Prayers for The Earth

May our spinning world's leaders, meeting in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, be wise and strong enough to set us on a path to healing the damage we have done and sustaining our Earth and its creatures, including all of us, as we learn to do better.

SDG Mondays: End Hunger

Today we are featuring the second of the United Nations' new Sustainable Development Goals:

"End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture."

This goal has eight associated targets:

•  "By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round

• By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons

• By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment

• By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality 

•  By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed

• Increase investment, including through enhanced international cooperation, in rural infrastructure, agricultural research and extension services, technology development and plant and livestock gene banks in order to enhance agricultural productive capacity in developing countries, in particular least developed countries

• Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round

• Adopt measures to ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets and their derivatives and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help limit extreme food price volatility."

What do you think of this goal and these targets?  

What can you do to help the world reach the targets?

Please post your thoughts in the comments section.

For me, I feel like some things I can do to try to help are to continue to advocate for a sustainably breastfeeding-friendly culture and for eating plant-based diets that leave enough land for food to be grown for everyone, not just the rich, and also to advocate for environmental practices that mitigate climate change.

I also hope to raise awareness about the very idea of sustainable development and these goals and targets in Texas and in the United States, where I live.
 
 

Thankful

When Dolores Huerta came to town to speak in October and, in the course of her keynote address, happened to mention that she is a vegetarian, my eleven-year-old threw up her fist in the audience and yelled "Viva!"

I think I'm just going to focus on blessings like that one.

Wednesdays with The Subversive Children's Book Club: A Is For Activist and Counting on Community

Good morning!  This installment of Wednesdays with The Subversive Children's Book Club features board books for babies by Innosanto Nagara.  

Mr. Nagara's A Is For Activist is a board book for babies in the style of alphabet books for babies everywhere, but with a twist - each letter stands for a word that is part of the vocabulary of activism and citizenship - "G is for grassroots", etc.  It is quite the favorite among activist parents.

Even better, in my opinion, is its more recent companion book, Counting on Community. This board book for babies by Mr. Nagara is a counting book that invites children to count people in their community ("urban farmers") and things they all share (bicycle helmets, chickens).  While A Is For Activist includes a lot that parents are going to enjoy more than kids will, Counting on Community is right on a little one's level and can probably be gifted to your nephew without annoying his mother, irregardless of her politics.

Both books are excellent additions to your subversive baby's library.

Election Results

So...Texans sadly passed all of the constitutional amendments on the ballot yesterday.  Bye-bye, school funding.  I honestly think people don't understand about constitutional amendments, because they almost always seem to pass in Texas.   

Amending our constitution is a really big deal. A much bigger deal than just passing a law. 

It should never be done lightly.  It should not be done often.

Sigh.

We need more government and citizenship education.

Also, while I am talking about election results, I must say this: 

I am very disappointed in you, Houston. Go to your room and stay there until you learn how to care about the civil rights of your brothers and sisters. Think about what you have done.

That is all.

Houston Be A HERO!

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, known also as Prop. One in The Houston City Election and as HERO, is on the ballot in Houston on this Election Day.

This very important ordinance prevents discrimination against LBGTQ persons in employment, housing and public accommodations.  It needs to pass.  Marriage equality is a wonderful thing, but, in most places, people can still be fired and denied housing for being gay.  The good people of Houston have tried to change this, but bigots are spending their money turning it into another spurious "bathroom debate", rather than discussing the serious discrimination faced by our LBGTQ brothers and sisters all across this nation.

Every Houstonian can be a HERO by voting for the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance today.
 

Election Day!!

Today is Election Day, Texas!  Go and vote on the constitutional amendments!  Remember, please, Mamas,  that a constitutional amendment is a thing more permanent than a mere ordinance or bill.  I think it behooves us not to enshrine anything in our constitution that limits the rights or the future of our citizens.

On that note, please do not vote to increase homestead exemption from school taxes.  Vote against that first proposition on the state constitutional ballot that steals money from our children's education and therefore their futures and takes away the choice to put the money back later.  Far too much funding has already been taken away from Texas schools.  Our children need well-funded schools. Our democracy does.

Vota!

SDG Mondays: End Poverty

Welcome to SDG Mondays!  Today we are featuring the first of the United Nations' new Sustainable Development Goals: 

"End Poverty in all its forms everywhere."

This goal has 7 associated targets:

• "By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day 1.2

• By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions

• Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable

• By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of 13 property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance

• By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters

• Ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular least developed countries, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions

• Create sound policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies, to support accelerated investment in poverty eradication actions."

What do you think of this goal and these targets?  

What can you do to help the world reach the targets?

Please post your thoughts in the comments section.

For me, I feel like one thing I can do is to try to help disenfranchised people register to vote and encourage them to get to the polls.  Maybe if a more diverse electorate actively voted, people who cared about these issues would get elected more. 

I also hope to raise awareness about the very idea of sustainable development and these goals and targets in Texas and in the United States, where I live.

 

November Is For Writing

I am not trying to write a novel but I have countless other manuscripts in various stages of incompletion and November inspires me as a time to make some (small, steady) progress on writing. So I shall strive to do so. Do any of you gentle readers have writing projects simmering?  Or, like mine, congealing for want of attention?

Box Tops and Baking

Tomorrow is the postmark deadline for the fall check to schools from Box Tops for Education, so I spent most of today counting and bundling Boxtops and packing them up and submitting them online, so that I can mail them all off on the way to work tomorrow.  I managed to get the grocery shopping done and now am baking pumpkin bread and banana muffins for the week, so the house smells good. 

If I think about it, there are so many other things "on my list", but I am trying not to think about it.  This fall needs to slow down some for our family and give us a little more shelter in each other, so I am going to try to keep the list as manageable as I can. 

November blessings to you and yours.