For ants, slow and steady wins the race

Ben Dobson is making the 3,000-mile salad a thing of the past.

"The East Coast should be feeding itself."

Jay Parkinson is dragging the medical profession into the IM age.

"Instead of waiting on the health-care industry to catch up, we're doing it."

Meet America's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company.

While the big drug companies may be content to let potential cures languish if they don't offer high profit margins, OneWorld Health doesn't have to let concerns about profits derail the development of medicine. The company negotiates for the rights to investigate whether compounds shelved by pharmaceutical companies might work against one or more of the so-called neglected diseases-from kala-azar to malaria-and shepherds the potential drugs through any necessary clinical trials. The company's use of partially developed medications helps cut down on a drug's ultimate cost to patients, as does its commitment to working with manufacturers that agree to produce the final product for little or no profit. The model also keeps costs low in a more fundamental way. Developing paromomycin, for example, cost nearly $50 million-most of which came from a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-but unlike the for-profit pharmaceutical companies, OneWorld Health doesn't need to recoup this cost by charging sky-high prices for the medication.

OneWorld Health is also working with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Sanofi-Aventis, and Amyris Biotechnologies to develop a new, cheap method of manufacturing an antimalaria drug.

The executives hope their work will not only lead to new medicines, but new philanthropic pharmaceutical companies. "The concept of a nonprofit drug company is fresh and new," says Myrtle Potter, a strategic adviser to OneWorld Health. "If we prove that the concept is sustainable and scalable, it will be a big success, not just for us but also for the patients we serve."

This past April, OneWorld Health announced an innovative agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Roche, which will give the company access to Roche's proprietary library of thousands of drug compounds. The executives at OneWorld Health hope that one of these compounds may hold a cure for the more than 2 million children who die every year of diarrheal disease. "Ninety percent of research money goes to the diseases that affect only ten percent of people," says Nina Grove, OneWorld Health's vice president for access and delivery. "OneWorld Health focuses on the diseases of those other 90 percent."]]>

Meet America's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company.

In India, they call it kala-azar, the black fever. And the signs are all too familiar: chronic fever, weight loss, a distended belly that signals a dangerously enlarged spleen. The fatal disease is visceral leishmaniasis, spread by sand flies that bite people as they sleep. In 2006, nearly 30,000 people in the Indian state of Bihar were stricken, and most of them died. Few could afford the pricey medicines that would have cured them.

Enter the Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the United States. Executives at the company heard that a decades-old antibiotic might be useful against kala-azar; so they sponsored clinical trials of the drug and found it to be effective in battling the parasites that cause the disease. The Indian government has now approved the medication-"paromomycin IM injection" in doctor's parlance-which is scheduled to hit the market soon. A complete course of treatment will cost patients as little as $10.

The paromomycin story illustrates that "you can be successful in developing safe and affordable drugs for neglected diseases," says Susan Wilson, the senior director of OneWorld Health's diarrheal-disease program. "There is very high need for new therapeutics to treat these infectious diseases that have not been focused on for many years. In many cases, they are treatable."

Founded by Dr. Victoria Hale in 2000, OneWorld Health has made it its mission to develop these treatments-and keep them affordable for the populations that need them most. The company's officers, most of whom spent years working in the for-profit drug industry, know that they can't tackle infectious disease on their own. The idea is to find new uses for existing medications or to identify promising medicines that have been abandoned by drug companies. "There are lots of perfectly fine drugs or drug candidates that get discarded because the people who are developing them don't see the potential for a high-value market," says Julie Cheng, a vice president and general counsel for the organization.

While the big drug companies may be content to let potential cures languish if they don't offer high profit margins, OneWorld Health doesn't have to let concerns about profits derail the development of medicine. The company negotiates for the rights to investigate whether compounds shelved by pharmaceutical companies might work against one or more of the so-called neglected diseases-from kala-azar to malaria-and shepherds the potential drugs through any necessary clinical trials. The company's use of partially developed medications helps cut down on a drug's ultimate cost to patients, as does its commitment to working with manufacturers that agree to produce the final product for little or no profit. The model also keeps costs low in a more fundamental way. Developing paromomycin, for example, cost nearly $50 million-most of which came from a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-but unlike the for-profit pharmaceutical companies, OneWorld Health doesn't need to recoup this cost by charging sky-high prices for the medication.

OneWorld Health is also working with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Sanofi-Aventis, and Amyris Biotechnologies to develop a new, cheap method of manufacturing an antimalaria drug.

The executives hope their work will not only lead to new medicines, but new philanthropic pharmaceutical companies. "The concept of a nonprofit drug company is fresh and new," says Myrtle Potter, a strategic adviser to OneWorld Health. "If we prove that the concept is sustainable and scalable, it will be a big success, not just for us but also for the patients we serve."

This past April, OneWorld Health announced an innovative agreement with the pharmaceutical giant Roche, which will give the company access to Roche's proprietary library of thousands of drug compounds. The executives at OneWorld Health hope that one of these compounds may hold a cure for the more than 2 million children who die every year of diarrheal disease. "Ninety percent of research money goes to the diseases that affect only ten percent of people," says Nina Grove, OneWorld Health's vice president for access and delivery. "OneWorld Health focuses on the diseases of those other 90 percent."]]> Emily Anthes Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:02:41 PDT http://www.good.is/post/prescription-for-upheaval/ http://www.good.is/post/prescription-for-upheaval/

The apogee of protest rock might well have come on May 15, 1970. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded "Ohio" in a Los Angeles record studio-a song that Neil Young had penned in feverish reaction to the Kent State killings 11 days earlier. In searing terms, the song called a generation to account for the actions of its government: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. / We're finally on our own. / This summer I hear the drumming, / Four dead in Ohio."

In these new tumultuous times, we have plenty to get worked up about (the Florida recount, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, to name a few), but you would be hard-pressed to find such overt social commentary addressed by today's of-the-moment rock bands, at least in any memorable way. Even Rolling Stone admitted not long ago that "some of the new political rock is couched in ambiguity"-but isn't a lack of ambiguity required for a clear message of protest?

Maybe we've just been looking for protest in all the wrong places. Maybe the interesting music revolt isn't happening on the FM dial anymore. Case in point: Ted Leo, lead singer and guitarist of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and a fixture of the alternative rock scene. His sound is a tightly woven texture of punk and pop, with hard-charging songs of an unambiguously political sort. "I see my songs as vignettes or snapshots about the human condition at a moment of reflection, or crisis, or triumph," says Leo, 37.

Quote:

You've got people creating amazing art infused with their passion and politics all the time.

As a New Jersey native, his songs can certainly echo the workingman blues of Bruce Springsteen, but they take just as much from Joe Strummer of the Clash and the whole punk ethos. In the late 1980s, Leo fronted the hardcore band Citizens Arrest (before stints with Animal Crackers and Chisel), and while he's no longer screaming into mics and hanging from rafters, the antiestablishment rebellion of hardcore punk still rings clearly throughout his newer, more popular work. In songs like "Heart Problems," "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb," and "The One Who Got Us Out," he laments the Iraq war, the abuse of detainees, the erosion of our civil liberties, our failing economy, and our broken health-care system.

In this age of Clear Channel, and the soft banalities of corporate-curated rock radio, it would seem quite a large leap for Leo's songs-angry and unapologetic-to seize a national audience in the way that "Ohio" or Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" captured college campuses decades ago. But Leo himself seems unperturbed by this fact. "I don't want to be a rock star, I don't ever want to be playing arenas. My audience is not massive: it's a tight and loyal crowd." He also resists the inevitable comparisons to his protest-rock forebears. His music is its own thing, he says. "To suggest that [the 1960s] were some sort of heyday of musical radicalism," he says, "completely glosses over the fact that when the world got self-satisfied in the 1970s, punk picked up the torch, and [the old radicals] were on the other side of the picket line. You've got people creating amazing art infused with their passion and politics all the time."

So far, Leo's most overt call to action has been Shake the Sheets, an album he released just before the 2004 presidential election. He and his band took their fist-pumping pop songs to get-out-the-vote events, shows supporting John Kerry, and organized protests. Despite the outcome of that election, Shake the Sheets struck a chord with a larger audience and marked a sharper, more direct approach in Leo's songwriting. This time around, he's at it again, having just performed at the Campus Progress national conference in Washington, D.C., and touring with the band Against Me! this fall. He has also been working on a new crop of songs, which he plans to release in time for the November elections.

---

Leo's 2004 album Shake the Sheets featured the hit "Me and Mia" as well as "The One Who Got Us Out," which features overtly political lyrics like "Take it to the floor of Congress / Look into the Core of Rotten / Turn into the one who got us out."]]>

The apogee of protest rock might well have come on May 15, 1970. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded "Ohio" in a Los Angeles record studio-a song that Neil Young had penned in feverish reaction to the Kent State killings 11 days earlier. In searing terms, the song called a generation to account for the actions of its government: "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. / We're finally on our own. / This summer I hear the drumming, / Four dead in Ohio."

In these new tumultuous times, we have plenty to get worked up about (the Florida recount, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, to name a few), but you would be hard-pressed to find such overt social commentary addressed by today's of-the-moment rock bands, at least in any memorable way. Even Rolling Stone admitted not long ago that "some of the new political rock is couched in ambiguity"-but isn't a lack of ambiguity required for a clear message of protest?

Maybe we've just been looking for protest in all the wrong places. Maybe the interesting music revolt isn't happening on the FM dial anymore. Case in point: Ted Leo, lead singer and guitarist of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, and a fixture of the alternative rock scene. His sound is a tightly woven texture of punk and pop, with hard-charging songs of an unambiguously political sort. "I see my songs as vignettes or snapshots about the human condition at a moment of reflection, or crisis, or triumph," says Leo, 37.

Quote:

You've got people creating amazing art infused with their passion and politics all the time.

As a New Jersey native, his songs can certainly echo the workingman blues of Bruce Springsteen, but they take just as much from Joe Strummer of the Clash and the whole punk ethos. In the late 1980s, Leo fronted the hardcore band Citizens Arrest (before stints with Animal Crackers and Chisel), and while he's no longer screaming into mics and hanging from rafters, the antiestablishment rebellion of hardcore punk still rings clearly throughout his newer, more popular work. In songs like "Heart Problems," "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb," and "The One Who Got Us Out," he laments the Iraq war, the abuse of detainees, the erosion of our civil liberties, our failing economy, and our broken health-care system.

In this age of Clear Channel, and the soft banalities of corporate-curated rock radio, it would seem quite a large leap for Leo's songs-angry and unapologetic-to seize a national audience in the way that "Ohio" or Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son" captured college campuses decades ago. But Leo himself seems unperturbed by this fact. "I don't want to be a rock star, I don't ever want to be playing arenas. My audience is not massive: it's a tight and loyal crowd." He also resists the inevitable comparisons to his protest-rock forebears. His music is its own thing, he says. "To suggest that [the 1960s] were some sort of heyday of musical radicalism," he says, "completely glosses over the fact that when the world got self-satisfied in the 1970s, punk picked up the torch, and [the old radicals] were on the other side of the picket line. You've got people creating amazing art infused with their passion and politics all the time."

So far, Leo's most overt call to action has been Shake the Sheets, an album he released just before the 2004 presidential election. He and his band took their fist-pumping pop songs to get-out-the-vote events, shows supporting John Kerry, and organized protests. Despite the outcome of that election, Shake the Sheets struck a chord with a larger audience and marked a sharper, more direct approach in Leo's songwriting. This time around, he's at it again, having just performed at the Campus Progress national conference in Washington, D.C., and touring with the band Against Me! this fall. He has also been working on a new crop of songs, which he plans to release in time for the November elections.

---

Leo's 2004 album Shake the Sheets featured the hit "Me and Mia" as well as "The One Who Got Us Out," which features overtly political lyrics like "Take it to the floor of Congress / Look into the Core of Rotten / Turn into the one who got us out."]]> Lindsay Ballant Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:18:19 PDT http://www.good.is/post/aids-vertisement/ http://www.good.is/post/aids-vertisement/

Drink Coke. Chew gum. Wear a condom. To Kate Roberts, the British-born mastermind behind the AIDS-awareness organization YouthAIDS, there should be no difference in the way these messages are presented. If consumer products can be sold to the masses, why can't social responsibility? "It's the same strategy," she says. "You have to make something desirable, available, and affordable."

There's no question that Roberts, 40, knows how to sell. In the mid-1990s, at the Moscow and Bucharest branches of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, she spearheaded campaigns to promote products like soda and cigarettes to the youth of newly capitalist Russia and Romania. While living in Eastern Europe, Roberts made the party circuit, dated a Romanian rock star, and even endured a kidnapping attempt by the Russian mafia, but her whirlwind high-society life took an unexpected turn in 1997, when she was approached by the nonprofit Public Services International to develop a pro bono advertising campaign for AIDS awareness in Romania.

As with her commercial work, Roberts's goal was to make the youth market crave what she was selling-in this case, a decidedly unglamorous product: condoms. "We would take a packet of unbranded condoms and completely revamp it," she says. "We'd give it a name, give it an image, and make the product desirable. Because these promotions were done in a very cool and hip and relevant way, the kids were more likely to use this condom." Thanks to her campaign-which included a documentary film, a TV show, and a series of underground parties-condom use in Romania doubled.

Quote:

Today's youth never saw those really scary, in-your-face, aggressive PSAs.

In 1999, burned out from the combined demands of her big-budget advertising work and her pro bono efforts, Roberts booked a three-week vacation to South Africa. Once she arrived, she found it tough to relax. Passing through Cape Town, she witnessed funeral after funeral; mourners weeping for their friends, siblings, children-all victims of AIDS. Confronted with the bleak evidence of the disease's staggering global impact, Roberts was compelled to take action: "So many people are living in poverty and contracting HIV," she says. "I thought, Why not do what we're doing in Romania, but do it all over the world?"

Soon, Roberts moved to Washington, D.C., and-with the backing of PSI-launched YouthAIDS, dedicated to preventing the spread of HIV around the world. In the nine years since, she's used her insider's knowledge of what makes consumers tick to create compelling, provocative ad campaigns, both for YouthAIDS and for a new initiative, Five & Alive, which fights global health issues like malaria, malnutrition, and pneumonia.

For both programs, Roberts employs a nimble advertising strategy. "It's about being creative and finding the right partnerships with the right media partner, corporations, and celebrities," she says.

YouthAIDS has tapped into many circles of the media world, using everything from a Wyclef Jean concert to a global shopping day as platforms to promote its message, but one of the organization's greatest coups is the recent "Hear No Evil" campaign, a collaboration with Aldo Shoes. The campaign has reached an estimated billion people worldwide.

Commandeering the attention of nearly one-sixth of the planet's population may seem like a dizzying feat, but Roberts says her work is far from done. According to a recent survey by UNAIDS, a joint program of 10 United Nations organizations, nearly 7,000 young people are infected with HIV every day across the globe; the demand for AIDS awareness and education remains as urgent as ever.

Today's youth never saw "the shocking images of Freddie Mercury or Rock Hudson dying, or those really scary, in-your-face, aggressive public-service announcements" that were omnipresent in the early days of AIDS, says Roberts. "All the global tragedies, like earthquakes and cyclones and the war, are dominating the media today, which makes it harder for this pandemic-which is one of the biggest pandemic of the 21st century-to get airplay. It's up to organizations like mine to make it relevant again."]]>

Drink Coke. Chew gum. Wear a condom. To Kate Roberts, the British-born mastermind behind the AIDS-awareness organization YouthAIDS, there should be no difference in the way these messages are presented. If consumer products can be sold to the masses, why can't social responsibility? "It's the same strategy," she says. "You have to make something desirable, available, and affordable."

There's no question that Roberts, 40, knows how to sell. In the mid-1990s, at the Moscow and Bucharest branches of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, she spearheaded campaigns to promote products like soda and cigarettes to the youth of newly capitalist Russia and Romania. While living in Eastern Europe, Roberts made the party circuit, dated a Romanian rock star, and even endured a kidnapping attempt by the Russian mafia, but her whirlwind high-society life took an unexpected turn in 1997, when she was approached by the nonprofit Public Services International to develop a pro bono advertising campaign for AIDS awareness in Romania.

As with her commercial work, Roberts's goal was to make the youth market crave what she was selling-in this case, a decidedly unglamorous product: condoms. "We would take a packet of unbranded condoms and completely revamp it," she says. "We'd give it a name, give it an image, and make the product desirable. Because these promotions were done in a very cool and hip and relevant way, the kids were more likely to use this condom." Thanks to her campaign-which included a documentary film, a TV show, and a series of underground parties-condom use in Romania doubled.

Quote:

Today's youth never saw those really scary, in-your-face, aggressive PSAs.

In 1999, burned out from the combined demands of her big-budget advertising work and her pro bono efforts, Roberts booked a three-week vacation to South Africa. Once she arrived, she found it tough to relax. Passing through Cape Town, she witnessed funeral after funeral; mourners weeping for their friends, siblings, children-all victims of AIDS. Confronted with the bleak evidence of the disease's staggering global impact, Roberts was compelled to take action: "So many people are living in poverty and contracting HIV," she says. "I thought, Why not do what we're doing in Romania, but do it all over the world?"

Soon, Roberts moved to Washington, D.C., and-with the backing of PSI-launched YouthAIDS, dedicated to preventing the spread of HIV around the world. In the nine years since, she's used her insider's knowledge of what makes consumers tick to create compelling, provocative ad campaigns, both for YouthAIDS and for a new initiative, Five & Alive, which fights global health issues like malaria, malnutrition, and pneumonia.

For both programs, Roberts employs a nimble advertising strategy. "It's about being creative and finding the right partnerships with the right media partner, corporations, and celebrities," she says.

YouthAIDS has tapped into many circles of the media world, using everything from a Wyclef Jean concert to a global shopping day as platforms to promote its message, but one of the organization's greatest coups is the recent "Hear No Evil" campaign, a collaboration with Aldo Shoes. The campaign has reached an estimated billion people worldwide.

Commandeering the attention of nearly one-sixth of the planet's population may seem like a dizzying feat, but Roberts says her work is far from done. According to a recent survey by UNAIDS, a joint program of 10 United Nations organizations, nearly 7,000 young people are infected with HIV every day across the globe; the demand for AIDS awareness and education remains as urgent as ever.

Today's youth never saw "the shocking images of Freddie Mercury or Rock Hudson dying, or those really scary, in-your-face, aggressive public-service announcements" that were omnipresent in the early days of AIDS, says Roberts. "All the global tragedies, like earthquakes and cyclones and the war, are dominating the media today, which makes it harder for this pandemic-which is one of the biggest pandemic of the 21st century-to get airplay. It's up to organizations like mine to make it relevant again."]]> Kathryn Hawkins Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:50:19 PDT http://www.good.is/post/high-water-rising/ http://www.good.is/post/high-water-rising/

In mid-August, 2005, Kimberly Roberts, a 24-year-old New Orleans native, bought a Sony Handycam for $20 from a man on the street, with the vague hope of recording something she could sell to the news. Living in a Ninth Ward neighborhood ravaged by murder and drugs, Roberts witnessed tabloid-news material on a nearly daily basis.

One week later, Hurricane Katrina came ashore, and she had a new subject entirely.

By the storm's end, Roberts had recorded hours of footage, much of which was taken from the vantage point of her attic, where she and her husband, Scott, huddled along with 10 of their neighbors. Now, three years later, their harrowing experience can be seen in Trouble the Water, a feature-length film that won the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival and is being released nationally in August. Uncompromising and heartfelt, Trouble the Water follows the Robertses through the storm and their struggle for recovery. "People are congratulating us for making this film and being so brave, but it's just who we are," says Kim. "We're not actors; this wasn't set up. This is the truth."

Before Katrina hit, Kim and Scott were just two of many anonymous, struggling New Orleanians, coping with the hardships of the inner city. Kim was an aspiring rap artist, Scott a tire technician. Once they got word of Katrina's impending landfall, the couple attempted to rent a car and flee (their own car had been stolen two weeks earlier), but they were refused. "If you had money [before Katrina], you could get out of any situation," says Scott, 33. "If you didn't, you were history."

Quote:

We're not actors; this wasn't set up. This is the truth.

By storm's end, the couple had managed to escape the city, along with 30 other survivors, in the back of a panel truck headed for a Red Cross shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana. At the same shelter, a pair of Brooklyn-based filmmakers, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (producers of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11), were shooting a documentary about New Orleans-born National Guard members returning to their devastated hometown. After the Robertses boldly introduced themselves and showed Deal and Lessin their footage, the producers scrapped their plan and began documenting the couple's post-Katrina lives. "The more time we spent with them," says Lessin, "the more we realized that the film needed to not only be about their Hurricane Katrina journey, but their survival."

The filmmakers followed the couple for two weeks as they returned to New Orleans only to find that promised government assistance was difficult to come by. Trouble the Water focuses a lens on the racial and economic fissures that have always been a part of New Orleans life, but which Katrina split wide open. One white 20-something National Guardsman, in response to aggressive requests for help from New Orleans's devastated poor, comments that "these people have no concept on how to survive." Later, a friend of Roberts offers an unintentional counterpoint, telling her son, who is thinking of joining the military, that he shouldn't "fight for a country that doesn't give a damn about him."


Trouble the Water is at once a window into the struggles faced by poor New Orleanians and an indictment of government efforts to help them. Soldiers with M16 rifles turn away Scott and other survivors when they seek help at the U.S. Naval Support Activity center; a FEMA employee tells the Robertses that their promised $2,000 check has been lost. "In this country, people who come from poverty are forgotten," says Scott. "We just hope that this film can change that, even if only slightly."

It's easy to see the film as an inspirational tale of obstacles overcome, but that would be overlooking a deeper, more troubling message: Even three years after Katrina, the damage is still palpable, and will take generations to fix. "This film tells people, ‘Don't depend on your government,'" says Kim. She and Scott are living again in New Orleans, where they have started a record label. "Don't depend on anybody but your family, and try to be in the position where you can help more than yourself."]]>

In mid-August, 2005, Kimberly Roberts, a 24-year-old New Orleans native, bought a Sony Handycam for $20 from a man on the street, with the vague hope of recording something she could sell to the news. Living in a Ninth Ward neighborhood ravaged by murder and drugs, Roberts witnessed tabloid-news material on a nearly daily basis.

One week later, Hurricane Katrina came ashore, and she had a new subject entirely.

By the storm's end, Roberts had recorded hours of footage, much of which was taken from the vantage point of her attic, where she and her husband, Scott, huddled along with 10 of their neighbors. Now, three years later, their harrowing experience can be seen in Trouble the Water, a feature-length film that won the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival and is being released nationally in August. Uncompromising and heartfelt, Trouble the Water follows the Robertses through the storm and their struggle for recovery. "People are congratulating us for making this film and being so brave, but it's just who we are," says Kim. "We're not actors; this wasn't set up. This is the truth."

Before Katrina hit, Kim and Scott were just two of many anonymous, struggling New Orleanians, coping with the hardships of the inner city. Kim was an aspiring rap artist, Scott a tire technician. Once they got word of Katrina's impending landfall, the couple attempted to rent a car and flee (their own car had been stolen two weeks earlier), but they were refused. "If you had money [before Katrina], you could get out of any situation," says Scott, 33. "If you didn't, you were history."

Quote:

We're not actors; this wasn't set up. This is the truth.

By storm's end, the couple had managed to escape the city, along with 30 other survivors, in the back of a panel truck headed for a Red Cross shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana. At the same shelter, a pair of Brooklyn-based filmmakers, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (producers of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11), were shooting a documentary about New Orleans-born National Guard members returning to their devastated hometown. After the Robertses boldly introduced themselves and showed Deal and Lessin their footage, the producers scrapped their plan and began documenting the couple's post-Katrina lives. "The more time we spent with them," says Lessin, "the more we realized that the film needed to not only be about their Hurricane Katrina journey, but their survival."

The filmmakers followed the couple for two weeks as they returned to New Orleans only to find that promised government assistance was difficult to come by. Trouble the Water focuses a lens on the racial and economic fissures that have always been a part of New Orleans life, but which Katrina split wide open. One white 20-something National Guardsman, in response to aggressive requests for help from New Orleans's devastated poor, comments that "these people have no concept on how to survive." Later, a friend of Roberts offers an unintentional counterpoint, telling her son, who is thinking of joining the military, that he shouldn't "fight for a country that doesn't give a damn about him."


Trouble the Water is at once a window into the struggles faced by poor New Orleanians and an indictment of government efforts to help them. Soldiers with M16 rifles turn away Scott and other survivors when they seek help at the U.S. Naval Support Activity center; a FEMA employee tells the Robertses that their promised $2,000 check has been lost. "In this country, people who come from poverty are forgotten," says Scott. "We just hope that this film can change that, even if only slightly."

It's easy to see the film as an inspirational tale of obstacles overcome, but that would be overlooking a deeper, more troubling message: Even three years after Katrina, the damage is still palpable, and will take generations to fix. "This film tells people, ‘Don't depend on your government,'" says Kim. She and Scott are living again in New Orleans, where they have started a record label. "Don't depend on anybody but your family, and try to be in the position where you can help more than yourself."]]> Matt Barone Wed, 13 Aug 2008 16:58:42 PDT http://www.good.is/post/neighborhood_watch/ http://www.good.is/post/neighborhood_watch/

A woman in Philadelphia hypes an upcoming public knitting day. In Minneapolis, a pundit bemoans Al Franken's just-launched senate bid. A man in Karachi, Pakistan, laments power outages that have become the norm for the frustrated residents there. And a concerned citizen in Bangalore, India, critiques racy advertising that recently went up in the city. These posts-aggregated at Metblogs, the largest city-specific blog network in the world-provide little glimpses of life in cities around the world. "People think the great thing about the internet is that you can connect with the world," says 33-year-old Sean Bonner, one of the founders of Metblogs. "But I want to connect with the guy down the street. I want to know what my neighbor thinks is the best sandwich in town. Or a secret shortcut to get home at night."

Bonner, along with fellow web conspirator Jason DeFillippo, hit upon the Metblogs concept five years ago, when the two men made the startling discovery that the internet offered hardly any useful local information about their hometown, Los Angeles. There was nothing to be found about the best restaurants, stores, or late-breaking local news. "The alt-weeklies and local papers were full of syndicated content," says Bonner. "Even if it was local, there was not an actual opinion."

Seeing an opportunity, Bonner and DeFillippo roughed out a concept for a multiple-author blog that would focus exclusively on life in their home city. Tech whiz DeFillippo handled programming, and after the two recruited a few contributors, Blogging.la was launched in November, 2003. Within a few months, the site expanded to include New York, San Francisco, London, and Chicago. After a year, more than 30 cities were in the network, and the site came to be called Metblogs (it has since grown to include 56 cities). The key to its success was getting reliable local information. Bonner wasn't interested in reviews or listings or even conventional news; he wanted real people, relating stories about the places where they lived. "We don't have 500 people working out of some office. We value the individual voice," says Bonner. It's this focus that sets Metblogs apart from successful local-news sites like Gothamist (a New York–based site that launched about the same time), or collective review sites like Yelp.

Quote:

I want to know what my neighbor thinks is the best sandwich in town.

The way it works is simple: There's no office or overhead, and the bloggers-Metblogs looks for six to 10 in a given city before launching the site-don't get paid. The modest sum Metblogs makes on advertising goes toward hosting and administrative costs, after which the remainder is used to pay salaries for the two founders and the three employees who do various jobs for the site. "Obviously, I wouldn't object to it making money," says Bonner. "But our focus has always been on building a cool site." (He declines to give numbers, but says that traffic has been increasing steadily since the day the site was launched.)

Although Bonner hesitates to label the Metblogs experiment with the trendy phrase "citizen journalism," he knows that the deeply personal firsthand accounts of his bloggers have become invaluable sources of information at a time when traditional news bureaus are shutting their doors due to budget cuts. In 2005, the year of the London terrorist bombings and the devastating earthquake in Pakistan, Metbloggers contributed valuable real-time reporting to both events. And during the 2006 coup in Thailand, the government shut down the BBC and CNN's live feeds, but Metblogs's Thai contributors freely walked the streets, posting photos six hours before the first mainstream coverage began to reach the United States.


Now, Metblogs's high profile has those big internet companies calling. Bonner has consulted for people like Yahoo, Shopzilla, and Obey Giant, and is currently an advisor at a Los Angeles branding firm. "Of course there are people who want to know how we did
it," he says. "But I don't want to sit in an office talking to people about what we're doing. I just want to do it."]]>

A woman in Philadelphia hypes an upcoming public knitting day. In Minneapolis, a pundit bemoans Al Franken's just-launched senate bid. A man in Karachi, Pakistan, laments power outages that have become the norm for the frustrated residents there. And a concerned citizen in Bangalore, India, critiques racy advertising that recently went up in the city. These posts-aggregated at Metblogs, the largest city-specific blog network in the world-provide little glimpses of life in cities around the world. "People think the great thing about the internet is that you can connect with the world," says 33-year-old Sean Bonner, one of the founders of Metblogs. "But I want to connect with the guy down the street. I want to know what my neighbor thinks is the best sandwich in town. Or a secret shortcut to get home at night."

Bonner, along with fellow web conspirator Jason DeFillippo, hit upon the Metblogs concept five years ago, when the two men made the startling discovery that the internet offered hardly any useful local information about their hometown, Los Angeles. There was nothing to be found about the best restaurants, stores, or late-breaking local news. "The alt-weeklies and local papers were full of syndicated content," says Bonner. "Even if it was local, there was not an actual opinion."

Seeing an opportunity, Bonner and DeFillippo roughed out a concept for a multiple-author blog that would focus exclusively on life in their home city. Tech whiz DeFillippo handled programming, and after the two recruited a few contributors, Blogging.la was launched in November, 2003. Within a few months, the site expanded to include New York, San Francisco, London, and Chicago. After a year, more than 30 cities were in the network, and the site came to be called Metblogs (it has since grown to include 56 cities). The key to its success was getting reliable local information. Bonner wasn't interested in reviews or listings or even conventional news; he wanted real people, relating stories about the places where they lived. "We don't have 500 people working out of some office. We value the individual voice," says Bonner. It's this focus that sets Metblogs apart from successful local-news sites like Gothamist (a New York–based site that launched about the same time), or collective review sites like Yelp.

Quote:

I want to know what my neighbor thinks is the best sandwich in town.

The way it works is simple: There's no office or overhead, and the bloggers-Metblogs looks for six to 10 in a given city before launching the site-don't get paid. The modest sum Metblogs makes on advertising goes toward hosting and administrative costs, after which the remainder is used to pay salaries for the two founders and the three employees who do various jobs for the site. "Obviously, I wouldn't object to it making money," says Bonner. "But our focus has always been on building a cool site." (He declines to give numbers, but says that traffic has been increasing steadily since the day the site was launched.)

Although Bonner hesitates to label the Metblogs experiment with the trendy phrase "citizen journalism," he knows that the deeply personal firsthand accounts of his bloggers have become invaluable sources of information at a time when traditional news bureaus are shutting their doors due to budget cuts. In 2005, the year of the London terrorist bombings and the devastating earthquake in Pakistan, Metbloggers contributed valuable real-time reporting to both events. And during the 2006 coup in Thailand, the government shut down the BBC and CNN's live feeds, but Metblogs's Thai contributors freely walked the streets, posting photos six hours before the first mainstream coverage began to reach the United States.


Now, Metblogs's high profile has those big internet companies calling. Bonner has consulted for people like Yahoo, Shopzilla, and Obey Giant, and is currently an advisor at a Los Angeles branding firm. "Of course there are people who want to know how we did
it," he says. "But I don't want to sit in an office talking to people about what we're doing. I just want to do it."]]> Alissa Walker Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:12:45 PDT http://www.good.is/post/fun_with_art/ http://www.good.is/post/fun_with_art/

Jonathon Keats makes art that makes you think.  How much is that worth?

The conceptual art career of Jonathon Keats started sometime before his sixth birthday. A bored Keats, marooned in the suburbs outside San Francisco, where his family had moved, began hawking stones. "I didn't know what else to do," he says. "So I set up a table outside, and I took some rocks off the ground, and I put the rocks on the table, and I just started to sell them." Had he later gone into business, the anecdote might have hinted at an early entrepreneurial savvy, but this enterprise was different. The 6-year-old Keats wasn't arguing that his rocks were more valuable than the many free rocks nearby. He was just arguing that they were for sale.

The artist's adult projects have remained faithful to the spirit of his first venture. In 2000, Keats, then 29 and a newly published novelist, launched his art career as "a new way" of approaching philosophy, which had interested him since his college days. In an unusual performance piece at San Francisco's Refusalon gallery, he simply sat in a chair for 24 hours and thought. Since art shows must have art to sell, he offered the thoughts themselves (cards time-stamped with a few minutes' worth of ideas). And since art shows must feel like art shows, he was accompanied by a nude model and bad wine.

Since then, his pieces have touched on everything from theology to the metric system to beekeeping, along with the occasional attempt to pin down God. He has lobbied the city of Berkeley to make "A = A" a local ordinance; devised a new system of measurement in which units are customized according to each person's heartbeat; and exploited the few sketchy details we have on God (He's older than everything else; He looks like a human being) to try placing Him in the taxonomic order. Most recently, Keats created a decidedly avant-garde entry to the burgeoning ring-tone market-a remix of John Cage's infamous silent composition, "4'33""-and he attempted what might be called apiarian choreography, arranging flower beds in such a way that pollinating honeybees will put on a ballet.

Quote:

Not knowing what movies plants would like, I ended up with pornography, which seemed the most obvious.

What these eccentric endeavors-lodged somewhere between hard and soft science, the postmodern and the baroque-have in common, according to their planner, is a twist on Dadaist Marcel Duchamp's notion of the found object. "That was a profound moment in the history of art," Keats says, "but it was slightly off from what could have been of much more interest, potentially." More intriguing to Keats was the idea of a found process-the motions we go through in everyday life, which, when freed from their usual context, often appear absurd. What does a law look like if you take away the reason for it? What meaning is there in the act of buying something if it doesn't matter what you get?

Keats's art is essentially that of an earnest philosopher-its driving method an intentional naiveté, a put-on innocence about the way the world works. Playing a bit dumb opens up questions most people assume are already answered, questions that often illuminate something new. There is, for example, the film he made for plants. Ignoring the assumption that plants don't watch movies, Keats could focus instead on matters of taste. "Not knowing what they'd like, I ended up with pornography, which seemed like the most obvious thing," he says. The result was Cinema Botanica, a black-and-white piece "featuring explicit acts of cross-pollination." His latest concept, to be set up next year at Montana State University, also gives agency to nature. Suggesting that a stream has "a song that it sings," he will give Bozeman's Mandeville Creek a new melody by rearranging the rocks beneath the water.



At a certain point, Keats's whole persona begins to appear as one big Keats project: a slightly preposterous "what if?" on how to lead an artist's life. It's a notion he encourages. On a shelf in one corner of his study, Keats keeps a large block of carbon beneath a bell jar. This solemn gray chunk, exactly equivalent to the artist's carbon weight, is the control in his biggest installation piece: "the project of being alive."]]>

Jonathon Keats makes art that makes you think.  How much is that worth?

The conceptual art career of Jonathon Keats started sometime before his sixth birthday. A bored Keats, marooned in the suburbs outside San Francisco, where his family had moved, began hawking stones. "I didn't know what else to do," he says. "So I set up a table outside, and I took some rocks off the ground, and I put the rocks on the table, and I just started to sell them." Had he later gone into business, the anecdote might have hinted at an early entrepreneurial savvy, but this enterprise was different. The 6-year-old Keats wasn't arguing that his rocks were more valuable than the many free rocks nearby. He was just arguing that they were for sale.

The artist's adult projects have remained faithful to the spirit of his first venture. In 2000, Keats, then 29 and a newly published novelist, launched his art career as "a new way" of approaching philosophy, which had interested him since his college days. In an unusual performance piece at San Francisco's Refusalon gallery, he simply sat in a chair for 24 hours and thought. Since art shows must have art to sell, he offered the thoughts themselves (cards time-stamped with a few minutes' worth of ideas). And since art shows must feel like art shows, he was accompanied by a nude model and bad wine.

Since then, his pieces have touched on everything from theology to the metric system to beekeeping, along with the occasional attempt to pin down God. He has lobbied the city of Berkeley to make "A = A" a local ordinance; devised a new system of measurement in which units are customized according to each person's heartbeat; and exploited the few sketchy details we have on God (He's older than everything else; He looks like a human being) to try placing Him in the taxonomic order. Most recently, Keats created a decidedly avant-garde entry to the burgeoning ring-tone market-a remix of John Cage's infamous silent composition, "4'33""-and he attempted what might be called apiarian choreography, arranging flower beds in such a way that pollinating honeybees will put on a ballet.

Quote:

Not knowing what movies plants would like, I ended up with pornography, which seemed the most obvious.

What these eccentric endeavors-lodged somewhere between hard and soft science, the postmodern and the baroque-have in common, according to their planner, is a twist on Dadaist Marcel Duchamp's notion of the found object. "That was a profound moment in the history of art," Keats says, "but it was slightly off from what could have been of much more interest, potentially." More intriguing to Keats was the idea of a found process-the motions we go through in everyday life, which, when freed from their usual context, often appear absurd. What does a law look like if you take away the reason for it? What meaning is there in the act of buying something if it doesn't matter what you get?

Keats's art is essentially that of an earnest philosopher-its driving method an intentional naiveté, a put-on innocence about the way the world works. Playing a bit dumb opens up questions most people assume are already answered, questions that often illuminate something new. There is, for example, the film he made for plants. Ignoring the assumption that plants don't watch movies, Keats could focus instead on matters of taste. "Not knowing what they'd like, I ended up with pornography, which seemed like the most obvious thing," he says. The result was Cinema Botanica, a black-and-white piece "featuring explicit acts of cross-pollination." His latest concept, to be set up next year at Montana State University, also gives agency to nature. Suggesting that a stream has "a song that it sings," he will give Bozeman's Mandeville Creek a new melody by rearranging the rocks beneath the water.



At a certain point, Keats's whole persona begins to appear as one big Keats project: a slightly preposterous "what if?" on how to lead an artist's life. It's a notion he encourages. On a shelf in one corner of his study, Keats keeps a large block of carbon beneath a bell jar. This solemn gray chunk, exactly equivalent to the artist's carbon weight, is the control in his biggest installation piece: "the project of being alive."]]> Theo Schell-Lambert Tue, 1 Jul 2008 17:07:14 PDT http://www.good.is/post/the_antidrug_lord/ http://www.good.is/post/the_antidrug_lord/

Tom Siebel keeps kids off meth by pushing shocking ads.

Outside a convenience store, a teenage girl makes an offer to an intimidating group of men: "You can do anything you want to me for 50 bucks." When one of them asks about her younger sister, standing nearby, she offers her up too. The men shuttle the girls, covered in scars, into a grungy bathroom. A voice-over confirms what many teens watching the television ad already know: "This isn't normal, but on meth it is."

Earlier this year, a series of such ads began airing in Illinois and Idaho, where the highly addictive drug has ravaged communities, crippling state budgets in the process. To stop the addiction cycle, billionaire software developer Tom Siebel (of Siebel Systems) has used his business savvy to create and promote the Meth Project-an anti-methamphetamine organization that targets first-time users. The organization aggressively preaches to young people with graphic portrayals of addiction on billboards, radio, and television.

Siebel, 55, borrowed the advertising concept from the American Cancer Society's successful "Truth" antismoking campaign, and his Meth Project ads go well beyond the classic "your brain on drugs" tagline. The spots offer a snapshot of meth addiction at its worst: a son attacking his mother; a boyfriend selling his girlfriend for drugs; a boy hallucinating that bugs are crawling on his skin; and the transformation of a pretty girl into one with skin sores and tooth decay. "We're really focused on realism," says Siebel. "That's exactly the way addicts look." With the slogan "Not Even Once," the campaign targets teens who haven't yet tried the drug.

Quote:

We're really focused on realism. That's exactly how addicts look.

The Meth Project first focused on Montana, where Siebel owns a cattle ranch. During trips to the state, he has watched the meth problem spiral into an epidemic. "It's palpable, visible, and very tragic," he says. Three years ago, more than half the children in Montana's foster-care system and more than half the prisoners in the state's jails were there because of methamphetamine, costing the state approximately $60 million a year. "The state's primary response was to increase prison sentencing," says Siebel. "That didn't strike me as making much of a difference in a positive sense."

Since the ads began airing in Montana in September, 2005, meth use among the state's teens has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to a recent survey by Montana's attorney general. In state-funded facilities, admissions for meth rehab have fallen by 42 percent among patients 20 years old and under, and meth-related crime has dropped by 62 percent. In three years, Montana has gone from fifth to 39th in the national ranking of methamphetamine abuse.


In addition to consulting with consumer-marketing experts, law enforcement authorities, focus groups, and award-winning directors, Siebel asks his four children, ages 9 to 19, for input on the campaigns. "These messages are in the same tone and color and frequency of what kids experience all day, he says. "For 16-year-olds, this is normal stuff." The ads are so stylized that they've made AdCritic's Top 10 list of best ads in the United States and won top honors at the Cannes Film Festival. The Office of National Drug Control Policy awarded the program a White House commendation as the most influential prevention campaign in 2006. Last fall, Siebel testified before the Senate and Congress on the effectiveness of his program and asked for support to expand nationwide.

To date, the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation has contributed $26 million to the Meth Project, making it the largest advertiser in Montana. A 2008 survey commissioned by the Montana Meth Project found that the ads were recognized by 88 percent of the state's teens, and two-thirds of teens reported seeing or hearing anti-meth messages weekly. Now, Siebel says, "We're in the franchising business." The advertisements have recently appeared beyond Montana's borders, in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, and Wyoming, and Siebel is taking a hard look at bringing the ads to more states soon, including Georgia, South Carolina, and the Dakotas, all states with large meth problems. As Siebel says, "The only difference between Montana and other states is the Meth Project."

LEARN MORE methproject.org ]]>

Tom Siebel keeps kids off meth by pushing shocking ads.

Outside a convenience store, a teenage girl makes an offer to an intimidating group of men: "You can do anything you want to me for 50 bucks." When one of them asks about her younger sister, standing nearby, she offers her up too. The men shuttle the girls, covered in scars, into a grungy bathroom. A voice-over confirms what many teens watching the television ad already know: "This isn't normal, but on meth it is."

Earlier this year, a series of such ads began airing in Illinois and Idaho, where the highly addictive drug has ravaged communities, crippling state budgets in the process. To stop the addiction cycle, billionaire software developer Tom Siebel (of Siebel Systems) has used his business savvy to create and promote the Meth Project-an anti-methamphetamine organization that targets first-time users. The organization aggressively preaches to young people with graphic portrayals of addiction on billboards, radio, and television.

Siebel, 55, borrowed the advertising concept from the American Cancer Society's successful "Truth" antismoking campaign, and his Meth Project ads go well beyond the classic "your brain on drugs" tagline. The spots offer a snapshot of meth addiction at its worst: a son attacking his mother; a boyfriend selling his girlfriend for drugs; a boy hallucinating that bugs are crawling on his skin; and the transformation of a pretty girl into one with skin sores and tooth decay. "We're really focused on realism," says Siebel. "That's exactly the way addicts look." With the slogan "Not Even Once," the campaign targets teens who haven't yet tried the drug.

Quote:

We're really focused on realism. That's exactly how addicts look.

The Meth Project first focused on Montana, where Siebel owns a cattle ranch. During trips to the state, he has watched the meth problem spiral into an epidemic. "It's palpable, visible, and very tragic," he says. Three years ago, more than half the children in Montana's foster-care system and more than half the prisoners in the state's jails were there because of methamphetamine, costing the state approximately $60 million a year. "The state's primary response was to increase prison sentencing," says Siebel. "That didn't strike me as making much of a difference in a positive sense."

Since the ads began airing in Montana in September, 2005, meth use among the state's teens has dropped by more than 40 percent, according to a recent survey by Montana's attorney general. In state-funded facilities, admissions for meth rehab have fallen by 42 percent among patients 20 years old and under, and meth-related crime has dropped by 62 percent. In three years, Montana has gone from fifth to 39th in the national ranking of methamphetamine abuse.


In addition to consulting with consumer-marketing experts, law enforcement authorities, focus groups, and award-winning directors, Siebel asks his four children, ages 9 to 19, for input on the campaigns. "These messages are in the same tone and color and frequency of what kids experience all day, he says. "For 16-year-olds, this is normal stuff." The ads are so stylized that they've made AdCritic's Top 10 list of best ads in the United States and won top honors at the Cannes Film Festival. The Office of National Drug Control Policy awarded the program a White House commendation as the most influential prevention campaign in 2006. Last fall, Siebel testified before the Senate and Congress on the effectiveness of his program and asked for support to expand nationwide.

To date, the Thomas and Stacey Siebel Foundation has contributed $26 million to the Meth Project, making it the largest advertiser in Montana. A 2008 survey commissioned by the Montana Meth Project found that the ads were recognized by 88 percent of the state's teens, and two-thirds of teens reported seeing or hearing anti-meth messages weekly. Now, Siebel says, "We're in the franchising business." The advertisements have recently appeared beyond Montana's borders, in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, and Wyoming, and Siebel is taking a hard look at bringing the ads to more states soon, including Georgia, South Carolina, and the Dakotas, all states with large meth problems. As Siebel says, "The only difference between Montana and other states is the Meth Project."

LEARN MORE methproject.org ]]> Corey Binns Thu, 5 Jun 2008 11:56:20 PDT http://www.good.is/post/the_new_nobels/ http://www.good.is/post/the_new_nobels/

Fred Kavli is finding ? and funding ? scientists who are solving the most complex puzzles in the universe.

As a boy, Fred Kavli watched the aurora borealis from his family's farm. Surrounded by the mountains and fjords of rural Norway, Kavli often contemplated the mysteries of the natural world. Even after becoming a successful entrepreneur, Kavli never stopped considering the unknown. Today, after making millions from his research into complex electronic sensors, Kavli is funding a broad range of cutting-edge scientific research, becoming one of the most forward-thinking benefactors of 21st-century science.

Kavli, now 80, is pouring his considerable fortune into the kinds of investigations that are less concerned with developing products and applications than with knowledge for its own sake. "Nothing is much more exciting than knowing the answers to the fundamental questions of life and the universe and, and everything," he says. The philanthropist's latest venture: creating a new class of prestigious scientific awards. The biannual Kavli Prizes, which are jointly sponsored by a foundation he set up and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, will award $1 million to a scientist doing world-class research in astrophysics, nanoscience, or neuroscience. The criteria, Kavli says, are simple: "We are looking to find the best scientists who are doing the best work." The first set of winners, selected by international committees of prominent scientists, was announced in May.

Quote:

Nothing is much more exciting than knowing the answers to the fundamental questions of life.

If the prizes sound more than a little similar to some other famous scientific honors, it's no coincidence. "The Nobel Prize is doing an excellent job," says Kavli. But he intends his awards to be different. While the Nobel Prizes are retrospective, honoring scientists who have made their contributions long ago, the Kavli Prizes are distinctly forward-looking. They are designed to reward work that is in its early stages-"Some of it may be very theoretical," Kavli says-and focus on promising young scientists who are still hard at work in their fields. This emphasis means that the prizes are less a valedictory honor for scientists past and more a way to propel researchers who will come to do some of the most important work of the future.

While Kavli is now honoring others for innovation, he's quite the innovator himself. When World War II led to fuel shortages in Norway, the teenage Kavli and his older brother started a business selling wood briquettes that could be used to power cars. Eventually he earned a degree in physics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology. After graduation, he set off for California.



In California, he established Kavlico, which rapidly became a major supplier of sensors for the automotive and aerospace industries. The company was a financial success, but Kavli wanted to accomplish more. When he was young, he "intended to do something that would be of benefit to human beings," he says. "In the meantime, I got into business, but I never forgot that goal." In 2000, he sold Kavlico for $345 million and used the proceeds to set up the Kavli Foundation, which began to support research in the same three areas in which the prize will be awarded. Kavli is excited about how much scientists still have to learn about them. "We'll never run out of questions," he says. Astrophysicists, for instance, are trying to understand more about the enigmatic "dark matter" that seems to influence the formation of galaxies; nanoscientists are studying how single molecules interact with living cells and neuroscientists are exploring how the developing brain manages to wire itself properly. The investigations may sound esoteric, but Kavli believes they'll eventually pay off. "It's curiosity that has really brought human beings to where we are today," he says.

There are now 15 Kavli Institutes, including centers for astrophysics at Stanford and MIT, neuroscience at Columbia and Yale, and nanoscience at Caltech and Harvard. And Kavli wants to establish as many as five more. Philanthropy, it turns out, hasn't been much of a retirement. "I'm working harder now," he says, "than I did when I had a company."

LEARN MORE kavliprize.no ]]>

Fred Kavli is finding ? and funding ? scientists who are solving the most complex puzzles in the universe.

As a boy, Fred Kavli watched the aurora borealis from his family's farm. Surrounded by the mountains and fjords of rural Norway, Kavli often contemplated the mysteries of the natural world. Even after becoming a successful entrepreneur, Kavli never stopped considering the unknown. Today, after making millions from his research into complex electronic sensors, Kavli is funding a broad range of cutting-edge scientific research, becoming one of the most forward-thinking benefactors of 21st-century science.

Kavli, now 80, is pouring his considerable fortune into the kinds of investigations that are less concerned with developing products and applications than with knowledge for its own sake. "Nothing is much more exciting than knowing the answers to the fundamental questions of life and the universe and, and everything," he says. The philanthropist's latest venture: creating a new class of prestigious scientific awards. The biannual Kavli Prizes, which are jointly sponsored by a foundation he set up and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, will award $1 million to a scientist doing world-class research in astrophysics, nanoscience, or neuroscience. The criteria, Kavli says, are simple: "We are looking to find the best scientists who are doing the best work." The first set of winners, selected by international committees of prominent scientists, was announced in May.

Quote:

Nothing is much more exciting than knowing the answers to the fundamental questions of life.

If the prizes sound more than a little similar to some other famous scientific honors, it's no coincidence. "The Nobel Prize is doing an excellent job," says Kavli. But he intends his awards to be different. While the Nobel Prizes are retrospective, honoring scientists who have made their contributions long ago, the Kavli Prizes are distinctly forward-looking. They are designed to reward work that is in its early stages-"Some of it may be very theoretical," Kavli says-and focus on promising young scientists who are still hard at work in their fields. This emphasis means that the prizes are less a valedictory honor for scientists past and more a way to propel researchers who will come to do some of the most important work of the future.

While Kavli is now honoring others for innovation, he's quite the innovator himself. When World War II led to fuel shortages in Norway, the teenage Kavli and his older brother started a business selling wood briquettes that could be used to power cars. Eventually he earned a degree in physics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology. After graduation, he set off for California.



In California, he established Kavlico, which rapidly became a major supplier of sensors for the automotive and aerospace industries. The company was a financial success, but Kavli wanted to accomplish more. When he was young, he "intended to do something that would be of benefit to human beings," he says. "In the meantime, I got into business, but I never forgot that goal." In 2000, he sold Kavlico for $345 million and used the proceeds to set up the Kavli Foundation, which began to support research in the same three areas in which the prize will be awarded. Kavli is excited about how much scientists still have to learn about them. "We'll never run out of questions," he says. Astrophysicists, for instance, are trying to understand more about the enigmatic "dark matter" that seems to influence the formation of galaxies; nanoscientists are studying how single molecules interact with living cells and neuroscientists are exploring how the developing brain manages to wire itself properly. The investigations may sound esoteric, but Kavli believes they'll eventually pay off. "It's curiosity that has really brought human beings to where we are today," he says.

There are now 15 Kavli Institutes, including centers for astrophysics at Stanford and MIT, neuroscience at Columbia and Yale, and nanoscience at Caltech and Harvard. And Kavli wants to establish as many as five more. Philanthropy, it turns out, hasn't been much of a retirement. "I'm working harder now," he says, "than I did when I had a company."

LEARN MORE kavliprize.no ]]> Emily Anthes Thu, 5 Jun 2008 11:48:41 PDT http://www.good.is/post/designs_on_the_future/ http://www.good.is/post/designs_on_the_future/

Valerie Casey's Designers Accord is a Kyoto Treaty for the design industry ? but everyone is signing on to this one.

In early 2007, on a plane returning to San Francisco from her third harried business trip of the month, the veteran designer Valerie Casey sensed the first unmistakable feelings of revolt. As an important player in the design world, Casey, 35, had been pitching new packaging and product-design strategies to corporate giants with less-than-stellar environmental resumes. Hesitant to even broach the topic of sustainability at the risk of scaring off her potential clients, and anguished at her own cowardice, she began, there on the plane, to write a "Kyoto Treaty" of design, a call to action for the design industry to turn away from environmentally irresponsible, profit-driven practices and commit itself to sustainability.

That impromptu manifesto has now been formalized as the Designers Accord, and a broad coalition of 100,000 designers, engineers, and corporate leaders have committed to the ideal of environmentally and socially responsible design. The accord gives actionable shape to the role and responsibility of designers. "The Designers Accord recognizes that the shared mind is more powerful than the individual alone," says Casey, "but that individual action is key to its success." Adopters must publicly declare their participation in the accord, initiate a dialogue about environmental responsibility with every client, put programs in place to reduce their carbon footprint annually, and teach employees about the importance of sustainable values in design.

Quote:

The shared mind is more powerful than the individual alone.

In the old days, a firm hired to design packaging for a product might have suggested an inexpensive, highly functional material. Having adopted the Designers Accord, that same firm must now research and suggest more environmentally friendly materials, and try to convince its clients of the importance of using them. It doesn't sound like much, but as Casey says, change in the design world needs to start somewhere.

Almost a year and a half after its inception, eight of the most influential product design firms (the D8, as Casey calls them, in a witty nod to the G8)-which include ideo (where Casey now works; designers of the PalmPilot), Frog Design (designers of Motorola MP3 players), Continuum (designers of the One Laptop Per Child $100 laptop), and Ziba (designers of KitchenAid appliances)-have all adopted the accord. It's quickly becoming an industry standard-so much so that Design Directory, an online resource of more than 6,000 design-firm listings that was recently launched by the design blog Core77 and Business Week-allows users to filter searches for designers and firms by whether or not they have adopted the accord.

Yet, despite the accord's growing list of supportive design firms, Casey believes that the firms' clients are the real untapped resource: "You can just imagine how we could amplify the effect of the movement if Google and Microsoft joined," she says. "It's hard to imagine any member of the creative community not wanting to be part of the conversation that has the potential to revolutionize our industry." The paper-supply giants Mohawk and New Leaf have recently signed on, not just making their own paper products and processes more sustainable, but also starting conversation with and demanding higher standards from their network of suppliers, clients, and partners.

The Designers Accord, in addition to specific guidelines for firms and companies, has a five-point code of conduct: "Do no harm; communicate and collaborate; Keep learning, keep teaching; Instigate meaningful change; Make theory action."

It's not often we gauge the success of a great idea by its future obsolescence, but despite the accord's growing influence, Casey is hoping to soon see it disappear: "It's a privilege to be shepherding this cause, but it's not about what I say anymore, it's about a dialogue. I hope that in next few years, these principles will be so integrated into the way people think about and practice design that it won't be necessary to have the Designers Accord."

And with each new victory, Casey sees the design industry slowly becoming a more relevant, change-making force in the world. "As a designer, I feel a responsibility to make positive social impact," she says. "Designers are a community of activists, not aestheticians."

LEARN MORE designersaccord.org

ADOPTERS GOOD and our design firm, Open, are both adopters of the accord.]]>

Valerie Casey's Designers Accord is a Kyoto Treaty for the design industry ? but everyone is signing on to this one.

In early 2007, on a plane returning to San Francisco from her third harried business trip of the month, the veteran designer Valerie Casey sensed the first unmistakable feelings of revolt. As an important player in the design world, Casey, 35, had been pitching new packaging and product-design strategies to corporate giants with less-than-stellar environmental resumes. Hesitant to even broach the topic of sustainability at the risk of scaring off her potential clients, and anguished at her own cowardice, she began, there on the plane, to write a "Kyoto Treaty" of design, a call to action for the design industry to turn away from environmentally irresponsible, profit-driven practices and commit itself to sustainability.

That impromptu manifesto has now been formalized as the Designers Accord, and a broad coalition of 100,000 designers, engineers, and corporate leaders have committed to the ideal of environmentally and socially responsible design. The accord gives actionable shape to the role and responsibility of designers. "The Designers Accord recognizes that the shared mind is more powerful than the individual alone," says Casey, "but that individual action is key to its success." Adopters must publicly declare their participation in the accord, initiate a dialogue about environmental responsibility with every client, put programs in place to reduce their carbon footprint annually, and teach employees about the importance of sustainable values in design.

Quote:

The shared mind is more powerful than the individual alone.

In the old days, a firm hired to design packaging for a product might have suggested an inexpensive, highly functional material. Having adopted the Designers Accord, that same firm must now research and suggest more environmentally friendly materials, and try to convince its clients of the importance of using them. It doesn't sound like much, but as Casey says, change in the design world needs to start somewhere.

Almost a year and a half after its inception, eight of the most influential product design firms (the D8, as Casey calls them, in a witty nod to the G8)-which include ideo (where Casey now works; designers of the PalmPilot), Frog Design (designers of Motorola MP3 players), Continuum (designers of the One Laptop Per Child $100 laptop), and Ziba (designers of KitchenAid appliances)-have all adopted the accord. It's quickly becoming an industry standard-so much so that Design Directory, an online resource of more than 6,000 design-firm listings that was recently launched by the design blog Core77 and Business Week-allows users to filter searches for designers and firms by whether or not they have adopted the accord.

Yet, despite the accord's growing list of supportive design firms, Casey believes that the firms' clients are the real untapped resource: "You can just imagine how we could amplify the effect of the movement if Google and Microsoft joined," she says. "It's hard to imagine any member of the creative community not wanting to be part of the conversation that has the potential to revolutionize our industry." The paper-supply giants Mohawk and New Leaf have recently signed on, not just making their own paper products and processes more sustainable, but also starting conversation with and demanding higher standards from their network of suppliers, clients, and partners.

The Designers Accord, in addition to specific guidelines for firms and companies, has a five-point code of conduct: "Do no harm; communicate and collaborate; Keep learning, keep teaching; Instigate meaningful change; Make theory action."

It's not often we gauge the success of a great idea by its future obsolescence, but despite the accord's growing influence, Casey is hoping to soon see it disappear: "It's a privilege to be shepherding this cause, but it's not about what I say anymore, it's about a dialogue. I hope that in next few years, these principles will be so integrated into the way people think about and practice design that it won't be necessary to have the Designers Accord."

And with each new victory, Casey sees the design industry slowly becoming a more relevant, change-making force in the world. "As a designer, I feel a responsibility to make positive social impact," she says. "Designers are a community of activists, not aestheticians."

LEARN MORE designersaccord.org

ADOPTERS GOOD and our design firm, Open, are both adopters of the accord.]]> Emily Pilloton Thu, 5 Jun 2008 11:37:49 PDT http://www.good.is/post/burned-by-desire/ http://www.good.is/post/burned-by-desire/

It takes a rare kind of courage to live like a character in a story, and not many real-life human beings have the nerve to try it-perhaps because the elements that make a narrative compelling also make life miserable. Most people are too attached to the things that make them happy (honor, love, and friendship) to appreciate the subtle appeal of those things that might make them into more interesting protagonists (disgrace, heartbreak, and loneliness).

Luckily, though, even prudent people will occasionally commit spectacular acts of mischief in pursuit of happiness. And when they do, the Moth is waiting-with an audience and a microphone. Since 1997, the storytelling organization has helped more than 4,000 people tell their tales of crimes, misdemeanors, and epic lapses in judgment. Few of the stories are downers-most, in fact, have uplifting messages-but it's hard to pull off a heartwarming finish without making at least a brief detour into misery.

"So there I am in bed with my future ex-husband..."

"I am 24 years old and I have never had sex..."

"My aunt Crissy always used to tell us, ‘I've done it all-crystal meth, topless dancing, running guns through Mexico...'"

This tension between desire and danger, between the things we want and the risks we'll take, helps explain how the Moth got its name. "We're always drawn back to that essential flame that fuels us and has the potential to destroy us," says Lea Thau, 36, who has been running the show since 2002, first as creative director and then as executive director. "The best stories are born from the moments when we got our wings burned or clipped a little."

The Moth is best known for its monthly Mainstage performances in New York, during which five or six storytellers present personal tales on the evening's theme ("Loss," "Love Hurts," "Out on a Limb," to name a few). The shows feature a mix of high-profile headliners (writers or actors with a well-developed feel for narrative, like Malcolm Gladwell or Margaret Cho) and regular people who have had simply unbelievable things happen to them. Alumni from this latter group include a voodoo priestess, a retired pickpocket, and a guy getting squeezed by the Mob.

Quote:

The best stories are born from the moments when we got our wings burned or clipped a little.

Thau and her assistant directors work with the performers for weeks to help them find the emotional core of their stories. She jokes that this process can feel a little like therapy-and then what happened? And how did that make you feel?-but the purpose is very different. She's trying to coax out a well-rounded narrative, not a well-rounded person. Ultimately, says Thau, "it's about stepping out of the story" and figuring out what will make it connect with others. The goal is to draw people in, to provide a communal experience that goes beyond entertainment; something that you simply can't get through a blog or a BlackBerry. Every Mainstage performance since 1998 has sold out-usually in the first few hours.

The stories are not scripted or memorized. They are told spontaneously-alive and in the moment. At the end of the day, performers have to get up on stage, without notes, and tell hundreds of people about one of the most personal things that ever happened to them. That, says Thau, is a terrifying prospect for almost anyone and the nerves and adrenalin can push the atmosphere to a sort of theatrical synergy. One storyteller gushed, "It's as if everyone in the room is holding hands under the table."

Part of that connection lies in the fact that while the people in the audience are watching the person on stage, a little mothlike voice inside each of them is saying, "Maybe I could do this, too." For them, the Moth has created StorySLAMs, open-mic nights in which 10 people compete to tell the best story.

The Moth doesn't just stay in New York, it often takes the show on the road, to places like Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The first international tour took place in Australia in February.

 

At a recent slam, a straight, single woman got up to tell a crowd of New Yorkers about the time she ended up on a blind date with an off-off-Broadway dancer. He was very good-looking, very drunk, and very gay. After a number of cocktails, he suggested that they go back to her place. "What the hell?" she said, and you could already smell her wings getting singed. "This'll make a good story."

LEARN MORE
themoth.org]]>

It takes a rare kind of courage to live like a character in a story, and not many real-life human beings have the nerve to try it-perhaps because the elements that make a narrative compelling also make life miserable. Most people are too attached to the things that make them happy (honor, love, and friendship) to appreciate the subtle appeal of those things that might make them into more interesting protagonists (disgrace, heartbreak, and loneliness).

Luckily, though, even prudent people will occasionally commit spectacular acts of mischief in pursuit of happiness. And when they do, the Moth is waiting-with an audience and a microphone. Since 1997, the storytelling organization has helped more than 4,000 people tell their tales of crimes, misdemeanors, and epic lapses in judgment. Few of the stories are downers-most, in fact, have uplifting messages-but it's hard to pull off a heartwarming finish without making at least a brief detour into misery.

"So there I am in bed with my future ex-husband..."

"I am 24 years old and I have never had sex..."

"My aunt Crissy always used to tell us, ‘I've done it all-crystal meth, topless dancing, running guns through Mexico...'"

This tension between desire and danger, between the things we want and the risks we'll take, helps explain how the Moth got its name. "We're always drawn back to that essential flame that fuels us and has the potential to destroy us," says Lea Thau, 36, who has been running the show since 2002, first as creative director and then as executive director. "The best stories are born from the moments when we got our wings burned or clipped a little."

The Moth is best known for its monthly Mainstage performances in New York, during which five or six storytellers present personal tales on the evening's theme ("Loss," "Love Hurts," "Out on a Limb," to name a few). The shows feature a mix of high-profile headliners (writers or actors with a well-developed feel for narrative, like Malcolm Gladwell or Margaret Cho) and regular people who have had simply unbelievable things happen to them. Alumni from this latter group include a voodoo priestess, a retired pickpocket, and a guy getting squeezed by the Mob.

Quote:

The best stories are born from the moments when we got our wings burned or clipped a little.

Thau and her assistant directors work with the performers for weeks to help them find the emotional core of their stories. She jokes that this process can feel a little like therapy-and then what happened? And how did that make you feel?-but the purpose is very different. She's trying to coax out a well-rounded narrative, not a well-rounded person. Ultimately, says Thau, "it's about stepping out of the story" and figuring out what will make it connect with others. The goal is to draw people in, to provide a communal experience that goes beyond entertainment; something that you simply can't get through a blog or a BlackBerry. Every Mainstage performance since 1998 has sold out-usually in the first few hours.

The stories are not scripted or memorized. They are told spontaneously-alive and in the moment. At the end of the day, performers have to get up on stage, without notes, and tell hundreds of people about one of the most personal things that ever happened to them. That, says Thau, is a terrifying prospect for almost anyone and the nerves and adrenalin can push the atmosphere to a sort of theatrical synergy. One storyteller gushed, "It's as if everyone in the room is holding hands under the table."

Part of that connection lies in the fact that while the people in the audience are watching the person on stage, a little mothlike voice inside each of them is saying, "Maybe I could do this, too." For them, the Moth has created StorySLAMs, open-mic nights in which 10 people compete to tell the best story.

The Moth doesn't just stay in New York, it often takes the show on the road, to places like Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The first international tour took place in Australia in February.

 

At a recent slam, a straight, single woman got up to tell a crowd of New Yorkers about the time she ended up on a blind date with an off-off-Broadway dancer. He was very good-looking, very drunk, and very gay. After a number of cocktails, he suggested that they go back to her place. "What the hell?" she said, and you could already smell her wings getting singed. "This'll make a good story."

LEARN MORE
themoth.org]]> Adam M Bright Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:43:16 PDT http://www.good.is/post/black-and-green/ http://www.good.is/post/black-and-green/

When California voters went to the polls in November, 2006, they had the chance to pass a historic measure, taxing the oil industry to pay for research on clean energy. Hollywood spent $40 million on a "yes" campaign, and it had big-name endorsements from Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Google's Larry Page. But while Tinseltown lent star power, the oil industry placed ads in several black-owned newspapers showing an African-American woman looking horrified at gas prices as she refueled her car. Soon after, the leader of the NAACP came out against the proposition. It failed to pass.

For Van Jones, a 39-year-old civil-rights lawyer in Oakland, California, watching these events unfold was frustrating, but not surprising. What environmentalists fail to realize, he says, is that "for people who live in personal crisis, telling them about a planetary crisis is just demoralizing. You need to talk to these people about opportunity."

In 1996, Jones co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights-a nonprofit organization designed to keep kids off the streets and out of jails. And today he is trumpeting an idea that's disarmingly simple: Let's funnel the coming wave of jobs in sustainable industries toward those who most need them, creating a "green-collar" job force that gives the working poor and minorities a chance to get ahead while also ensuring that this new economy has a labor force behind it. In 2005, Jones and his staff of 20 people launched a campaign for green-collar jobs. Two years later, they convinced the Oakland City Council to fund the first-ever Green Jobs Corps, which will begin training its first recruits later this year in fields like installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings, and laying green roofs.

Quote:

African-Americans will ask you, ‘What do polar bears and hybrid cars have to do with my situation?'

The power of a solution that bridges economic and environmental development, explains Jones, is that it has the potential to unite traditionally disparate factions of the progressive movement. "For at least a generation, activists of all constituencies have believed they could fix their problems on their own," he says. "But separatism won't work. On the environmental side, you'll end up leaving so many people out that they'll be undoing all the good and undermining your efforts." On the social-justice side, says Jones, boosting wages with the same old dirty jobs inevitably ends up hurting the poor, accelerating problems like cancer and asthma.

Jones grew up in rural west Tennessee and attended Yale Law School before settling in Oakland. He has spent as much time among Prius drivers as he has among those who ride the bus (and his fellow bus-riders were not there because public transportation limits carbon emissions). That's given him a certain amount of credibility in making his case. "Among African-Americans, you have many who will ask you, ‘What do polar bears and hybrid cars have to do with my situation?'" says Jones. "And then, mainstream environmentalists will say, ‘What do prisons and failing schools have to do with the environment?'" Jones says he tries to point out ways they're very closely related. "We talk about ‘disposability'-the idea that we have throw-away species and throw-away resources. We also think that we have throw-away children and throw-away neighborhoods."

Before becoming advocates for "green collar" jobs, Van Jones and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights launched influential campaigns to stop violence in Oakland and to reform California's youth prison system.

Now expanding its reach to the national level, the Ella Baker Center recently launched Green for All, a new organization aimed at securing $1 billion to lift 250,000 people out of poverty with employment in sustainable industries. It scored a major victory last December when Congress, as part of the omnibus energy bill, passed the Green Jobs Act of 2007, authorizing $125 million for a federal program, modeled on Oakland's, that will train 30,000 workers in new trades like installing solar panels. And that may just be the beginning: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have touted "green collar" initiatives as being key to the future economy.

As these victories turn increasing media attention to Jones, poster child of a new "black-green" movement, he's trying to keep his head down. "Sure, everybody likes to get a standing ovation," he says, "but I figured out a long time ago, nobody can eat your sound bite, and nobody can live in a house made out of newspaper clippings."

PHOTO
Brooke Anderson
www.flickr.com/photos/brooke_anderson

LEARN MORE
greenforall.org

]]>

When California voters went to the polls in November, 2006, they had the chance to pass a historic measure, taxing the oil industry to pay for research on clean energy. Hollywood spent $40 million on a "yes" campaign, and it had big-name endorsements from Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Google's Larry Page. But while Tinseltown lent star power, the oil industry placed ads in several black-owned newspapers showing an African-American woman looking horrified at gas prices as she refueled her car. Soon after, the leader of the NAACP came out against the proposition. It failed to pass.

For Van Jones, a 39-year-old civil-rights lawyer in Oakland, California, watching these events unfold was frustrating, but not surprising. What environmentalists fail to realize, he says, is that "for people who live in personal crisis, telling them about a planetary crisis is just demoralizing. You need to talk to these people about opportunity."

In 1996, Jones co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights-a nonprofit organization designed to keep kids off the streets and out of jails. And today he is trumpeting an idea that's disarmingly simple: Let's funnel the coming wave of jobs in sustainable industries toward those who most need them, creating a "green-collar" job force that gives the working poor and minorities a chance to get ahead while also ensuring that this new economy has a labor force behind it. In 2005, Jones and his staff of 20 people launched a campaign for green-collar jobs. Two years later, they convinced the Oakland City Council to fund the first-ever Green Jobs Corps, which will begin training its first recruits later this year in fields like installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings, and laying green roofs.

Quote:

African-Americans will ask you, ‘What do polar bears and hybrid cars have to do with my situation?'

The power of a solution that bridges economic and environmental development, explains Jones, is that it has the potential to unite traditionally disparate factions of the progressive movement. "For at least a generation, activists of all constituencies have believed they could fix their problems on their own," he says. "But separatism won't work. On the environmental side, you'll end up leaving so many people out that they'll be undoing all the good and undermining your efforts." On the social-justice side, says Jones, boosting wages with the same old dirty jobs inevitably ends up hurting the poor, accelerating problems like cancer and asthma.

Jones grew up in rural west Tennessee and attended Yale Law School before settling in Oakland. He has spent as much time among Prius drivers as he has among those who ride the bus (and his fellow bus-riders were not there because public transportation limits carbon emissions). That's given him a certain amount of credibility in making his case. "Among African-Americans, you have many who will ask you, ‘What do polar bears and hybrid cars have to do with my situation?'" says Jones. "And then, mainstream environmentalists will say, ‘What do prisons and failing schools have to do with the environment?'" Jones says he tries to point out ways they're very closely related. "We talk about ‘disposability'-the idea that we have throw-away species and throw-away resources. We also think that we have throw-away children and throw-away neighborhoods."

Before becoming advocates for "green collar" jobs, Van Jones and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights launched influential campaigns to stop violence in Oakland and to reform California's youth prison system.

Now expanding its reach to the national level, the Ella Baker Center recently launched Green for All, a new organization aimed at securing $1 billion to lift 250,000 people out of poverty with employment in sustainable industries. It scored a major victory last December when Congress, as part of the omnibus energy bill, passed the Green Jobs Act of 2007, authorizing $125 million for a federal program, modeled on Oakland's, that will train 30,000 workers in new trades like installing solar panels. And that may just be the beginning: Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have touted "green collar" initiatives as being key to the future economy.

As these victories turn increasing media attention to Jones, poster child of a new "black-green" movement, he's trying to keep his head down. "Sure, everybody likes to get a standing ovation," he says, "but I figured out a long time ago, nobody can eat your sound bite, and nobody can live in a house made out of newspaper clippings."

PHOTO
Brooke Anderson
www.flickr.com/photos/brooke_anderson

LEARN MORE
greenforall.org

]]> Maywa Montenegro Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:33:53 PDT http://www.good.is/post/hollyworld/ http://www.good.is/post/hollyworld/

For Jehane Noujaim, there are few things more emotionally stirring than a movie. So when the 34-year-old filmmaker was offered the chance to change the world by having one wish become a reality, she didn't ask for money to build water wells or ship medical supplies. She asked for a four-hour film festival played simultaneously around the globe. With Pangea Day-named for Pangea, Earth's ancient, unified landmass-Noujaim aims to build compassion among people around the world by sharing their life stories and experiences on film. Noujaim's plans have come to fruition thanks to the TED Prize-a $100,000 award given to help people fulfill one world-changing wish-which she won in 2006.

On May 10, audiences will gather at screenings, online, and around cell phones and televisions in far-flung locales from Cairo to Rio de Janeiro. They'll be there to watch four hours of documentaries and short features made by people around the world, on pressing issues ranging from climate change to political repression (Pangea Day received more than 1,500 film submissions from 43 countries). The films will stream live on Pangea Day's website, but Noujaim and her colleagues urge people to watch in groups, and have arranged for screenings in places that rarely feature films, including a Bedouin camp outside Jordan and a town square in Beirut. "My hope was to build a platform for that one boy in Africa or Pakistan or Myanmar to share his story and have the world listen. Because the minute people feel that their truth is relevant to the world, they begin to feel differently about themselves and their place in the world."

Noujaim's experiences as an Egyptian-American who grew up in the religiously and socially volatile Middle East have given her an understanding of how images can affect perspectives. "I believe that the images we see of ourselves-in the news, on the internet, or in film-help shape what we believe about ourselves and what others believe about us," she says. "And if those images are for the most part violent, humiliating, and degrading, what does that say about how young people will continue to see themselves and their relationship with the people who actually believe those images?"

Noujaim, the director of the critically acclaimed documentary Control Room, is one of the many directors working on the Freakonomics movie due out next year.

 

While promoting Control Room, her award-winning film about the inner workings of the Qatar-based television network Al Jazeera, Noujaim noticed that audiences in the Middle East were particularly curious to hear what Americans thought of her portrayal of the Al Jazeera newsroom. The opposite occurred when she screened the film in the States, giving Noujaim a vivid appreciation for the divide between the two cultures. During the 2006 World Cup, Noujaim watched people around the world jury-rig televisions and satellite feeds, gathering in the streets to watch the ultimate soccer tournament. If only filmmakers had the power to gather people around screens in unison like this, she thought. From these two experiences the idea for Pangea Day was born. "Pangea is a humble step in a process that might help to replace complacency and fear about the other with curiosity and excitement about the other," she explains. "It is about getting into another person's head, seeing the world through another person's eyes."

Of course, what people do following Pangea Day is up to them. After the global screening, Pangea Day's website will be remodeled into a springboard for people to act on their inspiration from the films, featuring information on organizations that are helping to address the issues brought to light through the screening process. Previous TED winners have used their $100,000 for things like creating new cures for brain disorders, and Noujaim is the first to point out that her results wont be nearly as quantifiable, but, even though it's a little bit of a cliché to say, she'll be happy for even small, incremental change. "Pangea will succeed if just one person tells a story and he or she feels the power of his or her own voice; if someone else on the other side of the world, watching a screen, feels compelled to tell his story back," Noujaim says. "If you laugh with someone and humanize them, it's harder to kill them."

LEARN MORE
pangeaday.org

SEED MONEY
Pangea Day was also funded by the Sapling foundation, which gave $1 million, and other sponsors.]]>

For Jehane Noujaim, there are few things more emotionally stirring than a movie. So when the 34-year-old filmmaker was offered the chance to change the world by having one wish become a reality, she didn't ask for money to build water wells or ship medical supplies. She asked for a four-hour film festival played simultaneously around the globe. With Pangea Day-named for Pangea, Earth's ancient, unified landmass-Noujaim aims to build compassion among people around the world by sharing their life stories and experiences on film. Noujaim's plans have come to fruition thanks to the TED Prize-a $100,000 award given to help people fulfill one world-changing wish-which she won in 2006.

On May 10, audiences will gather at screenings, online, and around cell phones and televisions in far-flung locales from Cairo to Rio de Janeiro. They'll be there to watch four hours of documentaries and short features made by people around the world, on pressing issues ranging from climate change to political repression (Pangea Day received more than 1,500 film submissions from 43 countries). The films will stream live on Pangea Day's website, but Noujaim and her colleagues urge people to watch in groups, and have arranged for screenings in places that rarely feature films, including a Bedouin camp outside Jordan and a town square in Beirut. "My hope was to build a platform for that one boy in Africa or Pakistan or Myanmar to share his story and have the world listen. Because the minute people feel that their truth is relevant to the world, they begin to feel differently about themselves and their place in the world."

Noujaim's experiences as an Egyptian-American who grew up in the religiously and socially volatile Middle East have given her an understanding of how images can affect perspectives. "I believe that the images we see of ourselves-in the news, on the internet, or in film-help shape what we believe about ourselves and what others believe about us," she says. "And if those images are for the most part violent, humiliating, and degrading, what does that say about how young people will continue to see themselves and their relationship with the people who actually believe those images?"

Noujaim, the director of the critically acclaimed documentary Control Room, is one of the many directors working on the Freakonomics movie due out next year.

 

While promoting Control Room, her award-winning film about the inner workings of the Qatar-based television network Al Jazeera, Noujaim noticed that audiences in the Middle East were particularly curious to hear what Americans thought of her portrayal of the Al Jazeera newsroom. The opposite occurred when she screened the film in the States, giving Noujaim a vivid appreciation for the divide between the two cultures. During the 2006 World Cup, Noujaim watched people around the world jury-rig televisions and satellite feeds, gathering in the streets to watch the ultimate soccer tournament. If only filmmakers had the power to gather people around screens in unison like this, she thought. From these two experiences the idea for Pangea Day was born. "Pangea is a humble step in a process that might help to replace complacency and fear about the other with curiosity and excitement about the other," she explains. "It is about getting into another person's head, seeing the world through another person's eyes."

Of course, what people do following Pangea Day is up to them. After the global screening, Pangea Day's website will be remodeled into a springboard for people to act on their inspiration from the films, featuring information on organizations that are helping to address the issues brought to light through the screening process. Previous TED winners have used their $100,000 for things like creating new cures for brain disorders, and Noujaim is the first to point out that her results wont be nearly as quantifiable, but, even though it's a little bit of a cliché to say, she'll be happy for even small, incremental change. "Pangea will succeed if just one person tells a story and he or she feels the power of his or her own voice; if someone else on the other side of the world, watching a screen, feels compelled to tell his story back," Noujaim says. "If you laugh with someone and humanize them, it's harder to kill them."

LEARN MORE
pangeaday.org

SEED MONEY
Pangea Day was also funded by the Sapling foundation, which gave $1 million, and other sponsors.]]> Corey Binns Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:43:39 PDT http://www.good.is/post/designer_genes/ http://www.good.is/post/designer_genes/

When Drew Endy envisions the future, he sees giant gourds engineered to grow into four-bedroom, two-bathroom houses. He sees people alerted to nascent tumors in their bodies by internal biological sensors, and cars fueled by bacteria-produced gasoline. Endy, 37, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field that combines biology, chemistry, and engineering to remake biological systems to act according to human design. In other words, he's a little like God, if God were a geek.

For Endy, who has roots in civil and environmental engineering, biology offers the most sophisticated building materials in the world, potentially far more useful than anything created by modern technology. Endy is attempting to create a biological programming language by identifying, cataloging, and standardizing small sequences of DNA that tell a cell to perform a specific task.

After joining the faculty at MIT, in 2004, Endy co-founded the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, an open-source catalogue of DNA segments with specific functions, such as those that make DNA strands fold into shapes like microscopic origami or cause cells to change color. These "BioBrick" parts, as Endy calls them, are fitted with special links at either end where they may be easily connected with other DNA segments, much in the manner of lego blocks. The segments snap together to form more complex instructions, so that scientists can manipulate exactly what task a cell performs. "We've started to collect genetic words that speak to the cell and tell it to do something," he says. For example, Endy's colleague Jay Keasling has found a way to reengineer E. coli so that they naturally produce an anti-malaria drug. Soon, huge vats of bacteria will be making the medicine, at a fraction of the current cost.

Quote:

He's a little like God, if God were a geek.

But that's a fairly rare example. For now, the use of BioBricks is limited, because making DNA is difficult. DNA synthesizers can use the genetic information of BioBricks to create new DNA-the idea is akin to the "replicators" from Star Trek that caused food to appear on command-but today's machines are rudimentary; they work slowly and create only a small amount of DNA. We're a long way from having Earl Grey tea materialize, mug and all. Though Endy-through Codon Devices, a biotech company he co-founded in 2004-is working to improve DNA replication technology, no one is yet close to assembling sophisticated biological systems.

But as the science and technology mature, the questions that surround biological engineering and DNA synthesis become more complex. Controversy already surrounds the genetic modification of crops, a relatively simple and straightforward process. Synthetic biologists, by contrast, aim to engineer life itself from whole cloth, which brings up obvious ethical questions, not to mention the possibility that deadly new pathogens could be created and released into the environment, intentionally or by mistake. Endy acknowledges that these risks are real, and even likely, but he believes they are outweighed by the possible benefits synthetic biology can bring to future generations.

Endy and some MIT colleagues started the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, in which student teams engineer living systems. In 2006, one team made bacteria that changes color when it detects arsenic in well water.

 

In fact, Endy believes that the best counter to these risks is for the synthetic biologists not to shy away from the potentially dangerous research, but rather to help ensure that it is used in the right way. Endy takes this a step further, by promoting a free, open exchange of information about DNA sequences, allowing synthetic biologists to focus on problems-solving rather than profit, and closely monitor any impending disasters. To that end, he also serves as president of the BioBricks Foundation, an organization of scientists and legal experts working to develop technical standards and legal protections for genetic sequences. "When we arrive at the future with a first generation of parts that can work together," he says, "we'll have the parts open and free, and people will be able to build what they want." And Endy has many ideas about what that future will look like: "Imagine large-scale cities grown from bio-matter," he muses. "Or, how about bacteria that smell like bananas? That sounds nice."

LEARN MORE
openwetware.org/wiki/Endy_Lab

MAKE UP
Justin St. Clair/Exclusive Artists]]>

When Drew Endy envisions the future, he sees giant gourds engineered to grow into four-bedroom, two-bathroom houses. He sees people alerted to nascent tumors in their bodies by internal biological sensors, and cars fueled by bacteria-produced gasoline. Endy, 37, is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field that combines biology, chemistry, and engineering to remake biological systems to act according to human design. In other words, he's a little like God, if God were a geek.

For Endy, who has roots in civil and environmental engineering, biology offers the most sophisticated building materials in the world, potentially far more useful than anything created by modern technology. Endy is attempting to create a biological programming language by identifying, cataloging, and standardizing small sequences of DNA that tell a cell to perform a specific task.

After joining the faculty at MIT, in 2004, Endy co-founded the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, an open-source catalogue of DNA segments with specific functions, such as those that make DNA strands fold into shapes like microscopic origami or cause cells to change color. These "BioBrick" parts, as Endy calls them, are fitted with special links at either end where they may be easily connected with other DNA segments, much in the manner of lego blocks. The segments snap together to form more complex instructions, so that scientists can manipulate exactly what task a cell performs. "We've started to collect genetic words that speak to the cell and tell it to do something," he says. For example, Endy's colleague Jay Keasling has found a way to reengineer E. coli so that they naturally produce an anti-malaria drug. Soon, huge vats of bacteria will be making the medicine, at a fraction of the current cost.

Quote:

He's a little like God, if God were a geek.

But that's a fairly rare example. For now, the use of BioBricks is limited, because making DNA is difficult. DNA synthesizers can use the genetic information of BioBricks to create new DNA-the idea is akin to the "replicators" from Star Trek that caused food to appear on command-but today's machines are rudimentary; they work slowly and create only a small amount of DNA. We're a long way from having Earl Grey tea materialize, mug and all. Though Endy-through Codon Devices, a biotech company he co-founded in 2004-is working to improve DNA replication technology, no one is yet close to assembling sophisticated biological systems.

But as the science and technology mature, the questions that surround biological engineering and DNA synthesis become more complex. Controversy already surrounds the genetic modification of crops, a relatively simple and straightforward process. Synthetic biologists, by contrast, aim to engineer life itself from whole cloth, which brings up obvious ethical questions, not to mention the possibility that deadly new pathogens could be created and released into the environment, intentionally or by mistake. Endy acknowledges that these risks are real, and even likely, but he believes they are outweighed by the possible benefits synthetic biology can bring to future generations.

Endy and some MIT colleagues started the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, in which student teams engineer living systems. In 2006, one team made bacteria that changes color when it detects arsenic in well water.

 

In fact, Endy believes that the best counter to these risks is for the synthetic biologists not to shy away from the potentially dangerous research, but rather to help ensure that it is used in the right way. Endy takes this a step further, by promoting a free, open exchange of information about DNA sequences, allowing synthetic biologists to focus on problems-solving rather than profit, and closely monitor any impending disasters. To that end, he also serves as president of the BioBricks Foundation, an organization of scientists and legal experts working to develop technical standards and legal protections for genetic sequences. "When we arrive at the future with a first generation of parts that can work together," he says, "we'll have the parts open and free, and people will be able to build what they want." And Endy has many ideas about what that future will look like: "Imagine large-scale cities grown from bio-matter," he muses. "Or, how about bacteria that smell like bananas? That sounds nice."

LEARN MORE
openwetware.org/wiki/Endy_Lab

MAKE UP
Justin St. Clair/Exclusive Artists]]> Rebecca Cathcart Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:17:31 PDT http://www.good.is/post/wheres-the-beef/ http://www.good.is/post/wheres-the-beef/

When Seth Tibbott stopped eating meat, back in 1974, Thanksgiving became one of the bleakest dates on his calendar-an entire day devoted to a sumptuous roasted bird that he couldn't touch. "It was like, 'Here's your salad and baked potato-be happy,'" recalls Tibbott, sitting in his office at Turtle Island Foods, his Hood River, Oregon, company. "But everyone else, they're having turkey, eating stuffing, having fun. We tried to make things like stuffed pumpkin instead, but it took all day and was never very good."

From this frustration, a meatless icon was born: the Tofurky, a softball-sized mound of flora and spices that boasts a surprisingly turkey-like taste and texture. Tibbott discovered that if he blended puréed tofu with wheat gluten, and threw in a few secret ingredients, the resulting creation possessed many of the same qualities as meat. When he first started selling the nonbirds, in 1995, he was met with raised eyebrows-from vegetarians and carnivores alike. After all, if you didn't want to eat flesh, why would you crave a flesh facsimile? But doubt eventually gave way to necessity-the Tofurky granted vegetarians a reprieve from their Thanksgiving Day purgatory, and, surprisingly, it tasted good. Sales climbed. In 2006, Tibbott's company-formerly a minuscule purveyor of soy products-sold its one-millionth Tofurky roast, and more than 250,000 now ship out each year.

Today, Turtle Island Foods is the fastest-growing meat-alternative brand in the nation, with a entire roster of fake meat products. "The whole thing that we try to do is bring vegetarians to the table on separate but equal footing with meat-eaters," explains Tibbott, 56, as he leads a tour of his plant. Throughout the facility, Tibbott's 54 employees pack up stout "Italian sausages" and "Bratwurst," peppered Jurky, and even foot-long veggie franks. Tibbott's rallying cry? "If they have it for meat-eaters, they should have it for veggies." And the veggies have been grateful: Turtle Island has nearly tripled its sales over the last four years.

Quote:

It's a huge step going from a meat-centered diet to 'Here's your cake of tofu.'

Tibbott himself elected to give up meat back when he was a sixth grade teacher charged with educating youngsters about nature. Meat production, he began to realize, was a terrible use of resources. "The basic inefficiency of meat is striking in that it takes so much more resources and land than crops," he says. "It's funny how in the environmental community that's not an obvious connection. When you go to these environmental potlucks, you see more meat there than you would at the National Cattlemen's Association. It's just so much more efficient for humans to eat lower on the food chain."

Not that Tibbott won't taste the forbidden flesh from time to time-sacrifices must be made in the name of science. In researching sausages, for example, he sampled some of the best in the world to properly mimic their flavors (the key: copious amounts of fat). Eager vegetarians mail in suggestions for new ersatz meat products all the time-think Tofuna-but he's had the most trouble with ham. Aside from the salty flavor, the pinkish color is a nightmare to get right.

These days, though, some of Tibbott's best customers aren't vegetarians at all; they're those who call themselves "vegetarian inclined" and try to eat a few meatless meals a week for the betterment of their health. The number of vegetarians in America has been stagnant for years at nearly 3 percent of the population, but it's these heart-conscious eaters who are fueling the 5-percent yearly growth of the meatless industry.

 

Turtle Island Foods' other products include Tofurky breakfast sausages, veggie burgers, and a range of faux deli meats-from "hickory smoked" to "oven roasted."

"This is where I think we need to be less militant and sanctimonious, and more appreciative of where these guys are coming from," says Tibbott. "Because it's a huge step going from a meat-centered diet to 'Here's your cake of tofu.'"

"I'm here to tell you, Tofurky is never going to fool a die-hard meat eater," he continues. "They're never going to go, 'What? That wasn't meat?' But their highest compliment is, 'You know, that's not bad.'"

LEARN MORE tofurky.com

LEAN MEAT A serving of Tofurky Italian Sausages has no cholesterol and half the fat of a real sausage.]]>

When Seth Tibbott stopped eating meat, back in 1974, Thanksgiving became one of the bleakest dates on his calendar-an entire day devoted to a sumptuous roasted bird that he couldn't touch. "It was like, 'Here's your salad and baked potato-be happy,'" recalls Tibbott, sitting in his office at Turtle Island Foods, his Hood River, Oregon, company. "But everyone else, they're having turkey, eating stuffing, having fun. We tried to make things like stuffed pumpkin instead, but it took all day and was never very good."

From this frustration, a meatless icon was born: the Tofurky, a softball-sized mound of flora and spices that boasts a surprisingly turkey-like taste and texture. Tibbott discovered that if he blended puréed tofu with wheat gluten, and threw in a few secret ingredients, the resulting creation possessed many of the same qualities as meat. When he first started selling the nonbirds, in 1995, he was met with raised eyebrows-from vegetarians and carnivores alike. After all, if you didn't want to eat flesh, why would you crave a flesh facsimile? But doubt eventually gave way to necessity-the Tofurky granted vegetarians a reprieve from their Thanksgiving Day purgatory, and, surprisingly, it tasted good. Sales climbed. In 2006, Tibbott's company-formerly a minuscule purveyor of soy products-sold its one-millionth Tofurky roast, and more than 250,000 now ship out each year.

Today, Turtle Island Foods is the fastest-growing meat-alternative brand in the nation, with a entire roster of fake meat products. "The whole thing that we try to do is bring vegetarians to the table on separate but equal footing with meat-eaters," explains Tibbott, 56, as he leads a tour of his plant. Throughout the facility, Tibbott's 54 employees pack up stout "Italian sausages" and "Bratwurst," peppered Jurky, and even foot-long veggie franks. Tibbott's rallying cry? "If they have it for meat-eaters, they should have it for veggies." And the veggies have been grateful: Turtle Island has nearly tripled its sales over the last four years.

Quote:

It's a huge step going from a meat-centered diet to 'Here's your cake of tofu.'

Tibbott himself elected to give up meat back when he was a sixth grade teacher charged with educating youngsters about nature. Meat production, he began to realize, was a terrible use of resources. "The basic inefficiency of meat is striking in that it takes so much more resources and land than crops," he says. "It's funny how in the environmental community that's not an obvious connection. When you go to these environmental potlucks, you see more meat there than you would at the National Cattlemen's Association. It's just so much more efficient for humans to eat lower on the food chain."

Not that Tibbott won't taste the forbidden flesh from time to time-sacrifices must be made in the name of science. In researching sausages, for example, he sampled some of the best in the world to properly mimic their flavors (the key: copious amounts of fat). Eager vegetarians mail in suggestions for new ersatz meat products all the time-think Tofuna-but he's had the most trouble with ham. Aside from the salty flavor, the pinkish color is a nightmare to get right.

These days, though, some of Tibbott's best customers aren't vegetarians at all; they're those who call themselves "vegetarian inclined" and try to eat a few meatless meals a week for the betterment of their health. The number of vegetarians in America has been stagnant for years at nearly 3 percent of the population, but it's these heart-conscious eaters who are fueling the 5-percent yearly growth of the meatless industry.

 

Turtle Island Foods' other products include Tofurky breakfast sausages, veggie burgers, and a range of faux deli meats-from "hickory smoked" to "oven roasted."

"This is where I think we need to be less militant and sanctimonious, and more appreciative of where these guys are coming from," says Tibbott. "Because it's a huge step going from a meat-centered diet to 'Here's your cake of tofu.'"

"I'm here to tell you, Tofurky is never going to fool a die-hard meat eater," he continues. "They're never going to go, 'What? That wasn't meat?' But their highest compliment is, 'You know, that's not bad.'"

LEARN MORE tofurky.com

LEAN MEAT A serving of Tofurky Italian Sausages has no cholesterol and half the fat of a real sausage.]]> Taylor Clark Sun, 3 Feb 2008 21:56:42 PST http://www.good.is/post/union_maid/ http://www.good.is/post/union_maid/

Sara Horowitz's grandmother lived in the Amalgamated Dwellings, a development on Manhattan's Lower East Side built in 1930 by a garment-workers union-the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. To Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancer's Union, the buildings symbolize an inspiring era of social change: "There had been a whole social movement pre–New Deal based on self-organization and mutual aide" she says. "The idea wasn't that the government would come in and fix things." Horowitz's Freelancers Union is an attempt to revive the spirit of that movement.

The idea for a union of freelancers came to Horowitz when she inadvertently became one. After law school, Horowitz, now 30, took a job with an ostensibly radical labor law firm whose partners soon reclassified her and her coworkers as independent contractors to save money on their benefits. When she got fed up, quit, and went back to school, her coworkers gave her faux letterhead for the "Transient Workers' Union" with her name listed on top as union president.

While completing a master's program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Horowitz decided that the Transient Workers' Union was a so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea. For the one-third of the American workforce that freelances in some form, the traditional union model was no longer applicable. But without some sort of collective voice, freelancers were being over-looked by the government.

Quote:

When people join together, you can do a lot more cool shit than when people are alone.

"Independent contractors weren't really contemplated as a group when our labor laws were written," Horowitz explains. And the only reason "we haven't adapted that system is because there isn't an organized constituency that's saying this is completely ludicrous." If she could create an institution to get freelancers what American professionals once took for granted-health-care coverage, antidiscrimination protection, pensions-she figured she could have a self-sustaining organization that could take on the status quo.

The question was how to recruit members. "You have freelancers that are working all over the place," Horowitz says. "How are you literally going to find them? If you're organizing in a factory, you go to the factory. With freelancers, there's a huge logistics problem: They're everywhere. So you have to find a reason for why they're going to come to you. So we said if we offer health insurance, they'll start telling their friends; they'll start coming to us."

And come they did. There are now 60,000 members, of whom more than 16,000 get health insurance through the union. The union uses what Horowitz calls an "à la carte" model-there are no membership fees or dues and members buy the services they want (when they do, a portion of those fees goes back to the union to support its operations). Membership is open to anyone, and health insurance is open to anyone who has earned $10,000 in the past six months or works at least 20 hours a week as a freelancer.

The union is now embarking on expanding both the benefits it offers and where it offers them. It is working on a system of unemployment insurance for freelancers and will soon offer retirement accounts that give independent workers the benefits of being part of a larger group rather than being a piddling lone IRA account at a big brokerage house. As Horowitz puts it, "When people join together, you can do a lot more cool shit than when people are alone."

Part of the union's recruitment drive includes posters in the New York subways with witty lines like, "Echinacea is not an acceptable form of health insurance."

The Freelancers Union is focusing on expanding nationally by recruiting in freelancer-heavy cities from coast to coast, including Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. In these new cities, it hopes to take on the kinds of local issues it has in New York, where it successfully lobbied to roll back the unincorporated business tax, which hit freelancers hard. As the union has grown, politicians have begun to take notice. Both John Edwards and John McCain have explicitly focused on how to make the U.S. economy and government programs work better for independent workers.

So can we expect Freelancers Union Dwellings to rise in cities across the country? The challenge of taking on the urban housing crunch may be too daunting, even for Horowitz. Still, she says, "We've looked into it."

LEARN MORE freelancersunion.org ]]>

Sara Horowitz's grandmother lived in the Amalgamated Dwellings, a development on Manhattan's Lower East Side built in 1930 by a garment-workers union-the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. To Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancer's Union, the buildings symbolize an inspiring era of social change: "There had been a whole social movement pre–New Deal based on self-organization and mutual aide" she says. "The idea wasn't that the government would come in and fix things." Horowitz's Freelancers Union is an attempt to revive the spirit of that movement.

The idea for a union of freelancers came to Horowitz when she inadvertently became one. After law school, Horowitz, now 30, took a job with an ostensibly radical labor law firm whose partners soon reclassified her and her coworkers as independent contractors to save money on their benefits. When she got fed up, quit, and went back to school, her coworkers gave her faux letterhead for the "Transient Workers' Union" with her name listed on top as union president.

While completing a master's program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Horowitz decided that the Transient Workers' Union was a so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea. For the one-third of the American workforce that freelances in some form, the traditional union model was no longer applicable. But without some sort of collective voice, freelancers were being over-looked by the government.

Quote:

When people join together, you can do a lot more cool shit than when people are alone.

"Independent contractors weren't really contemplated as a group when our labor laws were written," Horowitz explains. And the only reason "we haven't adapted that system is because there isn't an organized constituency that's saying this is completely ludicrous." If she could create an institution to get freelancers what American professionals once took for granted-health-care coverage, antidiscrimination protection, pensions-she figured she could have a self-sustaining organization that could take on the status quo.

The question was how to recruit members. "You have freelancers that are working all over the place," Horowitz says. "How are you literally going to find them? If you're organizing in a factory, you go to the factory. With freelancers, there's a huge logistics problem: They're everywhere. So you have to find a reason for why they're going to come to you. So we said if we offer health insurance, they'll start telling their friends; they'll start coming to us."

And come they did. There are now 60,000 members, of whom more than 16,000 get health insurance through the union. The union uses what Horowitz calls an "à la carte" model-there are no membership fees or dues and members buy the services they want (when they do, a portion of those fees goes back to the union to support its operations). Membership is open to anyone, and health insurance is open to anyone who has earned $10,000 in the past six months or works at least 20 hours a week as a freelancer.

The union is now embarking on expanding both the benefits it offers and where it offers them. It is working on a system of unemployment insurance for freelancers and will soon offer retirement accounts that give independent workers the benefits of being part of a larger group rather than being a piddling lone IRA account at a big brokerage house. As Horowitz puts it, "When people join together, you can do a lot more cool shit than when people are alone."

Part of the union's recruitment drive includes posters in the New York subways with witty lines like, "Echinacea is not an acceptable form of health insurance."

The Freelancers Union is focusing on expanding nationally by recruiting in freelancer-heavy cities from coast to coast, including Austin, Texas, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. In these new cities, it hopes to take on the kinds of local issues it has in New York, where it successfully lobbied to roll back the unincorporated business tax, which hit freelancers hard. As the union has grown, politicians have begun to take notice. Both John Edwards and John McCain have explicitly focused on how to make the U.S. economy and government programs work better for independent workers.

So can we expect Freelancers Union Dwellings to rise in cities across the country? The challenge of taking on the urban housing crunch may be too daunting, even for Horowitz. Still, she says, "We've looked into it."

LEARN MORE freelancersunion.org ]]> Daniel Brook Sun, 3 Feb 2008 21:38:18 PST