Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Courage for a Small Planet
by John Nichols Frances Moore Lappé has, for the better part of four decades, done her very best to guide the United States toward a more rational relationship with the planet and its inhabitants.
It has not been easy work, and the current circumstance would suggest that it has not been nearly so successful as Lappé or the readers of her groundbreaking books would have hoped.
But the truth is that Lappé has succeeded, masterfully.
[republished at PFP with Agence Global permission.]
Frances Moore Lappé will not submit to a foreboding future. She
knows we have the courage and creativity to renew the country -- and
the world -- and turn away from the Bush era of fears and failures.
No popular intellectual has been so very successful in reshaping
the character and content of debates about environmental and food
policy as this remarkable woman. It is true that some are still denying
the truths she advances. But they are increasingly isolated in the West
Wing of the Bush White House. And their days are numbered.
The
future belongs to Frances Moore Lappé -- who is on a national book tour
that will take her to Burlington, Vermont; Madison, Wisconsin; St.
Louis, Missouri and Worcester, Massachusetts, in coming days -- and to
those who have been guided by her wise assessments of the most
fundamental issues.
Lappé will always be known as the author
of Diet for a Small Planet, the 1971 book that reshaped the debate
about famines, food shortages and consumption. In it, the author argued
that it was not patterns of over-population, bad weather, or
technological inadequacy that caused human beings to be denied the
sustenance they required to survive. Rather, it was the unfair
distribution of the world's resources and a deficit of democracy, which
undermined the ability of citizens to make that distribution fairer and
more responsible.
This simple calculus, which even now is
neglected by many policy makers, was revolutionary. It returned the
debate about how to deal with famines and related crises to the
fundamental issues of inequality and inhumanity.
The
response was unprecedented. More than three million copies of Diet for
a Small Planet have been sold, and the 15 books Lappé has written in
ensuing years have added nuance and perspective to her original
arguments, while taking the debate about the human condition to new and
exciting places.
The value of Lappé's contribution is now
broadly recognized. She has received 17 honorary doctorates from
distinguished institutions, along with the global Right Livelihood
Award and the Rachel Carson Award. "A small number of people in every
generation are forerunners, in thought, action, spirit, who swerve past
the barriers of greed and power to hold a torch high for the rest of
us. Lappé is one of those," says historian Howard Zinn. The Washington
Post made the same point with the observation that, "Some of the
twentieth century's most vibrant activist thinkers have been American
women -- Margaret Mead, Jeanette Rankin, Barbara Ward, Dorothy Day --
who took it upon themselves to pump life into basic truths. Frances
Moore Lappé is among them."
It would be easy to rest on such laurels.
But
Lappé is not resting. She's out campaigning -- to renew civic and
democratic values, to restrain corporate excess and governmental abuse,
to stop fearing fear itself and to start embracing the radical
responses that will make America and the planet as peaceful, as
healthy, as humane and as fulfilled as our knowledge and our technology
makes possible.
That's the "gospel" Frances Moore Lappé
preaches in her terrific new book, Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity
and Courage in a World Gone Mad (Small Planet Press), and on the
national tour she's now on to herald its publication.
Lappé
is saying what every presidential candidate should, and she is doing so
with the boldness that is required if we hope to break with Bushism and
shape a future worthy of a nation founded on revolutionary promise and
a world that will only be set right if that promise is kept.
"I
just want to go for it," Lappé asks in the introduction to Getting a
Grip. "Why can't we have a nation -- why can't we have a world we're
proud of? Why can't we stop wringing our hands over poverty, hunger,
species decimation, genocide, and death from curable disease that we
know is all needless? The truth is there is no reason we can't. They
say -- whoever the "they" are -- that as we age, we mellow. I don't
think so. I'm getting less and less patient. Why? Because I realize
that humanity has no excuses anymore. In the span of my own lifetime,
both historical evidence and breakthroughs in knowledge have wiped out
all our excuses. We know that we know how to end this needless
suffering, and we have all the resources to do it. From sociology and
anthropology to economics, from education and ecology to systems
analysis -- the evidence is in. We know what works."
Frances
Moore Lappé is as right now as she has been in the past. It is time to
go for it -- no half steps, no half measures. We have a name for the
failures of the past: Bush. Now that the Bush era is ending, we need to
name and claim the future.
John Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine.
Agence
Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, Le Monde
diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark
Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Peter Kwong,Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and
Immanuel Wallerstein.
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Released: 02 November 2007
Word Count: 835
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
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Writings 
Frances Moore Lappé has, for the better part of four decades, done her very best to guide the United States toward a more rational relationship with the planet and its inhabitants. 
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