Common Security Club Blog

by Andree Zaleska
“The Container Store” promises us help with a cultural crisis in the most cheerful terms: “…innovative products to help customers save space and, ultimately, save them time.”  Simplify!  Get organized! We enjoy our possessions, it proclaims; ownership is wonderful and fulfilling—the only trick is to make it all fit.
But the very existence of [...]

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by Chuck Collins
Many Common Security Clubs have come together to support one another to reduce credit card debt and increase support for the local economy.  Some have worked to pass consumer protection laws. (More more info see our Action Page.)
It was over a year ago that the Federal Reserve issued new credit card rules to [...]

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“I can offer, but I can’t receive,” lamented Barbara to her Common Security Club in Portland, Oregon.  She was facing a difficult move, alone, and her group was trying to persuade her to accept their help.  She seemed both embarassed, and ashamed of feeling embarassed.
“It takes all five sessions {of the CSC curriculum} to get [...]

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What if you don’t give your kids the Christmas they deserve? (We know they deserve it because they are wonderful, as all kids are wonderful.) What if they wake up on December 25 at five am and discover that they didn’t get the new Nintendo, the American Girls Doll, this year’s i-whatever?
What if you make [...]

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Our National Fear of Neediness
Jared Gardner represents our west-coast “hub” of Common Security Club organizing, having been responsible for getting four Portland groups up and running.  I was talking to Jared last week about the groups when he mentioned an issue that’s a recurring theme among CSC facilitators. One of his group members needed to [...]

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Boston Community Organizers Fight Foreclosure and Eviction—Successfully!
In a Boston neighborhood, a nonprofit called City Life/Vida Urbana is fighting foreclosure and eviction, home by home.  Staffed largely by volunteers, including lawyers, organizers and ordinary homeowners who have been threatened with home loss, CLVU has one of the most successful rates of retaining homes for both tenants [...]

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Eileen had to escape from an abusive relationship, but felt overwhelmed and afraid.  She consented to her friend Donna pulling together a “personal safety net” team, starting with a practical Excel spreadsheet of names and contact information of friends who would help her with the transition.
“I was in tears as we met to compile a [...]

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Thanks to our studious and charming intern Evan Easterbrooks-Dick, we were able to spend part of the summer researching the specific economic issues that effect young people (between the ages of the 18 and 30, approximately).  Unlike any previous generation, young people today are leaving school with tremendous burdens that affect the success of their [...]

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Ramadan in Dunkin Donuts
This story comes from Adnan Onart, a Turkish Muslim living in Boston, Massachusetts, who is a member of the Common Security Club Network. He and his wife are active members of a Unitarian-Universalist congregation where, he says, they can best live out their Muslim faith. He recites his poem, “Ramadan in Dunkin [...]

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A Midwestern Church Steps Up to the Plate
Michael Greenman seemed a little amused at the question of why he organized his church around the needs of its own community just after the “economic meltdown” of 2008. “I’m an activist. I saw a need and nobody was addressing it.”
First Church Unitarian Universalist in Columbus, Ohio formed [...]

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