Shaping a caring economy. Together.

Meet Jeannine Sato: Mother of two, Director of Durham Connects Universal Newborn Nurse Visiting Program at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, and newly certified Caring Economy Conversation Leader. She is graduating this week along with 7 others in her online cohort in the dynamic Caring Economy Leadership Program. 

Ready to take action in your community?   

Join an upcoming cohort:

April 9 start

Meets 7 Tuesdays through June 4

May 11 start

Meets 3 Saturdays through June 1

Learn More: http://www.caringeconomy.org/content/caring-economy-leadership-program

What participants are saying:

"I love how much bigger my world has become after completing the program. The ideas, projects, and individual qualities of each of my
co-participants and of the facilitators opened my eyes, mind and heart
to greater possibilities and inspirations."- Charissa Fajardo- weekend intensive cohort; reproductive and sexual health advocate and single mother of four teenaged sons, Ottowa, Canada.

Reflections on the Equinox, Invasions, Happiness, Children, and a New Day....

An Equinox Moon-Pleiades conjunction photographed
by MarekNikodem of Szubin, Poland, in July 2009.

Today is the Vernal Equinox and International Happiness Day. Last night was the tenth anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq, and tonight is Nowruz Eve – and Dr. Riane Eisler speaks in Washington DC today!

I cannot let this confluence of events pass without comment, because the tenth anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq is slipping by with barely a note of recognition, much less any soul searching. The President made no direct remarks about it, but settled for a safe written statement about honoring those “who made the ultimate sacrifice”. There was little discussion at all in the media, except the usual cost/benefits analysis befitting corporate investors. At least, according to the New York Times, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld found time to tweet: “10 yrs ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil Iraqis. All who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.”

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All? Does that include the more than 150,000 civilians killed, and more than 350,000 wounded; the uncounted orphans; the three to five million persons displaced directly as a result of the US led Invasion of Iraq – what role did they play in history? Did their lives not make the scales tremble, even just a little, in the great gambit for war revenues and resources?

www.veteransforpeace.org

This afternoon in Washington DC, Dr. Eisler will have made the case at a congressional briefing that it makes economic sense to fund early childhood education and care. How many briefings were held before the decision was made to start a war? A decision that has already consumed over eight hundred billion dollars (including eight billion “outright wasted,” according to the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction). An Invasion that will end up costing as much as six trillion dollars during the next four decades, due to the complex, life-long care that so many vets will require; that is, those who don’t wind up homeless, or dead of suicide. One vet kills him or herself every sixty-five minutes – twenty-two American veterans kill themselves every day.

What does all this have to do with Happiness? Everything... it has everything to do with happiness.... It has to do with the amazing disconnect that allows us to create so much suffering with so much of our own money, yes, our own money; yet spend so little to create true Happiness. From continent to continent, the cries for help continue. How can we hear them all; how can we respond to them all?

An Indigenous Leader’s Call to Protect Mother Earth

By doing what we are doing at the Center for Partnership Studies, and the Caring Economy Campaign, and through the Spiritual Alliance to End Intimate Violence: because all of these assaults on the body of Mother Earth, on other forms of Life; on our sons and daughters swept away by invasions; on the Mothers and Children of our Global Community – all these different, seemingly endless assaults are linked by one thread – one thought:
       That Domination is an acceptable way of Life.

It is Not. It Never has been. All the different habits of violence spring like hydra heads from one throat – the belief that the Way of The Dominator is the right way and the only way. 

It is Not. By exposing that Great Lie and shaking off the delusion that the Dominator Way is inevitable, we free ourselves from the Spell of Domestication (as the Great Toltec teachers put it). We no longer Agree to cooperate with the spreading of fear, the theft of resources, and colonization for cheap labor and resource removal. We seek out Ways in our own Lives in which we ourselves are still contributing to Dominator cruelty and destruction – through our investments, our purchasing choices, our actions or lack of actions. We advocate the systematic transformation of our Dominator cultures from within through Awareness, Choices, Alignment, Intent, Teaching – and most of all through Love.

UN Foundation

And that makes me Happy.
--And the biggest Holiday of all today: Malala went back to school!!

~~ Together We Walk the Partnership Way
Toward Happy, Resilient Communities ~~

~ Happy International Happiness Day, Happy Spring Equinox, Happy Nowruz/New Day! ~

Great Stuff from Eve Purdew

Hi Everyone,

Conversation Leader Eve Purdew wrote in on international Women's Day to say:

"I’ve just watched a TED talk called Courtney Martin: Reinventing feminism which you may enjoyl"

Eve also shared that on International Women's Day, she used an excerpt from Riane's book The Power of Partnership called "The World Around Us" in her classes at the Sorbonne.  The piece offers a list of things we can do to shift the world in the direction of Partnership:

The World Around Us

Starving children are not a statistic. The women’s condition -What would life be like for you if you could not let a square inch of your skin be seen in public, could not attend school or have a job, could not drive a car or even travel in one without a male member of your family.

Re-examine fundamentalist teachings in terms of core dominator configuration of rigid male dominance. Condoned use of violence in families, communities and the world which themselves violate the core of religious teachings: caring, nonviolence, and empathy. Consider poor families worldwide. Imagine a society where the work of caring and care giving is highly rewarded and imagine how this would affect your life and that of your children.

Buy products from socially and environmentally responsible companies. Contact international human rights organisations and government agencies urging them to work actively for human rights in both private and public spheres. Speak up against prejudice and hate in radio talk shows and letters to the editor. Raise the awareness of your family, friends, and business associates to global partnership as a necessity in our age of instant technologies of destruction

Help move political discussions past old categories such as right versus left, East versus West, capitalism versus communism, etc etc to the underlying issue of attitudes and policies that support domination or partnership. Introduce and support partnership education in schools and universities

Work for political candidates who support a national and international politics of partnership or run for office yourself.

- Riane Eisler

Obama's Pre-K Proposal

Hi Everyone, 

As you may know, President Obama recently put forward a plan for universal quality preschool access in the United States - a key Caring Economy proposal!

As Caring Economy Conversation Leaders, we've all learned some key arguments for the economic value of early childhood education - and it is important to understand what opponents are saying, too.

Here are some resources to help you understand Obama's proposal, and some of the reaction to it:

This Washington Post article "Obama Touts Plan for Universal Preschool" outlines the plan, and indicates what some of the lines of objection from opponents (government can't competently run anything, costs too much, preschool should be the private responsibility of parents...).

Here is David Brooks's analysis - Brooks is a usually reasonable conservative commentator who supports the Pre-K initiave and dispels some of the myth-based objections often raised by opponents.

This interview with James J. Heckman, the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, reviews much of the key evidence for the importance of quality early childhood education.

And, here's a link to a 6 minute Jon Stewart Daily Show critique of the conservative media response to the pre-K proposals:  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-6-2013/kindergarten-stop

Many thanks to Caring Economy Campaign Director Kimberly Otis for all these links!

Experiments in Altruism

Conversation Leader Liz Copeland from Albuquerque, New Mexico shares this video, "Experiments in altruism in children and chimps"  featuring the work of Felix Warneken and others.


Liz writes:  "Dr. Eisler mentions Felix Warneken's work in Real Wealth on Pg 288 --and this you tube video is from the research she cites.  Warnken has now left the Max Planck Institute Dept of Evolutionary Anthropology  and is currently at Harvard Dept of Psychology. He and colleagues from Max Planck have released a report on experimental results which demonstrate young children sharing equally when they have cooperatively accomplished something.  Chimps do not show this same behavior."  




Thanks for sharing, Liz!