Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

In this special episode of the Bioneers, guest host Laura Flanders explores “Community Wealth Building,” a model that democratizes the economy, creates more cooperative businesses, better care for communities, and builds wealth for the many, not just the few. This episode features American political economist, historian, and author Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, along with India Pierce Lee about her work with the Collaborative in Cleveland, Ohio; and John McMicken, Executive Director of Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperative Corporation.

This episode is part 1 of a 4-part series exploring how communities are working to transform their local economies by harnessing their assets, anchoring capital and resources locally to directly invest in that place and its people – from land to money and finance. Explore the full series here.

Laura Flanders is the host and executive producer of Laura Flanders & Friends, which airs on PBS stations nationwide. She is an Izzy-Award winning independent journalist, a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Media Center.

This series is co-produced by Bioneers and Laura Flanders & Friends

Laura Flanders & Friends Producers: Laura Flanders and Abigail Handel

Production Assistance: Jeannie Hopper and David Neumann

Bioneers Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer: Stephanie Welch

Producer: Teo Grossman

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Democracy Collaborative

Evergreen Cooperatives

How to Make a Democratic Economy | Laura Flanders & Friends

Action Guide for Advancing Community Wealth Building in the United States | Democracy Collaborative

Gar Alperovitz – Replacing Corporate Capitalism: Why We Need a Next System | Bioneers 2018 Keynote

Our Economic Future: Achieving a More Equitable Society by Radically Rethinking Our Guiding Economic Ideas | Bioneers Reader

In this moment of radical transformation, shifting the societal pronoun from “me, me, me” to “we” may be the single most transformational pivot we can make in order for anything else to work. Our destiny is ultimately collective.

How can we overcome corrosive divisions and separations that are tearing us apart and create a world where everyone belongs?

In this program, we dip into a deep conversation on this topic between Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell, two long-time friends and leaders in a quest toward building a multicultural democracy.

Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder-in-Residence at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity. One of the nation’s most prominent, award-winning social justice advocates, she serves on numerous boards and advisory councils, including the inaugural Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve and California’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery.

john a. powell is the Director of the Othering and Belonging Institute and Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. A former National Legal Director of the ACLU, he co-founded the Poverty & Race Research Action Council and serves on the boards of several national and international organizations. His latest book is: Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

From Othering to Belonging | Bioneers 2022 Panel Discussion with Angela Glover Blackwell and john a. powell

Angela Glover Blackwell – Transformative Solidarity for a Thriving Multiracial Democracy | Bioneers 2022 Keynote Address

john a. powell – Healing Across Divides: Building Bridges to Challenge Systemic Injustice | Bioneers 2020 Keynote Address

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

What does it mean to bring the “feminine” forward in leadership from diverse cultural and ethnic perspectives? How might a spectrum of views help us to integrate relational intelligence into all our leadership? This hour long special features poet Noris Binet; Nikki Silvestri, former Executive Director of Green for All and The People's Grocery and Pat McCabe, or Woman Stands Shining, a Navajo teacher working on Indigenous frameworks for gender and all of life.

Ever since women won the right to vote in 1920, women leaders and their allies have sought to pass an Equal Rights Amendment to drive total equality and justice for women into the U.S. Constitution. It did pass in 1972, but fell three states short of ratification. Today’s next wave of the women’s movement might finally make the ERA a reality. Why is Constitutional protection so crucial? Join leading advocates Joan Blades (MomsRising co-founder), attorney Kimberle Crenshaw and Jessica Neuwirth (ERA Coalition President) to learn the true story of what’s at stake and how life would be different and better for women and men.

To learn more about Kimberle Crenshaw’s work, visit the African American Policy Forum.  You can follow Joan Blades work at MomsRising, and Living Room Conversations. Follow the progress Jessica Neuwirth and others are making with the ERA Coalition.

See related media in our Green New Deal Media Collection.

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Global healing requires a spiritual transformation of every aspect of life. Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine, author/educator Matthew Fox and Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher and scholar of Buddhism speak of the profound interconnectedness of all life and the experience of joy, courage and community we need to engage in the healing of the world.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. From the historic Indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969 to the fossil fuel fights throughout Canada and the U.S. today, Indigenous resistance illuminates an activism founded in a spiritual connection with the web of life and the human community - with Julian NoiseCat, Dr. LaNada War Jack and Clayton Thomas Müller.

Faulty Infrastructure and the Impacts of the Dakota Access Pipeline | 2022 NDN Collective Climate Justice Report

From Alcatraz to Standing Rock and Beyond: On the Past 50 and Next 50 Years of Indigenous Activism | 2019 Bioneers Indigenous Forum

Julian Brave NoiseCat – Apocalypse Then & Now | 2021 Bioneers Keynote Address

Bioneers Indigeneity Curriculum | Free resources for educators covering Alcatraz, Standing Rock, and more

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Kenny Ausubel

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

Producer: Teo Grossman

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Production Assistance: Monica Lopez

Special thanks to Cara Romero and Alexis Bunten, co-producers of the Bioneers Indigeneity Forum.

This program features music by Justin Delorme, Chippewa Travelers and Mimi O’Bonsawin from Nagamo Publishing at Nagamo.ca.

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

We plug into the real world Matrix – the digital Wild West of surveillance capitalism that dominates this Age of Information. Behind it is the unholy alliance between Big Tech and Big Brother. Privacy is the first casualty and democracy dies with it. Our guide is Cindy Cohn, director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, with her decades of experience challenging digital authoritarianism.

Cindy Cohn, the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation since 2015, served as EFF’s Legal Director as well as its General Counsel from 2000 to 2015. Among other honors, Ms. Cohn was named to The Non-Profit Times 2020 Power & Influence TOP 50 list, and in 2018, Forbes included Ms. Cohn as one of America’s Top 50 Women in Tech.

Cindy Cohn – The Climate Fight is Digital | Bioneers 2024 Keynote

Tools from Electronic Frontier Foundation

Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel

Written by: Kenny Ausubel

Additional production and writing: Leo Hornak

Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch

Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris

Producer: Teo Grossman

Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Labor organizer and Founder of One Fair Wage, Saru Jayaraman, takes us inside one of the fiercest labor struggles to challenge a mighty oligarchy: The food, beverage and restaurant industry. Workers are walking off the job and refusing historically low wages. She says if “we the people” stand with workers as they face this powerful lobby, they can win.

Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, co-founded (after 9/11) the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. Saru has won many prestigious awards for her advocacy and is the author of four books including: One Fair Wage: Ending All Subminimum Pay in America and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning.

Saru Jayaraman – The Great Revolution: What A Worker Power Moment Can Mean for Climate Justice | Bioneers 2023 Keynote

Saru Jayaraman – We the People: Workers Rising for Fair Wages | Bioneers 2017 Keynote

Inside the Campaign to Abolish the Subminimum Wage in 25 States by 2026 | Inequality.org

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

In a world that’s unraveling from climate disruption and gaping inequality, another climate crisis confronts us: the climate of hate and othering. Award-winning scholar and educator Valarie Kaur says to overcome racism and nationalism, we must not succumb to rage and grief. As someone who has spent much of her life challenging horrific injustices and intolerance, Kaur learned the lesson that historical nonviolent change-makers understood: social movements must be grounded in an ethic of love. She founded the Revolutionary Love Project, and has emerged as one of the most important voices of the American Sikh community, and a highly influential faith leader on the national stage.

Valarie Kaur, born into a family of Sikh farmers who settled in California in 1913, is a seasoned civil rights activist, award-winning filmmaker, lawyer, faith leader, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project, which seeks to champion love as a public ethic and wellspring for social action.

The theme music is co-written by the Baka Forest People of Cameroon and Baka Beyond, from the album East to West. Find out more at globalmusicexchange.org.

Additional music was made available by:

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

Aligning business with biology, disruptive design uses systems thinking to create models that show what “good” really looks like. Two winners of the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award-visionary architect Jason McLennan of the acclaimed Living Building Challenge and entrepreneur Cheryl Dahle of The Future of Fish-demonstrate breakthrough systems designs that can transform major industries, create a healthy sustainable environment and make life beautiful and fun.

Jason McLennan – From Reconciliation to Regeneration

Deep Community Resilience: Preparing for the Coming Age, Place-By-Place | Jason F. McLennan

Child-Centered Planning: A New Specialized Pattern Language Tool | Jason F. McLennan

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.