Posted on

Learning from the past to build a brighter future

This article was originally published for The Retiree Advocate at psara.org on May 3, 2012.

We live in difficult times. For more than three decades, working people, seniors, the poor, the young, people of color, women, immigrants and people with disabilities have faced growing threats to our economic well-being and security. Our nation is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet tens of millions of us live in poverty, face hunger, fear the loss of our homes or homelessness, worry about affordable quality health care, and hope that our children and grandchildren will receive a quality education. Growing old brings new fears of economic hard times even though we and our ancestors worked for generations to build the great fortunes of our great and wealthy nation. Why? Continue reading “Learning from the past to build a brighter future”

Posted on

Workshop: Winning Big in Hard Times: Learning from Our Ancestors

My new workshop “Winning Big in Hard Times: Learning from Our Ancestors” brings a powerful message of hope that we, like our ancestors, can move toward a brighter and more just future despite the presence of great corporate power.

Many of the struggles of our ancestors from the 1880s through the 1930s have reappeared as Corporate America attempts to reassert its dominance over our economic and political future. Our ancestors won great victories in hard times and so can we. What can we learn from them? We need to learn from their successes and failures as the future of our children, grandchildren and those we love is at stake.

I welcome the opportunity to work with you and your organizations with this new workshop. I also welcome your comments on how to improve these tools. Feel free to use them.

Posted on

Workshop: Making the American Dream Real for Everyone

“Making the American Dream Real for Everyone” is an interactive economic justice workshop that educates, inspires and stirs working people and their allies to take action to reclaim a more just and secure economic future for all. It builds from the economic difficulties experienced by workshop participants and those close to them. Anchored in a long historical perspective, the workshop explores the struggles of working people to ensure that economic prosperity is shared fairly rather than concentrated primarily among the wealthy.

Using a combination of personal stories, history and political and economic analysis, the workshop identifies the root causes of the historic shifts from growing economic injustice to justice and back to injustice today. The primary goal of the workshop is to bring individual and collective hope based on our own history as working people. Most importantly, the workshop brings hope for a better future by focusing discussion on how we can move toward a more economically just and secure nation for all.

Posted on

Workshop: Charity, Justice and God’s Call for Economic Justice

“Charity, Justice and God’s Call for Economic Justice” is an interactive workshop that draws on Christian faith teachings that direct us to work for economic justice. The prophet Micah said: “What does the Lord require of us: To love kindness, do justice and walk humbly with our God.” Participants learn about the importance of doing both charity and justice and the key differences between the two. Charity is acts of kindness while justice challenges and correct unfair and unjust power relationships that create exploitation and oppression.

Based in a faith perspective, participants learn about the root causes of the profound shift from a broadly shared prosperity to a prosperity and security that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy and corporations. The primary goal of the workshop is to connect their faith while actively working for greater economic justice which will create a more economically just and secure nation for all. In doing so, we live our faithful call to “Love kindness, do justice and walk humbly with our God.”