My husband, Rob, and I planned a two-week hiking trip through France, Italy and Switzerland, circumnavigating Mt. Blanc, the highest peak in Europe (15,781 feet). This was a big trip for us to celebrate our 40th anniversary. We don’t fly much apart from the two trips a year we take from Connecticut to southern California to visit our daughter and her family, mostly due to concerns about climate change, since flying is by far the quickest way to blow up your carbon footprint.

While in Chamonix, France (the base from which hikers and alpinists get to Mt. Blanc), I would look up and see a dozen or more multi-hued sails floating through the air with two people attached to them: an instructor and a newbie, paragliding. It looked irresistible to me, and I decided I had to try it.

With the help of the wonderful staff at our small hotel, we found a company and I signed up for a noon meeting with my instructor, David, at the base of the ski lift that would take us to the jumping off spot. He checked all his lines (there were dozens) and helped me into my harness, which was similar to a climbing harness so I was a little familiar. He told me he would tell me when to run off the cliff and to not stop running until we were in the air. He also apologized that his previous customer, after insisting on doing aerial acrobatics, had thrown up on him and he hoped it didn't smell too bad. I assured him I couldn't smell anything. So we took several running steps and found ourselves airborne. It was amazing, thrilling, beautiful. Unfortunately almost immediately after take off I began feeling slightly nauseated – nothing two serious but a little uncomfortable. It was better when he talked to me so he pointed out several things including two small glaciers that we're right in front of us. He, as a Chamonix native probably about 30 years old, pointed out that they had receded drastically in his lifetime "due to global warming" he said.

I found this little exchange enlightening, like it was just a normal thing for a regular person (not a scientist or political activist) to bring up the issue of climate change, like it was just a fact of life and not controversial at all. Of course in France and just about everywhere else in the world outside the U.S., it is just a fact and not controversial at all. It’s also very sad (and devastating for the Chamonix economy) that the glaciers are disappearing.

We took several great hikes on our own before we were to meet up with the group and leader who would guide us through the three countries around Mt. Blanc. Unfortunately, an hour before we were to meet, Rob threw his back out and we ended up using our trip insurance to come home almost a week early, since he felt that doing several more days of rigorous hiking (and especially the downhills) would be either impossible or foolish.

He thought the problem started as we sat in the economy section of the flight going over, so we got booked on Business Class on a non-stop flight from Geneva to New York. That was a first for me and truly amazing. How was it different from what I like to call “steerage”? Let me count the ways. The bathrooms are twice as big, with free tubes of moisturizer available. We were offered a hot, damp washcloth at the beginning and end of the flight to refresh ourselves. There were tons of movies and TV shows available for free. The food – two full meals – was excellent. There was tons of leg room. And the seats were set up in alternating rows, so everyone on board had a chance to fully recline. (In other words, no one was sitting directly behind or in front of another passenger.) And one of the flight attendants came by and asked me by name if I needed anything.

Ironically, a few days earlier I’d read an article saying how damaging air travel is for the planet but suggesting ways to minimize one’s carbon footprint if one is going to fly anyway. It said that flying first class or business (which seem the same to me) can generate up to 9 times the global warming gases of a seat in economy. So it was a little ironic that as we flew in those seats, Rob was reading a book about climate change.

 After my last post (in which I said I felt a part of nature, one animal among many), I couldn’t ignore the four dead animals I passed on my bike within a hundred feet of each other on Fitch Street in New Haven – a squirrel, a chipmunk, a blue jay and a possum, which was so mashed I could only identify it by its naked tail. All massacred by motorists.

As a daily cyclist into downtown New Haven (I drive a car, but not that often) I have my own issues with motorists, where I sometimes feel like roadkill-in-the-making, but to see these beautiful animals just flattened, block after block, is heartbreaking and maddening. Whenever my indoor cat sneaks out I picture her being flattened, too, although with their nine lives, I haven’t seen many dead cats on the road.

Then today as I was riding down the curvy road from the top of East Rock, partially braking, I came within a whisker of killing a chipmunk myself, so I have to take responsibility, too (although in fact he escaped).

I’ve never considered myself an animal rights activist, although as a mostly vegetarian for the past 40 years, and a strict vegetarian for the past 20, at least I don’t eat them. My philosophy is live and let live, unless they actually land on me, like mosquitos or ticks.
I still remember the sermon of a ministerial student at my church about 25 years ago. She told the story of driving cross-country and stopping to move off the highway every road-killed animal she encountered, as a gesture of respect for all life. Whether apocryphal or not, it obviously made a big impression on me.

I’m a Unitarian Universalist, and I coincidentally just noticed an ad in our quarterly magazine that asked “What if our first principle could be…The inherent worth and dignity of every being? The wording currently says, “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” The group, the First Principle Project, is seeking a bylaw change to their proposed wording. The ad goes on to say that it’s not just a bylaw change, “it is a deepening of faith and relationships through conversations with each other when we ask: How can we live more deeply connected to all life? What does it mean to be a human animal in a muiltispecies world? How can we love both human nature and all of nature?" So…non-carnivorous food for thought.

You know how once you start picking up litter you notice litter everywhere and it’s hard to stop? That’s how I feel about road kill now. Although I haven’t moved every dead animal out of the road, I’ve started taking photos of them. The one above is a beautiful skunk killed right near my house (the one below is a baby woodchuck). Yes, it stank, but so does the whole idea that killing all these four-leggeds is not a crime.

After Trump was elected and especially after he was inaugurated, I spent several months working madly on a range of issues, focusing on refugees, immigrants, health care and pipelines (indigenous rights and climate). I felt super motivated and like I was part of a rising tidal wave of opposition to his anti-human (except for the 1%) and anti-all other living things agenda. Some of my friends and just folks I know in the progressive community were shell-shocked, depressed and didn’t know what to do. I told them I didn’t know how long I could keep it up (we were just three months into what’s supposed to be a four-year term), but for the time being I was good.

Then sometime in May I hit a wall. I felt very tired and needed to sleep more than usual. I wasn’t exactly depressed; it was more a feeling of being at loose ends and seeing the enormity of the task at hand and feeling lost in it all.

At the same time, I started noticing the life around me more – or rather, the life around me got in my face. On a hike, a scarlet tanager sat on a branch a few feet away and serenaded us (pictured above, not a photo I took because I preferred just looking with my eyes). Then on two bird hikes in a row, many beautiful and not that common (at least to me) birds flew all around me or perched for minutes at a time on branches where we got a perfect view of them: orioles, indigo buntings, bluebirds, green herons, black and white warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks and many more. Then while on my bike yesterday I saw a great blue heron fly overhead, its neck extended and its legs? And two weeks in a row, I spotted a big, orangey-eared coyote, once crossing a road and the other time in a field five miles away. I’d never seen one in Connecticut before.

But I didn’t just observe these creatures – I felt like I was part of nature, just one species among many. I wasn’t out to kill them or deprive them of food or habitat. I was just sharing Earth with them. It was a very peaceful and even hopeful feeling.

I hope I can hold onto it to keep me going forward in the work ahead.

Click here for the interview I did with the lead plaintiff in the Juliana v Trump case of 21 children and youth suing the U.S. government over climate change.

And click here for the latest nonviolent direct action by Beyond Extreme Energy as five people disrupted the Senate hearing on the nominations of two Trumpistas to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which currently lacks a quorum. We want to keep it that way as long as possible, in order to minimize the destruction to communities and climate that FERC enables.

The photo above shows the corporate moneybags manipulating the commissioners of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who almost 100 percent of the time do the bidding of the companies they are supposed to “regulate.” Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) carried this in the People’s Climate March in D.C. on April 29 on a sweltering day that was more like mid-August than late April. It helped drive home the point of the march – that we are headed off a climate cliff double-time since Trump took office, and we have to stand up and resist. An estimated 200,000 folks attended, along with many more at 250 sister marches around the globe. Our visual was very popular, as hundreds of marchers took photos of it.

The day was the exclamation point to three earlier days of activity that included leafleting on Capitol Hill about our campaign to convince senators not to approve any nominations Trump may make to FERC, which has been operating since early March with just two out of five commissioners and thus doesn’t have a quorum to approve any gas infrastructure projects. We want to keep it that way for as long as possible. Our asks are that Congress conduct an investigation into corruption at FERC and make necessary changes in how the agency operates before confirming any new commissioners. Trump is under a lot of pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to fill the vacancies, but he hasn’t even nominated anyone yet.

Later that day we lobbied a dozen senators, some in person, about our campaign, or met with their staffers.

We also went to the Supreme Court, where 14 of the 21 youth plaintiffs in a lawsuit by Our Children’s Trust against the federal government for not taking action on climate change announced that they have changed the name of the defendant from Obama to Trump. The fossil fuel industry has successfully petitioned to join the suit on the side of the federal government. It’s very exciting that two federal judges in Oregon have ruled that the lawsuit can proceed, which the plaintiffs hope will happen by the end of this year. Whoever loses will appeal to the Ninth Circuit (which Oregon is part of), and whoever loses there will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to several short speeches by some of the youth and by their two attorneys, each of the plaintiffs read some of the most compelling statements from the Judge Ann Aiken’s ruling. You can listen to them, plus an interview with the lead plaintiff, in my next post.

On Friday morning about 60 of us went to FERC to hand out bags of sweet potatoes from eastern North Carolina and slices of sweet potato pie to illustrate the dangers to agriculture in the state if the fracked gas Atlantic Coast pipeline is allowed to run through it. I was afraid people wouldn’t take the sweet potatoes from perfect strangers, but many of them did, along with a flyer explaining the situation. We gave away almost half of the half-ton of sweet potatoes we brought to D.C. (We gave the rest away to a soup kitchen and to the fabulous Seeds of Peace cooking collective, who were cooking for us while we were in D.C., and who made the fabulous pies.) People from impacted communities from New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Maryland as well as North Carolina spoke. Click here for a short video montage of the action.

North Carolinians are walking to stop the Atlantic Coast pipeline (ACP), a $5 billion, 550-mile fracked gas “snake” that would cross three states. Calling themselves the Alliance to Protect Our People and the Places We Live (APPPL), they are walking the 200 miles in the Tarheel State to raise awareness in the counties through which it would pass and to strengthen their own organizing.

We were mostly young folks under 30 and geezers over 60 (I being in the latter category). Almost everyone was from North Carolina, with a few of us from farther afield.

The ACP is a project of Duke Energy, which would own the gas, and Dominion Resources, which would build the pipeline. They are among the biggest (and, in some circles, the most reviled) energy companies, building pipelines and LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals to sell ever more methane (what natural gas is made of) around the world and send the planet into irrecoverable heat stress.

Shades of DAPL, the Dakota Access pipeline – the route of the ACP was originally planned to go nearer whiter and wealthier cities, which would have been more direct and cheaper, but when they objected it was moved nearer the I-95 corridor, in the poorest and most racially diverse part of the state.

Not to mention the other reasons people don’t want it: Dominion would take people’s property by eminent domain; the pipeline poses a real safety risk (I learned that the agency in charge of regulating materials in pipelines allows steel to be used in rural areas that’s just over half as thick as what’s required in more populated areas); many of the temporary construction jobs would be filled by out of staters (perhaps with accompanying “man camps” and all the problems they bring); and it could permanently impair the farming practices currently used in this extremely rural area.

The first four days of the walk we passed by dozens of harvested cotton fields with tufts of cotton visible among the stunted stalks. The area also grows soybeans, grains, and sweet potatoes, and a little tobacco, which used to be a mainstay crop.

The land is flat, flat, flat. Besides all the farmland we saw, we also passed by some breathtaking swamps, with cypress trees rising from the shadowed water, which looked very clean to me. Pipeline companies like to build in swamps because it’s cheaper. I guess they don’t care about disturbing these delicate ecosystems and the role they play in cleaning our water and buffering the land from storms.

The first few nights were too cold (in the 30s and even high 20s) for me to camp out in my summer sleeping bag, but the weather warmed up more each day, and I got to camp at a beautiful Boy Scout camp by a lake, listening to the spring peepers and what seemed like a whole flock of great horned owls, hooting their signature “who-o-o-o cooks for you?” I was content.

Another highlight was meeting residents of a “rural resettlement” established during the Great Depression. Of the 100-plus such settlements, only 13 were for African Americans, and Tillery was the only one that included both black and white sharecroppers (still segregated within it). Several of the older residents walked with us and attended the rallies. They are strongly opposed to the pipeline.

One of the best parts of the walk was meeting so many terrific young people – almost all women, by the way. One, Emma, told me about the five years she’d spent at the San Francisco Zen Center and affiliated places -- one so remote that she said if anyone got seriously ill they’d have to be helicoptered out. Emily, who was the youngest participant at 20, was on the cusp of exploding into a life of political activism. She spoke at a couple of the rallies along the way, and said she was experiencing three new things: first time in North Carolina, first time on a long walk, and first time speaking publicly about an issue she cared deeply about. I feel like we’re leaving the future in good hands. Now, if only we had a good future to leave in those hands.

Here’s the link to the walk site: https://2017acpwalk.org/. For more info and to get a flavor for the walk, check out my story on Free Speech Radio News.
 

There’s been plenty to write about the past two months, and maybe that’s why I haven’t posted since November – just too much going on. I was at the inauguration on January 20 with a few hundred other climate activists blocking the Red Gate into the Mall as groups focused on other issues (the Movement for Black Lives, Immigrant Rights, women, LGBTQ folks, etc.) blocked other gates.  (That's me in the pinkish hat.) It was a celebration of our unity and love for each other, but Trump still took the oath of office and is now the President (#NotMyPresident).

Back in New Haven, it seems I’ve been on the streets at least twice a week, mostly for immigrant rights and protection of refugees and against the Dakota Access pipeline, which just got the green light from Trump’s Army Corps of Engineers to finish the pipeline under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe. It could start pumping oil 83 days from now, but lots of people are returning to the camps along the Cannonball River, including indigenous folks and three contingents of military veterans, for the Last Stand. A friend and I came within a day of driving out there ourselves in early December, but were advised by the leadership in North Dakota not to come due to the severity of the weather. Let’s see…83 days from now is just about May Day – seems like a great time for a visit to the site of what may be the most inspiring movement of my lifetime – and I ain’t young. And the weather will be much better then.

I recently had the opportunity to hear Diane Nash, a student leader of the Freedom Rides in 1961, which marked one of the most violent chapters of the Southern civil rights struggle. She spoke about that, about the role of women in the civil rights movement, where they were under-appreciated, and about the fundamentals of non-violence, including this one: “Oppression always requires the cooperation of the oppressed. An oppressive system is a partnership -- something the oppressed and the oppressor do together -- two sides of a coin. If the oppressed withdraw their cooperation and participation from the oppressive system, that system will fall.”

Nash said what kept her and her comrades going was singing to keep their spirits up, knowing they were willing to die for each other, and realizing if they gave up they'd have to continue living under segregation, which they were unwilling to do.

She also talked about the difference between a protest and a campaign. The latter includes several steps:  1) Investigation:  Choose an objective. Analyze and understand how the oppressed are participating in the oppression.  2) Education:  We do not want blind followers.  We want to be constantly recruiting and educating people about the issue we are working on.  3) Negotiation: Sometimes you can solve a problem at this phase, when you come face to face with your opponent.  We need to come with love and respect for the opponents as people but not tolerate what they are doing.  4) Demonstration:  sit-ins, pickets, marches, time to draw the attention of the community.  5) Resistance: withdraw participation in the system such as non-payment of taxes, strikes, boycotts.  Create a situation where it is easier for the target to grant your objective than deal with your resistance. 6) Take steps to see the problem doesn't recur.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how predictability is a privilege. It’s not the same as boring; rather, it’s being pretty sure that whatever you’re doing, you have a lot of control over the outcome. Whether it’s knowing what you’re having for dinner tonight (or that you’re having dinner at all) or knowing that whenever you leave home you’re very likely to return there safely. Poor people don’t have this privilege; nor do millions of African Americans, especially young men. Nor do the water protectors at Standing Rock. Nor do the Iraqi civilians who faced home invasions by U.S. troops or Syrian refugees who lost everything. Nor do any of us anywhere who take a stand for justice, risking arrest and who knows what else.

It’s hard to give up predictability, but I want a world of comrades like Diane Nash spoke of. I think that would be worth the trade-off.

This banner says it all. It was displayed at the 47th annual Day of Mourning, put on by the United American Indians of New England at Plymouth, MA. I finally made it to my first one three years ago, where the highlight was the reading of the 7-page letter from native political prisoner Leonard Peltier. This year his letter was a highlight again, but it was much shorter. He wrote about how he has some hope that President Obama will grant him clemency and a release from prison after 40 years for the murders of two FBI agents he didn’t commit (and for which there is no evidence that he did, plus there is plenty of evidence that the government used perjured testimony, withheld exculpatory evidence and committed other illegal and immoral acts to convict Leonard and keep him in prison). But he wrote that having hope is a tough emotion in prison, and he’s simultaneously trying to prepare himself if Obama takes no action (and he will likely then die in prison).

This gathering was the biggest in many years – maybe ever – due to the explosion of solidarity around the efforts of the Standing Rock Sioux to stop DAPL – the Dakota Access Pipeline. There were about a thousand of us there. The event features only native speakers, which is one of the few times they get to speak for themselves, but everyone is always welcome to attend and support.

After the speeches and some wonderful drumming and dancing, we walked down Cole’s Hill (where we had gathered around the statue of the Wampanoag leader Massasoit) to the water and held a rally at Plymouth Rock, which I and most other people apparently always think of as big as the Rock of Gibraltar in the Prudential Insurance ads, but it’s a small (a few feet long by a few feet wide), unassuming whitish rock that entombed in a mausoleum for all to see.

After the rally, where my friends from New Haven who are members of Unidad Latina en Accion displayed the wonderful banner above, Rob and I stayed for the potluck at one of two churches that host it every year. We sat at a table with a group of New Yorkers who’d come up in a bus. When I told my table mate that I was heading to Standing Rock, she gave me a big hug and said to pass it on when I got there.

The news is terrible from there, with 300 water protectors and their allies injured last weekend when the cops sprayed them with water hoses in 25 degree weather, and one woman whose arm was shattered by a concussion grenade, which then the cops denied using, but pieces of shrapnel were taken out of her arm during surgery. And then yesterday the Army Corps of Engineers declared they will evict people from the biggest camp (Oceti Sakowin) by Dec. 5 as a way to protect them from the violence. Give me a break. How about stopping all the armed forces massed against the nonviolent water protectors from using the violence in the first place?

One exciting development is that some retired military people are conducting a non-violent muster at Standing Rock on Dec. 4-6 (we’re due to arrive on the 7th, and will miss it). They’re all wearing their military uniforms as they confront the sheriff’s deputies, National Guard and other militarized forces. Should be interesting.

I’m excited to be going, to do some reporting but mostly to help in any way I can. I’m getting myself some super-warm clothes, sleeping bag and a winter tent (some of it thanks to a local political philanthropist who took me shopping at a trendy outdoor gear and clothing store.) But I’ll also be glad to be back home in time for Christmas.

Go to the end for important links.

It seems like everyone’s going to Standing Rock. And I’m torn between trying to get there myself to directly protest construction of the 1,100-mile Dakota Access fracked oil pipeline (DAPL) and continuing to organize local support actions, which the “water protectors” among the Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota and their allies are beseeching people to do. They say, "If you drink water and breathe air, this is your fight, too."

Many of the young people I met in 2014 who walked across the country as part of the Great March for Climate Action are already there and more are going. In New York City this week for a protest against the fracked gas Spectra AIM pipeline, I spent the night at a friend’s with Kelsey, who was leaving the next day on a Greyhound bus for Standing Rock – a more than 30-hour trip. I’ve been known to schlep my gear – tent, sleeping bag, blow-up pad, clothes, toiletries, books and my recording equipment – by bus and train to cover climate stories like Hurricane Katrina and mountaintop removal coal mining, but I couldn’t believe how much gear she was schlepping to enable her to camp out in the frigid Dakota nights.

My Catholic Worker friend Mark and his 20-something daughter are driving out this weekend to participate in an action there being organized by faith-based supporters. I was hoping to tag along, but the car is only a two-seater.

I’ve heard about other folks from Connecticut who might be heading out, and I’m going to check the ride board set up by Standing Rock supporters.

I organized a second local demo last week, this time at Wells Fargo bank, which has invested a scandalous $467 million in DAPL. We were at a busy downtown New Haven intersection, and passed out lots of flyers to mostly supportive people, then went in to read a letter to the bank manager. Unlike at TD Bank last month, where the bank manager freaked out and called the police, this manager welcomed us in and listened while I read the letter and then escorted us out after we marched around the office and chanted. The difference might have something to do with Wells Fargo’s reputation being in shreds from a different scandal, in which their employees were pressured to create two million fake accounts their customers didn’t want and then charging them fees to pad the bank’s bottom line. Now they’re playing nice.

The second action was smaller than the first, which came just a few days after private security guards hired by pipeline builder Energy Transfer Partners attacked peaceful but militant protectors with dogs and mace. But right after our second action things got very hot at Standing Rock. On two different days in the past week, more than a hundred people were arrested, pepper sprayed, dragged out of prayer circles and some beaten (no dogs used, though, from what I’ve read). The escalation came as a result of a new camp established right on the pipeline route near the Missouri River. Opponents say the company is building every inch of the pipeline it can (right up to the river on both sides), while it awaits a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to lay the pipe under the river (which is Lake Oahe at that point, formed by a previous dam project).

Standing Rock tribal chairman Dave Archambault said on Democracy Now!, “The federal government, the United states, all we have to do is deny this easement, and this will all go away. Reroute this pipeline, and this will all go away. Save—protect our water, this will all go away. Deny the easement. President Obama needs to step up now, deny the easement. Hillary Clinton needs to make a firm statement about this and stop trying to ride the fence.”

Click here for the most moving description I’ve read of a visit to Standing Rock by an outside supporter.

And click here for a native perspective on why it’s important to not make this fight all about climate change – though it is about that, too.

The photo above is this year's jack-o-lantern.

I waded further into organizing waters, doffing my reporter’s hat and coordinating my first Facebook event – an action at a local branch of TD Bank, one of the dozens of financial institutions bankrolling the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to the tune of $3.8 billion. The indigenous defenders on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation put out a call for international solidarity actions the first two weeks of September, to support their non-violent direct action to block the pipeline from going under the Missouri River, which would put their water at risk, along with the destruction of burial grounds and other cultural artifacts.

As many readers know, immediately after a federal district court judge ruled on Sept. 9 against the tribe and allowed the work to go forward, the Obama administration – through the Interior Department, the Army, and the Justice Department – put a halt on construction under the river and Lake Oahe – which itself was created decades ago by flooding indigenous lands with little or no input from the tribe – until it reviews decisions already made and conducts formal government-to-government consultations with Native American tribes this fall on how to better ensure meaningful tribal input on infrastructure projects that may impact tribal lands, resources or treaty rights, according to the statement. Read more here.

The administration also asked Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily suspend work on other sections of the project within 20 miles of the river crossing pending the Army Corps' review, but the company has continued with pipeline construction. Its 1,100-mile path would move 500,000 barrels a day of heavy oil across four states from North Dakota to Illinois.

About 125 people attended the September 7 rally and picket in front of the bank, and many of us entered to deliver a letter asking the branch manager to pass on our demand that TD Securities cut off its line of credit to the Dakota Access pipeline. Many people spoke about the need for solidarity with this indigenous-led struggle and the inspiration they take from it.

More than 200 tribes – including some historic enemies of the Sioux as well as tribes that depend on oil, gas and coal extraction for their livelihoods – are in support of the anti-DAPL struggle, and at their biggest the crowds gathered in various camps around the river numbered 3,500. That number is shrinking as the weather gets colder, but many are committed to staying through the winter if necessary, and are in urgent need of warm clothing and camping gear. You can contribute here.

This fight has galvanized native people across the country as well as climate activists who say this oil (along with other fossil fuels) must be kept in the ground to avoid tipping the climate into chaos, and others who recognize the leadership of indigenous nations and want to support them.

After starting small in April, the Sacred Stone camp and Red Warrior Camp and others have grown and generated a barrage of media coverage. Some of the best can be found at Yes! Magazine and Inside Climate News. Just google “Dakota Access” on their sites.

At the end of the month I attended a teach-in organized by the Association of Native Americans at Yale, featuring Mary Kathryn Nagle (pictured above), a member of the Cherokee Nation and a lawyer working on native issues, especially women’s and family issues. Among other things she talked about how the oil boom in North Dakota has fueled more violence against women, especially native women.

The pipeline fight has also generated a lot of conversation about “cultural appropriation” – who is a genuine native American, and how non-natives can best demonstrate their solidarity. I’m sure these discussions will continue. I’ve learned a lot already, e.g., how different tribes determine membership, the respectful way to play a powwow drum, and more. It’s strange – after centuries of physical genocide followed by decades of cultural genocide, now it seems everyone want to be native.
 

Nothing like volunteering after a disaster to meet people you’d never meet otherwise – people who are lovely and needing to keep their families together and rebuild, but who have a totally different outlook on life from me.

On June 23, torrential rains fell on parts of West Virginia, causing disastrous flooding and at least 23 deaths, destroying 1,500 homes and damaging 4,000 more.  

Two months later, I got a chance to visit the state for the first time since the previous disaster – the poisoning of 300,000 residents’ drinking water by Freedom Industries with a coal-washing chemical.

I tried to pitch a story about disaster recovery two months out, but was told it was not “news,” even though I think it is news because all the media and most of the volunteers have left and people are still grappling with the aftermath of a disaster that upended thousands of lives.

Through my friends at RAMPS (Radical Action for Mountains’ and Peoples’ Survival) I got in touch with a woman from the town of Clendenin, a half hour from Charleston, which was flooded when the Elk River (ironically, the source of that drinking water disaster) rose 33 feet above its normal level, rising to near the top of the first floor of homes on the facing street. Pamela Roush matched us with a young man who was repairing his own home and directing work on his pastor’s house down the block. There, RAMPS volunteers David and Ethan sweated for six hours, ripping out the ruined hardwood floors in two rooms so a new floor could be laid. It was hot, dusty work as they pried up boards no more than a few inches wide. They were both wearing dust masks but no eye protection (despite my suggestion), and I noticed when they took a break that David had a bloody gash over one eye where a splinter had flown up and hit his face. He’s a hardcore volunteer and didn’t even bother to stop and clean it or put a Band-Aid on it.

As for me, I was assigned to shovel a thin layer of dried mud out of the basement and then sweep it. Fortunately, the basement door was open to the back yard and there was no mold smell. I noticed a “Friends of Coal” sign on a shelf and a sign for “Elk River Christian School” under the stairs. Later, after the guys finished the floor job, I carried armloads of broken up floor boards out to the street and then pulled up all the remaining nails.

At one point I saw a truck full of guys (either volunteers or hired workers) drive down the street, a big Confederate flag waving from the truck bed.

During a break I had a conversation with Jonathan, whose family, including his wife and three young kids (5, 3, and almost 1) were living on the far side of Charleston while he commuted back and forth to work on the house. The family was out of town when the flood hit (his wife, Melissa, said the best thing about that was now they don’t have to be scared every time it rains, though it also meant they had no chance to save anything from their first floor). After chatting about how high the river rose and the damage it did, I broached the issue of climate change.

He told me the world wasn’t going to end until God said so (I hadn’t suggested climate chaos would end the entire world), and that there’d been plenty of floods in the past before anyone was talking about climate change. (Nobody has made a direct link yet to this particular flood and climate change, though these kinds of disasters are exactly what the models predict as the world warms and the air holds more moisture.)

While we were working, our “matchmaker,” Pam, stopped by. She said right after the flood, hundreds of volunteers poured in from the local area (including the friends I stayed with in South Charleston) and from all over the country. She was set up in the parking lot of an auto dealer, and sent work crews out to homes as needed. That’s when the really hard, dirty work was done, as folks shoveled heavy, stinking mud out of their basements and first floors. By the time I got there, they were in a rebuilding mode.

Pam said after the disaster faded from the headlines (to be replaced when I was there by the much more widespread flooding in southern Louisiana), gradually the number of volunteers dwindled from hundreds to handfuls, but she kept matching people up when she could. Click here to listen/read my Between the Lines interview with her and her sister-in-law, who were a dynamic duo coordinating the work. (Sharry and Pam are pictured above, with the Elk River -- back down to where it belongs -- in the background.)

Another day I was able to take the regional bus from Charleston (for 75 cents) out to Clendenin to do another job – cleaning the windows on a trailer that was going to be a temporary home for a family. There were 50 window panes (most were composite windows) and it took me three hours to wash them inside and out, often standing on the top of a step ladder, leaning out as far as I could without falling over. It was a very satisfying job. That was where I saw my one and only monarch butterfly of the year – flying solo, even more beautiful for being so rare.

I was glad I was able to help a little, and volunteering (as I also did after Katrina in New Orleans/the bayou and in NYC after Sandy) really informs my reporting. But after spending those few hours in Clendenin and knowing how many volunteer hours preceded me, and knowing how many more thousands of hours it will take to get things back to “normal” (and not to mention the mental health toll for years going forward), it just underlined for me how ridiculous it is not to address our climate crisis. I think Jonathan’s God is not happy with us. I hope the ranks of evangelicals who favor addressing it in order to be good stewards of creation will go forth and multiply, and fast.

On another note, I happened to be in Charleston when members of the Kanawha Forest Coalition held a press conference/rally to celebrate their victory in forcing the state's Department of Environmental Protection to permanently close down a mountaintop removal mine site and save three-quarters of the mountain where blasting had been originally allowed. This was a first. Click here to listen to my story on Free Speech Radio News