Sunday Easy Rider

Sunday mornings...the bike ride to the beach nearby my house in Boston. Welcome to the renewal of my Sunday commentary---SER(Sunday Easy Rider). The world may be in chaos, but the beach beckons all, the dog walkers, the elder Asian Tai Chi faithfuls, the lovers walking, the tan-seeking man who rides his bike to the beach collapsing into the diamond-glistening sand, the family dad helping his daughter build a sand castle. If you are a "water baby" you get the obsession-anything to be near the ocean. When I lived in land-locked Johannesburg for a year, I regularly rose at 4 or 5AM, hopped in the car, and drove the 7 hrs. to Durban just to smell the ocean, to see the sun transform the wave-capped ocean into day-twinkling stars, ebbing and flowing. If you had the misfortune of being in the car with me, you had only one potty-stop. Sorry. I needed to get their fast!
The reality is that genocide despots Charles Taylor (Liberia) and Ratko Miladic (Bosnia) are being tried at the Hague as the International Criminal Court confronts these  war criminals; several others are being lined up around the world and it seems we're finally getting the hang of making the bad guys pay for evil. Women and children have been some of the most vulnerable targets of war-related violence. This is one of many scenarios that reasserts the human struggle for social justice, punishment for immoral and illegal activities globally, and a war-weary species that desperately seeks a peace-loving future. One of the central shifts underway is the active repression of a level of masculine aggressiveness socialized into our national cultures and the even more active pursuit of feminine perspectives, voices, and activism arising from women and men everywhere from civil society agencies to the halls of government. Our globalizing identities seek a higher level of humane performance in all of our dealings, public and private. The long-term demand from traditional masculinity for sex trafficking, war as the ubiquitous problem-solver, and so many unexamined behaviors rooted in gender imbalances is asking us to re-examine 6000 of human evolution to remake our species, to think and do life differently. It's about time. Go to the beach and think about it.... I'll be back next Sunday. Meanwhile, speak your peace.....

Civil society movement will revolutionize everyone!

Global unrest, street protests, and citizen activism are happening everywhere as broad social movements that express civil discontent about social and economic inequalities, and lead to revolution and change. From every level of society around the world, our world is changing. Change is inevitable, healthy, and life-enhancing. In my travels on and offline, I am interacting and working with people-in villages, on webinars, on projects, in cities. As conflicts mount, as traditional power is challenged, we're all feeling a greater interdependence. Average citizens are using collective action to demand social transformation through innovative uses of technology and social networking, anti-violence campaigns, civil society alliances, and community organizing as forms of civic participation. From Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together and the ‘Arab Spring’, climate change to immigration reform, widening economic inequalities, to the new learning modalities of the Digital Age and Open Courseware that democratizes education, we all are caught in the mix. We ALL have skin in the game.  Social movements aim to raise human consciousness, improve the quality of life for all, and challenge political repression or economic crisis through grass-roots movements that resist government crackdowns and confront corporate greed. It is an exciting time to be alive!

Check in with your projects, your commitments, your new circles of co-workers rebuilding society everywhere. Meanwhile, view this episodic cartoon on development in South Africa-using art for civil and political awareness.

http://cdrablog.net/2012/02/13/civil-society-at-the-crossroads/