White Light Black Light

The New York Times Book Review stated that Ralph Nader’s book, The Good Fight, is fundamentally a call to action. Last week when I attended Ralph Nader’s talk at Westfield State College I understood why. His first point is that we do not expect/demand enough of our government; we should ask for more. Why sit back and not ask? One concept was to teach civic citizen classes as he sees a decline in understanding or caring. He went on to discuss ‘community economic self-reliance’ - “let’s put some meaning into community,” he stated.

His community economic self-reliance words produced a large shoutout to credit unions and discussed their importance as cooperatives of the people. And, then he gave the example of the Schumacher Society and BerkShares, another very interesting concept.

I can’t write here the passion in his talk but from the few sentences above, I think you get his message. He believes we have been brought to “ouch”, yes, I think we are all feeling that pain; and believes that more of us need “fire in our bellies” so we can deter “ouch” in the future!

// posted by Alice @ Monday, February 09, 2009