Tornadoes swept through my town in mid-May, wreaking havoc on many neighborhoods and decimating the trees in Sleeping Giant State Park, our go-to hiking venue for 30 years. Thousands of trees came down, making me treasure even more the joys and benefits they impart: beauty, shade, a home for critters, and their role in mitigating climate change by absorbing CO2, to name just a few. So far this year Connecticut has experienced an unprecedented eight tornadoes, fueled, experts say, by climate change.

The state closed the park and allowed only state employees or contractors in. It’s beloved by many, and we all wanted to help clean up the mess and get the park reopened. After a month, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection relented, saying the Sleeping Giant Park Association (SGPA) – which has been doing regular maintenance there for decades – could go in provided everyone using a chain saw passed a two-day class.

So starting mid-June, volunteers have flooded into the park every Sunday morning. I am one of them. Some – especially the sawyers – go just about every week. Others of us go whenever we can. We build teams around the sawyers – usually six teams with from three to five members. Our coordinator, Ray, sends out the schedule every week of who’s going where. The front of the park was completely stripped of trees, including the parking area and the popular shaded picnic grounds. It’s unrecognizable. In exchange for cleaning up, contractors took out all the valuable wood; then the area was graded and now looks more like a desert than a forest. There are no immediate plans to replant.

The state was responsible for cleaning up the front and the Tower Trail, the most popular, easiest trail to a stone tower with views in all directions to several towns away and Long Island Sound. SPGA is responsible for the 32 other miles in a wonderful system of trails that crisscross the Giant’s body and create almost endless hiking options.

My first time on the crew, we hiked up the Green trail to the White and immediately found a huge, beautiful oak tree sprawled across the trail. It took more than one session to cut it apart and toss the pieces on either side of the trail. I experienced both great sadness and a sense of accomplishment at removing the obstacle.

At the end of my second week I fell near a tangle of downed trees and sprained my right (dominant) wrist, which kept me out of commission for a few weeks. When I went back we found a huge white pine lying lengthwise in the trail, and had to cut it all up. It’s amazing the difference between sawing a pine (softwood) and an oak or other hardwood, which is so much denser. Just as we finished, a swarm of bees we’d disturbed went on a stinging rampage and three of us got several stings each. The only one spared was our teammate, Melody, who is allergic to bee stings. She was prepared with her epi pen and her benadryl, but fortunately didn’t need either.

About three weeks ago we transitioned from starting at the back side to starting at the front side, which is encouraging because it shows how much progress we’ve made (though it’s hard to say how much, since some parts we haven’t reached yet could be filled with blowdowns).

Today we seemed to have almost more volunteers than we could use, as we kept running into each other and leapfrogging down the trails as each team found a tree to work on.  Every single person I’ve interacted with has been delightful, as team members joke around and constantly appreciate each other’s efforts. Today I got my official SGPA Volunteer neon orange cap and t-shirt. I will wear them proudly.

You can read brief interviews here I did for Hartford Magazine with half a dozen folks about why they joined the trail crew.

When you fight and fight against “the system” and consistently feel frozen out, it’s hard to keep going, to keep organizing, to keep reaching out to bring in more neighbors, more people who would agree with you if they understood what the struggle is about, to maintain your own equilibrium and your sense of humor.

But then once in a while you win – or at least you slow the bastards down, which can provide organizing time and breathing room toward an eventual win. In the past few weeks FERC – the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – voted to put the brakes on two of the biggest and most passionately contested fracked gas pipelines currently under construction – the 600-mile Atlantic Coast pipeline from West Virginia through Virginia and North Carolina, and the 300-mile Mountain Valley pipeline, from West Virginia to Virginia. FERC responded to pipeline critics’ courtroom successes regarding forest crossings, water crossings, eminent domain and endangered species.

Having spent time in West Virginia reporting on another filthy and dangerous fossil fuel extraction process – mountaintop removal coal mining – I really fear for the safety and quality of life of my friends who live in the Mountain State if the pipeline – through steep inclines and unstable rock formations – is allowed to proceed.

It doesn’t mean the pipelines won’t be finished, but these decisions are giving people hope. Another thing that’s giving us hope is that a federal judge just ruled that the Trump administration must conduct an environmental review of the new proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline through Nebraska. Last November the Nebraska public service commission approved TransCanada’s application to build the pipeline, but significantly changed the route. This could delay construction of the pipeline a year or more, making almost a decade since the thing was first proposed. You can listen/read an interview I did right after last fall’s decision with one of the leading ranchers opposing the pipeline, working in beautiful collaboration with indigenous activists and environmentalists.

But there’s always plenty of bad news, too. The folks I wrote about last month fighting the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana are facing increasing oppression. A new state law that just went into effect led to three water protectors being scooped up from their canoes while on public waters. They were arrested and charged with felonies. You can listen to/read my interview with Anne White Hat about that. And Ellen Gerhart (pictured at top), a retired special ed teacher and grandmother, was thrown in the slammer for two to six months, found guilty by a judge of indirect criminal contempt that included baiting a bear to come onto the pipeline route on her property as a means of delaying construction. It’s pretty unbelievable that a judge would rule this way, considering the Gerharts live in the woods and have very consciously protected the flora and fauna on their land – so of course it’s not surprising that bears would be about.

The common denominator in these two cases of intimidation and oppression is that both pipelines are being built by Energy Transfer Partners – the same company that pushed through the Dakota Access Pipeline. Both state actors (judges, police) and private security (like Tiger Swan) work hand in glove with fossil fuel companies to bring about these results. Click here for a damning video of "security" taking down Cherri Foytlin in Louisiana.  

You can learn more about their cases and support them by going to

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/08/10/anti-pipeline-kayaktivists-hit-felony-charges-under-louisianas-new-alec-inspired-law

www.desmogblog.omecom/2018/08/01/ellen-gerhart-pennsylvania-arrested-sunoco-mariner-east-pipeline-dispute
 

I called a friend today who was having some health issues, and she didn’t sound good. Turns out it wasn’t her physical health that’s the problem, it’s the emotional toll that the never-ending political/social/environmental crises, and all the lies and corruption, was taking on her.

I can relate. For the first year of the Trump administration I was gung ho and even energized by all the fights I and millions of others were engaged in. We even won some – or at least postponed implementation of horrors such as the Muslim ban and the wall on the Mexican border. Now the Muslim ban has been approved by the Trump Supreme Court, and the wall is still a live issue.

What really sent me into a funk was Trump’s “zero tolerance policy” for unauthorized immigration on the US-Mexico border, his administration’s kidnapping of children and the introduction of new phrases into the American lexicon like “tender age cages” for kids under 5. Then he reversed himself and issued an executive order to stop the separation of families, but more than 3,000 kids were taken and there’s no way he will meet a court-ordered deadline to return all of them. There’s even the nightmare likelihood that some of them will never be returned, as some of their parents have already been deported or have been deemed “unfit” parents. The sick irony of this administration talking like it’s protecting these kids when it has traumatized them, perhaps permanently.

I’ve realized that I’m much more of a glass half-empty kind of girl lately, and I’ve taken out my frustration and depression on those closest to me. Once I realized it, I’m now trying to recover my energy and commitment and emotional balance.

Some people don’t have the luxury of drifting away from the fight – the parents trying to get their kids back, for sure, but also many of the frontline folks fighting extractive energy projects like mountaintop removal coal and gas and oil pipelines. Case in point: a small but incredibly dedicated group of folks fighting the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Louisiana. It’s the “tail” of the Dakota Access pipeline that triggered the beautiful resistance at Standing Rock. Same company (Energy Transfer Partners), same oil, same brutal tactics used by law enforcement and mercenaries. Cherri Foytlin, an indigenous woman who’s one of the leaders of #NoBayouBridge, was beat up one recent night, and another supporter was harassed and denied water for several hours in the 90+ heat and humidity while trying to hold the line against the pipeline. (That's Cherri in the photo above.)

But they are resisting in beautiful and creative ways, like setting up tree sits in the path of the pipeline. In an interview, while talking about the situation, Cherri said she wanted no pity and even laughed several times. She said what keeps her going is the solidarity of others in the fight with her, like a Lakota brother from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota who’s been there for a month and recently locked down all day to a piece of machinery, with the words “Give St. James a way out” written on the pipe his arms were stuck into – a reference to a poor African American community along the pipeline route for whom the company did not bother to create an escape route in case of disaster.

Click here for an inspiring video of these three fighters.

I know my limits. I know I can’t go to Louisiana in the middle of the summer – I would melt into a puddle. So I’m staying in New Haven and organizing a solidarity action during the last two weeks of July – along with dozens of other places around the country, targeting the banks that are funding Bayou Bridge and several other dirty, damaging and unnecessary oil and gas pipelines.

You can visit the Rise Together website to find an action (hopefully) near you and learn how else you can contribute money or time.


 
 
 

So many in the U.S. are decrying the Trump administration’s separation of immigrants from their children along our southern border, claiming, “This is not who we are.” It certainly isn’t all of who we are, but there are two such glaring examples of how it was exactly who we were – or who our government was – that we can’t ignore them if we hope to look honestly at our past and become the nation so many think we already are.

I just watched a documentary called “Dawnland,” which is an exploration of the practice of removing indigenous children from their parents and communities in order to “take the Indian out of them.”

As the blurb for the documentary says, “For most of the 20th century, government agents systematically forced Native American children from their homes and placed them with white families. As recently as the 1970’s, one in four Native children nationwide were living in non-Native foster care, adoptive homes, or boarding schools. Many children experienced devastating emotional and physical harm by adults who mistreated them and tried to erase their cultural identity.” The film follows the State of Maine’s version of a truth and reconciliation commission a few years ago, inviting parents and children who suffered through this atrocity to talk about it. The process produced a report, but it seemed at the end of the film that perhaps nothing more would come of it.

It was hard to watch, just like the screams and cries of the kids snatched from their immigrant parents hoping to claim asylum was hard to listen to in an audio released by Pro Publica on June 18.

I was hiking last week on the Appalachian Trail in the mid-Atlantic states, and our van driver pointed out the marker on a street corner in Sharpsburg, in western Maryland, to denote where slave auctions were held. I never saw such a site in person before, and that was a slap upside the head.

We don’t have any audio recordings of the slave auctions before the Civil War, but if we try hard – or think of our own children, if we are parents, or remember being kids and think about being torn away from our moms and dads – we might get a tiny inkling of what that was like. Or truly take in Sojourner Truth’s often-quoted words, “I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”

When these attacks on the humanity of our brothers and sisters occurred, there were many Americans who called on “the better angels” of their natures (to quote Abe Lincoln) to condemn and oppose these atrocities. It took a Civil War, with 600,000 dead, to end legal chattel slavery. (Slavery continued after the war as freed blacks were arrested on bogus charges and pressed into chain gangs – as another documentary, “Slavery by Another Name,” makes clear. And now it continues in the bogus War on Drugs and the Prison Pipeline, which have separated untold mothers and fathers, disproportionately African Americans, from their sons and daughters.)

Trump’s cruel policy is the latest iteration of practices that have helped define our country for centuries – since before we were even a country. The damage done in the past was incalculable, and so will it be from the current tragedy. The fact that racism is at the root of these practices should go without saying, but I’ll say it.  And Trump's executive order issued on June 20 that parents and children will no longer be separated, but will be jailed together, is not an acceptable response as immigration violations have, up until now, been considered civil, not criminal offenses. Furthermore, it does nothing to reunite the families already ripped apart. Let’s continue to raise our voices against this atrocity. Let's stop this now.

(My photo above was taken at a recent protest in New Haven against separating families.)

There’s a new feature film out, “Little Pink House,” based on the true story of the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469, “a case involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development. In a 5–4 decision, the Court held that the general benefits a community enjoyed from economic growth qualified private redevelopment plans as a permissible "public use" under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” I couldn’t say it better, Wikipedia.

I covered this story – which unfolded an hour from where I live – for multiple outlets. I visited several of the families who lived in what seemed a tight-knit community on the shore of Long Island Sound. Suzette Kelo was the owner of said little pink house and lead plaintiff for the whole neighborhood that was destroyed when they lost their case at the high court. Even more maddening, again quoting Wikipedia, “The case arose in the context of condemnation by the city of New London, Connecticut, of privately owned real property, so that it could be used as part of a ‘comprehensive redevelopment plan.’ However, the private developer was unable to obtain financing and abandoned the redevelopment project, leaving the land as an undeveloped empty lot."

I went back to see the destruction after all the families had been forced out.

This court decision is what has enabled the taking of private property for private gain over and over in the past 13 years. Like the destruction of thousands of trees along 26 miles of a proposed fracked gas pipeline in Pennsylvania – including the sugar bush (trees yielding sap for maple syrup) of a family that invited people onto their land to resist the taking until they were stopped by a court order and marshalls armed with semi-automatic weapons to “protect” the workers who took the trees down. Then New York State, where 100 more miles of the pipeline were to be built, killed the project so it never saw the light of day. Click here to hear/read my Between the Lines interview with  Megan Holleran, who led the family's fight.

Many more recent examples of the use of eminent domain for private gain have been occurring in Virginia and West Virginia, as homeowners and their supporters fight the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines. One particularly egregious story involves the Reilly family – mom, dad, and four home-schooled children who were raising animals on an organic farm in bucolic southwestern Virginia. They were openly opposed to the Mountain Valley pipeline passing through their land, threatening their home, their water and their peace of mind. Yet FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) gave EQT Midstream Partners, LP, the lead company building the pipeline, permission to start felling trees along the 303-mile route, even though it didn’t have all the final approvals it needed. When a protester took up residence in a tree along the pipeline route, the family expressed their support, since such actions slow down these projects. The company took them to court and a judge fined Ian and Carolyn Reilly each $1,000 – payable to the company. You can hear/read my interview with Carolyn Reilly here.

People are still resisting, and it seems a majority of the tree sitters have been women – in many cases, older women. After one was forced down when law enforcement prevented her support team from delivering food or water for several days, another woman began a tree sit in a nearby tree.

As my friend Lyn wrote in an email sharing these latest developments with friends, “Suppose I lived in a beautiful forest. Then suppose that my parents, grandparents and great grandparents had also lived there. For years my family had felt blessed by the forest. Suppose further that one day the beauty, peace and God-given stillness of my place were shaken by huge death machines that threatened everything with extinction and poisoning. I wonder what I would do...Would I say to myself, ‘I am powerless, a small person. I guess I'll just move to another place. After all, some consider this destruction to be necessary progress.’ Would I?”

I hope I wouldn’t. And even if we don't have to make such a heart-wrenching choice ourselves, we can support these brave aerial activists. For more, read this inspiring article from the Guardian.

I just got back from an impressive, many faceted, inspiring action called Cuomo Walk the Talk. It involved a protest just a few blocks down the hill from the Capitol building in Albany, where the Cuomo administration wants to build yet one more fracked gas power plant in a low-income, majority people of color neighborhood to power the Capitol building itself.  

Then we marched through city streets – about 1,500 strong – to the Capitol for another rally outside the building. One of the speakers was Robert Howarth from Cornell, who was one of the first scientists to point out the powerful impact of methane on warming the planet (“natural” gas is about 95 percent methane) – 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after release, which is the time frame we need to deal with.

The theme of the day is that Cuomo, who has presidential ambitions, fancies himself a climate hero – his administration banned fracking in New York State in 2014 – yet he is enabling all kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure to proceed, while killing a few of the most egregious projects. His goal is to move to 50% renewables by 2030, while protesters are demanding a quicker transition. Organizers say right now New York is powered just 3 percent by wind and sun (which obviously doesn’t include hydro).

After the rally we all marched into the Capitol, chanting at the top of our lungs – and the sound echoed deliciously off the walls of the staircase as we climbed to Cuomo’s office. On top of the state seal activists unfurled a beautiful cloth sun declaring, “The sun is setting on fossil fuels, the sun is rising on renewables.” Then more than 50 of us sat down in a hallway in a long oval, each in turn saying why we came and why we were willing to risk arrest to press Cuomo on the issue of climate justice. I could have given a hundred reasons, but what I said was that my granddaughter is growing up in California between climate change-powered wildfires and sea level rise, and we have to do better in addressing the crisis. One of the best parts was all the chanting and singing we did, led by an incredibly talented and passionate member of the Peace Poets, Lu Aya. He did a workshop the day before the action where we learned some techniques for effectively teaching songs and chants, which I hope to use in the future.

We were taken into custody by very polite state police officers, handcuffed and escorted in an elevator to a big room on a lower level, where we were asked a few questions and released into the room to chat with each other until all 55 of us were processed and released together, charged with disorderly conduct. For many it was their first arrest, and I joked with people that being arrested is usually not like this. We didn’t have to sit on a cold concrete sidewalk blocking doors or be taken to a freezing cold jail and spend several hours before being released. We had plenty of snacks and early access to bathrooms.

I got to talk to new friends on both sides of me – one a musician/activist who teaches music workshops around the world, the other a brand new college grad who got a job working for an organization focused on climate change and public health. And I got to visit with old friends from Vermont, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. We have to go back to Albany in May to deal with our infraction.

This was by far the most racially diverse climate action I’ve ever been in, and it was the result of coalition building between some radical climate activists (almost all white) and some people of color community organizations (brought together by New York Renews) whose demands were not as radical (e.g., Food and Water Watch wanted the demand to be 100% renewables by 2030, while New York Renews proposed 100% by 2050). Because of that, some climate activists declined to participate. The demands of the action were: Stop all fossil fuel infrastructure projects! Move New York State to 100% renewable energy! (with no date attached because the different groups couldn’t agree on one). And Make the corporations polluting our air and water pay!

It seems to me that we need to broaden our base of support for climate action and work with groups we don’t agree with 100 percent of the time, assuming their demands aren’t actually antithetical to ours. One friend who didn’t participate does feel that the differences are too great, but while I was marching with all these fired-up white climate activists and African Americans from impacted communities across the state (from Buffalo to Albany to New York City), I felt like we were on the same page and that we are more powerful together than separate. 

Happy Spring!
In my neck of the woods (Connecticut) it’s way below normal temperature (in the 30s) and the fourth late winter (early spring) snowstorm has just begun.
We just returned from several days visiting family in Orange County, California – which I’ve always dissed as having boring weather where it’s always in the 70s and sunny – but this time it was a nice reprieve, even though it was colder than normal there (topping out at around 60 degrees).
We’re always looking for fun new things to do with our 5-year-old granddaughter, Eliza. This time we visited the mission at San Juan Capistrano, about a half hour drive from her home in Irvine. Ever since I learned that the migratory swallows always return to Capistrano on March 19, I’ve been intrigued with visiting, since that’s my birthday, St. Joseph’s Day.
We were departing on March 17, so we missed that by a couple of days, but we went anyway on March 16. We saw the former homes of some swallows, built under the eaves of some of the old buildings, but we didn’t see a single swallow. We learned that major construction to stabilize the mission church many years ago drove a lot of the swallows elsewhere – now the peak viewing areas are nearby highway underpasses – but in more recent years at least some have returned. However, I couldn't find any reports that they actually did return on March 19.
The highlight for me was seeing all the beautiful flowers and some trees, many of which I was able to identify with a brochure featuring the flora and their locations on the property. I don’t know why, but I enjoy these things more when I know what they are, and they are completely different from what grows where I live. Eliza had a great time feeding about a dozen huge koi that were swimming around a fountain, and she also stayed engaged as we walked around the premises for two hours with a phone-like apparatus that talked to us each time we punched a different number, to learn about the history of the place.
The mission was one of either 7 or 9 (accounts vary) established by Father Junipero Serra along the California coast. He was a Spanish priest who came to California in the late 1700s to convert the indigenous peoples he encountered. The talking history mentioned that the interaction between the Spaniards and the natives was “challenging” to the latter, but overall made it sound like they benefitted more than lost through European contact. They were given a choice of whether to come into the mission, and if they did they had to give up their culture and become Catholic. Some accounts say they were basically treated like slaves; the most generous interpretation is that they were treated like children.
Serra was beatified in 1988 (an important step toward sainthood), and canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, and was therefore referred to as “Saint Serra” in the explanations we read at the mission. There was some opposition to this process by some indigenous scholars (one called the missions “concentration camps” and “a place of death”), although according to Wikipedia, other native people supported it, saying on balance that Serra treated the Indians well and sometimes intervened to protect them from the rapes and beatings of the Spanish soldiers garrisoned at the missions. Some of his supporters say much of the criticism results from “ahistorical value judgments” – that old slippery slope, if ever there was one.
The photo above shows the ruins of the mission church, which collapsed in an earthquake just a few years after construction was finished.
The day after we visited the mission, we went to a bird sanctuary just a few minutes from Eliza’s house and saw hundreds of cliff swallows – the same species that made Capistrano famous.
They seemed to dive-bomb us, not out of hostility but because we just happened to be on their erratic flight paths. They are beautiful with iridescent dark blue backs. We also saw all kinds of other birds, from giant pelicans to tiny jeweled hummingbirds. Another highlight of our trip.
​

 

I’ve managed to get to the end of February without posting my monthly blog. It’s not that there’s nothing to write about; in fact, it’s the opposite. I’ve been so deluged with actions to organize or attend, and bombarded with mostly horrible news, that I don’t know where to begin.

Well, the thing on top of mind is, of course, the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The students’ responses have been incredibly inspiring, and they’ve already gotten action in Florida: raising the age of purchasing long guns from 18 to 21, creating a short waiting period before purchase, and banning bump stocks.* They didn’t get their main demand – banning assault rifles. But they – and students across the country – are going to keep organizing. They’ve already raised millions of dollars for their March 24 rally in D.C. for gun safety, which I plan to attend. I’ll also help fund students to go from Connecticut.
* Correction: I should have known this was too good to be true. None of these has passed yet, though all are on the table, which in itself may be a tiny victory.

Action in D.C. will be a lot harder, but I really feel this may finally be the change we’ve needed for decades. Besides legislation, some businesses have cut ties with the NRA and Dick's Sporting Goods said it would stop selling assault rifles and not sell any guns to anyone under 21.

Also a lot going on climate-wise. I attended a Teach-In for a Livable World! Climate Justice Now! that was organized largely by 350 CT and Sierra Club of CT. There was a good turnout (about a hundred people) for a six-hour event that included some excellent speakers who all made the point that if we don’t practice intersectionality across our various “silos” (like the environment, and women’s, labor and people of color movements) we will never succeed in our quest to lower greenhouse gas emissions enough to save the earth for humanity (and other living things).

The labor speaker was Sean Sweeney from Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, and he gave a great talk about the need for public energy systems, not private, for-profit ones, even if they are “green.” An excerpt of his half-hour talk is at this week’s Between the Lines radio show.

(There's a glitch in my website where instead of highlighting a word, it highlights the whole paragraph, so just click anywhere on it to connect to the link.)

Anne Hendrixson, director of Population and Development Programs at Hampshire College, raised some controversial issues regarding women’s reproductive rights and population, denying almost any role of population in contributing to climate change. I’ll be posting some of her talk later, so check back here for links.

When I feel burned out or depressed, I’ve loved listening to and spying the cardinals, who always sing at the tops of trees. They’re around all winter, of course, but they don’t sing for months in the fall and early winter – ‘til about February, when they start up again. The winter – aside from some bitter cold days in December – has been mostly mild, with little snow, which makes me sad. But we could still get a storm or two before spring fully springs. I’m already looking at seed catalogues for my garden.
 

Some of us are old enough to remember the career advice Dustin Hoffman got in The Graduate (or young enough to have seen it in reruns): “One word, son: plastics.” That was in 1967. And plastics did indeed take off, proliferating into an unbelievable flowering of disposable and non-disposable items. Think plastic bags, plastic storage containers, plastic bottles, plastic utensils, plastic pots for plants, plastic wrap, plastic cups and more long-lasting items like plastic pipes in the ground, plastic cars on the road and plastic jets in the air (or at least partially plastic).  We even have plastic clothing: it’s called Fleece. And plastics are critical in the health care field, from heart stents to replacement body parts.

For years I’ve tried to minimize my use of fossil fuels, from which plastic is made, but which are consumed much more abundantly in gasoline and heating fuel and electricity. I always thought plastics were a tiny percentage of the problem and not something I needed to worry about.

But at the summit against oil and gas infrastructure last November in Pittsburgh, for the first time I heard people talking about fighting “cracker plants,” explained here in a report from State Impact Pennsylvania, a joint project of NPR stations in the state: “In June 2016, Shell Chemical Appalachia announced it plans to build a massive, multi-billion dollar petrochemical plant (known as an ethane cracker) in Potter Township, Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. ‘Cracker’ is industry lingo for a plant that takes oil and gas and breaks it into smaller molecules, to create ethylene, which is used in plastics manufacturing.” It would create toxic air pollution and lead to negative health outcomes for at least some residents.

But plastics manufacturing isn’t a “tiny” part of the problem. According to an article in The Guardian, plastic production is planned to increase by 40% in the next decade. “The global plastic binge, which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after multibillion dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the U.S.”

So I decided to do a “plastics cleanse.” But it’s not that easy. I use a straw to drink my coffee, and I plan to get a set of bamboo straws, but first I thought I’d use up the dozens of plastic straws I’ve accumulated over the years. My daughter uses a lunch bag that is an alternative to plastic bags, and I can get one, but first I may as well use up the hundreds of plastic bags of all sizes I have in the house. I have three fleece tops, and nothing could be cozier in cold weather, and since I already have them I might as well keep wearing them, though if they ever wear out (they show no sign of doing so) I could replace them with flannel or wool. There’s also a lot of plastic in all my electronic devices, and I’m not sure how I’d replace them when they wear out or get broken.

Since the conference, I’m more aware of who pays the price for my plastic conveniences, and I hope that will help me minimize its use.

P.S. The photo above has nothing to do with this topic; it’s just showing how I like to decompress after dealing with all these daunting problems. Oh, wait! My skis are partially made of plastic, too.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/creating-plastic-from-greenhouse-gases-180954540/#WljJye53ZYyAM30w.99

10 Things You Can Do to Minimize Plastic Use -- http://bit.ly/2nI9TEi

https://phys.org/news/2017-07-billion-metric-tons-scientists-total.html#jCp

To maintain my sanity in these insane times, I have to focus on positive developments, ongoing fights that have a chance of succeeding, or at least actions showcasing solidarity. There have been plenty of them lately. 

A few weeks ago I attended the People vs Oil and Gas Infrastructure Summit (catchy name, I know) in Pittsburgh, with more than 300 other activists. I met people working on both gas and oil pipeline struggles, including many native Americans from Canada and the U.S. A highlight of the conference was an indigenous-led “water walk” from the hotel several blocks to where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers merge to form the Ohio River (which later flows into the Mississippi, giving a clear sense of rivers as being the veins of the earth). It’s a very sacred place, and when we got there the leaders said prayers and smudged us with sage. It was evening of a mid-November day, but in keeping with the warm weather we’ve had almost all fall, it was just a lovely evening (no gloves or hat needed), albeit a reminder of the “climate, changed” as one woman put it.

I interviewed a man who works with the Sierra Club’s Labor and Economic Justice program, who had some insights into how labor activists and climate activists can support each other more. You can listen/read about it here.

An awards ceremony featured three grassroots activists who have either won battles or have helped move the struggle forward in significant ways. I was really touched by Frank Finan, a widower who bought a high-tech FLIR camera that reveals leaking gas that otherwise is invisible and has no smell either. He has taken it on his own dime all over the country to help myriad other fights. I mention he’s a widower because when he gave his brief acceptance speech he gave his wife so much credit for his life’s work, which endeared him to me. Another Pennsylvania man, Ray Kemble, has been on the front lines of the fight against Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, which in turn has filed a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) against him, putting him in danger of losing his home (which is surrounded by fracking wells). The other winner was Ranjana Bhandari, a woman from Texas who organized her neighbors and won a fight to stop fracking in Lake Arlington.

Early Monday morning after the conference, Rising Tide Pittsburgh and allies pulled off a great action by erecting two tripods with a person suspended from each and three people locked down to each other between the tripods (see photo above) at the entrance to an office park that houses many fossil fuel companies, and succeeded in blocking the road for several hours.  They were raising the alarm about the terrible destruction that fracking does to their families and communities. Someone at the conference had suggested that it might be more effective to lobby elected officials as the woman from Texas had done, but the direct action proponents always point out that they act after all the other avenues of redress have been exhausted and their concerns have not been addressed. I was with a team that blocked the road further up, advising drivers to make a U-turn because they couldn’t get through anyway. All were compliant; most were silent but a half dozen cursed us. I kept thinking of Heather Heyer being mowed down in Charlottesville and hoped none of the drivers would weaponize their vehicle toward us.
When the cops dismantled the protest, just the tripod-sitters were charged with a couple of misdemeanors.

You can read a story about it here.

Closer to home, on November 30 about a dozen of us pulled off a very fun but meaningful action around the City of New Haven’s tree lighting festival on the Green, which happened to be sponsored by Wells Fargo. We have a campaign to get the city to move its $10 million-plus per day operating budget out of Wells, so we wrote new words to some holiday songs, donned our elf hats, and strolled the Green, singing to thousands of people and handing out flyers. You can read the story and watch the two-minute video

here.

The mayor responded that the city is gradually moving its money (which is fine, but we’re saying it should be to a local bank and she hasn’t yet declared a definite alternative bank for the bulk of the funds), and she said Wells Fargo was being a “good corporate citizen” by sponsoring the event. That sent some of us into paroxysms of scornful laughter; “corporate” doesn’t go with “citizen,” and “good” doesn’t go with “Wells Fargo.”

I’m hoping to do some real caroling before the month is out, and grab a little holiday spirit. Our son, daughter and granddaughter will be with us for Christmas, which will be a big shot of happiness.