THE ISSUE 70 THEME
The Power of Story
28 The Mission of YES! is to support you in building a just and sustainable world. In each issue we focus on a different theme through these lenses:
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Guide to the THEME SECTION photo by Jack Storms
NEW VISIONS Solving today’s big problems will take more than a quick fix. These authors offer clarity about the roots of our problems and visions of a better way.
WORLD & COMMUNITY New models that foster justice and real prosperity, and sustain the Earth’s living systems. How can we bring these models to life and put them to work?
THE POWER OF ONE Stories of people who find their courage, open their hearts, and discover what it means to be human in today’s world.
18 The Power of Storytelling: A Graphic Tale Those who decide which stories most of us hear define the culture as well as the future. By Symbolia and YES! Magazine Editors
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Why Net Neutrality Is Worth Fighting For
Storytellers of an Emerging World
Will the Internet remain an egalitarian source of information or become a profit center for big telcos? By Candace Clement
The new storytellers show the many paths forward. By Sarah van Gelder
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Books That Opened My World
Silent Spring Still Echoes
Speculative fiction for inspiration and strategy. By Adrienne Maree Brown 36 : : 7 Novels for a Different Future
BREAKING OPEN Infographics, visual storytelling, and the arts—taking you into unexpected spaces where business-asusual breaks open into new possibilities.
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Rachel Carson’s book changed history. New artwork by Chris Jordan shows her message is still meaningful today.
Voices Raised: Who’s Telling a Different Story? 24 : : The Young Turks Network
37 : : Photographer Edward Burtynsky
28 : : Longhouse Media
43 : : Fear of a Brown Planet
32 : : Low-Power FM Radio
44 : : Las Cafeteras
33 : : Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
48 : : My Name is Rachel Corrie
OTHER FEATURES
8 Infographic: Why Social Security Is Not Going Broke A nonhysterical look at how the numbers really can add up. By Doug Pibel
30 photo by Dayna More/shutterstock
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Begin With Your Own Story Three personal narratives that helped build powerful movements. By Kristin Moe
Tim DeChristopher: Why Climate Change Is Personal Overcoming generational anger to find the courage required for the difficult work ahead. Interview by Sarah van Gelder
30 The Return of Hometown News Old-school reporters working with citizen journalists look to revive local reporting—as well as their communities—with online news. By Dan Kennedy on THE COVER
40 Talking Cows Take on Factory Farming The Meatrix’s success shows how a good story trumps a mountain of facts. By Jonah Sachs
Symbolia Magazine illustrator Joyce Rice created the cover for our Story Power issue.
60 These Days, It’s Cool to be a Commoner Self-organized commons are undergoing a renaissance today as one of the most robust alternatives to modern-day capitalism. By David Bollier
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FROM THE EDITOR
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CONTRIBUTORS
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READERS FORUM
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PEOPLE WE LOVE : : Craftivists
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THE PAGE THAT COUNTS
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FROM THE PUBLISHER : : Education revolution
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YES! BUT HOW? : : Too Many T-shirts
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IN REVIEW : : Gar Alperovitz’s What Then Must We Do?
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ISSUE 70
First the Anger, Then the Love Why Climate Change Is Personal
“I’ve never seen a place in this movement or in the discourse around climate change where it’s considered appropriate for young people to express their anger at old people. But it’s just under the surface.”
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Tim DeChristopher In Conversation with Sarah van Gelder
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n the morning of December 19, 2008, Tim DeChristopher woke up knowing he would somehow protest an auction of oil and gas leases on federal lands in Utah’s red rock country. How he would make his views known, though, was a mystery. When an official at the auction asked him if he was there to bid on land parcels, he agreed. That seemed like a good place to start. At first, he bid on parcels to increase their prices—it didn’t seem right to him that the leases were going for as little as $2 an acre. But after more than half the leases had been acquired by oil and gas companies, he began bidding to win. He acquired the rights to 14 parcels—a total of 22,500 acres for $1.8 million—before he was escorted out of the auction, and held and questioned by federal officials. His civil disobedience galvanized activists concerned about the climate crisis and the fate of public wilderness lands. Some, including members of his Unitarian Universalist Church, formed the climate justice action group Peaceful Uprising. On April 1, 2009, DeChristopher was indicted on two felony counts: interfering with a federal oil and gas leasing auction and making false statements. He pled not guilty on both counts and rejected the offer of a plea bargain, so he faced 10 years in prison and a fine of $750,000. His supporters raised cash to cover the first payment on the leases he’d won. The auction of those lands—initiated under the Bush Administration—was later ruled illegal and rescinded. But DeChristopher was found guilty. He served 21 months in prison and paid a fine of $10,000. He was
YES! photo by paul dunn
released in April 2013 and is now attending Harvard Divinity School. Tim DeChristopher was born in West Virginia, where his mother was an early opponent of mountaintop removal. He worked as a wilderness guide for at-risk youth and was studying economics at the University of Utah when he took part in the protest that made him famous. Rolling Stone called DeChristopher “America’s most creative climate criminal.” He was nominated for the 2011 Utahn of the Year by The Salt Lake Tribune, named a 2011 Visionary of the Year by Utne Reader, and was one of the “YES! Breakthrough 15” in 2012. The documentary Bidder 70 features his story, and he’s been interviewed by, among many others, Bill Moyer, Amy Goodman, and David Letterman.
Sarah van Gelder: What was the moment like for you when you realized you were going to go to jail? Tim DeChristopher: Once I decided to start winning parcels of land at the auction, I pretty much knew I was going to prison. That moment was extremely liberating. It was the first moment that I felt like my actions were finally in line with what I felt was the scale of the crisis. van Gelder: I read that you decided to start bidding when you saw a friend burst into tears. DeChristopher: That was one of the things that pushed me to the edge. I was feeling outraged that most of the parcels yesmagazine . org
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ISSUE 70
Why Social Security’s Not Going Broke a nonhysterical look at a system that ’ s working
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imple fact: Social Security will never “go broke.” As long as people are working, Social Security will have money. It may not pay as much money as we hoped, but it will never have no money at all. Here’s some perspective: In 1983 Social Security was paying out more than it was taking in. We fixed it with a small increase in withholding. That increase, the result of Ronald Reagan’s Greenspan Commission, was designed to collect extra money to cover Social Security for the baby boomers. There is now $2.8 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund, which will fully cover expenses for about the next two decades. To make it work after that is pretty painless—we just have to decide who pays. —Doug Pibel
Social Security Expenditures
In normal operation, Social Security is pay-asyou-go. Current workers pay into the system about as much as is being paid out. There’s a trust fund that holds about a year’s worth of benefits.
Social Security and its Trust Fund
From 1975-1981 Social Security was paying out more than it was taking in, and the trust fund was nearly dry. Unlike today, that was a real crisis.
p come u We’ve efore short b
ou go
y Pay as
3.0
nned, As pla llion i $2.8 tr 13 in 20 2.5 Baby boomers (and later workers) have not only supported current retirees—the way the system was designed to work—but they’ve paid extra to fund their own retirement.
2.0
1.5
1.0
.5 trillions of dollars
There’s a myth that the trust fund is just “worthless IOUs.” The trust fund money is real money collected from wage earners, and the Social Security trustees do what the law requires them to do with excess money: Buy U.S. Treasury bonds. The United States has never defaulted on a bond. The trust fund bonds have the same guarantee as bonds held by any other investor. If Citibank and the Chinese government get paid for their bonds, so do we.
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Three Simple OPTIONS Making Social Security solvent in the long run isn’t that hard. But who should bear the cost?
There are several official projections for what could happen in the next 75 years. In one scenario, we have until 2068 to make adjustments. In another, the trust fund is spent in 2033. That doesn’t mean there’s no money, but benefits would go down 25%.
Those of us who pay, pay a bit more
eturns Trust r you go as to pay
Raising Social Security withholding right now by 2.9% fixes the problem forever. The employee’s share of that is 1.45%. For a median-earning household, $51,000, that would be $739.50 more a year.
Elderly people take home less
High earners pay a fair share
After annual income hits $117,000, Social Security withholding stops. If you make $1 million, this is your SS tax rate
If we cut all benefits right now by 16.5%, problem solved. For elderly people, the current average annual benefit is about $14,880. A 16.5% cut means $2,455 less a year.
If you make $117,000 or less: If we raise the cap to $197,000, we’ve solved at least 70% of the problem. That’s an increase of $5,360 a year for someone who makes $197,000. Some economists propose no cap at all, so billionaires pay the same rate as the rest of us.
ason One re rtfall sho for the After the Greenspan Commission’s adjustments, Social Security taxed 90% of the nation’s income. The extra money was used to justify cutting income tax on the very wealthy. That allowed their wealth to grow more than lower-income earners. Those higher incomes are beyond the $117,000 Social Security tax cap. Consequently, we are no longer taxing at 90%. Only 83% could be taxed in 2012.
Why it
s
matter
Social Security was designed to keep the elderly out of poverty, and it works. Should we cut the benefits of our most vulnerable citizens? 160%
Real family income as a percent of 1973 levels
140
In 1959 ...
In 2012 ...
120 100 80 60
Median income
High income 1950
1960
1970
Low income
40 20 0
1980
1990
2000
2010
Elderly living in poverty
Elderly living in poverty
SS is more than half of their income.
It’s more than 90% of their income.
YES! INFOGRAPHIC 2014 Research by doug pibel with assistance from socialsecurityworks.org and cepr .net specific citations at yesmagazine.org/ss-sources
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The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel
photo by kiliii fish
Nadezhda Duvan, last living shaman of the Ulchi People of Siberia, performing the bear dance. Dances and their accompanying stories are vital to Ulchi culture.
ISSUE 70
THE POWER OF STORY
WHY STORIES, WHY NOW?
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as a society are failing us. People hear these stories and look around and they don’t match up. For example, a dominant story of the past century is about a hyperindividualistic kind of consumerism: “More stuff will make you more happy. The measure of success is the quantity of stuff you acquire. If I am financially successful, I did it myself and don’t owe anyone—or society itself—anything.” These narratives pervaded modern life to the extent that people thought they were truths, not stories. As we learn the hidden ecological, health, and social costs of following these stories, their credibility is eroding. More and more people are discarding them as false stories and are banding together to write new ones that better serve communities living on a stressed planet. The new stories are about recognizing our interdependence, valuing community and environmental health over blind economic growth, and the joys of working together for a better world—one with healthier stories for everyone. —Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff
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h e s t o r i e s w e h av e t o l d o u r s e lv e s
and often seems to be falling apart; at a time when myth simply means something untrue; in an era when “social media” replaces being truly “in touch”; sharing stories brings back the oldest way of being connected and seeking coherence. Stories are our main way of making relationships and keeping them. What we call “the world” is also an ongoing story, the great, unending drama being retold again and again. Genuine stories help us to restore ourselves and re-story the world around us. —Michael Meade, Mosaic Multicultural Foundation n a w o r l d t h at h a s n o c o h e r i n g s t o r y
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r a d i t i o n a l g at e k e e p e r s a r e d i s a p p e a r i n g .
Newspapers and glossy print media are dying. Publishers have gutted their infrastructure. The three-headed hydra of network television has given way to a thousand cable venues. From the manufacture of canned goods to the dissemination of stories, the 20th century was about supply, and controlling it. That’s why the gatekeepers were initially put in place, to manage supply. The 21st century, however, is about demand, and sorting out that demand. We live in an increasingly horizontal world. Social networking, self-publishing, podcasting, satellite radio, cable television, web series, YouTube, all of these new venues allow storytellers a pulpit from which to sort out their own demand, and all these new venues need to be fed. As much as I’d like to think that the increase in storytelling is about personal empowerment, or some idealistic shift in cultural awareness, I think more people are telling stories simply because they can find somebody, somewhere, to listen to them. —Jonathan Evison, novelist
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amid ever more people, we crave the stories that bond us as human beings. As we figure out the meanings of our lives, we get the opportunity to pass on our hard-won ideas so that others can stand on our shoulders. Stories are how we’ve always learned the important things. My grandmother used to say, “There is no poverty as deep as a man without stories.” —Kiliii Fish, photographer
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ISSUE 70
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THE POWER OF STORY
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ISSUE 70
THE POWER OF STORY
Octavia Butler’s VISIONARY FICTION inviteS US back into the realm of magic, expansive thinking, and emergent strategy
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yes! illustration photo by Kims Creative Hub and Bruce Rolff/shutterstock
Adrienne Maree Brown
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am certainly not the first or only person who forgot how to imagine. I’m not sure when I forgot, but it had something to do with the numbing effect of constant media, with its hyperbranding and tip-of-the-iceberg bad news. And working too much, not having time to read or to let my mind wander, feeling I was too important to rely on magic. My work has primarily been as a facilitator. I help others envision, plan, and create viable futures for humanity. I call my work “organizational healing” as opposed to “strategic planning.” It takes faith, timeand creativity to do this sort of change work. So this forgetfulness was a minor tragedy. I live in the post-apocalyptic shape-shifting city known as Detroit. Most of my work supports communities around the country that are directly impacted by the changing climate and our racialized economic system. It can feel like we are constantly being further disenfranchised. As a facilitator, I often witness groups with a severely limited capacity to imagine. Where we need to be generating viable futures, instead we often displace imagination with longing or nostalgia. As I get older, the future becomes less clear and more frightening—the planet is in danger and I am a citizen of the country most responsible for environmental, economic, and military distress worldwide. I too sometimes feel a yearning for a past moment in movement history. And yet even in moments of great revolution, there were hierarchies in place that would disempower people who looked, sounded or loved like me.
All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. from Parable of by Octavia Butler
the
Sower
I’ve found myself on the edge of hopelessness in my movement work, slowly devastated by the ways we treat each other when we can’t see a way forward. Fortunately, I’m not the first or only person who has been invited back into the spellbinding realm of expansive thinking, visionary speculation, and emergent strategy by Octavia Butler, the first celebrated black female sci-fi writer. Butler was immensely complex. She was a tall broad-shouldered woman with a voice like scotch poured through a ceremonial drum. Despite that powerful physical presence, her way of life was private. I have described her as a “hermit recluse,” but her writing is essentially about replacing isolation (and hierarchy, which she called “the fatal flaw” of humans), with a more communal approach to life. She was also a genius—an official title thanks to the MacArthur Foundation, who awarded her “the genius grant” for her visionary work. In 12 novels and a collection of short stories, Butler described nontraditional relationships, rightwing fascism, environmental crisis, and life after catastrophe from a variety of angles. She brought in science and technology where relevant, and aliens, vampires, and other fantastical storytelling devices when necessary. In Butler’s hands, even theology became a fantastical device—the religion she created in her novels was based on humans eventually leaving this planet. And yet the Earthseed philosophy-theology of her Parable novels is tied to reality. Its core concept is about living and leading in alignment with the reality of constant change, something I’m calling “emergent strategy.” One of the most celebrated protagonists of Butler’s near future is Lauren Oya Olamina, the visionary leader introduced in The Parable of the Sower, the first of a two-part series. Olamina, who is 15 when the novel begins, has grown up in a gated community— others are starving in the world of extreme scarcity outside the walls. As society falls apart, Olamina makes her way through catastrophe, but learns that surviving is not enough. She also has to bring forth and share a new philosophy-theology—which may be the only way forward for humanity—Earthseed. Olamina eventually creates a community of survivors and refugees and teaches them the Earthseed philosophy, described by another character in the second book, The Parable of the Talents:
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THE POWER OF STORY
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PRESERVING THE CULTURE LONGHOUSE MEDIA Great Native leaders appear to be overlooking contemporary Aztec dancers in a scene from Hummingbird, a short film that captures the spiritual power of ritual and tradition. The film was made by Longhouse Media, an organization that aims to catalyze indigenous people and communities to use media as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation, and social change. Longhouse Executive Director Tracy Rector emphasizes the group’s mission to nurture Native artists who use both traditional and modern forms of storytelling: “Our stories define us. Indigenous people have the right to share their own experiences through their own lens.” One of the ways Longhouse elevates Native stories is through a filmmaking project for tribal youth that is responsible for the acclaimed feature-length documentary March Point. Rector says the program has a positive impact for participants in many areas of their lives, such as academic success and overall self-esteem. Another program, the SuperFly Filmmaking Experience, a Longhouse and Seattle International Film Festival joint project, brings Native and non-Native youth together for filmmaking, storytelling, and cultural exchange. Clearwater, a Longhouse documentary currently in production, shows how the Suquamish people, who have a strong relationship to the saltwater ecology of their home on Puget Sound, are responding to the environmental threat of ocean acidification. —Christine St. Pierre photo by Jac k Storms
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