Earth House Center -- Oakland, California

Welcome to news and videos by, about and related to Earth House Center and our topics of concern in the making of a just and sustainable world.

February 9th-15th, 2015, was National Random Acts of Kindness Week, and February 17th celebrated Random Kindness day. This year we have launched the 20th anniversary edition of Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty. The re-release of the book is accompanied by our global Random Kindness Community Resilience Project, building justice and resilience throughout vulnerable communities in the face of climate change. Book proceeds go to climate and nuclear refugees from Fukushima.

Building Climate Justice
& Just Resilience
M. Paloma Pavel, PhD
With Carl Anthony and Guests

Saturday Sept. 20 10am
Milano School of International Affairs The New School, Manhattan
55 W. 13th St. Room 205,
Dorothy Hirshon Suite

10:00 am Refreshments and Reception
10:30 am -12:00 pm Book Signing and Community Dialogue

Join us for the launch of the 20th anniversary edition of Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty, with a Foreword by Desmond Tutu, and for a community dialogue on building Climate Justice and Just Resilience. M. Paloma Pavel and Carl Anthony (co-founders of Breakthrough Communities) are traveling from California to New York to host this event for UN Climate Week. Guests include Lynne Elizabeth of New Village Press, more to be announced.


Continue reading (PDF)...

---

Date: August 23, 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 8:00-10:30 am
Location: St. Theresa Little Flower Catholic Church, 30 Mandalay Road, Oakland

Genesis, the San Francisco Bay Area regional affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation (national community organizing network), annually presents the Carl Anthony Legacy Award for Bay Area justice, sustainability, and equity heroes. This year, Genesis has announced that Sheila Jordan, Superintendent of Alameda County Office of Education, will be the recipient of the 2014 Carl Anthony Legacy Award.

Sheila Jordan has been a courageous champion for the Free Bus Pass for Youth of Alameda County, helping to win $15 million of Transportation Expenditure Plan funds for Youth Bus Passes. Genesis will be honoring Sheila's vision and hard work to provide at-risk students and all students the tools they need to build productive lives.

We invite you to join with Genesis in the celebration of our community visionary leader, Sheila Jordan. Breakthrough Communities is deeply inspired by the work of the Gamaliel foundation nationally, and its regional affiliate, Genesis. For more information on these remarkable organizations, visit:
http://www.genesisca.org/
http://www.gamaliel.org/

Warm Regards,

Carl Anthony and Paloma Pavel, PhD
Co-Founders, Breakthrough Communities

PDF of this Item

As a member of the 6 Big Wins for Social Equity Network, Breakthrough Communities contributed a memorandum that laid the groundwork for strategic collaboration of major working groups. The coalition has partnered with over 30 social justice, faith, public health, and environmental organizations to advance policies in sectors that are essential to building a stronger and more equitable future for the people of the Bay Area. With this goal in mind, we are very pleased to announce that the Plan Bay Area Environmental Impact Report and Equity Analysis is set to publicize that our Equity, Environment and Jobs (EEJ) alternative is the "environmentally superior alternative," performing better than the others on environmental, health and equity metrics.

Together we are working to advance:
1. Affordable Housing in High Opportunity Neighborhoods
2. Operating Expenses for Public Transit Service
3. Investment without Displacement
4. Environmental Justice, Healthy and Safe Communities
5. Economic Opportunity
6. Community Power

Our model would add housing growth, including affordable housing opportunities, in both low-income and high-opportunity places. This means increasing housing not only in the places that volunteered to be Priority Development Areas but also in other job-rich, transit oriented, high opportunity communities that did not volunteer for such growth. The program would also invest an additional $8 billion into transit services, tailored to fit our more inclusive housing distribution plan and it would create anti-displacement incentives via the One Bay Area Grant program for local cities.

Compared to the other alternatives, the proposed EEJ alternative would have the most favorable environmental impacts as well. In Air Quality it would result in the lowest criteria pollutant emissions as well as the lowest amount of Toxic Air Contaminants. This is a result of placing a greater emphasis on aligning compact land use development with transit service and increasing transit capacity. In Greenhouse Gas Emissions the proposed plan performs better in terms of total GHG emissions reductions, achieving a 17% reduction from 2010 to 2040.

The EEJ alternative puts much less displacement pressure on overburdened renter households than the other alternatives, demonstrating a substantially lower potential for displacement. In the
EEJ, 21% of communities of concern are at risk of displacement, while in the draft Plan 36% are at risk. EEJ also has the lowest combined housing and transportation costs as a share of income for low-income households.

On health metrics, the EEJ scenario performs better than the draft Plan on reducing premature deaths from fine particulates, reducing coarse particulate emissions, and increasing average time walking and biking. It also shows lower increases in injuries and fatalities from collisions in communities. The EEJ alternative also has the strongest transit ridership of all alternatives considered - 5% more than the proposed plan.

---

This video, produced for the California Department of Health, introduces a “systems” approach toward health improvement.  A narrow emphasis on medical issues only, to give just one example, would not reveal that a lack of grocery stores selling fresh fruits and vegetables in a given neighborhood, will effect the long term health of the residents of that neighborhood. Narrated by Carl Anthony. Produced and directed by Paloma Pavel.

  

---

 

Produced by Paloma Pavel for Alameda County Medical Center

---

 

---