Moving Day!

We are excited to announce the launch of our new site, the ProgressiveKid Reader, a thematic online experience for progressive kids, parents, and teachers. We’re migrating everything from On a Ledge to the Reader where you can expect the same quality writing and deep thinking with the added benefits of

more top-notch contributors including professionals [...]

Plastic Thinking (on Grass)

These two arguments represent extremely faulty thinking that is endemic to a cultural disease affecting our American society. People seem to think them validation for all kinds of hideous behavior, but they are easily shot down.

Clean Coal’s Dirty Little Secret

The mining process generates liquid waste called slurry, a mix of carcinogenic compounds and heavy metals. The slurry is stored in open lagoons that, of course, sometimes break and flood. This is even more likely during periods of heavy rainfall and flooding (such as during global warming).

Wolf in the Mirror: Recovery and Redemption

The fact that there is no recorded case of a wolf killing a human in North America has long been eclipsed by an irrational fear and hatred of wolves that stretches back to the time of the Inquisition.

Beware the Chocolate Monsters: Keep Slave Labor Out of Halloween

According to Global Exchange, such child slaves and laborers experience the hazards of using machetes and applying pesticides and insecticides with no protection. Enslaved children typically work over 12 hours a day harvesting cocoa beans and have no idea what chocolate tastes like.

A Green Lining to Economic Downturn

Besides, there may be a green lining to all of this economic turmoil. I can’t think of any more effective way to get most Americans to change their lives than lack of cash. So let’s try—amid foreclosures, job loss, the costly (on so many levels) war in Iraq, salary freezes, skyrocketing health care costs and grocery, gas, and heating bills—to look on and for the bright side of things.

Stand Up for Your Rites

We green, free thinkers who dream of a radically transformed society sometimes feel a little like we’re blazing trails in the dark. Ongoing rituals that are full of meaning for people who care about life and the planet can sustain us during difficult times and during times of doubt and fear.

What Comes First

What I heard didn’t make me wave cardboard signs or toss confetti. It made me feel sad. And angry. I started talking back to the radio.

Beyond Climate Change 101

As with all meaningful change, there is no simple fix for our climate change crisis. There is no pill, band aid, 12-step formula, or “expert’s” advice to heal Earth or its life forms. There is no “clean” nuclear power that will preserve our current luxuries without risking even more environmental disaster, no green product that will redeem generations of overconsumption, no fluorescent light bulb that will reverse the excess of our industrialized systems, no recycling process that can restore forests, no zoo or seed bank that can preserve our world’s biodiversity, no replacement planet we can relocate to. For worse and for better we are stuck here with our mess and our weakness, our solutions and our strength.

Trust Your Kids: Raise Them Cage-Free!

Parents are a jumpy bunch these days. Even before I had my daughter I was troubled by the prevailing attitude among parents that the world has become a place too dangerous to let kids be kids anymore. Popular opinion seems to be that it is now too risky to let children do time-tested things like play outside unsupervised, climb a tree, explore on a bike, or walk to school alone, all things I and my friends enjoyed as kids. Once I became a mother I began to witness first-hand the stifling paranoia among other parents about their kids’ safety and to see the effect it was having on kids.