We'll learn fear might not mean 'stop'; personally, I've come to believe fear usually means 'go.' It always means listen closely.

Democracy is not what we have. It is what we do.

Diane Wilson asked, "Why aren't people upset? Why aren't people protesting?" The mayor and county commissioners told her to keep quiet, and everybody else was afraid to speak out against the companies, which included some of the country's biggest chemical companies. There were even attempts on her life. Family members abandoned her, and certainly none of the other shrimpers stood with her.

What an extraordinary time to be alive. We're the first people on our planet to have real choice: we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life.

If we start with "limits" and a premise of scarcity and fear, it makes us fearful of each other, and that makes us vulnerable to anti-democratic systems.

Beauty is created by fellow human beings, and enhanced because they are in relationship with each other.

I had the realization that hunger is not caused by scarcity of food, it is caused by the production system and an absence of democracy throughout the world.