Creative Communities

Practical solutions for a new society (includes a 5-part series on how to print your own community money)

Fred Morse – Sun Engines And Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)

By Creative Communities

A brief history of a carbon free technology that could produce enough electricity to replace coal. CSP was pioneered by US engineers in the late 19th century and lost out to oil and coal.
President Nixon asked Fred Morse whether solar energy made sense for America. His answer was “definitely yes”. Fred Morse went on to manage solar energy in the Department of Energy for Presidents Carter and Reagan until 1989 when the programs were dismantled. Today Morse is the senior adviser for US operations for the Spanish firm Abengoa. They operate in over 70 countries and specialize in solar and bio-energy. Abengoa is trying to build the world’s largest CSP plant near Phoenix, AZ. <http://www.abengoasolar.com/sites/solar/en/our_projects/usa/arizona/index.html> Coal and nuclear [ . . . ]

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Community Money – A Special Section on Printing Your Own Money

By Creative Communities

Local Currency Conference, San Francisco, Calif., February 1998. Has your community printed its own money?
Are you personally curious about the worldwide movement to create local barter systems?
Here are highlights of the first-ever conference on the topic.
Printing Community Money
code: C405 >To order a copy click here: $8.00
This documentary takes you to Ithaca, N.Y., where a successful community money system was launched in 1991. Six years later, over $60,000 dollars worth of Ithaca Hours had been put into circulation, triggering an estimated $2 million dollars worth of exchanges. Over 40 towns in the US and Canada have begun their own community money systems modeled on Ithaca Hours, initiated by Paul Glover, an urban historian and planner and long-term Ithaca resident.
Community [ . . . ]

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Amparo Cadavid: Magdalena Medio Community Radio in Colombia

By Creative Communities

In Search of Sister Stations
(The special edition of this tape comes with the talk by Peter Dale Scott on Side B)
At a radio conference in Madison, Wisconsin, a shy, young woman from Colombia arrived with a video recorded along the Magdalena River. It showed three of the 15 radio stations that are currently on the air in that region.
Ranging from a tiny shed where an elder woman shoos away the chickens every morning to turn on the transmitter to a full-fledged studio with staff meetings, these signals stand for the huge diversity of stations that are only a few dozen miles apart. What unites all of them is the fear of Plan Colombia. Financial support to the army has always [ . . . ]

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Civil Disobedience: Forest and Land Action

By Creative Communities

Rainbow Warrior Action
Interview with the daring women and men from Greenpeace who boarded the freighter Thorseggen, en route to Long Beach, by night and blocked the cargo cranes for three days. They called attention to the newsprint containing old growth that had been loaded on the Fraser surrey docks in Vancouver. The Great Bear Rain forest is the largest remaining tract of temperate rain forest left on earth. 50 minutes, 1998
code: A133 >To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
Luna, Julia, and the Survival of the Forest
Julia Butterfly Hill has been living in a 1000 year old redwood tree called Luna for one year. She has protected Luna from being logged and has become an eloquent spokesperson for [ . . . ]

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Civil Disobedience: Grassroots War Resistance

By Creative Communities

Kathy Kelly: STOP the war on Iraq –
Adam Shapiro, ISM : STOP the war on Palestine
an invitation to create International Teams
Kathy Kelly was part of  teams of Internationals who went to Iraq, Kosovo and Palestine to help protect civilians and refugees. She explains how this work is done and how to overcome fear of going into a war zone. Kathy Kelly is the co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness. <http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw > They are working on ending the sanctions on Iraq that cause the death of so many children.
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Kathy Kelly click HERE
For a broadcast quality mp3 version of Adam Shapiro click> HERE
code A219: >To order a copy click [ . . . ]

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Cities – and how to make them a better place to live

By Creative Communities

Mike Davis from the City of Quartz to Gentrified San Francisco
A conversation with Tim Redmond
Los Angelenos who read his “City of Quartz” never looked at their town the same way again. Seen from the intersection between kitsch and ecological disaster, Davis reveals the hidden history of the city that points into a future shared with other towns. This conversation centers on that common pattern of development.
Mike Davis is a former meat-cutter and long-distance truck-driver. He now teaches Urban Theory at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Tim Redmond is the editor of the weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian.
code: A 178 >To order a copy click here: $8.00
Go to A-Infos to download a broadcast quality copy of [ . . . ]

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Who will protect the earth? – Western Shoshone Land Rights

By Creative Communities, Sovereignty

Two recent military style raids to confiscate Shoshone cattle are meant to intimidate the tribe into accepting money for their land. Elders refuse payment of 15 cents per acre for 26 million acres of stolen land.Others disagree. The US government plays hardball and tries to divide the Shoshone. Recorded at the Spring 2003 Gathering of the Western Shoshone
For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
code: N230 To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00
code N230CD: $10.00

Restoring a Forest – with Fire and Love

By Creative Communities, Environment

Dennis Martinez
code: N 315 $8.00
The forest at the Mountain Grove Center For New Education, near Glendale in SW Oregon was clear-cut in the 1930s and 40s. It has come back thick, young, and dark. When Indians cared for the land the old growth incense cedars and chinquapins were spaced widely, plants thrived on the sun-lit forest floor, and animals found shelter and food. Dennis Martinez knows about Indian forest practice and he is restoring this land. 60 minutes
CLICK HERE to download a 29 minute version.

Arjun Makhjijani And David Freeman – Is Nuclear Power Coming Back?

By Creative Communities, Environment and Climate Change

– and do we need a police state to live with it?
Pres. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, says he will streamline loan guarantees to build nuclear and coal fired power plants. This puts nuclear power on the watch list for the Obama administration.
This program features one of the great orators and elders of the anti nuclear movement. David Freeman shut down 8 of their 14 reactors while heading the Tennessee Valley Authority under Pres. Carter. He calls nuclear a failed technology and says that, in the age of terrorism, we need a police state to guard those Trojan horses.
Preceding Freeman’s comment you will hear from Dr. Arjun Makhijani. He holds a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, [ . . . ]

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Ralph Nader: Alternative VS Corporate Technology

By Amazing Speakers & Events, Government, Simple Technologies

Speaking on a PA system powered by solar energy, Ralph Nader gave a moving and intelligent speech on the development and ownership of current technologies and their impact on the earth. He refers to alternative technologies, how they could be used and why we do not have them, even though they could benefit us and the earth. (Aug. 2000)
code: A166   To order a copy click here: $8.00
CLICK HERE to listen – or go to A-Infos to download a broadcast quality 29-minute version.

Frances Moore Lappe & Paul Martin du Bois: Doing Democracy

By Transition Towns

People do not go hungry for lack of food, but for lack of democracy – i.e., control over and access to food. This is a report of active, locally based, and empowered forms of democratic self government: elementary school children are supervising the clean-up of a toxic spill; citizens groups are founding their own radio stations or taking over manufacturing plants. (1995)
code: A 117 To order a cassette copy click here: $8.00