Indigenous Women Take the Lead in Idle No More

by Kristin Moe, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/indigenous-women-take-lead-idle-no-more

Kristin Moe wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Kristin writes about climate, grassroots movements, and social change.

A woman stops traffic at an Idle No More event in Vancouver, British Columbia. Photo by Tamara Herman.

Late last year, amid the the rallies, dances, blockades, and furious tweeting that accompanied the burgeoning Idle No More movement, a young native woman was kidnapped by two Caucasian men in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was two days after Christmas.

They drove her out to a remote wooded area where they raped and strangled her. According to one report, the men told her that they’d done this before, and intended to do it again. They allegedly said, “You Indians deserve to lose your treaty rights.”

The story was not widely reported in the press, maybe because the woman, publicly known as “Angela Smith,” is indigenous, or maybe because violence against indigenous women happens so frequently that it’s rarely considered news.

Which is what makes the very fact of Idle No More’s female leadership so significant.

Across Canada, indigenous women are continuing a tradition of leadership that existed before colonization, and in spite of a political system which, over the last 150 years, has made every attempt to prevent them from having power.

While the stated goal of Idle No More is “education and the revitalization of indigenous peoples through awareness and empowerment,” according to a press release issued by the group on January 10, the rights of indigenous women appear to be an inherent part of that revitalization.

The movement - which has swept North America and inspired solidarity actions all over the world - was initiated by four women: Jessica Gordon, Sylvia McAdams, Sheelah McLean, and Nina Wilson.

It gained early momentum around the hunger strike maintained by another woman, Chief of the Attawapiskat, Theresa Spence.

“It’s not coincidental that women are initiating this movement,” says Kiera-Dawn Kolson, 26, a Dene activist from Northwest Territories who has spoken at and helped organize Idle No More events since the movement began.

She’s Greenpeace’s Arctic Campaigner, a motivational speaker, facilitator, singer/songwriter, and performer.

On a recent day of action, Kolson watched excitedly from her hometown of Yellowknife as image after image of rallies streamed in from all over Canada.

She noticed a pattern: From Ontario to Nunavut, from Saskatchewan to the Yukon, the images showed young women in the roles of organizers and spokespeople.

She’s energized, but not surprised. “So many of our communities were and are still matriarchal societies,” she says. In many communities across the country, it was - and, in some hopeful instances, still is - the grandmothers who called the shots.

And while each society is different, they all shared the same fate under Canada’s Indian Act, an all-encompassing piece of legislation that had devastating ramifications for women; created by white men with Victorian values, the Act explicitly excluded women from most forms of power and even made their identity as “Indians” contingent on their husbands.

Nearly a hundred and forty years later, in Canada and all over the world, young indigenous women (as well as transgendered youth) are some of the most heavily brutalized segments of the population.

In some provinces, native women are seven times more likely to be murdered than their non-indigenous counterparts.

According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), 582 women were murdered or disappeared between 2000 and 2010 - and many more cases are unreported. No one knows how much the number has risen since then; the project apparently stalled after the Harper government cut NWAC’s research funding.

Kolson has been active in NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit project, which compiles data on missing and murdered women and works to spread awareness about the issue. Building on NWAC’s research, Human Rights Watch has recently taken up the cause, and is mounting an investigation of its own.

Meanwhile, Kolson lives with the knowledge that her identity puts her in danger. In college, she was careful to choose only classes that took place during the day so she wouldn’t have to walk alone at night.

“Angela Smith” was left alone in the frozen woods after her attack, and the two men drove away. They never believed she’d live. They were wrong: not only did she survive, she walked the four hours back to her town, and her story has come to symbolize strength in the face of unimaginable violence. We hope she is healing.

As Idle No More continues to gain traction, its women leaders work to make visible the systems - of political power, racism, and economic injustice - that oppress all native people. For them, these are not abstract issues; each of these pieces contributes to a society where their bodies, and those of their sisters and daughters, are targets.

The name “Idle No More” is new, but the struggle is as old as Canada. It stands firmly in the tradition of human rights movements led by those most oppressed: the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., the Independence movement in India, and the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa.

Its female leadership is a testament to the ability of women to reclaim power in the face of oppression, and to the resilience, over centuries, of a people for whom assimilation is not an option.

How Workers Laid Off from a Chicago Factory Took It Over Themselves

by Laura Flanders, Yes! magazine: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/how-cooperatives-are-driving-the-new-economy/chicago-factory-workers

Laura Flanders wrote this article for How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy, the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. 

Laura is a former host of Air America, and founder and host of GRITtv. 

She is the author of Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, and Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians. 

She writes regularly for The Nation and the Guardian and appears as a regular guest on MSNBC.

Four years ago, as the recession took hold and layoffs around the country were approaching 500,000 a month, a group of workers in Chicago saved a factory and inspired a nation.

Fired by their boss, they occupied instead of leaving. Fired by a second boss, they occupied and formed a worker’s cooperative. Now they are worker-owners of a load of equipment and they’re setting up a factory in a new location.

All they want to do is to get back to making and selling windows. It shouldn’t be this hard to keep good jobs in Chicago, but “A cooperative can be a way of surviving, of moving forward,” says Armando Robles, one of the workers.

Robles was one of 250 workers fired in December 2008 without notice or severance by Republic Windows and Doors when the company announced it was closing its Chicago factory. The company said that it could no longer operate because it had lost its line of credit with Bank of America.

The irony of the situation was clear. Bank of America had received billions in government bailouts to keep the economy working, and yet the Republic workers were being laid off without their entitled payments and benefits.

Supported by their union, the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, Robles and his fellow workers voted to resist. They occupied the plant for six days, winning back pay, severance, and time for a new company to take ownership.

Generating thousands of articles and news reports about their fight, they encouraged a downcast nation, even an incoming U.S. president.

At a press conference during the factory occupation, then President-elect Barack Obama declared: “When it comes to the situation here in Chicago, with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned … I think they are absolutely right.”

The public relations potential, combined with the prospect of stimulus spending and a green economy boom, spurred Serious Energy of California to take over the former Republic plant in February 2009.

Among the investors in the new business was Mesirow Financial, a Chicago-based firm, with close ties to (among others), then White House Chief of Staff (soon to be Chicago Mayor) Rahm Emanuel.

With $15 million from Mesirow alone, Serious looked forward to landing substantial federal and city contracts.

Two years later, those contracts were yet to materialize. The ballyhooed green economy? Chicago’s grand green retrofitting scheme? They were nowhere in sight, and city and state spending was essentially on ice.

By the end of 2009, only 20 of the Republic workers had been hired back. In February 2012, Serious announced it, too, was closing the Chicago factory and selling off the machines.

This time, Robles et al. only needed to occupy for a matter of hours before management agreed to a deal. Serious agreed to give the workers the first option to buy the plant’s equipment and 90 days to come up with a bid.

“Republic walked away from our jobs. Serious walked away from our jobs, but we are not walking away from our jobs,” said Melvin Macklin, who had worked at the plant for more than a decade.

In the time between the first layoff and the second, the workers and their families became aware of other options.

As it happens, after appearing together with Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis on GRITtv, Robles and United Electrical field organizer Leah Fried sat down with The Working World, a nonprofit that has helped start and maintain worker cooperatives in Argentina and other parts of Latin America.

With help from The Working World and advice from colleagues in the co-op movement in the United States and abroad, on May 30, 2012, Robles, Macklin and 22 colleagues founded New Era Windows, LLC, a worker-run cooperative incorporated in Illinois to manufacture what they promise will be “quality, affordable windows.”

Despite the initial agreement, it was not until last August, many months and some intense struggle later, that Serious finally agreed to let New Era buy the factory equipment.

The struggle was partly political - Serious had to be pressured to keep its pledge to the workers - but it was largely financial. The new worker-owners decided that they would earn equal wages and have equal votes in decision-making.

They also agreed to each contribute a fee of $1,000 to “buy in.” At 58, Macklin borrowed some of his buy-in from a nephew, but he says that the stretch to raise the money was worth it.

“It’s not just about profits,” he says - it’s about sustaining communities, keeping jobs in places where people need them.

“There will be no big, fat-cat salaries, no CEOs, CFOs and COOs to pay, so our bottom line will be easier. We already know how to make the best windows … we don’t know for sure it’ll be successful, but we didn’t know the occupation would be successful - I thought I was going to jail. Unless we step out and try, we’ll never know.”

The workers took the leap, but investors have been less inclined to follow. In spite of preparing a business plan and reaching out to social impact investors, the co-op has thus far been unable to attract venture capital.

Even with the collateral of the equipment, the workers have been unable to win any loans. The $500,000 they were able to raise for the purchase came from a single source, The Working World.

“It’s awesome that they’ve done it - this is as grassroots as it gets,” says Brendan Martin, founder and director of The Working World. “But to reverse the rules of capital, you need capital. It’s not enough for workers to realize they have opportunity; resources also have to come to them.”

“There should be governmental help to keep factories open and allow the workers to try to keep their jobs,” says Robles. “When there is no government help, at least there should be social help, community help, anything. The loss to a community is overwhelming when a whole factory closes.”

Why support the co-ops in your community? The benefits might be further-reaching than you think.
President Obama knew as much four years ago, at that Chicago press conference. The Chicago workers’ experience was reflective of a national situation, he said.

“When you have a financial system that is shaky, credit contracts. Businesses large and small start cutting back on their plants and equipment and their workforces. That’s why it’s so important for us to maintain a strong financial system".

"But it’s also important for us to make sure that the plans and programs that we design aren’t just targeted at maintaining the solvency of banks, but they are designed to get money out the doors and to help people on Main Street.”

You’d think that helping a minority-run green business in a high-unemployment community would be a smart way to help those celebrated “people on Main Street,” but so far, no money has come out of those doors.

Absent a rational industrial policy from the government, and a smart new stimulus package, the New Era experiment is in the hands of the market.

For almost a year, the workers have hung on, living off their severance, unemployment, and sweat. Their new factory’s almost set up; they hope to start selling early this year, and they’re looking for customers.

More information at newerawindows.com

For Land and Life: 25 Stories of Indigenous Resilience That you Might’ve Missed in 2013

by John Ahni Schertow, Climate Connections: http://climate-connections.org/2013/12/15/for-land-and-life-25-stories-of-indigenous-resilience-that-you-mightve-missed-in-2013/

New Zealanders celebrate their country's endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the sheer number of abuses and attacks that Indigenous Peoples face around the world, we don’t often come by stories of hope and resilience.

Stories that speak of long-fought struggles coming to a just end, peaceful exchanges between Nations who live in different parts of the world, and assertions of Traditional authority that governments and corporations simply accept without challenge or condition. 

Here’s a few of those stories that you might have missed over the past 12 months. Here’s to 25,000 more stories just like them! 

An Ainu-Maori Exchange



A group of 7 Ainu youth, accompanied by 3 Ainu committee members and 3 interpreters, traveled to New Zealand in order to study the various ambitious endeavors of the Maori people who have successfully revitalized their rights as Indigenous People while living with strength in the society of New Zealand.

After successfully carrying out a major online fundraiser to pay for the journey, the Ainu - who are themselves struggling to revitalize their culture, language and identity - reported a very positive experience during their stay.

As explored on the Ainu Maori Exchange activity website, the Ainu learned a language teaching method called Te Ataarangi, sat down with the Maori Party - Whangaehu Marae, visited several Maori-based schools and businesses as well as television and radio stations and many different historical sites. 

An Alternative Currency 

Esquimalt First Nation, in an effort to reform the monetary system, unveiled a new barter currency on their territory known as Tetlas.

Similar to a gift certificate, the Tetla was developed by the organization Tetla Tsetsuwatil to assist economic development in the S’amuna’ Nation and other native nations, and to encourage trade with non-natives and among non-natives. More than two dozen businesses now accept the alternative currency. 

Indigenous millennium development goals

Colombia’s indigenous organizations revealed five new ‘millennium development goals’ (MDGs), presenting the world’s first national framework for realizing indigenous rights in response to the Millennium Declaration.

The move challenged the country’s authorities to record their progress in meeting the new targets, which include the protection of indigenous territory; the implementation of free, prior and informed consent protocols and the ‘institutional redesign’ of the state in its relations with Indigenous Peoples. 

Occupying Brazil’s House of Representatives



In Brazil, approximately 700 indigenous leaders occupied the country’s House of Representatives in a concerted effort to stop the nomination process for the Special Committee on PEC 215, a proposal that would transfer from the federal government to the National Congress the authority to approve the demarcation of traditional lands.

Despite a heavy-handed response from police officers and security personnel, the Indigenous leaders held their ground until the government representatives took appropriate action. 

The little school of liberty

Thousands of people from around the world descended on Chiapas for the Zapatistas’ first organizing school, called la escuelita de libertad, which means the little school of liberty.

Originally the group allotted for only 500 students, but so many people wished to enroll that they opened an additional 1,200 slots for the week-long school. While attending the escuelita, students lived with a family in a rebel zapatista community and participated both in the school and in the daily life of the community.

This year, the EZLN also announced the creation of a traveling Indigenous seminar to provide a forum “in which the Indigenous Peoples of the continent can be heard by those who have an attentive and respectful ear for their word, their history, and their resistance.” The announcement was supported by more than 30 Indigenous organizations and governments. 

In Defense of Medicine

The Matsés Peoples, in order to protect the medicines from bio-prospectors, decided not to translate their Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia to English or Spanish.

The Matsés are writing the Encyclopedia in order to preserve and propagate their traditional systems of medicine for future generations - of Matsés. 

“Original Nations” passports

An historic ceremony was held outside the Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne, Australia for the issuing of “Original Nations” passports and West Papuan visas in conjunction with the West Papua Freedom Flotilla.

The flotilla convoy would go on to travel from Lake Eyre to West Papua, highlighting the abuse of human rights and land rights occurring in West Papua and reconnecting the Indigenous Peoples of West Papua and Australia. 

Assertions of Authority

Red Sucker Lake First Nation delivered a stop work order to Mega Precious Metals Inc. in Northern Manitoba.

The First Nation stated at the time that the company was operating illegally in its traditional territory. Mathias Colomb First Nation (MCCN) issued a similar order to Hudbay Mining and Smelting Co., Ltd. also in Manitoba. 

An independent republic

The Murrawarri Peoples took their first steps toward becoming an independent republic on their traditional unceded lands in northern New South Wales and Queensland, Australia.

After issuing a formal declaration, The Murrawarri established an interim government in preparation for a parliament that would consist of 54 representatives appointed by their respective ancestral family groups.

The Murrawarri Nation’s act of self-determination caught the attention of at least 27 other Indigenous Nations in Australia who requested Murrawarri’s declarations and constitution to use as templates for their own independence movements. 

The Tahltan said NO



The Tahltan People celebrated a decision by Fortune Minerals’ to halt mineral exploration activities on Klappan Mountain inside the Sacred Headwaters region of Northern British Columbia, Canada.

The decision came after several bold actions led by the Klabona Keepers including the delivery of an eviction notice, a blockade and the take over of a drilling site. 

Honouring the Two Row

A delegation of Haudenosaunee leaders traveled to the Netherlands on Haudenosaunee passports to participate in a ceremony honoring the 400 year old Two Row Wampum Treaty between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and The Netherlands.

The ceremony was held at the Tree of Peace which was planted by the late Mohawk elder Jake Swamp at Wijkpark Transvaal in The Hague in September 2006. 

A pilgrimage of hope

Offering solidarity to Indigenous Nations, five Carvers from the Lummi Nation set out on a journey up the Pacific North West Coast sending a message of Kwel’Hoy, or ‘We Draw The Line’ to the resource extraction industry.

With them, lain carefully on a flat bed, the Lummi carried a beautifully-carved 22-foot cedar totem pole for Indigenous communities to bless along the way.

Their journey gained international attention as a pilgrimage of hope, healing and determination for each of the embattled Indigenous Nations they visited. 

A summit of Indigenous communication

The Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication was held in Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The important summit brought together indigenous media makers from various countries in Latin America to share their ideas and experiences and to continue planning the future of Indigenous multimedia communications. 

A return to the land

Ontario’s Springwater Provincial Park became the site of a new land reclamation after Ontario Parks took down its flagand changed the park’s status to non-operational - due to low visitation and funding.

A small group of people from several Indigenous nations set up a camp inside the park land, exercising Article 26 of the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples, concerning the right to lands and resources that were once traditionally occupied.

It is the group’s goal to see Springwater as an educational and spiritual centre. So far, they’ve held full moon and drumming ceremonies, children’s programming and feasts.

Meanwhile, the Oshkimaadiziig Unity Camp continued to occupy nearby Awenda Provincial Park, an action that began, says camp spokesperson Kai Kai Kons,”as a result of the illegal surrenders of our inherent rights and traditional territories along with the policies and laws enforced upon our people where the Chippewa Tri Council and Canada are in breach of the 1764 Niagara Covenant Chain Belt.”

The group, part of a growing movement called ACTION - Anishinabek Confederacy To Invoke Our Nationhood, states that Awenda Provincial Park is situated on one of five traditional embassies known as Council Rock which is interwoven in the inter-tribal treaty between the Anishinabek and Haudenosaunee.

Other camps were set up throughout the year, including by theThe Lac Courte Oreilles band of Ojibwa in northern Wisconsin and The Algonquins of Barriere Lake within La Verendrye Wildlife Reserve in Quebec.

The well-known Unist’ot’en camp also continued their work to protect sovereign Wet’suwet’en territory in what is now British Colombia. 

Coming together as Nations



Evading the Indonesian navy, two tiny boats met near the Australia-Indonesia border to ceremonially reconnect the indigenous peoples of Australia and West Papua.

The ceremony was the pinnacle of a 5000km journey beginning in Lake Eyre, in which sacred water and ashes were carried and presented to West Papuan leaders.

The cultural exchange of Indigenous elders was held in secret, due to threats made by Indonesian government ministers and military officials who had stated that they would “take measures” against the peaceful exchange. 

Another welcomed victory

Two Indigenous communities from northern Saskatchewan were finally dropped from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s nuclear waste dump shortlist.

After several years of grassroots resistance spearheaded by the Committee for Future Generations and supported by other organizations, it was announced on Nov. 21 that both communities were unsuitable for further study. 

The Saami step forward

The Saami Peoples stepped forward to defend an area of great spiritual and cultural importance.

Walking alongside a group of non-indigenous activists, the Saami set up a roadblock to stop the UK-based mining company, Beowulf, which was planning to carry out a drilling program in the area known as Kallak (Saami: Gállok).

The blockade was dismantled on several occasions; however, that did not deter anyone from continuing to defend the land. Ultimately, the Saami and their allies were victorious in preventing Beowulf from moving ahead. 

The law of the Messi

A Messi villager in Papua New Guinea put up a “gorgor” at Nautilus’ proposed Solwara 1 experimental seabed mining project site. As a traditional law, the “gorgor protocol” prohibits any Ships or vessels by Nautilus from entering into the area that is protected by the “gorgor”.

If Nautilus breaches this area and enters illegally, the Messi “have ALL the right under kastom to destroy the vessels or ship,” commented Karabuspalau Kaiku on facebook.

“Elders and villagers from adjoining villages have caution[ed] the National Government to critically address the issue from the bottom up. Traditional law over the environment must be respected by foreigners,” Kaiku adds. 

Preserving history

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) and the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT) celebrated the final return of the Hall Mountain Tract to tribal hands. Hall Mountain, a 108-acre tract of land, is the viewshed of the historic Cowee Mound site located six miles south of Franklin.

The Mound, a site of great cultural significance to the Tribe, was the largest, busiest diplomatic and commercial center for the Cherokee people and all Native people on the East Coast until the late 1700s. 

A place called PKOLS

WSÁNEC nations lead an action to reclaim the traditional name of PKOLS on what is now southern Vancouver Island. Originally known as Mount Douglas, PKOLS is an historically important meeting place and a part of the WSÁNEC creation story.

The Douglas Treaty was signed atop PKOLS in 1852. The action to reclaim the name, which signified the renewal of the original nation-to-nation treaty relationship, included a march and a re-enactment of the original treaty signing with governor James Douglas.

A joint Declaration reclaiming PKOLS was also signed and a permanent sign was installed. 

Defending the Great Lakes

After years of community opposition, the controversial plan to ship radioactive waste across the Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean to Sweden was officially cancelled by the Swedish company, Studsvik.

In a rare show of unity, opponents to the plan included City mayors, U.S. Senators, environmental and nuclear groups, indigenous communities and other civil society groups. 

We won’t be silenced!

The Oglala Lakota passed a resolution opposing the proposed Otter Creek coal mine and Tongue River Railroad in their historical homelands of southeastern Montana.

The Oglala Lakota have thus far been excluded from any consultations despite the fact that the proposed mine site is an area of great cultural and historical significance containing countless burial sites, human remains, battle sites, stone features and artifacts.

In addition to calling for proper consultation, the Oglala Lakota called on all Tribal Nations who signed the Fort Laramie Treaty to stand with them in opposing the mine and railroad. 

A bittersweet victory

The Musqueam finally managed to bring a certain end to the months-long struggle to stop a condominium development atop the ancient village of cusnaum. The Musqueam recentlyworked out a deal to buy and preserve the site, also known as Marpole Midden, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

After 18 months of talks, community members announced plans to place permanent educational signage on the archaeological site, and likely commission several carved poles to honor the more than 4,000-year-old village. 

Sitting at a different table



As United Nations delegates gathered in Warsaw to craft a global climate treaty, indigenous leaders from across North America met half a world away. Their message: The solution to climate change will never come via UN talks.

The United Nations has always maintained a typical colonial stance when it comes to Indigenous Peoples and land; nevertheless the institution deserved a chance to prove itself. It simply failed to do the necessary work, a failure that we can no longer afford to ignore.

“The work that we have is for all of us to do,” said Vickie Downey, a clan mother at the Tesuque Pueblo in New Mexico. “We do this for our grandchildren.” 

Turning back the tide of colonialism

With the Idle No More movement in Canada waking up a sleeping giant, a second movement began to take shape known as the Indigenous Nationhood Movement.

A movement for “Indigenous nationhood, resurgence, and decolonization”, INM has grown into a vast circle of people connected through commitments to principled action supporting Indigenous nations in advancing, articulating, reclaiming, expressing, and asserting nationhood, raising up traditional governments, and reclaiming and reoccupying traditional homelands.

Like the Idle No More movement, INM is an immensely inspiring effort and one that shows great promise for the long road ahead. Indeed, Indigenous Peoples in Canada have once again set a strong example for all other Indigenous Peoples around the world, particularly those who have suffered the harsh burden of isolation and uncertainty in facing an all-too-familiar colonial beast.

Building Urban Resilience

Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Wikipedia)

Deden Rukmana, Jakarta Post: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/12/21/building-urban-resilience.html

In the last few years, the concept of resilience has rapidly become popular and is increasingly used in urban policy and strategies.

Resilience appears to be fast replacing sustainability.

The concept of sustainability has been at the forefront of urban policy discourse since the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations issued the concept of sustainable development in 1987.

Sustainability aims to minimize our impact on the environment, but has one small flaw. Sustainability puts the environment back into balance, but the way the environment behaves is difficult to predict. We are living in an environment with a heightened sense of uncertainty and unpredictability.

There are many environmental events that are out of control and we need to survive when the environment attacks us.

Urban resilience is the ability of urban communities to recover from disasters and disturbances in a sustainable way, maintain a good quality of life and increase its coping capacity to reduce the damages from an unpredictable disaster or disturbance. Resilient urban communities are better prepared for uncertainties and able to adapt to changing conditions.

The World Economic Forum (WCF) released its 2013 Global Risks Report and included a section on resilience in the report.

It is the first such report of the forum that discusses the global risks from the resilience perspective. The report identifies five components of national resilience that are applicable for the urban context.

The components are robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, response and recovery. Robustness refers to the ability to absorb and withstand disaster and disturbance. Redundancy is the excess capacity to enable the maintenance of core functions in the event of disasters and disturbances.

Resourcefulness involves the ability to adapt and respond flexibly to disaster and disturbances, and transform a negative impact into a positive one. Response means the ability to mobilize quickly in the face of disturbance. Recovery is the ability to regain normality after a disaster or disturbance.

Building urban resilience refers to the development of these five components in the urban system, including buildings, infrastructure and communities.

Building urban resilience is a long term program and requires coordination among stakeholders in the city including government agencies, private companies and residents to prepare for, withstand and recover stronger from disaster, disruptions and chronic stresses.

In May 2013, the Rockefeller Foundation announced the Centennial Challenge of 100 Resilient Cities. The foundation received nearly 400 applications from cities around the world ranging from thousand-year-old cities to mega-cities dealing with rapid urbanization.

A panel of judges, including former president Bill Clinton, reviewed the applications particularly on how the cities are approaching and planning for resilience and their commitment to building a resilient city.

On Dec. 3, the panel selected the first set of 33 cities for the foundation’s 100 Resilient Network.

The 33 selected cities include Semarang, Melbourne, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Ramalah, Rotterdam, Rome, Rio de Jainero, Mexico City and Dakar. These cities have implemented innovative programs and demonstrated positive results for resilience.

For example, New Orleans had experience from dealing with and rebounding from hurricanes Katrina and Isaac and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and learned important lessons about being a resilient city.

Similarly, New York City has learned valuable lessons from Hurricane Sandy and developed programs to protect its residents from coastal flooding and sea level rise that could lead to replicable models for other coastal cities.

Innovative programs for increasing resilience and lessons learned in recovering from disasters and catastrophes from those selected cities should be introduced to other cities for possible replication, including to Indonesian cities. Jakarta and other Indonesian cities should prepare for possible catastrophic disruptions and should develop systems to recover.

Semarang was selected because it has innovative programs to address flash floods and tidal flooding. These include rainwater harvesting, vetiver grass plantation, mangrove rehabilitation and early warning system for floods and vector-borne diseases.

Other Indonesian cities should learn from Semarang and other selected cities and have systems in place to recover, persist or even thrive amid disruptions.

The writer is associate professor and coordinator of the graduate program in Urban Studies and Planning at Savannah State University in Savannah, Georgia, USA.

Riding the Bike Share Boom

by Clarence Eckerson, Jr, originally published by StreetFilms, Resilience.org: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-12-20/riding-the-bike-share-boom



Without a doubt, 2013 has been a banner year for bike-share in the United States. Major systems were implemented in New York City and Chicago, and many others debuted or expanded in other cities.

In fact, Citi Bike users have biked over 10 million miles and the system is closing in on 100,000 annual members!

The Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) has been studying 25 bike-share systems throughout the world, analyzing which ones perform the best and why.

That informed ITDP's Bike Share Planning Guide, which has copious data and fascinating charts to pore over, helping cities create bike-share systems that will thrive.

We were very happy to team up with ITDP to make this Streetfilm. It features a dozen bike-share systems and captures footage from an unprecedented number of bike-share cities in any one film.

Enjoy and download the report!

‘Building Resilience’: The 3rd C - Connection

Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions (Wikipedia)

by Teri Andrews Rinne, Tahoe Daily Tribune: http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/northshore/nnews/8697762-113/child-family-resilience-connection

Teri Andrews Rinne is the children’s services librarian at the Truckee Library, 10031 Levon Ave. Call 530-582-7846 or visit www.mynevadacounty.com/library

This is the sixth installment in a series based upon the book “Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings” by Kenneth Ginsburg. Find Parts 1-4 at: www.tahoedailytribune.com, keyword “Resilience”.

While it is true that children with strong resilience are self-sufficient and independent, they are also interdependent with other people. Human connection provides reassurance that we will be okay despite tough times. 

But beyond times of crisis, connection also provides a higher level of security that gives us joy, and a comfortable base, that permits us to take chances that allow us to come closer to our full potential.

Children do best with multiple circles of connection to feel secure and protected at home, at school, and in the community. 

Children with close ties to family, friends, school, and community are more likely to have a solid sense of security that produces strong values and prevents them from seeking destructive alternatives.

Family is the central force in any child’s life, but connections to civic, educational, religious, and athletic groups can also increase a young person’s sense of belonging to a wider world and being safe within it.

One adult can make a critical difference in a child’s life. Resilience research and literature consistently demonstrate that guidance and support from a caring adult are pivotal in determining whether a young person can overcome challenges. 

Hopefully children will have several supportive people in their lives - parents, relatives, peers, teachers, coaches and clergy.

For parents, the crucial starting point is empathetic listening. Children need to feel listened to and respected. When we are empathetic toward children, we create an emotional safety net. They feel secure in coming to us with problems. 

When they are in trouble, they know we will listen without sarcasm, criticism, or blame. When they make a mistake, they know we will help them correct it without condemnation. 

Ginsburg very strongly points out that it is not our job to have all the answers: “Don’t worry, just listen. If you can be a sounding board, you will help him figure things out.” Give yourself the gift of losing the fantasy that you’re supposed to have all the answers.

Some questions to ponder when considering how connected your children are to family and the broader world include:

- Do we build a sense of physical safety and emotional security within our home?

- Do my children know that I am absolutely crazy in love with them?

- Do I understand that the challenges my children will put me through on their path toward independence are normal developmental phases or will I take them so personally that our relationship will be harmed?

- Do I allow my children to have and express all types of emotions or do I suppress unpleasant feelings?

- Are they learning that going to other people for emotional support during difficult times is productive or shameful?

- Do we do everything to address conflict within our family and work to resolve problems rather than let them fester?

- Do we have a television and entertainment center in almost every room or do we create common space where our family shares time together?

- Do I encourage my children to take pride in the various ethnic, religious, or cultural groups to which we belong?

- Do I jealously guard my children from developing close relationships with others or do I foster healthy relationships that I know will reinforce my positive messages?

- Do I protect my friends’ and neighbors’ children, just as I hope they will protect mine?

BOOK REVIEW: The Science and Philosophy of Friendship: Lessons from Aristotle on the Art of Connecting

by Maria Popova, Brain Pickings: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/19/aristotle-friendship/

"Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons.”

“A principal fruit of friendship,” Francis Bacon wrote in his timeless meditation on the subject, “is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.”

For Thoreau, friendship was one of life’s great rewards.

But in today’s cultural landscape of muddled relationships scattered across various platforms for connecting, amidst constant debates about whether our Facebook “friendships” are making us more or less happy, it pays to consider what friendship actually is.

That’s precisely what CUNY philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci explores in Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life (public library), which also gave us this provocative read on the science of what we call “intuition.”

Philosophers and cognitive scientists agree that friendship is an essential ingredient of human happiness.

But beyond the dry academic definitions - like, say, “voluntary interdependence between two persons over time, which is intended to facilitate socio-emotional goals of the participants, and may involve varying types and degrees of companionship, intimacy, affection and mutual assistance” - lies a body of compelling research that sheds light on how, precisely, friendship augments happiness.

Pigliucci writes:

Happiness is influenced, as one might expect, by all of the “big five” personality traits: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness. … As research conducted by Meliksah Demir and Lesley Weitekamp also clearly shows, however, friendship augments happiness above and beyond the basic effect of personality.

The way friendship enhances well-being, it turns out, has nothing to do with quantity and everything to do with quality - researchers confirm that it isn’t the number of friends (or, in the case of Facebook, “friends”) we have, but the nature of those relationships:

In particular, what makes for a good happiness-enhancing friendship is the degree of companionship (when you do things together with your friends) and of self-validation (when your friends reassure you that you are a good, worthy individual).

This is where Aristotle comes in: He recognized three types of love - agape, eros, and philia - which endure as an insightful model for illuminating the nature of our relationships. Pigliucci describes the taxonomy:

Agape is a broad kind of love, the kind that religious people feel that God has for us, or that a secular person may have for humanity at large. Eros, naturally, is more concerned with the type of love we have for sexual partners, though the Greeks meant it more broadly than we do. Philia is the type of love that concerns us here because it includes the sort of feelings we have for friends, family, and even business partners.

But this poses the obvious question of what separates love, or eros (itself a complex phenomenon nearly impossible to define, despite history’s ample attempts) from friendship, or philia - a conundrum young E. B. White and James Thurber famously considered and Sartre ultimately failed at resolving.

Pigliucci explains:

The obvious answer is that typically (though certainly not necessarily) you have sex with your eros partner but not with your philia friends. More subtly, however, philosophers have pointed out that love is an evaluative attitude, while friendship is a relational one. It makes perfect sense that you could be in love with someone who doesn’t reciprocate your feeling, but it is incoherent to say that one has a nonreciprocal friendship.

Aristotle further classified friendships into three distinct categories: of pleasure, of utility, and of virtue:

In friendships of pleasure, you and another person are friends because of the direct pleasure your friendship brings - for instance, you like and befriend people who are good conversationalists, or with whom you can go to concerts, and so on. Friendships of utility are those in which you gain a tangible benefit, either economic or political, from the relationship. Exploitation of other people is not necessarily implied by the idea of utility friendships - first, because the advantage can be reciprocal, and second, because a business or political relation doesn’t preclude having genuine feelings of affection for each other. For Aristotle, however, the highest kind of friendship was one of virtue: you are friends with someone because of the kind of person he is, that is, because of his virtues (understood in the ancient Greek sense of virtue ethics [and] not in the much more narrow modern sense, which is largely derived from the influence of Christianity).

But what it really boils down to is that friendship affords us a more dimensional way of looking at ourselves and at the world, thus enhancing our understanding of the meaning of life. Once again, Pigliucci takes us back to Aristotle:

Aristotle’s opinion was that friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this (reciprocal) mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons. Friends, then, share a similar concept of eudaimonia [Greek for “having a good demon,” often translated as “happiness”] and help each other achieve it. So it is not just that friends are instrumentally good because they enrich our lives, but that they are an integral part of what it means to live the good life, according to Aristotle and other ancient Greek philosophers (like Epicurus). Of course, another reason to value the idea of friendship is its social dimension. In the words of philosopher Elizabeth Telfer, friendship provides “a degree and kind of consideration for others’ welfare which cannot exist outside

Answers for Aristotle is excellent in its entirety. Complement it with some heartening famous friendships, like those between Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Julia Child and Avis DeVoto, Ursula Nordstrom and Maurice Sendak, and Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini.