Click each question to jump directly to the answer. 

1. What is the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan?

2. Why do you call this a "Marshall Plan?"

3. Haven't plans to aid the poor failed in the past? What makes this any different?

4. What makes this different from other plans?

5. How can you get around the reality that many states will not cooperate in your well-intentioned GMP, except to overtly or covertly subvert it?

6. How can you eliminate poverty without creating jobs or some form of employment? Isn't that the task of the private sector?

7. How can you claim that further "development" of any sort is good for the planet, when development has caused many of the environmental hazards on the planet today?

8. How is the NSP-version of the GMP related to more immediate problems facing the U.S., like illegal immigration and domestic poverty?

9. What is an International Generosity Corps (IGC)?

10. How much will all this cost and who will pay for it?

11. How does the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan compare to other versions, such as those coming out of Europe?

12. Aren't there areas of this plan that need to be more worked out before you put this into the political arena?

13. What kind of help do you need to make the Global Marshall Plan a reality?

14. How do you envision the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan getting adopted in the Western world, and in the U.S. in particular?

15. Apart from the tasks described above, are there any other things ordinary citizens can do while waiting for this political strategy to work?

Answers

The NSP wants advanced industrial countries of the world to use their resources to eliminate, once and for all global and domestic, poverty, homelessness, and hunger; provide quality education and health care for all; and repair the global environment. As an initial commitment, we want the U.S. to donate at least 1-2% of its Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty years. We realize that the amount may be less if other countries join in the effort, and more if they do not.

Here are the indispensable parts of the NSP version of the Plan:

A. The Global Marshall Plan (GMP) will not be one more aid plan that uses the concept of "generosity" as a cover for the pursuit of national interest. All elements of the Global Marshall Plan will be administered in ways that are consistent with love, kindness, generosity, compassion, ecological sensitivity, and nonviolence. The Plan will actually foster the ability of countries to act on those value. To accomplish this, the Global Marshall Plan must embody generosity in a way that inspires open-heartedness and love, as well as ethical aliveness and deep ecological sensitivity.

B. The monies will be given to an international agency governed by an international board. The board will be composed of cultural, religious, spiritual, social justice and environmental activist leaders who have a proven history of commitment to peace, social justice and the elimination of poverty. This agency will hire the "subject matter experts:" economists, sociologists, environmentalists, lawyers, public healthcare activists, educational reform activists, and other professional experts. These experts must share a strong commitment to empowerment of local people, social justice, peace, and respect for local cultural and religious traditions. This team will develop plans to present to the international board.

C. The international board will work with national boards, similarly composed of cultural, religious, spiritual, NGO [what does this stand for?]  and local social justice and environmental activist leaders. These board members will develop national plans for submittal to the international board for approval and funding.

D. All previously negotiated international trade agreements shaped by the advanced industrial societies will be re-conceptualized and amended. Changes to these agreements will ensure that they work in the best interests of underdeveloped countries, and do not serve only the multinational corporations or the interests of the developed world. For example, new trade agreements will promote local farmers throughout the world, rather than providing special benefits for the farmers of the European Union and the United States. The new agreements will NOT assist the corporate farming model of the West at the expense of small family farms. Similarly, such agreements will favor the needs of the global environment and the rights of workers to organize and secure a living wage in the industries of developed and emerging societies.

E. All plans approved by the board must be rigorously screened to ensure that they meet the following criteria: 1) they are environmentally sound and enhance sustainability; 2) they value "growth" only as long as the growth is in alignment with the environmental needs of the planet and of the local area, and is in alignment with a philosophy of love, generosity, kindness, compassion, and nonviolence; and 3) they enhance the ability of people to value each other and to support diversity, generosity, and cooperation.

F. All parts of this plan must be delivered in a spirit of generosity, but also in a spirit of humility and repentance. Humility is essential because the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan recognizes that the West's superior economic status does not imply a higher level of consciousness or moral worth. Repentance is vital because we deeply regret the destruction and impoverishment that advanced industrial societies have caused in countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and much of Africa and Central and South America.

Unfortunately, the values of materialism and selfishness dominated the cultures of Western countries over the past thousand years. This led to destruction of human life through wars and through colonial and imperial economic and political arrangements. Of course, having more material goods has a good side-it greatly reduces some of the suffering and discomfort in daily life. It also opens up huge amount of knowledge through scientific endeavor. This knowledge has the potential for improving the wellbeing of everyone on the planet and the planet itself.

We also recognize that the actual use of science and technology has often served to make mass murder more frequent and more effective. It has fostered production methods that have destroyed the environment and threatened the survival of the planet. It has also enriched the lives of some while impoverishing the lives of many. Therefore, the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan insists on humility.

Humility recognizes that many economically impoverished countries are often impoverished because of policies imposed on them by advanced industrial countries and their trade agreements.  These impoverished nations are nevertheless homes to flourishing spiritual and ethical wisdom that is so often absent in advanced industrial societies. However, we must resist the tendency to view these  "oppressed" peoples as wiser or more virtuous than others. This is a mistake that led to many failures of social change movements of the past.

G. An International Generosity Corps (ICG) will be recruited from around the world. Volunteers will dedicate two years of their lives to help implement the Global Marshall Plan. To attract people at a variety of levels of expertise and experience, the ICG would pay its volunteers the average wage received by people with a similar level of competence and experience in their homeland. However, volunteers could not receive more than three times the average income of all people in their home country. Only those who demonstrated the following qualities would be admitted to the training program for the IGC: a high level of humility, a commitment to social justice, non-violence, and peace, and a philosophy of generosity.

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George Marshall was Secretary of State when he convinced the U.S. to launch a plan to rebuild Europe after the Second World War. This was a plan that was widely credited with stimulating European economies so they became successful. And eventually they were able to stand on their own without direct aid from the U.S. The Marshall Plan stands as a reminder that government financed plans, if run with intelligence and sensitivity, can be successful in alleviating suffering and stimulating economic well-being.

We are aware that a subtext of the older Marshall Plan was to advance American economic domination and overcome the potential socialist leanings of many in post- WWII Europe. However, we do not share those goals, so we are not using the term, "Marshall Plan," for that reason. In fact, we would gladly endorse another name for the Plan if it actually conveyed as much of the substance and hooked into the positive feelings generated by Global Marshall Plan, but we do not know of such a name.

 
We fully support the programs of the Millinnium Goals and the One Campaign to reduce or eliminate the debt that third world countries contnue to owe to Western banks. We fully support the campaingn of dozens of anti-poverty gorups like OxFam and Bread for the World and Sojourners and the work of the Catholic Relief servicesa and the Jewish Fund for Justice and all other such programs that do not seek to link their plans to attempts to turn recipients into members of a partiuclar religiom. HOWEVER, we believe that it is only articulating and fighting for a larger visiion of the TOTAL elimianton of global poverty, homelessness, hunger,inadequate education, inadequate healthcare and a comprehensive repair of the global environment tht we can actually excite people enouogh with that vision to motivate them to engage in the difficult in-fighting inside the political arena that may lead to change. We urge all the groups concerned with ending world hunger to endorse and embrace the Global and Domestic Marshall Plan for that reason. Given the rought and tumble of Western poitics, it may very well be that it is only through mobilizing people for this seemingly utopinan goal that the established elites of power and wealth will feel enough pressure to come though with support for what will then seem to be more "moderate" goal so of the Millienium and One Campaign ideas or the other projects supported by Bread for the World, Oxfam, etc.  So embracing and popularizing the notion of the Global and Domestic Marshall Plan may be precisely the best strategy to accomplish the more moderate goals.

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There has never been a serious attempt to eliminate poverty in the US or around the world. Rather, poverty programs from the New Deal to the One Campaign have focused on reducing the level of poverty and freeing people from some of the worst impacts of the "free market." They have done so by providing social supports or by reducing or forgiving some elements of debt.

While these programs have reduced some of the worst aspects of material suffering, they have never been funded at a level that could create the economic infrastructure necessary to lift the majority of the world's poor to economic wellbeing.

These plans did not succeed in doing what they actually never set out to do. As a result, people paying taxes to these programs saw their taxes rise year after year, without a corresponding end to poverty. This generated a great deal of frustration because people felt that their tax monies were being sunk into a bottomless pit. And they were not wrong, because the programs they funded never sought to eliminate poverty, but only to buffer its worst impacts.

Moreover all programs have been delivered in the form of "objective caring" (namely, money), rather than subjective caring. In other words, the benefits have been delivered without any attempt to create actual caring bonds between human beings. They have been delivered without placing any importance on the value of generosity and caring as a motivation for the people who deliver the benefits. Anyone who on the receiving end of these programs can report on the insensitive and often boorish ways that domestic welfare or foreign aid has been delivered. In the absence of any real caring, some recipients have exploited the system, further aggravating the frustrations of taxpayers.

0To remedy this problem, the governing bodies must develop a New Bottom Line for delivering aid. This New Bottom Line involves fostering an ethos of solidarity, central to the kinds of programs the governing bodies will fund, the way the programs will be administered, and the hiring, retention and promotion of people who will work for the programs.

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In the past, programs often ended up providing money to global multinationals, which rarely helped the poor. Sometimes the money helped develop a small but growing middle class, but that group often identified with the interests of the rich and ignored the needs of the poor.

Our program will explicitly seek to avoid this dynamic by funding infrastructure  for the poor and homeless, and for rural farmers and rural business. The infrastructure will include schools, hospitals, energy sources, and homes.

One major difference between the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan and other versions is that we insist that funding decisions NOT be made, by governmental authorities,  corporate interests, or the "free marketplace." Rather, we require that decisions are made by a board or each country composed of a wide variety of experts: cultural and religious/spiritual figures, social change activists, environmentalists, NGOs [what does this stand for?], and grass roots activists.

The members of each board will have an explicit mandate to direct help to the wellbeing of the poor and the transformation of their condition. The plan rejects the "trickle down "theory that says: the best way to serve the poor is to serve the interests of the powerful or the corporations, which in turn will allow some of their profits to trickle down to the rest of the society.

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We know that many countries in the world are governed by elites that are dictatorial or do not care about the wellbeing of their poorest citizens. They would not be willing to have agencies of the Global Marshall Plan work independently of their governments. They would attempt to siphon off the funds to their allies. They would use language like "democratic control by our own society" to justify the undemocratic outcome of how the funds are used. Local government would subvert or replace an independent local board of spiritual leaders, cultural leaders, and democratic local leaders.

We do not envision a need to start the Global Marshall Plan by funding projects in every country in the world. This is not a program that has to spend all its money right away to prove it has not "failed." Instead, we will start with those countries where the governments really are well intentioned and not corrupt. The success of those programs will become an incentive for other countries to join in whole-heartedly with our Plan.  If we live up to our mission of acting out of a spirit of generosity and caring for others, we will play a major role in breaking through the culture of "me-first-ism" that dominates the world.

Today, people think in terms of getting as much for themselves as possible, because they believe that is what everyone else is doing. The collective impact of that behavior is a world being destroyed by selfishness and materialism.

But most human beings want to live in a very different world. They want a world that values generosity, mutual recognition between human beings, real love and caring, gratitude, mutual forgiveness and open-heartedness, awe and wonder, and social responsibility. But they don't believe it's possible. And their cynical pessimism about what is possible leads them to believe that the only "rational" behavior is to follow the logic of the capitalist marketplace and its not-so-hidden message, "Get as much for yourself as possible, as quickly as you can!"

Corrupt governments are often led by people infused with this kind of reasoning. They don't see themselves as "stealing," so much as being "rational." They believe that it's logical to help your friends and those who will eventually help you, and ignore the interests of anyone else, since they can't do anything for you anyway.

The Strategy of Generosity behind the Global Marshall Plan has the capacity to challenge this way of thinking and being in the world. As people begin to perceive the Global Marshall Plan as a genuine act of generosity, the Plan will have major ripple effects throughout the world. This will make it easier to challenge selfishness in government. It will also make it easier to reach powerful people who are honest enough to make the Global Marshall Plan a plausible partner for developing their own country.

Until that happens, we will not work with those governments, but instead work through NGOs [what does this stand for?] that can directly connect with the people who need the aid. What if the NGOs are corrupt? We won't work with any country's NGOs until we are assured that both the aid and the message of generosity and caring will truly reach the poor and empower them. Until then, the Global Marshall Plan programs will function only in countries where there is a reasonable chance of the programs doing the tasks they set out to do.

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We will work with micro-financing projects that economically empower people to start very small entrepreneurial enterprises. We will also work with small and medium size businesses that demonstrate how the funds they receive will translate into ongoing employment for poor people. We will also fund new forms of work, including those that involve collective living, collective sharing of finances, community control of energy and utilities, and larger economic ventures like the production of steel, and mass transportation.

The goal of this program is to put in place housing, food supplies, ecological understanding, skills training, and infrastructure through the IGC, By the end of the twenty-year period, the requisites of an economy should be in place so that the local people have enough expertise to continue to fund and implement the IGC.

We may also need to fund the creation of socially responsible corporations that follow the New Bottom Line and provide employment for people in a given society or trans-nationally. These corporations would produce products that are actually needed, and would operate according to ecologically sustainable policies that foster caring and generosity among employees and community members. Such corporations would be set up with boards of directors that represent the investors, the workers, and members of the local communities.

We recognize that in a global capitalist system, any corporations functioning under "the New Bottom Line," will be at a disadvantage. Why? Because they will be unable to use the ruthless techniques of global capital, such as threatening to move or close the plant if workers strike for reasonable wages, producing goods that are profitable but environmentally destructive, or ignoring the needs of the communities where they operate.

While part of this plan requires the Global Marshall Plan to continue to support these GMP-sponsored corporations, we know that this disadvantage will continue even after the Global Marshall Plan no longer functions. For that reason, the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan will simultaneously fund and support movements seeking constitutional changes in all the countries of the planet, whether or not they are part of the Global Marshall Plan. These changes would establish the Social Responsibility clause for all large corporations. The clause would require the corporations to prove to a jury of ordinary citizens, a satisfactory level of social responsibility, including fostering the values of the New Bottom Line, to maintain their charters.

This is not intended to act as first aid for capitalism. We will work with a variety of different economic systems to foster public sector economic growth, economic programs rooted in or supervised by the public sector, and mixed public-private cooperation. The NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan is neutral about describing what we want as "capitalist, " socialist," or any other name. However, we are not neutral about the kind of decision-making we want to foster: one that gives priority to efforts to replace an ethos of selfishness and materialism with an ethos of generosity and caring for others.

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We believe that a certain level of economic development is necessary to provide environmental justice, which is the prerequisite for environmental sanity. As long as we live in a world where millions of people die each year of malnutrition or diseases that could have been cured by fairer distribution of the world's health resources, it's unrealistic to believe that people in the underdeveloped world will focus on preserving the world's resources and environment. Instead, they use those resources in whatever way they can to meet with their immediate survival needs.

For example, people will continue to cut down the Amazon forests to plant grass to sustain cattle that will be bought by middle class city dwellers at prices that make it possible for the poor to buy enough food to avoid starving to death.  Unless the rest of us help the poor find other ways to provide enough food and sustenance for their families, environmental destruction will continue.

This means that a fairer distribution of the world's resources and material wellbeing is necessary to begin the process of involving everyone in the highest priority of the 21st century: saving the planet from environmental destruction.

We do not accept the notion that "first we raise the standard of living of the world and later we worry about the environment." There is no "later" -- saving the environment is an immediate and global priority and The Global Marshall Plan must work in tandem with that priority.

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These are all the same problem.

Illegal immigration would be dramatically reduced if the millions of people seeking work in the U.S. were able to find comparable employment in their home countries. If people have a reasonable standard of living in their home countries, they will not risk death or imprisonment to work in another country.

As to domestic poverty, the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan states that part of its focus must be to wipe out domestic poverty, as well as international poverty.

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This will function as the Global Marshall Plan's hands-on division for volunteers. These volunteers will dedicate a part of their lives to helping repair the damage done to the world by various episodes of Western colonialism and imperialism. The International Generosity Corps (IGC) will be empowered to work out private arrangements to encourage needed personnel for short-term stints in the underdeveloped world, or short-term education trips to share specific skills, However, the normal commitment will be a two-year period during which time, each volunteer will learn the language and culture, and then spend time teaching his or her skills to others in poor communities around the world. Or volunteers may simply work on projects funded by the Global Marshall Plan.

The Global Marshall Plan will pay for IGC members' food, lodging, and necessary equipment. The Plan will also pay the volunteers a partial salary based on their income lost by volunteering in the program. This salary will be paid to their families or to a fund that they can access AFTER they complete the terms of their service.

IGC members will also participate in a global communication project in which they report on what they are actually doing "on the ground" in the recipient countries. The goal of this project is to reassure the people who are funding the Global Marshall Plan by showing them what is being done with their monies, as well as fostering more generosity as people recognize its effects.

Volunteers will be carefully screened to ensure that we are not only getting the most technically efficient, but also those who are genuinely caring, loving, generous, and gentle people whose very beings convey the notion that the people of the world care about each other and want to care for each other. These qualities are important because IGC members will be perceived as representatives of the international good will extended to those in need around the world.

Volunteers will receive supervision by local and international spiritual/religious leaders, psychotherapists, and teachers, as well as by experts in the fields that the volunteers are offering services. Being in the International Generosity Corps will provide opportunities to meet with other volunteers and receive teaching and training in an on-going manner. It will also provide emotional and spiritual supervision and support, along with opportunities to make new friends, and form relationships with people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.

During the last three months of service in the IGC, volunteers will share what they have learned with fellow citizens in their country of origin. This includes suggesting changes that their fell citizens might make in their home country.

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Before the twenty years of full-scale funding there will be a 5-year start up period when detailed plans will be developed in each participating country (both donors and recipients). These plans will be submitted to the international board. During this period, the phase-in plans will be fully worked out.

We will start with countries that are most open to this kind of generosity. The cost during this initial period will be considerably less than the cost once the program gets fully off the ground with countries in need. Of course, many of those countries will have less resistance at this point because they understand that the donor countries are giving them support, not out of a desire to exercise control or domination, but out of genuine generosity.

In its fullest and most-likely-to-succeed version, this program will cost two trillion dollars a year, once all the G8 countries are involved in financially supporting it. We estimate that the world will save more than that amount from decreases in military spending

We propose that the cost be paid by a progressive Generosity Tax that takes a higher percentage of income from the rich, and less from the poor, along with a tax on international financial transactions. Some economists estimate that a 1% tax on international financial transactions would yield enough monies to fund this project for its first ten years!

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We plan to work collaboratively with every organization or group that wants to move toward a Global Marshall Plan, even when we have significant differences with other groups. As long as those groups do not advocate extremist or anti-American rhetoric, we will work with them. We will join coalitions and work to make them successful. At the same time, we will keep the autonomy of the NSP intact, and continue to promote the NSP version, to the extent that it will help develop greater support for the Global Marshall Plan idea.

This means we will have a two track approach: 1) support and work with larger coalitions promoting the Global Marshall Plan, and 2) support our own activities and vision around the NSP version, educate people about our version, and build campaigns at specific historical moments to support The New Bottom Line and the Strategy of Generosity.

Some spiritual progressives in Europe have told us that their Global Marshall Plan discourse is so riddled with political language, that it's almost useless. They report that the social democratic reformist language and economistic social democratic political style makes it difficult to build mass support for the Plan.

We still intend to use the Global Marshall Plan language, but will infuse it with a deep spiritual vision, one that emphasizes: 1) the human desire to be needed, 2) the importance of developing a sense of awe, wonder and radical amazement at the incredible grandeur and mystery of the universe, 3) the need for transcendent meaning and purpose to life, and 4) the need for love and human connection that cannot be fulfilled by buying more things.

Fostering love and generosity, caring for others, ecological sensitivity, and ethical aliveness are equally part of our goals. Therefore, we will not abandon our NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan. We will modify it only in ways that make it clearer, more workable, and more in accord with our fundamental goals of building a global campaign for the New Bottom Line.

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No. The plan has enough details to allow people to relate to it. It will need far more details once there is a majority support for the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan. But for the moment, we have enough of a concept to start building public support.

However, we still need advice, carefully worked on elaborations, models, financing proposals, and refinements. We also need initial ideas about who should be on the international governing body. Yes, we know that it should include the Dalai Lama, former President Jimmy Carter, and Nelson Mandela. But we also need less famous people who meet our criteria.- Who do you think they should be and why do you think they should be on the board? We'd like to know who are you and how do we get in touch with you and the people you recommend.

Your suggestions, carefully thought out, are very welcome. If you'd like to be part of the NSP activist Global Marshall Plan conference call, send your email address to: rabbilerner@tikkun.org.

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[We should probably pull out this information and give it its own Web Page called, "Help the Plan"]

We need lots of people and lots of funding. So here's how you can help:

§         We need people who are willing to write letters to the media. policy people, and Congressional people.

§         We need people, who are willing to pass out leaflets or demonstrate on behalf of the NSP version of the Global Marshall Plan.

Note: We also have no reluctance about insisting that this is a spiritual program whose center is the Strategy of Generosity. So before you email us, please read all the relevant materials at www.spiritualprogressives.org.

§         Most immediately we need funds to start the project, to hire organizers, to print materials, and to develop longer and more detailed brochures. If you have financial contacts, please help us.

§         If you know how to approach organizations for funding, please identify the organizations you'd like to contact (particularly foundations and corporate giving sources).

§         If you know how to write the grant proposal, please do so, but don't submit it before clearing it with us.

§         If you have a contact on the board of a foundation or corporation, approach them with these ideas, and if they are interested, let us know the next steps.

§         Or if you'd like to run a local fund-raising event for the Global Marshall Plan, please do so and send the tax-deductible contributions to us at the NSP so we can use it to help hire organizers.

§         If you have other relevant skills, let us know. For example, maybe you can organize a large event in your area to promote the Global Marshall Plan, but need one of us to come there and speak. Or maybe you can film a weekly YouTube appearance for Rabbi Lerner or Nichola Torbett. Perhaps you can get us invited to a large conference where we'd have plenty of time to present these ideas. Or maybe you'd like to volunteer time at our Berkeley California office, or make outreach calls or do data entry from your home --  we could use your assistance. If you have other ideas about how you could help us, please let us know.

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It seems this could be a problem because there is such strong opposition to any such plans, as well as opposition to the use of the government to help promote large-scale programs of social engineering.

Opposition to large-scale government programs is often rational. Many of those programs have been implemented from the standpoint of advancing the interests of the ruling elites, rather than from the standpoint of exercising genuine generosity toward others. If that were the way our program came into prominence, we'd oppose it too!

We envision a mass movement building around the Network of Spiritual Progressives, which endorses the New Bottom Line and its commitment to love and kindness, generosity and caring, and the Spiritual Covenant with America. The Global Marshall Plan is part of plank number 7 of the Spiritual Covenant. This is the plank that defines generosity as the best path to homeland security and the best foreign policy. Why? Because we recognize that our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of everyone alive on the planet, as well as on the wellbeing of the planet itself.

Our strategy is to build popular support for the idea of generosity as an alternative to militarist or economic and diplomatic domination of the countries of the world.

Here are some of the steps:

§         Local NSP activists seek endorsement and involvement of clergy and their congregations. They also seek out union leaders, political party activists and candidates, elected officials, media columnists and reporters, NGOs and their activists, and civic groups such as the Rotary Clubs. Individuals should also be encouraged to sign the endorsement of the NSP version of the GMP on our website www.spiritualprogressives.org

§         Local NSP activists lead a campaign to get endorsement of the Global Marshall Plan by local city councils, state legislatures, and the U.S. Congress, or to put the Global Marshall Plan endorsement on local or state ballots.

§         Global Marshall Plan enthusiasts start to run for office on the platform of the Spiritual Covenant, with special emphasis on the Global Marshall Plan. Many get elected even though they have little money backing them. Others run as delegates to the state and national conventions of their political parties. By running and being at those conventions, they use every possible opportunity to spread our Global Marshall Plan brochures and to talk about the substance of the ideas.

§         We seek to create a Network of Spiritual Progressives in every political party, so we can advance the ideas of a Global Marshall Plan and the rest of the Spiritual Covenant with America. To do this, you can join the political party that most appeals to you. Start going to meetings and talking about the New Bottom Line and the Spiritual Covenant, emphasizing the need for a spiritual progressive perspective and for the Strategy of Generosity and the Global Marshall Plan.

§         Build relationships with those who seem interested in these ideas. These are people who share some of our spiritual progressive ideals, even if they are nervous about expressing them publicly. They may even shy away from acknowledging to themselves and their closest friends that they have a strong idealistic, spiritual and ethical consciousness. Invite them to NSP events, including those on the Generosity Strategy to end the war in Iraq and build a different kind of world. Then, the next time you want to bring up the topic of endorsing the GMP in the party, ask for their support.

§         Eventually, political parties will endorse the idea and presidential candidates will compete to see who is most dedicated to generosity. When one of these candidates wins the election, they will use their mandate to mobilize national support and push the Global Marshall Plan through the Congress. In the meantime, Congress will have created committees to explore the version of the Global Marshall Plan they want to endorse. The members of the committees will have already made contact with similar campaigns in other advanced industrial societies to further the thinking, planning, and forms of legislation necessary to make the plans more detailed.

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Yes. Embody generosity and talk about it!

Here are a few ideas. Please send us yours!

At your local NSP meeting, demonstrate there is no shortage of love, caring, kindness and generosity toward others. Try the following:

§         Make it a practice to start every meeting by giving a hug to everyone who is receptive and does not feel invaded by the practice. Also, get everyone in a circle, have them face each other's backs, and have each person give a 5-minute neck and shoulder massage to the person in front of them (except for people who are unwilling to do this). Then, go around and have every person "check in" with a one-minute report on where they are in their lives this week, what challenges they face, and have them share an experience where they acted generously, or wished they had.

§         At the end of each meeting, have each person put forward a request for prayer or support from the others in the group for some positive outcome in their lives.

§         Actively collect lists of peoples' needs of each person, as well as skills or time that they would be willing to offer to other members of the chapter (including those who signed up originally but are no longer coming).

§         Simultaneously, ask each person to volunteer time to others in the group to a) teach a skill or, b) offer a service. These services might include fixing a toilet, helping someone shovel snow or paint a house, providing childcare for several hours, or teaching someone a skill such as sewing, or using the computer, or playing an instrument. The sky's the limit!

Outside of your NSP meetings, there are other ways to embody generosity:

§         Apart from the formal NSP monthly meeting, create a Generosity night. Have a delicious vegetarian potluck, where everyone shows their generosity by putting energy into what they bring to share, and then talk about that. During Generosity night, focus on what you can do individually or as part of the NSP, to embody more generosity in your lives and in your NSP chapter. Make sure your ideas do not undermine the outreach and political action component of the NSP, or deflect attention away from spreading support for the Global Marshall Plan.

§         Create an NSP-sponsored interfaith Generosity event several times a year. For example, gather together all the religious, civic, and NGO institutions in your city (or part of your city). During the event, provide food for the hungry or shelter for the homeless. Ask each religious community to host an event during one of its "generosity-focused" holidays. Ask them to explain how generosity is understood in that tradition and how it's "made real," as well as symbolized, in the stories and practices of that religion.

§         Practice Generosity of Sirit daily. For example, do something you normally wouldn't want to do, that would greatly please a friend, lover, spouse, or family member. Do it without calling attention to yourself or demanding reward or acknowledgment. Just do it as an act of loving generosity. Pay attention to how this feels.

§         Send us your thoughts and ideas and we'll share them on our website at www.spiritualprogressives.org (send them to: rabbilerner@tikkun.org).

§         Give generously to the Network of Spiritual Progressives (tax-deductible) so we can more effectively spread these ideas. Donate on line at www.spiritualprogressives.org or contact our office at 510 644 1200 (Pacific Time).

Whatever part of this you adopt, terrific. Many blessings for all that you can and will do to promote the Generosity approach!

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--Written by Rabbi Michael Lerner, edited by Martha Roden