YES! Article archive

The Affordable Housing Issue

A decade after the housing market crash, too few homes are available where they’re needed. In places where there are enough homes, for sale or for rent, prices are increasingly out of reach for people who aren’t wealthy. The affordability challenge is different for each city, so communities are borrowing ideas from each other, then innovating. People, too, are shifting expectations to create affordable homes.

The Decolonize Issue

American white supremacy can be traced back colonialism. In this issue we explore the extent to which ending economic, cultural, and racial oppression is possible. What movements are countering the colonialist power structures? What’s working to support self-determination? We turned to Indigenous writers and photographers to tell those stories.

The Solidarity Economies Issue

As capitalism continues to enrich the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else, it’s easy to feel defeated. But there are other stories to tell—the stories of communities full of generous people who are finding ways to lift each other up. In this issue you'll learn how to build solidarity economies based on joy. From how we shop to how we build our homes and livelihoods, we can help bring justice—and joy—to others.

The Just Transition Issue

The transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy is underway. That’s good news for the planet as well as the disadvantaged communities that bear an outsized burden of the extractive economy. As we make this transition, now is the moment to make sure the emerging economic system addresses the injustices of the old. Our fall 2017 issue looks at specific paths toward a “just transition”—one built on inclusivity and equity.

The Sanctuary Issue

Between ICE raids and xenophobic travel policies, immigrants increasingly live in fear and uncertainty. But there’s a groundswell of resistance—from cities and states to small communities and individuals. Our summer issue explores the compassionate defiance behind sanctuary. In standing together to protect vulnerable people, our communities are flexing the vital political and moral muscles of resistance.

Why Science Can’t Be Silent

Up against the White House’s “alternative facts” and attempts to hide climate data, can new allies—citizens and science—prevail against politicians and corporations? Climate science is looking like a new front line, and scientists are increasingly its freedom fighters. Citizens need to support them by engaging in daily research, demanding truth, and forcing government and industry to use research for the common good.

50 Solutions

For our 20th-anniversary issue, we asked a dozen reporters to speak with hundreds of people around the country—activists, entrepreneurs, parents, politicians, religious leaders, scientists, students, workers—to bring you 50 of our favorite inspiring solutions. These are the ideas making the places we live more sustainable and inclusive—and bringing communities together.

The Gig Economy Issue

Four out of 10 Americans work outside of the traditional 9-to-5, a rate that is growing fast. For workers, this "gig" work can feel both empowering and precarious. This issue looks at how we can bring out the best of the gig economy, but also protect workers. From cooperatives and online communities to "portable" work benefits, we can make the gig economy work for us.

Gender Justice

From North Carolina bathrooms to the fight for the White House, sex, gender, and power are in the headlines. This issue takes us beyond breaking news for a closer look at the forces inviting us toward a more inclusive understanding of who women are and how gender works. You’ll discover that embedded in today’s feminism is a demand for the rights and dignity of all people.

Life After Oil

The science is clear: we have to keep carbon in the ground. But what happens next? This issue looks at how we can get to a post-carbon world—from easy switches to big fixes—and what life will be like when we do. Getting off fossil fuels is daunting, but we found it may also be the key to a more joyful, connected, and fair way of life.

The Good Health Issue

What nourishes a culture of good health? In this issue we explore how our vitality is affected by not only our bodies and minds, but also our society, our economy, our relationships, and our environment. The Good Health issue reminds us that our well-being is enmeshed with that of our community, and that to achieve real health, we must work together.

The Debt Issue

For many of us, debt plays such a negative role in our lives that it can be difficult to imagine what a positive relationship to debt might look like. This issue considers how our collective debts can be a source of solidarity to change an unfair economic system. Working together we can create lending and borrowing systems that enrich our communities.

Make It Right

Many hoped the election of President Obama meant we had achieved a post-racial society. The #BlackLivesMatter movement—responding to the killing of African Americans—is a clear indication that we have not. This issue explores how we can come to terms with our history, acknowledge the trauma, and take concrete steps to make things right.

Together, With Earth

So-called modern progress has depended on exploiting the Earth’s resources as if they had no end. We’ve lost touch with the ancient wisdom that we are partners with Earth and all life on it. Now is the time to reclaim our sacred connection with Earth, and to think deeply, radically, and personally about the best ways to keep this planet—and its millions of species—alive.

The Cities Issue

What is it about cities that enables them to move forward while the nation as a whole is stalled? An urban revolution has cities across the country becoming hotbeds of democracy and progressive innovation. Here are the most exciting ways cities are leading us into the future.

The End of Poverty

The gap between the wealthy and the poor widens daily in America. And the prevailing story says poverty is inevitable—a natural part of the human condition. In this issue we show how the richest country in history chose policies that create an impoverished underclass—and how different choices will end poverty.

The Storytelling Issue

We define our culture through the stories we tell—our family histories, our traditions, our shared experience. But sometimes it’s been a struggle to be heard over Big Media promoting the official version, and we’ve surrendered our stories to those with money and power. Today’s storytellers are finding new and creative ways to be heard.

Education Uprising

For decades the myth of failing public schools justified industrial-scale testing and a privatization agenda. Now radical educators are bursting the bubble test, getting culturally relevant, and restoring justice to the classroom. Welcome to Education Spring.

The Food for Health Issue

We’ve lost our taste for cooking, and with it the pleasures of sharing food with family and friends. We’ve been told industrial food is quicker, cheaper, and tastier. Turns out that’s wrong. Here’s how we rediscover the joy of real food, spiced with love and tradition.

The Human Cost of Stuff

Our houses, our dumpsters, our lives overflow with stuff. It’s so cheap, how can you not buy yet one more thing that will surely make your life better? But it’s only cheap if we ignore the hidden costs to humans and to the Earth. Here’s how to fix our broken relationship with stuff.

Love and the Apocalypse

We’ve never faced bigger threats to our well-being and to the health of our planet. Accepting that reality could be paralyzing. Meet the people who are, instead, moving forward with love, imagination, and renewed respect for the Earth.

How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy

What if we all owned and oversaw the banks, by vote, and had a say in decisions made by retailers where we shop? What if we ran our workplaces without corporate CEOs? Here are stories of companies and communities where business is done by the people, for the people.

What Would Nature Do?

Industrial societies have spent several centuries trying to conquer nature. Instead, we’ve produced mass extinctions, climate change, and pollution. What’s a better way for humans to live on Earth? Nature is telling us, if only we would listen.

The Body Issue

The body has become a political, economic, and cultural battleground. Big pharma, agribusiness, the health care industry, and the political right try to shape the choices we have about our health and our bodies. Here are ways we can take charge.

Making It Home

The mess left by the real estate crash isn’t cleaned up yet; many are still losing their homes. But here and there people are rewriting the rules of ownership, changing their expectations about what “home” means, and creating houses that are affordable and sustainable.
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