J ournalism for P eople B uilding a B etter W orld
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INDIGENOUS FOODWAYS
HOW TO MAKE HEALING TEAS AND TONICS FROM WILDFLOWERS
Enough for Everyone Right-sizing Our Living Standards and Learning to Share
The How Much Is Enough? Issue Work Less, Live More to Save Sanity— and the Planet Why Wisdom Traditions See Simple Living as a Radical Act How to Buy Nothing and Build Community
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Today, resistance involves creating change—redefining what is enough. “Not to have a bank account, what do you rely on? You have to rely on people,” Brother Chân Pháp Dung says. “It’s not that we do this alone, we do it together.” Megan Sweas, Page 50
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FROM THE EDITORS
Getting to Enough
PHOTO FROM PLUM VILLAGE COMMU NITY O F ENGAGED BUDD H ISM
PHOTO BY CAVAN IMAGES/ADO BE
What is enough? The question is relative, and can be asked and answered in a number of ways. Answers may vary from quantitative to qualitative responses. We had this in mind when considering the question of enoughness: What is enough money, time, work, food, stuff? Or, am I, as an individual—or are we as a collective—enough? Are there enough resources for the growing human population around the world as we struggle with a perception of scarcity, ever-present climate devastation, crumbling infrastructure, failing government systems, and in many cases state violence? The simple answer is, “yes!” But the overall answer is a bit more complex. All the aforementioned challenges undermine the drive toward the ecological civilization we envisioned and explored in our spring issue. As a global society, we’ve bought into the idea of scarcity—yet that scarcity is a fabrication. Our problem is not that we don’t have enough, it is that the majority of us—particularly our most vulnerable—don’t have access to the abundance of resources Earth provides. And the hoarding of those resources by the wealthy reinforces a system of exploitation under which most humans on the planet live. There is plenty of food for every person to receive the optimal 2,353 calories a day of culturally appropriate nutrition, plenty of money (another fabrication, but with very real consequences if you don’t have it) to fund the health care needs of everyone, plenty of clean water to drink (although our toxic habits are polluting it every day), plenty of land to steward, and plenty of energy to cool us in the hot summer months and warm us when it’s cold outside. There are plenty of houses available so that no one has to live on the street. We, in fact, have all that we need to transform society into one where everyone has enough. In this issue of YES!, we look at all aspects of “enoughness”: How much energy can we consume without exceeding the Earth’s boundaries? How can the rich give their wealth away to have maximum positive impact? Is a four-day work week the answer for overworked/underpaid U.S. residents? Can we be happier with less, while ensuring that those with less will have more? Also included are vignettes of enoughness, encompassing rest, public safety, diversity, and other aspects of life. We know what a better way forward looks like, and now we know without doubt that we have all we need—and are all we need—to forge ahead. Let’s do it!
Zenobia Jeffries Warfield YES! executive editor
Chris Winters YES! senior editor
Peace,
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INDIGENOUS FOODWAYS
Valerie Segrest Illustrations by Annie Brulé
PART 2 FALL HARVEST
A PANACEA GARDEN awaits our next steps. In early summer, we introduced seven traditionally healing wildflower plants and how to invite them into our gardens. Now is the time for
ECHINACEA MEDICINE: Echinacea is effective for treating infections, inflammation, sore throats, coughs, and toothaches. The fresh root produces a numbing sensation for the tongue, gums, and throat that can ease the discomfort of cold symptoms. TASTE: Earthy, subtly spiced, and heavily floral flavor HARVEST: Root, leaf, and flower PREPARATIONS: Tea, honey, and syrup
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ECHINACEA-INFUSED HONEY: Harvest the roots of Echinacea after the lower temperatures of the autumn season arrive. At this time, the vitality of the plant begins to move toward its anchor, fattening up rootlets to store food and energy through the winter. Carefully dig up the roots (remember to leave some behind so the flower can return next year). Rinse the roots well by removing as much dirt as possible. Let them dry overnight or for the day. Put about 2 tablespoons of Echinacea root in a clean glass jar and completely cover with 4 ounces of honey (preferably local and raw). Allow the Echinacea root honey to steep for one to two weeks. Press out the honey from the roots and discard them. Store the honey in a cool, dark place. Take a spoonful to ease sore throats and address oncoming colds as needed.
harvesting and transfiguration. Before foraging and formulating begins, good harvesting ethics should be addressed as a reminder that reciprocity begins with mindfulness. Respectfully removing parts of plant communities begins with the harvester making an offering. This can be a prayer or a song or maybe tidy up the space around the plant. Also, don’t take too much, make it look like you were never even there. Hold good thoughts and consider how you want people to feel when they experience your finished product. Establishing a mindful apothecary is an empowering process and an incredible healing journey rich with stories and memories. For more information on uses and precautions, you can check websites of the Botanical Society of America and National Institutes of Health, or ask naturopathic health care providers.
RED RASPBERRY MEDICINE: Raspberry leaf is high in vital nutrients including vitamin C, iron, magnesium, and potassium, making it very effective as a blood vessel tonic. It is useful for a variety of conditions that support female fertility, from soothing labor pains to easing contractions and alleviating muscle cramps. TASTE: Full-bodied floral flavor with sweet mineral tones HARVEST: Leaf, root, and berry PREPARATIONS: Tea and syrup
RASPBERRY LEAF TEA: After harvesting the raspberries, cut flowering Raspberry canes near the base of the plant, bundle the stems together in groups of no more than six. Using a rubber band, tie them and hang upside down in a cool, dry place out of the sunlight. In about a week, the leaves and petals should dry out completely. Carefully remove the dried leaves from the stems and store them in a covered jar out of direct sunlight. Prepare a cup of tea with your harvest by adding 1 tablespoon crushed dried Raspberry leaves to 8 ounces of hot water. Steep for 15 minutes.
GERMAN CHAMOMILE MEDICINE: Delicate Chamomile flowers have magic to handle a variety of maladies. They have traditionally been used to address indigestion, diarrhea, flatulence, anxiety, depression, and insomnia; and as topical treatments for chickenpox, diaper rash, and even eye infections.
CALMING CHAMOMILE CIDER: Harvest blossoms as they appear and dry them in a flat, well-ventilated basket until they are completely dry. This should take about a week. Steep Chamomile flowers in hot water for 10-15 minutes, using 1 tablespoon for every 8 ounces of hot water. Add equal parts fresh apple cider for an antioxidant-rich and calming beverage.
TASTE: Soft, golden delicious apple flavor with mellow floral honey notes HARVEST: Leaf and flower PREPARATIONS: Tea, honey, and syrup
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LESS WORK, MORE LIVING Story by Elaine Meyer Illustration by Delphine Lee
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One parcel at a time, Bay Area activists are pushing for land trust housing to decommodify land and take properties out of an unjust market.
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he San Francisco Bay Area has long been one of the most expensive places to live in the United States. The region, home to the booming Silicon Valley tech sector and a rising number of billionaires, also has one of the highest numbers of people without homes. The 2015 Bay Area Equity Atlas found half of San Francisco Bay Area renters spent at least a third of their income on rent, and in 2021, Joint Venture Silicon Valley reported that the median annual wage of a service industry worker, at $35,241 before tax, was just slightly higher than the $25,800 it costs to rent a local studio apartment. It’s easy to find horror stories: paying $1,200 a month to live in a literal closet in San Francisco; $2,250 for a room with a fold-down bed; a $1,400 master bedroom in San José whose occupant is prohibited from cooking. In August 2020, The New York Times recounted the story of a Guatemalan immigrant who lived with 11 others in a three-bedroom home in the Bay Area city of San Mateo. When she contracted COVID-19, she sequestered herself in a closet for days to avoid infecting her children. And those are just the examples of people with homes. Despite the region
Liz Gonzalez sits with landlord Paul Orozco in front of his four-unit building in San José, California. He is selling the building to Gonzalez’s South Bay Community Land Trust to remove it from the speculative housing market.
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Lack of Housing Is Not the Problem Story by Andrew Lee Photos by Amy Osborne
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O
ver the next 20 years, a minimum of $35 trillion, and up to $70 trillion, in wealth will transfer from the post-World War II generation to the next younger generation. Most of that wealth will flow in the upper canopy of the wealth forest, between family members in the world’s wealthiest 0.1%. This intergenerational transfer will only further entrench racial and economic inequalities, aided by a veritable army of financial professionals devoted to minimizing taxes and maximizing family inheritances within narrow bloodlines. But some beneficiaries of this system are working to disrupt it, with the help of financial advisors who have a very different outlook from the rest of their profession. They are redirecting this wealth to solve big problems, like climate disruption and racial inequity. And this has created a new ethos among some of the elite and their financial advisers: “wealth minimization.” Jody Wiser, an investor with inherited wealth from Portland, Oregon, saw a change in culture when her investment advisory firm went through a change in ownership. “I was soured to them when their quarterly podcast began with a CPA who advises clients to move to states with no income taxes,” she says. She told the firm that their anti-tax bias was why she was transferring her assets away from them. “Some people inherit a ‘trusted family wealth advisor’ along with money,” says Nora Leccese, the high-net-wealth and family philanthropy coordinator at Resource Generation, a multiracial community of young people with wealth committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power. “These advisors show up with a bias for accumulation and against redistribution.” This puts some wealthy family members on a collision course with the “wealth defense industry,” professionals whose training is entirely focused on excessive accumulation and fostering inherited-wealth dynasties. As I wrote in my book, The Wealth Hoarders, this sector includes the tax attorneys, accountants, wealth managers, and family office staffers who are paid millions to hide trillions. They have a toolbox of tricks and dodges—anonymous shell corporations, offshore bank accounts, dynasty trusts, complex transactions—to sequester and place wealth beyond the reach of taxation and accountability. They are the accomplices to tax avoidance, wealth hoarding, and entrenched inequality. That’s what makes it all the more amazing to meet Stephanie Brobbey, the founder of Good Ancestor Movement Ltd., a new U.K.-based wealth advisory firm devoted to wealth minimization. Brobbey spent a decade working as an attorney in London’s bustling private wealth sector; her new firm is now disrupting industry norms. “There are two prevailing narratives that the wealth advisory profession has internalized,” explains Brobbey, who was born in London to parents from Ghana. “The first is that excessive wealth accumulation is completely acceptable if not desirable. The second is that taxation is synonymous with waste. That’s the water that our profession swims in.”
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Helping the Rich Let Go A new generation of wealth advisors helps wealthy people give away their money instead of hoard it. Story by Chuck Collins Illustration by Pablo Iglesias
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ABOUT YES! MEDIA
LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Christine Hanna
When I Think About Enough Dear Reader, When I was in my mid-20s, with an MBA in hand and just off a wild ride with a dot-com startup that left me with a pile of cash in my bank account, I stopped to take a breath. In that space, I read Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, which confirmed my suspicion that I had an important choice to make. I could continue down my current path of leadership roles in companies designed to accumulate wealth for myself and other owners, and surround myself with the things I didn’t have growing up. That path had its allure but also a gnawing sense of unease —would a pile of money and things be enough? Or a different path, allowing me to put creative and intellectual energy toward meaningful work and offering sufficient money to cover the most important things. To be clear, I’m not terribly courageous. I take only calculated risks. The reason I could choose to “go change the world” is that—unlike many people—I had the security and confidence to assume that I would always have sufficient means to live a comfortable life. I mulled my options while backpacking around the world, opening my heart and mind to different cultures and ways of living. When I returned, I chose the path of meaningful work, deprioritizing material wealth and investing in a life of purpose. And many years and jobs later, here I am at YES!, building a better world together with you. YES! turns 25 this year, and we have a lot of choices ahead that will determine its path for the next 25 years. As a progressive media organization that is a catalyst for change, YES! has extraordinary opportunities to make a real difference in the lives of millions of people and their communities. My greatest hope is that YES! will always have the security to take the kind of bold steps needed to help change the world. We’ve got big plans and exciting goals that will require hard work, talent, and money. That’s why we’ve established a special fund—we’re calling it the Fund For Our Future—which will enable us to take advantage of exceptional opportunities to grow and to weather unexpected storms. What I love about this issue of YES! is that it expands the question “How much is enough?” to go beyond material wealth to all the ways we measure our worth. It asks us to consider fairness as we take stock of what we value, and design our lives and relationships to support those values. By doing this, we can ensure enough security for everyone to live a purposeful life. Hoping for change is not enough; it takes individual and collective energy to create it. Whether your energy is in the form of time, money, or making connections, thank you for putting your values to work for our future.
P.S.: If you’d like to make a gift to the Fund For Our Future, use the envelope in this magazine, or donate online at yesmagazine.org/future.
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FUND FOR OUR FUTURE In honor of our 25th anniversary, I’m asking 25 readers to step up with a special gift of $1,000, to help us build the kind of YES! the world needs for the next 25 years. A generous donor will match your gift. Donate at yesmagazine.org/ future or use the insert in this magazine.
ABOUT YES! MEDIA
Why I Give D av i d M a r k h a m Hilton, New York
practice. People come to see me who are anxious and depressed. Many have lost a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. When their symptoms start to lift, I ask if they’ve thought of volunteering. Most draw a blank. With YES! I can say, “Maybe you’d want to check out this magazine. There are a lot of good ideas in here about how we can make the world a better place by working together.” It allows me to move beyond pie-in-the-sky psychobabble and give them real-life examples of how people are finding meaning and purpose in their lives by working with others in practical and concrete ways.
How will you distribute 300 copies? I’m leaving copies in my local coffee shop, putting them in Little Free Libraries, putting them in office waiting rooms, giving them to people who might be interested in the topic covered in that issue. I’m making it up as I go!
Why do you support YES! as a monthly donor? David Markham recently bought six boxes—300 copies—of YES! Magazine to give away. That caught our attention! What did he plan to do with so many copies? It turns out David’s been giving away YES! issues for years. When he learned he could buy whole boxes of back issues, he saw a chance to expand his “seeding” project.
I see YES! Magazine on the cutting edge of human evolution—facilitating the development of a more positive world through mutual problem solving and by lifting up great ideas at the local level. The world needs that work and that vision. I want to help however I can. You might even want to start “seeding” YES! Magazine throughout your world.
Why do you give away YES! issues? To spread good news! So much good is being done in the world but most of what we see in the media is negative. YES! is different and deserves broader exposure. I fancy myself the Johnny Appleseed of positive journalism.
What prompted that?
Please join me in donating to YES! Your gift of $5 a month or more will help inspire millions of people to join us in building a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world. And your YES! subscription will be free! Just go to yesmagazine.org/ donate. Or call 800-937-4451.
I am a psychiatric social worker in private yesmagazine . org
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CULTURE SHIFT
Beyond “Bridgerton”: Facing Up to Slavery in Europe Ruth Terry
AMID THE GEORGE FLOYD protests last summer, a prominent Turkish newspaper reassured the population with an article headlined, “Bizim Siyahlar Türkiye’de Mutlu,” meaning, “Our Blacks Are Happy in Turkey.” The newspaper didn’t interview Afro-Turks, a Black population descended from Africans enslaved by the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. It quoted African immigrants who said they didn’t really experience racism in Istanbul outside of occasional stares or gestures. 66
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Having lived in Istanbul for six years, I’ve definitely heard this before. “How can there be racism in Turkey when James Baldiwn came to Istanbul to escape American racism?” say White expats. Many Turks also see racism as an American problem. There may be discrimination in the country, but not racism, as a Turkish acquaintance once explained to me. Olivette Otele’s new book African Europeans: An Untold History doesn’t mention Turkey—though it mentions Afro-Greek descendants of those enslaved during the Ottoman Empire—but it does reveal similar strains of collective amnesia about the legacy of African enslavement outside the Americas. Otele, vice-president of Britain’s Royal Historical Society, meticulously reconstructs the lives of forgotten African Europeans, tracing the intercontinental thread of anti-Blackness from GrecoRoman times to the present. African Europeans is arranged more or less chronologically, but I found myself reflecting on how place shapes antiBlackness, an ideological virus that mutates and adapts to various contexts and has spread globally. Unlike Americans, Europeans were largely able to offshore enslavement, which has enabled a collective amnesia about both the source of their national wealth and their deep involvement in America’s so-called “original sin.” Out of sight, out of mind. A prime example is the Netherlands, which was deeply involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation of Black and Brown people in colonies like Suriname and Indonesia. This history is visible, but only if you know where to look. In Amsterdam, that’s in art and architecture. On one of my pre-pandemic trips to the Netherlands, I went on a Black Heritage Tour with guide Jennifer Tosch, who pointed out monuments featuring African faces, and depictions of “Moors” carved into friezes atop stately buildings. At the Rijksmuseum, Black people materialized from the background of ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCES MURPHY/YES! MAGAZINE
I found myself reflecting on how place shapes anti-Blackness, an ideological virus that mutates and adapts to various contexts and has spread globally. Golden Age paintings like the wallsized crowd-pleaser, “Militia Company of District VIII under the Command of Captain Roelof Bicker” by Bartholomeus van der Helst. We visited The Black Archives, a museum mentioned in African Europeans, for an exhibition of photos showing anti-racist activism, resistance Tosch told me is largely unacknowledged by the Dutch mainstream. Perhaps they think “their” Black people are happy, too. But African Europeans also reveals some historical Black complicity in obscuring the realities of racism, colorism, and slavery. African Europeans, especially those who were biracial, benefited from proximity to Whiteness and by emulating it. Many of those who left the written records Otele draws from were educated and enculturated by Europeans and reflect that perspective. For example, the 18th-century writings of Ghanaian born, formerly enslaved Jacobus Capitein, who later became a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, record nothing but love for the Dutch guardian who owned/educated him. Even as early as the second century, writes Otele, Libyan-born Roman emperor Septimius Severus, one of the first Black people in Britain, chose to intentionally distance himself from his African roots. Interestingly, Otele doesn’t dwell much on Britain until the final chapter, which centers the work of Black women activists, a puzzling omission by an author who is professor of the history of slavery at the University of Bristol— especially when contemporary British racism is so topical. The Netflix series “Bridgerton” may be
set in a reimagined post-racial Regency England populated by Black royals, but in reality, London alone had as many as 15,000 Black “servants” by the 18th century. Many were brutally enslaved and “often beaten so badly that they died or became crippled,” wrote Akhil Sharma in The New York Times in 2014. As in the United States, this legacy lives on in today’s White-Black disparities in health, wealth, and well-being. In March 2021, around the time Prince Harry and Meghan Markle opened up to Oprah about racism within the royal family, the United Kingdom’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities issued a report saying, “We no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities. The impediments and disparities do exist, they are varied, and ironically very few of them are directly to do with racism.” I see the fact that Olivette Otele became the first Black woman professor of history in the U.K. in 2018 as evidence to the contrary. This sort of hand-waving away of antiBlackness feels uniquely European to me, the comforting absolution of “white innocence,” a term Otele credits to historian Gloria Wekker. But one troubling section of African Europeans helped me understand this impulse. The Senegalese islands of Gorée and Saint-Louis, now tourist destinations, were the main slave ports where Africans were trafficked from Senegal to the New World. They were also home to the Signares, dual-heritage women who built their economy—and colorist class system—from their trade in enslaved Africans. Otele writes that around half of Signare households had six or more
African Europeans: An Untold History Olivette Otele Basic Books, 2021
enslaved people. My knee-jerk reaction to that old, frequently weaponized American conservative chestnut, “But Africans held slaves, too,” has always been that African slavery was less violent, less institutionalized. Even if this were true purely for reasons of scale, Otele leaves me wondering: How far would the Signares have scaled up their slave trade if they had the opportunity? I don’t know what to do with the complicity of people like the Signares,
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We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary with an online festival— two days of lively discussion about the solutions and ideas that go into building a better world. Inspiring speakers and panelists include: Vandana Shiva, Alicia Garza, adrienne maree brown, Dallas Goldtooth, and YES! co-founders Sarah van Gelder and David Korten.
A Better World Rising 2021 OCTOBER 7 & 8
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