Jun 05 2013
Activism, Community, Culture, Environment, International, Knowledge, Progress, Sustainability, Tourism, Water

Becoming Green: How Hotels and Businesses Are Changing Around the World q

by Sam Marquit

Going from independent contracting to commercial contracting really changed my attitude towards green building and materials. By choosing self-sustaining facilities, eco-friendly policies and socially conscious practices, hotels and businesses can become more responsible. Many travellers look for hotels that are eco-friendly, but what really goes into a fully eco-conscious experience? There are a few initiatives and hotels out there that are doing something different and changing the attitudes of their community in the process.

Businesses across Asia vie every year for a nomination in the renowned Wild Asia Tourism Awards. This program honors businesses that do something for the environment, community or wildlife in their area. There are several categories that businesses can be nominated for, including community engagement, resource efficiency, wildlife conservation and cultural preservation. The awards help other businesses see what they can do to affect the planet while working towards building better and brighter communities.

Hotels can really change movements across the tourism industry. There are millions of hotels across this planet, and if each one of them made a change in policy to be more environmentally conscious, imagine what could be done for the planet. The ink48 Hotel is an eco-friendly hotel that serves all organic food and takes part in multiple eco-friendly practices. In addition, the hotel has a program called “Earthcare,” which brings members and community leaders together to talk about eco-friendly practices, sustainable technology and other issues that are facing the planet today. By hosting this program, the hotel has helped people have a conversation about the ways in which they can personally affect the future of our planet.

There are over 100,000 guest rooms available in Las Vegas. With millions of travelers per year, it can be tough for hotels to make major changes to the way their hotels operate. However, that didn’t stop the Las Vegas Palazzo Hotel and Resort. This hotel offers water recycling programs, waste reuse and solar panels as part of their eco-friendly practices. The hotel also won the “Most Eco-Friendly Hotel in America” award, which has gained a lot of recognition for the cause and helped change the policies of other hotels in the area. By focusing on a greener environment and on conserving resources, the hotel has greatly impacted its local community.

As a contractor, I’m so proud to be apart of this process and contribute to a greener future for our planet. It is extremely important for other businesses to catch on, much like the new green Las Vegas hotels are. New green facilities continue to go up. Businesses need to continue this trend and recognize how they can change and implement different practices to become more sustainable.

Read more from Sam here:

http://fmarquitv.tumblr.com

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May 30 2013
Activism, Community, Consumption, Culture, Environment, Food, Health, Human Rights, International, Knowledge, Local, Photography, Politics, Social Change, Sustainability

March Against Monsanto – Photos of a Movement

by Deanna C.

On Saturday May 25th I, along with hundreds of other Vancouverites, participated in the global ‘March Against Monsanto and GMO.’ What’s GMO?  And who and what is Monsanto? And why do we care? These seemed to be recurring questions I was asked from a number of friends when I spoke of my upcoming participation in the march.

by Deanna C.

I’ll plead a bit of ignorance here – In all honesty I wasn’t well positioned to effectively answer these questions.  As a health conscious person I knew that GMO (genetically modified organic) was “bad” for me and I also knew a little bit about Monsanto, but I really didn’t know enough about either of the above to be able to articulate well enough what the movement was about and why it was so important. So I did a bit of research and read up on the issues (see the suggested links and resources below to learn more about GMO and Monsanto), but the most valuable resource was the march itself.  It gave me the opportunity to learn more, connect with others, ask questions and be around passionate people who all felt strongly about our basic rights and health.  It was a great vibe and a positive environment. I met a number of people during the march who, like me, were relatively new to the movement but were equally concerned about GMO and the unethical practices of corporations like Monsanto, and who wanted to be a part of this powerful force of citizens mobilizing for a change worldwide. That people and families from all walks of life with various levels of awareness and different interests turned up to this event speaks not only to the organizers’ ability to rally people together and get their message out, but also to the fact that more and more concerned citizens want to take action.  I am certain that at the very least this global march against Monsanto attracted more attention  and gained more support and momentum for the movement.

by Deanna C.

by Deanna C.

So, why should we care about Monsanto and GMO? That’s for you as an individual to decide and I encourage you to read up on both and learn more (from all sides of the debate).  But I’ll tell you why I care.  I care because it matters to me what goes into my body.  It also matters to me what impact any engineered process may have on the environment.  While we don’t know for sure what impact GMOs have on our bodies, cells and DNA there is a growing body of research that connects GMO foods with health problems and environmental damage.  I also expect (in fact demand) the right to know what is in my food, especially if it could potentially harm me.  As for Monsanto, I don’t know about you but there seems to be something fundamentally wrong (and frightening) with giant corporations dominating and controlling our food chain (and engaging in unethical, intimidating, socially unjust practices, to say the very least). I am not okay with that.  These reasons among many others are why I care and why I participated in the March against Monsanto.  It was an empowering and inspiring experience for me to be a part of this global movement.  I was reminded that the value of people mobilizing in solidarity like this should not be minimized, if only to create a level of awareness among others.  I am a strong believer that knowledge is power and I believe the first step to any real change is raising awareness. People will not act on something if they don’t know about it (or enough about it) to make informed decisions.  I was also left with the encouraging impression that the movement will continue on and grow even larger and stronger, and this reaffirms my belief that conscious and concerned citizens collectively coming together can absolutely make change happen.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

by Deanna C.

by Deanna C.

Resources:

(there are many other articles and sites about GMO and Monsanto a google search will provide you with a lot of reading material!)

Information about the March and movement – http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/

Understanding GMO – http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/queen-of-green/faqs/food/understanding-gmo/

A documentary about Monsanto http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/

See more of Deanna’s work at www.to-live-inspired.com

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Apr 30 2013
Activism, Community, Consumption, Culture, Documentary, Environment, Food, Health, International, Knowledge, Social Change, Sustainability

SOIL: why we need to stop treating it like DIRT

by Kate Patterson

Spring is here. Gardens are being planted, everywhere plants are flowering and the world is once again becoming green, so I thought it would be a fitting time to share some of my favorite things about one of the most dynamic, yet underappreciated systems on Earth, soil.  First, it’s important to have a bit of a background on how and why soils formed and what that has meant to the evolution of modern human civilization.  I’ll then describe some of the not-so good (and the good) news about what we have been doing to our soils in the recent past that is jeopardizing our ability to feed our growing world population and what many amazing soil scientists, farmers, gardeners, and involved citizens are doing about it.

Soil is a complex living, breathing system.  It’s packed with tons of cool organisms and is an extremely complex mixture of inorganic and organic processes, without which life on Earth could not exist.  Through industrial agricultural practices, urbanization and deforestation we are in danger of degrading our healthy soils by stripping off nutrient rich layers that are necessary for functioning ecosystems, and from a more anthropocentric perspective, for our ability to grow food.

To get a sense of just how important soil is we have to backtrack to the to the beginning of the first life on Earth, about 3.8 billion years ago, when the Earth’s average temperature was too hot and anoxic for anything except extreme cyanobacteria to survive.  The presence of bacteria on rock surfaces helped to enhance weathering rates through chemical reactions, which sped up the breakdown of rocks and formation of soils.  Carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas, diffused into soils to be used for various reactions, which helped to decrease its warming effect in our atmosphere.  The slow breakdown of rocks and formation of soil minerals also created a suitable nutrient rich substrate necessary for the evolution of land plants.  Through photosynthesis, plants further decreased carbon dioxide and increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere and then died and contributed organic matter to the soil.  It wasn’t until about 400 million years ago that the first land plants appeared, and only a little while before that when soils came to be as we know them today.

Continue reading →

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Apr 25 2013
Activism, Children, Communication, Community, Culture, Education, Equality, language, LGBT, Local, Social Change, Youth

Beyond Pink: Queer Straight Alliance Changing Minds at King George School

by Matea Kulić

It may come as a surprise that King George Secondary School, just a stone’s throw from the vibrant Davie Gay Village in Vancouver, was without a Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) only six months ago.

King Geoge Secondary School

“I was shocked,” says Student Support Worker Deona Zammit, describing the atmosphere of homophobia when she first started at the school. She recounts how some kids yelled out “Yes it is!” while she was tacking up a series of school board sanctioned “Sexuality is Not a Choice” posters.

“There used to be a lot of name calling in every classroom,” QSA Student Leader Sienna St. Laurent says. “Someone asks a question and another turns around and say’s ‘that’s so gay’. They don’t think about how they use these words as part of their vocabulary.”

When Deona and Sienna teamed up to start the QSA in November they rectified the noticeable absence of King George on the school board’s list of QSA’s. Now every highschool within the City of Vancouver has one.

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Mar 08 2013
Activism, Community, Crime, Culture, Equality, Family, Feminism, Health, Housing, Politics, Poverty, Social Change, Violence Against Women, Women

Happy International Women’s Day! Less talk, more action to end violence against women

by Sarah Allan

Happy International Women’s Day!

I wish that this day could be spent celebrating the successes and achievements of women around the world, but sadly, though its 2013 and we have come a long way, locally and globally the focus is still on the very real and seemingly ever-present issue of violence against women. While it is variously referred to as ‘domestic violence’ (by the B.C. government), ‘family violence’ (by B.C.’s Family Law Act), ‘violence against women in relationships’ (also by the B.C. government) , and other other vague names, it all boils down to, and should accurately be called, violence against women. When talking about an issue as important as this, it’s important to choose our words carefully and with intention, as the language we use to frame a discussion sets parameters for coming up with solutions, whether we mean it to or not. I among others take issue with the misleading labels commonly used to describe physical, sexual, emotional and psychological violence towards women, as ‘domestic violence’ infers privacy and violence that takes place in the home; as ‘family violence’ and ‘domestic violence’ both obscure the gendered nature of what it is most often describing, violence by a man against a women; and as ‘violence against women in relationships’ glosses over the fact that women’s risk of violence increases once a relationship is over. Call it what you will, but i doesn’t erase the reality of violence against women in this country. It is still true that more than half of all Canadian women have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16 and that women are more likely to be assaulted by someone that they know, than by a stranger.

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Feb 05 2013
Communication, Consumption, Culture, Food, Health, International, Internet, Knowledge

If You Can’t Enjoy Quinoa, You’re Dead To Me.

by Melanie Hadida

Rant first; recipe later.

I guess I’ll start by addressing the recent controversy associated with quinoa farming and the ways rich white people’s demand for copious amounts of quinoa has driven up local costs of quinoa for South Americans:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa

The article was making the rounds on Facebook, and I’m pretty sure if your Facebook news feed is as socially and globally conscious as mine is, you’ve already seen this article. As a proud McGill University International Development Studies alum, I am certainly aware of the plight of third world farmers and their disadvantages in the global market, unfair economic policies and the overall exploitation millions of people experience to harvest and produce the foods us greedy fatties love to stuff in our faces. I’m an extremely strong advocate of Fair Trade practices (although the movement itself has its own downfalls). Indeed, quinoa can be farmed in North America so why not support that as well!

But my problem is with trendiness. Caring about quinoa farmers has become just as trendy as quinoa itself. I have a serious issue with thousands of hipsters tweeting and Facebooking “Sorry vegans! Looks like your love of quinoa is evil for poor Bolivians!” from their laptops and smartphones that were also—surprise surprise—BUILT ON THE EXPLOITATION AND OUTRIGHT TORTURE OF OTHER PEOPLE!

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Jan 24 2013
Art, Communication, Culture, Education, Equality, Feminism, International, Love, Media, Music, Progress, Social Change, Women, Youth

Riding on the Backs of Women: Big Words and Big Realities for the Snowboard Industry

by Chelsey Geralda Denise Armstrong

I recently attended a Masters defense entitled (deep breath) “An Analysis of White-Supremacist-Capitalist-Heteronormative-Patriarchy in the Graphics of Burton and Capita Snowboards” (by Kascindra Shewan) and while I found some holes in the authors arguments there is no question that the emerging discourse was vigorous and vivacious.

Some of you readers may indeed play a big part in the snowboard industry, many of whom are my dearest friends and colleagues. It is therefore imperative that you understand: Any investigation into the role of women in contemporary society should not be immediately deemed as femi-nazi bullshit. Rather, try to appreciate that ‘everything happens for a reason’ – the words in our language, the symbols, the conventions, the attitudes – all these exist because of the relations (past and present) between genders, classes, ethnicities and religions. For example, the term “Paddywagon”, although seeming relatively harmless, is actually deeply imbedded in the ethnic violence incurred against Irish people at the turn of the century. “That sucks” is an example of hetero-normative language, as it implies that being gay and ‘sucking dick’ is somehow unnatural and gross. I’m not arguing for the eradication of “you suck” in our everyday language (well, maybe)– I’m suggesting that while I explore the quiet violence of stereotypes against women in the snowboard industry, you should not feel offended, hopefully it should spring some healthy reflection and discourse.

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Jan 14 2013
Activism, Civil LIberties, Communication, Crime, Human Rights, Internet, Knowledge, Media, Police and Security, Politics, Social Change, Youth

Aaron Swartz and the Fight for Freedom of Information

by Tracy Giesz-Ramsay

I had the brief chance to meet Aaron Swartz two years ago while in New York, and was instantly drawn to his charismatic outspokenness and passion when talking about the freedom of the internet and it’s powerful capability to inspire revolution and organize youth activism around the world. The room was full of fellow advocates and friends who when Aaron spoke, listened with awe and intensity to his every word. It was a swift encounter but a truly inspiring one. The following is a collection of statements from his close friends, family, and acquaintances that I find summarize the tragic situation far better than I could hope to myself:

AaronSwartz

“Since his arresting the early morning of January 11, 2011 — two years to the day before Aaron Swartz ended his life — I have known more about the events that began this spiral than I have wanted to know. Aaron consulted me as a friend and lawyer that morning. He shared with me what went down and why, and I worked with him to get help. When my obligations to Harvard created a conflict that made it impossible for me to continue as a lawyer, I continued as a friend. Not a good enough friend, no doubt, but nothing was going to draw that friendship into doubt.

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Jan 11 2013
Activism, Children, Colonialism, Colonization, Communication, Community, Culture, Democracy, Education, Environment, First Nations, Health, Human Rights, Knowledge, Politics, Poverty, Social Change, Sustainability, Water, Youth

Idle No More – Snowflakes, Drums and Thunder

by Sarah Spence

I’ll be honest, I have never been a very political person and I have struggled with finding my identity as a member of the First Nations. I can confidently say that both of these have been because of the barrier that separates the ‘Indian’ world from the ‘White-Man’s’ world. It’s sad to say that this barrier still exists and continues to shackle my identity in a state of limbo, as I assume it has done to many before me and will do to many after me. However, this is a reality that many Indigenous people throughout the world are faced with when going through the integration process into the non-Indigenous society. There are stereotypes and ignorance regarding these separated societies that get picked up, and the fact that individuals do not follow these stereotypical concepts about being of Indigenous descent can often make them feel fraudulent, ambivalent and confused.

When I first started hearing about Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike and the Idle No More movement regarding Bill C-45, I was slightly hesitant and skeptical of what my involvement should be. Then I watched a Youtube video of Chief Theresa Spence explaining the cycles of pain of the people in her community who are living in third-world conditions. One thing she mentioned in the video struck a chord with me: that children can’t even take a shower without the possibility of getting a rash because the water isn’t clean. It wasn’t until I heard those words come out of her mouth that I realized the ignorance that I had been carrying around throughout most of my life.

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Dec 31 2012
2 Comments
Activism, Colonialism, Colonization, Commons, Communication, Community, Culture, Democracy, Environment, First Nations, Internet, Knowledge, Local, Photography, Politics, Social Change, Sustainability, Water

Idle No More – #idlenomore

by Matea Kulic (italicized verses by Joy Harjo) with photographs by Shelby Tay

photograph by Shelby Tay

photograph by Shelby Tay

It was almost a year ago now I watched those words sear through the air of the auditorium. It was the red of her I noticed first: Red leather coat and boots, bright red lips.

I have a memory.

      It swims deep in blood

 

My spirit comes here to drink.

My spirit comes here to drink.

Blood is the undercurrent.

Each saxophone note and beat of her drum stained my ears until they echoed in stories of loss, love and life that only Joy Harjo can weave so seamlessly.

Her words lifted out of the room, past the main square of San Miguel, where the Wixarika Indigenous gathered. They flew out over vast bronze hills and colored the cacti as they opened in blossom.

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