Sustaining Self in a Life of Institution - Banned Books Week Essay Contest Winner

Editor's Note: Congratulations to Gemma Baumer, the winner of the Thoreau Center for Sustainability's Student Essay Contest, sponsored by the Whole Earth Library.  The contest is a commemoration of Banned Books Week and is held in conjunction with The Bay School of San Francisco.

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the importance of intellectual freedom by raising awareness of the all-too-frequent efforts to limit access to books and other materials in schools, libraries, and bookstores.  In 2010...

Dave Eggers, a Voice of Witness

Interested in learning more about Voice of Witness's work?  Check out their upcoming Voices From Burma event in New York City or their Inside this Place, Not of It event in San Francisco.

This past August, the acclaimed author and educator Dave Eggers—best known as the author of seven books including  What is the What, as well as the founder of both McSweeney's and  826 Valencia—visited the Tides Learning Community for a  conversation with Tides CEO Melissa Bradley.  Eggers focused on a more recent...

Experience Progressive Change at This Year’s Bioneers Conference

Editor's Note: This guest post comes from Nina Simons, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bioneers.

It’s going to be a truly breakthrough year at the Bioneers Conference, rife with relevant ideas, innovations, great people, systemic reinvention, and renewal.   This year, we are bringing an exceptionally high degree of strategic reinvention as we birth Bioneers 3.0.  No other gathering brings together cutting-edge innovators from all walks of life, addressing the widest range of issues imaginable – all within...

We're Just Getting Started: Preventing Massive Budget Cuts

Editor's Note: This guest post comes from Samuel Kang, General Counsel at the Greenlining Institute, who will be moderating the first of a series of Tides Learning Community calls focused on Connecting the Dots on the Budget Deal.

Remember the nasty national deficit debate back in August? The fight is not over. President Obama and Congress punted the issue to a committee charged with reducing the federal deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. The battle resumed shortly after Labor Day, when the 12 members...

One Heart World-Wide Battles Maternal Mortality

Earlier this month, Arlene Samen and Carlos Tapadera Concheño of One Heart World-Wide visited the Tides Learning Community in San Francisco to speak about their excellent work in teaching good birth practices and preventing maternal mortality in Tibet, Mexico, and Nepal.  Samen originally launched the One Heart program in Tibet, where in just ten years, they saw the annual number of women who died in childbirth drop from 33 to zero in two counties they worked in.  As Samen noted, even after China’s crackdown on...

Preserve Democracy: Expand the Vote, Don’t Restrict It

Editor's Note: This guest post comes from Judith Browne-Dianis, Co-Director of the Advancement Project, a policy, communications and legal action group committed to racial justice founded by a team of veteran civil rights lawyers in 1999.

Attacks on Democracy went on trial last Thursday at a hearing held by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. At the hearing, Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation continued the Right’s persistent campaign of...

In Sickness and Health: Visitation Rights a Step Towards LGBT Equality

Editor's Note: This post comes from Jane Stafford, Managing Director of the Community Clinics Initiative, a a joint project of Tides and The California Endowment.

While many in the LGBT community wait for President Obama to exert greater leadership on the issue of marriage equality, others in his administration have already taken significant steps towards recognizing the rights of LGBT couples.  Last week, the Department of Health & Human Services issued a press release titled “Medicare steps up enforcement of equal...

Broadcasting Opportunity: How Community Radio Powers Social Change

Editor's Note: This post comes from Danielle Chynoweth, Director of Planning at the Prometheus Radio Project, based in Philadelphia.

Ninety percent of Americans use radio at least once a week, making it the most common point of connection today.  And thanks to the passage of the Local Community Radio Act, groups will soon have the opportunity to start community radio stations in cities and towns across the country—as early as next summer.  This marks the largest expansion of community radio in U.S. history, and...

Tides Collaborates to Create Forest Conservation Park

In the Strait of Georgia, between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia, sits Cortes Island, home to a pristine 153-acre forested property known locally as Hank’s Beach.  The local community and visitors have hiked through the forest and enjoyed the quiet seclusion of the beach for many years.  Columbian black-tailed deer, gray wolves and cougars extensively utilize a wildlife corridor on the property, and several sensitive ecosystems are represented, particularly on the bluffs above the beach.  However, some...

9/11 Stories: September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Prepares for Ten Year Anniversary

As we approach the ten year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Tides project September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is commemorating this date with a renewed call for compassionate, just, and nonviolent solutions in the face of war and terrorism.  As Peaceful Tomorrows reminds us, "Ten years since the attacks of 9/11, it is more pressing than ever that we on this shared earth learn the vital lessons of how to live together peacefully."

As part of this commemoration, the group has been collecting videos...