“Idle No More” and other Protests

The massive Climate Change protest in DC  brought together Indigenous leaders from Canada and the US as well as African Americans with the usually dominantly white movement. In Seattle, sadly, we had two separate demonstrations, one on Saturday  and one on Sunday, the first organized by Idle No More the Canadian based Indigenous protest of violation of treaty rights-such as removal of environmental protections from hundreds of tribal lakes and lands- they have been holding huge actions all over Canada. Here in Seattle there was a demo based  at Gasworks Park.

The second by the Sierra Club at Golden Gardens, a rally, photo, and short march. As far as I could see  there were lots of white people (probably because of the location.) Mayor McGinn gave a speech. This is Backbone’s Snowflake nuzzling a bullet train carrying people as an alternative to coal train.

The Sierra Club rally focused heavily on the coal trains, I wish it had also officially embraced the issue of tankers with tar sands oil negotiating through Puget Sound,  as well. as fracking. The tankers are already in Puget Sound, but there is a planned escalation from 5 a month to over 30 a month.  The Grim Reapers got it right ( a protest in Olympia on inauguration day that I joined)They included all of the disasters.

According to Carlo Voli, climate activist, all the refineries in Washington State are already processing tar sands oil, we are already using it in our cars. I drove to the rally with much guilt ( far away from downtown core),  how many fossil fuels are we using as we protest. Harpers Magazine author Richard Manning, writing on the devastation in Bakken, North Dakota from fracking for oil told us at the end of his article exactly how much fossil fuel he used to write his article. We should all be thinking that way.

A show at the Burke Museum Plastics Unwrapped  manages to tell it all in a compressed space : 1500 disposable plastic water bottles used every second in the U.S., 3,000 plastic bags every quarter of a second,

170 pounds of e waste discarded every second in the U.S., 9 million pounds of marine debris removed from beaches last year.

Only 7 percent of plastics are recycled each year, ghost nets left in the ocean kill thousands of marine mammals, seabirds, fish and other creatures. On the plus side the show talked about recycling!

Of course, not using plastic in the first place is a better idea. It is impossible though. Trader Joe’s is hopeless on packaging. When buying any product think about re-use vs waste, like all cellophane (petroleum based) bags go right into the landfill, but a nice glass jar can be re used over and over. Our local Madison Market Co-Op has fantastic bulk items. I keep discovering new ones, most recently, bulk frozen peas (which unfortunately are delivered by the truckers whose strike is being smashed by Whole Foods). If you bring your own container or bag you are on a plus side with the trash problem.

So when I travel on an airplane (one trip equals driving an SUV for a whole year and I make a lot of trips), I make my tiny effort by bringing my own water bottle and tea so I don’t generate trash on the plane

(ridiculous small difference compared to giving up flying).  I carry a big purse into which almost anything can go without a plastic bag, and try not to create hopeless trash ( it is impossible, on my last trip to NYC I had a Styrofoam encased street dinner, plastic encased sandwiches, aluminum wrapped gyros etc. Of course if I had eaten in any real restaurants no trash, but I was eating on the cheap).

In Seattle we have lots of recycling, but the rest of the country is awash in landfill, plastic, and no options. Depressing. And of course those plastics are petroleum based, and there we are protesting oil production. Here is the diagram from the Burke show

The show also told us what we did before plastics and how we got here. Of course we had wood, cotton, fibers, leather.

Then after World War II many war factories making plastic for war were transformed into plastic production for throw away objects and we were encouraged to consume, consume, consume.

It would be perfectly possible to generate an army of new green jobs if we could just get the oil industry on board with a new way of thinking. Who will take the lead? As I watched the devastation going on in East Texas for the XL Pipeline as shown on Democracy Now, I really started crying. Somehow watching a specific tree shoved over was more affecting than all the statistics in the world. (For many people trees have their own spiritual life. I always feel that way in the forest.)  I wondered what would happen if the men operating the back hoes got off and refused to continue destroying the planet. If the men laying the pipe said no. But reading Harper’s Magazine (see link above)explains what is going on. Jobs. Profits. “Energy Independence” ( Good news: Carlo said someone had photographed defects in the pipeline welds in the Texas Keystone and are going to sue )

Destruction of our planet is intimately connected with violence against the people on it, particularly indigenous men and women, and women in general, as well as the killing of plants, animals, and the sea and air.

In DC Jacqueline Thomas Chief of the Saik’u Nation listed the destructions and ended with plants as the most important.

One Billion Women around the world protested violence against women on Valentine’s Day, a project catalyzed by Eve Ensler. Take a look at some of the amazing videos on the website linked to One Billion Rising. Especially Hyderabad India.

I took part in a demonstration organized by We Will Not Be Silent on Times Square. I did not get to dance, which was the main idea (dancing instead of violence) , but it was a really powerful and amusing experience to stand in the middle of Times Square protesting  violence against women on Valentine’s Day. Other people were getting a romantic picture taken and it was projected onto a giant screen above us. There was a massive billboard of Oprah, and of a tough woman in some sport.  The contrast of the darkness of violence against women and the brilliance of Time Square seemed like a perfect dialectic. We even had some Valentine love song being piped in. Then we had to move because there was a wedding planned for our location.

But wandering around us were various cartoon characters, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, as well as Elmo and the Cookie Monster who joined us. Altogether it was a thrilling experience.