An off-the-cuff essay, written not for any particular occasion, but just to get it out of me. It’s probably mostly common knowledge (among people on the green left), just maybe not well articulated yet, and too easily forgotten. Politically, we’re all playing a little catch-up these days. Understanding the apparent global turn we are seeing […]
Posts Tagged ‘left politics’
On civility
Posted in Cultural politics, tagged body politic, civics, civillity, communicative discourse, illiberalism, incivility, left politics, Politics, post-truth, Trump on July 13, 2018 | 3 Comments »
Some say the problem in today’s political world is the lack of civility. Others say the problem is civility itself, or the pretense of it (and use of it as a bludgeon), when what is called for is outrage. It seems to me that there is no universal “civility.” Civility is a matter of fitting […]
Hysteria, or hope?
Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged Charlottesville, cultural left, democracy, fascism, hope, hysteria, left, left politics, political left, Trump era on August 29, 2017 | 20 Comments »
Based on its title and on the snippets I saw being quoted, I fully expected to dislike Lee Jones’ article “Charlottesville and the Politics of Left Hysteria,” posted a few days ago at The Current Moment. Instead, I’ve found it nuanced, cogent, and well worth reading. I myself have tried to broach this topic of the […]
Green pilgrimage & global civil religion
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged ecopolitics, ecotheology, fundamentalism, global civil religion, globalism, globalization, left politics, pilgrimage, religion on October 5, 2010 | 7 Comments »
I’m getting ready to head to Spain, where I’ve been invited to give a talk on “green pilgrimage” at the Fourth Colloquium Compostela. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ll be speaking about. Green Pilgrimage: Prospects for Ecology and Peace-Building
Copenhagen: changing the climate of democracy
Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Politics, tagged ecopolitics, Hardt & Negri, left politics, Politics on December 17, 2009 | 7 Comments »
What makes COP-15 a turning point is that a new set of connections are being forged in the heat of the confrontation of active citizens from around the world with the reality of global political-economic power structures. Paul Hawken’s “largest movement in the world,” the movement of movements made up of environmental, social justice, and indigenous rights civil society organizations — which isn’t a movement yet until it begins to move and act in a coordinated manner — and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s “multitude” — the multiple and internally differentiated force that is, or that can become, capable of acting in common toward a global democracy — are both being born today, in the stark meeting of global justice activism with ecological reality.