Yet another week filled with outreach and information. The Big Event this week, of course, has been the National Cooperative Business Association Conference, with a number of CESJ representatives interacting with some of the “higher ups” in the organization and discussing the complementarity of the Just Third Way and the coop movement. There have been a few other things, as well:
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| A hand up beats a hand out any day of the week. |
• You’re Fired! Interestingly,
instead of figuring out ways to aid Puerto Rico, a territory of the United
States whose people are U.S. citizens, President Trump is making noises about
cutting off federal aid. Perhaps he is
thinking of telling our fellow citizens they’re fired for not performing well
or not being sufficiently grating in America Made Grate Again. Of course, the essence of social justice,
whether in a business, a territory, or the world, is to restructure
institutions to make it possible for people to take care of themselves through
their own efforts. Just pouring money in
will not, of course, do anything in the long run except make matters worse,
however essential it is in the short run (as in “yesterday”). What Puerto Rico needs is not a guarantee of
ongoing handouts, but a practical and proven method of getting everybody back
on their feet to become productive and contributing members of society, not
permanent dependents — something like “Project Economic Justice,” below. Otherwise, what’s next? Firing Alaska and Hawaii for not being part
of the continental, contiguous U.S.? Why
not getting rid of those states that were once independent countries? That would include the Kingdom of Hawaii
(already fired, but rehire it and fire it again), and the Republics of Texas,
California (which included Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and portions of New Mexico,
Wyoming, and Colorado), and Vermont. And
the District of Columbia. Fire D.C. Move the capital to Denver or Chicago. Or Memphis, and take over Graceland as the
new White House.
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| Presenting the Task Force Report to Pope John Paul II |
• Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice. Last week we posted an extract from the original strategy paper that led to the Task Force. On Monday and Tuesday we posted the complete text of President Reagan’s
speech to the Task Force. The bipartisan Task Force report was
presented to both President Ronald Reagan and Pope St. John Paul II in special
meetings, the former praising the work of the Task Force, and the latter giving
us his personal encouragement for our work.
The report was translated into Polish and 40,000 copies distributed
through Solidarity channels. We
suggested that people send the links to their representatives in Congress as a
possible long-term solution to the disasters that have hit Puerto Rico. We reiterate that solution. It’s still better than anything else anyone
has proposed.
• National Cooperative Business Association Conference (NCBA). Lic. José Recinos, Our Man (Originally) From
Guatemala, has taken time out from his busy travel schedule (Joe is literally
all over the map. . . .) to attend the National
Cooperative Business Association Conference this week in Washington,
DC. The NCBA has been looking into
expanding its vision and focusing on all types of cooperative business
enterprises. Senior officials have
expressed interest in the Just Third Way, and might even find a way to introduce
the concepts into the effort to rebuild Puerto Rico.
• Solidarity in Action. Joe
has also worked with Union Solidarista de Guatemala, and was a friend of Don
Alberto Martén Chavarría, founder of Solidarismo Costariccense. He expects to put the CESJ core group in
touch with the organization founded to keep Don Alberto’s vision alive, and
there may be enough material about the work Don Alberto did with Louis Kelso
and Norman Kurland to include in a “Paradigm Paper” on solidarity, which would
also include CESJ’s work with the Polish Solidarity Union.
• Just Third Way and Paraguay.
Earlier this week the CESJ core group had an introductory telephone
conference with a Fulbright scholar in Paraguay who is interested in setting up
an exchange student program, possibly in January or July of 2018. We hope this is the first of many discussions.
• CESJ Interns. Speaking of
Fulbright scholars, a recent CESJ intern, Eliza R., has applied for the
program. In addition, CESJ’s current
intern, Bryan V., has made great progress in revamping the Just Third Way Hour
podcast, a task that has turned out to be much more involved than we initially
thought.
• Amazon Smile Program. Here’s
the usual announcement about the Amazon
Smile program, albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get
tired of seeing it. To participate in
the Amazon Smile program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• We have had visitors from 27 different countries and 36 states
and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week.
Most visitors are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India,
and New Zealand. The most popular
postings this past week in descending order were “Project Economic Justice: President
Reagan’s Speech, I,” “Project Economic Justice: Two-Tiered Capital Credit
System,” “Puerto Rico: A Few Suggestions,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,”
and “News from the Network, Vol. 10, No. 40.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
