Citizen Updates...
Citizen Updates…
The latest on some stories nosotros're following
Sep. 29, 2015
B Lab Strikes Once again…
Final week, the New York Times reported that Kickstarter, which has been a Certified B Corporation since December 2014, upped it'southward game past reincorporating as a benefit corporation—a legal construction that extends its fiduciary responsibility across shareholders to stakeholders like employees, community and the environment. Information technology represents a doubling down of an increasingly popular suggestion: That doing proficient can exist as much a part of a company's corporate mandate as doing well. It's just the latest coup for B Lab, the Wayne-based nonprofit that has jumpstarted the international B Corp movement, which extends companies' fiduciary responsibility beyond shareholders to stakeholders like employees, customs and the surroundings.
Over 1,400 companies worldwide have joined the B Corp trend. Every bit the Times heralded last spring: "Involvement in Social Mission Gains Footing Amidst Small Companies." That's when B Corp Etsy, the online marketplace for homegrown craft, began trading publicly.
"It'due south crawly that Kickstarter is using the do good corporation structure," says B Lab co-founder Jay Coen Gilbert. "They join an increasing number of venture-backed companies to do and so. Kickstarter's leadership volition make it easier for many to follow, especially with investors similar Fred Wilson from Union Foursquare Ventures talking about it."
Wait for more big name companies to arrive on the deed, because of demand: Inquiry shows that younger customers and employees are more than inclined to purchase products and toil in workplaces whose social mission aligns with their values.
…As Does Liz Arnold
If you were hanging out last Sabbatum within the Francis Festival grounds, you might have seen a immature woman dressed as the Pope, toting a paper-thin cutout of the Pontiff and handing out anti-fracking literature. That would have been rabble-rousing activist Liz Arnold, who we terminal wrote about after she commandeered the stage during a Democratic gubernatorial primary contend and filibustered about the about 2,000 Pennsylvanians who have filed complaints almost fracking's ill effects on their drinking h2o.
Since and so, Arnold, one of the leaders of Encouraging the Development of a Green Economy, or EDGE, has, she says, welcomed a new ally to her cause: Pope Francis. Two weeks agone, when executives of the shale manufacture gathered at the Convention Center to huddle over means to turn Philly into an free energy hub, Arnold and near thirty of her compatriots were there, shouting excerpts from the Pope's 192-page encyclical on climate modify to the perplexed executives: "You accept a responsibleness to care for the mutual home!" Some dressed equally priests and nuns to perform a mass exorcism: "Exorcise the demons of greed and evil these otherwise decent people are filled with," they shouted to the heavens as the perplexed businessmen in suits walked by.
Like the Abbie Hoffman-led Yippies of the Sixties—who once started a near-riot by dropping hundred dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and who protested the Vietnam War past performing a mass "levitation" of the "evil" Pentagon—Arnold and Border are committed to natural language-in-cheek theatre every bit their favored mode of spurring social change. At the inauguration of Governor Wolf, 1 of Arnold'south colleagues, Maria Kretschmann, was in attendance dressed as Marie Antoinette, after reading that Wolf had said that, when it came to fracking, he wanted to "take my cake and eat it, too." The stunt not but made news, but got Kretschmann a cursory audience with the governor.
Arnold laments that it takes gimmicks to go such an important issue talked about, noting that a recent investigation past the Public Herald raised questions near how the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has been handling drinking water contamination complaints since fracking began over a decade ago.
Even after New York State cited public wellness concerns while banned fracking, Arnold says it'southward hard to get the issue on the radar screen here. "You've got willful negligence on the role of the DEP, and you've got essentially a media coma of this outcome," says the 31-year-onetime electrician by merchandise. "Fracking is debated in New York and in the Great britain. But not here, where the manufacture is a major political donor."
And so she pledges to keep speaking truth to power—albeit with a good-natured, theatrical wink.
Upwardly Next for Adjacent End: Republic!
With a lilliputian over a calendar month to go until the Nov. three election, Adjacent Stop: Democracy! is almost ready to exam its quirky get-out-the-vote hypothesis: That a series of arty signs directing people to their polling identify might stimulate turnout in an ballot that no one expects will draw many to the election box.
Since receiving a $166,000 grant fom the Knight Foundation's Cities Challenge in the spring, Next Cease: Democracy manager Lansie Sylvia and her team take recruited over 50 local artists—some well-known, some amateurs, some from Landscape Arts' Restorative Justice program—to create signs telling residents to "Vote Here" and "Vote Aqui." They have successfully raised $15,000 in a Kickstarter campaign over the summer to pay Darla Jackson at Philadelphia Sculpture Gym to build durable wooden sandwich boards for the artists to use. They hired Ken Winneg, from Penn's Annenberg Centre, to study the effectiveness of their project. And they have selected 60 polling stations, scattered throughout the city, where they volition mail service the signs, similar a giant, civic-minded popular-up art installation. Because while Philly does non practise so well with the voter turnout—only 27 pct came out to vote in the Mayoral master—we do public fine art superbly. (See: Record number of painters on Pope Francis-inspired public mural.)
Of grade, simply a lucky few voters-to-be will actually encounter the signs by artists as varied as Isaiah Zagar, Child Hazo and Dominic Episcopo (to name a few). After all, there are 850 polling places in the city—and only threescore Vote Here signs.
Thankfully, you can see them all in one place in the weeks leading up to the election. "Signs of Change," a DesignPhiladelphia exhibit, will open on October 15th at ImpactHub (the co-working space of Here'southward My Chance, a practice-skillful branding agency, where Sylvia works). All 60 of the Vote Here signs will be on display, as will some of the artists, including those on the opening reception'due south console give-and-take: NDA, Ishknits, Ryan Psota, Austin Seraphin and Sonia Petruse. It is likely to be a dizzying display of the variety of Philly-based artists, which in and of itself is a noble undertaking.
Beyond that, out on the streets, will Next Stop: Democracy! spring-start voting? Will Sylvia and her colleagues prove that simple way-finding is the answer to our urban center's poor showing at the polls? Not probable. But at least the city volition look prettier on the day we elect our next mayor. And mayhap, just maybe, a few more voters volition be part of that decision.
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/citizen-updates/
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