Transnational adoption is a thriving global business. Its success and lack of regulation has created a profit motive for child trafficking. Writer, activist, and adoptee filmmaker So Yung Kim recommends reorganizing the transnational adoption industry in order to protect the rights of children. Domestic and international adoptees are already coming together to discuss options and partner on policy [...]
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conduciv has written 128 articles so far, you can find them below.
Columns
The Opposite of Obama
The incident with Henry Louis Gates Jr. has made it clear that while many Americans take pride in electing a “black” president, President Obama is not supposed to discuss race. Obama quickly got the message as well, transforming a much needed dialogue about racial profiling in the wake of Gates’s arrest into an appropriately mocked [...]
Think Tank
EDITORIAL International Adoption and the Fight for Human Rights
International adoption has quietly become a large, lucrative business. While international adoption agencies would no doubt like to keep it this way, adult international adoptees are now asking questions. They are participating in a debate over whose best interests the practice actually serves, or should serve: the adopter or the adoptee? Taking a critical look [...]
Space Style Dialogues
Fall 2009 Menswear Trends
Innovative designers committed to socially and environmentally responsible fashion have created cutting-edge, key menswear pieces this season. L.A. Corralez highlights two major Fall 2009 trends and how to upgrade your look with ethical fashion pieces.
Mind and Body
The Little Guide to Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism and Writer’s Blocks
So you have a goal in life, a mission, and a strategy. Then you execute it and sail toward complete success. Right? Probably not. At some point stress, exhaustion, and even burnout can bring your project down. But, you can reel it in. Hillary Rettig argues that what prevents ambitious and idealistic people from achieving [...]
Think Tank
Drowning in the Shallow End: Third Wave Feminism
In the 1990s a new generation of women heralded the dawn of a new feminist era. But does declaring a “new wave” – particularly one that equates individual lifestyle choices with activism, consumer power with feminism, and diversity with racial equality – make for a feminist social movement? Heather Tirado Gilligan explores this issue through [...]
Space Style Dialogues
Fall 2009 Womenswear Eco-Trend Alert
Many of us would like to be green and socially responsible shoppers, but it can be hard to know which labels are really practicing these values, and which are taking it on like a fad, without much action. L.A. Corralez helps comb through this perplexity, keeping us in touch with what’s in style and how [...]
Mind and Body
Be a Lifelong Activist
Conducive sounds off with Hillary Rettig, author of The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way. This straightforward and concise text teaches you how to overcome your fears and blocks to live a happy and productive life with a progressive mission. Rettig is a writing teacher and productivity/career coach helping activists, [...]
Mind and Body
How Do You Keep It Together
Fighting for progressive social change can be very satisfying, pushing toward a greater vision of what we can be. But it can also be incredibly frustrating. The struggle can involve matters incredibly important to you that other people just don’t understand, and the work can be long, arduous, and sometimes fruitless, as the battle is [...]
Fiction, Film, Poetry
LYRICS OF THE DAWN Poetry and Social Movements
What is the connection between social movements and poetry? Sometimes the two can seem worlds apart, given that social change often requires intense and unyielding activism, without time for much else. However, the shape of activism can be profoundly creative, and what activists often fight for is a more meaningful and hopeful vision of humanity, [...]
Think Tank
MARRIAGE PROMOTION A Claim That is Right – for All the Wrong Reasons
USA Today is very excited about marriage. Splashed across the front page of the Health and Behavior section in February, and set off by a colorful illustration, was this pom-pom raising headline: “Federally funded ad campaign holds up value of marriage.” You read that right -federal funds are being used in an ad campaign to [...]
Mind and Body
Stop the Burnout! 20 Tips to Help You Fundraise for the Long Haul
Fundraising is already difficult, let alone during a recession. How to fundraise during these hard times and meet goals without overextending yourself? Program & Development Coordinator for the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT) Manish Vaidya offers some tips for preventing burnout.
Beneficial People
Climate Crisis: Alaskan Village Shishmaref Sinking Into the Sea
The effects of climate change are not coming, they are here. For over a decade villages in northwest Alaska have been watching their coastlines erode away, as the warming climate reduces permafrost and the formation of sea ice that protects and maintains their shores. Many of the villages are in low-lying coastal areas near freshwater [...]
Columns
IS YOUR MARRIAGE INVISIBLE? Same-Sex Marriage and the 2010 Census
In spring, same-sex marriage supporters celebrated recent wins in Iowa, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire after the Proposition 8 let-down in California. As the movement for civil rights progresses, Heather Tirado Gilligan details a new problem. As it stands now, the 2010 census will discount same-sex marriages. Ignoring same-sex marriages does not allow an accurate [...]
Space Style Dialogues
ORGANIC MEETS GEOMETRIC
L.A. Corralez reviews slow fashion label, NaturevsFuture. The slow fashion movement borrows from slow food ideas of knowing more about what you buy, the workers who make what you buy, and using that information to make more socially and environmentally responsible choices. Slow Fashion can be vintage, made from recycled or organic materials, and [...]
Space Style Dialogues
ECO-TRENDWATCH all dressed up
For eco-friendly fashion designers, this Spring/Summer collections were all about going with the flow in feminine flowy dresses. Dresses came in less intense colors and were made from draped light fabrics such as cotton and silk.
Fiction, Film, Poetry
Charlize Theron on Battle in Seattle
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M – Th 11p / 10c Charlize Theron comedycentral.com Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor Purchase a copy of Battle in Seattle here. Democracy Now interview with director Stuart Townsend and organizer David Solnit from the Real Battle in Seattle.
Beneficial People
Urban Fruit Gleaming
Around the country food banks are experiencing food shortages. Meanwhile fruit trees across U.S. neighborhoods go unpicked. The people at Portland Free Tree Project found a way to easily clean up their neighborhood by giving excess fruit to those who can use the fresh organic produce. They show us how we can clean up our [...]
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