"It's time to talk about what's next."
Those are the words of academic and author Gar Alperovitz, founder of the Democracy Collaborative, who—alongside veteran environmentalist Gus Speth—this week launched a new initiative called the "Next Systems Project" which seeks to address the interrelated threats of financial inequality, planetary climate disruption, and money-saturated democracies by advocating for deep, heretofore radical transformations of the current systems that govern the world's economies, energy systems, and political institutions.
As part of the launch, the Next Systems Project produced this video which features prominent progressive figures such as actor and activist Danny Glover, economist Juliet Schor, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, labor rights activist Sarita Gupta, and others:
According to the project's website, the effort is a response to a tangible and widespread "hunger for a new way forward" capable of addressing various social problems by injecting "the central idea of system change" into the public discourse. The goal of the project—described as an ambitious multi-year initiative—would be to formulate, refine, and publicize "comprehensive alternative political-economic system models" that would, in practice, prove that achieving "superior social, economic and ecological outcomes" is not just desirable, but possible.
"By defining issues systemically," the project organizers explain, "we believe we can begin to move the political conversation beyond current limits with the aim of catalyzing a substantive debate about the need for a radically different system and how we might go about its construction. Despite the scale of the difficulties, a cautious and paradoxical optimism is warranted. There are real alternatives. Arising from the unforgiving logic of dead ends, the steadily building array of promising new proposals and alternative institutions and experiments, together with an explosion of ideas and new activism, offer a powerful basis for hope."
The mission statement of the project—articulated in a short document titled It's Time to Face the Depth of the Systemic Crisis We Confront has been endorsed by an impressive list of more than 350 contemporary journalists, activists, academics, and thought leaders from various disciplines who all agree the current political and economic system is serving the interests of "corporate profits, the growth of GDP, and the projection of national power" while ignoring the needs and wellbeing of people, communities, ecosystems and the planet as a whole.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Economic Outrage du Jour: Ripping Off the Jobless:
As if things were not bad enough for Americans who have lost their jobs and are among those lucky enough to be eligible for unemployment benefits, one company has become adept at keeping many of them from actually collecting on that lifeline. They've done it, according The New York Times, through a combination of delays, failure to show up at hearings, bogus appeals and other chicanery, including outright lies and fraud. The company reportedly handles 30 percent of all the nation's jobless claims. Jason DeParle writes:
The work has made Talx a boom business in a bust economy, but critics say the company has undermined a crucial safety net. Officials in a number of states have called Talx a chronic source of error and delay. Advocates for the unemployed say the company seeks to keep jobless workers from collecting benefits. ...
Wisconsin officials were among the first to complain, passing a law in 2005 to prevent what they called a common Talx practice: failing to respond to requests for information, only to appeal when workers got benefits. ...
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Good ol' American entrepreneurialism at work. And lucrative, too. The guys who started Talx gobbled up seven companies in five years, then sold the blend three years ago for $1.4 billion. There are, of course, men and women in the hallowed halls of Congress who no doubt cheer the efforts this company makes. After all, they agree with their ideological predecessors of 75 years ago who fought against creating a benefits program for the jobless in the first place. Like Talx, they'll do just about anything to keep Americans on the ropes from getting relief since they view the benefits as creating lazy Americans, "hobos," as Nevada Rep. Dean Heller said six weeks ago.
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