Movies for a New Year's Revolution

I considered making a list of heartwarming, feel good movies to help us get through the pre-dystopian blues (and you can certainly find them here.) But after a month of that kind of distraction, I feel it’s time to move on. If you’re ready for a change too, this list might be just what you need – Movies for a Revolution. 

If you’re like me, the best remedy is doing something about it. These movies leave you with a feeling of hope. President Snow (of Hunger Games ) warned us about hope, “A little is good. A lot is dangerous” – because it can ignite a revolution. Right now our country could use a lot of hope. If you’re ready to see things blown up, these films provide the arsenal. But if you’re ready for a revolution - at least a revolution of the heart – allow these films to ignite the force in you and prepare you for the work ahead.

One way to get prepared is to arm yourself with the facts of what is going on in our world.

1) In The Hunger Games series, we observe how the government controls the people through the corporate owned media. They instill fear and divide the people of the 12 districts by having them fight each other in the hunger games. Meanwhile, the citizens of the Capital live in gluttony by exploiting the resources and labor of the 12 districts, while the working class struggles to get enough to eat.

America’s corporate-owned media planted fear in us that made us ripe for a populist demagogue. They did that by broadcasting a stream of violent images of terrorist acts, drug cartel wars, and every conceivable crime done by a Mexican or person of color. They used illegal immigrants as scapegoats, blaming them for our lack of jobs, while the CEOs got million dollar bonuses for sending our manufacturing jobs overseas to exploit cheap (sometimes slave) labor. We need to heed Peta’s advice and “Remember who the real enemy is,” so we are fighting the right battle. Katniss shows us that our strength lies in unity and love.

2) Like I wrote in my previous review, “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the ultimate action flick - a total adrenaline rush of continual action, one long explosive car chase. It is a practical effect picture. Everything you see on the screen is real. Real people driving those trucks, real trucks rolling over and crashing in the Libyan desert. The production had military advisers for the battles.

This prophetic action movie briefs us on the consequences of pursuing profit over the common good. The barren wasteland resembles the scarred land that mining companies leave behind. Our country is at the cusp of a dystopian system where greedy corporations will have complete control over the one thing we all need to survive – water. The first steps have already been taken. Nestle bottled up California’s water during a severe drought. They are now bottling what’s left of the clean water in Michigan to sell to the people of Flint whose water was poisoned by corporate meddling. Nestle is currently setting up operations in drought-ridden Phoenix to bottle Arizona’s CAP water (water that was transported 320 miles from Colorado at a great environmental cost) so they can sell our own water back to us. The chairman of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, told his board that water isn’t a human right, that it should be privatized. As fossil fuel companies continue to deplete our water supply to extract coal and gas, they are creating a water shortage. Some countries are already in the midst of water wars like those in Mad Max. Imagine having to rely on greedy corporations to divvy out our drinking water.

Every-man Max and the young War Boy Nux learn from the mothers what is really worth fighting for: fair distribution of water and a future for their children where their sons aren’t raised as fodder for old men’s wars. The movie demonstrates how to get our warriors to fight for what is right – by showing empathy for their suffering and uniting with them over "righteous causes."

The movie inspires us to plant the seeds of change in our communities. The shot of the matriarch unwrapping the heritage seeds is a great visual metaphor for planting the seeds of a more sustainable way. Change is fostered by demonstrating successful practices - much like the water-harvesting systems initiated by Brad Lancaster. (Look him up. He didn’t win the local genius award for nothing.) Curb cuts (that irrigate street-side trees) used to be illegal in Tucson. Now water-harvesting features are required at new apartment complexes. As Nux says, "It looks like hope." 

3) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story casts a laser beam on how a small group of dedicated people can make a big difference when the Force (I’ll call it love) is with them. It shows how taking a risk to do the right thing can inspire others to follow suit. Revolutions are built on hope!

A real-life example is the Water Protectors at Standing Rock. The peaceful Water Protectors are putting their lives on the line to stand up to Energy Transfer Partners' (Sunoco) attempts to build an oil pipeline under the Missouri River that supplies water to 17 million Americans.  (Look it up. These pipelines explode and leak all the time...) A small group of matriarchs from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe started this prayerful, non-violent action out of love for their children and Mother Earth. Despite sparse media coverage, over 300 indigenous tribes joined them. After watching drone footage of police brutally attacking unarmed protesters, two thousand vets deployed to Standing Rock to defend them and our water. Thanks to the Water Protectors the permit to drill under the Missouri River has been denied. That is the hope I was writing about! But it's not too late to join the fight. Trump signed an executive order to restart the pipeline, so the fight continues.

Hopefully these Sci Fi flicks will inspire the peaceful warriors in us all to take up the good fight, even if that just means trying to live a more sustainable lifestyle: not buying bottled water, bringing reusable shopping bags to the store, being mindful of water use, driving less, buying local, keeping up with what is happening in our government, signing petitions, and pulling money out of banks that support the pipeline... To quote Yoda, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.” (Sorry, that’s another movie.) 

I would greatly recommend The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for an inspiring New Year's marathon. Wishing you a Happy New Year full of hope and love. 

Movie Blessings! 

Jana Segal-Stormont

www.reelinspiration.blogspot.com


If you would like to read more about my adventures in transitioning to a more sustainable lifestyle, scroll down this blog: http://www.sustainablelivingtucson.org/

Investing Ethically: or Putting Our Money Where Our Blog Is.

“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has sold off its entire $187 million stake in oil giant BP, as well as its entire $824 million holding in ExxonMobil. BP posted a record $6.5 billion annual loss in February while ExxonMobil is under investigation about whether it lied in the past to investors about the threat of climate change.”

"Climate change poses the greatest threat to health in the 21st century, according to doctors, and to avoid catastrophic impacts, most known fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground. If the world’s governments succeed as promised and halt global warming, those reserves could become worthless, and divestment campaigners argue there are both financial and moral reasons for divestment." - The Guardian reporter Damian Carrington.

At the end of 20 years of marriage, I was awarded half of our 401K. After sending the investment company our divorce agreement, I received letters urging me to make a decision on what to do with my share: keep the 401K with the current investment company or change companies. I procrastinated because, to be honest, I didn’t like either of those choices – especially after so many lost their retirement money when Wall Street made risky investments. I was grateful to have the money, but I didn’t care for how it had been earned. Part of me wanted to take the money out and pay off the rest of the mortgage on our modest house. After faithfully paying $860 a month for twenty years, I still had 15 years to go. I didn’t want the bank to get another dime of my money! But Dan crunched the numbers, and discovered that the penalty and taxes for taking the money out early was equivalent to the interest I would pay in the remaining 15 years of the mortgage – assuming the 401K wouldn’t make any additional money!

It was either keep the 401k for another five years or suffer a huge loss. We half-heartedly accepted the help of a persistent financial adviser. He did the usual assessment of our investment objectives and how much risk we were comfortable with. I shuffled uneasily in my seat as he explained our moderate risk growth profile, which means 40-50% income investment (safe investments like bonds that return slightly above the rate of inflation, but aren't likely to lose value), roughly 30% long-term growth (blue chip stocks), and about 10-20% short-term growth investments (high yield, somewhat high risk, stocks).

About a week later, our adviser called, wanting to just “swing by” to drop off the prospectus he had worked out. I sat there in agony as we read over the list of companies that were the antithesis of everything we believed in: all the big pharma companies, all the big box companies, and every big energy company, including Exxon. There was no way I was going to invest in Exxon! We don’t even drive a car in an effort not to contribute to climate change! Apparently these big companies are included in most prospectuses because you could count on them to make big profits – never mind how unethically they did that.

I explained to our poor adviser that it was less important that the fund grow than it was for us to invest in something we believe in. Were there possibly any “green” or “sustainable” companies we could invest in?

A few days later he dropped off the prospectuses of some “sustainable funds”. Flipping through their holdings, we saw they also included big pharma and even GE! GE represents everything we were fighting against. They use coal and water to power their plants, they got billions of dollars in subsidies and hid their profits overseas. They were on the list because they manufacture wind turbines in addition to their many not-so-green products.

Frustrated, I blurted out that if I had my way, I wouldn’t be investing in a broken system that rewarded CEOs with million dollar bonuses for firing and exploiting workers. Dan replied, “Unfortunately, that’s how capitalism works – by exploiting other people.” I exclaimed, “Then I don’t want to be in this system!” It was not going to be easy to invest ethically in a process where the actual system itself is the problem.

We tried another angle. What about socially responsible companies? Our persevering adviser really took on the challenge. He dug up two “socially responsible funds” for us to check out. One of them came highly recommended by his firm. But Dan looked it over and found many of the same companies we objected to in the growth funds. It appeared that the company’s priorities had shifted to making more money for its investors. The other company’s definition of “socially responsible” was Christian fundamentalist values. In other words, they would not invest in alcohol, tobacco, guns or companies with health plans that included birth control. Argh!

Back to the drawing board. Our adviser asked if we had any companies in mind. He suggested that we could put together our own portfolio including government bonds and individual companies of our choosing. Our adviser was really starting to get into it. He even enlisted the help of his assistant.

He e-mailed us the prospectus on a water fund. After reading it, we couldn’t figure out why he had chosen it. Just because it was a water fund, didn’t mean it was necessarily sustainable. We certainly didn’t want to invest in a company that would exploit Native Americans or destroy their aquifers to get to it. He read their mission over the phone, “We have a team of analysts dedicated to environmental, social and corporate-governance research, including environmental technology, science, policy and issues of sustainability. In addition, our unique Grassroots Research platform combines an in-house staff, over 300 independent researchers and more than 50,000 industry contacts to gather on-the-ground market intelligence.” We were sold. We had 20% of our portfolio right there.

He looked up renewable energy companies on Wikipedia and recommended three solar companies. Bingo!

With our adviser on the phone, me on my computer and Dan on his, we googled social justice companies and brainstormed companies that treated their employees well. Dan looked up their reputation for being socially responsible and sustainable and shared his expertise on the big computer companies. Our adviser made sure they were public companies, and let us know how they were doing in the market. (We were disappointed to find that Trader Joes and Ben and Jerry’s weren’t publicly traded and that most B Corp funds aren’t rated high enough to be sold by our adviser.) In addition to recommending companies that reflected our principles, it was our financial adviser’s responsibility to make sure the companies were solid and had growth potential. Together, we cranked out the rest of our portfolio in no time at all.

What we ended up with was a mix of "income securities" - mostly government and some private bond funds. The rest is "growth securities:" the water investment mutual fund and a portfolio of stocks we chose ourselves including two solar companies and companies that treat their employees well. We’re still not entirely comfortable with our role in securities markets that are the engine that drives so much inequality and environmental destruction worldwide. But we did do our best to make sure that our investment will do as much good as possible in our current economic system. Sometimes, that’s the best you can do.

Planting the Rain: How we discovered the Watershed Management Group

I first heard about the Watershed Management Group (WMG) shortly after returning to Tucson in 2013. As I was talking to people about growing native and locally-adapted plants here in the Sonoran Desert, WMG frequently came up in the conversation. I checked out their website and read some of their newsletters, but I didn't really understand the benefits of water harvesting in anything but an intellectual manner until I rode my bike around town on the Homescape Harvest Tour in 2014. (Click the map below to join me on the tour.)

We set off on our odyssey from another Tucson treasure, Bicycle Inter-Community Art & Salvage (BICAS) and pedaled away to see what our neighbors were doing to harvest water in their own yards.

On the tour, I saw people doing truly amazing things with water harvesting...at a lot of different levels. In one case, it was little more than building up a berm between the house and the roof line to make sure the rainwater would flow into the small backyard garden, instead of flooding the foundation of the house.

Another homeowner took the recycling approach: building a cistern, composting barrel, and chicken coop out of "junk" saved from the scrapyard.

And, it's not just homeowners who were getting into the act: responsible businesses, like the Tucson Association of Realtors, installed curb cuts and catchment basins filled with native grasses and plants to reduce flooding in their parking lot and filter the pollutants out of the water before allowing it to settle in to help replenish our diminishing groundwater reserves.

The Shipek house (Lisa Shipek is the Executive Director of WMG and Catlow Shipek is the Policy and Technical Training Director at WMG) was a true showcase of just how much is possible by taking a holistic approach to managing water and waste. While it will be a long time, if ever, before we get to the same point with our humble midtown home, it was incredibly inspiring. Whether it is the rainwater-sustained lush greenery that greets you from the street (a rarity in Tucson!) or the composting toilet and solar heated shower that we all had to line up to check out, there were so many great ideas in this one home alone, that I could easily write another blog post just about all the features of their oasis in the desert.

The tour wrapped up at the WMG Living Lab - the office, classroom, and demonstration site that is "home base" for the Watershed Management Group.

When the 2015 Homescape Harvest Tour rolled around, I knew I needed to bring Jana along with me. We started off our walking tour with the full tour of the Living Lab.

 

We also saw a really exciting example of a neighborhood coming together to convert a vacant lot that used to be full of trash and surplus equipment into a "pocket park." This neighborhood eyesore is well on its way to becoming a garden spot that the whole neighborhood can enjoy. Seeing what they are doing in the Palo Verde neighborhood has inspired us to consider similar projects in our own neighborhood.

Jana and I are very excited about water harvesting and the Watershed Management Group. We have a lot to do to make our xeriscaped plastic sheeting and gravel Tucson yard into a desert food forest, but we're very excited about the challenge and the potential we see in our yard. And, with every workshop we attend at WMG, we get a lot more ideas to try to implement. We're ready to plant some water!

Starting Where We Live

We plan to take out the rocks and use greywater to water our backyard. 

Glancing at the sweet Tree of Life Valentine card Dan gave me, brings to mind how we have grown together in the past two years. The Tree of Life represents our connection to each other, our community, and the planet.

After giving up on internet dating, I found Dan on Facebook. There were pictures of him mentoring teens in robotics, gazing fondly at his 3D printer, and painting the walls at CoLab workspace. I was impressed by how he was trying to do good in the world, so I asked him for a tour of CoLab. He rushed by me sweating profusely from riding his bike. After showing off CoLab, he offered to give me a tour of “his downtown” – Maker House and Xerocraft. We settled in the courthouse courtyard and talked for 6 hours. I told him about my creative boys, my screenwriting, supporting local filmmakers by organizing film events, and writing reviews of meaningful films. He told me in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested in dating. He came to Tucson so he could live inexpensively while working on his many humanitarian projects. The one that was dearest to his heart was “The Pineapple Project” a computer program that would allow subsistence farmers worldwide to use their cell phones to find out what was best to plant on their land.  

That's Gary Nabhan there. We're big fans. 

When we got together a few days later (yeah!), we struggled with finding time for us and all his projects. We are still working on finding the right balance. Dan soon discovered that he needed to apply his program closer to home, so “Sonoran Gardener” was born. Combining my interest in film and his in sustainability, we have gone to just about every sustainability or environmental movie event in Tucson! I even found ways to discuss environmental issues in my movie reviews at Reel Inspiration.

The Poo looking guilty. 

While I have always recycled and have never driven, I am grateful to Dan for introducing me to sustainable living. It has added so much to the quality of our life together. In addition to not owning a car, Dan makes his own bread (lucky for me and the boys) and we are experimenting with planting heritage foods and edible weeds. (That’s right! Weeds!) The heritage Sonoran winter wheat is growing nicely, but the only one who has eaten any of it is “The Poo,” Dan’s dog. We did enjoy some purslane that was growing behind the neighbor’s fence. (I found a yummy Mexican recipe for a green sauce made of tomatillos, garlic, onions and serrano chiles!) We even tried planting purslane and some wild amaranth in our garden.  We may be the only ones who purposefully plant weeds in our garden!

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea).

Sometimes our environmental efforts conflict with each other. We would like to shop local, but not having a car makes it very time consuming to get to the farmers markets on the far end of town. We do cook some heritage foods that we purchased at Native Seeds:  like Tohono O’odham tepary beans. (Those stubborn little beans took over 24 hours to cook after soaking overnight!), and mesquite flour pancakes with prickly pear syrup. (Yum!) Dan would like to harvest his own mesquite beans, but they always fall to the ground before he gets to it. It’s hard being a programmer/gatherer!

Dan and I are great partners in living sustainably. Though we still struggle with developing daily habits. I squawk at Dan for leaving the water on while he reaches for a fork, “We live in the desert!”  I have learned to turn the water off while brushing my teeth! But I still kick myself for forgetting to bring the reusable grocery bag to the store.

Watershed management workshop.

We have found new ways to water our Tree of Life. Dan introduced me to the Watershed Management Group. We started with a lovely neighborhood tour. And we recently attended the Rainwater and Greywater harvesting classes. We are excited to redesign our yard so we can use washing machine water on our landscape. It’s sure to be hard work, but fun too! 

Steps Towards Sustainability - We Had To Start Somewhere.

Excited and energized by the "Food Justice, Faith and Climate Change Forum," I tried to share what I learned with my apathetic teenage son. Feeling frustrated after he told me that everything I was doing to combat climate change was stupid (I hate that word!), I tried to paint him a picture of how it would affect us. “You know the way the land looks in "Mad Max: Fury Road" – where nothing can grow on it - that’s possible.  It could happen again. It has happened before in this country. In Oklahoma, the farmers overworked the land so much that nothing would grow on it.” My son said he already knew about that.  “That’s the Dust Bowl. I don’t care. What would you have done about it? Told those farmers not to farm on their land? Would they have listened to you? What good do you do?”  I replied, “I don’t know. But I know that I couldn’t live with myself if I left that for you without doing something. I have to start somewhere, don’t I?"

Our fledgling tree still needs support

So here I am starting somewhere.  My husband Dan and I started where we live. Bit by bit we are making an effort to transform our convenient consumer lifestyle into a more sustainable lifestyle. Admittedly, we are still learning what that means. My simplest definition is incorporating sustainable practices and habits into our everyday life that protect our precious land (so it will continue to grow plants like the food we eat and maintain the various ecosystems and wildlife) and conserve our precious water supply. This is especially important since we live in the desert. While reduce, reuse, recycle is a great start (I am still groping with changing old habits), it goes beyond that to shopping locally, gardening, water harvesting, reducing use of fossil fuels…  We have so much to learn!  But it’s kinda fun and exciting.

I have been wanting to start a “Sustainable Living Tucson” blog for some time.  Dan and I have discovered so many incredible resources (Watershed Management Group, Native Seeds/SEARCH, PimaCounty Seed Libraries), that I wanted to start a blog showing how Tucson is a sustainability mecca in the desert. And hopefully I will get to that someday. But as my wise brother-in-law suggested, it might be more useful to share our honest struggles in changing our lifestyle from that of an average American consumer to being more responsible for the future of our home. So here I am - starting where we are NOW.