Here is a poem I wrote, after hearing an amazing head teacher, called Jill Wood speaking about why she had taken the decision for her Year 6 Students not to take their SATS tests (compulsory exams for our 11 year old in England). She was giving her “enough now” to the detrimental effects testing can have on children. Here is what she inspired in me:
My kids love to know who my wife and I are voting for and we want to be a family that talks about this kind of stuff around our dinner table. So we told them “this year, we’re firmly nailing our green colours to the mast”. They didn’t know what that meant, so we told them – “we’re voting GREEN”!
I’ve read a surprising amount of the manifestos of each of the parties this year. Before doing so, I was highly inclined not to vote at all as I feel the political class/system is so out of touch with real life and there seems to be little radical voice in the arena. However, I have become hopeful that the Green party really are standing for some hugely important issues and offering a real alternative.
Here is my summary of why I am voting green:
A New Politics – Caroline Lucas has not been afraid to challenge the status quo. I believe we must find an inclusive, love based politics if we are going to find a new and reimagined future together. I believe the Green party are truest to this hope. I also love the gentle, gracious, intelligent and firm leadership of Natalie Bennett – for me, she was outstanding in the leaders’ debate and held her nerve in the face of the ‘old boys club’. As a feminist, I am passionate about seeing women fully instated in leadership, not just ‘talked-up’. The leadership we are seeing from Natalie and Caroline is of a different order from the brash, bullying, testosterone-fuelled alternatives. 
Healthcare – It might surprise some, as a GP that I say this, but for me the Greens have a serious and well thought through health policy. Their health policy is more holistic and more just (for those who need health care the most) than any of the other parties. I have to say, both Labour and the Lib Dems are also saying some great stuff, but overall, the Greens are willing to shift the conversation to where we need it to go – from an illness model towards promoting health and wellbeing.
Education – Our children have become commodities of the economic state. I love that the Greens are talking far more holistically and compassionately about the future of our children. 
Environment – It needs hardly be said, but this issue is actually going to kill us and we need some people in government who are going to help us make some massive changes to our energy supplies and the ways we are choosing to live. Their view is comprehensive and holistic. The raping of the earth’s resources and high CO2 levels are far more dangerous than the threat of terrorism. We must face this hard truth and act now.
Defence and International Development – Here we have a dual policy that makes sense. Stop our own hypocritical nuclear arsenal and make for positive peace by tackling poverty in the developing world.
Economy – Huge fresh creation of new jobs in making the world more beautiful through green technologies, massive investment back into the public sector and encouraging those of us more able to be less self-protective and share the greater burden of taxation, rather than crushing the poor whilst the rich get ever richer. I also like that they will hold banks and big business to better account.
Immigration – There are too many awful lies being peddled about asylum seekers and refugees. I believe in open borders and intercultural rich diversity. I believe in interdependence and love, not fear, independence and hate.
Justice – A fresh look at the criminal justice system, with a move towards restorative justice is from my perspective the only way to go.
Voting – I refuse to be told that my vote will be a wasted vote. I am fed up of the arrogance of the system that tells me there are only two alternatives. The old politics is over. We are entering the day of coalitions and finding our way to a wholly different kind of political system. I am voting Green, not to be tactical, not to be pig-headed, not out of fear, but because I believe they genuinely hold the brightest torch for the things that matter the most not for me, but for everyone. We cannot vote out of selfish self-protectionism. We must position ourselves for the future generations and the future of this planet. That is why I am voting GREEN!
For a long time I have been convinced that we cannot reimagine the future if we do not redefine our relationship with money. A number of years ago I read a book by a chap called Alan Kreider in which he was talking about how we foster community. He said that the sad truth is, until we’re able to talk about money in a free and open way and sort out our finances, we can never truly learn to be community.
Since the financial crash of 2008, I have been fascinated to watch the unfolding interplay between the banking sector and the ‘political elite’. We suffered a massive earthquake, the after shocks continue and serve as a warning that more disaster is on its way; but we have an hilarious situation in which the politicians tell us that by some weird combination of printing more money, tightening our belts or spending more (depending on who your finance minister is!), punishing the poor and ‘regulating the banks’, whilst bailing them out, we will somehow recover from this trauma, so that we can continue business as usual. But it is business as usual that caused this crisis and it is business as usual that will lead us back into one.
I have been disappointed by the lack of alternatives discussed in the public political arena. In my mind, it matters very little which party is in power, as the general direction of all of the current alternatives is towards future growth of the economy with more of humanity and the earth itself becoming fodder to the ever hungry machine. Here in the UK, the conservatives tell us that austerity is the answer, and we must particularly blame the ‘feckless poor’ for the mess we are in. The labour party tell us that actually spending more is the answer, but the responsibility must lie with the ‘greedy rich’. The liberals are lost at sea and seem to have forgotten what liberalism is, (at least for a while) and then UKIP arrive to offer the ‘heroic’ idea that what we really need is self protectionism, independence and more patriotism. Kill me now.
And yet, we remain in an amazing moment of anomy, in which many, the commons, the multitudes are undeniably calling into question meaning and purpose at a profound level. We are at the fullness of what Foucault calls ‘Biopwer’ – the commodification of life itself. And people are sick of it. People are sick of feeling like they are being eaten 
up like bread in order to keep the economy going, to keep the targets met, to keep the debts serviced. I see teacher after social worker after nurse after builder after sales person have breakdowns in my consulting room, because they can no longer stand under the rod of their oppressors. I see managers and directors having breakdowns as they realise they are losing touch with their own humanity and for what? Is this what we were made for? Is this the best we had hoped for? But it is in these moments that we must allow the songs of ‘Les Miserables’ to become our own – “Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry men, it the music of a people who will NOT be slaves again….”
There is a sound emerging in our hearts, there is a rumbling in the people, there is a hope rising in our hearts that this dog eat dog world of violence and suffering is not the future we must endure. There is an alternative. There is a possible future of peace and love, but raging against the machine and losing our voices shouting at it may not accomplish very much – at least that is what I am learning! I have ranted to myself and others many times, but what has it achieved? Perhaps a stirring of hearts, perhaps a rising of hope, perhaps a new determination that life can and will be different for the multitudes. But ranting will not suffice, nor dreaming alone. It is time for brave acts, to disregard the powers and to begin to be creative.
But our creativity must be both prophetic and practical, experimental and pragmatic. We call for a new future and we live differently. And so, we must redefine our relationship with money, not do away with it, but refine what we mean by ‘money’ and ‘the economy’. With that in mind, I want to do some blog posts on a phenomenal book I have just finished entitled ‘Sacred Economics’ by Charles Eisenstein. It gives voice to 
many things I and others have thought about but lacked the understanding or language to communicate. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Charles believes in the creative commons, when it comes to copyright – (check out their website), so I am free to copy passages of his book where that is helpful, but I want to honour the brilliant work he has done. He gives a brilliant history lesson in our relationship with money, how it has led to an age of separation where community is broken down and we have lost relationship with one another and the earth, how we recover a ‘gift economy’ and how we practically move forward to “the more beautiful future our hearts tell us is possible.” I hope the coming blogs are inspirational, encouraging and practical.
The photo “revolution is taken by Tim Pierce. http://www.flickr.com/photos/qwrrty/6209634263/
reimaginingthefuture 