4 states have passed acts this past November to end gerrymandering. This is incredibly encouraging, as gerrymandering ensures that our votes are meaningless. As long as gerrymandering exists we do not have representative government and cannot say we live in a democracy. That is not just my opinion, it is a fact.

Was austerity the only possible response to the debt that many nations incurred after the global economic mess post 2008? The answer, if one looks at Portugal and some other places, is NO. In other words, what was fed to us—that austerity was inevitable and necessary—was a lie. There was and is another way.

Nations around the world, one by one, are eliminating their old laws and statutes that make homosexuality illegal. The largest and most recent of these is India, where an old law–section 377–imposed by the former British occupiers, has recently been struck down.

Decades of  unchecked speculative land investment have helped to make houses in most major cities some of the most inaccessible and unaffordable in the world. This crisis of affordability hurts people who are least able to pay the most: people living on the fringes of the city, renters, new migrants and low-income groups.

Innovations are currently happening in housing that are concerned less with formal or material changes and much more with innovation in the ways we live together. It is in thinking beyond the exclusivity of private land ownership, that solutions to the vexed issues of housing are beginning to emerge.

Creative Growth Art Center is a studio for artists with disabilities, supporting a multitude of world-renowned artists and bolstering burgeoning talents. The common ground for most artists here is a shared experience of an inequitable amount of hardship and tragedy during some point in their lives. When joined together in shared space and by a mutually fundamental desire to create artwork, it almost invariably fosters a heightened social awareness and sense of empathy. Having the freedom to discuss these issues openly with peers while simultaneously engaging creatively can result in both emotional and artistic catharsis.

The only non-fossil way we have, as things stand, of meeting our energy needs realistically is with nuclear. That doesn't mean we stop developing renewables—quite the opposite: nuclear just gives us a little more breathing space in which to do that.