| Powerful Ideas, Practical Actions |
February 2011 |
|
|
 |
Colin Beavan. Photo by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine
 No Impact Week Photo Awards
Food, energy, giving back, and more: The winning entries from January’s YES! No Impact Week participants.
|
:: SHARE WITH YOUR NETWORKS
|
|
NO IMPACT MAN:
My Life as an Accidental Activist
Colin Beavan didn’t set out to lead a movement. But that’s where he ended up. Here’s how a regular guy found he had the power to change the world…
So many of us have good ideas for helping the world. But we tuck our ideas away. I did. I’d tell myself that if the idea were any good someone else would have already done it. That I’m not capable of making a difference. I’d sit on my ideas, get on with my “life,” and then feel angry at the world because the problems I cared about didn’t get solved.
I had that fear of going first.
Then I took my first hapless step into what I call accidental activism. In 2006, I started a project where I lived as environmentally as possible for a year—with my little family, on the ninth floor of an apartment building in the middle of New York City—to attract attention to the world’s environmental, economic, and quality of life crises.
I had no experience as an activist. Yet suddenly my project caught fire.
My book and film, both titled No Impact Man, ended up being translated into 20-plus languages. Some philanthropists appeared and offered me funding to hire consultants to get NoImpactProject.org off the ground. About 20,000 people have now participated in our educational immersion program, No Impact Week.
And how have I felt through all this?
Like a deer in the headlights.
READ ON …
|
|
|
|
| A New American Revolution… |
|
|
Sarah van Gelder on events in Wisconsin
An American Uprising?
It took awhile, but Wisconsin shows that the poor and middle class of the U.S. may be ready to push back. Madison may be only the beginning.
YES! Executive Editor Sarah van Gelder on why the uprising that swept Tunisia, Egypt, and parts of Europe is showing signs of blossoming across the United States.
READ MORE…
:: Wisconsin: Solidarity Among Workers …
And Football Players
As Wisconsin’s public workers fight to keep their wages and bargaining rights, they’re joined by others involved in a labor struggle: their Super Bowl champion neighbors.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
YES! We Can Reinvent a Failed Prison System
Our editorial team is already looking ahead to issue #58 of YES!, when the magazine will grapple with how to solve the U.S.’s prison problem. We’ll explore replacing our system of punishment, exclusion, and racial profiling with one that restores health and community, and fosters everyone’s capacity to care for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Find out what the YES! team is planning and let us know your suggestions or tips for this issue.
LEARN MORE…
WANT TO HELP CHOOSE OUR MAGAZINE COVERS?
JOIN OUR READERS PANEL TODAY
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“We had no other alternative.”
Sitting In
with
Wendell Berry
Midway through his four-day sit-in in the Kentucky governor’s office, Wendell Berry spoke to Jeff Biggers about the heartbreak in mountaintop removal mining.
|
|
|
|
|
VIDEO
The Economic Injustice of Plastic
TED Talk: Van Jones on how plastic unfairly harms the poor’and what the rest of us can do about it.
The Story of Citizens United v. FEC
How we the people can reclaim our democracy: Annie Leonard offers 5 Ways to Fight Citizens Utd.
“Whether your passion is protecting the environment or creating green jobs or improving public education—or really any other issue on which corporate interests are blocking real solutions—this is your campaign too.”
|
|
|
|
|
