AND BEAUTY FOR ALL – Restoring America’s landscape, revitalizing its communities and bridging the urban/rural divide

Note to those outside the US:  This is a new American campaign but one that might be duplicated in many other countries.  As a frequent traveler in Europe, I have drawn inspiration from the beauty of its cities, villages and countryside, with greater density and less sprawl, more green space, more pedestrian-friendly design, excellent rail transport, separate bike paths (in the Netherlands, Denmark…), etc.  We have much to learn from you.  So while the language here is targeted to Americans, please feel free to adopt it to your own needs.

As a participant in SCORAI, I believe that beautiful surroundings and graceful public space as well as meaningful activities in making our surroundings more beautiful can reduce the need and desire for consumerism and its addictive qualities. I hope that additional research will confirm this—it certainly confirms the positive impact of nature on health and happiness.

I hope to work with communities, organizations, schools, colleges and universities to promote this concept.

Enjoy!

John de Graaf

Seattle, Washington, USA

News

 

…AND BEAUTY FOR ALL:

Restoring America’s landscape, revitalizing its communities and bridging the urban/rural divide

–a proposal for an organization

MISSION

We are troubled by the rancor and polarization in our country and seek to bridge and heal the painful divide between urban and rural Americans.

Doug Tompkins, the founder of the clothing company, Esprit, once said that “If anything can save the world, I’d put my money on beauty.” We concur.

We believe people flourish in beautiful surroundings and that all Americans have a right to live, work and play in beautiful places. We recognize that beauty is an essential part of the good life, a natural aspect of the “pursuit of happiness,” and a universal human need.

We believe all Americans appreciate beauty, regardless of their political views, origin, economic status or creed, and that working to restore beautiful landscapes and create beautiful places is a non-partisan cause that can bring us together and build community in polarizing times. In a rapidly-growing America and more stressful America, we also need more space for healthy recreation and leisure.

We believe that all Americans are inspired by the majesty of our national parks and the beauty of well-tended countryside, wild places, clear lakes and streams, graceful buildings and inviting public spaces. We are uninspired and unhappy among denuded landscapes, polluted waters, scarred mountainsides, littered streets, strip malls and commercial clutter, derelict buildings and cold uniform living spaces like the bland gray apartments of the Soviet era or the failed grim housing projects in our own cities.

We honor those who have democratized our grandest natural wonders and passed on to us a legacy of beautiful landscapes and green spaces to work and play in as well as those who build farms and grow food in formerly urban wastelands. We recognize the inequalities still inherent in our access to beauty and seek to extend opportunities to experience beauty to all who share this country.

We worry that in the quest for wealth and growth we may overlook the human need for beauty. We seek to preserve the beauty that still exists and restore that which has been lost. We believe America’s beauty must be won and protected by every generation.

We commit ourselves to passing on a more beautiful America to our children and theirs and we seek a renewed stirring of love for our land.

THE CONCEPT

We wish to build a new organization dedicated to bringing beauty to all Americans.

We envision local chapters in every community.

We seek to reach all forms of media with our message and we envision a robust social media presence.

We seek to inspire young activists. and to find volunteers among the baby boomer “elders,” who have not forgotten the quality of life dreams of the 60s and wish to build on the legacy they achieved at that time.

We aim to unite city and country, conservatives and liberals, people of all faiths, races and backgrounds, who love the beauty of our land and wish to restore and preserve it.

With Aldo Leopold, we discern that “bread and beauty grow best together.” Thus, we seek both to restore landscapes and local economies and to create meaningful jobs for many who are currently unemployed or underemployed.

We wish to rebuild community, trust and respectful policy discourse.

Our cause is as moral as it is practical. We reject the cynical notion that public institutions and public officials are hopelessly inefficient and corrupt and seek to re-energize democracy and idealism.

We seek to build on a new upsurge of local interest in whole foods, sustainable agriculture, land stewardship, small businesses and cooperatives, physical and mental health, meaningful work and leisure and desires for community and empathy. We understand that all over America new solutions are being tested and found effective. Our hope is to create awareness of these “best practices” and help bring them to scale.

We seek to counter the increasing congestion in our cities, the decay in our countryside, the monopolization of enterprises and power, and the treatment of our land as a commodity instead of our common legacy.

We envision a new America that stands again as a beacon to all people.

We seek to revitalize education so that all Americans appreciate the value of natural beauty, conservation and stewardship, and we seek to honor the histories and struggles of those who passed on to us what remains of our magnificent heritage.

We welcome all who share the dream of a beautiful and fair America.

In a time of partisan anger and division, we believe that beauty can heal our wounds.

We call for input and feedback from all who share our basic goal.

We believe that love for America means love for our land and our communities.

BACKGROUND

Half a century ago, during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, America made a bi-partisan national commitment to natural beauty and conservation. From a series of task forces to a cabinet-level bureau and White House conferences on Natural Beauty and on Youth for Conservation and Natural Beauty, we set forth to reduce pollution, save wildlands and wild rivers, banish litter, beautify our cities and countryside and restore broken landscapes.

In speech after speech, President Johnson warned us against burying our landscape under unbridled growth and urged us to focus on more noble goals than endless economic expansion.

Led by the president’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson, we pledged to beautify America. We established beautification committees in many states and cities, and brought together diverse Americans of multiple professions to use their skills to make our country more beautiful. We understood that such change would require both the public and private sector to succeed.

We passed more conservation legislation than ever before in our history, including protection for Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers. We banished billboards and auto junkyards from our interstate system and reduced their presence on other thoroughfares. We passed landmark clean air and water legislation. We stood for bold new ideas like burying powerlines to increase the aesthetic values in our cities.

We revitalized our nation’s capital, long an embarrassment for foreign visitors, beginning with the poorest sections of the city.

We committed ourselves to increasing parklands and green space. We launched a national program of bikeways and pathways connecting our cities and offering new recreational opportunities for all.

We called for an educational commitment to understand ecology and the necessity of conservation.

We called for shifting agricultural subsidies to support small and sustainable farming operations.

Stirred by such commitments and by an upsurge of new organizations like the Sierra Club (with its stunning coffee-table volumes celebrating the American earth), millions of us, from Scout troops and garden clubs to architects and wildlife managers, from artists and musicians to ordinary citizens of all varieties, were drawn by the dream of beauty and found ways to do our part.

Exactly 50 years ago, President Johnson declared 1967, “The Year of Youth for Natural Beauty and Conservation,” and youth responded, planting millions of trees, cleaning up tons of waste and, eventually, organizing the great Earth Day event in 1970, when 20 million Americans brought awareness of environmental degradation and demanded a new era of protection.

It was a time of optimism, when we believed in our government and in each other, when we truly believed that progress in quality of life and spiritual growth need not be sacrificed to utilitarian economic decisions and when, in near unanimous Congressional votes, we moved past partisanship to stewardship.

We didn’t get all we sought and the Vietnam War intervened to reduce both our trust in government and the resources we could commit to beautify our land. Indeed, it obscured the progress we did make and were making. But we started. Now is the time to build on that legacy and complete the mission.

Though some say we must learn history to prevent it from repeating itself, this is the history we learn so we can repeat it and extend its impact. Half a century after those noble efforts, let us recommit to making America beautiful for all.

GOALS

We advocate:

A CPR campaign for the Earth—

–Conservation of soil, water, biodiversity, wildlife

–Preservation of natural areas, greenspace, parks, wildness

–Restoration of natural landscapes, soil, fisheries

Revitalized rural communities and small farms

Sustainable agriculture, including large urban farms

Cooperative economic development and support for small businesses

Human-friendly urban and suburban redesign

Reduction of sprawl and traffic

Rural resettlement to reverse the rush to cities and the hollowing out of our small towns

Training young people to be sustainable, small-scale farmers and gardeners

National service in restoration and conservation, including a large-scale campaign to restore the mountaintops of Appalachia

Public sector jobs in restoration and conservation and incentives for private action.

Partnerships with land grant universities and institutes, and new research centers to support the program

A focus on re-localization

A new commitment to a national rails-to-trails system

Additional hike- and bikeways with affordable campgrounds

Improving the beauty of our cities by burying powerlines underground

De-emphasis of strip mall development and outdoor advertising

Support for artists to help beautify urban areas and small towns

A priority for our poorest and least-served communities

Making “America the Beautiful” our National Anthem

A trans-partisan and respectful dialogue to find common solutions

A commitment to diversity in leadership and decision-making

 

RELEVANT QUOTES

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise…Bread and beauty grow best together. Aldo Leopold

It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is! David Brower

Beauty is truth and truth beauty. John Keats

No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening – still all is Beauty!  We all need beauty as well as bread. John Muir

In such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty. Phil Ochs

Beauty is the face of truth. Rabindranath Tagore

Beauty before me. Beauty behind me. Beauty above me. Beauty below me. In beauty, may I walk. Navajo prayer

Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity. Oscar Wilde

Beauty is God’s handwriting. Ralph Waldo Emerson

How little, from the resources unrenewable by Man, cost the things of greatest value—wild beauty, peace, health and love, music and all the testaments of spirit! Nancy Newhall and Ansel Adams

Whatever we have perceived to be in the slightest degree beautiful is of infinitely more value to us than what we have only discovered to be useful and to serve our purpose…What’s the use of a house without a tolerable planet to put it on? Henry David Thoreau

There is in the human mind an almost inseparable connection between the beautiful and the good…Those whose days are all consumed in the low pursuits of avarice, or the gaudy frivolities of fashion, unobservant of nature’s loveliness, are unconscious of the harmony of creation. Thomas Cole

Those who would not live without beauty must join in a tireless effort to bring it into being. President Lyndon Johnson

Beauty feeds a different kind of hunger…Beauty is not optional, but a strategy for survival…Finding beauty in a broken world is acknowledging that beauty leads us to our deepest and highest selves. It inspires us. We have an innate desire for grace. Terry Tempest Williams

It’s the basis of art. It’s the basis of romance. It’s the basis of becoming human. We can’t lose that! Park ranger Shelton Johnson

North Cascades National Park

AND BEAUTY FOR ALL DAY—October 2

We plan to celebrate the first AND BEAUTY FOR ALL DAY on October 2, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the so-called “Conservation Grand Slam,” when President Johnson signed the Redwoods National Park Act, the North Cascades National Park Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Bill and the National Scenic Trails Act. We envision celebrations of this day in dozens of cities, towns and campuses. To get involved please write John de Graaf at: jodg@comcast.net