George Lakey is many things to many people, including activist, organizer, author, professor, father, and friend. And now he's a movie star, of sorts, due to a feature-length documentary film, called Citizen George, directed by Glenn Holsten. Archival footage, interviews, and animation tell the stories of George’s decades of activism and participation in movements for justice throughout his life. The film shows George’s evolution over time highlighting spiritual inspiration, and the dynamic role of community in enabling activists to face danger and violence, aiding audiences who are highly anxious about today’s crises.
Jan Spencer is back today to guest-host today Spirit In Action with the 3rd installment of his series Primer for Paradigm Shift – the needed ways of seeing and thinking about the world in order to become sustainable and to leave our world-wrecking ways behind us. We're working with Jan on Creating A Preferred Future and today he'll be combining the philosophy and ideas behind this work with real-life stories and examples of putting it into practice, like the work of Local 2020.
Carrie Newcomer joins us for a Song of the Soul drawn from her latest album, A Great Wild Mercy, including some songs co-written with John McCutcheon and with Siri Undlin/Humbird. This is Carrie's sixth time on Northern Spirit Radio, sharing her Folk/Americana/Indie/Singer-Songwriter genre music with deep spiritual and activist roots. You can follow Carrie on her Substack Page, A Gathering of Spirits.
Past/present religious/spiritual influences: Methodist, Mennonite, Quaker
Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes, and author of several influential books, including “The Transition Handbook” and “From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want,” believes that playful imagination is crucial for tackling climate change. Rob encourages communities to adopt sustainable practices that promote self-sufficiency and environmental stewardship.
Sue Orfield wields her saxophone in the way that the pied piper played his pipe, mesmerizing all people, great & small, and leading them on a joyful, haunting, dancing, enthralling journey to the center. A part of dozens of groups of performers of numerous genres of music, Sue magically brings out the best in the artists and the audiences she showers her abundant gifts upon.
While James Spartz currently makes music with Dogtown Hollow, he has sometimes been onstage as part of Jim James & The Damn Shames and under other names. While songwriting & performing call to him deeply, his Clark Kent alter ego has worked in fields related to Environmental Communication, Social Work, and Poverty Research. Sometimes self-described as performing roots-rock music, his tastes sometimes have been honky-tonky, country, folk, and jazzy.
Bianca van Heydoorn spoke at this year's FGC Gathering, held this year at Haverford College, just outside of Philadelphia, which made it much easier to have Bianca here for Spirit In Action. Bianca is Executive Director of YSRP, the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, working in multiple ways to limit the damage that our prison-industrial system does, and has done, to youth who are threatened with adult penalties, from ages as young as 10 in the unusually harsh system in PA. YSRP also supports the youth during and after incarceration.
Jonathan Kuttab was born & raised in Jerusalem, and he helped found Nonviolence International and the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, and is the author of Beyond the Two-State Solution and The Truth Shall Set You Free.
Gretta Stone became a musician because she loved being part of all the folk music that many Quakers shared together when she became part of Doylestown Friends Meeting, and at one point was part of a band called Faith and Practice. Gretta's path led to various travels, including her evolution into instrumental music and sacred harp singing. The Faith and Practice band no longer exists as it has morphed, with new members, into the band Fools and Prophets.
ISMAY is a musical experience wrapped around Avery Hellman. Without trying to limit ISMAY by any of the boxes we often put musicians in, their music is bluegrass, or country, or Americana, or folk, or something completely new. And Avery, a.k.a ISMAY, is a farmer, a singer-songwriter, an environmentalist, a cowburl, or some kind of person you're just going to be astonished by.