written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
(find your bioregion/watershed)
(find your bioregion/watershed)
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written from Upper Rock, Wisconsin
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[this smaller quote is what I responded to:]
At 09:53 AM 11/17/00 -0800, you wrote:
Hello all, but especially a hello to all those who have been using the bioregional list serve to discuss U.S. electoral politics. As a Canadian, it was amusing to read some of the diverse comments on the U.S. election (especially those of Michael Moore). In Canada, it seems we are much more experienced with strategic voting than USians. Here we have not three, but five major parties, plus a small (certainly not major) green party. However, enough is enough! Now we have people announcing that they are dropping this list serve because of too much U.S. politics and not enough on bioregionalism. When will you folks cease and desist? Can't you set up your own list serve and stop APPROPRIATING ours? In my view, green politics has suffered in Canada from too much reformist electoral manipulative politicking. Please, USians, don't imitate us on this one. Any future green parties must be built out of a strong civil society with many large, inter linked social movements. The first strategic task is to build those social movements and to thoroughly network them. Playing at electoral politics at this stage is just that. So, please get your own list serve. Mike Carr
A strong 'civil society' as you would have it, is based on representative and inclusive institutions and districts that allow for a registering of geographic bailiwicks, instead of quaranteeening voters in uncompetitive clientelistic districts. State policies matter, and state policies will either make, break, create, or demote bioregionalism. Without the formal architecture, greens will always be marginalized, because the structures are organized to marginalize 'that type of voting:' environmental feedback on the state.
I suggest a glance at Patricia Abers work (below) on the formal structure of urban governance as its own facilitator of 'civil society' inclusions, if you are skeptical. It's less that you can make a claim that 'civil society' is somehow a separate 'sphere' of activity, outside of politics:
"From clientelism to cooperation: Local government, participatory policy, and civic organizing in Porto Alegre, Brazil,"
Politics & Society; Stoneham; Dec 1998; Rebecca Abers;
Volume: 26
Issue: 4
Start Page: 511-537
ISSN: 00323292
Subject Terms: Public administration
Cities
Local government
Geographic Names: Porto Alegre Brazil
Abstract:
Abers discusses how civic empowerment has occurred in Porto Alegre Brazil.
Abstract:
A growing number of scholars and policy makers agree that improving the quality of life in impoverished urban areas-both in the "First" and "Third" Worlds-depends on the capacity of local residents to form social networks and civic organizations. Much recent work argues that such capacity will only develop with the retreat of the state, which has historically worked against the capacity of communities to help themselves by paternalistically providing services and welfare directly to individuals and, in some cases (especially in the Third World), by repressing civic groups outright. Some recent studies, however, have shown that state actors can actually promote the empowerment rather than the weakening of civic organizations. This article looks at one particularly impressive example of such state-fostered civic organizing.
Since 1989, the local government of Porto Alegre, a city of 1.3 million people in southern Brazil, has implemented what it calls the "participatory budget." One of the central goals of this policy is to hand over decisions about the distribution of municipal funds for basic capital improvements-paved streets, drainage and sewer investments, school construction, and so on-to neighborhood-based forums. The policy has fostered a dramatic increase in neighborhood activism in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, with over 14,000 people participating each year in budget assemblies. Innumerable new neighborhood organizations have appeared in response to the policy, often in areas that were previously dominated by closed, ineffective associations that served as little more than tools of clientelist party politics. The Porto Alegre policy has combined a substantial amount of government investment in social programs with a successful state-sponsored effort at capacitating civic groups to control that investment and, in doing so, to dramatically improve their quality of life.
This article will examine how this process of civic empowerment occurred.' The next section will consider the role that state actors can play in helping those with little previous experience to begin to organize collectively. I then go on to briefly examine the history of neighborhood associationalism in Porto Alegre and to describe the budget policy. The main body of the article looks at one district of the city that, prior to 1989, had virtually no experience with broad-based, participatory civic organizing, showing how the budget policy mobilized neighborhood groups, discouraged clientelist forms of neighborhood action, and promoted the emergence of participatory groups that not only struggled collectively to bring benefits to their neighborhoods but also learned to work in collaboration with other neighborhood groups in the pursuit of broader goals.
Regards,
Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison
I know some 'flat earth' (i.e., localist only) bioregionalists. However, only a few are like that. Here's something from another list that may interest you [Rob Richie]:
[here's the 'flat earther']
Mike Carr wrote:
>
> Hello all, but especially a hello to all those who have been using the
> bioregional list serve to discuss U.S. electoral politics. As a
> Canadian, it was amusing to read some of the diverse comments on the
> U.S. election (especially those of Michael Moore). In Canada, it
> seems we are much more experienced with strategic voting than USians.
> Here we have not three, but five major parties, plus a small
> (certainly not major) green party. However, enough is enough! Now we
> have people announcing that they are dropping this list serve because
> of too much U.S. politics and not enough on bioregionalism. When will
> you folks cease and desist? Can't you set up your own list serve and
> stop APPROPRIATING ours? In my view, green politics has suffered in
> Canada from too much reformist electoral manipulative politicking.
> Please, USians, don't imitate us on this one. Any future green
> parties must be built out of a strong civil society with many large,
> inter linked social movements. The first strategic task is to build
> those social movements and to thoroughly network them. Playing at
> electoral politics at this stage is just that. So, please get your
> own list serve. Mike Carr
[Michele's reponse, another list member:]
-----Original Message-----
From: bioregional-owner@csf.colorado.edu [mailto:bioregional-owner@csf.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Michele Witten
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2000 12:41 PM
To: Bioregional-L
Subject: Re: GoreNadarBush
Well, it seems to me that this list has always been about politics.
Isn't bioregionalism to a great extent about organizing humans according
to bioregion, as in, undoing the current organization by political
boundaries? If folks are interested in talking about the organization
of nature in bioregions, I think they might well be happier on something
like the conservation biology list serve. Meanwhile, this US election
looked very bioregional to me -- check out a map of states (NY Times has
one) that went for the two major candidates.
Gore got most of the urban areas with major ports -- the Northeast, the
Great Lakes, the West Coast. These areas' mercantile histories are
closely tied to their natural features. Bush got most of the huge
central swath of the country whose economies are still (more or less)
based on raw resource extraction. The states within that territory that
Gore got or came closest to getting were the ones right on the
Mississippi River. Gore areas are densely settled, Bush areas are
sparsely settled. Even in my tiny, rural, liberal state of Vermont,
this pattern held: liberal candidates took the Interstate Highway
corridors--which also happen to be the major river/lake valleys--and
Republicans won large areas of the state that are ag-based and sparsely
populated.
I think there is an interesting conversation to be had about the
relationships between bioregions and human developments and political
leanings. Does the fact that the plains are largely conservative and
the ports largely liberal have implications for promoting
bioregionalism? Is this pattern unique to the US, or does a similar
trend follow the plains and coasts and lakes north through Canada? On
the other hand, maybe I'm the only person who sees the pattern, or maybe
I'm just wrong. What do you think?
Michele
[someone congratulating Michele:]
Date: Fri, 17 Nov 2000 12:52:14 -0800
From: JIWLP <JIWLP@earthling.net>
Subject: RE: GoreNadarBush
In-reply-to: <3A1597D9.165C02D3@gmied.org>
To: Michele Witten <mwitten@gmied.org>
Cc: Bioregional - L <bioregional@csf.colorado.edu>
Message-id: <ACEBKENIBBOFPNNPKNOGGEDCDNAA.JIWLP@earthling.net>
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Congratulations to Michele for clearly outlining the interface of bioregional issues and this election. I think folks like Mike believe that "bioregionalism" means hiding under rocks and ignoring the impact of national political decision making on local biospheres, think again. For example, one of the leading bioregional lights, David McCloskey, concludes: "Massive ecosystem conservation proposals can play a very significant role [in the restoration of natural ecosystems]. This necessarily presumes that there is a role for federal decisionmaking, and it is beyond cavil that the Chief Executive can exert a tremendous amount of influence. Thus, to dismiss who will be issuing executive orders on environmental issues, and passing on legislation, is to ignore an integral issue for everyone who embraces bioregionalism. Thus, I think discussion of national political issues is wholly germane.
Wil Burns, Editor-in-Chief
Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy
1210 Floribunda Ave. #7
Burlingame, CA 94010 USA
Phone: 650.703.3280
Fax: 801.838.4710
JIWLP@pacbell.net
http://www.jiwlp.com/
[here was my response:]
A strong 'civil society' as you would have it, is based on representative and inclusive institutions and districts that allow for a registering of geographic bailiwicks instead of quaranteeening voters in uncompetitive clientelistic districts. State policies matter, and state policies will either make, break, create, or demote bioregionalism. Without the formal architecture, greens will always be marginalized, because the structures are organized to marginalize 'that type of voting,' environmental feedback, on the state.
I suggest a glance at Patricia Abers work on the formal structure of urban governance as its own facilitator of 'civil society' inclusions, if you are skeptical. It's less that you can make a claim that 'civil society' is somehow a separate 'sphere' of activity, outside of politics.
From clientelism to cooperation: Local government, participatory policy, and civic organizing in Porto Alegre, Brazil
Politics & Society; Stoneham; Dec 1998; Rebecca Abers;
Volume: 26
Issue: 4
Start Page: 511-537
ISSN: 00323292
Subject Terms: Public administration
Cities
Local government
Geographic Names: Porto Alegre Brazil
Abstract:
Abers discusses how civic empowerment has occurred in Porto Alegre Brazil.
Abstract:
A growing number of scholars and policy makers agree that improving the quality of life in impoverished urban areas-both in the "First" and "Third" Worlds-depends on the capacity of local residents to form social networks and civic organizations. Much recent work argues that such capacity will only develop with the retreat of the state, which has historically worked against the capacity of communities to help themselves by paternalistically providing services and welfare directly to individuals and, in some cases (especially in the Third World), by repressing civic groups outright. Some recent studies, however, have shown that state actors can actually promote the empowerment rather than the weakening of civic organizations. This article looks at one particularly impressive example of such state-fostered civic organizing.
Since 1989, the local government of Porto Alegre, a city of 1.3 million people in southern Brazil, has implemented what it calls the "participatory budget." One of the central goals of this policy is to hand over decisions about the distribution of municipal funds for basic capital improvements-paved streets, drainage and sewer investments, school construction, and so on-to neighborhood-based forums. The policy has fostered a dramatic increase in neighborhood activism in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, with over 14,000 people participating each year in budget assemblies. Innumerable new neighborhood organizations have appeared in response to the policy, often in areas that were previously dominated by closed, ineffective associations that served as little more than tools of clientelist party politics. The Porto Alegre policy has combined a substantial amount of government investment in social programs with a successful state-sponsored effort at capacitating civic groups to control that investment and, in doing so, to dramatically improve their quality of life.
This article will examine how this process of civic empowerment occurred.' The next section will consider the role that state actors can play in helping those with little previous experience to begin to organize collectively. I then go on to briefly examine the history of neighborhood associationalism in Porto Alegre and to describe the budget policy. The main body of the article looks at one district of the city that, prior to 1989, had virtually no experience with broad-based, participatory civic organizing, showing how the budget policy mobilized neighborhood groups, discouraged clientelist forms of neighborhood action, and promoted the emergence of participatory groups that not only struggled collectively to bring benefits to their neighborhoods but also learned to work in collaboration with other neighborhood groups in the pursuit of broader goals.
Regards,
Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison
[written to Rob Richie, of www.fairvote.org :]
At 05:08 AM 11/16/00 -0500, you [Rob Richie] wrote:
>Mark,
>
>Are you working with any other people / organizations
>in Wisconsin? What has been their reaction to your ideas?
>
>thanks,
>Rob [Richie] [www.fairvote.org]
Some bioregionalist/Greens I know did appreciate (effusively, actually) a 'bioregionalist perspective' on the electoral college, particlarly as it related to making them aware of the dynamics of locality and third parties historically in the United States (instead of third parties being 'national') and how the electoral college was the last 'un-co-opted' geographic registering of the vote, and about uncompetitive ungeographic districts as facilitating environmetnal degradation simultaneously with demobilizing election clout.
I have pointed them to your work on www.fairvote.org for the districting issue, as it relates to it being ungeographic gerrymandering. I've yet to hear anything back from them on that at present.
Regards,
Mark
link to a map of the present congressional districts of the United States
link to a map of the majoritarian districts of Wisconsin, compared to the bioregions of Wisconsin
link to www.fairvote.org, where you can see the irregular majoritarian districts.
Choose 'redistricting.' This site discusses the degree to which they are uncompetitive as well, with 60+ Congressional representatives and senators 'returning' to Congress without having been challenged when they 'ran' for election. There were over 90 of them in 1996. For a sense of scale, there are only 535 members of Congress total (435 House; 100 Senate). The size of the Congress is adjusted occassionally. The House of Representatives has been at 435 since 1910. Additionally, incumbency as a phenomenon is over 90% in the United States as well. There is very little 'running' for office in the United States. Why is this so? Some of this was explained above. See the other pages for more.
other pages on the bioregional state, keep reading them in order (recommended)
or
