What’s The Big Idea? Colorado’s movers and shakers have plenty


It's a new year, with new leadership in Washington, and lots of big ideas. Those forward-thinking plans don’t always originate inside the Beltway. Most truly progressive plans come from creative people all around the globe, those who can synthesize ideas, communicate them effectively, and energize others. And the best plans come not from those who think outside the box, but rather from thinkers who recognize that there isn’t a box at all.

In Colorado, we have more than our share. We've chosen to call them “forward thinkers,” and we've had the privilege of profiling seven of them for you in this issue. Some of our forward thinkers you've heard of; others, maybe not. The common thread: they're all thinking about the big issues that will define our future--energy, health, politics, media and arts, civil and human rights, and peace at all levels. Some of these issues may define if we even have a future.

To find these folks, Nexus asked experts in their fields to tell us who they admire, and why. From the four dozen names that surfaced, we chose those who we thought Nexus readers would most like to hear about: people with an alternative viewpoint, an eye on the seventh generation, and a cross-disciplinary, holistic mindset. Now we'd like to hear from you, too; who do you think the forward thinkers are? We'll be keeping a file and report back what we learn. Meanwhile, enjoy this inspiring roundup.

Dreams into actions
Ashara Ekundayo: educator, businesswoman, indie arts evangelist, media activist

Ashara Ekundayo will talk plenty about "Cafe Nuba," Denver's premier monthly spoken-word and music showcase rooted in black cultural traditions and held in the historic Five Points neighborhood. She launched it ten years ago, and is justifiably proud of it (and the KGNU radio segment of the same name). But there is more on her mind than that.

If you probe deeper, you might learn about the Pan African Arts Society—the non-profit organization for social change that she founded in 1999,: and one of its many projects, the Pan African Film Festival, a week of international black film, workshops, panels and more in April, or her weekly Freespeech TV, on which Ekundayo interviews peace and social justice activists. Whatever the topic, her spoken words will come out fast, funny, and sometimes furious.

The key word defining Ekundayo is multi, as in multi-cultural, multi-tasking, multi-faceted arts personality. She's a curator and a catalyst, a self-proclaimed cultural Jedi within the urban arts scene. And she knows how to get things done.

Often she does it by helping other "creatives" transform their dreams into actions. She has a marketing consulting business, BluBlak Media. With it, she develops cultural festivals and conferences, produces guerrilla-marketing plans, executes new media campaigns, or does whatever else it takes. It's about getting the word out, especially the words of people who may have felt voiceless before.

“I love being an aware African woman who understands that many things we love about U.S. culture are rooted in African-American creativity: hip-hop culture, jazz, and soulfood. I'm a cultural worker cultivating an identity beyond the ‘isms’ society puts us in. I'm working through, and with, spirit.”

Everyone’s revolution
Amory Lovins: energy scientist, chairman of Rocky Mountain Institute, MacArthur fellow, and one of the three creators of the concept of “natural capitalism”

Four decades ago, Amory Lovins saw an energy crisis building. As a young adult, long before the 1973 oil embargo that was the wake-up call to far-sighted folk, he realized that energy was perhaps the sternest delimiter of society. So he became an energy scientist, but on his own terms. After a decade spent in and out of academia, Lovins and his then-wife Hunter Lovins opened their own think-and-do tank 26 years ago, the Rocky Mountain Institute.

The Institute, based in Snowmass, focuses on what he calls “radical energy and energy efficiency.” Technologies are conceived there, piloted there, and promoted from there. He's motivated by the end use/least cost question: it doesn't matter to the consumer where electricity comes from; they just want the lights to go on when they flip the switch at the lowest cost, and without trammeling the globe.

“Natural capitalism” sums it up: instead of virtually limitless natural resources, “natural capital,”--the resources and ecological systems that sustain life—are in decline and must be managed from a scarcity viewpoint. It’s the reverse of the Industrial Revolution concept, when it appeared that resources were, indeed, limitless.

There's no doom-and-gloom in Lovins' approach. “The energy revolution is well underway,” he says. “We've doubled energy efficiency since 1975.” Proof, indeed, that change for the better can happen.

“The problem used to be defined as ‘Where do we get more energy?’ But people don't want barrels of sticky black goo or raw kilowatt hours, they want the services energy provides like hot showers, cold beer, mobility, and comfort.”

Seeing the good
Sakyong, Jamgön Mipham Rinpoche: Buddhist lama, world leader, artist, poet, marathoner.

The Sakyong is not just a Colorado leader, but also a world leader. The Sakyong—literally, “earth protector”-- rules the Shambhala tradition, with the emphasis on the word, “tradition.” He’s a modern man, but he’s not the creator of a new paradigm; rather, he's the interpreter and caretaker of a lineage that extends thousands of years into the past. As such, he travels the globe working with practitioners, teaching students, introducing newcomers to Buddhism, and representing Shambhala to the outer world.

Shambhala has its roots in Tibet, but the Sakyong has his roots here. As the son of previous lineage-head, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, he was largely raised and educated in Colorado. He frequently teaches at the Shambhala Mountain Center, outside Fort Collins. This is the site of the Great Stupa of Dharmakay, the largest and most elaborate Buddhist structure on this continent; here, in 2006, the Sakyong presented the first 'Living Peace Award' to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

The Sakyong is beloved as the leader of all of Shambhala's 170 centers around the world, but he is also a great teacher. “Competition doesn't enable us to accomplish what we want; it just adds to the grind of trying to gain by outdoing somebody else,” he says.

He also teaches meditation which, he says, isn’t far afield from his passionate hobby, running marathons. “Both involve purpose, focus, breathing, even dealing with pain and random thoughts,” he says. But the Sakyong teaches more than sitting in meditation. In his book Ruling Your World (Doubleday, 2006), he teaches regular folk how to live a courageous life based on wisdom, compassion and goodness. Indeed, he says, these three attributes will someday trump greed and aggression. One can only hope.

“I am encouraging people to develop the strength, compassion and intelligence that we all have in order to help bring peace to the world. Can we slow down? Can we have the confidence to look at our own minds? If we do that, we will see the decency and goodness in other people.”

Human rights through a new lens
Crystal Echo Hawk, member of the Kitkehaki band of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, champion of indigenous peoples' rights, nominee for the Reebok Human Rights Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, promoter of arts and activism for youth, and organizer extraordinaire.

At 37, Crystal Echo Hawk represents the next generation of Indian rights activists. Following in the footsteps of such legends as Russell Means, Vine DeLoria, Jr., her father, Tom Echo Hawk, and her uncles, Walter and John Echo Hawk, Crystal is speaking up for her people. Her current platform is as assistant director of development at the Native American Rights Fund, a non-profit law firm in Boulder founded in part by her Uncle John in 1970.

Her own activist tendencies surfaced during her years at the University of Sussex in England, where she focused on social movements. When she received her M.A. In political science in 1996, the Zapatistas from Chiapas, Mexico, were just declaring independence; she began acting as an assistant to the Zapatista's official U.S. Representative in Washington, D.C. “I had learned to look at things through the lens of academia, but that was from a white, Eurocentric lens,” she says. “I said, 'Let's take this body of theory and this discourse around civil society, and see how the people of Chiapas are mobilizing and capturing the imagination of the world.’ ”

Shortly thereafter, Echo Hawk worked as the tribal planner for her tribe, the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, and created the non-profit Nvision, to equip emerging and future leaders to walk in two worlds. “If we don't cultivate this generation of emerging leaders,” she says, “a lot of the hard-won fights of the past could be in jeopardy.”

“The federal government is violating the rights of Natives; what's going to stop them from violating other people's rights? It's a larger call for social justice, and for the federal government to do the right thing by all people.”

Be fearless and ask the hard questions
David Barsamian: journalist, author, speaker, intellectual, and creator and director of “Alternative Radio,” a syndicated radio public affairs program

Barsamian, with his slight build, frumpy clothes, and salt-and-pepper hair, might not appear to be a media star; but, when the medium is radio, it's what's between the ears that counts—and he's got firepower there. The son of Armenian refugees who fled genocide in their homeland—what’s now southeastern Turkey—in 1915, he grew up asking questions of his parents—mainly, “Why did you have to leave?” He hasn't stopped asking questions since, and is best known as an in-depth interviewer.

Barsamian didn't bother with what he calls a “proper education;” he dropped out of college after a year. Instead, his “improper education” prepared him to be a advocate of alternative media (alternative, that is, to the thousands of radio stations, television channels, newspapers, magazines and web sites owned and managed by five big conglomerates). Barsamian is best known for Alternative Radio, his truly independent, syndicated weekly show, which is heard on 167 US stations and 40 abroad. He brings us the voices of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, and other authors, thinkers, artists and activists who challenge the status quo.

Recently, he’s covered the politics and sociology of food and eating, featuring Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemma) and Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved). Here's a surprise: the project is entirely independent, surviving on the sale of tapes and transcripts, and on donations from grateful listeners.

"I am doing work in ideology, and this work simply requires common sense, an analytical mind, and a willingness to be fearless, to challenge, to ask questions. And to be skeptical: when people in power say something, take everything with a grain of salt. Ask yourself, why are they saying that? Whose interests are being served?”

The humane future of medicine
Fred Abrams , M.D. Ob/Gyn, bioethicist, author, humanitarian, fundraiser and speaker

When a community-hospital ethics committee was started at Rose Medical Center in Denver—one of the first in the nation—it was largely because of Fred Abrams, who proposed it, carried it through, and then headed it up.

His publicity of bioethics and his fundraising efforts were deeply significant in the move by the University of Colorado, Denver to establish the Fulginiti Pavilion for Ethics and Humanities, a separate building devoted entirely to ethics and one of the first in the nation. So influential has he been in medical ethics that, in 2006, the AMA honored him with an award for Leadership in Medical Ethics and Professionalism.

Abrams’ interest in medical ethics was fueled early in his 42-year career as an Ob/Gyn. He witnessed the legalization of abortion, the creation of birth control pills, enormous advances in reproductive technology and the ethical dilemmas that accompanied them.

One of Abrams’ recent interests has been serving on the board of the Life Quality Institute, whose mission is to educate health professionals, patients and their families in palliative care for patients at the end of life. Because “end of life” begins when a person has been diagnosed with an illness known to worsen and eventually cause death, the institute, following Abrams’ approach, teaches more than pain and symptom control.

“To help people at the end of life means to provide for their needs,” says Abrams, “without the desperate, usually fruitless and uncomfortable interventions, while everybody waits for a miracle.” As a chaplain who works with him says, “If you're waiting for a miracle, you don't need a hospital.”

“I used to say ethics is something that affects you from the cradle to the grave. Now that's obsolete; with more than 15 to 20 ways to reproduce, we start long before the cradle. As for the grave, we've gone beyond it; we’ve used a deceased father's sperm to create new life. The span of ethics has widened incredibly.”

The soul-wide view
Marc David: non-dogmatic nutritionist, author, teacher, speaker, head of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, advocate for a new relationship to food

Marc David nearly died five times before he reached age 2. Asthma meant that his early childhood was spent not running—a hard-to-follow, and isolating, dictum for any child. His nutrition as a child was about what you’d expect back then--“I was raised in the generation of TV dinners and marshmallow fluff,” he says--yet at age five, he began asking for fruits and vegetables. His mom didn't know where this desire came from, but she bought the stuff, and he was on his way to a healthier life.

As an adult in the 1980s, David invented a graduate course of study for himself in the psychology of eating, a field that didn’t exist yet. What he learned from his research with 50 volunteers—anorexics, bulimics, overweight people, and others who identified themselves as having food disorders—formed the basis of his professional life: it's not about the food, it's not about will power, and it's not about morality and ethics. It's about the inner person.

He explains this perspective in his books, Nourishing Wisdom: A Mind-Body Approach to Nutrition and Well Being (Harmony/Bell Tower, 1994), and The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss (Healing Arts Press, 2005). And he shares it as the founder and director of Boulder's Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

David teaches people how to heal the soul, and thus impact the body. For those of us who see eating as a test, a challenge, and a place of shame—which is most women and many men—this new approach can be scary at first. The good news: liberation soon follows.

“I’m not interested in converting people from junk food to the right foods. Yes, that's useful and of course it helps. But we're not going to get where we need to go as creative and soulful beings until we get to a healthy relationship with body and self.”