MEDIA ROOTS- As the current US labor system trembles with insecurity, leaking the salaries, benefits and rights of workers across the country, people are increasingly wondering what alternatives there are.

In the Bay Area, one doesn’t have to venture far before coming across a local favorite, the Arizmendi Bakeries. Backed by a development and support cooperative, the Arizmendi Association has 6 cooperative bakeries that specialize in morning pastries, artisan breads and gourmet pizza. Together, these bakeries comprise one of the most successful worker owned associations in the region.

Although cooperatives can take many different shapes, they share a fundamental characteristic: the workers are the ultimate decision-making body. Each worker is a shareholder in the business with one vote in every decision that guides the organization. At Arizmendi, every employee is part owner in the bakery with an equal share in the company.

Tiffany Martinez was a labor rights activist and union organizer before becoming a worker owner of the Emeryville Bakery four years ago.  Despite her years of involvement fighting for worker empowerment, Tiffany was never taught about cooperatives.

“I felt cheated, in the same way that I wished my high school counselors told me about trade school… I didn’t even know about unions until I got to college, which I think is this huge failure in our education system. Young people don’t have exposure to all the different options after high school.”

A co-worker at the union Tiffany worked for told her about Arizmendi. Feeling over worked and underpaid, Tiffany decided to pursue a job opening at the bakery. Following the interview process at Arizmendi – a sit down with the cooperative’s hiring committee and then a tryout in the bakery– she was hired.

“Having dedicated so much of my time as an adult to workers rights I felt really conflicted about having to do anything else or something that contradicted what I had been working for. But the cooperative is about worker’s rights too, so I threw myself into it.”

Arizmendi grew out of a study group in 1995. The group was studying thriving cooperatives in Spain, the Basque region and Italy, to find out why they were not similarly flourishing in the United States.

The study found that cooperatives in other parts of the world used their success to build new cooperatives, while co-ops in the United States were more scattered, without any kind of network to connect them.

“Learning to cooperate among cooperatives has been one of the keys to our success,” explains Tim Huet, a participant in the ’95 study group and member of the Arizmendi Development and Support Cooperative. It is this branch of the Arizmendi Association that coordinates the development of new cooperatives while providing ongoing support to the existing bakeries.

The successful Cheeseboard Collective, which became a cooperative in 1971, presented an excellent, local model from which to build future cooperatives. When approached by the study group, the Cheeseboard Collective agreed to lend its name, recipes and facilities to train people in starting a network of new local bakeries. In this way, Arizmendi was born in 1997, opening its first bakery named after Father Jose María Arizmendiarrieta, the founder of the Mondragón cooperative movement in Basque Country.

The Development and Support Cooperative of the Arizmendi Association is the closest thing in the organization to a manager insofar as it creates the business plan for the cooperatives, finds the funding to start them, recruits and trains the new worker-owners and provides ongoing education and legal support to the bakeries.

Everyone hired at the cooperative goes through an extensive business education program before becoming a worker owner. Tim is a part of this training process.

“We teach them how to read financial sheets and make decisions from that. We teach them conflict resolution because in our co-ops, there are no bosses. There are no managers. There is no one to solve your conflicts so we teach people how to work things out directly.”

The worker-owners are also taught the legal responsibilities of being an owner and director of a cooperative corporation, alongside the history and principles of cooperatives. Learning how to facilitate decision-making rooted in consensus among owners is another important element of running the business.

No one co-op is the same – individual worker-owners decide the shape their cooperative will take, and the differences between the bakeries tend to exist in how much the co-ops delegate decisions and tasks.

“Some cooperatives tend toward making all of their decisions together in one room. Other cooperatives tend to have more work groups that have authority in certain areas as long as they don’t contradict the overall mission,” explains Tim.

The beauty of cooperatives like Arizmendi is the flexibility granted to their workers. As the business changes over time and in size, so can the structures by which the worker owners decide to operate.

However, one consistency across all of the bakeries is the central tenet that every worker has one vote for every decision made. Thumbs up are a go, thumbs to the side are a stand aside vote, and thumbs down are a block. To maintain accountability and clarity in the decision-making process, stand aside and block votes have to explain their positions.

Arizmendi Emeryville delegates decisions among different committees to keep the many tasks at hand from becoming too many or too tedious, and every worker-owner is expected to be involved. Some committee positions are elected like the Policy Council, the Hiring Committee and the Collective Evaluation Committee. Examples of the volunteer committees include those that deal with finance and marketing, the details of production, and the maintenance and repairs of the bakery property.

Currently, one of the most challenging decisions facing the Emeryville cooperative is how to increase their prices in a global climate of rising food costs.  It is a delicate and difficult line to navigate between sustaining the bakery and worker-owners while still keeping the food accessible to the community.

Over the years, Arizmendi has met great success with its business model. In 2010, a year in which jobs loss was high and few new businesses were created, Arizmendi opened two more bakeries employing 30 plus people. Furthermore, Arizmendi has sparked inspiration in other parts of the world and for those who are moved to create cooperatives of their own, Arizmendi has the policy of spending at least an hour with whoever contacts them seeking support and advice.

For both Tim and Tiffany however, the greatest successes of the Arizmendi Cooperative Association are interpersonal.

“A lot of times when we hire people they’ve never been asked how they want their work place to run, they’ve never been asked to make decisions about their pay. So it’s a profoundly altering experience in that case,” explains Tim. “A lot of time people gain skills about conflict resolution with each other and how to run meetings and how to run a business, that then spill over into other aspects of their lives – their family lives, their community lives.”

On a personal level, Tiffany says that the amount of time, energy and personal investment that she has put in the bakery is something she was never compelled to do when she was working for someone else or as a union organizer.

“I’ve never felt taken advantage of or pushed to do something that I couldn’t do – that I didn’t have the training or support to do.”

Tiffany described a lesson she received in humility after years of working the same shift. “I thought I knew everything and there wasn’t anything I could be told that I didn’t know. But that was so arrogant. I realized I have to learn how to listen to people when they have feedback about my stuff. I started practicing taking feedback again and not taking it personally- it’s not about me, it’s about the food that we are putting out together.

We fight like brothers and sisters sometimes. There are a lot of family dynamics there. You know, sometimes we bring our A-game and sometimes we don’t. What I’ve experienced in the last couple years is that we call each other out when we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing and that is really hard because how do you give someone feedback in a way that is going to help them out and not shut them down? That is something that we have all been learning about.”

If she were to leave the bakery, Tiffany said she would go to another worker-owned cooperative because she could no longer imagine working for a boss or a system in which she has no say.

“Look at what is happening in Wisconsin right now. We have to have more structures where people are going to be respected and have a say over what is happening in their workplace. It just seems so logical. Why would you go into a work structure that at its core isn’t committed to making your life better? So that you can have sick time off, so you can be with your kids and have healthcare. So that there aren’t unilateral changes to your shift that affect you and your family.”

The stability of her job at Arizmendi and having coworkers that care enough to shift schedules and work to accommodate the changes in their colleagues lives is simply something Tiffany had never experienced elsewhere. “I may not always agree with my coworkers but I love them and I can’t say that about my previous work experiences.”

The central aim of the Arizmendi Cooperative Association is to create a truly democratic economy – one in which everyone has a say in the decisions that affect them on a day-to-day basis. The biggest challenges to achieving this goal, explains Tim, are raising money (they do not take government or foundation grant money) and more importantly, living in a society that actually teaches people to be powerless.

“I think our political institutions, and most institutions in our society, train us to be undemocratic and they actually want us to accept a role that is not democratic. They have no interest in incorporating new or democratic skills in folks. The idea is that you will follow orders and so they have no interest in having work places where people learn democracy. They actually train people in this kind of deal where you are going to be an employee and take orders and the benefit of that is you don’t have any responsibility. You can complain all you want about the politicians, you get to complain about your bosses all the time and because you have no power, you have no responsibility.

We often encounter people who have been through enculturation into that and part of our job is to teach them that you can’t just be complaining anymore – you are the ones in power, you have to take responsibility to change things.”

Some worker-owners of Arizmendi have not previously had much input in their lives but now have a voice in arguably the most consuming aspect of life – how they earn a living. They come from a diversity of backgrounds, entering into a collective partnership as owners of their own business, feeding the community, and providing inspiration to others.

Arizmendi believes that the solution to the present broken system is to create an every day democracy.

“If people are working in authoritarian work environments, are going to authoritarian schools then they are not going to have the democratic skills they need to run a democratic society on a city, state or national level,” Tim explained. “So, I really think we need to give people that experience in the day to day – how you come together with your coworkers about how you run your business – and that will lead to reform on a national or regional level.”

Written by Alicia Roldan

Photos by Abby Martin

PROJECT CENSORED– As we approach the prophetic and supposed media hyped end-of-times year of 2012, hysterical speculation will abound.  But the ubiquitous corporate media don’t seem to notice that We the People of these United States already stand at our own precipice– the potential end of what has been deemed the Great American Experiment, the institutional embodiment of human freedom protected by government of, by, and for the people.

Of course, for many, the promises of equality and democracy that lie therein may never have existed in the history of the United States.  Certainly, racism, sexism, classism, and imperialism, have all played the role of antagonist to said promises.  However, America’s founding documents were particularly rife with rhetorical flourishes that were supportive of liberty, freedom of expression, the pursuit of happiness– all of which actually sprouted many social and political movements that changed American culture by striving toward those founding principles, achieving them in varying degrees.  In this regard, America has succeeded in realizing the essence of some of its promises.  But in reality, the US, in historical terms, has fallen short in myriad ways across the demographic spectrum and that trend is not abating.  This is in large part due to American’s reliance on reform over revolutionary ideals and action as tools for change.

Arguably, the root of these aforementioned problems within democracy, beyond exclusion or manipulation of the franchise, chiefly resides in the controlling of public information and education, and access to it. Thomas Jefferson once offered a possible solution to these issues when he wrote, “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.” 

The focus then is to achieve a truly free press and a literate citizenry in maintenance of democratic government.  More timely, this was purportedly the focus of the organizers and A-list participants of the National Conference on Media Reform this past weekend in the historic (once revolutionary?) city of Boston.  However, these reformers have also fallen short of achieving this goal.

We the people should go straight to the root of our problems with media, which means taking a radical approach in dealing with the current problems of our supposed free press to ensure that all are, as Jefferson put it, safe.  For starters, we should move well beyond reformist calls for attenuating institutional dials, changing a few metaphorical channels, or appointing new FCC commissioners.  This has not worked.  The root of democracy is with the people, in education, in literacy, in media awareness, and the path to change comes from the people, not the president.  That we move beyond a reform ethos concentrated on elite media control must be agreed upon by all those aware of the problem in order for real change to take place.  And while moving beyond reform, we cannot succumb to “hope and change we can believe in,” which was promised, yet never delivered after the 2008 election where many reformers focused great efforts to no avail. These eventual outcomes of reform serve to create a subculture of acceptance in defeat, living to fight again…in another four years.  That is a long game.  And we have played it for a long time. 

It is true that reforms play a role in radical changes, though they are stepladders to paradigmatic changes. The time to unite, face reality, and act to rebuild a new and relevant democracy on the foundation of a truly free press is upon us as we are in dire straights as a country, as a world.

Like falling empires of old, the US today is mired in multi-front, unilateral wars and is engaging in new ones ongoing while living well beyond its means at home; ignoring domestic affairs when not outright waging internal wars against those who actually expect elected and appointed officials to live up to our founding Enlightenment principles.  

These current so-called “wars on terror” have cost over $3 trillion to date and occupy a great deal of time of political leaders.  All the while, the US boasts record declines in middle and working class incomes and opportunities; a jobless “recovery” in the wake of the economic collapse of 2008 (caused in large part by the biggest banks on Wall Street which subsequently were not held accountable and instead bailed out at taxpayer expense); a crumbling infrastructure; failing schools (including public and private charter); abysmal records on access and quality of healthcare given the overall wealth and technological prowess of the country; rising infant mortality rates; increasing homelessness; skyrocketing foreclosures; collapse of community development and non-profit support systems; faulty elections procedures; the use of torture abroad and at home; the list goes on and on.

Last but not least, we suffer a hyperreal condition as a society, spurred on by fearful, factless, and feckless news programming by the nation’s supposed leading journalistic outlets.  This is why most people in America do not seem to notice the inevitable descent.  America is so disconnected that even while individuals may suffer in large numbers they lack a collective adhesive in a modern media landscape.  They erroneously believe they suffer alone, and thanks to corporate media propaganda, are often afraid of the wrong things.  Yet, a truly free press should help build and protect democracy for the people, not destroy it.

All this is taking place in what appears to be absolute decline across the board for most Americans as the upper few percent of the population control most of the nation’s wealth.  A real free press would tell us to forget the GDP and focus on community building and works programs, not abstract market fluctuations.  America is a debtor nation and has not made much outside of weapons and related technologies accompanied by military industrial media complex propaganda/advertising for years– all masquerading as official foreign policy and the “news.”  The US government, along with this massive military industrial complex, has now armed the world to the teeth to justify a permanent warfare state.

America, its government of and by corporations over the people, is now locked in a self-created, last-ditch effort to occupy the nether regions of oil, industrial capitalism’s dwindling lifeblood.  The US forces the rest of the world to trade on the dollar to maintain global hegemony, funding its expansion of over a thousand military bases in over 130 countries.  Meanwhile, China, Russia, and several South American countries, are already operating outside this monetary imposition, which as the late scholar and author of the Blowback trilogy Chalmers Johnson argued, is what would spell the end of American empire– fiscal bankruptcy.  The collapse of the dollar would hasten that.  Indeed, that time draws nigh as the cry for austerity from ostentatious leaders rings hollow across the land.

But again, don’t expect the so-called mainstream media to explain all this to the public.  After all, according to the mainstream media in the US (in actuality, it is the corporate media, but the term “mainstream” is used so often people tend to forget it is not so mainstream) there are teachers to blame and public workers to vilify, and there is an ever ready supply of immigrant populations to enslave or deport as well as exotic lands Americans can’t find on a map to invade in efforts to rout evildoers that supposedly cause our current calamities.  And if that’s too much to handle, big media in the US can intersperse a steady diet of junk food news where Americans can vicariously feast on celebrity gossip and sport spectacles ranging from Charlie Sheen and Dancing With the Stars to the Super Bowl and March Madness in hopes that the problems we all face in the real world will simply just go away.

These are the same issues many in the media reform movement also decry, and rightfully so.  Reform efforts have been laudable.  But the solutions reformers offer mostly seem to involve “fixing the system” by focusing on influence of advertisers or regulating ownership (which to date have not achieved reformer objectives).  Other reformers want the government to step in to “fix the system” by creating a public media, without noting government has played a big role in the current problem and even while public media is under attack by Congress, PBS and NPR have hardly stood out in major ways to challenge the plutocracy in the name of the people.

These reform notions do not go to the root of the problem, they do not map out a radical solution.  And, despite reformers’ benevolent instincts and intentions, don’t always expect reformers that criticize the big media messengers’ behaviors to realize that the system they spend so much time trying to repair is now defunct, if it ever existed in any democratically functional means in the first place.  This is why we, the media literate citizens of this dying republic, must now move beyond reform to create a new way.

We need to be the media in word and deed, not lobby those in power to reform their own current establishment megaphones for their own power elite agendas, as that will not happen, and indeed, it has not in the past.  In order to achieve real change, we need not have elaborate conferences that rely on power elite voices, their foundation monies, and their apologetic reformist rhetoric.  In the words of 19th century American activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, we need to embody the true change she channeled when she said, “Reformers who are always compromising have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.”  Indeed.

The time to speak truth to power, to media power elites and their political allies, is now.  Media reform is an important movement, but it should not be seen as the only path to create a more just and democratic media system.  More radical approaches are needed at this point.  So just say no to reform driven agendas delivered as so much managed news propaganda and embrace the possibilities of a radical media democracy in action, of, by, and for the people.  Show it with actions through citizen journalism and support of local and independent, non-corporate, community media.   Do it after the reform spectacle of vicarious deference to power and celebrity is over in Boston this year, as the real change only begins with true, radical action at home.  That’s the only way a truly free press can be created, preserved, and grown to be a tool of the people and not the reformers with their unrequited overtures to the media power elite.  The time to act is now.  We may not have time enough for the next reform conference to save us.

Mickey Huff is Director of Project Censored, on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation, and Associate Professor of History at Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Contact: Mickey [at] projectcensored.org and Peter [at] projectcensored.org

See “Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform” by Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, et al, in chapter 11 of Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, eds, Censored 2009, NY, Seven Stories Press, 2008, pp. 281-295.

MEDIA ROOTS- If anyone had any doubt that the morals of our governors in Washington are as flexible and flimsy as a half-chewed rubber band, then they need look no further than Obama & Co.’s disparate, polar-opposite approaches to the twin tyrants of Egypt and Libya.

When democracy ‘threatened’ (as Washington political elites saw it) to break out in Egypt recently, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and most Republicans looked on with great consternation and apprehension. One of our closest allies in the Middle East, torturer and tyrant Hosni Mubarak, was in danger of being toppled from his throne by the Egyptian rabble. Our government had no idea whatsoever how to handle this unusual state of affairs.

Mubarak, after all, has been a loyal supporter of US foreign policy in the Middle East, a strong ally in the region for decades, and someone our government felt it could control- unlike the Iranians, for example. Losing Mubarak in Egypt would introduce uncertainty into the region, something American power elites hate and fear much more than any tin-pot dictator; and it would allow the Egyptian people to choose a new leader, perhaps one not as subservient to Washington as our politicians and military would like.

“Shall we give Mubarak more money and bombs to stay in power?” “Shall we publicly claim to support the Egyptian public while maneuvering behind the scenes to prop up our loyal dictator-friend?” “Maybe we quickly replace Mubarak with a new and improved despot, with a bright and shiny smile, to appease these people.” One can imagine that these were the kinds of things going through the minds of our political leaders at the time.

The silence publicly emanating from Washington in the early days of the Egyptian Uprising was deafening. Then, after the insipid silence, came mealy-mouthed and meaningless mumbo jumbo designed to please everyone, while satisfying no one. 

Obama tried to sound diplomatic, telling both sides of the growing conflict in Egypt to do the right thing, to let events play themselves out, and to behave responsibly. This mindless drivel and gutless pontificating angered Egyptian democracy activists, who were expecting the US government to pay more than just lip service to their professed democratic ideals.

Yet, many Americans pretend to support democracy while aggressively undermining it around the world.  In fact, our government has turned such activity into an art form–no one does it better, or with greater style and aplomb.

Dictators, tyrants, despots and wannabe autocrats across the globe stand in awe at our accomplishments in this field of endeavor: we invade country after country, we continually wage multiple wars, we maintain hundreds of military garrisons spread through the vast majority of the world’s countries, we provide munitions and money to countless dictatorships, we steal the oil and natural gas of other countries shamelessly and continuously, and we lie, cheat and steal to our hearts’ content.  

Then, our government proudly proclaims to the world, and to the rubes back in the US, that we worship the word of The People, that we are “The Greatest Democracy In The World,” pillars of the global community, Gods of Liberty and Fountains of Freedom.

We do this effortlessly, convincingly and apparently, sincerely. It is an awe-inspiring act worthy of Shakespeare. The level of hypocrisy, coupled with some self-deception, is truly staggering. Mind boggling. A monument to prevarication that would put the builders of the Great Pyramids to shame for artfulness, audacity and craftsmanship.

Let us now turn to the case of Libya’s Moammar Khadafy, a tyrant we don’t like because we can’t control him. He doesn’t do what we say. He won’t follow our orders. He refuses to give preferential treatment to our corporations. He snubs the CIA. He won’t allow us to pock his land with US military installations. He is simply incorrigible.

What is to be done with such a man?  

Well, Ronald Reagan, who loved a good tyrant (the bloodier the better, of course– take Philippine blood-lover Ferdinand Marcos) knew that Khadafy wouldn’t take marching orders from Washington. So, he did what countless others in the Oval Office, before him did to recalcitrant adversaries– he bombed him.

He missed Khadafy, but killed his infant daughter. Blew her to smithereens. Blatant terrorism. Illegal act of war. Horrible violation of international law. But US presidents routinely commit acts of murder without prejudice, and this case was no different.

Now, Khadafy’s people are rising up against him, and Obama & Co. are licking their lips at their good fortune. The President (shortly after slipping on the angel’s halo which all U.S. presidents have fitted themselves with for a century) declared that he is simply “appalled” at this tin pot dictator’s actions (according to The San Francisco Chronicle and Associated Press); Secretary Clinton roars that this nonsense must stop RIGHT NOW!;  the U.S. Corporate Press thunders their denunciation of this evil demagogue who MUST BE STOPPED from hurting his people and destroying the delicate leaves of a blooming democracy before they can take root.

(Military action, as of this writing, has been launched against Libya, with President Obama set to go before the nation to tell Americans why the United States is now involved in three separate wars across the Middle East. Four wars actually, if you count Pakistan.)

And on and on.

It is a sad state of affairs of course, for the nation that introduced the world to Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. And no doubt, these fine gentlemen are looking down from their place in the starry firmament with no small amount of disgust and anger, right now; for betraying one’s own stated principles is the worst kind of fraud imaginable.    

I wish the people of Libya, Egypt and all the other nations of the Middle East much good fortune in their quest for freedom. But my message to those brave souls is this: You may or may not receive help (and could be actively undermined) from the government of the United States in your continued quest for democratic freedoms. Everything that our government does, especially in the Middle East, is strategic and control-based and dependent upon political, economic and social considerations, which can change quickly and without warning.

So be warned: conniving Washington politicians sailing the ship of state have had no problem in the past throwing Lady Democracy overboard to make room for more Middle East oil. They are perfectly capable of supporting another dictator just like the ones you’ve been overthrowing, and will, if it serves the interests of America’s political and economic elite.

Written by Tom J. Wright

Photo by flickr user Muhammad

MEDIA ROOTS – “As machines replace skill, they disconnect themselves from life; they come between us and life. They begin to enact our ignorance of value – of essential sources, dependences, and relationships.

The catch is that we cannot live in machines. We can only live in the world, in life. To live, our contact with the sources of life must remain direct; we must eat, drink, breathe, move, mate, etc. When we let machines and machine skills obscure the values that represent these fundamental dependences, then we inevitably damage the world; we diminish life. We begin to ‘prosper’ at the cost of a fundamental degradation.”

-Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture.

One look at American culture and Berry’s words ring true. We are, beyond a doubt, humans living through machines.

Steel and plastic cages transport our bodies from place to place, while treadmills and ellipticals are used to burn mounting calories. At home, hours are spent fixed to a television or computer screen, as processed foods from the petroleum-based American diet are cooked by microwave. Cell phones in hand, activities previously left to the home or office, are accessed everywhere. Now, as a mobile dictionary, encyclopedia, GPS, internet, television, video game player, camera, audio recorder, telephone and social networking device, the smarter phones become, the stronger the attachment to them and the more constant their use throughout the day.

Suffice it to say, days pass for some people when contact with technology and machines trump their time spent engaging with other humans and the natural world.

In our reliance on technology we forget our own basic skills, functions and needs of movement, human connection, and nourishment of the mind, body and spirit. By neglecting to honor the link that joins our inherent human abilities and our fundamental human needs, we begin to devalue life as our understanding of its ‘essential sources, dependences and relationships,’ weakens.

For example, excessive cell phone and computer use can detract from important face-to-face human interactions, as well as physical movement. These technologies remove us from the present surrounding environment by putting us instantaneously in contact with people in other places and information of every sort. Video and computer games further enable their users to shed themselves of reality through the creation of avatars with their own independent, digital lives, such as in the game Second Life.

While there are tremendous benefits to having immediate access to information and long-distance contact with others, people who spend the vast majority of their daily hours in use of these technologies can develop addictions that leave them uncomfortable and anxious when such immediate response and instant entertainment is not within grasp.

This dependency has potentially crippling consequences. Finding peace in the calm of the present moment can become difficult. With attention divided among people, devices and other input, important details of the present moment go unnoticed, like subtle human interactions and other small things that can bring great joy to life.

The way we communicate, which is fundamental to enriching relationships and thriving communities, is also altered as more interactions take place digitally. In this medium of communication we lose the richness of experience that body language, facial expression, and the sensation of touch and smell, can create.

Hours tethered to a computer, TV or the steering wheel of a car, significantly limit our physical movement to slight motions of the arm at best, diminishing our physical and psychological health while simultaneously degrading our muscular capabilities. Just as dogs need walks, or animals that become restless in cages, we too have an intrinsic need for movement and exercise.

Many of us find ourselves bouncing between digital and natural environments, attempting to achieve balance in a culture that often feels as if it’s herding us towards one singular monotonous way of being. The beauty of this balancing act though, is that we control technology – we have the power to set limits for ourselves, to power off our devices, and to re-engage.

Simple acts can be transformative. For those who live within a 2-mile radius of frequented places, walking or riding a bicycle is an excellent option that, contrary to popular thought, saves time while adding exercise into the day. Restaurants, cafes and other time spent with friends and family provide good opportunity to detach from technology and give into what is around us.

Another limit-setting technique is to avoid the computer right before bed and for the first hour every morning. It is amazing how a simple and fresh approach to the morning can set the day off right.

As with most things, moderation is key, joined with a genuine respect and appreciation for the human element of the world and our need for movement.

Wendell Berry, in The Unsettling of America, insightfully writes of what we must work to avoid:

“We are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land. Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal they are growing useless like our ‘marginal’ land because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.”

As dark and unforgiving as this portrayal is, it is worth remembering that we live in a country with growing obesity rates and chronic illness. Whether it’s the nature of the work we do, or the food system that feeds us, it is easy to find outlets for blame, yet the responsibility for our well-being rests largely on us.  

The concept of health is originally rooted in wholeness, wholeness with our internal and external selves, as well as with our surrounding environment and community. As humans we have the power of our will to act consciously for the enrichment of our lives and the life of the planet, through movement, breath, love and the lightness of body and soul.

It is up to each of us to seek out a lifestyle that integrates these basic needs and abilities. This could be one of the most important day-to-day choices we make because, simply said, our communities will not be healthy until we choose health for ourselves.

If you feel stuck in old patterns and dependencies, realize that you have the ability to shift your body and habits to reach greater strength and peace. You are your own worst enemy. Only you can choose steadfast commitment and determination to truly live, in direct contact with the sources of life.

So, stand with me now, step away from the computer, push your chair back and reach your hands for the sky.

Stretch, breathe deep, smile.

We were made to move. The energy is in you, waiting for release.

 

Written by alicia roldán ©

 

Photography by Rick Pickett