In a lengthy chapter her 2004 book Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (updated and re-issued in paperback this month), Wainwright describes in great detail how Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT), under the leadership of the city’s mayor, Olivio Dutra, opened up the budgetary process to all citizens. While Wainwright clearly applauds the participatory-budgeting experiment, she is also willing to ask the hard questions, like, Why did the participatory budgeting process decline in the years since 2004, when the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre lost the mayorship? Hillary Wainwright is one of the finest people I have met over the last few years, so I’m happy to share this profile, written by my friend David Bollier : “If you want to learn the nitty-gritty about social transformation in our times — What works and what doesn’t?

By the fall of 2004, three years after a record default on a debt of more than $100 billion, the country was well on the road to recovery; and it achieved this feat without foreign help. This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies,” said economist Mark Weisbrot in a 2004 interview quoted in The New York Times. “While Weisbrot is co-director of a Washington-based Below is a first excerpt from a very important, crucial editorial by Costas Douzinas in the Guardian, which calls for resistance against EU/IMF imposed policies which have already a record of destroying many economies.

but the solidarity with a stranger makes it more than that. 17 Xyooj January 6th, 2009 at 8:13 pm interesting thoughts…thanks for sharing the value of knowing you exist and that others that you value also exist is perhaps keep us all in touch with our existence….knowing link] 18 Leah Dossey March 4th, 2009 at 2:12 pm I'm okay, you are okay and this blog post is more than okay. Grant McCracken This Blog Sits At the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics Chief Culture Officer -The Book Books Recommended Books Speaking Consulting Culture Camps Bio Contact Jul 19 How social networks work: the puzzle of exhaust data By grant Jerry Michalski and Pip Coburn were recently talking about the puzzleof "exhaust data."