A man named Brian has a good life – a wife, a newborn baby – then he learns he has brain cancer. The treatments exhaust his health insurance, leaving him without coverage for the recovery.

His friends band together and raise money so he can receive the appropriate care.

This happens across the United States every day. Is this a smaller part of the social movement towards a national healthcare/Medicare for All government run health insurance? Or is this just a fundraiser?

It is real. "Benefit for Brian" will be an all-day concert in Simsbury on Sunday, May 2, 2010 to help defray the medical expenses associated with Brian's battle with brain cancer.

I don't know who Brian is, but the flyer I found advertising the fundraiser said: "Brian was diagnosed with brain cancer after undergoing two surgeries to remove a large tumor from his brain, and he is going to require a long and expensive recovery."

Local rock musicians like Flipper Dave, Shortness, the Dr. Juice Trio and Matt Zeiner will perform at the Old Well, a restaurant at 20 Tariffville Road in Simsbury from 2 to 10 p.m. There will be food and a raffle to help raise money.

If the community rallying around Brian isn’t heartwarming enough, the picture of Brian holding his newborn infant on the flyer will grab your heart and make you want to go. But I found this flyer interesting from a social movement perspective.

Is the "Benefit for Brian," and the dozens of other similar fundraisers held across the country every day to help fellow citizens pay for outrageous medical costs an indication of a nascent parallel polis, the signature steps in a social movement that will eventually overcome the dominant health care structure?

A social movement begins with contemporaneous personal and collective identification with the consequences of the control exercised by the elite, and that this is a wrong being perpetrated on undeserving people, according to author Edward L. Rubin in "Passing Through the Door: Social Movement Literature and Legal Scholarship," as published in 150 University of Pennsylvania Law Review, page 1.

 

More Parallel Polis: Benefit for Brian as a Social Movement

Pension funds, the massive trove of public money earmarked to provide a secure retirement for government workers, can always be counted on to stir up controversy.

 

MDC chairman Bill DiBella recently paid almost $800,000 in fines to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission because of kickbacks he received from former state treasurer Paul Silvester's investment of pension monies in certain market funds.

 

The city of Fairfield, Connecticut lost almost $42 million because it invested with ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff back in December 2008.

 

Then there's Oz Griebel, a Republican candidate for governor in Connecticut, who is preaching that public employees need to downgrade their expectations of fully-funded pension plans and accept market-driven 401k retirement plans like everyone else.

 

Back on March 2004, I wrote a column about pension funds called "Dump Stocks, Invest Locally." For me, the concept of putting city pension funds in a stock market which profits off the destruction of urban areas seemed counterintuitive and indeed, counterproductive.

 

And six years later, I think we need to revisit the concept of investing pension funds in local business opportunities.

 

In March 2004, Hartford City Treasurer Kathleen Palm Devine and I spoke about using pension funds as a community economic development engine in what are called economically targeted investments.

 

At that time, she told me pension funds are not for rebuilding Hartford. Palm detailed her own 40 year plan for securing the pension fund, and land was not among the six classes of assets she targeted for investment because land is illiquid.

 

Yet in 2004, Palm was getting some press because she was considering using city pension funds to finance the construction of residential brownstones on the empty parking lots between Buckingham and Capital.

Pension Funds as an economic engine - continued...

 

During the six years I have been writing this column, I criticized, praised and offered ideas. Many times, in the course of critiquing the current order of things, I have been asked, "What exactly do you want?"

 

The thought is that once you figure out what you want, you can determine how to get it. If self-government were only that easy.

 

I have given the "What do you want?" question considerable thought. I am going to spend the next hour (pre-deadline, of course), trying to hash out a reasonable answer, so that the next time I am asked: "What do you want?" I can answer it by saying something other than "This is not about what I want…"

 

If this sounds utopian, who cares? I make no apologies for what I want. I have tried to parse the logical consequences of my policy desires, and account for them. These are in no particular order, because I want them all equally.

 

This is what I want. I may not be able to get them, and some of these may be physiologically impossible given the human genetic makeup, but this is what I want.

 

I want an end to wars – religious wars, resource wars, water wars, information wars, wars on terror, wars on drugs, wars on poverty, war on dictators, wars on people, wars for profit. I want peace. Religious and spiritual tolerance and peace.

 

I want an end to regionalism, factionalism and parochialism. I want an end to colonialism, racism, ageism, sexism, and elitism. I want no flags, false flags or logo flags.

 

In the face of multinational corporations that cross borders with their capital easier than people can migrate to new lands, the nation-state is an out-moded means of social organization. People are not illegal.

 

Furthermore, with the Internet creating a vast repository of human knowledge and the ability to communicate instantaneously, and with the planet itself confronting humans with climate change, which could doom humanity, we need to organize as one people quick.

 

More on my ideas for policy- What Do I Want?....

 

The route to transformational politics lies in believing in the power of ideas, Bill Curry, lawyer and politico, told the Connecticut Green Party's monthly statewide meeting at the Portland Senior Center Tuesday, January 26, 2010.

 

"We have to believe that the power of ideas are stronger than the money," Curry said. "You have to believe that your ideas will organize people."

 

The United States was the most powerful force in the world before it had money, armies or even a foreign policy. The American revolution, fueled by ideas of egalitarianism, equality and liberty, toppled monarchies across Europe. This is the power of ideas that we need to harness now, Curry said.

 

With a hint of resignation about the current political configuration in America, Curry's visit to the Green Party represents a milestone. For months, even years, Curry has said that the two major political parties in America are the Greens and the Libertarians, as their ideas align most with the majority of the American peoples.

 

However, the collusion between the Democrats, Republicans and corporations prevents those ideas from gaining traction in the political information war of the early 21st century.

 

Curry isn't the first statewide political figure from the two major parties to meet with the Greens. Republican state representative Diana Urban met with the Greens in the Portland Library when she was considering running an anti-war candidacy for the U.S. Senate should Lamont have lost to Lieberman in the primaries.

 

While Urban ended up switching parties to become a Democrat, and never married with the Greens, the exigencies that prompted the visit from Curry remain. As Curry put it, the Democrats and Republicans may not get along, but they have slowly become infused in the corporate state that is the American government.

 

Curry told the crowd of 18 or so people, including Green Party faithful, new Green Party members, and John Mertens of the Connecticut for Lieberman party, who was stumping to become the Green Party nominee for U.S. Senate, that the time is ripe for the ideas of a third party to take center stage in the American political scene.

 

"The kind of change you are I are talking about requires real political parties," Curry said. "Real political parties build constituencies behind ideas."

 

The Democratic Party, he said, is a mere shell, with town committee meetings resembling Madame Tussaud's wax museum more than active debate.

 

While he hoped that the Green Party could fill that role, he warned that the Green Party was not there yet. Policies drive progress and organization, he said.

 

The Green Party, Curry said, has to work out internally policy ideas, and the actual blueprint for what this transformational politics will look like. "People will buy it, they just don't know it is available," he said.

 

Read More on Bill Curry and the Power of Ideas...

 

What would an Office of the Community Lawyer in Hartford be like?

 

If we model it on the Office of the Community Lawyer in Winsted, Connecticut, it would be a non-partisan civic resource for citizens, situated in an office on Main Street, where anyone can walk in for citizenship assistance.

 

"By taking the dollar signs off the courtroom door and replacing those with pro bono service signs, a community lawyer can enable citizens to exercise their legal rights against opponents who are richer, or use other people's money (such as hospitals and governments) to pay attorneys in private practice," Claire Nader wrote in the recently-published introduction to the Report to the Community about the Office of the Community Lawyer.

 

The 20-page report (.pdf here) chronicling the successes of the Community Lawyer was prepared for the 20th anniversary celebration of the Office of the Community Lawyer.

 

On Saturday, October 10, 2009, the community in Northwest Connecticut celebrated this milestone with a fundraiser dinner featuring Bill Curry, Richard Blumenthal and Claire Nader. 

 

More than 150 people gathered from as far as Chicago and Los Angeles in Winsted’s Crystal Peak ballroom to recognize the achievements of the Office of the Community Lawyer, and the person who has been that advocate for 19 years, Charlene Lavoie.

 

Even though I've known Charlene and the Office of the Community Lawyer since 1995, saying the words together still jars: community lawyer. It's not what they teach in law school as modern legal theory, for sure.

 

Community lawyering is such a different concept from the motion practice of trial litigation, where maybe one in 20 cases reaches court, and most are settled prior to seeing a jury.

 

As young Connecticut lawyer in the mid-1980s, Lavoie wanted more from her legal degree than filing motions to strike counts one and two of defendants' counterclaim or  motions for summary judgment on the issue of liability only. 

 

Oddly, motion practice generates feelings of immobility that the bulk of the law comes from the people who can afford $300 an hour legal services. What about those who make $800 a month? Is the law on their side? For a long time, it has seemed no.

 

The Office of the Community Lawyer, (link)...

 

I hate cars. But cars are a fact of life in Connecticut. This should not be. But it is.

 

I moved to Hartford in 1998 so I could bicycle to work, and for years, I kept a calendar tracking car free days.

 

But now, I have a job requiring a 40-mile round trip commute. To find some peace within this tyranny of travel, after I wrecked my 1993 Honda Civic in October 2006 (working a different car-dependent job), I bought a diesel VW Jetta with the goal of using biodiesel to kick my addiction to foreign oil.

 

When Karl Benz invented the diesel engine, he envisioned a flexible fuel engine that could run on veggie oil, diesel or biodiesel. Biodiesel makes your car run cleaner (less frequent oil changes, etc) and you emit 70 percent less carbon.

 

The best part of this non-fossil fuel is that ordinary people can mix biodiesel in their garages with methanol, lye and used vegetable oil from restaurants. I hoped that a diesel car could help me attain fuel self-sufficiency.

 

While running with biodiesel doesn't eliminate traffic, or any government policies that slant the transportation system towards the automobile, the wealthy and the suburbs, biodiesel would make me feel better about not relying on war to get around.

 

Making a gallon of biodiesel costs about two dollars - a dollar for materials (equipment, methanol and lye) and a dollar for the labor. Building relationships with restaurants, collecting the veggie oil, filtering it, mixing it, cleaning up after the chemical reaction, and pumping it into your car all take time, which is money. This is all still cheaper than ExxonMobil’s sulfur-free diesel, which still spews mercury and Sox and Nox into the atmosphere.

 

Other biodieselers seem to handle the mixing and using of biodiesel without a problem. It seemed so simple at first that I dreamed of a bio cooperative where diesel drivers pool resources to insure a stable flow of clean fuel - a closed loop industrial process that recycles oil from local eateries and creates a few jobs, too.

 

But my bad car karma (or, my car-ma) has led to me to declare my experiments with the alternative fuel a failure.

 

The tribulations of my used 1999 Volkswagen Jetta TDI began with the engine being replaced under warranty in December 2006, two months after I bought it. In June 2007, my dad, trying to be a nice guy, accidentally filled my tank with unleaded instead of diesel.

 

Mistakes happen, so I can't hold that against my dad, especially considering that before graduating college, I totaled four of his cars – a '77 Chevy Nova, a '72 Dodge Dart, an '83 Ford Escort, and an '87 Firebird.

 

Obviously, that I am not the world's best driver contributes to my loathing of my dependence on automobiles. Yet I figured that making my own fuel might repair some of my bad car-ma.

 

So after paying a mechanic to drain the unleaded from my diesel, I started in earnest trying to mix biodiesel. A friend of mine has been mixing his own biodiesel for years, and I learned from him.

 

Adventures with Biodiesel...to the rest of the story...

 

Columnist’s note: Some of these items may be repeats from older columns, but the ideas are so strong, so important, they bear repeating:

 

1. Daylighted Park River done in sections, like the progress of Riverfront Recapture – first the flower street to the Legislative Office Building – build a bridge for Broad Street. Second section Bushnell Park, Jewel Street, to the Whitehead Highway. Third section from Farmington Avenue behind the Mark Twain House to Capital Avenue at the Aetna Viaduct.

 

The end of the I-84 Aetna viaduct on Capital Avenue should account for a daylighted Park River.

 

The possibilities for cultural vibrancy that come with running water in a central urban location are limitless – look at WaterFire in Providence. Buckets of fire – logs burning in floating steel wire mesh pits – 50 of them, on the river, with music piped along the river.

 

Across the street from Waterfire, a big band and a DJ take turns playing ballroom music for dance lessons, shows and group dances on a floor big enough for hundreds - set up in the middle of an intersection.

 

Whose streets? Our streets. Dancing in the streets. Yeah. Every other Saturday night. Riverfront Recapture is close, but the daylighted Park River could add so much energy flow to the city.

 

2. Sarah Palin’s America to understand that the life in Northeast cities depends on immigrant populations. Without this influx of people to live in our urban spaces, the blocks would be desolate.

 

White flight left the cities a shell. Immigrant vibrancy has reflowered them.

 

While New York City and San Francisco could live without their Chinatowns and still be vibrant cities, without the transplanted nightclubs from Mexico and the trucks selling acupurrias and tostones from Puerto Rico, many of our city streets on a Friday night might be abandoned.

 

Providence, RI has a Broad Street, too, that runs north to south from downtown to Cranston. More than a dozen food trucks of all shapes and sizes and nationalities – Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan and names – La Universidad de Chimi, El Pais de Chimi, El Pueblo de Chimi, Ciudad Chimi.

 

The trucks park in the wide shoulders, alongside restaurants and nightclubs. People stroll down the street, or target their favorite truck and hang out. The sidewalks teem with food and motorcycles and men sitting on chairs on the sidewalk and salsa and rap. Sweet life.

 

Maybe the city could encourage vendors of ethnic cuisines to line up on Friday and Saturday nights on a stretch like Wawarme where the cars line up alongside Colt Park and the Shrine to the BVM.

 

Or maybe on Franklin Avenue, where there is plenty of shoulder and parking. The end result is that the city should do things to encourage and harness this lively momentum.

 

3. Fields of sunflowers. On empty vacant lots. I’m not talking mere guerilla gardening. I’m talking money for Knox Parks to hire Green Teams to till empty lots – like the corner of Park and Main, put topsoil on it, and plant sunflowers. Fields of them.

 

On the corner of Laurel and Case. On the corner of Sigourney and Collins. On the corner of Shultas and Fraknlin. These lots sit empty, creating a hopeless, lonely, abandoned city. Hartford is alive. Plant sunflowers. Make Hartford look pretty.

Continue to Wishes 4 Thru 11...(continued)

 

The Earth cannot handle more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Currently, humanity has added enough CO2 to bring the content in our atmosphere to 389.42 parts per million.

 

On October 24, 2009, a worldwide day of action will address this crisis. See 350.org.

 

From December 7 through 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, world leaders will meet to decide on how to address the carbon crisis.

 

Yet federal, state, regional and local American democratic institutions, paralyzed by the influx of corporate cash, have been unable to address what some consider the most perilous threat humans have ever faced.

 

In the face of this crisis, some deny, some are paralyzed, some want to change the world, like the Al Gore and the Yes Men!, who both advocate civil disobedience.

 

The humble state of Connecticut, using legislative tools developed during the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, could be a leader in addressing climate change. The law guiding state energy policy begins with Connecticut General Statutes §16a-1: "It is found and declared that a shortage of energy supplies and resources exists in the state."

 

This series of statutes allows the governor to declare an energy emergency if an impending shortage of usable energy supplies threatens the health, safety, or welfare of state citizens (C.G.S. §16a-2).

 

The law defines "energy resources" to include natural gas, petroleum products, coal and coal products, wood fuels, geothermal sources, radioactive materials, and any other resource that can yield energy (C.G.S. §16a-11).

 

Pursuant to this finding, the General Assembly created an Energy Emergency Plan, C.G.S. §16a-9, under which the Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management is able to ration oil and gas supplies.

 

At least someone in state government has some awareness of this oil emergency law, because on September 20, 2005, Principal Analyst Daniel Duffy from the state Office of Legislative Research prepared a report answering whether state law prohibits price gouging.

 

Duffy's response details the oil emergency plan. He noted that the statute was last amended in 1994, and it gives the OPM secretary the right to impose price restrictions on energy resources.

 

Someone read Duffy's report in 2005, when oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel, and then plain ignored it.

 

Although it was a Republican President in 1973 who dealt with the first oil embargo, a Republican governor – even one with stratospheric approval ratings – would not dare buck the Bush administration in 2005.

 

The political consequences of declaring an oil emergency to stop price gauging would have sent shockwaves throughout not just Connecticut, but the world.

 

An American state invoking fuel rationing independent of the federal government in Bush’s America? Unbelievable. It need not be in Obama's America. Connecticut has the power to start such a revolution. It chooses not to, of course.

 

Declare An Oil Emergency?...(link)

Homelessness among young people does not always mean that students live out of cars, or on the streets. It means that they have no stable place to make a life.

 

The horror stories of students struggling to pay tuition and work and rent show me what resilience is and give meaning to the old adage of picking yourself up by the bootstraps.

 

One young woman with no parents to go to sleeps on her uncle’s couch, fending off her cousins who steal her food. She can't go stay with her grandmother, because the grandmother may lose Section 8 funds. Where else is this girl to go?

 

I could list off dozens of other stories from students and young people trapped in an economic downturn with an inability to establish independent lives. This leads them to turn to the streets, which offer no possibility of success, and every chance at jail.

 

Secure, regular shelter is an essential to personal growth, and if we want young people to participate in the community, they need to have an infrastructure they can count on. That means when they come home at night, they expect the food they bought to be there.

 

Housing for young people ages 18 to 35 in Hartford represents a crisis in this city. The grind of poverty and the war on drugs and so many other factors that have led to broken homes means that these youth rely on extended family connections which aren’t the most productive.

 

My struggles of moving home after college, trying to live by my parents' rules again pale in comparison to some of what these homeless youth go through. It drove me nuts. And my degree and car provided cash and freedom of movement, but they did little to eliminate the frustration of being young and home.

 

For couch surfing young people who have never been able to find an apartment on their own, by the time they hit 22 and are still sharing a room with their nieces, I can imagine that it makes them angry, cornered and hopeless.

 

Other cities – albeit those with much larger populations and resource bases – recognize the issue of youth housing and have taken steps towards fixing it.

 

In New York City and 20 other cities across the United States, Covenant House, despite the leadership issues it has dealt with in the past, is an established provider of mid-term (meaning several months) free housing for young people trying to get on their feet. Covenant House makes kids sign something like contracts to keep them there, and encourage them to build on the shelter experience.

 

Ending Teen Homelessness link...