Planning Environmentally Aware Events

Lark Weller Institute for Social, Economic and Ecological Sustainability There often seems to be an unspoken assumption that business and environmentalism don’t mix. Business functions are renowned as ostentatious shows of excess, but this does not have to be the case! Today, it is easier – and more important – …

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Support Local Businesses throughout Minnesota

Supporting locally owned, independent businesses keeps more of your money in your community. When you spend $1 at a local independent store, an average of 68 cents is recirculated into the local economy. In contrast, when you spend $1 at a national chain store, only about 43 cents stays at …

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The CERES Principles

Tara Wesely   Remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Immediately following this disaster, a coalition of environmentalists and investors realized that in order to effect real environmental change, they needed industry leaders to accept responsibility for their company’s impacts on the environment. The coalition drafted the below principles – originally …

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What is Green Design and Why is it Always Brown?

Holly Utech Shea, Inc. Contrary to initial impressions, what qualifies as "green" design actually has little to do with how a brochure or package looks. Even if the brochure for a given chemical company is on natural looking, speckled paper with a big leaf on the front doesn’t mean that …

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Workers’ Rights

Charley Smith   I was just lying on the grass at Peavy Park on May Day. There were progressive and activist types all around. I felt alienated as always; even on International Workers Day, I was in the minority as a crazy, angry, blue-collar-working trash person. My friend asked me …

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Buddhism: A Culture of Peace

Lee Lewis MN Zen Center Buddhism is known generally as a tradition or religion of peace. As a tradition, it emphasizes the cultivation of inner peace and serenity, joy and repose through the observation of the mind. In the introduction to The Way of the Bodhisattva (Shambhala, 2006), the Padmakara …

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Fan Zines

Susan Leem Utne Reader / Intern When I began to read and collect zines I kept one or two in my backpack. Soon they sat in neat piles on my desk, and in a matter of weeks they haphazardly slouched out of shoeboxes. Now these self-made independent periodicals burst through …

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Why Progressives Should Care

Carla J. Magnuson and John Slade Twin Cities-Independent Media Center With media mergers spurred on by the deregulating 1996 Telecommunications Act, newspapers, TV stations and radio stations are increasingly owned by a few media moguls. Public television and radio (PBS & NPR) are regularly turning to commercial interests to underwrite …

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Eco-Villages and Intentional Communities

Laurie Voeltz Intern at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage I have this dream of living some kind of “happily-ever-after.” A dream where I’m surrounded by friends, and we eat together, laugh together, create together, work together and work out our problems together outside the constraints of modern society as we know it. …

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