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| January Race, Class, and Civil Rights |
| February Poverty, Homelessness, and Unemployment |
| March Imperialism and Economic Injustice |
| April Environment |
| May Labor |
| June Population |
| July Violence |
| August Nuclear weapons |
| September Education, Information, and Communication |
| October Democracy and Religion |
| November Hunger and Health Care |
| December Children |
Here are a very few examples of connections. These give the flavor of connections but not the form that we will generally present.
- High level connections
- Figure 1. Web of relationships between categories of issues.
- The eyeglasses example
- Figure 2. A web of relationships between eyeglasses and political issues.
- War leads to pollution.
- Overpopulation leads to poverty.
High level connections
For the most part, the connections we'll discuss will be among the issues associated with the categories. In any case, here is a picture of the high-level connections which both stand on their own and derive from connections between related issues.
Figure 1. The web of relationships between high-level categories.
The eyeglasses example
To improve conditions in, for example, India, we should donate our old eyeglasses. In the United States we routinely discard old eyeglasses when we get new ones. In doing this, we not only generate a little more garbage, but we deprive others of the benefits of our old lenses. Instead of trashing them, we could donate our old lenses to organizations that distribute them to people in impoverished regions and the third world. While they may not be the ideal prescription, these eyeglasses improve lives and societies in the following ways. Quality of vision affects mortality - you're less likely to fall off a cliff if you can see the edge. Quality of vision affects the ability to read, hence to learn, to be informed, to make intelligent decisions, to participate in the democratic process, and to earn a living. So, donating eyeglasses in the U.S. can improve education, reduce poverty, reduce unemployment, improve labor practices, improve nutrition, and increase participation in democracy in other parts of the world. We could say that eyeglasses lead to better education which leads to a more informed populace which leads to more effective democratic processes - all of which mitigate the widening gap between the rich and poor and improve the quality of life. If we consider possible categories of issues that interest the Peace, Justice, and Environmental movements, we can say that distribution of used eyeglasses has an effect on population, children, socio-economic class, imperialism, economic injustice, labor, education, democracy, and hunger. All of these categories are connected by eyeglasses. See Figure 2.
The above example illustrates that, if they cooperated in bringing eyeglasses to people in impoverished regions and the third world, activists interested in population or children or imperialism or economic injustice or education or ... would all benefit their own cause. The issues are connected, in this case, through the redistribution of eyeglasses.
War leads to pollution
As another example, let's look at one of the links between the Peace and Environmental movements. War causes pollution in the territories of both the warring nations and of possibly distant neutral nations. At the end of the 1990 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein ordered his troops to burn the oil wells in Kuwait as they retreated. This not only caused very serious pollution in Kuwait and neighboring countries, but also for the Indian subcontinent. Likewise, in the recent war over Bosnia, allied forces bombed factories and oil refineries in Serbia. This led to spills into the Danube River and pollution in the nations through which it flows. Obviously, war leads to environmental damage.
This example illustrates a very direct connection between war and pollution and it's hard to imagine how an environmentalist might avoid supporting a peace movement. The issues are connected, in this case by a causal link - war causes pollution.
Overpopulation leads to poverty and vice-versa
"... Overpopulation leads to deforestation or soil exhaustion, which leads to increasing poverty. Increasing poverty leads to migration to more remote areas, where the cycle begins again. ..."
From Julie Fisher, Nongovernments : NGOs and the Political Development of the Third World, Kumarian Press, August 1997, page 2.
Help us build this web.
The general form and content of expositions of connections are described here.