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Protecting our health from toxic pollution is too important a job to be left to scientists, govenment regulators or even professional environmental activists. Annie looks at two communities, half a world apart, where citizens showed that people on the front lines of pollution have the power to fight back against being poisoned.

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Community Environmental Monitor, Cuddalore, India
Global Community Monitor, Richmond, California

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Episode 10: The People Have the Power

]]> http://www.storyofstuff.org/2013/04/24/the-good-stuff-episode-10-the-people-have-the-power/feed/ 0 http://www.storyofstuff.org/2013/03/01/the-good-stuff-episode-9-kids-who-care-challenge-crayola/ http://www.storyofstuff.org/2013/03/01/the-good-stuff-episode-9-kids-who-care-challenge-crayola/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 20:45:13 +0000 nicole http://www.storyofstuff.org/?p=31408

If you laid all the Crayola plastic markers made each year end to end, they’d circle the earth three times – and they’re not recyclable. Some California kids are campaigning to change that – and in the process, learning how to flex their citizen muscles. Learn how you can help.

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Kids Who Care’s petition to Crayola on Change.org
Kids Who Care on Facebook
Crayola campaign video
Dixon Ticonderoga Recycling Program 

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Episode 9: Kids Who Care challenge Crayola

Our latest podcast turns the tables – or rather the microphone – on Annie as she’s interviewed by Jearlyn Steele of WCCO-AM in Minneapolis. On the heels of President Obama’s inaugural, Annie and Jearlyn talk about what must be done to combat climate change. Annie also reflects on the first five years of The Story of Stuff Project.

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WCCO’s Jearlyn Steele
350.org
YES! Magazine 

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Episode 8: Annie on Climate Change

From corner bakeries to one of Spain’s largest companies, worker-owned co-ops around the world are providing an alternative model to business as usual. Annie talked with worker-owners of the Evergreen Cooperatives, which are transforming an economically distressed neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio – and changing lives at the same time.

_ Guest_
Medrick Addison, Evergreen Laundry
Michael Mckenzie, Evergreen Energy Solutions
Mary Donnell, Green City Growers 

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Evergreen’s toolkit for aspiring cooperatives
Mondragon Corporation, Gipuzkoa, Spain

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Episode 7: Workers as Owners

Now, revisionist history aside, Thanksgiving is a great holiday. It is two full days during which most people in the U.S. are liberated from work and school.  It comes at a time when the days are getting shorter, trees have lost their leaves, and we’re pulling the sweaters out from the back of our overstuffed closets. In the midst of our hectic year-end bustle, we get to spend two days pausing, recharging, looking into the faces of loved ones rather than into our computer screens.

Jdimytai Damour

And, of course, remembering those who can’t be with us.

There’s one mother I especially think of on Black Friday:  Marie Tellismond. In 2008, on Black Friday, Marie lost her 34-year-old son, Jdimytai Damour.

Jdimytai — known as Jimmy to his friends — had taken a temporary job for the holidays at a Walmart near his home on Long Island, NY. When the store opened at 5:00 in the morning, the crowds of shoppers — many of who had been waiting in the cold for hours to score good deals — stormed the doors and trampled Jdimytai as he struggled to protect a pregnant woman from the stampede.

Jdimytai was a college student and his mother said he hoped to be a teacher one day. He liked watching football and eating his mother’s cooking. In an interview after the tragedy, she dabbed her eyes and said: “I don’t have anybody else.”

Now, I’ve never met Marie Tellismond, but as a fellow mother, I am pretty sure she would give anything to have a day with her son again. Losing someone we love makes us get our priorities straight really, really fast.

Most of us have a choice this Friday that Marie Tellismond no longer has. We have a choice to stay put with loved ones, to play board games and eat leftovers and maybe even watch a football game together. Or we can chose to leave the warmth of our beds before dawn to sit in our cars in a parking lot at some mall searching for low prices on products which we don’t really need and often don’t even want, but getting them is all part of the Black Friday Frenzy.

Let’s opt out of the frenzy this year, and instead, do something that honors Jdimytai and his fellow Walmart workers.

On Black Friday, let’s join the thousands of courageous Walmart workers across the country standing up and speaking out for better working conditions.

You likely know the story: Walmart employees earn low wages, receive hardly any benefits, and have little to no voice in their stores. When they’ve attempted to organize a union in the past to advocate for a fairer workplace, they’ve faced intimidation and layoffs.

This year, Walmart is even making some employees leave their Thanksgiving family gatherings to report to work so it can get the Black Friday shopping mayhem started early!

This Friday, it is not just workers but the broader community that is joining together to say “enough!” Enough to the frenzied mindless consumption that is undermining our planet and our communities. And enough to denying workers the basic rights, payment and respect that a civilized society requires.

You can find and join a protest at a Walmart near you here.

Or, if you can’t make it in person, you can Sponsor a Striker and her family by buying a gift card for food to offset the wages she’ll likely lose from striking.

If we’re going to figure out how to build an economy and society that is healthy for people and the planet, this Friday is a good place to start.

Let’s opt out of the Black Friday madness. Instead, let’s choose family. Let’s chose solidarity. Let’s chose a better world for all.

Well, we want to show the world that there are better things to do than spend the day at the mall buying more stuff! Can you help us?

Tell us what you think is better than shopping — it could be spending time with your family, going for a hike… anything! We’ll use your photos to tell the story of people who’ve committed to #buynothing this holiday season.

Here’s what you do:

1. Print out the #buynothing sign.
2. Write your favorite activity in the blank. (example: “Sharing is better than shopping.”)
3. Take a picture and email it to photos@storyofstuff.org.

In Part 2 of our special podcast accompanying The Story of Change, Annie talks with leading changemakers about how they do it. Hint: Start close to home, sharpen your citizen skills, and then take on the world

_ Guest_
Beth Terry
Kyle Thiermann
Eric Liu
Van Jones
Ralph Nader
Becky Tarbotton

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My Plastic-Free Life
Surfing for Change
Guiding Lights Network
Rebuild the Dream
Rainforest Action Network

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Click here and fill out our form to suggest a story for The Good Stuff

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Episode 6: Don’t Just “Be the Change”- Make Change!