August Conscious Choice

http://consciouschoice.com/2007/08/choicenews0708.html

Rethinking How We Communicate

As television's most uninspired age ambles on, Americans sit in front of screens across the country consuming prodigious amounts of "reality" shows, consisting of programs that pit participants against one another in tests of Machiavellian cunning. Gordon Ramsay, Chef on FOX-TV's Hell's Kitchen constantly barks things like, "All I want is a fucking chicken — move your ass, you fat useless sack of yankie dankie doodle!" The Apprentice, American Idol, Survivor and so many others cultivate a culture of competitive, underhanded communication that we tell ourselves is just entertainment.

Meanwhile, roughly 50 percent of marriages in the U.S. fail per year, 18 percent of Americans over eighteen are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and the National Institutes of Health reports that one out of every four kids will be verbally or physically abused by another youth. Might these statistics have something to do with the way we communicate with one another?

Much has been written about America's — and many would argue, the Western world's — predilection for "violent communication" — interactions using judgments, intimidation, coercion, guilt, and blame to get what we want. Dr. Marshal Rosenberg's practice of non-vionent communication (NVC) offers an alternative, providing a way to re-think how we communicate, along with practical tools to achieve empathic connection with others.

Also known as "Compassionate Communication," this practice delivers a skill set that allows us to get to the core of people's behaviors, responding according to their needs and our own. "It may take five minutes or it may take five years, depending on the situation," says Jeff Brown, a certified NVC trainer who gives workshops around the country and has yet to come across a situation where this method of communication has not been effective.

Myra Walden, an NVC counselor in Chicago's West Suburbs, clarifies that "regardless of the way people may communicate, NVC teaches us to hear the needs underlying any words or actions."

A dialogue would include the four components of NVC: observations, feelings, needs, and requests, resulting in a more meaningful, connected exchange. The NVC model can be extended into the school, the workplace, and even the political arena. In Israel, the Ministry of Education is making NVC mandatory in schools. There are trainers currently in Sri Lanka bringing dialogue to warring parties.

Local NVC trainers and workshops can be found through Jeff Brown, heartfeltcommunication.com, Hema Pokharna, journeysoflife.org, Allan Rohlfs, hometown.aol.com/allan rohlf and Myra Walden, allianceforNVC.org.

— Jessie Tierney


Choice Outings for Hot August Nights

Eight: 18 @ Unity
"Love is my religion,” chants the Circus of the Spirit. A dance party but so much more, this eclectic mix of healers, belly dancers, djs, vendors, yogis, drummers, puppeteers, artists, and just about anyone you can imagine, gather at Unity Church to fill the night with good energy. With ten rooms of dance music, live music, tarot card readers, chillout space, acoustic arts, spiritual room, a prayer chaplain, laser lights, open hearts and much more. Dance into the night on Friday August 3. Visit circus.unitychicago.org.

Full Moon Jam
What better way than spinning fire and a drum circle to celebrate the full moon? On August 28 — during the lunar eclipse — meet one-half mile south of Foster Beach on the lakefront to watch the moon rise over the water, feel the drum beats, and witness a fire spinning show. This four-year-old community event is kid-friendly. Visit spunn.org/comm.shtml.

Critical Mass
For a “taste of bike bliss,” join Chicago Critical Mass on August 31 as bikers take over city streets wishing Chicagoans a “Happy Friday!” Thousands of cyclists meet at Daley Plaza (Dearborn and Washington) on the last Friday of every month, regardless of season or weather, for an event that has grown over ten years. This biking celebration welcomes all to join. It’s free and fun. All you have to do is show up with your bike. Go ahead, ride on. Visit chicagocriticalmass.org.

— CC Interns Extraordinaire Brooke Bailey & Jessie Tierney



Don’t Get Mad, Get Active

Stop BP from Dumping in Lake Michigan!
The towering BP oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana has been exempted from state environmental laws, allowing the company to dump an average of 1,584 pounds of ammonia and 4,925 pounds of sludge into Lake Michigan every day!

Conscious Choice has reported on BP’s record as one of the worst environmental polluters in the world (see Stealing Green, December‘06). BP has maintained an intensive marketing campaign to green their image of moving Beyond Petroleum (while 99 percent of their profits still come from oil and gas production).

The Whiting plant has been approved to expand so it can refine Canadian crude oil, which requires more energy to process (contributing to greenhouse gases) and is dirtier than conventional methods, meaning industrial sludge — full of concentrated heavy metals, and ammonia, which promotes algae growth and kills fish — gets pumped right into the lake we swim in and rely on for drinking water.

Contact BP Writing Refinery’s Public Affairs — ask for Tom Kyleman, 219-473-7700.

--Jessie Tierney

July Conscious Choice

Yay for internships, Conscious Choice, the Peace School, and Upside-down school buses!

US Defense Spending: One Seriously Chunky Monkey

U.S. Defense Spending: One Seriously Chunky Monkey
By Jessie Tierney

What do an upside-down school bus and a stack of Oreo cookies have in common with U.S. military spending?

It's not the start of some random joke — it's "Topsy," an "art bus" created by Ben (as in Ben & Jerry's) Cohen — and it's following candidates along the Primary Trail this election season.

Part of a campaign co-sponsored by True Majority and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, the Topsy bus takes aim at the U.S. government's upside-down budgetary spending. Bearing the message "The U.S. Budget is Topsy-Turvy," Topsy follows in the tracks of earlier Cohen projects, like the animated flash "Oreo cookie video" which made web rounds in 2004. In the video, a cartoon Cohen stacks Oreo cookies representing the U.S. budget. A 40-cookie tower equates the Pentagon's share of the federal pie, an annual allocation of $463 billion. The tower dwarfs the 4 cookies allotted for K–12 education, the single cookie allocated to world hunger, and the piddling quarter of a cookie parceled out to alternative energy projects.

The total annual cost for American "security," including defense expenditures for the Departments of Energy, State, Justice, Veterans Affairs, Treasury and NASA, is a whopping $934.9 billion — more than the total defense expenditures of all other nations combined. This incomprehensibly large sum still does not include the cost of war in Iraq and Afghanistan — an amount which, growing by the minute, has already surpassed half a trillion dollars. Cohen and his coterie propose that the "cookies" allocated to defense spending are supporting outdated and ineffective measures.

"A bunch of the candidates [on the campaign trail] have admitted that there is a tremendous waste in the Pentagon and that they would seek to compact that waste," says Cohen, who is marshalling 8,000 volunteers to spread the word in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. "People are talking about how the military is so stretched now. It's beginning to become mainstream."

"Wars of the future," according to Cohen, "are not going to be against other countries — they're going to be against guerillas and terrorists. Nuclear submarines don't really play a roll in that."

The Sensible Priorities campaign proposes to take that $60 billion (or 6 cookies) and rebuild schools, eliminate need for Middle Eastern oil, feed the six million starving children worldwide, provide all children with health insurance, and give Head Start to every kid who needs it. To find out when Topsy rolls into your town, check out www.sensiblepriorities.org/topsy.php.

Watch Cohen in the cookie flash movie at truemajority.org/oreos.

— Jessie Tierney

Breathing Peace: The Peace School Celebrates its 35th Year(scroll down, it's the third article)

Breathing Peace: Chicago's Peace School Celebrates its 35th year

"Inhale wooorld ... exhale peaaace," Master Charles Kim's voice vibrates, filling the room with his relaxing tone. This year, the Peace School celebrates its 35th anniversary, where peace breathing is one aspect of the multi-faceted practice taught in the Lincoln Ave. storefront studio.
In 1972, the late Grand Master MyungSu Y.S. Kim moved his family and Martial Arts practice to Chicago from Korea, where he started a training program combining peace breathing, yoga, meditation and Martial Arts. This unique practice dedicates each breath and movement to world peace. The approach even works for those with hectic lives — in the words of Head Instructor and Education Coordinator Jennifer Kim, "You always have time to breathe. You're breathing right now, so why not utilize the breath in a positive way?"

In addition to peaceful practice, the founder worked to establish a global day of peace. Mayor Bilandic acknowledged Peace Day in Chicago in 1978, which, with thousands of letters typed by Peace School volunteers and sent across America, spread to 540 cities, then to all 50 states in 1980. In 1986, the United Nations designated the school a Peace Messenger because of its work in getting proclamations of peace days from governors and mayors throughout the nation. "And it all started here," says Jennifer Kim, "with a little group of volunteers and typewriters!"

Head Instructor Greg Garrett, who started at the Peace School when he was 17, says that working alongside the late Grand Master Kim "was like sitting down with Mahatma Gandhi — he just had that presence — he was a magnet, a personality you just couldn't refuse."

Grand Master Kim's momentum and energy continue to flow through the school after his death.
Current Peace School president Master Charles Kim hopes to continue the work accomplished by his father. He has aspirations for the school to become an educational institution, training leaders to work sincerely for humanity while spreading ideas of world peace through the U.S. and beyond."

Peace Day 2007 will be held at noon on Friday, Sept. 21, in Daley Plaza. Visit peaceschool.org or email for more information.— Jessie Tierney