It’s a simple message. Most of the people I know have too large houses and too much stuff. I had/have too much stuff then moved from a large house into a 2 bedroom apartment with my daughter and am relieved and freed from many excess things. But it is hard to get away from things, because they are everywhere and people want to give them and get them and there are way too many places for them.

My mom was outlived by the glue sticks she bought at Costco. There was a lesson in there. She had clothes with the tags still on them. She had precious items she kept and kept and we ended up giving them to goodwill and throwing way too much away.

Luckily the tide seems to be turning — just in time as we are broker than usual anyway. There are too many tvs, computers, sweaters, jeans, boots, cds, objects in every room. And creative people are making it so we can share things like cars and bikes.

I’d like to share celery with about 4 people since there’s no way I can make it through a whole celery (don’t even know what they’re called) but need a few stalks for soup.

I’d also like to share a trip to Costco with about 4 people so that I can get cheap crackers.

In my newly freed-from-stuff state I took the interactive Slavery Footprint assessment (very complicated algorithm but explained in depth on their website) that measures how much “slave labor” goes into your life.

I tallied a disappointing 34 slaves to their average of 25 and hoped that this group they are measuring are largely in college without a kid, car, or mortgage.

But I remain disappointed in my count and want the ability to lobby more for a largely non meat-eating, sparse product-using, life. Turns out electronic equipment and clothes (really I don’t have that many) are big slave labor users.

What I like about Slavery Footprint is their non-finger pointing — information is power and leads to change and change in corporations — attitude. They are on to something, have a bloody-edge website, and you should check them out.

Especially if you think your footprint is small.

The names we gravitate to are memorable, not too similar to names of other groups, and (hopefully) original and not copyrighted already.

Trends are odd factors in naming. For a while “like google” entered every conversation. And while some groups are perfectly suited to it, not many sound right with a Swahili name.

Your group’s name needs to “feel” right, and sticky in the right way.

One client came to us, a research group with the name “Technical Assistance for Prevention Outcomes and Measurements,” they went by the lovely acronym of “TA-POM.” We came up with the name, “Prevention by Design” which suited them to a T and greatly improved morale.

We created the campaign “Voices Not Victims” to say in shorthand that violence prevention can be more effective with communication and advocacy rather than with reinforcement of the idea of a victim. One is positive and hopeful the other continues fear and immobility.

We like to turn things on their head to get a point across like with “Respect is what’s Sexy” a campaign that took the tired concept of “asking for it” and spun it around.

Unlike a logo or other defining image, a name more often “nails it” rather than embellishes all you are trying to say. We take you through a process to get at the nugget of who your group is. Sometimes it’s more organic than listing out options, sometimes it gets blurted out by an unlikely candidate during the time we are working on it.

Then it’s back into the creative cave to work on a logo…

Just when you thought there was only single-issue protest left out there, the Occupy Wall Street 99% came on the scene to give us something real and compelling to respond to, talk about and support. Aside from some of the tactics and drum circles, this movement has been a breath of fresh air for many on the left and progressives. Thanks to the people out there we have a discourse that mentions “income disparity” in the daily paper. Ordinary and decent people who are angry at losing houses and jobs and need and want change are getting an audience. Fingers are getting pointed at the right institutions.

Kudos to Adbusters the Canadian magazine that launched this whole movement. An amazing thing to have a group like this that spoofs corporate advertising in a socially biting, lefty, sometimes ironic and usually intelligent way, be responsible for starting this surprising and important protest. Check them out at http://www.adbusters.org/

Seems like PETA is more focused on naked starlets against fur than an overall agenda for animal rights and their ethical treatment.

They’ve gone from showing lab monkeys in cages and bunny rabbits in make-up to this. Arguably the ads are more pleasing – but besides getting attention what are they doing? Who wears fur? My mom once a year in the early 60s. Visiting Contessas?

And are lab animals, the fur industry, and pet-eating in Korea really a larger problem than big, dirty, greenhouse gas-producing chicken farm/factories in America’s heartland?

I think that most of us with any exposure to it can agree that the meat industry is disgusting. But a large population eats meat and is going to keep eating meat.

We would dearly like to eat meat that is safer, less factory-based, and oh I don’t know, something less gross than what exists and closer to the ritual killing of that water buffalo in Apocalypse Now.

A kind of harm-reduction model of animal farming and butchering – a groovy Michael Pollan/Alice Waters meat production. Maybe sometimes with a Rabbi. Small producers, organic, local…

Getting us all to become vegans is going to take a while. We know PETA’s mission, it wouldn’t kill them to work with us a little and launch an interim plan that includes a more ethical treatment of animals in a sometimes meat-eating world.

I’m here to tell you, first-hand, that there’s a lot of crap out there and sometimes it’s hard to do anything about it.

I’m not talking about some bad photos that get posted on someone else’s Facebook, although I have been the recipient of those as well.

Two years ago a former client of mine was arrested for possible misuse of funds at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Program. I found out New Year’s Eve after getting a message on my work phone from the Sacramento Bee saying they were writing a story that involved me…

New Year’s day, curious, I did a search and saw that there was a full-blown online news story on my former client and at least three mentions of myself, unfounded allegations, and a bit of gay innuendo “we don’t know what the relationship was between them” kind of thing. It was a nightmare.

Not a good way to start the year. I called UC Davis, the police department, and on the advice of a friend who works with the press, did not call, the very conservative, Sacramento Bee.

Suffice it to say, that story has caused a lot of panicky moments and head shaking. Not to mention a grand f- up of any search results on my name.

There was of course no findings of wrongdoing but also never an ability to address my accusers/investigators – since UC Davis police never returned my calls even after I reached the Chief of Police who told me an investigator would call me back.

But here’s the thing, some conservative bloggers, intent on documenting government “waste” have reprinted the article, embellished it, and it is out there together with the original, flagrant article.

I don’t think there is any sense in engaging with conservative bloggers. It leads to bad things.

I do think that it makes sense to try and clear your name when you can and to “not believe everything you read” in the news and on the Internet.

If you did you would be like my daughter who when researching Kenya in the 3rd grade gleefully announced that: “Barack Obama was born in Kenya!”

This week I had the very small consolation of finding out that the UC Chief of Police, Annette Spicuzza, who told me “they would have someone call me back, and maybe clear this thing up in one phone call” has now been put on administrative leave for her role in pepper spraying peaceful demonstrators on campus. This time, of course, a much more harmful action, but part of a legacy of poor decision-making on her part.

The spitting mad activist spokesperson is annoying. Really annoying.*

As a participant, I lived through 80s Feminism on a progressive campus, so I’ve been inoculated for way-empowered, and fuming mad, but I think the booster is no longer effective.

I find myself liking the calm, lying corporate PR guy on NPR as he spars with an activist organizational head because the ED of (blank) organization has this extreme anger he can barely contain.

I wish there was some kind of anti-rage pill that could be taken before these debates since I am sure the nonprofit ED is the actual kind, smart individual, just trapped in a crazy world where they/we have to keep on reframing the debate.

But, it’s gotta be done. A former boss used to say that “responsible extremism” is how we move the agenda. And certainly there’s a lot of righteous anger, but the smart person, who keeps their cool up against the enemy, is our favorite hero.

The best of them, like The ED of the Oakland Institute, Anuradha Mittal, has seen first-hand how ugly the world can get for people who are kept in the dark while corporations tinker with their futures. She’s working hard to give a voice to hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people who are being adversely impacted by corporate land grabs in Africa…

And still keeps her cool.

(I am not talking about protestors, fyi, and the Occupy people in particular, I support them, I was spitting mad after seeing recent video…)

Apparently they are running out of quinoa in the Andes. The super “not a grain, really a seed” eaten by local and ancient indigenous people like the Incas is now becoming scarce and prohibitively expensive due to the West’s obsession with new food. Many wanna-be and thin-elites have become afraid of regular grains and in particular of wheat even though fit Italians eat it every meal and are known to have washboard stomachs. The wheatists are leading us astray.

Places, outside of Bolivia, I have seen quinoa: shampoo ingredient in giveaway bottle, upstate NY hotel; non-wheat pizza dough, both coasts; numerous Whole Foods crackers.

What a shanda.

Other related news:

Our love of premium tequila has made agave (aka “blue gold”) a scarce commodity in Mexico.

India’s stores of yoga are rumored to be depleted.

So what to do?

Let’s advocate that only a portion of these items be made available for export while the remaining goods stay in the producing country at an affordable cost. (Leaving hamburgers from McDonalds not a fair exchange.)

Perhaps there could be a deal and a brand like “fair trade” coffee for items we don’t deplete. A mark that indicates: “we leave some behind.”

We don’t need all that quinoa.

Check out the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/

We were very excited about it (ten+ years ago). Business smarts focused on the world’s problems like hunger and AIDs, I think Bill Gates said he would stop malaria and polio. The ebay guy, google, a bunch of others. And although I am all for this, I think that the focused attention of entrepreneurial thinking on the world’s problems didn’t do as much as they thought it would.

Turns out that deep-seated inequalities and historical roots of poverty and disease are hard to solve. Even with near-genius, out-of-the box thinkers. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against it. Just like I am okay with the sale of t-shirts to help a cause. And there’s nothing wrong with giving spare money to help someone with emergency food and some kind of item like a mosquito net. But it doesn’t fundamentally change conditions for anyone. And it doesn’t rattle any cages. In short, it’s safe help and sometimes that’s all you can do. But there’s a lot more to be done of course and not enough groups doing it.

People with the big money should at least fund it.

You can’t gloss over inequality and oppression that easy. Understanding the underlying issues apparently still has a value. Convincing policymakers and government to change course to uplift and support people like small farmers is hard work.

It takes more than a cape that says “winner” and a huge amount of money to get things done.

Overused stuff:

The word “real” – “real change” really.
Stick figure logos. Of any kind.
The term: “making a difference.”
Overdone images of diversity at all costs, ie. trying to show “one of each”
(in every ad a la college recruitment brochure).
Art that you feel you’ve seen over and over again.

Underused stuff:

Proof that a group has contributed to any positive social change.
Having actual diversity at an organization (particularly upper-level).
A clear call to action – what do you want people to do?
Art that makes you smile, wonder, think.
Writing that inspires, questions, propels.
Humor. Yes it’s a crap sandwich sometimes. Minds that have a hard time wrapping themselves around something new. Still there’s usually something to laugh about.