Catalogue - page 3

Affiche du document Rebalancing Society

Rebalancing Society

Henry Mintzberg

1h07min30

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90 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h07min.
Internationally renowned bestselling author Henry Mintzberg offers an original and compelling analysis of the roots of our current political and economic crisis and lays out a roadmap for restoring balance and renewing capitalism and democracy.Enough of the imbalance that is causing the degradation of our environment, the demise of our democracies, and the denigration of ourselves. Enough of the pendulum politics of left and right and paralysis in the political center. We require an unprecedented form of radical renewal. In this book Henry Mintzberg offers a new understanding of the root of our current crisis and a strategy for restoring the balance so vital to the survival of our progeny and our planet.With the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, Western pundits declared that capitalism had triumphed. They were wrong—balance triumphed. A healthy society balances a public sector of respected governments, a private sector of responsible businesses, and a plural sector of robust communities. Communism collapsed under the weight of its overbearing public sector. Now the “liberal democracies” are threatened—socially, politically, even economically—by the unchecked excesses of the private sector.Radical renewal will have to begin in the plural sector, which alone has the inclination and the independence to challenge unacceptable practices and develop better ones. Too many governments have been co-opted by the private sector. And corporate social responsibility can't compensate for the corporate social irresponsibility we see around us “They” won't do it. We shall have to do it, each of us and all of us, not as passive “human resources,” but as resourceful human beings.Tom Paine wrote in 1776, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” He was right then. Can we be right again now? Can we afford not to be? ContentsOverview: The Basic Point1. The Triumph of Imbalance2. From Exploiting Resources to Exploring Our Resourcefulness3. Three Pillars to Support a Balanced Society4. Radical Renewal5. You, Me, and We in This Troubled World
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Affiche du document The Rise of the American Corporate Security State

The Rise of the American Corporate Security State

Beatrice Edwards

1h06min00

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88 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h06min.
In the United States today we have good reasons to be afraid. Our Bill of Rights is no more. It has been rendered pointless by heavy surveillance of average citizens, political persecution of dissenters, and the potential of indefinite detention now codified into law. Our democracy and freedoms are impaired daily by government control of information, systemic financial corruption, unfettered corporate influence in our elections, and by corporate-controlled international institutions. The Constitution of The United States that has shielded us for more than 200 years from the tentacles of oppressive government and the stranglehold of private wealth becomes more meaningless with each new act of corporate-ocracy. Behind a thinning veneer of democracy, the Corporate Security State is tipping the balance between the self-interest of a governing corporate elite and the rights of the people to freedom, safety and fairness. The consequences of these trends and conditions are devastating. We are submerged in endless war, and the wealth produced by and in the United States skews upward in greater concentrations every year. The middle class is under financial attack, as Washington prepares to loot Social Security and Medicare to finance the insatiable war-making and profit-taking.   Repression descends on a people slowly at first, but then crushes quickly, silencing dissent. According to the author of Rise of The American Corporate Security State, Beatrice Edwards, our task now is to recognize the real reasons to be afraid in 21st century America, and address them.  Our early steps in the right direction may be small ones, but they are important. They are based on the principle that we, as Americans, have a right to know what our government is doing and to speak openly about it. Creeping censorship, secret courts, clandestine corporate control are all anathema to democratic practices and must be corrected now, before this last chance to redeem our rights is lost.
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Affiche du document Capitalism 3.0

Capitalism 3.0

Peter Barnes

1h36min45

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129 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h37min.
The commons — those creations of nature and society we inherit together and must preserve for our children — is under siege. Our current version of capitalism — the corporate, globalized version 2.0 — is rapidly squandering this heritage. Now, Peter Barnes offers a solution: protect the commons by giving it property rights and strong institutional managers. Barnes shows how capitalism — like a computer — is run by an operating system. Our current operating system gives too much power to profit-maximizing corporations that devour the commons and distribute most of their profits to a sliver of the population. And government — which in theory should defend the commons — is all too often a tool of those very corporations. Barnes proposes a revised operating system — Capitalism 3.0 — that protects the commons while preserving the many strengths of capitalism as we know it. His major innovation is the commons trust, a market based legal entity with the power to limit the use of scare commons, charge rent, and pay dividends — in both cash and services — to everyone. In Barnes' vision, an array of commons trusts would institutionalize our obligations to future generations, fellow citizens, and nature. Once established, they'd use markets and property rights to create a better world for us all. Capitalism 3.0 offers a practical alternative to our current flawed economic system. It points the way to a future in which we can retain capitalism's virtues while mitigating its vices.
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Affiche du document This Changes Everything

This Changes Everything

Sarah van Gelder

48min00

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64 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 48min.
We Are the 99% The Occupy Wall Street movement named the core issue of our time: the overwhelming power of Wall Street and large corporations— something the political establishment and most media have long ignored. But the movement goes far beyond this critique. This Changes Everything shows how the movement is shifting the way people view themselves and the world, the kind of society they believe is possible, and their own involvement in creating a society that works for the 99% rather than just the 1%. Attempts to pigeonhole this decentralized, fast-evolving movement have led to confusion and misperception. In this volume, the editors of YES! Magazine bring together voices from inside and outside the protests to convey the issues, possibilities, and personalities associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. This book features contributions from Naomi Klein, David Korten, Rebecca Solnit, Ralph Nader, and others, as well as Occupy activists who were there from the beginning. It offers insights for those actively protesting or expressing support for the movement—and for the millions more who sympathize with the goal of a more equitable and democratic future. Since their founding in 1996, YES! Magazine and YesMagazine.org have been showing how powerful ideas fused with practical actions can drive profound change toward a more just, sustainable, and compassionate world. Project Censored calls YES! “the standard for solutions journalism.” Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman calls YES! a “vital voice of independent journalism.” The Utne Independent Press Awards have repeatedly recognized YES! Magazine.
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Affiche du document What the U.S. Can Learn from China

What the U.S. Can Learn from China

Ann Lee

1h40min30

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134 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h40min.
While America is still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, a high unemployment rate, and a surge in government debt, China’s economy is the second largest in the world, and many predict it will surpass the United States’ by 2020. President Obama called China’s rise “a Sputnik moment”—will America seize this moment or continue to treat China as its scapegoat? Mainstream media and the U.S. government regularly target China as a threat. Rather than viewing China’s power, influence, and contributions to the global economy in a negative light, Ann Lee asks, What can America learn from its competition? Why did China recover so quickly after the global economic meltdown? What accounts for China’s extraordinary growth, despite one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world? How does the Chinese political system avoid partisan rancor but achieve genuine public accountability? From education to governance to foreign aid, Lee details the policies and practices that have made China a global power and then isolates the ways the United States can use China’s enduring principles to foster much-needed change at home. This is no whitewash. Lee is fully aware of China’s shortcomings, particularly in the area of human rights. She has relatives who suffered during the Cultural Revolution. But by overemphasizing our differences with China, the United States stands to miss a vital opportunity. Filled with sharp insights and thorough research, What the U.S. Can Learn from China is Lee’s rallying cry for a new approach at a time when learning from one another is the key to surviving and thriving.
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Affiche du document Making Waves and Riding the Currents

Making Waves and Riding the Currents

Charles Halpern

1h59min15

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159 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h59min.
This book is about working for a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world while cultivating the wisdom that supports and deepens this work. Charles Halpern is a social entrepreneur with a remarkable record of institutional innovation. He founded the Center for Law and Social Policy, the nation’s first public interest law firm, litigating landmark environmental protection and constitutional rights cases. As founding dean of the new City University of New York School of Law he initiated a bold program for training public interest lawyers as whole people. Later, as president of the $400 million Nathan Cummings Foundation, he launched an innovative grant program that drew together social justice advocacy with meditation and spiritual inquiry. In his years of activism, he had a growing intuition that something was missing, and he sought ways of developing inner resources that complemented his cognitive and adversarial skills. These explorations led him to the conviction that what he calls the practice of wisdom is essential to his effectiveness and well-being and to our collective capacity to address the challenges of the 21st century successfully. With wit and self-deprecating humor, Halpern shares candid and revealing lessons from every stage of his life, describing his journey and the teachers and colleagues he encountered on the way—a cast of characters that includes Barney Frank and Ralph Nader, Ram Dass and the Dalai Lama. Making Waves and Riding the Currents vividly demonstrates the life-enhancing benefits of integrating a commitment to social justice with the cultivation of wisdom. It is a real-world guide to effectively achieving social and institutional change while maintaining balance, compassion, and hope.
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Affiche du document Cracking the Code

Cracking the Code

Thom Hartmann

1h46min30

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142 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h46min.
By the bestselling author and XM and Sirius Satellite radio host heard on more than eighty radio stations coast to coast seven days a week Shows progressives how to master the science and technology of persuasive communication and counter the right-wing message machine Offers exercises and examples throughout to help readers put the concepts they’re learning into practice Millions of working Americans talk, act, and vote as if their economic interests match those of the megawealthy, the multinational corporations, and the politicians who do their bidding. How did this happen? According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It’s not an escalation in Iraq, it’s a surge; it’s not the inheritance tax, it’s the death tax; it’s not drilling for oil, it’s exploring for energy. Conservatives didn’t intuit the path to persuasive messaging—they learned these techniques. There is no reason why progressives can’t learn them too. In Cracking the Code, Hartmann shows you how. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist and advertising executive as well as a national radio host, he breaks down the science and technology of effective communication so you can apply it to your own efforts to counter right-wing disinformation. It’s both an art and a science—as Hartmann explains, political persuasion is as much about biology as ideology, about knowing how the brain processes information and how that influences the way people perceive messages, make decisions, and form a worldview. Throughout the book, Hartmann shows you precisely how to master this technology, providing examples dating back to the time of the Founding Fathers. As you read deeply in this book, you’ll see things you hadn’t realized were there—in everything from advertising to political rants—and discover abilities you didn’t know you had. Whether you’re a politician, an activist, a volunteer, or a concerned citizen, you’ll develop a strong sense for how to reach into that part of the collective human psyche where we truly do have the power to create a new world.
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Affiche du document The Death of

The Death of "Why?"

Andrea Batista Schlesinger

1h43min30

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138 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h43min.
The spirit of inquiry is the engine of democracy. The democratic process is nothing less than citizens regularly asking what kind of society they want to live in and whom they want to lead them. But more and more people are avoiding the whole messy business of questioning. Americans are instead being trained to look for ready-made answers, with potentially dire implications for the health of our society. In this impassioned new book, Andrea Batista Schlesinger argues that we’re besieged by cultural forces that urge us to avoid independent thought and critical analysis. The media reduces politics to a spectator sport, focusing on polls and personalities rather than issues and ideas. Schools teach to standardized tests—students learn to fill in the bubbles, not open their minds. “Financial literacy” courses have replaced civics classes, graduating smart shoppers rather than informed citizens. Even the Internet promotes habits that discourage inquiry. Regurgitating search-engine results becomes a substitute for genuine research and reflection. Social networks promote connection rather than engagement. With all the information available online, over a third of those younger than twenty-five say they get no news on a typical day, up from 25 percent in 1998. The situation isn’t hopeless. Batista Schlesinger spotlights individuals and institutions across the country that are working to renew a healthy sense of curiosity and skepticism, particularly in American’s youth. It is, at this point, an uphill battle but one well worth undertaking. The Death of “Why?” offers both a penetrating socio-cultural critique of our current path and a way forward for cultivating inquiry and reinvigorating our democracy.
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Affiche du document Share This!

Share This!

Deanna Zandt

1h24min00

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112 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h24min.
Shows how both activists and the casually progressive can leverage the power of social networks for social change Helps readers maintain credibility, establish new connections, deal with common fears, and have a good time Authoritative but aggressively non-technical—like talking to a real person with a great sense of humor who really knows her stuff Social networks can be so much more than a way to find your high school friends or learn what your favorite celebrity had for breakfast. They can be powerful tools for changing the world. With Share This! both regular folks of a progressive bent and committed activists can learn how to go beyond swapping movie reviews and vacation photos (not that there’s anything wrong with that). At the moment the same kinds of people who dominate the dialog off-line are dominating it online, and things will never change if that doesn’t change. Progressives need to get on social networks and share their stories, join conversations, connect with others—and not just others exactly like themselves. It’s vital to reach out across all those ethnic/gender/preference/class/age lines that exist even within the progressive camp. As Deanna Zandt puts it, “creating a just society is sort of like the evolution of the species—if you have a bunch of the same DNA mixing together the species mutates poorly and eventually dies off.” But there are definitely dos and don’ts. Zandt delves into exactly what people are and are not looking for in online exchanges. How to be a good guest. What to share. Why authenticity is more important than just about anything, including traditional notions of expertise or authority. She addresses some common fears, like worrying about giving too much about yourself away, blurring the lines between your professional and personal life, or getting buried under a steaming heap of information overload. And she offers detailed, nuts-and bolts “how to get started” advice for both individuals and organizations. The Internet is upending hierarchies and freeing the flow of information in a way that makes the invention of the printing press seem like an historical footnote. Share This! shows how to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to make marginalized voices heard and support real, fundamental change—and, incidentally, have some fun doing it.
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Affiche du document Hidden Power

Hidden Power

Charles Derber

1h53min15

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151 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h53min.
Political parties and elections are increasingly political theatre, with real power hidden behind a smokescreen of propaganda, carefully manipulated cultural and religious wars, and voting rituals. But there is another kind of hidden power in America: the grassroots social movements working for progressive change. If the Democratic Party can ally with these movements, America can be returned to its people. Derber sees American history as a succession of regimes, each spanning several administrations. Since the end of the Civil War, regimes of hidden power, in which corporate interests control both parties behind the scenes, have alternated with more open, inclusive and democratic regimes. Derber details how and why these hidden power systems finally collapsed and what determined the types of regimes that succeeded them. Hidden Power reveals how the current regime, possibly the most corporate in history, has maintained power by intensifying the red/blue culture wars, supporting religious extremists, exploiting terrorism fears, and manipulating the electoral process. Will this latest corporate regime be replaced by one that is more progressive? Or it could turn even further right and yield to something even worse, a uniquely American form of fascism? The best hope for positive change lies in an alliance between the Democratic Party and the grass roots progressive movements that, Derber shows, have always been the catalysts for change. Hidden Power concludes with an impassioned argument for why this would be in the Democrats' best interests, as well as the country's, and a detailed program for exactly how to go about it. Thoughtful, eloquent, and compelling, Hidden Power offers real hope for restoring genuine democracy to America.
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Affiche du document 2048

2048

John Kirk Boyd

1h47min15

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143 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h47min.
Creating an enforceable international guarantee of basic human rights Outlines the basics of a universally acceptable agreement Shows what everyone can do to make this agreement a reality In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a deeply inspiring document that has been translated into over 300 languages and dialects. But because its provisions are not enforceable, its promise has not been fulfilled. Human rights violations continue in every corner of the globe, the cause of countless individual tragedies as well as large-scale disasters like war, poverty and environmental ruin. It’s time to take the next step. 2048 sets out a visionary, audacious, but, Kirk Boyd insists, achievable goal: drafting an enforceable international agreement that will allow the people of the world to create a social order based upon human rights and the rule of law. Boyd and the 2048 Project aim to have this agreement, the International Convention on Human Rights, in place by the 100th anniversary of the Universal Declaration. Written documents have always played a key role in advancing human rights: the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence. The express purpose of the International Convention is to safeguard what Boyd calls the Five Freedoms, adding freedom for the environment to Franklin Roosevelt’s famous Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Boyd skillfully anticipates objections to the notion of a universal and enforceable written agreement—that it would be culturally insensitive, too expensive, unacceptably limit national sovereignty—and convincingly answers them. In fact some promising first steps have already been taken. He describes existing transnational agreements with effective compliance mechanisms that can serve as models. But Boyd wants to inspire more than argue. In 2048 he urges everyone to participate in the drafting of the agreement via the 2048 website and describes specific actions people can take to help make it a reality. “What you do with what you read” Boyd writes, “is as important as what this book says.” Little by little, working together creatively with the tools now available, we can take the next step forward in the evolution of human rights.
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Affiche du document Citizen Wealth

Citizen Wealth

Wade Rathke

1h30min45

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121 pages. Temps de lecture estimé 1h31min.
America’s safety net is torn and tattered. Income inequality continues to grow—the gap between rich and poor has expanded fivefold in the last 25 years. For millions of working families achieving basic middle class comforts has begun to seem as distant a dream as winning the lottery. What is needed, and what veteran organizer and ACORN founder Wade Rathke provides in this hard-hitting new book, is a comprehensive grassroots strategy to create what he calls citizen wealth: an enduring foundation on which working people can build a future that extends beyond paying next month’s rent. Rathke shares breakthrough strategies that have enabled ACORN and other organizations help people secure the basics of citizen wealth—a house and a decent income—offering from-the-trenches advice on mounting successful living wage campaigns, battling unscrupulous and predatory lending practices, and developing new forms of worker organizations to protect wages and benefits. The anti-poverty programs still out there can provide critical support for citizen wealth-building efforts, but they’re woefully underutilized. Rathke shows how to cut through government indifference and bureaucratic obstacles to provide those in need with access to these vital resources. But community organizations can’t do it alone. Rathke describes ACORN partnerships with HSBC Bank and H & R Block that helped these businesses see building citizen wealth as a new market opportunity—a win for them and for the people they once exploited. And he looks at other examples of strange bedfellows in the fight for citizen wealth, including Citibank, once the target of massive protests by ACORN and now, working with them, a major investor in working class communities. “We need to create a national economic and political consensus that increasing family income, wealth and assets is not `welfare’ or an entitlement ‘give-away” program but an investment in the public good and well-being.” Rathke writes. Based on forty years of hard-won experience, Wade Rathke offers a new blueprint for helping millions to achieve the American Dream.
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