Gloria Steinem's speech at Bioneers Conference 2011

Bioneers is generously sharing some of these talks.  Here's Gloria Steinem:


Gloria Steinem at Bioneers 2011 from Bioneers on Vimeo.

Bioneers Conference 2011 - 14-16 October 2011 - San Rafael,California

This is how Bioneers describes itself on their website www.bioneers.org, and I wanted you to understand who Bioneers are.

What is Bioneers?

A New Word.

Founder Kenny Ausubel coined the term Bioneers in 1990 to describe an emerging culture. Bioneers are social and scientific innovators from all walks of life and disciplines who have peered deep into the heart of living systems to understand how nature operates, and to mimic "nature's operating instructions" to serve human ends without harming the web of life. Nature's principles—kinship, cooperation, diversity, symbiosis and cycles of continuous creation absent of waste—can also serve as metaphoric guideposts for organizing an equitable, compassionate and democratic society. 

A Leading Source of Innovative Solutions.

As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, we provide a forum and social hub for education about solutions presented through the Bioneers Conference and our programs. Our media productions leverage this content to reach millions of people around the nation and the world with our award-winning radio series, Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature; anthology book series; television programs; and our interactive website. We act as a key source for the media, including third-party films and the press. Our DVDs, CDs and other educational materials are also used by colleges and schools and by community-based and other organizations to inform and inspire positive change at the local level.

An Annual Conference.

The Bioneers Conference is a leading-edge forum where you can see tomorrow today: a future environment of hope. Social and scientific innovators focus on breakthrough solutions inspired by nature and human ingenuity. These visionaries are already creating the healthy, diverse, equitable and beautiful world we want to live in—our legacy for future generations and the web of life on which our lives depend. You can connect with hundreds or thousands of engaged folks making a real difference.

In 2008, more than 12,000 people attended our main Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California and 18 local Beaming Bioneers satellite conferences across the country. Bioneers fosters connection, cross-pollination and collaboration by bringing together diverse people and projects. We link strategic networks at the local, regional, national and international levels.

A Systemic Framework.

The bioneers are engaged citizens from all backgrounds and fields who focus on solving our world’s most urgent problems within a framework of interdependence: It's all connected. Just as the web of life is intricately interconnected, so too are all environmental and social issues. We take a "solve-the-whole-problem" approach that is holistic, systemic and multidisciplinary.

A Network of Networks.

Bioneers fosters connection, cross-pollination and collaboration by bringing together diverse people and projects within a broadly progressive framework. We connect people with solutions and grow social capital for positive change by linking strategic networks on the local, regional, national and international levels.

A Catalyst for Restoration.

Sustainability is the dynamic midpoint between perpetual natural cycles of destruction and restoration. In this severely damaged and depleted world, we need to tip the scales toward restoration, regeneration and resilience to sustain the web of life for future generations.

An Oasis of Hope.

As a celebration of the dazzling genius of people and nature, Bioneers helps spark mass creativity and engagement. As author and social entrepreneur Paul Hawken said, "Bioneers is central to the re-imagination of what it means to be human."

Here is a link that will give you the program of the conference - http://www.bioneers.org/conference/2011-bioneers-program

As you can see, I am overwhelmed by how to present the conference experience.  I can't do it.  But I think I'll at least list the speakers my sister, Joan, and I listened to while we were there:

Friday
(Among other things to kick off the conference was a performance by R. Carlos Nakai, whose music was so important to me over the years.  He is native American (Navajo/Ute) and plays a reed flute.  I remember soaking in my bathtub late at night, with candles lit, listening to Carlos Nakai.)

Opening remarks by co-founders Kenny Asubel and his wife, Nina Simons, are always so eloquent, inspiring and profound.  It would be worth the price of admission to just hear them talk.

John D. Liu
Restoration Writ Large:  Unleashing the Potential of Nature and People for Large-Scale Ecosystem Restoration


Karen Brown
Revolutionizing K-12 Education with Sustainability in Mind


Roxanne Brown
Blue and Green:  Working Together to Secure a Sustainable Future


Rebecca Moore
Google Earth-Eye View:  Mapping Futue Environment of Hope


Gloria Steinem
When Women Are People... and Corporations Are Not:  Why the First Inequality Will Also Be The Last


Saturday


Paul Stamets
Solutions from the Underground:  How Muchrooms Can Help Save the World


Natalia Greene (Equador)
The Rights of Nature:  An Idea Whose Time Has Come


Joshua Fouts
The Emerging Imagination Age


Anim Steel
The Real Food Challenge


Amory Lovins
Reinventing Fire


Sunday


Melissa Nelson (Anishinaabe/Metis)
Revitalizing Indegeneity:  Eco-Cultural Knowledge and Reciprocity


Dayna Baumeister
Life's Operating Manual


Pam Rajput
Voices for Peace and Sustainable Development - The First Women's Parliament of India


Mary Evelyn Tucker
The Power of Story


Phillipe Cousteau
Continuing a Legacy:  Building a Sustainable World in the 21st Century




One of my quandries about how to present this was, for example, do I list the people who introduced the speakers?  That was an impressive group of people too.  sigh   You can fill a lot of gaps if you're interested by checking through the program (link is above).  Short bios of all the speakers and presenters are there.  The afternoons were filled with workshops on the most interesting subjects.

Here is what I chose to attend:

No Women, No Democracy:  From the Streets of Cairo to Your Family
My sister attended Leveraging White Privilege Toward Beloved Community


Thereafter, we did not attend any of the afternoon workshops because we had so far to travel to get to my daughter's house before dark.  But this is what I had signed up for:

Leadership at the Nexus:  When Women Thrive, Communities Thrive


I did attend this one:  Moonrise:  A Whole Systems Inquiry into Women Reinventing Leadership


Re-Envisioniing Education:  Transforming Schools to Cultivate the Wisdom of the Young


Campaign Connection:  Pursuing Happiness Instead of Chasing Growth - Creating a Happiness Initiative in Your Community


Genetic Engineering:  The Battle for Safe Food, Public Health and Environmental Sovereignty


Love That Works:  Developing an Ecology of Love and Unlocking the Mystery of Transformative Intimacy


Take a look at the program, and you will see that there are sooooo many diverse subjects being worked on.

Here are the few photos I took:

Marin Center, San Rafael, California where the conference is held

The workshops were spread around in different rooms, auditorium or tents

View from across the lake

Lots of juicy information all over the place

Imogen Heap and another musician performing.  She entertained a couple times and was terrific.

Gloria Steinem was impressive and inspiring

One of my workshops

Destiny Arts
"Destiny Arts Center is an Oakland, CA-based nonprofit violence prevention and arts education organization whose mission is to end isolation, prejudice and violence in the lives of young people....."

6-13 October 2011 - London, California

My husband and I left our home in Coonoor, taking a taxi to Coimbatore airport where we flew to Chennai.    I flew on to London later that day; Gopal took a train to Delhi.

I landed in London on the 5th, went sightseeing on the 6th, then flew on to San Francisco the following day.

Dexter met me at SFO dressed in a kurta pajama I had bought him years ago.  He looked so cute,  I couldn't believe it!  (Turns out his parents had bribed him to wear the outfit.)

The first full day in Oakland, we all went for a walk.
Ramon, Dexter, Suzie

A little snake we encountered on our walk

One of the first things I did was put a bird feeder outside Dexter's bedroom window.   (No birds ever fed from it while I was there.)

On Monday, the 10th, I went to see my friend Tilak and his wife Nandani, who had come recently from Nepal.  It was magical to see her in the U.S. with him.  And it was nice to see Tilak's mother, Laxmi.

On Wednesday, Suzie's friend Jenny brought her new baby, Ellory, over to show us.  Suzie had a hard time keeping her hands off that baby. 

Jenny with Ellory's older brother, Oli

The next day my sister, Joan, came to stay over so we could go to the Bioneers Conference the following day.  Our brother, Todd, and his wife, Sharon, came by to eat take-out pizza and salad with all of us.  Coincidentally, it was Sharon's birthday.  It was fun.

#Occupy!

My daughter had sent me an essay by Russell Brand regarding Amy Winehouse's death.  Today she sent me this one by Brand, which I really appreciate.  Enjoy.

#occupy

October 20th, 2011

Among the many triumphs of the Occupy Wall Street movement (a campaign so alive with zeitgeist that I feel here obligated to reference its proper title – #OccupyWallStreet) is the remarkable sense of occasion that accompanies the phenomenon. Since it began a month ago I’ve been subliminally transfixed. Then, like a baffled alien abductee, I unwittingly found myself first transplanted from Los Angeles to Manhattan then suddenly somnambu-jogging through Tribeca to Zuccotti Park, lured by a peculiar certainty that I simply had to be there.
Leaving my apartment with an objective no grander than to go for a run I somehow landed amidst Zuccotti’s tarpaulin sprawl in unforgivable leggings and a headband that would have had Alice reaching for a shard of cracked looking-glass.

There can be few cultures that would unthinkingly welcome into their fold a man dressed as I was in the macabre attire of a spandex scarecrow but the occupants of this pop up civilization offered me first food, then shelter and then, incredibly, hope that we can change the world.

Of course, this may seem like cock-eyed optimism given that physically the site resembles a Kenyan slum, all slung together wigwams, a Toy-Town medi-centre and a cardboard-igloo library, but whilst the visible structures may be flimsy they are held together by an invisible scaffold of ideals founded upon the thing the establishment fears most; the will of the people.

During my first accidental visit I chatted with an enthralling bunch, notably a beautiful group of teenagers, righteous and idealistic and interestingly mellow. I suppose they differ from the London teens that last month took a starkly contrasting course of action from the same impetus of frustration, in that while they may be similarly disenfranchised, they believe in the possibility of change.

Brianna who is seventeen, pagan-pretty and dusky, is attending college by day and occupying Wall Street by night like some heart wrenching cross between Pocahontas and Batman, said that young people are entitled to an education without being bound to a lifetime of debt. Whilst “Messiah” (there’s a lot of those names flying about, go with it; it’s a small price to pay for Utopia) literally danced into the conversation and self consciously, but touchingly, divided up and shared a stick of gum in a “Sermon on the Mount” brought to us by Juicy Fruit. You might think, that given her name, that was the least she could do, but we’re talking about a sixteen-year-old girl here. If Fox News and the Daily Mail are to be believed I’m damn lucky she didn’t shiv me in the guts and film it on her phone.

Here in Zuccotti Square these young people clearly felt safe, purposeful, included and behaved with charm, compassion and respect. Naturally I was impressed but more agitated than ever by my jogging outfit. Really, it’s terrible, I mean if we’re going to bring about systemic and meaningful social change, I want to be dressed for it.

The next day I returned to learn more, in a very fetching scarf with my friend Daniel Pinchbeck the brilliant writer, radical and ludicrously, yet truthfully titled “psychedelic Shaman”.

One of the movement’s significant principles is that there are no appointed leaders. That said, there are more experienced and pragmatic inhabitants to whom Daniel and I chatted. We were given a tour of the site and in spite of the lashing rain and gales, which I, of course regarded as the winds of change and cleansing rain, all we encountered were bonhomous and welcoming. Much more than I’d anticipated. Let’s face facts, one of the campaign’s few edicts is to provide the unrepresented 99% with a voice, had I, when I fitted into that demographic, chanced upon a touring celebrity I would have used that voice to tell him to fuck off, no matter how nice his scarf was.

Perhaps it is this ambience of inclusion, of acceptance and indeed of love that has brought #OccupyWallStreet such success. There is a remarkable absence of anger and resentment which is why the movement resonates so deeply. Is this movement’s implicit goal to reengage our humanity? To reach beyond the political, the national and other illusory, temporary concepts and into our true, spiritual nature?

Justin, our volunteer tour guide was smiling and patient, especially with my incessant questioning about where people go to the toilet; mostly in McDonald’s it transpires – I’m glad Ronald and the Hamburglar at last have a chance to atone for their mucky past and eery jocundity. The sense of cohesion and civic duty in the square, which many call Liberty Square, its former title, was something I found appealing. In my country, England, and across the world there is amongst older people an irritation at the breakdown of traditional values, a grudge against apathetic and uncaring youth, atomized and X-box agog, indifferent to their culture, abstracted from their land.

Here young men who would typically be drenched in spittle-flecked “Get a job” rage diligently join committees for sanitation, cooking and on site security. A voluntary conscription to the cause of change. A nation founded on ideals of harmony and responsibility, on representing the whole, built here in a privately owned square. The ownership of the Square, explained David, a seasoned and visionary activist, is important as the New York Real Estate Group who represent the interests of the powerful institutions to whom this movement is a threat, are now desperate to implement legislative change that will ensure the Occupation will be curtailed and not repeated. Clearly this is no simple undertaking as demonstrated when the suspicious attempts to vacate the Square for cleaning were abandoned. It is unlike Mayor Bloomberg to back down but David outlined this movement is unlike anything this country has ever seen.

Other protestors took the time to educate me on the matters that had brought them to the square. One purple haired, perfect skinned occupant told me beneath the billow and crack of the turbulent tarpaulin that in 2009 24% of American families with children were at some point too poor to buy food. Hunger. It doesn’t get more basic than that. Another lad, black and bright eyed with spectacles that I suspect-acle didn’t have glass in them, informed me that 50 million Americans do not have health care. Perhaps that’s why his glasses weren’t finished.

Of course these problems are not unique to America, they are the symptoms of a global epidemic, said a lady who was there speaking on behalf of the Mexican Zapatista movement using the already iconic “Human Mic” system in which staccato sentences are truncated and repeated by the crowd. A charming and inspiring instant cultural artifact.

A Scotsman there told me that he considered this to be America’s class awakening, that the 99% are a contemporary proletariat existing in opposition to an oligarchical 1%. A business class that have been steadily waging a clandestine class war through market deregulation and psychopathic economic exploitation. The surprisingly sanguine Scot told me that now this exploitation is reaching critical mass, too many families are affected, too many people are losing jobs, too many people across our planet cannot put food on their family’s table for this behavior to continue unopposed.

As I listened, Johnny, a wild-eyed wolf man drummer, continued the burgeoning rhythm, a slow, comforting nocturnal heartbeat.

Later, leaving the McDonald’s lavvy (the staff were lovely and friendly and seemed to really like the protestors; recognizing perhaps whose interests were being represented) we exploited corporate facilities further by questioning Bill, a seasoned campaigner, in Dirty Ron’s boutique brand, Pret a Manger.

Bill has been an activist for many years primarily with the early campaigns to bring awareness and justice to sufferers of HIV and AIDS. He said there were similarities with the #OccupyWallStreet movement in terms of the bureaucratic obstacles and official reluctance, but that this huge issue of social inequality, of unbearable economic disparity has a veracity and velocity that was difficult even for those on the ground floor to anticipate.

Daniel Pinchbeck proposes that we are entering an era of profound change of consciousness. That capitalism has provided our civilization with the machinery of mass communication and with it potential global union.

It occurs that the relentless charge of vagueness leveled at this movement may be it’s great strength. The reason there is no candid agenda is because a spiritual shift this seismic is initially difficult to legislate.

I think another attractive distinction that #OccupyWallStreet has is that unlike a lot of pious “Lefty” movements it’s a riot down there – I mean in the sense of “fun” not the kind of riots I was arrested at as a boy. Why, I met a fellow in a skin-tight stars and stripes gimp suit, all covered with scribbles and slogans. I’m not ashamed to admit that in the giddiness of the moment I quite forgot myself and unzipped his mouth and planted a kiss on his full lips. Only after did I ask his sexual orientation which he described as “open minded”, the perv.

As I was leaving, my outfit compromised once more by the addition of a freely given plastic poncho (it wasn’t really a poncho it was a sack, I had to chew my way out of it to make a head-hole, even then I was hardly Clint Eastwood but I had to do something about my hair. Plus my ascot was by now ruined) a bloke I spoke to, a former US government employee, a Doogie Howser Deepthroat, told me of the fear the movement had generated amongst politicians. #OccupyWallStreet has no recognizable funding, an anomaly the government does not know how to address. Typically public protests are funded by non-profit organizations that are easy to hound, and behind them foundations that would yield to political intimidation. But this amorphous, righteous, global collective is impossible to buy, too popular to repress and too peaceful to oppose militarily. Those in power for the first time in two generations are being confronted with something they don’t understand, and they are afraid.

As I walked home to my 1% apartment I felt incredibly hopeful, the benevolence and enlightenment of the Zuccotti tribe alleviated my feelings of hypocrisy, at least for now. Looking back through the media trucks and flash bulbs it was apparent that they have colonized more than the formerly anonymous square, they have colonized the international agenda. All about the surveillance cameras observe, the police look on.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is already a success on the most basic of principles; it’s own simple objective as stated in its name has been met- Wall Street is occupied. At least Zuccotti Park is, this once architecturally banal plaza, framed by silently thundering corporate tombstones, is becoming both the graveyard of a deceased economic dogma and the cradle of the revolution.

America is awake and with it the American dream has awoken.

Birds around our new home

Hoopoe (We can hear her, but haven't seen her here yet.)

Common Flameback (Singara Tea Estate)

Common Myna (Live and feed near the house.)

Long-tailed Shrike (Saw in the neighborhood.)

House Crow (We feed; they come to remind us.)

Large-billed Crow (We feed.)

House Sparrow (We feed.)

Jungle Babbler (Singara Tea Estate and neighborhood.)

Oriental Magpie Robin (Neighborhood.)

Pied Bushchat (Singara Tea Estate and neighborhood.  Tiny bird.)

Red-Whiskered Bulbul (We feed.)

Rock Pigeon (Transcient; we feed)

Spotted Dove (We feed thirteen.)

Grey Wagtail (who paddles and bobs through the puddle on the roof next door)

6-21 September 2011

Here are some pictures we have taken on our walks.

Apurva, Govindharajan's youngest, surprised us with a visit on the 15th.  On the 16th she stayed overnight while her father travelled on business.  She's sweet and fun.  We enjoyed her stay with us.

Carolyn and Apurva at Singara

We couldn't find a name for this guy, but it looks like some kind of ground beetle.  It's 3" long!

I found this flower at the Taj hotel where I take yoga.

From the side.  Isn't that elegant?

When we moved into our new house, I cried because I couldn't have the bird feeders and bird bath I was used to.  Now, we throw feed over the driveway out back to the roof behind the house where birds come to feed.  And the rain provides large pools of water for them to drink and bathe in.

Here's a Grey Wagtail, a marsh person who comes to pad around in the  water.  His long tail bobs behind him the whole time as if he bends his knees and bounces as he walks.

Here are Spotted Doves

And this guy is a pup who lives nearby.  Very sweet and needing love.