The New School at Commonweal

Join Michael Lerner in conversation with Chris Desser—environmental lawyer and community activist. From our podcast: For me meditation practice… creates a place for me of rock bottom truth. Which isn’t to say that true things aren’t unfolding in the process, but it is a place where one just knows. And that knowing is—it’s not just that it’s a comfortable place to be, it’s an essential place to be… and I think that that rock bottom truth is for me a place of clarity of intent. Christina L Desser Chris is a fellow of On the Commons, a think tank focused on developing the concept of The Commons as an overarching analytical structure organizing across sectors and disciplines. She served on the California Coastal Commission and the San Francisco Commission for the Environment. In 2003, she co-founded Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a project that successfully increased the participation of single women in the electoral process. She was co-editor of Living with the Genie—Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery (Island Press, 2003). Chris has practiced environmental law has served on the boards of many companies, foundations and progressive non-profits including Women Donors Network, The Rockwood Leadership Program, Patagonia, Mother Jones Magazine, and the Rainforest Action Network.

Join Michael Lerner in conversation with nurse midwives Ariska Razak, RN, and Carol Densmore, CNM, talking about birth and the healing wisdom of earth-based traditions. Ariska Razak, RN, CNM, MPH Arisika’s work integrates the disciplines of Women’s Studies/ Women’s Spirituality, and Women’s Health and Spiritual Dance, through the incorporation of the teachings of earth-based spiritual traditions, women’s spirituality, and women’s health into the language of movement and dance. She has worked as a nurse midwife, health care provider, and health care administrator for over 25 years, serving as staff nurse-midwife and director of the Nurse-Midwife Service at Highland Hospital in Oakland; director of the Alameda County Pre-term Delivery Prevention Project, and Assistant Administrator for Ancillary services at Cowell Hospital, UC Berkeley. Carol Densmore Carol brings 25 years of experience in education, program development, and clinical care to her current position as the Director of the Cambridge Health Alliance Doula Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This unique, multicultural program offers emotional, social, and educational support for childbearing women at the Cambridge Birth Center and Cambridge Hospital. She has attended births in Boston area hospitals and homes, a Mexican border birth center and an Indian desert village. In India, she traveled extensively and researched the training of village health workers and traditional midwives. She holds Master’s Degrees in Education and in Public Health from Boston University and is a Certified Nurse Midwife.

Across the United States, thousands of people, most of them in low-income or minority communities, live next to heavily polluting industrial sites. In Sacrifice Zones: The Front Lines of Toxic Chemical Exposure in the United States, Steve Lerner tells the stories of twelve communities, from Brooklyn to Pensacola, that rose up to fight the industries and military bases causing disproportionately high levels of chemical pollution. He calls these low-income neighborhoods “sacrifice zones”—repurposing a Cold War term coined by U.S. government officials to designate areas contaminated with radioactive pollutants during the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Join Michael Lerner in a conversation with Steve about the residents of a new generation of “sacrifice zones,” tainted with chemical pollutants, who need additional regulatory protections.

In celebration of the 35th anniversary of Commonweal Garden, founder Avis Rappaport Licht—and Regenerative Design Institute founders Penny Livingston Stark and James Stark—speak with Michael Lerner about their work with the earth and teaching hundreds of programs on permaculture, nature awareness, and leadership. Join them as they honor all those who have contributed to making the Commonweal Garden what it is today.

~Co-presented with the Mesa Refuge~ Please join New School host and Zen Meditation teacher Jaune Evans in conversation with Buddhist meditation and organic gardening mentor Wendy Johnson. This dialogue will be grounded in the examination of four core principles of Zen Buddhism and gardening: cultivating the way, maintaining fertility in your practice, propagating new life, and tending the earth. There will be ample opportunity to interact with the presenters during this practical presentation. Wendy is a Buddhist meditation teacher and organic gardening mentor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She began practicing Zen Buddhist meditation in 1971 and has led meditation retreats nationwide since 1992 as an ordained lay dharma teacher in the traditions of Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the San Francisco Zen Center. As one of the founders of the organic farming program at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, Wendy has been teaching organic agriculture and meditation for decades. Since its inception in 1995, she has been a mentor and advisor to the Edible Schoolyard Project affiliated with Chez Panisse restaurant. She served as a founding instructor of the College of Marin’s innovative Organic Farm and Gardening Project established in 2009, where she taught organic agriculture for the first seven seasons of the program. In 2000 Wendy and her husband, Peter Rudnick, received the annual Sustainable Agriculture Award from the National Ecological Farming Association. She is the author of Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, published by Bantam in 2008. Jaune Evans is the executive director of Tamalpais Trust, which supports global indigenous-led organizations. She is a Soto Zen teacher and priest in the Everyday Zen sangha guided by Norman Fischer. Jaune also leads the Heart of Compassion sangha in Point Reyes on Friday mornings at the Presbyterian Church. Her love for stories and West Marin have deep roots. She has served as a board member and advisory committee member of the Mesa Refuge, and has also received two of Mesa’s writing fellowships. Jaune is a new member of the Commonweal Board of Directors, former director of the Institute for Art and Healing at Commonweal, and is currently a facilitator in Commonweal’s Healing Circles program. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

(A posting of a conversation from 2014 TNS Archives) Join us for conversation and with TNS Host Oren Slozberg and Lennon Flowers, founder of The Dinner Party: a community of mostly 20- and 30-somethings who’ve each experienced significant loss and who get together over dinner parties to talk about it and the ways in which it continues to affect their lives. Together, they’ve pioneered tools and community through which young people who’ve experienced significant loss can use their shared experience as a springboard toward living better, bolder, and more connected lives. Lennon Flowers Lennon is the co-founder and executive cirector of The Dinner Party. Lennon lost her mom during her senior year of college, following a four-year fight with lung cancer. It had been more than three years since her passing when she hitched up her wagon and headed West to Los Angeles. Suddenly 3,000 miles away from home and the friends she’d known for years, she found she no longer had anyone with whom she could talk about her mom, and explore the way in which her life, death, and absence continued to affect her. So when Carla, a friend, colleague, and soon-to-be roommate, invited her over for dinner, it was a no brainer. Lennon most recently served as community director for Ashoka’s Start Empathy. She has written for YES! Magazine, Forbes, Elephant Journal, Open Democracy, EdWeek, and GOOD. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Co-presented with The Resilience Project at Commonweal This year we have all witnessed how major global stressors—from climate change and income inequality to pandemics and autocracy—can impact each other and cause massive, cascading changes in our world. At the same time, other factors including pollution, artificial intelligence, population growth, and social media seem unstoppable forces that escalate other risks. Many fear that a broader systems collapse could be a plausible scenario. Given what we know, how do we respond? In this roundtable conversation, join Christina as she brings together scholars, designers, and activists to share their perspectives on the polycrisis. Audience questions and comments will enrich the dialogue, and the moderator will lead participants in a creative exercise to generate new language and insights. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

~Co-presented with Real Food Media~ Just about twenty years ago, several dozen of the nation’s leading scientists, ethicists, and environmentalists gathered in Bolinas, California, at Commonweal to draft a declaration of principles for the regulation, policy, and commercialization of the emerging technologies of genetically engineered organisms. The result? The Pacific Declaration. Now, two decades later, with the rapid expansion of genetically engineered organisms throughout the food system and emergent in animal agriculture and beyond, the wisdom—and caution—of The Pacific Declaration is just as relevant; its words prescient. To mark this anniversary milestone and reflect on the current context and what we can learn from this history, join us in a conversation with Anna Lappé—the daughter of one of the Declaration’s founding signatories—as well as author Claire Cummings, The Center for Food Safety’s Rebecca Spector, The Cultural Conservancy’s Melissa Nelson, and others at the forefront of the conversation about genetic engineering and the future of food. Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author, a respected advocate for food justice and sustainability, and an advisor to funders investing in food system transformation. A recipient of the James Beard Leadership Award, Anna is the co-author or author of three books and the contributing author to more than a dozen others. Anna’s work has been translated internationally and featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Gourmet, Oprah Magazine, among many other outlets. A frequent public speaker, her popular TEDx talks have been watched nearly one million times. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Jewish mystical traditions offer the adept a rich array of practices and paradigms supporting personal and communal healing and renewal. These include text, sacred time, sensory experience, meditation, imagination, play, and teshuvah—an annual and ongoing process of realigning the self with the cosmos. Join TNS host Irwin Keller in conversation with scholar and mystic, Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg, as they discuss Judaism’s esoteric side and what it might offer all of us in broken times. Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg, PhD Reb Elliott is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought and Mysticism at the University of Michigan, and rabbi of the Pardes Hannah minyan in Ann Arbor. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Oberlin College, before coming to Michigan. He has received an NEH Fellowship and a Kellogg Foundation grant supporting his scholarship. Reb Elliot has written two books on the kabbalistic celebration of Shabbat and is currently working on a scholarly study of Jewish mystical prayer and meditation, and a multi-tiered study of Judaism as spiritual practice. Reb Elliot received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 1998, and is senior faculty in the rabbinic ordination program of the Aleph Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Oncologist Dr. Donald Abrams is a true pioneer on many important fronts—AIDS care, medical cannabis research and policy, the “right to die,” and integrative cancer care. He has also participated in a number of Commonweal’s projects, providing invaluable expertise. A full professor of medicine at UCSF, he has just retired after a long career and will talk about some of the many issues he has confronted and maybe some lessons learned. Join him and his longtime friend and colleague TNS Host Steve Heilig this inspiring informal talk. Watch our 2014 two-part video series with Donald: https://tns.commonweal.org/podcasts/donald-abrams-m-d Donald Abrams, MD: He co-edited the Oxford University Press textbook Integrative Oncology with Andrew Weil, MD. He was also named a “Top Cancer Doctor” in Newsweek’s 2015 Special Health Issue on Curing Cancer. Prior to specializing in oncology, Dr. Abrams worked in the field of HIV. He has conducted numerous clinical trials investigating complementary therapies in patients with HIV, including therapeutic touch, traditional Chinese medicine interventions, medical marijuana, medicinal mushrooms, and distant healing. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.