Independent Media Institute
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A global movement is building for a just, sustainable economy that prioritizes people and the planet over endless profit and growth.
Managing solar radiation through technology is possible, but there are ethical and political concerns.
A key to fighting climate change could be right under our feet.
We can empower children to be a part of the solution.
We can no longer rely on simple solutions like recycling to solve our plastic waste problem.
Most plastic is tossed after minutes of use, but its impact on wildlife and the environment can last for centuries.
Americans discard 100 billion plastic bags annually, the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil.
Efforts by governments and cities across the nation to defund the public library indicate a misunderstanding of the essential role that libraries play.
A look at successful programs that already exist as alternatives to police, and which policy changes and actions might restructure the U.S.’s policing and justice systems.
Workers were documented killing piglets by smashing their heads against the ground.
Chemicals commonly found in consumer products have been proven to harm human health, yet they still remain legal stateside.
Bioenergy is often seen as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to other forms of energy generation. But the truth is that it can actually be quite harmful to the environment
It’s undeniably true that Republican-controlled states are worse-off, almost across the board.
Lack of governmental oversight of factory farms has created a public health crisis of antibiotic-resistance diseases in people.
By Tia Schwab in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, Stone Pier Press | English
A new report breaks down how elections are run and how votes are detected and counted. Readers will bring an evidence-based mix of skepticism and realism to this foundational feature of American democracy.
By Duncan A. Buell, Steven Rosenfeld in Voting and Elections | Independent Media Institute | English | October 2022
Time-proven acequia irrigation systems already in use in New Mexico make it possible for people to thrive in arid regions.
The movement to revillage our modern world seeks to combat mental illness, housing and climate disasters.
An interview with the creator of the short film “Ode to Joy,” which celebrates connection with nature as a portal to deeper connection with self and each other.
Experts warn that continued world population growth will make things worse.
Despite industry rhetoric, hydropower is high-cost and high-risk. There are better options for a renewable energy future.
By turning wastewater into drinking water, our existing water supplies could go further.
Biodiversity is plummeting, but restoring rivers could quickly reverse this disastrous trend.
The Mesoamerican city of Monte Albán is a powerful case study that early investments in public infrastructure and goods foster longer-term sustainability.
Society’s addiction to palm oil—the world’s most widely consumed vegetable oil—is killing critically endangered Sumatran elephants.
By Laurel Sutherlin in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, Rainforest Action Network | English
Pointing fingers won’t help—an attitude shift is what the world needs now.
Modern sustainability evolved from forest management of the 18th century, and its ancient roots go back even further. Could it help with today’s climate crisis and lumber shortage?
As the world burns—and as kids sound the alarm—the original environmental scientist is worth revisiting.
A genetically engineered chestnut tree may be the first to spread into forests, setting dangerous global precedents.
Less than 10 percent of the plastic used in the United States is recycled.
A product of environmental racism, “sacrifice zones” are located near pollution hot spots and are usually communities of color.
The destruction of nature might one day become a criminal offense adjudicated by the International Criminal Court.
Cataclysmic wildfires have been increasing in intensity and frequency due to human-caused climate change.
COVID-19, SARS, and Ebola were transmitted to humans from wild animals living in tropical forests. Destroying their habitats is killing us.
Major U.S. brands are ignoring the enormous environmental destruction caused by their meat suppliers.
Electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi and cell towers may pose a “credible risk” to birds, mammals, insects, and even plants.
Wet markets are perfect breeding grounds for pathogens that can jump from animals to humans.
Countless dairy cows experience a shocking level of cruelty every day at factory farms.
Palm oil is found in 50 percent of all consumer goods. And it’s killing the environment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to the world’s new pollution problem.
No food should be worth the amount of suffering experienced by sentient animals trapped in our food system.
As the European Union phases out animal research, the United States just wants more.
The industrialized food system is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is not a major topic at climate talks.
The average American believes the false narrative that natural gas is a “clean fuel.”
Middle school student activists write to their elected representatives to urge climate action.
By focusing the climate fight on what we emit, not what we consume, we are destined to fail.
America’s highest court has limited the EPA’s authority to regulate power plant emissions.
Under the cover of greenwashing, global insurers are fueling climate change.
Eating locally reduces your ecological footprint, but studies show what you eat may be even more important.
When global leaders won’t save our food system, cities take the lead.
People are growing less tolerant to violence against animals, and lawmakers are responding. But more needs to be done.
By Nina Jackel in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, Lady Freethinker | English
Direct sales and the organic label are not enough to keep family-scale farms viable.
When it comes to maintaining energy flows, there is a closing window to avert both climate catastrophe and economic peril.
By Richard Heinberg in Environment | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, Post Carbon Institute | English
Renewable energy isn’t replacing fossil fuel energy—it’s adding to it.
By Richard Heinberg in Environment | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, Post Carbon Institute | English
It is possible to ‘grow’ leather without raising and killing animals.
By Lucy Goodchild van Hilten in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute | English
We wouldn’t say “it” or “that” when referring to humans, so why would we for other sentient individuals?
The Bureau of Land Management is misleading the American people about the nation’s wild horses and burros.
By Ginger Fedak in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, In Defense of Animals, Independent Media Institute | English
No version of “waters of the U.S.” (WOTUS), part of the Clean Water Act, adequately protects the nation’s natural areas.
By Sam Davis in Environment | Dogwood Alliance, Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute | English
Animal whisperer Sy Montgomery argues that we share greater similarities than differences with our fellow animals, and that fact should make us reexamine our relationships with them.
By Leslie Crawford in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, Stone Pier Press | English
A city in the middle of the desert with less rainfall than any other in the nation was bound to have a water problem.
Fossil fuel stakeholders have been seeking new revenue in the petrochemical industry in general, and plastics in particular.
A thought experiment tells us a lot about man’s best friend—and ourselves.
By Jessica Pierce, Marc Bekoff in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute | English
Americans eat more meat per capita than any other country, even though meat consumption is linked to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
By Jennifer Barckley in Environment | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, The Humane League | English
In its illogical support of Big Dairy, the U.S. government is misleading the public and padding the pockets of one industry over another.
By Jennifer Barckley in Animal Rights | Earth Food Life, Independent Media Institute, The Humane League | English | March 2022
It’s time to rethink our broken and unfair family planning systems.
By Carter Dillard in Environment | Earth Food Life, Fair Start Movement, Independent Media Institute | English
Smaller, more sustainable families would create massive long-term savings and catalyze sustainable development.
By Carter Dillard in Environment | Earth Food Life, Fair Start Movement, Independent Media Institute | English
Progress is being undone by growth, especially as the climate crisis deepens.
By Carter Dillard in Environment | Earth Food Life, Fair Start Movement, Independent Media Institute | English
The climate crisis is a form of oppression by a wealthy few.
By Carter Dillard in Environment | Earth Food Life, Fair Start Movement, Independent Media Institute | English
Many nonprofits have accepted family planning policies that are harmful to women, children, and the environment.
By Carter Dillard in Environment | Earth Food Life, Fair Start Movement, Independent Media Institute | English
DeVos’s divisive tenure as U.S. secretary of education under the Trump administration will have repercussions for decades to come.
A state where schools experienced deep adversities before COVID-19 shows the nation a pathway forward.
A 2022 study warns that career and technical education and advanced digital systems increasingly lock children into narrow school curricula and prescribed workplace futures.
An approach to transformative school improvement challenges existing education models.
Charter school funders like Eli Broad turned school leadership into a cartel system focused on advancing careers and enriching businesses.
Mark Changizi’s study offers a scientific and anthropological explanation for a phenomenon many take for granted.
Can we pinpoint a time in our evolutionary trajectory when we wandered from the path of empathy, of compassion and respect for one another and for all forms of life?
A 2021 study on the effects of climate crises in ancient Mesopotamia found increased cooperation and a more widespread distribution of power.
Anthropologists' research on the origins of war, going back to the beginning of human history and our closest ape relatives, suggests war is not part of our evolution. They also find systems of peace work, and many already exist.
The utter failure of private capitalism to prepare for the coronavirus should have surprised no one. Private capitalism, as business school graduates repeat, focuses on profit. The “profit incentive,” they learn, makes private capitalism the superior, “most efficient” economic system available. That is its “bottom line” and “chief goal.” The problem is that to produce adequate numbers of testing components, masks, gloves, ventilators, hospital beds, etc., and then to store, secure, monitor, maintain and demographically stockpile them were not and are not privately profitable businesses.
Rupa Marya, a physician and musician, studies how social structures impact health. She says colonial capitalism fractures the critical relationships that keep us healthy.
Yoga teachers who work with oppressed communities say the practice is a key way to navigate stress, trauma, and disruption.
Artists have always been on the front lines of protest and social shift, taking the pulse of culture and society.
Capitalism’s political problem arose from its intrinsically undemocratic juxtaposition of an employer minority and an employee majority.
China concluded that in the United States, achieving prioritized social goals happened more when public and private resources were coordinated and focused to do so.
Democratic impulses, similarly provoked and suppressed inside workplace autocracies, have not yet matured into social movements that are strong and focused enough to overthrow autocracy inside workplaces.
There are alternatives to the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates and curtailing money supply growth but they are ignored.
Fascism can indeed “happen here,” but in unique fashion.
In reality, markets are useful institutions for capitalists to manipulate for profit.
If the internet were a country, it would be the sixth biggest user of electricity.
The role of the state is central to this decline of capitalism in one area and form and its ascent in another area and form.
Seventy-five percent of new or emerging diseases that harm humans start in non-human animals.
Jobs, real wages, consumption, profits and investments are growing more in China, India and Brazil than old capital centers.
In China today, like the USSR a century ago, transition to a post-capitalist society has been stalled.
Republicans believe that Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán has figured out the “secret sauce” to turn a republic into a hard-right oligarchy, and today they’re in Budapest drinking deep from his insights on the fine points of destroying democracy.
“Free” and “unregulated” markets simply do not define capitalism, and are not marked by anything like “liberty.”
Community support throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings against racial injustice around the world prove the necessity of mutual aid for survival during times of crisis, and beyond.
A people-powered effort to move to fossil fuels to alternatives at the local level is building across the U.S. and the globe.
As one of the leading voices in late-night TV for social justice and racial equality, Trevor Noah’s take was disappointingly pedestrian at best, and reinforced bipartisan elite propaganda at worst.
American veterans poisoned at Camp Lejeune can finally seek justice, thanks to a new law.
Grief spaces and community listening circles in Ashland, Oregon, model ways for communities to navigate these trying times—from fires to COVID-19 to racist police killings.
Due to decades of activism by a coalition of Indigenous groups, commercial fishers, concerned citizens and environmentalists, Oregon and California state governments committed to removing four dams along the Klamath River.
Defenders of capitalism criticize kinds of capitalism that lack the particular adjectives that matter most to them.
From the Black Panthers to Shepard Fairey, artists have been behind some of the biggest acts of political resistance in the U.S. The anonymous artist collective behind the naked Trump statues that appeared around the U.S. in 2020 released a documentary about protest art during the 2020 election season.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the shortcomings of our mega-food industries and the necessity to localize food production.
A principled conservative who rejected demands in 2020 to “find votes” is now singing a very different tune.
Every other economic system in human history was born, evolved, and ceased to exist at some point. The most reasonable expectation is that capitalism will also cease to exist one day.
Despite centuries of domestication, the call of the wild has always been in the chicken’s heart.
Inflation deeply affects societies that suffer them, yet no democratic process determines where, when or how employers’ decisions to inflate prices lead to those impacts.
A changing climate and population growth are fueling water-based conflicts across the African continent.
Raising the minimum wage can and should be one basis for a mutually beneficial alliance between wage workers and small businesses.
The obscenely rich have thus driven the U.S. economy and society further from anything remotely resembling a “level playing field.”
Mission
The Independent Media Institute (IMI) is a nonprofit organization that educates the public through a diverse array of independent media projects and programs. They work with journalists and media outlets to shine a spotlight on stories that are vital to the public interest, using multiple media formats and distribution channels.
Approach
IMI amplifies the reach and impact of the work produced by their partner journalists, public intellectuals, and editorial teams on the leading issues of our times. The goal is to educate, inspire, collaborate with movements and visionaries who are fighting for social change—and prevent the worst from happening.
The organization provides a range of services to its partners: editing and quality control, visual design, project design and fundraising development, syndication to partner publications, and media bookings through its extensive email and social media channels.
History
Since 1983, the Independent Media Institute has served the public through the creation and distribution of content about political and social issues. In 1998, IMI founded AlterNet, an award-winning news website that published original reporting by independent investigative journalists, syndicated a broad range of partner publications, and reached diverse audiences for more than 20 years, reaching a peak of an average of 6.5 million unique monthly visitors in 2016, and publishing 1,000 articles a month.
In early 2018, IMI transferred AlterNet to new ownership, allowing IMI to re-focus its work on creating and distributing original, thoughtful explorations of social justice and public interest issues. Through both its own reporting and via programs and partnerships with other organizations, IMI continues its pursuit of excellence and social impact in media.
Associated Authors
Debra Merskin, PhD, is a professor of media studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon and is a co-founder of Animals and Media.
Ginger Fedak is the wild horse and burro campaign director at In Defense of Animals. A lifelong animal welfare advocate and horse professional, Fedak has spent decades teaching about and advocating for domestic and wild horses.
Nina Jackel is the founder of Lady Freethinker, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to exposing and stopping the suffering of animals, humans, and the planet. Find them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Brittany Michelson is an animal rights activist, writer and former teacher.
Erika Schelby is the author of Liberating the Future from the Past? Liberating the Past from the Future? (2013) and Looking for Humboldt and Searching for German Footprints in New Mexico and Beyond (2017). Schelby lives in New Mexico.
Leslie Crawford is the author of Sprig the Rescue Pig and Gwen the Rescue Hen, both published by Stone Pier Press. She lives in San Francisco with her two children, six hens, and four foster pigeons. No partridges. Follow her on Twitter @lesliemcrawford.
Lydia Chodosh is a writer, designer, and fine artist based in Providence, Rhode Island.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist, author of more than 20 books.
Katy Neusteter is the marketing director at American Rivers, a national non-profit conservation organization dedicated to protecting and restoring healthy natural rivers and the variety of life they sustain for people, fish, and wildlife, founded in 1973.
Alicia Graef is a guardian and dog meat campaigner at In Defense of Animals. A lifelong animal lover and freelance writer with a Bachelor’s degree in animal and veterinary science, Alicia has covered issues relating to animals for more than a decade.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku is a Munduruku Indigenous woman leader from Indigenous Reserve Praia do Índio in the Brazilian Amazon. She is a member of Pariri, a local Munduruku association, as well as the Munduruku Wakoborûn Women’s Association. In 2020, Alessandra won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for her work defending the culture, livelihoods and rights of Indigenous peoples in Brazil.
Laurel Sutherlin is the senior communications strategist for Rainforest Action Network. He is a lifelong environmental and human rights campaigner as well as a naturalist and outdoor educator with a passion for birds and wild places. Follow him on Twitter @laurelsutherlin.
Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner is a writing fellow at Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, AlterNet, Architectural Digest, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, and other publications.
Anita Krajnc is executive director of the Animal Save Movement and global coordinator of the Plant Based Treaty initiative.
Carrie P. Freeman, PhD, is a professor of communication at Georgia State University and is a co-founder of Animals and Media.
Carter Dillard is the policy adviser for the Fair Start Movement. He served as an Honors Program attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and also served with a national security law agency before developing a comprehensive account of reforming family planning for the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal.
Daniel Ross is a journalist whose work has appeared in Truthout, the Guardian, FairWarning, Newsweek, YES! Magazine, Salon, AlterNet, Vice and a number of other publications.
Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and author of 31 books of nonfiction for adults and children. She is the recipient of lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association.
For more than two decades, Darryl Knudsen has channeled the power of civil society movements to create enduring, positive change toward social and environmental justice for the underrepresented. Darryl holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and a BA from Dartmouth College. He served as the executive director of International Rivers.
Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union for Concerned Scientists.
April M. Short is an editor, journalist, and documentary editor and producer. She is the Local Peace Economy editor of the Observatory.
Reynard Loki is a co-founder of the Observatory, where he is the environment and animal rights editor. He is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute, where he serves as the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life.
Steve Taylor is the press secretary for Global Justice Ecology Project and the host of the podcast Breaking Green. He is the recipient of the Leo and Kay Drey Award for Leadership from the Coalition for the Environment for his work as co-founder of the Times Beach Action Group.
Omala Snyder studies English literature, creative writing, and international relations at Dartmouth College.
David Hastings is a marine scientist.
Irikefe V. Dafe has advocated for river protections in Nigeria and throughout Africa for three decades. Much of his work has focused on protecting the River Ethiope and the rights of communities who rely upon the river for food, water and their livelihoods. He is a lead organizer of the First National Dialogue on Rights of Nature in Nigeria. He is also the founder and CEO of River Ethiope Trust Foundation and an expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature Initiative.
Frederick Clayton is an investigative journalist with the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism focusing on environmental themes, specifically water and sanitation issues worldwide.
Anne Petermann is the executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project.
Richard Heinberg is a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and the author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival.
Karen Davis, PhD, is the president and founder of United Poultry Concerns, an award-winning animal rights activist and the author of numerous books.
Mary Mazzoni is the senior editor of TriplePundit and director of TriplePundit’s Brand Studio.
Elizabeth Henderson is co-chair of the Interstate Council policy committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and represents the Interstate Council on the Board of the Agricultural Justice Project.
Lucy Goodchild van Hilten is a writing fellow at Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She has served as assistant editor of Microbiology Today and senior marketing communications manager for Life Sciences at Elsevier. She holds an MSc degree in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from Imperial College London.
Nital Jethalal is a policy analyst and economist. He currently serves as strategist and policy advisor for the Plant Based Treaty and also oversees economics and policy research for Plant Based Data. Nital is also the president of VegTO and a director at the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank.
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