my trip to Colombia

I am thrilled about going to Colombia this coming January on a Witness For Peace delegation.
http://witnessforpeace.org/article.php?list=type&type=111
We will meet with indigenous people and afro-colombians who are negatively affected by US trade policies.

Globalization & Immigration

I was so impressed by Marisol Jiménez McGee's presentation that I asked her permission to put her whole talk on Globalization & Immigration on Youtube. She is advocacy director for El Pueblo, and a passionate speaker with an easy-to-understand analysis of a complex situation. It is 24 min long in total, but in four 6 min parts.


It's well worth the time if you want to get the big picture, right from the formation of the UN, World Bank, and IMF to the effect of the wall and militarization at the U.S./Mexican border. The event was held at my UU Fellowship, ERUUF, to raise money to send two 18-24 yr olds on a Witness For Peace expedition to Mexico.

Economic Hitman

I've been thinking more about the grip that multi-national corporations have on how prosperity flows and poverty perpetuates. I googled Bill Perkins, who wrote "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". He also is active in the Awakening the Dreamer effort. In fact, they said he was one of the first to go down to Ecuador and meet with the tribal leaders there.

Here's a 2 minute cartoon narrated by Perkins, which explains the enormous dilemma in an amusing nutshell.

but what can we do, personally, to change this power dynamic?

Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream

I trained as a facilitator for this workshop a few months ago, and finally had the wonderful experience of leading it with four friends on May 16. We had 17 people attend and most people stayed for the whole session and seemed to really appreciate it. Here is a video about a typical Symposium:

Awakening the Dreamer Symposium Trailer from Pachamama Alliance on Vimeo.

The main idea is to awaken people to the necessity of living in balance with nature, and with social justice for everyone. .. and also to empower them to be engaged with being part of the solution.

There's an amazing story of how the organization got started, by indigenous people in the rainforests of Ecuador in 1995. The first group they started is called the Pachamama Alliance.