http://commonsecurityclub.org Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:51:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=758 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 ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=706 “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 ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=526 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 ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=449 By Grace Lee Bogs The greatest human need facing the American people is to stop shirking responsibility and to start assuming responsibility. This is what Jimmy Boggs wrote in 1963 in The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Workers Notebook, which has just been reissued with a new introduction by me ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=438 By Chuck Collins In the Boston neighborhood around our church, the wreckage of the economic meltdown is still palpable. Foreclosed houses sit empty, metal grates shutter businesses and the view toward the future is anxious. Many of my fellow congregants have watched their job security vanish and savings evaporate. Grown children have ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=433 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 ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=419 By Katrina Vanden Heuval Chuck Collins, co-founder of United for a Fair Economy and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, describes the difference between this financial crisis and those of the past. "The risk of this economic crisis is that people stay isolated, hunkered down and afraid," Collins says. ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=417 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 ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=403 By Sam Pizzigati In closely knit communities, people care about each other and help each other, too. But healthy “social fabrics,” as the expression goes, can tear. Inequality can tear them. The wider the income gaps between us, the less we share in common, the less we care about those around ... http://commonsecurityclub.org/?p=396