Welcome to Iona's Writing Work.
Fighting global warming with inspiring educational materials.
Life-long activist and author
As Co-Director of the Grassroots Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice, Iona traveled with her (now deceased) husband John throughout the Northeast and Midwest for 15 years organizing meetings and presenting programs. Then she decided to stay home and publish a global warming newspaper, which she did for 15 years. Iona just finished researching and writing a book about Violence titled Why Was Wycliffe Beaten to Death? So many reasons for violence; how many reasons for love? This is not an ordinary book. Many people shared their stories and their work; also, if you find that you are concerned about a particular issue, there might be a group working on it and the link to their website is provided.
Anneke meets Iona for Deep Transformation Network.
Why I Wrote This Book: Wycliffe
After devoting 57 years to the environmental movement from the tiniest steps to full-blown activism, I knew we were losing the War Against the Earth on all fronts.
I have purposefully avoided reading about violence so I decided it was time to understand how so many men in particular can do such bloody, brutal things. For the most part, they are the ones ruling the world, fighting wars, doing mass shootings, abusing women and children Two incidents made me aware of the fact that I did not understand why men in particular are so violent. What is going on?
First, I watched the movie “Braveheart” and then a man in Africa I had grown to love
electronically, was beaten to death. Even my husband says he used to like to play football, box, wrestle, fight. This is so foreign to me; I had an unpleasant visceral reaction just hearing this. I don’t get it.
I decided to research violence and put my findings into a book, which might be shared with others who care about the Earth and about poor people. Some say we are in a mass extinction; some say our American culture is insane, some say technology is killing the planet. I say these are all true.
Why Was Wycliffe Beaten to Death? So many reasons for violence, how many reasons for love? Is the result of my recent inquiry.
What are we to do? Some answers to this question are positioned in the last sections of this book, many provided by other people. I’m still trying to figure out what my next move will be after a self-care sabbatical.
The day I received David Pinto’s book Fulcrum: Generational World Transformation, I opened to page 152 and found an extremely useful quote: “A second rule-of-thumb is to match your capacity to strategise (sic, UK) with your own sense of social power.” I had not read his first rule before spotting this one. I’ll be reading the entire book during my break.
Iona has edited five newsletters over the years.
TREEHUGGERS UNITED = INVINCIBLE!
For a few months, I was the Ocean County (New Jersey) Coordinator for the Old-Growth Forest Network. I didn’t find an old-growth forest to save from logging so I started a new phase of my global warming newspaper focused on forests and trees this time. I created 14 issues before deciding to write a book on violence to help me understand why the world is such a mess. I’m putting these in backwards order chronologically. Please click on the links to see each newspaper in its full glory. I always tried to make each paper beautiful and colorful.
GRASSROOTS COALITION NEWS
From 2021 to 2023, my newspaper was called Grassroots Coalition News (GCN). I was running the Grassroots Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice by myself after John died in 2019.
GROUNDSWELL NEWS JOURNAL
I invented another new name, Groundswell News, which morphed into Groundswell News Journal and published those from 2018 to 2020. During these years, I published news of Greta Thunberg and her ignition of the youth movement fighting the climate emergency and my September 2019 issue was a tribute to John, my husband of 30 years and a revolutionary champion of justice.
THE GO-BACK CLUB
There is a gap between 2008 and 2012 and I came back in 2013 with an electronic version and a new name, The Go-Back Club, which I published until 2018 calling it a “Newsbooklet (sic, a name I invented) of the Simple-Living Brigade.” I was keenly aware that Americans are the worst causes of climate chaos because of their (our) outrageous consumer habits/addictions. I hoped that if “simple living” could go viral, we as a nation could help bring down carbon dioxide levels while also save natural resources, which wouldn’t be needed to produce crappy products made from mining, logging, and toxic chemicals.
THE ORDER OF THE EARTH
The Order of the Earth was first published as a tabloid and shortly thereafter I found another printer who would be able to print my newspaper as a broadsheet, which I preferred. I had to work full-time in a sewing factory to earn $1,000 a month to cover the printing and postage costs. I did that for four years and worked afternoons, evenings, and weekends on the newspaper. After four years, I was exhausted and took a break. During that time I failed to save electronic copies as I did in the first two years.
I wrote a few books before my most recent one about violence. These are in chronological order.
Metamorphosis
I wrote this book about divorce from both sides in 1982. My parents had divorced when I was five and I was in the process of getting divorced myself. A kindly printer in a neighboring town taught me how to typeset and lay out the pages. He guided me to a publisher and I was planning to use my rent money to pay him for publishing 400 books. It was so exciting seeing all those butterflies coming off the press that I was snapping pictures and talking to the workers. The owner was leaving for his lunch when I was finished and ready to pay him.
“How much do I owe you?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Off Our Rockers: Earth, Hearth, and Wanderlust
A Lifestyle Conversation Between a Suburbanite and an Environmentalist
My friend who lived in another town and I had fun writing letters to each other back then; yes, letters! She asked me questions and I answered them. We pulled our rocking chairs onto her grassy lawn to take pictures for the cover. Hers was a traditional brown rocker and mine was a work of art with colorful animals and designs topped by a moon and a few stars sprouting curlicue on wires from the headrest of the chair. We tried finding a publisher but nobody nibbled. I no longer have a copy of this; too many moves with too much downsizing.
Congrats….on completing your gigantic work of love against violence!
Have to read in increments since it’s powerful, sometimes difficult + then there are the forever interruptions!
Love,
Joan Norris Daurio, Manasquan, New Jersey
Hi Iona Conner, how are you doing today? I think everything goes well.
I really appreciate and love your book that is plenty of inspiration, emotions, education, which the world will look forward to hearing and change the devil behaviour for those who stay and practice it, and will know that the world is better place to live equally.
Continue to advocate for the marginalised people who live in this Earth with fearing, etc. They have also rights to live on the earth like others in peace and security. I love it.
Thank you.
Kind regards.
Yours activist.
Feruzi Juma Kikuni, refugee camp in Kenya (click tab “African Refugees” for more information about Feruzi’s work)
Hello, Iona.
I think your book has the potential to be a very valuable contribution to understanding violence in society on a micro and macro scale. Bravo for writing it!
This is awesome! The document is so engaging, I love the way you have put it together (as I knew I would from seeing your newspapers). For me, my attention is held right from the start — that’s a rare skill you have, to do that, especially over a topic such as this.
Briefly, I think you are just the person to write your book. It occurs to me that I can see that, even in the way you blend your newspaper articles, thoughtfully chosen, balancing the positive with reality, and all the while with a very compassionate approach. You are just the person for the task.
I love your website, it looks amazing, and I will enjoy reading your work. Thank you for sharing the link. I think your writing is a wonderful and generous gift to the readers.
I was thinking about you having to leave out the section on men enjoying fighting from your book and did a little online reading about the differences between men and women in respect of motivations and rewards (and hence actions and behaviours). There is quite a lot written along those lines, and predictably males are inherently (as a sweeping generalisation) more aggressive than females; but this is perhaps an adjunct at this stage, as your book is wonderful without all that. It is interesting to read about, however.
What an absolutely amazing contribution you have already made to the world, and to life, by your actions.
Felicity, UK
Wow Iona, the Table of Contents looks so interesting and important! Bravo to you! I look forward to reading it. At the moment, I am deep into preparations for Equinox Earth Day event in New York, will send you the program, perhaps you might forward it to anyone you know in NYC? Again, congrats on your book!
Alanna Hartzok, Pennsylvania
Thank you so much for this book, Iona. This was so good of you to send it to me. I will be reading it. I can’t imagine living in any of those African communities where there is so much violence… and where the hospitals don’t care about treating you unless they get their money. It’s such a sad state of affairs. And there is violence in my country as well against other races… and we all know who encourages that. It’s all rooted in fear.
Anyway, thanks so much!
Doug Davis, Adirondacks, New York USA
Gm..I read about 30 pages …very sad. It’s a shame the way the world is so unfair to some.
Billie Nadler Hnatt, Bayville, New Jersey, USA
Congrats on finishing book. What’s next?
Mitch, New Jersey
Iona:
Thanks for sending this. The book is of course very good, and I (naturally) recognize many of the themes from your previous work.
I think you and I share a fundamental suspicion towards many of the more popular remedies to the challenge of climate change, including solar and wind facilities in particular. I think we both prefer natural remedies, including planting trees and providing for wetland preservation, along with making necessary changes in culture.
And I know that both you and I like railroads. We need to see more of them – in more places – as they are incredibly efficient!
You do mention farming – and organic farming – but I still wish you would give a little wider berth to the broader processes of soil health and regenerative agriculture. Organic agriculture looks at the products of the soil, which is all to the good, but I wish you’d explore more deeply into the value of promoting the health of the soil itself. As one of my favorite books (The Soil
Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson) points out, using the amazing depth and complexity of the living components of soil can not only produce far healthier products – but also capture immense amounts of CO2. Totally incredible volumes of it!
I think you know this about me – with my love of farming – so you might have expected such a response. But if you haven’t read Ohlson’s book, I very much recommend it. Not long – very readable – and entirely evocative!
I agree with some of your perspectives on men, but not all. As you know, I have long been a champion of promoting more integrated ways of helping young men and adolescents achieve manhood. It is one area where I think modern and industrialized societies have often (though not always) failed and it’s one area where I think “indigenous” (pre-industrial) societies are generally far more successful than our own – primarily because they usually see socializing boys-to-men
as a primary and absolutely critical function of society as a whole.
I think it’s also because indigenous societies usually see the tribe as the central building block and primary principle of society – whereas we tend to see the nuclear family as fulfilling that same function – which I personally feel may well be the source of many of our problems.
Anyway, if I may be so bold, I would also say that it has been men who have often been our society’s most prominent advocates of peace and non-violence – as you yourself have pointed out: Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, Nelson Mandela, St. Francis, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus himself.
I can relate to Nicole’s perspectives on the value of “teamwork” between men and women. I also very much like the way Oprah Winfrey approaches the topic. She talks about how “our men” can and do support women’s liberation – and vice versa.
I could go on with other observations – but I am sure you are getting plenty of commentary from your readership. I especially like your focus on love and compassion – self-confidence and essential fearlessness – and in fact equality – as your most prominent themes.
As a practical matter – however – I think you could have added a little more stress to the importance of voting for candidates who support peaceful change and the environment – because it is our legislatures who determine where and how many of our society’s most valuable resources are allocated.
Likewise, I think that people should continue to stay In touch with our elected representatives once they are in office. It’s very easy now because I’d say they all have websites. And people should write letters to the editors of their local newspapers often – and check in as engaged alumni with the schools where they were once educated to see where those schools are investing their money.
Anyway, I’m sure you’ve heard most of this from me before at one time or another.
Congratulations again on a work that I’m sure many people will take to heart!
Best wishes to you and David,
Dan Adams, McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania USA
P.S. On an entirely unrelated matter (I just thought of this) – if you are still interested in looking into the sources of violence – you might want to do some research into the incredible differences between the two closely related species of primates – chimpanzees and bonobos – both living in the Congo basin. Chimps are notoriously ruthless and violent, whereas bonobos are the exact opposite. …. Plus, I thought your reporting on the Congo itself was quite important. Many people, including environmentalists, often overlook it.
Hello, Iona.
The site does exactly what it is meant to do: I downloaded your book. Happy to tidy the WordPress errors. DM me so we can arrange to meet and we can walk through creating a user to access to the site, which you can turn off when I’m done, and enable when you need someone to change/fix it in the future. As for sharing it, my method is unconventional but I think
natural. The book: do you want to create a paperback? As for the content of the book: it is unusual, inviting someone to dive into your life and your journey in writing the book. Quite challenging, potentially transformative of the reader. Are you aware of the reader’s experience?
Would you be willing to witness it? [Iona answered, Yes.]
David Pinto, Jersey UK
Why and How I Started My Own Newspaper
(written about 20 years ago)
Just when most people would have been dreaming of retirement, I was dreaming of starting my own newspaper. The urge goes way back. Thirty-five years ago, our daily paper arrived face-up on the door mat. The photo of a naked, dead woman’s body in a ravine, though microscopic, shocked me. I ran into the house and cancelled our subscription, thankful that I had seen it before my little sons arrived home from school. I was unnerved.
I don’t like the way women are portrayed in underwear ads, crying or simply as helpmates. I abhor the gruesome, ugly and trivial content of most papers. And I believe that in these times of grave global warming threats, people aren’t seeing the immediacy and truth through their beloved mainstream papers because that would necessitate ruffling the feathers of valuable advertisers.
In addition to these negative reasons for creating an alternative newspaper, I love to write. I have dabbled in newspaper editing for non-profit organizations for decades, including publishing my own newsletters on 8 1/2 by 11″ copy paper. I enjoy finding people who are doing wonderful work and talking about them to others.
So at 61 I decided to publish what I believe is the nation’s first, hard-copy global warming newspaper, The Order of the Earth: News, Views and Musings (a name I thought of long ago). I focus more on women and peace than men and war. I focus more on preserving forests and trees than on income-producing clean energy in the fight against catastrophic climate change. I do not believe this world is as awful as it appears to be through the eyes of news gatherers who scan the world for the gory, the scary, the tragic, the weird. Meanwhile, people everywhere are overcoming obstacles and working hard to create a brighter future. I like to find the kind, the beautiful, the thoughtful, the outrageous. I work long hours to uncover stories showing that we can indeed transform this country to minimize and survive ghastly environmental conditions that
climate change is forcing on us.
How on Earth, are we as a society going to find the strength, intelligence and courage to radically change the way the world operates (which has been compared to a car going 100 miles an hour toward a brick wall) if we are numb and depressed from the news?
Given all of the above, I evaluated my talents and my passion (environmentalism after 40 years in the movement both as a professional and as a volunteer) and asked, “What do I want to do for the rest of my life and what needs are not being met in the world of activism?”
Instead of easing back to play bridge, golf or sit in my rocking chair on the porch reading, I look forward to working deliberately long hours. My newspaper is peopled with folks I admire. It is also sprinkled with news from investigative journalists who uncover corruption in all levels of government and corporations. We are an entirely volunteer publication, with many talented, intelligent and compassionate people contributing ideas and articles.
The Order of the Earth is a 16-page, colored monthly publication; we hope to expand to a 24-page weekly during the next couple of years. The only obstacle I face is money. Even though this idea had been building for 35 years, I didn’t fully understand (and still don’t) the economics of this plan. My husband and I choose to live in near-poverty to run our non-profit
Grassroots Coalition for Environmental and Economic Justice. I need to work part-time to help pay for printing, postage and cartridges. Somehow or other, I must bring in between $650 and $800 a month over and above our Social Security, on which we try to live.
The paper would never have been born if it weren’t for two close friends who agreed to put some energy and generosity behind my dream. One insisted that it was time to switch to newsprint and the other said she’d pay for my publishing software and our first press run.
I nearly forgot someone. A woman I never met in Frederick got her hands on one of my black and white newsletters a year ago and quietly transformed our front page into a beautiful, colorful depiction of the Earth’s glory. I was astonished that such a thing was possible since I had zero publishing/graphics background. At that point I knew that The Order of the Earth would be not only a valuable tool for people in years ahead, but it would be a beautiful newspaper. I was ecstatic.
With that loving spirit behind me, we planned our “Big Launch” for January 1, 2008. We hoped to bring the environmental community into the homes of the mainstream community. I shopped around for the cheapest printing price and went with a company that was not the cheapest, but the friendliest and most convenient to my friends in Frederick, who were going to help me distribute the papers. That company happened to be The Herald-Mail. Since my comparison shopping had been based on 2,000 papers, I unquestioningly ordered 2,000. Do you realize how many papers that is? Imagine getting a 16-page paper every single day and piling them all up for recycling. The 2,000 papers the Herald-Mail staff joyfully put in my Ford Escort the day I arrived to pick up our January papers was equivalent to four-and-a-half years of newsprint. What on Earth was I going to do with all those papers?
In my eagerness to put together a great paper, I had failed to construct a distribution system. So, I mailed them out in little bunches to all my friends around the country and gave my Frederick colleagues 200 each. In time we sent them all on their way. For February we cut back to 1,500. When money is tight, I back down to 1,000. We ship them to the great groups we invite to write for us and they help us distribute them in their locations in hopes that their memberships and campaigns will get stronger through our publicity and our subscriptions and ads will increase.
Let me back up a minute here to say that we lived in Frederick until three and a half years ago, when we found a lovely home with land, we could afford in a place unlike any other I’ve ever lived. It’s heavenly here in rural Pennsylvania but logging, hunting, and racing junk cars are common, women are referred to as “girls” and everybody knows everybody else or is somehow related. These are hard-working, unpretentious people living in “God’s Country.” This is not a high-income area, nor is it populated with well-paying companies so it’s hard to find work offering more than minimum wage.
I have been disappointed in the low number of subscriptions and ads after publishing 11,000 newspapers and giving away roughly 10,000 of them through coffee shops, bookstores, supportive businesses, and eco-events. Admittedly, I am not strong at sales; however, I have made face-to-face arrangements with seven businesses in our conservative area to sell The Order for $.50 to compete with local papers. We are slowly developing a following.
I love every minute I spend on the paper and trust that finances will work themselves out as climate change gets worse and people’s desire to read a different type of news grows.
The Order of the Earth and I will be here to help.
Hi Iona Conner, how are you doing today? I think everything goes well.
I really appreciate and love your book that is plenty of inspiration, emotions, education, which the world will look forward to hearing and change the devil behaviour for those who stay and practice it, and will know that the world is better place to live equally.
Continue to advocate for the marginalised people who live in this Earth with fearing, etc. They have also rights to live on the earth like others in peace and security. I love it.
Thank you.
Kind regards.
Yours activist.
Feruzi Juma Kikuni, refugee camp
Email address, radi4deeply@gmail.com
Facebook page of RADI, https://www.facebook.com/100079521192522/posts/166385296022176/?flite=scwspnss
Website: http://www.radi4deeply.org/
Refugee Alliance for Development and Innovation (RADI) is a nonprofit, Community-Based Organization located in Kakuma refugee camp and Kalubeyei settlement, Turkana West county/Kenya.
This is a young Organization formed in 2020 by a group of refugees and asylum seekers, both men and women, who have been forcibly displaced from their home countries because of war, insecurity cases, multiple violences, persecution, natural disasters, etc. Our purpose is to help our fellow vulnerable refugees and host communities in crisis with critical conditions involving individuals such as orphans, widows, disabled people, children, youths, etc.
This camp has approximately 200,000 refugees who have fled violence and war. Today there is another category of refugees who will need help – climate refugees, people whose homes are uninhabitable due to drought, floods, heatwaves, lack of food and water, etc. People are fleeing for their lives and we want to help. Here is an excerpt from https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/how-to-save-a-planet/like-the-monarch-human-Kl4GVhRJpdE/
“…[T]he scale at which people will need to relocate due to climate change will be different than ever before. A World Bank report estimates that over the next 30 years, 143 million people will be displaced within three of the most vulnerable regions alone: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. To handle such shifts in population, our governments and immigration systems will have to evolve.”
And here is an excerpt from another article.
“We are unprepared for a world in which climate change and other factors compel millions more people to flee for survival. The choice we face in the U.S. of how to respond — with border walls or with a welcoming culture — will be a defining political fault line for our generation. A new paradigm for vastly greater levels of immigration must be a central priority on both moral and strategic grounds. Such an approach is critical to the well-being of immigrants and to the social democratic project itself,” wrote Deepak Bhargava, Distinguished Lecturer of Urban Studies, School of Labor and Urban Studies, City University of New York and Co-Editor, Immigration Matters. https://unboundphilanthropy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/On-the-Frontlines-of-the-Climate-Emergency-1.pdf
One of our members, Sengo Kesheni in Tanzania, founded Ubuntu Pan-Africanism and Welfare for Africans, is teaching us about the Ubuntu philosophy in which people care for each other respectfully as equals. This is what I have been trying to do with everyone in our Global Family. I have done my best and now I’m taking some time off, trusting that all the friendships and connections my friends in Africa have made with each other over the years will serve them well. A prime example is that Mukama is going to be working in Tanzania. His story starts on page 16 of my book. When Mukama arrived in Tanzania, Sengo put out his hand to welcome his brother. Even though they are not living in the same part of the country, Sengo would help Mukama if his teaching job doesn’t work out. Now that I have put them in touch with each other, they can continue to offer moral or other types of support as time goes by. That is my hope for everyone. Let’s help each other as much as we can.