The Next System Project helps us face creatively the systemic challenges we face now and in the near future. The second volume of the project’s “New Systems Series” includes: Building A Cooperative Solidarity Commonwealth: Jessica Gordon Nembhard describes a system that seeks to establish and strengthen economic participation from the bottom up through interlinking networks of […]
Next System Project
March 18,2016
Where can we look for the new ideas needed for a decent human future? The Next System Project gathers the work of people thinking the systemic challenges we face now and in the near future. From the project’s web site: Responding to real hunger for a new way forward, and building on innovative thinking and […]
Ecological News and Analysis
February 28,2016
When mainstream media don’t offer the critical analyses that we need to understand the multiple, cascading ecological crises of our time, where can we look for information and insight? There are many good sources, including Resilience.com. A project of the Post Carbon Institute, this website offers no-nonsense writing on energy, agriculture, and the economy. Collecting […]
Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully
October 05,2015
Third Coast’s Robert Jensen has published a new book, Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully, an account of his intellectual, political, and emotional relationship with his late friend Jim Koplin. A reviewer in the Minneapolis Star Tribune writes: If at the beginning of “Plain Radical” you wonder what kind of […]
Capitalism v. Climate
September 25,2014
Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, offers a blunt statement of today’s central problem: “[O]ur economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life.” The book, and a companion film directed […]
After the harvest — learning to leave the planet gracefully
June 06,2014
With economic and ecological crises deepening, more people are facing the harsh reality that modern high-energy/high-technology ways of living—along with the economic system out of which they emerged—have to change if the Earth is to sustain a large-scale human presence in the future. If the American “way of life” is incompatible with a sustainable future, […]
Barking dogs and sinking ships: Journalism’s search for metaphor and meaning
March 27,2014
In a review of a new book on mainstream news coverage of the financial crisis, UT professor Robert Jensen suggests that the model of contemporary professional journalism is inadequate to deal with the multiple crises–cultural, political, economic, and ecological–that we face. Jensen points out that “watchdog journalism” focuses on misbehavior by powerful people within existing […]
Realistic Left Politics in Texas
March 14,2014
In an op/ed in the Austin American-Statesman, Robert Jensen and Patrick Youngblood of Third Coast point out that while Texas politics is particularly reactionary, the deeper problem is a U.S. political culture that can’t face reality. We spend little time decrying the ideological fanaticism of Republicans but instead highlight differences between our work on global […]
Sharp Left Turn for the Media Reform Movement
February 08,2014
Robert McChesney, one of the United States’ most astute media critics, has written an important article, “Sharp Left Turn for the Media Reform Movement: Toward a Post-Capitalist Democracy,” in the February issue of Monthly Review. As a co-founder of Free Press, McChesney has been a central figure in the media reform movement that has over […]
Getting Past Capitalism
February 04,2014
The profound failures of capitalism — at the personal, political, and ecological levels — are more evident than ever. (Here’s a quick primer on “Anti-capitalism in five minutes or less.”) The space for honest conversation about how we can transcend this pathological economic system is opening up, albeit slowly. Last month in Austin, for example, […]