Omar Freilla grew up in the South Bronx amid burnt-out buildings, waste transfer stations and power plants. He spent his childhood watching the PBS show “Nature,” dazzled by scenes of pristine wilderness—the rainforest, the mountains and the arctic. “There was one thing that always bothered me about those shows, though,” he recalled in a talk at a Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California. “You never saw any people on them.”

Why do activists fail in their efforts to create positive change? The main reason, according to activist and attorney Tom Linzey of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, is that activism starts with the faulty assumption that we live in a democracy. As unnerving as Linzey’s observation is, he says it’s central to a new solution for reclaiming control of our lives and communities from corporations.

“Perhaps we’re in this mess today because we’ve never had a democracy in this country,” Linzey said at the 2006 Bioneers Conference. “Perhaps that corporate cultural IV in our arm has been working so well that it’s hard for us to even imagine what self-government would look like.” Until now, that is.

My people, the Eyak, an Athabaskan tribe, live along the Copper River Delta in south central Alaska. Our ancestral homeland is a 300-mile stretch of the Gulf of Alaska and it’s absolutely stunning. We have inhabited this thin green strip of Hemlock and Sitka Spruce forest along the coast for the last 3,500 years.

When the Exxon Valdez oil spill happened in 1989 and the ocean died, something inside me came to life. I was a commercial fisherman in Prince William Sound and the Copper River Delta when I realized that I had to do everything I possibly could to save the forests and our wild salmon.

Space isn’t the final frontier—it’s time. Millions of American suffer from “time poverty” as vacations shrink, schedules grow more packed and workdays lengthen. We work nine full weeks more per year than Europeans. Time poverty even affects our children: they have lost 12 hours per week in free time since the late 1970s.

We can take back our time, however, starting with simple, individual actions. These steps open up time for life, whether we’re craving more time with our families or a few hours to contribute to our communities or listen to our deepest longings.

My son Wade was born with severe food allergies. His allergies did not become apparent until he was several months old. At first my husband and I noticed a little fussiness after mealtime but we dismissed it. One day when we went out for breakfast, I gave my son a little bit of milk with some cereal. I watched as his face swelled up, his eyes swelled shut, his face filled with tears. He was obviously in pain, but I could not do one thing to make him comfortable.

As we raced to the hospital, I began to wonder if my son was going to die. My husband and I were to repeat that scenario at least six or seven more times over the next several months and it was always the same. My son would be exposed to the allergen, the allergic reaction would cause him to wheeze, the wheezing could not be controlled unless we took him to the emergency room and then my son would be hospitalized for at least a week.

Adrienne Maree Brown is the head of the Ruckus Society, an institute that has trained social justice organizers for more than a decade. A writer, singer and organizer, Brown was also a founder of the League of Young Voters and the co-editor of How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office.

Andre Banks: Can you talk a little about your vision, big picture, but also the work you’re doing now at Ruckus?

Adrienne Maree Brown: I think in a word, my vision is really about leadership—being able to see strong leaders in communities that really need leadership right now. I feel like we’re in a moment of peaked resources at every level: human resources, fiscal resources, oil, water, air. We have reached the point of running ourselves out of what we most need.