Opportunity to hear Kitzhaber on health care

While LOVESalem does not belong to any political party --- believing, like Groucho, that we wouldn't want to belong to any organization that would have us --- sometimes it's one of the parties who is talking about things that matter to Salem, in this case health care.

We are honored to welcome Former Governor - Dr. John Kitzhaber on Wednesday, March 18.

Reservation requests for this event may exceed the capacity of our meeting space.
Early reservations are strongly encouraged. Reservations will be honored on a first come, first served basis. If your reservation is one of those that exceed our meeting room capacity, we will place you on a waiting list.

Dr. Kitzhaber will speak on the Health Care Reform at the Federal Level, a subject he presents in speeches and lectures through the country.

Make your reservation by:
e-mailing: mariondemoforum@yahoo.com or
calling our message line: 503-363-8392

2009 Politcal Outlook Series
Marion DemoForum
Welcomes

Dr. John Kitzhaber
Former Governor & Senate President
Health Care Reform Advocate
Prospects for Health Care Reform - Federal Level
Wednesday, March 18
Noon to 1PM
Kwan's Cuisine, 835 Commercial St SE, Salem

Reservations Required (Deadline Tues March 17)
Cost - $11 includes a buffet lunch, tea & gratuity

For more info, visit our web site

John Kitzhaber served as Governer from 1995 through 2003. Prior that he served in the legislature from 1981 through 1993 serving as Senate President from 1985 through 1993. One of his most notable accomplishments as a legislator and a governor was the creation and expansion of the Oregon Health Plan.

Kitzhaber is a physican. He worked as an emergency room physician from 1973 to 1986. He currently works as a medical educator and speaks throughout the nation as an advocate for health care reform. In 2006, he founded an organiztion called the Archmedes Movement to organize and advocate for health care reform.

To Make your reservation:
email: mariondemoforum@yahoo.com
Or call our message line: 503-363-8392

In your message, give your name, phone number, any special dietary needs, and the number of people who will attend. Please indicate that you are making a DemoForum reservation.

As always, we would like to welcome our guest speaker with a large audience. You can assist us in planning a successful luncheon and insure your place at the DemoForum by MAKING YOUR RESERVATION EARLY. Late reservations make an accurate headcount difficult and damage our business relationship with the restaurant.

We hope to see you at the DemoForum. Don’t miss it!

Andy Bromeland, DemoForum Coordinator

Capital Rally, March 15, 1 p.m.

Peace and Justice Works
Iraq Affinity Group
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065 (Office)
pjw@pjw.info
http://www.pjw.info/Iraq.html

MEDIA ADVISORY/Calendar Listing

For immediate release February 14, 2009

Contacts: Dan Handelman, Peace and Justice Works (503) 236-3065, iraq@pjw.info
William Seaman, Portland Peaceful Response Coalition (503) 344-5078, pprc@riseup.net

Event: March and rally: "Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad: Keep Oregon's Guard Home from Iraq and Afghanistan"
Date: Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Time: 1:00 PM
Place: Steps of the State Capitol & Capitol Mall, downtown Salem, Oregon.

Peace Rally and March Planned
at Capitol in Salem Sunday, March 15, 2009
Across Oregon, peace and social justice groups mobilize to mark 6th anniversary of Iraq war and push state legislators to keep Guard home

Dozens of peace and social justice organizations across the state are gearing up for a big action in Salem this March to call for an end to the US war in Iraq and to urge Oregon State legislators to stop the Spring deployment of the National Guard to Iraq.

The action, titled "Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad: Keep Oregon's Guard Home from Iraq and Afghanistan" is scheduled to take place on Sunday, March 15th, at 1:00 PM, with a rally at the steps of the Capitol, followed by a march through downtown Salem. The full call to action for the event is listed below.

"This will be a great opportunity to show both the Obama administration and the Legislature that lots of Oregonians still want peace and are willing to work for it," said [Salem's] Peter Bergel, Director of Oregon PeaceWorks, one of the over 40 organizations co-sponsoring the March 15th action at the state Capitol.

The timing corresponds with the Rural Organizing Project's Annual Rural Caucus & Strategy Session which is held March 15th and 16th in Salem. The ROP gathering includes a statewide strategic planning session on Sunday, March 15th, taking place before and continuing after the peace march and rally, and a legislative visit day on Monday, the 16th, with the goal of informing legislators of Oregon's priorities for the 2009 legislature.

"Sending half the Oregon guard to Iraq is a big hardship for them and for Oregon," said Curt Bell, a member of the PDX Peace Coalition, another co-sponsor for the March 15th peace rally. "Some of them might not come back and they are needed here at home." Bell emphasized that the United States should be bringing troops home from Iraq, not sending more. "The authorization to send the Oregon Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan this spring is not constitutionally valid and our state legislature needs to step up and say no to deployment."

"We face severe economic dislocations in the coming months, with millions losing their jobs, their health insurance and their homes," said William Seaman, a volunteer with Portland Peaceful Response Coalition, "Our continued presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is the problem, not the solution to the ongoing violence there, and the astronomical spending on these wars and occupations would bring greater security worldwide if it were directed to creating jobs, rebuilding our collapsing infrastructure, and helping to put the country's economy back on track."

"The selection of our state capitol as the location for this protest was very deliberate," said Leah Bolger of Veterans for Peace Chapter 132 in Corvallis. "Congress has ignored the public call for a return of our troops from Iraq--now the people are turning to their state legislature to demand that they step up and challenge the illegal deployment of our National Guard troops. We want our country to stop spending $12 billion a month on Iraq and use that money to take care of human needs here at home," added Bolger, who also serves as National Vice-President of Veterans for Peace and is co-coordinator of the Campaign to Keep Oregon's Guard in Oregon.

Co-sponsors for the March 15th action in Salem include Peace & Justice Works Iraq Affinity Group (503-236-3065), Portland Peaceful Response Coalition (www.pprc-news.org), East Timor Action Network/Portland, War Resisters League-Portland (503-238-0605), PDX Peace Coalition (www.pdxpeace.org), Metanoia Peace Community-United Methodist Church, Rural Organizing Project, Oregon Wildlife Federation, Peace Justice and Environment Committee of the Portland Mennonite Church, Progressive Responses--a program of Community Alliance of Lane County (CALC), Oregon PeaceWorks (503-585-2767-Salem), Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace Chapter 132 (Corvallis), American Friends Service Committee, Portland Alliance (media cosponsor), Alliance for Democracy - Portland Chapter, Portland Solidarity (portlandsolidarity@post.com), Silverton People for Peace, Veterans for Peace Chapter 72 (Portland), Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights (www.auphr.org), Veterans for Peace Chapter 141 (Bandon), Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Yamhill Valley Peacemakers, Willamette Reds, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom-Portland Chapter, Street Roots, and KBOO Community Radio 90.7FM Portland/100.7FM Corvallis/91.9FM Hood River (www.kboo.fm).

Endorsers include Love Makes a Family Inc, Code Pink Portland, Tikkun Olam committee of P'nai Or, Women in Black, Rogue Valley Veterans for Peace Chapter 156 (Grants Pass), West Hills Friends Church, Freedom Socialist Party (503-240-4662), Stand for Peace (Cottage Grove), Central Oregon Peace Network (Bend), Institute for Peace and Justice at Linn Benton Community College, Oregon Green Energy Coalition, Radical Women, Portland Jobs with Justice, Eugene PeaceWorks and others.

For more information, please call Peace & Justice Works at 503-236-3065.

The full call to action for the March 15 event:

Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad: Keep Oregon's Guard Home from Iraq and Afghanistan

-- Money for jobs, education, healthcare and housing, not war!

-- End the Siege of Gaza! A Just Peace for Palestine-Israel!

-- Say NO to Scapegoating! Protect Immigrant Rights!

Our country needs a renewed and vigorous commitment to human rights, implementing UN resolutions treating rape as a war crime and supporting women as peace-builders. Never again the scourge of torture. Never again the secret prisons and renditions, the knock on the door in the dead of night. Those responsible for the crimes must be brought to justice. And the Oregon Guard must stay in Oregon!

As our country and our world slide deeper into recession, half of the Oregon Guard have been ordered to Iraq in an immoral war that Oregonians oppose. The Oregon Guard's place is at home, providing service for communities threatened by natural disasters.

- END -

SJ notices C.I.T.Y.

Story on the Chickens in the Yard movement.

Beware of con-men bearing miracles

The opposite of a transition towards relocalization is the manic urge to keep everything the way it was, or to get back to "business as usual" as quickly as possible.

This is best demonstrated by the old reliable of energy scammers popping up whenever energy prices cause economic havoc -- the unexpressed (and often unconscious) desire that people have to continue the energy party makes them very vulnerable to the scam artist who promises the magic potion (or technology) that will solve all the problems . . .

Given that most Americans are poorly educated in science and have long been encouraged to be suspicious of anyone who is not (those eggheads), there's a perfect opportunity awaiting for the scam artist --- a large population of economically distressed people who are easy prey for smooth talk about how "government is part of the conspiracy," which always seems to involve boundless cheap energy.

That's always the tipoff --- just like the Conquistadors would do anything for the Fountain of Youth, a lot of Americans are all-too-ready to ignore the warning signs and give money to scam artists promising super mileage or slashed heating bills. . . .

In any time of crisis, beware anyone who shows up offering a miraculous new invention/suppressed technology/hidden secret that can cure our energy woes.

A book of revelations for relocalizers: Outside Lies Magic: Regaining history and awareness in everyday places

A very nice book for helping learn to focus on the environment around you: the place you live, in other words. This book will help you become an explorer, making your walks and bike journeys through and around Salem more fun and more rewarding.

Click on the image for the full review (excerpted below) from the BookPage review.

Outside Lies Magic:
Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places
By John R. Stilgoe
Walker, $21
ISBN 0802713408

"Exploration is Stilgoe's theme in this pithy, spirited, heartfelt little book. For what they reveal about his preoccupations, it's worthwhile to list a couple of the author's previous books--Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb and Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. Stilgoe is an explorer who knows full well that he doesn't have to journey to Surinam for the exotic or to Luxor for history. Sometimes the fantastic is merely the prosaic viewed in a new light. Stilgoe is a master at providing that thoughtful light. By doing so he illuminates the everyday world most of us live in, the world of strip malls and highways and back yards.". . .

Anyone who reads this book will inevitably view the interstate service station, electric wires, the rural mailbox, even lawns and pigeons with a new perspective. Seeing the world around you, rather than floating through it like a robot, alerts the eyes, jolts the brain--and challenges society. It's ambitious and rewarding. It's fun. "Whoever owns the real estate and its constituents, the explorer owns the landscape. And the explorer owns all the insights, all the magic that comes from looking." And who are the explorers? You and I.

Why the "High Speed Rail" spending will hurt rather than help Salem

Sam Smith is an acute observer of all things political and social for over 50 years in DC. His apt piece on the drawbacks of pouring billions into the latest high-tech gadgets when you haven't even got the basics is perfectly expressed.

Salem (like nearly all cities in America) needs to start focusing on providing the same level of transit that it offered in 1909, and quit pouring money into "intelligent highway systems," and other technotoys that simply amount to trying to keep the auto-dominated system we have.

HIGH SPEED, HIGH COST, HIGH INCOME RAIL

There's nothing wrong with high speed rail except that when your country is really hurting, when your rail system largely falls behind other countries' because of lack of tracks rather than lack of velocity, and when high speed rail appeals more to bankers than to folks scared of foreclosing homes, it's a strange transit program to feature in something called a stimulus bill.

One might even call it an $8 billion earmark.

I watched this development with a sense of deja vu. Long ago, I was a rare critic of DC's Metro subway plans, not because I was against mass transit, but because it was a highly inefficient way of spending mass transit funds compared to light rail or exclusive bus lanes. At the time we could have had ten times as many miles of light rail for the same price of the subway system.

The other day I was struck by Metro bragging about its record ridership during the Obama inauguration. I was one of the few people in town who noticed that Metro had finally achieved what it had, at the beginning, promised the federal government would be normal. We needed a first black president to get that many riders. Further, Metro doesn't even have the capacity to handle that many people on a regular basis.

Other problems I correctly projected included the fact that Metro wouldn't really compete with the automobile but with its own bus lines, that it was more of a land development than a transit scheme, and that auto traffic would increase as the subway encouraged new buildings but that a majority of the new users of these buildings would still come by car.

I mention these examples because they illustrate the sort of complexity that transit planning involves, a complexity that rarely gets any attention in the media or by politicians. There's nothing like something as streamlined as a bullet to make everyone put away doubts, analysis and comparisons and just sit back and say, "Wow."

The problem became permanently embedded in my mind after I asked a transportation engineer to identify the best form of mass transit. His immediate answer: "Stop people from moving around so much." So simple, yet so wise and so alien to almost every discussion of the topic you will hear.

If we were really smart, we would be spending far more effort, for example, on redesigning neighborhoods so travel isn't so necessary. What if every urban neighborhood had minibus service to help people get to necessary services? Or a business center with high quality video conference and other equipment so that more people could work at home often?

Instead we are planning to spend $8 billion so that people who already travel more than they should can do it faster and easier.

Of course, there are plenty of political reasons for this. The extraordinary power of the highway lobby remains undiminished, as does the fear of the trucking industry that freight trains might take a major portion of their business away albeit making more sense economically and ecologically.

One map of proposed routes shows not only high speed service to Las Vegas, home of the Senate majority leader, but a surprising number of routes spreading out from the Chicago of Barrack Obama and Rahm Emanuel.

Admittedly these are just proposals. But the power and pressure are there. For example, Howard Learner, president of the Chicago-based high speed rail pushing Environmental Law notes that the Federal Railroad Administration thinks a plan connecting and 11 other cities is the project most shovel ready.

The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion. . . Modern, comfortable, double-deck trains with wide seats and large windows would churn along at top speeds of 110 m.p.h. The faster trains would shave hours off trips, delivering passengers from one downtown to another hundreds of miles away. Amtrak trains in most of the Midwest now operate at up to 79 m.p.h., although average speeds are much slower, especially around Chicago due to freight traffic." And there's also the plan to electrify the route between San Jose and Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco.

The truth is that conventional rail and bus riders aren't powerful enough to get what they need. Even upscale liberals prefer air or high speed rail. In the end, there's no strong constituency for the ordinary rider.

As a result of such things, we can expect more than a fair share of hype and hokum as the high rail projects get underway. But here are a few real things to also keep in mind:

Building new conventional rail lines would have had a much stronger effect on the economy than merely speeding up existing routes. Beyond the benefits of construction and the system itself, there would be the economic opportunities created along the route, just as happened when we first built rail and our country at the same time.

Philip Longman in an excellent Washington Monthly article, writes: Railroads have gone from having too much track to having not enough. Today, the nation's rail network is just 94,942 miles, less than half of what it was in 1970, yet it is hauling 137 percent more freight, making for extreme congestion and longer shipping times."

When moving freight, speed is just not that important. An example can be found in a towboat pushing more freight up the Mississippi River than all the steamboats of Mark Twain's time. Why does this lethargic system work so well? Simply because it's not the speed but the capacity that matters. As long as what's on the barges keep coming, how fast it comes doesn't really matter.

Passenger rail capacity is also important. We don't know what the real capacity of these high speed systems will be but we can guess that the railroads won't have large numbers of spare trains waiting around for the Christmas season. Conventional rail uses easily coupled old equipment to adjust for peaks, but high speed rail is so expensive that it is more likely to fall short.

For example, Trains for America describes the problem with the high speed Acela: The trains now run with an engine at each end. While that step speeds turnarounds when the Acela finishes its route and then reverses direction, reconfiguring trains to add coaches would be very difficult and very time consuming, spokeswoman Karina Romero said. Amtrak also doesn't have any spare Acela passenger cars, so extending the trains would require buying more custom-built coaches, she said.

The trucking lobby. Philip Longman notes that "In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation's highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent."

High speed trains can become a pollution problem. The progressive journalist George Monbiot has reported: "Though trains traveling at normal speeds have much lower carbon emissions than airplanes, Professor Roger Kemp shows that energy consumption rises dramatically at speeds above 125 miles per hour. Increasing the speed from 140 to 220 mph almost doubles the amount of fuel burned. If the trains are powered by electricity, and if that electricity is produced by plants burning fossil fuels, they cause more CO2 emissions than planes."

Where the Japanese model stumbles. A letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out that "The population density of the major fast-train-using countries averages two-plus times that of Ohio (Japan's is 3.3 times); gasoline prices are 2.2 times the Ohio price; airport congestion is worse; and regulated airfares to convenient airports are higher than comparable U.S. destinations. What's more, arrival at a train terminal in a European or Japanese city often places you within walking distance of the major commercial and tourist locations. Not so in the United States. I have used high-speed trains many times and they are great, but building and operating them would be a major financial drain in Ohio.

The cost factor: Based on the only example we have in the United States, high speed rail is substantially more expensive and serves a wealthier class of riders. For example, making a reservation on one conventional Amtrak train from Washington to NYC today would have cost $52 less than the high speed Acela. More startling is that conventional business class is $16 cheaper than Acela even though in conventional business class you get more leg room, much more space to stow your gear, a free newspaper and free coffee and soft drinks. And all this costs you is one extra half hour ride under more pleasant conditions.

Cost of building high speed routes. Here's what the NY Times had to say the other day: "[The stimulus bill] will not be enough to pay for a single bullet train, transportation experts say. And by the time the $8 billion gets divided among the 11 regions across the country that the government has designated as high-speed rail corridors, it is unlikely to do much beyond paying for long-delayed improvements to passenger lines, and making a modest investment in California's plan for a true bullet train. In the short term, the money - inserted at the 11th hour by the White House - could put people to work improving tracks, crossings and signal systems." A completed California system alone is expected to cost about $45 billion.

A major reason for the high cost: building exclusive tracks for the high speed trains. Even though Acela, for example, can theoretically hit 150 miles an hour, it only averages 84 mph between NYC and Washington, in part because of stops and in part because it uses improved conventional tracks. It only hits full speed on about 35 miles in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

But this raises an important and almost entirely undiscussed question. Is the huge expense of exclusive track high speed rail preferable to spending the money on expanding conventional service to many times more passengers?

Ridership - Costs are changing, however, thanks to other problems. Back in August, the Boston Globe cheerfully reported:

"Amtrak may add cars to its Acela, the fastest US passenger train, and raise fares as riders fill coaches on the Washington-to-Boston route, chief executive officer Alexander Kummant said. Demand for the high-speed service also may spur Amtrak to levy a surcharge to help buy additional equipment, Kummant said."

But with the new year, Trains for America was telling a different story:

"While Amtrak ridership, generally speaking, has continued to look fairly healthy despite the poor economy and lower fuel prices, the same cannot be said of the its Acela high-speed service on the Northeast Corridor. The recession has led to a decrease in business travel, prompting the company to reduce Acela fares in order to bring in more leisure travelers. From Bloomberg: Amtrak will offer one-way nonrefundable Acela business-class tickets for as low as $99 between New York and Washington, down from $133 or more, and as low as $79 between Boston and New York, from $93 or higher. The prices are available for travel from March 3 through June 26 and tickets must be purchased 14 days in advance.

Acela ridership dropped about 14 percent in January from the same month a year ago, and about 10 percent for the four months ending in January from the same period last year, spokesman Cliff Cole said in a telephone interview from New York.'

If anything, this highlights the huge variation in the services Amtrak runs. Standard routes, and in particular those considered long-distance, have continued to see high levels of ridership. One wonders if many travelers aren't fleeing air carriers and high-speed services like Acela for a cheaper, if longer, journey on a train."

Even before the downturn, however, the Acela ridership reports were less than stunning. For example, in the last fiscal year the conventional northeast coast regional service rose 9.5% while Acela ridershp only went up 6.5%. Seventy percent of the ridership along the northeast corridor remained with the slower, cheaper trains.

Meanwhile other conventional service was booming. The Keystone Service, which operates between Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and New York City, rose 20 percent. The Downeaster, operating several times daily between Portland, Maine and Boston, Mass., grew 31 percent, despite being slower than an express bus because of all of its stops. Chicago-Wisconsin Hiawatha service was up nearly 26 percent. And the Kansas City to St. Louis route grew more than 30 percent.

Some other traditional train routes that grew more than twice as much as the high speed Acela: Oakland-Sacramento, Northern California Capitol Corridor service, and Chicago-San Antonio.

Other uses: - Philip Longman, in his Washington Montly article, reminds us of alternative uses of conventional rail that seldom get mentioned. Some past examples:

"The Pacific Fruit Growers Express delivered fresh fruits and vegetables to the East Coast using far less energy and labor than today's truck fleets. The Railway Express Agency, which attached special cars to passenger trains, provided Americans with a level of express freight service that cannot be had for any price today, offering door-to-door delivery of everything from canoes to bowls of tropical fish to, in at least one instance, a giraffe. High-speed Railway Post Office trains also offered efficient mail service to even the smallest towns which is not matched today. In his book Train Time, Harvard historian and rail expert John R. Stilgoe describes the Pennsylvania Railroad's Fast Mail train No. 11, which, because of its speed and on-board crew of fast sorting mail clerks, ensured next-day delivery on a letter mailed with a standard two-cent stamp in New York to points as far west as Chicago. Today, that same letter is likely to travel by air first to FedEx's Memphis hub, then be unloaded, sorted, and reloaded onto another plane, a process that demands far greater expenditures of money, carbon, fuel, and, in many instances, time than the one used eighty years ago. . . . Another potential use of steel wheel interstates would be auto trains."

The big advantage of high speed rail is that the media, politicians and upper class love the idea and are happy to promote it without asking any of the hard questions. But it's worth remembering that after Washington and San Francisco blew huge sums on subways, city planners finally got wise and started looking at less expensive transit systems that were more efficient in every regard except speed. And so, Washington is today finally working towards having its first light rail route in 47 years.

Finally, there is a lot of talk about how the Obama administration is a second New Deal. But the first New Deal would never have spent huge sums on super trains for the better off; it would have expanded decent if unexotic rail service for ordinary folks. Today you can hardly even get Democrats to talk about such things.

Building a Resiliant World: Awesomely good TomGram

After the Green Economy, Green Security

How to Build Resilient Communities in a Chaotic World
By Chip Ward

Now that we've decided to "green" the economy, why not green homeland security, too? I'm not talking about interrogators questioning suspects under the glow of compact fluorescent light bulbs, or cops wearing recycled Kevlar recharging their Tasers via solar panels. What I mean is: Shouldn't we finally start rethinking the very notion of homeland security on a sinking planet?

Now that Dennis Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence, claims that global insecurity is more of a danger to us than terrorism, isn't it time to release the idea of "security" from its top-down, business-as-usual, terrorism-oriented shackles? Isn't it, in fact, time for the Obama administration to begin building security we can believe in; that is, a bottom-up movement that will start us down the road to the kind of resilient American communities that could effectively recover from the disasters -- manmade or natural (if there's still a difference) -- that will surely characterize this emerging age of financial and climate chaos? In the long run, if we don't start pursuing security that actually focuses on the foremost challenges of our moment, that emphasizes recovery rather than what passes for "defense," that builds communities rather than just more SWAT teams, we're in trouble.

Today, "homeland security" and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), that unwieldy amalgam of 13 agencies created by the Bush administration in 2002, continue to express the potent, all-encompassing fears and assumptions of our last president's Global War on Terror. Foreign enemies may indeed be plotting to attack us, but, believe it or not (and increasing numbers of people, watching their homes, money, and jobs melt away are coming to believe it), that's probably neither the worst, nor the most dangerous thing in store for us.

Outsized fear of terrorism and what it can accomplish, stoked by the apocalyptic look of the attacks of 9/11, masked the agenda of officials who were all too ready to suppress challenges by shredding our civil liberties. That agenda has been driven by a legion of privateers, selling everything from gas masks to biometric ID systems, who would loot the public treasury in the name of patriotism. Like so many bad trips of the Bush years, homeland security was run down the wrong tracks from the beginning -- as the arrival of that distinctly un-American word "homeland" so clearly signaled -- and it has, not surprisingly, carried us in the wrong direction ever since.

In that context, it's worth remembering that after 9/11 came Hurricane Katrina, epic droughts and wildfires, Biblical-level floods, and then, of course, economic meltdown. Despite widespread fears here, the likelihood that most of us will experience a terrorist attack is slim indeed; on the other hand, it's a sure bet that disruptions to our far-flung supply lines for food, water, and energy will affect us all in the decades ahead. Nature, after all, is loaded with disturbances like droughts (growing ever more intense thanks to global climate change) that resonate through the human realm as famines, migrations, civil wars, failed states, and eventually warlords and pirates.

Even if these seem to you like nature's version of terrorism, you can't prevent a monster storm or a killer drought by arresting it at the border or caging it before it strikes. That's why a new green version of security should concentrate our energies and resources on recovery from disasters at least as much as defense against them -- and not recovery as delivered by distant, fumbling Federal Emergency Management Agency officials either. The fact is that pre-organized, homegrown (rather than homeland) networks of citizens who have planned and prepared together to meet basic needs and to aid one another in times of trouble will be better able to bounce back from the sorts of disasters that might actually hit us than a nation of helpless individuals waiting to be rescued or protected.

Imagine redubbing the DHS the Department of Homegrown Security and at least you have a place to begin.

Homegrown Security for a Cantankerous Future

Homeland security, post-9/11, has been highly militarized and focused primarily on single-event disasters like attacks or accidents, not on, say, the infection of critical grain crops by some newly evolved disease or, as is actually happening, the serial collapse of ocean fisheries. Unlike a terrorist attack, such disasters could strike everywhere at once, rendering single-point plans useless. If Miami goes down in a hurricane, FEMA can (we hope) feed people via trucks and airlifts. If some part of the global food trade were to shut down, hundreds of thousands of community gardens and networks of backyard farmers ready to share their harvests, not warehouses full of emergency provisions, could prove the difference between crisis and catastrophe. Systemic challenges, after all, require systemic responses.

Food and security may not be a twosome that comes quickly to mind, but experts know that our food supply is particularly vulnerable. We're familiar with the hardships that follow spikes in the price of gas or the freezing of credit lines, but few of us in the U.S. have experienced the panic and privation of a broken food chain -- so far. That's going to change in the decades ahead. Count on it, even if it seems as unlikely today as, for most of us, an economic meltdown did just one short year ago.

Our industrialized and globalized food production and distribution system is a wonder, bringing us exotic eats from distant places at mostly affordable prices. Those mangos from Mexico and kiwis from New Zealand are certainly a treat, but the understandable pleasure we take in them hides a great risk. If you're thinking about what the greening of homeland security might actually mean, look no further than our food supply.

The typical American meal travels, on average, 1,000 miles to get to your plate. The wheat in your burger bun may be from Canada, the beef from Argentina, and the tomato from Chile. Food shipped from that far away is vulnerable to all sorts of disruptions -- a calamitous storm that hits a food-growing center; spikes in the price of fuel for fertilizer, farm machinery, and trucking; internecine strife or regional wars that shut down harvests or block trade routes; national policies to hoard food as prices spike or scarcities set in; not to speak of the usual droughts, floods, and crop failures that have always plagued humankind and are intensifying in a globally warming world.

An interruption of food supplies from afar is only tolerable if we've planned ahead and so can fill in with locally grown food. Sadly, for those of us who live outside of California and Florida, local food remains seasonal, limited, and anything but diverse. And don't forget, local food has been weakened in this country by the reasonably thorough job we've done of wiping out all those less-than-superprofitable family farms. U.S. agriculture is now strikingly consolidated into massive, industrial-style operations. So chickens come from vast chicken farms in Arkansas, hogs from humongous hog outfits in Georgia, corn from the mono-crop Midwestern "cornbelt," and so on.

Such monolithic enterprises may be profitable for Big Ag, but they're not going to do us much good, given the cantankerous future already inching its way toward us. When a severe drought in Australia led to plummeting rice production in the Murray River Basin last year, the price of rice across the planet suddenly doubled. The spike in rice prices, like the sudden leap in the cost of wheat, soy, and other staples, was primarily due to the then-soaring price of oil for farm machinery, fertilizer, and transport, though rampant market speculation contributed as well. At that moment, the collapse of Australian rice farming pushed a worsening situation across a threshold into crisis territory. Because the world agricultural trade system is so thoroughly interconnected and interdependent, a shock on one part of the planet can resonate far and wide -- just as (we've learned to our dismay) can happen in financial markets.

Think of the shortages and ensuing food riots in 30 countries across the planet in 2008 as grim coming attractions for life on a planet with unpredictable extreme weather, booming populations, overloaded ecosystems, and distorted food economies. The spike in prices that put food staples out of reach of rioting masses of people was soon enough mitigated by the collapse of energy prices when the global economy tanked. Make no mistake, though: food shortages and the social unrest that goes with them will eventually return.

And here's something else to take into consideration: Nations that suffer food shortages may, when their hungry citizens demand food sovereignty, protect their agricultural sectors by erecting trade barriers -- just as is beginning to happen in other areas of production under the pressure of the global economic meltdown. The era of globalized food production, whose fruits (and vegetables) we Americans have come to consider little short of our supermarket birthright, may contract significantly in the relatively near future. We should be prepared. And that's where a Department of Homegrown Security could make some real sense.

Most American cities, after all, have less than a week's worth of food in their pipeline and most of us don't stockpile, which makes city dwellers especially vulnerable to disruptions of the food supply. Skip your next three meals and you'll grasp the panic likely to arise if the American food chain is ever broken in a significant way. The question is: How can we address rather than ignore this vital, if underappreciated, aspect of homeland security?

Vertical Farms and Victory Gardens

Because cities are so dependent on daily food shipments, local food security in urban areas might well mean storing more food for emergencies; this would certainly be the old-school approach to disaster planning, and it has worked well enough over the short run. Over the long run, however, what makes real sense is to encourage urban and suburban community gardens and farmers' markets, and not just on a scale that ensures a summer supply of arugula and fresh tomatoes, but on one that might actually help mitigate prolonged food disruptions. There are enough vacant lots, backyards, and rooftops to host many thousands of gardens, either created by voluntary groups or by small-scale entrepreneurs. Urban farming could even go big. Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier recently unveiled his vision of a "vertical farm," a 30-story tower right in the middle of an urban landscape, that could grow enough food to feed 50,000 people in the surrounding neighborhood.

Cultural historian and visionary critic Mike Davis has already wondered why our approach to homeland security doesn't draw from the example of "victory gardens" during World War II. In 1943, just two years into the war, 20 million victory gardens were producing a staggering 30-40% of the nation's vegetables. Thousands of abandoned urban lots were being cleared and planted by tenement neighbors working together. The Office of Civilian Defense encouraged and empowered such projects, but the phenomenon was also self-organizing because citizens on the home front wanted to participate, and home gardening was, after all, a delicious way to be patriotic.

Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark, reports that, within the de-industrialized ruins of Detroit, a landscape she describes as "not quite post-apocalyptic but… post-American," people are homesteading abandoned lots, growing their own produce, raising farm animals, and planting orchards. In that depopulated city, some have been clawing (or perhaps hoeing) their way back to a semblance of food security. They have done so because they had to, and their reward has been harvests that would be the envy of any organic farmer. The catastrophe that is Detroit didn't happen with a Hurricane Katrina-style bang, but as a slow, grinding bust -- and a possibly haunting preview of what many American municipalities may experience, post-crash. Solnit claims, however, that the greening of Detroit under the pressure of economic adversity is not just a strategy for survival, but a possible path to renewal. It's also a living guidebook to possibilities for our new Department of Homegrown Security when it considers where it might most advantageously put some of its financial muscle while creating a more secure -- and resilient -- America.

As chef and author Alice Waters has demonstrated so practically, schools can start "edible schoolyard" gardens that cut lunch-program costs, provide healthy foods for students, and teach the principles of ecology. The food-growing skills and knowledge that many of our great-grandparents took for granted growing up in a more rural America have long since been lost in our migration into cities and suburbs. Relearning those lost arts could be a key to survival if the trucks stop arriving at the Big Box down the street.

The present Department of Homeland Security has produced reams of literature on detecting and handling chemical weapons and managing casualties after terrorist attacks. Fine, we needed to know that. Now, how about some instructive materials on composting soil, rotating crops to control pests and restore soil nutrients, and canning and drying all that seasonal bounty so it can be eaten next winter?

It's not just about increasing the local food supply, of course. Community gardens provide a safe place for neighbors to cooperate, socialize, bond, share, celebrate, and learn from one another. The self-reliant networks that are created when citizens engage in such projects can be activated in an emergency. The capacity of a community to self-organize can be critically important when a crisis is confronted. Such collective efforts have been called "community greening" or "civic ecology," but the traditional name "grassroots democracy" fits no less well.

Ideally, the greening of homeland security would mean more than pamphlets on planting, but would provide actual seed money -- and not just for seeds either, but for building greenhouses, distributing tools, and starting farmers' markets where growers and consumers can connect. How about raiding the Department of Homeland Security's gluttonous budget for "homegrown" grants to communities that want to get started?

Here's the interesting thing: Without federal aid or direction, the first glimmer of a green approach to homeland security is already appearing. It goes by the moniker "relocalization," and if that's a bit of an awkward mouthful for you, it really means that your most basic security is in the hands not of distant officials in Washington but of neighbors who believe that self-reliance is safer than dependence. In this emerging age of chaos, pooled resources and coordinated responses will, this new movement believes, be more effective than thousands of individuals breaking out their survival kits alone, or waiting for the helicopters to land.

Actually, relocalization is an international movement and, as usual when it comes to the greening of modern society, the Europeans are way ahead of us. There are now hundreds of local groups in at least a dozen countries that are convening local meetings as part of the Relocalization Network to "make other arrangements for the post-carbon future" of their communities. In Great Britain, an allied "Transition Towns" movement has sprung up in an effort to spark ideas about, and focus energies on, how to wean whole communities off imported energy, food, and material goods. With a rising sea at its front door, the Netherlands has taken a further step. Its national security plan actually makes sustainability and environmental recovery key priorities.

In the U.S., "post-carbon" working groups are beginning to sprout across the country. In my backyard, right in the heart of red-state Utah, a diverse group of citizens calling themselves the Canyonlands Sustainable Solutions have come together to generate practical plans for insulating the remote town of Moab, 200 miles from the trade and transport hub of Salt Lake City, from future food and energy price shocks and supply interruptions. Such local groups are often loosely allied with one another, especially regionally, through websites and blogs that report on the progress of diverse projects, trade ideas as well as information, and offer lots of feedback.

The citizens engaged in relocalization projects have largely given up on federal aid and are going it alone. Still, think how much farther they could go if only a fraction of the $27 billion directed at state and local governments to enhance "emergency preparedness" in the 2009 Department of Homeland Security budget were given in grants to their projects. If we can afford to hand rural Craighead County in Arkansas $600,000 for hazmat suits and other anti-terror paraphernalia to defend cotton and soybean farmers from attack, surely we could provide grants for urban homesteaders in Detroit.

Food security, of course, is just one aspect of a green vision of homegrown (instead of homeland) security. Other obvious elements like energy and water security could also be re-imagined, if only official Washington weren't so stuck in the obvious. No doubt, somewhere out there on the Titanic this planet is becoming, the go-it-aloners, with no Department of Homegrown Security to back them, are already doing so -- and helping prepare us all as best they can for the realization that, right now, there are not enough lifeboats to carry us to safety.

Perhaps it's not so unrealistic to expect that someday, as a homegrown security movement builds and matures, it can capture a share of the federal funds that now go to such dubious measures as closed-circuit TVs and crash-proof barriers at sports stadiums, including $345,000 for Razorback Stadium in Arkansas.

In the meanwhile, let's encourage projects that are building resilience in communities as small as Moab and as large as New York City, while revitalizing local culture with a dose of grassroots engagement. Seed it, and feed it, and it will bloom. Along the way we will learn that when it comes to home, or land, or security, living in an open, inclusive, and robust democracy is not an impediment to defense but a deep advantage. Democracy, if only we nurture it, is the very soil of our resilience.

More like this, please: grow food on idle industrial zoned land

In the story about the latest setback for plans to develop the Mill Creek Site, some commenters at the SJ site hit on the right idea:

(first commenter): Plant food crops there this spring to help people out until this prime property is ready to be developed. There is water available on this property. Canneries are close by. Help out the area food banks. Why let this good farm land just sit when there are hungry people in this area and things will not get better for a while.

(responding): Excellent idea! Why not let those who want space to grow food but don't have room now have a small plot according to family size? They could pay a fee to cover water if needed. Maybe the community college or county extension or someone could offer classes on canning and freezing produce. Let's put that land to good use

For the young to save us, we must first save the young

It's no accident that most of the social dysfunction that imperils us skyrocketed in the last third of the 20th Century, since that is precisely coincident with the period in which television attained dominance as the primary social/recreational activity in the United States. Rather than bringing up children who slowly grew in competence and experience with age, we have kept kids trapped in a permanent adolescence even as their bodies race into adulthood, watching others have lives rather than learning to build one for themselves.

Of all the silver linings to be hoped for from the economic hardship period we are entering, the collapse of 24-hour television and television-as-babysitter is the one most devoutly to be sought. When the cable company reports that subscriptions are plummeting as people realize that they are hurting their kids with TV, that will be cause for hope.

Watching a lot of TV during adolescence, an alarming new study has found, can change a normal brain to a depressive one. The study, which tracked more than 4,000 adolescents as they grew up, found that for every extra hour a teen spends watching TV or playing videogames on an average day, he or she is 8 percent more likely to develop depression as an adult. Study author Dr. Brian Primack says that teens’ experiences help shape their developing brains, and that being parked in front of a screen often replaces positive social, academic, and athletic activities that give kids a sense of mastery and self-respect. Instead, he tells the Los Angeles Times, TV teaches kids to be passive, and to judge themselves against fictional characters whose looks and accomplishments seem out of reach.

Care to Breathe More Toxics?

A Must for your Thursday Night (2/26):

February 26, 2009
6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Willamette University School of Law
Paulus Lecture Hall -- Room 201

Covanta/Marion County Waste-to-Energy Facility as an Integrated Part of the County's Waste Management System -- Jeffrey Hahn, Covanta Energy Corporation

Incineration Dangers: From Nanoparticles to Nonsustainability -- Dr. Paul Connett, renowned expert on zero waste and harmful waste incineration by-products.

Sponsored by League of Women Voters of Marion/Polk Counties, Willamette University Center for Sustainable Communities, Salem City Club, Marion County, Friends of Marion County, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Oregon Toxics Alliance, Oregon Center for Environmental Health, and Health Care Without Harm

[One hopes this will be taped and made available online and through CCTV. Anyone with information about this, please post a comment.]

For more information, see this post about "Waste Incineration: The Self-Inflicted Wound." And there's the always-wonderful "Story of Stuff."