“You must have a flaming moral purpose so that greed, oppression and exploitation shrivel before the fire in you.”

P.R. Sarkar (Supreme Expression II, 33)

                                                                                                                                         Photo credit: istock

Contents:

Editorial: Disaster is Also An Opportunity for Equity, Social Justice and Inclusion by Nina Shapiro and John Linkhart

Report from Steve Phillips, Maui, Hawaii

Article: The Time for Revolution is Now! by Radha Moan

Article: Why Resilient Communities? by Brad Smith

Poem: We Are the Revolution by Jyoti Wind

Reports from Working Groups/Committees/Affiliates

Upcoming Event: PA Annual Gathering 10/6-10/8

Editorial:

Disaster is Also An Opportunity For Equity, Social Justice and Inclusion

The founder of Prout, P.R. Sarkar gave us the tools for the basic building blocks of the organization. It is up to us to implement Prout in ways that meet our current challenges, and to work cooperatively with humanitarian organizations in local settings and around the world to demonstrate that we truly are a group of caring individuals, wanting to improve the social condition and to spread love and concern to all living things.

We are in the midst of a Summer of climate emergencies. From devastating fires in the Canadian Boreal Forest, and the resultant ash clouds that have caused unprecedented air quality issues in North America, to hotter temperatures globally including South America and Europe, to the wildfires in Hawaii, to Hurricane Hilary bringing unprecedented amounts of rain and flooding to N. Mexico and S. California, we are experiencing more frequent and more severe disruptions of normal life, in large part caused or exacerbated by human activity leading to climate change and the lack of progress addressing that existential threat as the Anthropocene’s 6^thmass extinction event continues on this planet, our collective home.

The silver lining of such disruptions is that by interrupting the status quo, it creates the possibility of transitioning into a sustainable, more equitable way of living in greater harmony with each other as well as with the interconnected world in which we all live. The traditional goal of emergency management is to return to the pre-event normal. Not only is that not desirable in many cases, but actually not even possible as many have discovered in the aftermath of disasters. When such things happen, the even greater long-term risk for those impacted is the experience of disaster capitalism, described so well in Naomi Klein’s book “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. But a reverse Shock Doctrine is also possible and can arise from such circumstances for the betterment of all.

Which one we experience is up to us...

We would like to highlight PA Seminars in the past year that address our need to develop disaster response plans to help ensure the availability of basic necessities and critical infrastructure for our communities:

11/10/22: Steve Phillips on Local Food Security and Distribution Systems based on his work in Maui, Hawaii. 

In this issue you will find a recent article by Steve, regarding emergency service work going on in Maui, Hawaii now, after the devastating 8/8/23 Maui fires. His leadership and active engagement in relief work on Maui and in Lahaina where he is helping ensure as many as 10,000 people per day are being fed and that his business network of organic farmers are able to get their food delivered to people in need (e.g. 5,000 pounds of food was distributed in one day). Dada Maheshvarananda recently flew there and is working side by side with Steve to aid with the short-term needs of the people. It is Prout Alliance's aim to begin to partner more closely with AMURT/AMURTEL and local relief organizations, and to support the efforts of local residents of Maui to get back on their feet.

7/13/23 John Linkhart on How do Humans Respond to Catastrophes? Myth and Fact

8/10/23 Clair Olivers on Critical Infrastructure That We Take for Granted – Interconnected and Vulnerable

The next event is also relevant to disaster relief, recovery and transition planning:

9/14/23 From Disaster Relief to Long-Term Self-Sufficiency: The experience of a humanitarian organization in capacity building and the empowerment of rural Haitian communities with Demeter Russafov

To register for upcoming events or to review past ones go to www.proutalliance.org

Submitted by:

 Nina Shapiro, Newsletter Editor & Steering Committee Chair and

John Linkhart, Education Group Member

Maui Fire Disaster

The Lahaina fire that happened on Tuesday, August 8, burned over 2,200 structures, mostly homes, and estimates are that more than 500 people have died. 115 bodies have been found so far, but only 3% of the area has been covered. Many people are missing. The disaster systems did not work, including warning sirens, and fire trucks that could not get water.

The recovery effort is now in full swing. I will describe what our company, Local Harvest, is doing and highlight some other efforts.

On Tuesday evening I was driving my daughter to the airport, and when we approached Lahaina, we could not get through. We saw a huge wall of black smoke covering the sky around the city. We were forced to turn back. That night and the next morning we heard more of the story. Information was hard to get as the electricity was out, phone service was unreliable and the internet was down. We had some food at our farmers market in Napili that we put out for people to take the next morning. There were hundreds of people staying in cars near our market site. at Maui Preparatory Academy and at the Napili Plaza. Most stores were closed, as well as gas stations, because there was no electricity. One supermarket opened for a day and there was a line of 300 people there throughout the day. There are relief tents set up in several locations with food and supplies. Most of the food is non-perishables.

Our company, Local Harvest, focuses on local fresh produce and other healthy foods. This will not only help those in need, but also the farms that have lost much of their customer base. We are working with non-profits including World Central Kitchen, Homeless Heroes Hawaii, the Hawaii Food Hub Hui, and the Hawaii Farmers Union. We are also working with relief camps and restaurants who are preparing free meals. We are supplying local produce to meal prep locations that make a total of 10,000 meals per day for those in need. We are also supplying 500 variety boxes (building to 1,000) per week of fresh produce to be distributed to families. We received a donation of $50,000 from the Hawaii Food Hub Hui to feed the people and support the local farms. This funding may run out in two weeks.

I have heard some heartbreaking stories. There was one woman with a one-month-old baby and a three-year-old son. They were escaping through the fire in their car, but it broke down. Another vehicle stopped to help them while embers were flying all around. They squeezed into that other car and all narrowly escaped. They ended up in a shelter, were then moved to another shelter and finally ended up in a hotel where my sister was staying at the time. That is where I heard her story.

Another woman who came to our food distribution had to escape by jumping into the ocean and staying there for eight hours through the night. Another family did the same, hanging onto a piece of plywood for the night while holding their two-year-old child.

School was let out early on the day of the fire and children went home, but in many cases their parents were not home. The children did not know they had to evacuate, and many died in the fire.

Also, several vendors at our farmers market lost their homes and their businesses.

I am sure you have heard many other sad stories. It will be a long recovery for West Maui. Lahaina was one of the most prized cities of Hawaii, full of cultural and historical significance. Thanks for any help you can offer. Funding relief efforts is the most valuable thing you can do at this time. We have set up a gofundme, “Local Harvest 10,000 meals.”

Those interested in tax deductible donations may also go to amurt.net or amurtel.org

Please donate.

Mahalo (Hawaiian for Thank You).

Submitted by Steve Phillips

The Time For Revolution Has Come!

                                                                 Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

Radha Moan is a freelance ghostwriter for therapists, content writer, and journalist. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including the Tiny Buddha anthology 365 Tiny Love Challenges. You might be familiar with her blog, www.anotherworldisprobable.com, where she blogs every Monday. You can learn more about her professional endeavors at www.rebekahmoan.com.

The Time For Revolution Has Come!

By: Radha Moan

If you’re anything like me, you hear people talking about reforming capitalism. They call it “conscious capitalism” or discuss the importance of harm reduction under this exploitative system. In other words, there’s a resignation that capitalism is here to stay, it’s terrible, but we can make incremental improvements so it’s not quite so terrible.

However, we can’t. Conscious capitalism is a myth. A friend of mine, who at the time was an economics professor at the University of Chicago, said capitalism requires an economic underclass. In order for capitalism to function, someone must get the short end of the stick. And yes, we can make choices to shop locally, which is a key tenet of Prout, but that doesn’t do anything to change the system because even if some Americans want more consciousness in their capitalism, that doesn’t mean everyone does.

Back in 2015, Michael Hobbes wrote a fascinating article about how Indian children subsist off pennies a day making clothing not for Americans, but for Indians or Chinese. And not only that, the clothing production cycle is so divorced from people at the top, no one really knows where their clothes are made. Contracts subcontract out over and over again until the whole thing becomes a tangled mess. And for sweatshop workers who try to unionize, the company says, “See you later,” and goes to another country where regulation is laxer and they can pay people less. As long as we care about getting something for the lowest price possible, we’ll continue to have exploitation.

Amazon is a prime example of this. How many news stories have been written about the horrors of Amazon? The workers peeing in water bottles because their breaks aren’t long enough? Those who stack boxes around someone who literally just died because they’re ordered to keep working? 'We know all this yet Amazon’s profits have continued to soar. Why? Because it’s convenient and cheap to order something from Amazon. We are divorced from the situation on the factory floor. It doesn’t enter our consciousness when we purchase from the company.

Look, I get it, some things are only available on Amazon. And there are people who don’t have the health privilege to leave the house and shop locally all over town. I’m not faulting any individuals. I’m faulting the system that brought us here. We can’t have “conscious capitalism” because capitalism always rewards the convenient and cheap. What we really need is a revolution.

P.R. Sarkar, the founder of Prout, said, “The inevitable consequence of exploitation is revolution. When the merchants, maddened with excessive greed, lose their common sense completely and forsake their humanity totally, then the opportune time has come [for revolution] …. Revolution takes place when, from the economic perspective, only two classes remain in society: the exploiters and the exploited.”

We are in that situation. And even the exploited are exploiters because we can’t not be. Every cellphone and every computer created has an element of exploitation embedded within it, whether that’s how the parts were made or how the minerals that make it function were mined.

Why Economic Reform Won’t Cut It:

Patchwork improvements are not enough. We need to raze the whole thing to the ground and start fresh. We need something new where people’s lives are valued over profit. Where local economies are bolstered and wages are fair. A system that takes into account the environmental impact and doesn’t plan for its products to become obsolete in a few years. We need something new. We need Prout.

You, dear reader, already know this so what can you do to foster a revolution? Hold the line. When someone spouts off nonsense about reforming capitalism, push back. Keep beating the drum of revolution until one day, they see it too.

Together, we can turn Prout from a theory to a reality.

Brad began studying Prout only last year but was already aligned with the principles and practices of Prout. He has fulfilled roles as a student, spiritual practitioner, musician, woodworker, salesperson, entrepreneur, husband, father, parent caregiver, non-profit founder and manager, youth worker, and intentional community founder and member, among many others. In 2022 he helped organize and lead the New Era Convergence, which was largely influenced by Prout. All this life experience informs his current focus on helping develop Resilient Communities.

He may be emailed at bsmith.interplay@gmail.com   

Why Resilient Communities?

by Brad Smith

We are defining a Resilient Community as:

• a small socially and economically cooperative group

• living in simple, affordable, low-impact dwellings in town or country

• regeneratively producing much or most of their own food and other basic needs

• nurturing the healing and well-being of their members and the wider community

• sequestering more carbon than they emit

Why do we need Resilient Communities now?

It is clear to many that our current civilization and its life support systems are disintegrating. Social breakdown, economic oppression, climate disaster, and more are accelerating. The root causes of all of these are built into the basic systems most people rely on to meet their essential needs. This is already causing great suffering and death to millions of people around the world.

It is too late to change global systems fast enough to avert their wholesale breakdown. This breakdown, however, will force fundamental change not previously possible. One way or another, humanity will have to live within planetary boundaries, if only because too few of us will be left to have that much of an impact. But if we voluntarily live within those boundaries we will cause far less conflict, chaos, suffering, and death.

This is what Resilient Communities are being developed to achieve:

Millions upon millions will be and already are being displaced by increasing climate disruption, environmental breakdown, and political/economic chaos. If there is nowhere for all these uprooted people to go, social unrest and conflict will reach a flash point and the elites in power will have to act, for better or for worse. The easiest, cheapest, and most humane solution will be to set aside decent land for displaced people where they can take care of themselves without being an undue burden on already disintegrating systems.

Creating working models for how to do this will be a rewarding and joyful endeavor for the right kinds of people. Knowledge already exists for how to do so, but knowledge itself is not enough. The law of unforeseen consequences dictates that the best laid plans always meet complications and that most plans fail to one degree or another. Failure is the primary way we learn and improve, so by prototyping so that our failures are small enough to allow us to adjust course we can steadily develop sustainable new systems.

The refugees who come later will bear all sorts of trauma, which we will have to develop systems to support the healing of. The prototypes we are developing now are not the relocation communities that will come later to different locations. Those of us who are developing these prototype communities together will have to be highly stable, capable people with special skills.

The most important work for today, therefore, is to develop working prototypes for how people can relocate on land in ways that enable and empower them to meet most of their needs themselves.This will not only minimize suffering, but it will plant the seeds for a relocalized economic system resilient enough to adapt to the cataclysms already baked into our future.

Jyoti Wind is a poet, writer, and astrologer. She lives in Boulder, CO and reads the patterns of the times. She can be reached at:

www.jyotiwindastrology.com

We Are the Revolution

We revolve around the Sun

The Great Cosmic Diviner of Souls,

One revolution at a time,

One large turning of the wheel.

We are turning now.

We are the revolution of the next era coming.

We are the voices for the new times,

Still a ways away.

We are the eyes who see

How the turning of the Great Wheel

Speaks to us,

Sings us into a future

We may never be part of.

Yet each of us have our hand on that Wheel,

And we turn it.

We revolve it,

And we are the revolution.

   Jyoti Wind

  Sunflower In Bulgaria                                            Photo Source: FreeImages

PA Organizational Reports

Steering Committee Report:

Prout Alliance (PA) recently entered into a membership agreement with Proutist Universal (PU) for the mutual purpose of education and propagation of Prout. This is an exciting step towards cooperative coordination and fulfillment of the mission put forth by P.R. Sarkar.

PA is hosting it's annual gathering, October 6-9 at the Prama Institute in Marshall, NC.  Topic: Prout Solutions for a World in Crisis.

There will be hybrid options for in person or online registration.

(See flyer below)

Secretary Report:

A draft of bylaws for the Prout Alliance has been completed.

A sub-committee has been formed to refine the draft and recommend steps toward adopting the bylaws.

Submitted by Mark Friedman, Secretary

The Prout Alliance Outreach Committee has met several times since the last newsletter.  Our members have discussed artificial intelligence and how socially conscious people should agree to use this technology.  One of our members has drafted a statement regarding our use of artificial intelligence that adheres to Proutistic values.  This statement is now with the Materials Team to further develop.

We will be speaking with students at Manhattanville College (Purchase, New York) in September and will include the work of the Prout Alliance.  One of our members has been writing replies to daily postings by Robert Reich on his Substack blog about Prout while referring readers to the Prout Alliance website. Several readers have indicated they have found our website interesting. 

Marc Nevas also has a course planned to start in late September at the Lotus Center in Silver City, New Mexico, entitled: The Role of the Spiritual Aspirant During the Time of the Change of Eras. The syllabus and promotional materials are available to Prout Alliance members upon request.

He also hosted a Permaculture potluck where key Prout concepts were introduced.

We plan to coordinate with the Prout Alliance Steering Committee to use our time strategically in ways that are aligned with our organization's priorities and agenda for the upcoming year.  

Please feel free to reach us at Outreach@proutalliance.org 

Submitted by Nada Khader, Liaison

Prout Alliance Education Committee Report:

The Prout Alliance (PA) Education Work Group (Ed WG) continues to coordinate monthly seminars on topics of interest for Proutists and other activists. The coming September program will be the 20^th consecutive presentation of our series, which began in February of 2022.

Our next program is scheduled for Thurs 9/14/23 at 8:00 PM EDT (5 PM PDT), entitled “From Disaster Relief to Long-Term Self-Sufficiency: The Experience of a Humanitarian Organization in Capacity Building and the Empowerment of Rural Haitian Communities.” Presenting will be Demeter Russafov, who has been active in Haiti relief and development work for 15 years.

The October Seminar will be for 90 minutes and held in conjunction with the Prout Alliance Annual Meeting on Sat 10/7/23 at 10-11:30 AM EDT 7-8:30 AM PDT. It is entitled “A conversation with Bill Ayers: When Freedom is the Question, Abolition is the Answer.“ Bill Ayers is an activist, retired professor, and widely published author who was involved in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Weather Underground in the late 60’s and early 70’s.

Scheduling is already underway for November and December 2023 as well as early 2024 presentations, so please watch for those announcements. Meanwhile the Sept and Oct presentations are open for Registration. Please note you will need to register for Prof. Ayers’ presentation and the PA Annual meeting separately as there will be unique Zoom links for each event. You can register for the PA Seminars by going to Events at proutalliance.org or proutalliance.wildapricot.org. BTW, recordings of previous seminars are also available at those websites, if you want to review ones you enjoyed or perhaps missed. The Ed WG welcomes suggestions about topics people would be interested in hearing about by recognized content experts. We also invite anyone with an area of expertise about which they would be willing to give a presentation to please contact us.

Topic suggestions, offers to give a presentation or any other feedback you wish to share can be sent to the Education Workgroup members as follows:

Mark Friedman at: markfmaya@gmail.com;

Tapan Mallik at tmallik@hotmail.com;

or John Linkhart at linkhartjohn3@gmail.com.

Submittted by John Linkhart and Mark Friedman

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