Money is not wealth.

 This morning I have been thinking about foreclosure  and alternative economies (though the scent of fresh jasmine from the Chinatown community garden, the bamboo wind-chimes and songbirds are distracting deep thought). Last night I was at a campfire discussing what a foreign policy with Iran would look like if it took into consideration our history of imperialism. It reminded me of Lisa Schirch's work to see development and diplomacy as acts of our national defense. It is difficult to watch the way the system works against healing and progress in people's lives.
   On Thursday our writing group wrote about 'the color of hunger.' One guest wrote (in Spanish), "Only you know the color of your hunger."  There are so many struggles in my community-- struggles to re-enter against the stigma of felony, of past-drug use, struggles to maintain homes, to find work, to find a place to sleep at night. Recently there have been more guests (and even volunteers) who are facing foreclosure and the loss of their homes.

"The anti-foreclosure and right-to-housing movements are among the most consistent in our nation’s history of activism—a constant necessity in a country where private property is a right but a family’s basic shelter, security, and safety is a privilege." Occupy Moves to Front Lawns

I can not fully understand what a terrifying place to be in that is for them. And what is happening here is just a tiny sliver of the struggle across the United States- the struggle which I hope is the birth-pangs of awakening to the unsustainable way of American life.  Having just finished my third cup of coffee this morning I can't articulate the urgency, passion, despair, and hope I feel about this... but I am recalling the power of the human microphone at Occupy Wall Street last October and the sense of embodying others words and speaking for and with them to be heard. We must take our power for each other, from each other, together with each other. We must not forget that money is not wealth. And we must challenge the systems that prevent us from being human with each other.

[David Korten]

The devastation created by Wall Street’s failure affirms three truths that are the foundation on which millions of people are at work building a New Economy:

1. Our individual and collective well-being depends on acting with concern for the well-being of others. We all do better when we look out for one another.
2. Money is not wealth. It is just numbers. Sacrificing the health and happiness of billions of people to grow numbers on computer hard drives to improve one’s score on the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people is immoral. Managing a society’s economy to facilitate this immoral competition at the expense of people and nature is an act of collective insanity. 
3. The proper purpose of the economy and the enterprises that comprise it is to provide good jobs and quality goods and services beneficial to the health and happiness of people, community and nature. A modest financial profit is essential to a firm’s viability, but is not its proper purpose. 

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