Any small connection is better than none.

Here at Home

Currently, it is almost impossible for the population of this country to live this way. A major change in expectations needs to happen. We cannot always expect to have everything we want when we want it. Our diet need to get less processed. Our connection to the land and our food source needs to dramatically increase. How this happens is up to us as individuals. It is determined by where we live. It is determined by how much we believe we can actually do it.

The philosophy of organic farming, non-mechanized, non-chemical, non-genetically altered, non-cloned and non-nano altered agriculture can feed all people. But it takes labor, knowledge and the will to do it. The will to take profit out of the equation. If fuel to make electricity becomes unavailable there would simply be no choice. If a crisis happens within the food distribution system in this country

perhaps the will would be there.

Perhaps

Perhaps then, people would begin to see another way; another way besides that which they are told is the only way. This would be a step toward a sustainable path within the world. This would be a step toward sustaining ourselves as humans.

Perhaps then, our footprints would become easier to wear away.

Perhaps then, the earth would breathe easier

and cry

less.

Retrospect

As I look back over the years, I see how I’ve cultivated myself. I see how I have changed. How I have grown and prospered emotionally and spiritually. I gave up the past’s pollution. I am giving up the ugliness of human industrial life. The ugliness of our history; I will not forget it. I will remember and accept it. I will teach my children to walk lightly. Like feathers brushing sand. I will not stand in their way.

But, I, me personally, still have a long way to go.

Printed Sources

Pacific Northwest Research Station, Science Findings - Finite Land, Infinite Futures? Sustainable Options on a Fixed Land Base

issue 31 February 2001

Native American Sustainable Agriculture in Wisconsin Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates

University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, Summer 2004, Michele Shaw and Dr. Zoltan Grossman

Yes Magazine, issue 49 Spring 2009 - The City That Ended Hunger, Belo Horizonte: Food Democracy on a Penny a Day, by Frances Moore Lappe

Yes Magazine, issue 49 Spring 2009 - Food Rebellions, by Eric Holt-Gimenez

Web Based Sources

http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/usinterimproj/

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OrganicCubawithoutFossilFuels.php

http://www.hellocuba.ca/itineraries/470alamar1.php

http://havanajournal.com/business/entry/organoponicos-and-organic-produce-in-cuba/

http://wafreepress.org/46/organic_farming.html

Young People, Yes, Absolutes, Responsibility And Many Others

This posting is early. Not just to make up for all the late ones, but to get this project in line for finishing it. On (or by) the New Moon I'll be posting the final installment. Since I finished writing the original on a Full Moon and it is a new calendar year beginning, I felt it was only fitting.

Young People

“To look at an adolescent as equal, and as human, and as smart, is a revolutionary idea.”

Andy Gaertner

“Food is hidden away - hidden away from us until we eat it.” 

“The focus of our society isn’t on food.”

Recently, I had the privilege of running a discussion group with some teen and pre-teen homeschoolers on sustainable food systems. Some of their observations are quoted here. Their thoughts are incorporated throughout.

After this experience I can say that it is truly the young people who will guide the process in the future. They are engaged, concerned and thoughtful. They care about the planet they live on. They are going to create the future systems.

Do we have to have total collapse? Not necessarily. Especially if the young people get set up and going. Currently a subsystem of environmental consciousness exists within the dominant system of environmental destruction. Can’t those roles be reversed as a transitional state of human society? Can the subsystem become the dominant system and allow for the few who won’t change their habits to continue to exist within it, and eventually just die off? Leaving the now environmentally conscious dominant system to continue? Stranger things have happened within human history.

“It’s a lot easier to get a pill instead of changing habits.”

“Eat less - to eat so much is convenient.”

Means of Change

Voting alone isn’t going to change anything. Protesting alone isn’t going to change anything. Direct action and civil disobedience won’t change anything by themselves. It will take all those methods and more, working together at the same time. Supporting each other and not interfering with each other. Respecting each other.

And that

will only be the beginning.

Real change cannot be achieved unless we change ourselves. Truly. As individuals. “We” must change. How can we expect anything to change unless we ourselves change? Give up hateful and repressive ideas and shun those who preach them. Give up the ideas of superiority. Of being able to take what we want. Of entitlement. Give up those things that contribute to the destruction of resources and not replacing them. Give up those things and more. The things that have been fed to us by a repressive and angry society. A society that devours anything that differs from it. A society that perpetuates itself at any cost, even at the cost of the planet and the life on it. A society that won’t give in or change voluntarily. A society that must be forced. That is a sad thing. Because we make up our society. We are allowing this to happen.

All of it.

Hope

You can have hope. But only if you are doing something that makes someone else’s hope come true. You cannot not participate in the change. You must participate. Otherwise, your hope is only serving to remove you from accountability. From being responsible for your actions.

That is the convenience of our society.

Personal Accountability

People are accountable for their actions, intended or not.

No

In our society and culture we are trained to say yes or to not care. Otherwise, we are trained to consent to the action whatever it may be. We are not trained to think critically because that leads to saying, no. Or, wait. Or, let’s look at this another way. We are trained to look at things from one perspective - the expert’s. We need to become our own experts. If we don’t have time to learn enough to be an expert, then we need to start trusting our initial instincts about an issue. But that is something that we are trained to ignore even more than saying, no.

Saying no to the things that destroy us, our children, our environment, our land-base, our water systems, our air, our world, is healthy. It is sustainable behavior. It is also something that is punished in our society. We are to accept the temporary benefits of development, jobs, comfort and convenience. We do this only to see them vanish within our lifetimes. We do this only to see a few become wealthy upon our misery. Upon the death of the land. Upon the poisoning of the water and the air.

We consent.

Acceptable Losses.

The people who think a monetary value can be placed onto the Earth and the life upon it are very troubled people. The Earth and all life upon it is priceless and needs to be treated with respect and reverence. This is an inescapable truth. When we stray from this truth, we lose our connection to the earth.

Yes

After we have said no, we need to start saying yes to the things that affirm our lives. The things that make us healthy and allow our children to thrive. The things that support us in every way. The things that nurture us and the planet. For some this is harder than saying, no.

Absolutes

We’re afraid of imposing them. We’re afraid of having to deal with them. They are taboo. But they could solve a lot of our society's problems. What if all businesses, factories and power plants that produced waste had to be responsible for the breaking down and cleaning up of that waste? Wouldn't our communities then be better places to live? Wouldn’t the earth be cleaner and healthier for us and our children?

Make it mandatory.

Corporations will complain. They will say that they can’t make the profits that they want. Profit will do no one any good when the earth can’t support their lives and habits. Profit cannot weigh as much as the value of living things and the health of our planet. There should be no question as to what is more important. Putting a monetary value onto the Earth and the living things on it means that at some point it becomes OK to exploit them. It becomes OK to use them for personal profit. It becomes OK to let them die. People are also living things.

Absolutes may yet save the day.

Responsibility

We as individuals and as a society need to apply a zero waste policy to all business and enterprises. Make industries and businesses directly responsible for any waste they produce and its effects. If it can be recycled, composted, salvaged, reused or reintroduced into the production cycle then it must, with no exceptions. If the waste or by products cannot be reused in some way, then they must be disposed of or cleaned up in such a way as to make them utterly harmless to the ecosystem and environment. No exceptions. Even radioactive waste can be made non-radioactive but the technology is so costly no one will pay for it. So what if it’s expensive? If that’s what it takes to make it safe, then so be it. If one billion dollars a day can be spent on war, why can it not be spent to make our planet healthy? Why not?

Is there one good reason?

If the technology is that hazardous then we shouldn’t be using it. Do away with the need for it within our society by changing our habits.

Make companies and corporations directly responsible for the effects their products, the pollution of the manufacturing process, the health consequences of the pollution and their processes, the sourcing of raw materials and effects on the communities they come from, everything associated with making their products. Everything they do. Make them responsible for everything they produce and the effects those things have on the environment and people.

Fines are not going to dissuade corporations. Strip the violators of their corporate charters. Appropriate corporate profits from the accounts of the share holders to fund environmental cleanup, hospital care, and restitution to the victims of the policies that the share holders have approved. Then, maybe, they might listen to the needs of the planet.

Before we can hold others responsible, we have to be responsible. Deal with our personal actions and fix the problems that have been created by them. Take the responsibility. We can live without the gobs of cheap, non-durable stuff. Really, we can. We can live without technological distraction. We can live without imported foods. We can stop demanding that certain foods be available year round. We can change our diets and our tastes. Really, we can. We can turn off our light bulbs. Then we don't have to use the high efficiency mercury bulbs. Bulbs that would break, be improperly disposed of and over time would add more mutagenic heavy metal to our water systems and environment just so we can keep the same habits. We can walk more, ride a bike more, take a train or a bus and drive less. We can change our habits and our way in the world. We can walk with light steps and leave soft footprints. Footprints that can be easier to wear away.

Really.

We can.

Mr. Bummer's Meatless Tacos: Collapse

Mr. Bummer's Meatless Tacos: Collapse

Collapse

Collapse

“I won’t have to get people to believe it when physics and geology start driving the process.”

Peter Kilde

When electricity stops being something that can be produced cheaply and crude oil is scarce and expensive to extract, some currently habitable areas of our country may no longer be livable and will have to be abandoned. Remote, arid areas with no ready source of water or food currently have diverted and pumped water and or imported food. This would stop with the advent of peak oil. Those populations would have to move to other areas of the country, further stressing the areas that they move to. Our methods of farming would radically have to change. As the desert grow regions stopped producing food, there would be shortages.

Famine is part of the human cycle of history.

All societies eventually collapse. Ours will at some point. No one wants to be around when that takes place. It’s not a fun process. In Russia the collapse of the Soviet system happened with great speed. Six months before the official end of the  Soviet Communist government, people thought that the suggestion of collapse was crazy.

After the old system of government collapsed, the population of Russia dropped due to death and emigration away from the country. Mostly, though, the population went down due to death. Crime was a major factor in this. Economic collapse leads to major crime increases. People become more desperate. People become more vicious. People forget that economics is based on something that isn’t real.

However, the population in Russia was very resilient. Through a massive garden system outside of Moscow in the suburbs, most of the food was still able to be produced for that city. The people ate mostly storage crops such as cabbage or roots, but they were fed. Other cities also had similar systems. No one was evicted from their homes because no one owned the housing. It was all owned by the State. People were still able to travel because there was already an effective public transit system in place. The government was able to keep this system running. People were able to buy what they needed because there was an intricate Black Market system in place due to the former repression of the Soviet system.

From the outside came foreign capital to restart the Russian industrial system. However, that kind of recovery is possible only if help arrives from the outside. On a global scale, there is no outside. Unless alien tourist industry comes to Earth and sets up some stellar hotels and employs lots of hairless simian life forms in their service sector, we’re screwed.

We came very close to a total global collapse of economy when the U.S. economy vortexed downward. If another nation, such as China, were to spiral down and take the U.S. down with it, global collapse may yet happen.

Soon.

It is unlikely that alien tourists would want to visit a burned out shell of a planet. So, we need to be more careful with our world to keep up its tourist appeal for that out side capital to be there when we need it.

Currently in industrialized society, there is a misallocation of resources and time to maintain our way of life. This life, both private and political, is getting more and more complex. Societies collapse when the complexity of their systems becomes too much of a burden on the available resources in their environment. When the resources become unavailable

the systems disintegrate

quickly.

What will motivate a behavior change to modify our priorities and our way of being on the planet? Hopefully not global economic collapse. Hopefully, people can get over their political and religiously self important selves. Humans, especially industrialized humans, have been in control of the uphill process so far using their ingenuity, technology and greed. But, soon the earth and its processes are going to take over the steering for the downhill slide using physics, chemistry and geology. And the earth doesn’t care if you believe what is happening or not. If you want it to happen or not.

Climate change data is public. But if you would like to have data on how much oil there is available to extract, you can’t. That’s secret. Why is that?

Using one resource to get at another is only as effective as what you get out of it. Ethanol, the savior of the corn midwest, is a 1.3 to 1 ratio of energy in to energy out, a 1 to 1 ratio at best. Tar sands are also very close to even to extract the oil found in them. Hydrogen is a 3 to 1 energy in to energy out process. When it takes a barrel of oil to pull a barrel of oil out of the ground the companies pack up and go home.

There are no vast oil wells in the midwest. But, an ethanol plant ensures that there will be economy. The parts and machinery of the production plant have to be built by a company, creating jobs. The ethanol plant itself creates jobs. The corn farmers get to sell their corn to the ethanol plant. The truckers that haul everything get jobs. Making ethanol burns up as much or a little more energy than the ethanol itself will put out. Then, the ethanol gets used to power vehicles at a lesser rate of BTU return than gasoline. Ethanol is cleaner to burn than gasoline. But, we are burning fossil fuels to make this plant based fuel to burn it in cars. Fossil fuels are burned to make the fertilizers and pesticides that are applied to the corn. Fossil fuels are used in the machinery to harvest and truck the corn. Eventually, when the oil is scarce enough and costly enough, the ethanol plant will close. All the jobs will go away. That’s the temporary benefit of “creating jobs” instead of actually benefiting our society. But, someone along the way made a profit.

And it’s all

“green”.

Good Ol' Days of Subsistence and Possible Changed Habits

Good Ol’ Days

We can choose to not be so complicated all the time. Anthropologists are currently studying simpler times before the industrial revolution to gain insight on how to solve current problems. Simple and complex are relative terms. Simple could be defined in this context as people powered. Complex can be defined as machines or solid state technology. 

To be clear, peoples lives have never been simple. Going back to a simpler time in memory is a way to escape the seemingly harsher reality of the present and replace it with a romanticized past. Simpler times in this context are past times in which less was used to achieve the same results, usually with a trade off of labor. Technology, especially mechanization, replaced physical labor. But, that labor achieved more for the individual directly. People worked for themselves usually with their families together. Today, people leave their families to go work for someone else. To sell products to someone else. To make money for someone else. Today, people in other countries don’t farm their own cultural lands. They grow cash crops on the same land but they don’t own it anymore. They work for the new owners of the land. In this country, more and more family farms are being bought by corporations and the family stays on as employees to run the farm for someone else. They then get cash to buy what they used to make and produce for themselves.

Subsistence

“I know that I could take my chain saw, truck and dog, go until the truck dies and be OK.”

Crystal Halvorson

We can become dependent on our technology very quickly. Technology makes life easier in the short run. If you had to haul your own water to do your dishes and to wash with, would you use less water than you do now? If you put up all the food you need for a winter, would it be rewarding to you? Would you appreciate the land around your home more than you do now?

We don’t have to take advantage of everything we have invented. We can live a life of less convenience and more work. Life would simply be harder. But also more aware. More connected.

People who have lived a subsistence life have a different view of the resources around them. They see themselves as responsible for how they live physically. When they grow their own food, hunt their own food and put up enough food to last them through a winter, they are working directly for themselves. They have most certainly earned what they have.

People who work a job to get everything that they have, have also earned those things. The difference is that there is an enormous and hidden infrastructure system supporting them in this effort. And, this infrastructure is causing immense destruction on the planet.

Either we find a system that offers less convenience and more subsistence for our industrialized populations to earn what they have or

we shall be forced to do so

in a greater haste than anyone would like.

The Possibility of Changed Habits

In Juneau Alaska, a town in a remote area of the state, all the electricity comes from a Hydro-electric power source. An avalanche took out the single cable running power to the town. They had no power for four months due to the difficulty in getting crews to the area to fix the cable. In the mean time, back up diesel generators were used to provide functioning power. The cost of power to the residents of Juneau became almost five times more expensive. It jumped from .11 cents per kilowatt hour up to .54 cents per kilowatt hour. The residents of the town cut their energy use by 40% in two weeks. They took out one light bulb in each room of government buildings. They shut down their saunas, their pools and stopped watering their golf course.

They changed their habits.

Not only because electricity became more expensive, but because there simply wasn’t enough electricity to operate all the things they would have liked to have. There was enough electricity to run critical town and home systems. The cost of this electricity to run those systems became very expensive. This is a foreshadowing of what we as a society could face in the not too distant future.

We would be able to have what we need

not what we want.

Other Ways of Business and Coop Caution

Other Ways of Doing Business

As individuals, as communities and as a society we need to remove ourselves from a dependent way of being - cash - and move toward relying on ourselves. We can barter with our friends and neighbors for what we need with what they need. This will strengthen our immediate communities. This will create an independent community and not one dominated by a cash economy.  By creating a barter economy a community will be able to connect with itself and become more sustainable. The individuals will become more sustainable.

Co-ops: A Cautionary Tale

We need a structure to hang our concerns on. We need a structure that can be an alternative to the corporate way in the world. The co-op structure serves this purpose well.

Beginning as a way for people to get what they needed when power structures failed to provide those things, co-ops have served many needs for many people around the world. Food co-ops were begun in the late 1800s to get poor, impoverished workers access to quality food at prices they could afford. When the company stores that the workers were forced to use would not provide quality food at a reasonable price, the workers banded together to begin buying clubs and co-ops.

This is much the same way food co-ops have started in modern times. Residents of a deprived neighborhood get together and begin a buying club or a food co-op. This is a result of people wanting greater control of their food source, something corporations provide none of. A corporation controls; it does not allow the patron to control. This is the origin of the phrase born of the modern food co-op movement - “People before profits.” Sadly, this phrase has in recent times fallen from use. “People before profits” cannot be reconciled with “profit as a focus”. 

Since the mid 1990s, food co-ops have begun a process of corporatization. Corporations cannot take over co-ops by direct acquisition, but they can control co-ops through indirect acquisition via policy, culture and contract.

Once co-ops have adopted internal structures that mimic corporate structure, those co-ops' responses become easier to predict. Once co-ops have signed exclusive contracts with corporate distributors co-ops become easier to pull into the corporate way of being in the world. Co-ops become dependent on corporations and the infrastructure they provide. Co-ops become easier to control and manipulate for corporate gain and profit. If competition cannot be eliminated it needs to be controlled for the gain of the controller.

When co-ops were more autonomous they were difficult to control and their responses to situations were difficult to predict. When the internal structures of co-ops were unique and supporting of their own individual and localized needs, co-ops were a much stronger force of resilience and a galvanizing force in the communities they sprang from. Sadly, the business of selling food in our culture has been slowly absorbed by corporate production, buying and distribution power. This makes it exceedingly difficult for small or moderate sized food co-ops to compete financially with corporate owned food chains. They cannot compete with the low prices corporate stores offer unless they buy their food from corporate owned and controlled sources in large quantities.

One answer co-ops have gravitated toward is joining together to strengthen their buying power. A seemingly easy solution was to form an umbrella organization to facilitate co-ops banding together and to dictate responses to changing situations within the co-op food industry.

This structure mimics a corporate one. Through the umbrella structure, the co-ops are advised how to structure themselves based on corporate ways of analysis. This includes internal policy and governance. By structuring themselves internally as corporations, the culture of the staff also changes. The day to day becomes more rote and less creative. Less input is sought by management and more is dictated.

The co-ops have also entered into binding contracts with corporate food distributors exclusively. This gives the co-ops better pricing for staple goods. But, this arrangement puts independent distributors out of the market helping the corporate system gain hegemony. Co-ops seldom support local vendors for purely political reasons anymore. Co-ops seldom do anything for purely political reasons anymore. Supporting local entities and boycotting corporate entities because it’s the right thing to do has given way to the financial benefits gained by supporting local or corporate entities.

Now If one co-op falls, they all can go down

in a very predictable way.

Do away with corporatization of the co-op. Return to core co-op structures, co-op ideals and a unique co-op way of being in the world. Corporatizing co-ops leads to focus on profits and not ideals. It’s the ideals that set co-ops apart.

An umbrella is a tool. To use it for fear of getting wet is understandable. But if there are obstacles in the way blocking the umbrella’s passage and the person under the umbrella lets the umbrella dictate that they cannot walk in the rain, this is counterintuitive. To know when to fold up the umbrella so that the person may pass by the obstacles in a more sure footed way is wise. The key is not to fear the rain. Then, the umbrella remains a tool controlled by the person, and not the other way around.

It is up to the members of co-ops to be very involved with what is being done internally at the co-op. It is up to the members to be the experts and not abdicate those responsibilities solely to a few people. It takes more work to involve the membership in more decisions and it takes a membership that wants to get involved. It means sharing deciding power. It means working together instead of top down decision making. It means making the co-op a true part of the community. It means making the co-op “ours” instead of “mine”, throughout. The “my” language is corporate. The “our” language is co-op.

This is the substance of the difference.

Corporations have long been viewed as the models of success because our culture views profit as success. The death, ruined lives, destruction and environmental damage done by corporations to achieve profit is never added into this model. Co-ops can change this way of doing business if they themselves don’t get trapped within it. By going down the path of corporatization, co-ops have squandered their most precious resources - their connections to local producers, their staff, their own members and ultimately their own communities.

However, co-ops that focus entirely on ideals are seldom financially sound. If their doors close there is no more vehicle for the ideals they purport. A balance of the business of selling food and the philosophy of people before profits is the core of what can make a co-op thrive. But leaning more toward ideals is what sets co-ops apart from corporations. It is a balance that is not symmetrical.

Profit

is a heavy weight to counter

indeed.

Education

Education

A human being is like crops - create the environment of healthy soil, water, air, food, and the crop will do its own work. Figure out what the crop needs, then give it that. When a person’s needs are met then the person can grow, will grow, to their fullest potential. It’s our birthright to be able to grow to our fullest potential as human beings. Anyone who stops us from doing so has a reason.

And that reason

revolves around control.

In our society right now we need children that function on a high level. With our current system what we get is a low level of functioning. We get an emotionally stunted development. We get adults with the emotional processing ability of children. We get adults who are easy to control.

If we can see the world through the eyes of a child, make decisions based on a child’s needs, then we have taken a major step in being sustainable as a culture and in letting go of the things that ultimately keep us imprisoned. Imprisoned in a world of fear, estrangement, abuse, violence, deterioration of our planet’s environment, all for the sake of people we will never see or know in our lives. Those who profit. Those who exploit. Those who take more than they give back. Or simply take and never give anything back at all.

Sustainability is about empowerment and reaching the potential we have as an individuals. Our culture needs sustainable human beings. Our culture needs humans who are able to reach their highest potential.

Our current public education system in the U.S. is not capable of meeting these needs. The stated purpose of this eduction system was to create a “docile” work force. To adapt people to this society. Docile means easily managed or handled. Or for practical purposes, afraid. Education in this culture is designed to minimize human potential. Just like a mono-crop of corn is designed to have uniformity and no variance in gene type, our system for educating our children is designed to produce the same person over and over again. Someone who responds to orders, responds to bells, conforms to the given societal standards, follows the rules, knows their place and most importantly

does not question authority.

People’s own thwarted potential is what scares them. They then impart this notion onto the next generation, willingly.

What does it take for you to be a sustainable person?

We, as inhabitants of this culture need to ask ourselves many questions. Some of which get to the very core of sustainability as an idea. How does this culture affect us as individuals? As people? As humans? How does this culture affect other cultures and their inhabitants? How does this culture affect the natural (real) world around us?

Is our way, our personal way, sustainable? Are we as individuals healthy in mind and body? Is our spiritual way able to live in harmony with the Earth? With others? Are we destructive in our actions and beliefs? Do our beliefs and actions destroy other human’s lives? Do they destroy other living things? Do they destroy the world? Do we take and not give back? Are we disconnected from ourselves? Our true selves? Other humans? The natural (real) world? The Earth? Or, do we prefer to luxuriate in the detritus of our technology? Our distractions? Relate to other humans through a haze of Victorian era morals and etiquette?

By observing the child and meeting the needs of the child we begin to correct the future. By putting the child first and designing environments that meet the needs of the child, we are allowing for the future to have sustainable humans.

There are other models of education. There are those that have the revolutionary and empowering notion that the child’s needs come first. If we’re going to have a revolutionary education, then we are going to have a revolutionary society. The problem for those in power with this notion is, there can no longer be a mono-crop system in place. Within an education system where children are empowered, there must be diversity. Diversity makes people difficult to manage and

difficult to control.