We Don’t Stop

Michael Franti Talks Peace, Love and Music

Apr 30, 2008

If the contemporary struggle for a better world has a soundtrack, it surely features the music of Michael Franti. To Franti, music and activism are one and the same — his albums, the last three of which have sold over 100,000 copies combined, are truth-telling manifestos you can dance to. While touring constantly, he tirelessly promotes peace, sustainability and human rights. His annual Power to the Peaceful festival raises money for different causes each year — from Mumia Abul Jamal’s legal case to bringing American troops home from Iraq. Last year, 60,000 people attended in San Francisco and 4,000 in São Paulo, Brazil. He has been named an Ambassador of Peace by the World Health Organization, and performs benefit concerts for Iraq Veterans Against the War, grassroots workers in New Orleans, as well as free concerts in prisons. In his personal life he is a vegan and yogi, and if you find yourself behind his hybrid or his biodiesel tour bus, follow him: he’ll pay your bridge toll. Last month we visited Franti in his San Francisco studio as he was putting the finishing touches on his new release, “All Rebel Rockers,” due out in September.

Read it on Common Ground…

Posted in Magazines, Whole Life Times

Skeletons, Earthenware and SpongeBob Piñatas

HEADS UP | TONALÁ, MEXICO

April 13, 2008

AVENIDA Independencia runs west from the central square in Tlaquepaque, Mexico. For several blocks it is a pedestrian street, cobbled and lined with ornate mansions that, more than a century ago, served as weekend homes for the elite of Guadalajara. Today, they are shops featuring high-end wares for other weekend homes throughout the continent.

They make things easy: they have good selections, and they’ll happily pack up your handblown glasses and carved headboard and ship them to you, or even arrange custom orders. But prices rival those in the United States. For those with a serious love of shopping, and on the lookout for deals — especially on artisanal goods like pottery, ironwork, glass and furniture — it’s worth leaving the calm elegance of Tlaquepaque for the exuberant chaos of nearby Tonalã.

Tonalã is where the professionals shop. I visited with Rebecca Allen, an interior designer based in San Francisco, who has been making regular buying trips to Tonalã for more than a decade. She is part of an ancient tradition: the town, near rich clay seams, has been a center of pottery — and of trade more broadly — for millenniums. It remains one of Mexico’s top artisanal hubs; the streets are lined with shops and ateliers, and a complex at its heart features nothing but earthenware.

Read it on the NYT site…

Posted in New York Times, Newspapers

Rumble in the Jungle

How barefaced capitalism can help save the Amazonian rainforest

Apr 10th 2008 | PUERTO MALDONADO

FROM the top of the 30m-tall viewing platform at Posada Amazonas, a thatched 30-bed tourist lodge in the Peruvian Amazon, immense trees—some more than a millennium in age—extend to the horizon. It seems an untroubled Eden. But below the canopy, danger lurks in the shape of a new paved highway.

Peru’s Madre de Dios region has been undergoing an ecotourism boom. More than 70 “eco-lodges” cater to tourists from around the world, eager to experience a few days in the Amazon. Last year more than 60,000 foreigners visited the area, a 20-fold increase over 15 years.

Its success stems from two factors. First, the region comprises vast areas of pristine rainforest, including some of the most biodiverse places on earth, much of it protected (at least on paper) in magnificent national parks. It is also easily accessible. Its capital, Puerto Maldonado, is less than an hour’s flight from Cuzco, gateway to Machu Picchu, the Incas’ ruined city. From Puerto Maldonado, many of the lodges are just an hour or two away by riverboat.

Read it on The Economist’s site…

Posted in Magazines, The Economist