Is it climate change, which makes droughts more severe and more likely to persist? Is it the labor policies that allowed the worker's wages to be cut? Or is it that NAFTA has flooded the Mexican market with cheap, U.S.-grown corn since 1996, forcing him to leave his family’s farm and migrate to California in the first place?

The fact of an ageing society isn’t new; it has been proceeding quietly across all developed countries for 174 years: data on female life expectancies starting in 1840 reveal an increase...

In her new book, Diane Ravitch — one of the leading thinkers behind the controversial Bush-era law — explores how the faulty logic of high-stakes testing, charter school expansion, and privatization hinders education...

While crime rates have dropped dramatically in most US cities over the past two decades, there has been a recent uptick in robberies of cell phones and laptops, which can be easily sold over the Internet. What we can to do to deter criminals, who rob of us of our peace of mind as well as possessions?

The push to reform America’s failing schools dates to a 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” which found that U.S. students’ test scores were plummeting. The study's failure to consider factors like poverty, race, and immigration concealed the fact that scores were actually improving.

There’s a country path I walk often, near where I live, that borders the edge of a vineyard. There’s a place along this path where some grapevines have escaped under and over the barbed wire vineyard fence and now grow wild.

We were about to put this kid out of school, when what he really deserved was a medal. As executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, Fania Davis sees programs like hers as part of the way to end the school-to-prison pipeline.

Lama Tsomo is a Tibetan Buddhist lama, a former homesteader, and an heiress to a family fortune who lives a quiet life in the mountains of Montana. Now she is beginning to teach the practices and insights gained through years of solitary retreats and study.

After surviving near financial meltdown, devastating oil spills, and enormous bank bailouts, we're finally beginning to understand the deep connection between our economic and our political lives. To bring about real change, we'll need some powerful tools...

As national media outlets announced the failure of Washington state’s Initiative 522 — a measure that would require labeling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients — those advocating for the measure paused. The race was...

A lot of community education involves unlearning what we've learned in the school system, things that undermine our faith in our own ability to think for ourselves, undermine the development of our unique abilities, undermine our ability to be happy...

by the Women of the World. This is a time for collaboration at a global level as never before required. We can and must join together as women to take action with common but differentiated responsibilities for achieving sustainability. We must act now for ourselves, for future generations, for all living things on Mother Earth...

One of my first memories of taking an environmental stance was in the late 60s. I was about ten years old, and I refused to ride in my dad's Opal that was burning some serious motor oil. I do not remember why I was so concerned about the gray-blue smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe, but...

The Indian leader saw nonviolence as an active and powerful thing — not just the absence of war. Gandhi lived Ahimsa as a daily practice, waging peace to stop war and violence. His lifelong “experiments” with truth proved that truth force is more powerful than brute force.

Schools have made a strong impact on American youth, in good ways and bad. As an advocate for education and learning in general, it is not my intention to denigrate education, but instead to point out that...

My own vision for the coming decade places communities at the center of dialogue, planning, action and change. My hope is to educate community members and congregations so they can better...

Veteran activist and organizer Marshall Ganz, joins Bill to discuss the power of social movements to effect meaningful social change.

After months of protest, teachers, students and parents in Seattle, Washington, have won their campaign to reject standardized tests in reading and math. In January, teachers at Garfield High School began a boycott of the test, saying it was wasteful and...

In a perfect world, the resources that all the world's people and other-than-human species depend upon would be recognized to be a "global commons". Included in the commons would be, for example: clean air and water...

Imagine that in this time ahead we do not live beyond Earth's means or behave as if we were larger than Life, that we live in an age in which we have helped to restore health to Earth's immune system and learned how not to...

If we take away the governing bodies that propel us to destroy our land base and each other; if the forces that domesticate us were to cease, would we naturally find balance and heal, like all other living things?

Just as spending on social housing for homeless people has been widely proven to be more cost-effective than leaving people on the streets, so too is spending on food being proven as a way to save costs. Healthy eating prevents chronic diseases among people of all ages, from pre-school children to...

Collaborative groups are everywhere. They might be a group of neighbors coming together to plan how their town can make a transition to a more energy efficient economy or a church group planning a bake sale. They could be a group of anarchist forest defenders...