Urban Ecology

Weaponized

2016-11-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

Have you missed me? I'm trying something new. You can subscribe to the urbanecology tinyletter here: https://tinyletter.com/urbanecology. Meanwhile, one more post here.

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What This In-Vogue Verb Tells Us About Our Divided Culture

Did reading this bother you? Referring to “truthiness", a term coined by Stephen Colbert "But in this election, truthiness has become fully weaponized by social media …” (Oct. 26, 2016 NYTimes opinion page)

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/29/one-nation-weaponized-what-this-in-vogue-verb-tells-us-about-our-divided-culture/

Like a bunny in the headlights of an oncoming truck (Watership Down) I admit to being fully “tharn” in the wake of the outcome of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Some of this is shock and fear, but most of it is a lack of clarity about how to respond to the terrible fate our new president-elect promised to unleash upon the powerless, “the historically disenfranchised”, the sick, the young, the old. An important part of the conundrum for me is my struggle with non-violent language, avoiding language that is weaponized. As a Buddhist I try to adhere to its ethical principles, The Five Precepts.

Rather than describing my engagement with the Precepts as frequently failing, let’s just say I have the privilege of frequently starting over. Two of them, numbers one and four, are especially relevant to the issue of the election, right action in relationship to it, nonviolence and me. The first precept is, “I undertake the training vow to avoid taking the life of beings” and the fourth precept is, “I undertake the training vow to refrain from false speech.” These two feel deeply connected to me, even In times when I am distracted from my practice. As I have investigated and sat with the first precept it has become very focused on the environment and the evolving realization of how my actions contribute to harm and killing of beings. And the fourth encompasses more than not lying or deceiving. It includes the five standards for right speech one of the factors of the Buddhist Eightfold Path. What is spoken...

Is truthful
Is not divisive
With goodwill
Is beneficial
Is timely

While this may all sound very monkish, there is a part of a sutra attributed to the Buddha that begins, “And how is one made pure in four ways by verbal action?” And goes on to describe participation in

EPA Town Hall Meeting, Mossville Louisiana

a community meeting (AN 10.176).

Under the best of circumstances I struggle with the fourth precept and right speech. This election season I have, perhaps we all have, been exposed to and wallowed in the opposite of right speech, that which is false, divisive, abusive and idle. I am struck by how words destroy, and how words lead to destructive action. This focus on right speech does not preclude resistance to that which is destructive and harmful to all living beings. Right now I just don’t know what my role is in countering these harms without doing more harm myself.

I know I probably need to just let it go, open my eyes and see the speeding truck is not just bearing down on me but all of us, regardless of who we voted for, and engage. The good thing about the precepts (or any truly generous spiritual practice) is a girl can always start over.

Stop the Sasol Land Grab of Mossville!

2016-08-16T09:18:00.000-04:00

East side of Mossville 2012 at
Industries Fenceline

In case you missed my e-newsletter, here is the email I wrote to Administrator Gina McCarthy:

Dear Administrator McCarthy:

Last week your Region 6 office participated in the ongoing injustice being suffered by the people of Mossville Louisiana, and thereby became complicit in the land grab being perpetrated by Sasol, the apartheid era

East side of Mossville 2016

South African oil company. When Region 6 endorsed the suspect industry Voluntary Property Purchase process they helped cover up Sasol's coercive, deceptive and financially inadequate program to take possession of this 225 year old community. I urge you to make Sasol return to negotiations with Mossville residents and Mossville Environmental Action Now. Impel Sasol to make Mossville residents whole, debt free, and fully housed.

Please write EPA Administrator McCarthy today!

McCarthy.Gina@epa.gov

Stop the Sasol Land Grab of Mossville: What's a Voluntary Property Purchase Program

2016-08-15T14:54:00.000-04:00

Environmental Justice Elders Lead Off Demo at
Sasol Houston Headquarters

Many of you have asked what's up with my blog. I'm hoping to make a transition to a website with the blog embedded but I don't seem to have the skill or talent to accomplish that. I'm looking for help. I'll let you know how it goes. On to the main event!
______________________________
Sasol, the apartheid era South African synthetic fuel company is perpetrating an coercive, deceptive and financially unjust grab for the land of people of Mossville Louisiana. You all have read about Mossville over the years. This post is about the collusion of the oil and chemical industries in creating something called the Voluntary Property Purchase Program to buyout communities and avoid liability for industrial toxic pollution that drives down property values, poisons the environment and destroys the livelihoods and health of the communities they are "benefitting."

I have found 4 other instances of oil refiners and chemical processing companies using Georgia-based Community Interaction Consultants (CIC) as their front organization in the negotiation of buyouts, all highly contested -- 2 in Michigan, 1 in Arkansas and 1 in 1999 in Baltimore. The Port of Corpus Christi seems to be taking bids on one now. John Mitchell, the president and founder of CIC, describes the company at his LinkedIn page as providing

"community relocation consulting, program development, and program administration services for heavy manufacturers facing diminution of value claims"... and,
"Beginning in 1989, consulting for the development and administration of property programs focused on green belt expansion for heavy manufacturing sites."

Green belts are supposed to be areas protected by zoning policy to maintain wild, agricultural and open space as a buffer between industry and settled areas. International environmental justice activists have created a Green Belt Movement. Of course international mega-corporations see these areas as expansion opportunities, greenwashing their buyouts as relocations, property value protection programs, and most egregiously, as voluntary.

Dislocation from ones home and land (especially in Louisiana where multiple generations live and build on the family property under the ownership of one family member) after your property has been polluted by dioxin, oil spills, benzine releases and other chemicals, your family's health destroyed and the concerted effort of community members and their allies to gain the attention of, and action from government, industry and the judiciary ignored -- in the case of Mossville for over two decades -- does not lead to a freely made decision to voluntarily sell one's property to the perpetrator (or the perpetrators' stalking horse) of the harm the community has experienced.

There is probably need for a Department of Justice investigation into oil and chemical industry collusion in creating the VPPPs in order to avoid the true cost of their egregious disregard for the communities they have driven out and whose land they have come to own.

Engaging New Learning Environments

2016-03-24T12:05:00.001-04:00

As some of you know, I am now working full-time at SLC developing an End of Life Care Program. As part of that I am developing learning opportunities that are both online and face-to-face. To help me get a grip on this I am taking an online course called #BlendKit2016, to help me learn about course development and to develop my own practice in this new learning environment. So this is my first reaction blog to a 5 week course that will end next week. As a learner I am finding that I am able to put off doing online work almost indefinitely. This is important self-reflection for designing for students who may be like me -- late middle-aged, abundantly degreed, easily bored.

Anyway. The most striking statement in the first chapter of readings was to "Begin with relevant metaphors for learning" (Thompson, ed., Reader BlendKit Learning Toolkit, https://blended.online.ucf.edu/, p. 9). To me this is the second starting place. The first is the "relevant metaphors" for learners. Individual need is highly valued in the theorizing so far. This is important but I am equally concerned about building learning community and how adults, especially, come together to learn and solve problems. Transmission of information is important, and addressing barriers to learning for individuals is the obvious task of any teacher. So I will reflect on these two metaphors and get back to you.

In the case study #2 the chart on critical design decisions is immensely helpful, as is the description of studio-based instruction. Both case studies used a similar design strategy, beginning with "learning and teaching principles" (p. 10), suggesting what is specific to the field or discipline, choosing the learning technology that fits the field, the setting, the teaching capacity and the principles, and then describing how online and face-to-face will interact and complement each other.

There. I did my assignment.

Sandra Bland & Driving While Black

2015-07-18T20:41:00.002-04:00

Sandra Bland #SayHerName

We don't know how Sandra Bland (#SayHerName) ended up dead in police custody after an unnecessary, ultimately violent traffic stop and arrest in one of the scarier parts of Texas, at least if you are driving while black. Waller County Texas has a history of racial tension, a police chief who was fired from the nearby town of Hempstead for unremitting racist behavior; and Waller County, on the edge of Harris County and the Houston municipal limits, is in the part of the state where police departments make lots of money from stop and seize activities.

A friend, who like me, has enjoyed the freedom of driving as part of our training and consulting activities, commented about how much what happened to Sandra Bland frightened her. And I share the same worry, especially when crossing the Mason-Dixon line (although central PA always gives me pause).

I once researched a non-fiction piece to answer the question, in how many states, between Maine and the panhandle of Florida, would I find the confederate flag? This was in 2004. I loaded up the Brown Dog, and we set off from Boston on a 3 day drive -- we had been in Maine and NH earlier, which is why I wanted to write the piece. The important detail here is the Brown Dog. Of course I found the confederate flag, stuck to, flapping from or emblazoned on something in every state, from Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts (South Boston of course), New York, and just over the line in the Pennsylvania town of Milford, on a flagpole in front of the cigar shop in its historic district. I was not surprised, and only appalled once, in West Virginia at the site of Booker T. Washington's first home house in freedom, a truck perpetually parked nearby, a battle flag prominently affixed to its bumper.

Brown Dog was my Co-Pilot

But this post isn't about the flag. It's about the security I felt with my 60 pound lab/shepherd mix by my side. An utterly harmless dog who seemed to strike terror in the minds of men. Brownie, the Brown Dog, traveled the country with me, north and south. He passed on in 2008, to be with the elders who he had
known and loved. And every year without him, I am a little more fearful about driving alone.

And isn't this the point of terrorism? To deprive us of the freedom to go where we please, do what we want, enjoy this country as most white men believe it is their right to enjoy this country? (I know white women think they have this unvarnished right but that is only because of their misplaced faith in white supremacy. They forget to look over their shoulders at the patriarchal vengeance that seeks to keep them in check.)

#SayHerName Brief, AAPF

I have no words of encouragement, no analysis that relieves the unease I feel -- many Black women feel, most Black men feel -- that in those uninvited interactions with the enforcement mechanisms of white supremacy, the local and state police agencies, our lives do not matter. We can't be respectable enough, educated enough, dignified enough, distinguished enough, docile enough. So we might as well resist and disrupt with all our might.

"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals, p. 13

The Exodus of the People of Mossville, Part 3: Who Is Sasol?

2015-05-03T19:44:00.000-04:00

This is 3rd in a series of posts on the Exodus of the People of Mossville, Louisiana, an historically African-American community founded in the late 1800s by Jack Moss. Sasol, the South African synthetic oil company, is buying up property to build the first North American (fracked) gas to liquids plant.

The following facts are drawn from the Mossville Environmental Action Now website (see website for citations):

Who Is Sasol?

Founded in 1950 in South Africa, in response to international communities' fuel embargo due to the practice of apartheid.
In 1954, Sasol created Sasolburg to supply housing and facilities for employees; it segregated the development into Sasolburg proper (exclusively for white employees) and Zamdela township (for non-whites).
Zamdela remains marginalized.
Despite the presence of a major manufacturer in their backyard, unemployment in Zamdela remains high, 43% as of January 2013 (1).
Sasol has been accused of pollution in Zamdela that’s caused sickness and hospitalization, including a chlorine gas leak in 2000, which led to over 200 hospitalized (2).
Over 42,000 tons of volatile organic compounds are reported to have been polluted into Zamdela (3).
Residents of Zamdela began monitoring their air in 2001- finding quickly that the level of benzene in the air was over 8 times the US legal limit (4).
Most of Zamdela’s residents earn less than R400 a month (about $40 USD a month); Sasol’s CEO David Constable received a 68% pay increase (5) this year, bringing his salary to R53.7 M for the year ended June 2013.

What is Sasol North America?

Condea Vista (now Sasol North America) was found guilty of "wanton and reckless disregard of public safety” in 1997 for its responsibility for one of the largest chemical spills in the nation’s history, which contaminated the groundwater underneath the surrounding community. The company was charged with dumping an estimated 19-47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride, a suspected human carcinogen, into the local estuary (6). This local estuary is Mossville, Louisiana.
Sasol North America has self-reported releasing dioxins, a cancer-causing highly-toxic group of chemicals in Mossville area (7).
Greenpeace is suing Sasol North America for spying: "allegedly trespassing, conducting unlawful surveillance and stealing confidential information related to Greenpeace's work in the Lake Charles region of Louisiana," (8) which includes work with the Mossville.

The Exodus of the People of Mossville, Part 2: American Petro-State

2015-04-26T22:18:00.005-04:00

View of Lake Charles Industrial Zone from Mossville

What was the point of the expansionist enterprise we know as the "Discovery of America" -- that invasion by the nations of Europe into the Caribbean, North and South America? Extraction of resources. We learn of the mythic search for gold by Spaniards, Columbus' misdirected search for a new route to the spices of south Asia, the interest of the Dutch in the same. But once the northern Europeans got over their lust for shiny metals and geographic confusion they realized that the Americas were a gold mine of a different sort. It had everything that was becoming in short supply in their home countries -- timber and good soil for growing cotton, and the quintessential cash crop, tobacco. Eventually coal would be found as well as other useful minerals. Soon, Africans would be extracted from the Continent and brought to work the plantations, farms, timber stands and mines of the "new" land. American colonists understood their role in the beginning. They were employees of corporations, called variously, The Dutch West India Company, British East India Company, and eventually for Louisiana, the Company of the West or the Mississippi Company as it was also known, under imperial French charter.

What does any of this have to do with an American Petro-State?

The Louisiana settlement began in 1699 at what today is Biloxi Mississippi. The poet, essayist and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson, writing in 1916 to document the strange provenance of the Louisianan term "People of Color (gens de couleur)", suggests there were less than 300 people in the colony by the time the first African slaves arrived. France and Louisiana's economic viability were dependent on the machinations of the Mississippi Company and what became known as the "Mississippi Bubble." I mention it here because the Mississippi Bubble introduces early to Louisiana one of the key elements necessary for its future as a haven for oil and gas drilling and petrochemical processing -- monopolistic corruption. A Scottish gambler, John Law, convinced the French government that if they gave him control of the Mississippi Company, and all the resources and people of what is now Mississippi and Louisiana, that he could increase the number of White people and slaves in the colony. The plan went awry, Law had inflated the value of the Mississippi Company stock and when shares were not redeemable it almost bankrupted France and its colonies. Louisiana would remain backward economically for generations. But that doesn't mean companies weren't getting wealthy. Eventually, after the French had given up on the vast territory it controlled in North America, the production of agricultural and other commodities - sugar, salt, cotton, sulphur, rice --would dominate the lives of most of the states residents, regardless of their color or legal status. At the turn of the 20th century the first oil would be discovered at Jennings Field near Lafayette. This arguably marks the emergence of the American Petro-State.

What is a Petro-State? Mostly we think of it in terms of Russia "oilgarchs", Persian Gulf Arab oil states and authoritarian regimes in Africa, South America and Asia. But North America has regions that function like foreign Petro-States. Instead of despot rulers there is a history of state government level corruption, lax environmental enforcement and corporate control of land and property rights.

What characterizes a Petro-State? According to Michael Watts in his reflection on Louisiana and the BP oil disaster (2012):
"Petrocorruption and the shady politics of oil development were there from the beginning, as the oil industry emerged on the backs of an extractive economy (timber, sulfur, rice, salt, furs). Local businessmen snapped up land and threw themselves into a chaotic land grab backed by Texas drillers and operators with little regard for the law. Wildcatting sprung up with no regulation; leases, especially along the coast wetlands, were allocated behind closed doors. Huey P. Long famously launched his career with an attack on Standard Oil and then proceeded to build his own subterranean oil empire. While senator, Long and his political cronies established the Win or Lose Corporation, which acquired cut-rate mineral leases through the government and resold them at a healthy profit."

Essential to the profitability of the petrostate is its ability to operate in the shadows, to tamp down dissent and evade regulatory or criminal punishment. The fact that many readers of this post know nothing of these conditions, the economic, geo-spatial, health, environmental and cultural implications of its existence suggests these massive, obscenely wealthy corporations have been successful.

228,000 oil wells have been drilled in Louisiana since the discovery of the Jennings Field (Watts). The oil extracted from Louisiana and Texas, the drilling that has led to the destruction of the wetlands and the chemical processing that has created multiple Cancer Alleys and many Sacrificial Neighborhoods along the fence lines of chemical processors and oil refineries, provides us with our daily needs, from the fabrics we wear to the medical devices essential to our survival.

And the cartography of the American Petro-State is no longer limited to Louisiana and Texas. See that big red scab up by Ohio?

Earth Day 2015

2015-04-22T06:43:00.002-04:00

Today is the 45th Anniversary of Earth Day

This week is the 5th Anniversary of the BP Oil Disaster

This year is the 10th Anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina & Rita

The View from a Mossville Fenceline. Photo by R Hudson

Right now, There is a great dislocation happening in southwest Louisiana, the exodus of the people of Mossville Louisiana from the village built by their ancestors over 150 years ago. The community of Mossville is disappearing under the greedy footprint of Sasol, the South African Oil and Gas company, abetted by a complicit state government, indifferent to the needs and wishes of its most vulnerable citizens, those in the fenceline communities, near to oil refineries and chemical processors. These communities, like Mossville, bear the burden of toxic exposures, and their citizens organize to protect their health as well as the air, land and water where they live. Organizations like Mossville Environmental Action Now seek to protect all of us from predatory extractive industries that realize obscene profits while leaving devastation in their wake.

In the coming weeks this blog will describe the situation in Mossville and suggest multiple approaches to thinking about the dispossession of one of this country's oldest African-American communities from its land by an apartheid- era South African based oil and chemical processing giant.

Many African-American, Indigenous and working poor communities have disappeared through Louisiana state policies that favor industrial expansion over the rights of its citizens. Mossville, because of the decades-long organizing by its residents, provides important lessons for how we, who believe in the possibility of creating a safe and prosperous environment for all beings, can confront the predation of industry and support the important work of local and grassroots organizing, such as that of Mossville Environmental Action Now.

This weekend watch for a post on The Emergence of an American Petro-State.

A Deep Environmental Funk

2015-03-04T11:22:00.001-05:00

Compost Pile Akron winter Feb. 23rd

I know I've been away for awhile. I've been in a funk about the fate of the earth and all the beings residing on it; and all the communities in which we live. Trying to pull myself together because Mossville needs what little help I can offer, because #AllLivesMatter which is demonstrated in the way we struggle to honor how #BlackLifeMatters. So, In honor of all life, a couple links to articles that demonstrate why I have been in "the sloth of despond". Thankfully all things, including despond, arise and pass away.

1. Oklahoma knew in 2010 what was causing all them earthquakes:

http://bit.ly/1AILds1

2. Only Capital, and its interests seems able to stop #MountaintopRemoval coal mining.http://bit.ly/1CwfpO5

3. The man who brought you those lite coffee capsules that are clogging the ocean has regrets. http://bit.ly/1AISjN9

It's An Act of Kindness. It's An Act of Justice. Shut It Down!

2014-11-27T19:00:00.004-05:00

#ThisistheMovement #61

I now believe I spent a lifetime with a man, my father, running scared from police violence.

Since I first became conscious of racism (1st grade, St. Bernard's, first day of school) I have worried about what white men would do to my people, to me. It's a low-level anxiety, one that I can box up and hold at bay. But less so lately. Especially in regards to law enforcement. I drive the speed limit these days and drive slowly by any time I see that the Ohio Highway Patrol has pulled someone over. Just to make sure they aren't black, and if they are, to ascertain if they are safe.

And while I understand the choice, I find it unfortunate when Black and Brown people choose to wear the uniforms of the institutions that enforce systematic structural racism in this country. I'm very near 60 and I don't want to see any of the young people from this past summer's youth employment project or my younger relations or any random black girl or boy spend as many years worried, scared or afraid. I don't want to see another person killed by those who wear the uniform that supports structural inequity (even if you don't think that is what you are doing). So it's time to call a stop.

I'm not that different from the sometimes bitter middle-aged man who was my father. I, like him, am afraid of big demonstrations. I'm a stay-in-the-background kind of activist. I prefer the hard work of creating viable organizations and building individual and community capacity for social change to standing on a street corner with a megaphone. I hate to be arrested. But I agree with the brave, young, BOLD Black Lovers -- It's time to shut it down.

I'm going to Walmart first thing Friday morning to urge Black folk to stay away, for at least this one day. For John Crawford, who was shot in a Walmart for carrying a pellet gun that he picked up in that Walmart, and was being sold in that Walmart just outside Cincinnati. I'm going for Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy, playing with the modern equivalent of a dart gun, shot by Cleveland cops within seconds of their arrival at the playground where Tamir was hanging out. I'm going for the scores of others who weren't at their family's Thanksgiving table because of institutionalized, state-sanctioned murder. I hope you will join in wherever you are. It's time to disrupt the system that allows these events and so many other instances of structural racism to damage the lives of our relations, friends, family, community members.

Disrupt, before it's too late for another black boy or girl, man or woman.

Consider it an act of loving-kindness.

Disrupt.

Before it's too late for all of us.

No Indictment: A Letter from the Organizers in Ferguson

2014-11-24T22:11:00.004-05:00

The Results Are In

An Open Letter from Protestors On The Grand Jury Decision (11.24.14)

In Ferguson, a wound bleeds.

For 108 days, we have been in a state of prolonged and protracted grief. In that time, we have found community with one another, bonding together as family around the simple notion that our love for our community compels us to fight for our community. We have had no choice but to cling together in hope, faith, love, and indomitable determination to capture that ever-escaping reality of justice.

After 108 days, that bleeding wound has been reopened, salt poured in, insult added to the deepest of injury. On August 9^th, we found ourselves pushed into unknown territory, learning day by day, minute by minute, to lead and support a movement bigger than ourselves, the most important of our lifetime. We were indeed unprepared to begin with, and even in our maturation through these 108 days, we find ourselves reinjured, continually heartbroken, and robbed of even the remote possibility of judicial resolution. A life has been violently taken before it could barely begin. In this moment, we know, beyond any doubt, that no one will be held accountable within the confines of a system to which we were taught to pledge allegiance. The very hands with which we pledged that allegiance were not enough to save Mike in surrender.

Once again, in our community, in our country, that pledge has returned to us void.

For 108 days, we have continuously been admonished that we should “let the system work,” and wait to see what the results are.

The results are in.

And we still don’t have justice.

This fight for the dignity of our people, for the importance of our lives, for the protection of our children, is one that did not begin Michael’s murder and will not end with this announcement. The ‘system’ you have told us to rely on has kept us on the margins of society. This system has housed us in her worst homes, educated our children in her worst schools, locked up our men at disproportionate rates and shamed our women for receiving the support they need to be our mothers. This system you have admonished us to believe in has consistently, unfailingly, and unabashedly let us down and kicked us out, time and time again.

This same system in which you’ve told us to trust--this same system meant to serve and protect citizens-- has once again killed two more of our unarmed brothers: Walking up a staircase and shot down in cold blood, we fight for Akai Gurley; Playing with a toy after police had been warned that he held a bb gun and not a real gun at only twelve years old, we fight for Tamir Rice.

So you will likely ask yourself, now that the announcement has been made, why we will still take to the streets? Why we will still raise our voices to protect our community? Why will still cry tears of heartbreak and sing songs of determination?

We will continue to struggle because without struggle, there is no progress.

We will continue to disrupt life, because without disruption we fear for our lives.

We will continue because Assata reminds us daily that “it is our duty to fight for freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Those chains have bound us-all of us- up for too long. And do not be mistaken- if one of us is bound, we all are. We are, altogether, bound up in a system that continues to treat some men better than others. A system that preserves some and disregards others. A system that protects the rights of some and does not guard the rights of all.

And until this system is dismantled, until the status quo that deems us less valuable than others is no longer acceptable or profitable, we will struggle. We will fight. We will protest.

Grief, even in its most righteous state, cannot last forever. No community can sustain itself this way.

So we still continue to stand for progress, and stand alongside anyone who will make a personal investment in ending our grief and will take a personal stake in achieving justice.

We march on with purpose. The work continues. This is not a moment but a movement. The movement lives.

This letter was written and signed by numerous protestors and supporters, too many to list. Permission is granted in advance for reproduction by all outlets.

Ebola and Us

2014-10-18T18:53:00.002-04:00

(I'm taking a minute from the Black Urban Growers Conference #BUGS2014 #Detroit for this post. Then it's back to edible landscapes and food sovereignty!)

Ebola Virus

I've been thinking about this since August, but now that my home town, Akron, OH, has hit the spotlight with the identification of U. S. Ebola patient #3, I think it's time.

Americans are spoiled. We inflict war and carnage, exploit resources and generally mindlessly pursue our self-interest without recognizing that we are not Fortress America, reaching out and pillaging, and then dashing back, arms full of other people's resources, to our titanium castle on a big island in the middle of a big ocean.

We were never that, and we aren't that now. Globalization brought Christopher Columbus and deadly diseases to the naive immunes systems of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and North America. The results were 80-95% of populations dying. Disease and pestilence have been introduced to every continent from some other place because of "journeys of discovery" to find the raw materials of the emerging and consolidating capitalist economies.

There was a point in this country when people realized that it was unsustainable to continue to pollute our water supplies with our trash and feces. That gave rise, in part, to the public health movement in the early 20th century (they had other, less honorable intentions of course). Public health brought sanitation, vaccines, access to clinics and infectious disease control. In the last 20 years this commitment to public health, that eventually gave us the CDC, the surgeon general and state, county and local public health offices, has been deprived of funding and government support. The CDC has had it's budget cut by billions over the last 20 years.

In addition, thanks to the Reagan era health care reform, privatization has resulted in for-profit hospitals with little focus on their public health responsibilities. And then there are states like Texas.

States like Texas, Louisiana, and West Virginia have inefficient, poorly funded or practically non-existent public health infrastructures. They pander to extractive industries -- oil, coal, fracked gas -- that need environmental

Houston. Thanks Juan Parras of TEJAS

and public health regulations to be held at bay so they can make their enormous profits.

So, don't show up in a Texas for-profit hospital and expect them to know where Liberia is or that Ebola is epidemic there. And if you don't have insurance (because there is no Medicaid expansion Texas) you will be lucky to be handed a bottle of antibiotics but you will definitely be sent away. But the nurses will try to do their best, cobbling together the protective gear inappropriately so that they will be guaranteed to be the next Ebola victims.

Disease spreads, Ebola will be here. If you are really worried about your personal health insist your local and state governments reinvigorate the systems that guarantee our public health.

A Request from Organizers in Ferguson

2014-08-20T05:00:00.000-04:00

Perhaps you are like me, and have a deep and long-standing sense of guilt about not going to the Gulf Coast, particularly New Orleans, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I have mostly

addressed that regret and shame by working with Mossville Environmental Action Now and experiencing the enduring agony that is the situation for communities of color trying to live (and breathe...) in that state's oil patch. But it only takes the first five minutes of a situation like Ferguson for that old guilty voice to rise up, with this thought, "I should be there. I should be there supporting my people!"

I have learned to not give in to this urge. And while I am obsessed with the events unfolding around the death of Michael Brown, I have been acutely aware that the Organization for Black Struggle, a St. Louis-based community organization attempting to create some capacity for long-lasting social justice in "The Lou" and its suburbs.

Jamala Rogers of OBS (OBS Website)

This has been born out by the following request from the people on the ground who understand the issues, resources and needs available in this critical time. OBS has an important message for us. Beginning, most importantly by asking us to STAY HOME.
Here's their message, received via Spirit House in Durham, NC. They are an affiliate of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD).

This from The Organization for Black Struggle in Ferguson:

"First let me say, we are appreciative of the calls and texts of concern for us in the state of Misery. For many of you who responded to the call for funds to support a full-time organizer, we are beyond grateful. The Organization for Black Struggle is now able to put a team on the ground in a more strategic, focuses and sustained way.

Your local comrades have been on the ground since Day One of the uprising--initially providing security for both protestors and small businesses located on the busy strip of West Florissant (now the epicenter of the rebellion)--as well as maintaining surveillance of the militarized police force.

OBS convened a group of over 50 people on Friday--labor, community, student activists-- to coordinate our efforts, to rally around the community demands, and most importantly to began setting in place the processes/mechanisms for Ferguson residents to fight for long-term reforms, i.e. civilian oversight board, etc. We organized a Day of Solidarity yesterday that brought thousands together to rally at the apartment complex and then move to workshops/trainings at Steve's church.

We fully understand that soon the media will roll out to the next hot issue and battle-fatigue will set in for the residents. With all eyes on St. Louis now, we must maximize our impact in the short run as well as the long run.

You have seen the images and being conscious of the media's spin, you can read between the lines to determine what's bullshit and probably be pretty inaccurate without having to be on the ground. We ask that you use all available avenues to make the epidemic of police murders a national issue.

For comrades asking about how they can support this struggle, here are a few suggestions:

Help shape and reframe the narrative around looting; the media and even some well-meaning folks are getting caught up with a small piece of the issue that involves an even small percentage of the thousands who have been in peaceful protest. The focus and blame needs to put squarely on the white power structure in Ferguson for their years of political and economic abuse topped with police abuse.
Lift up the serious issue of urban centers being treated as if they're militarized zones. As much as we've talked here about the militarization of the police, seeing was believing. When

Ferguson? No. New Orleans, 2005

the country police showed off their military hardware, most fair-minded people were horrified and now we have more allies than ever before. Just in time! The St. Louis police chief wants drones to be added to a bond issue.
We have discouraged people from coming to The Lou for a variety of reasons but understandably folks want to be where the action is. This is a bad habit that the movement needs to break--running all over the country to a fight when the damn fight is in your own backyard. (emphasis mine) Of course, there are times when a call is put out for people's presence because it's the numbers that are needed. This is an opportunity to connect the Mike Brown murder with all of the other extrajudicial murders in the country. (See Fletcher's recent article in ZNet.) Activists and organizers need to began examining/criticizing policing methods where they live and put some real energy into make these occupying forces accountable.

Lastly, if there's something you hear about Ferguson that needs clarifying or you get information that you think is helpful (like the press release I received on the County Police Chief going to Israel for counter-terrorism training a couple of years!), please feel free to call or to share..."

So, I'm staying home. Send a donation to Organization for Black Struggle so they can hire an organizer to be in Ferguson and build community capacity to address their own problems.

For my part, I'm checking in with one of Akron's local social justice group, Stop the Violence Akron Movement, and putting my efforts at the service of BOLD toward figuring out how we build a movement based on working locally, in our own weed-infested backyards.

Ferguson & The Declining Effectiveness of Civil Rights Era Leadership

2014-08-18T09:33:00.001-04:00

As the reaction to the murder of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, MO cop continues to Many have found the actions (or inactions) of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon incomprehensible. On Thursday, August 14, the day he turned enforcement responsibilities over the the Highway Patrol, he made his pronouncements from the relative safety of the University of Missouri. At some point on Thursday he appeared in Floissant, MO, 3 miles from Ferguson, to seek the prayers and intercession of the local African-American clergy.

Those spiritual efforts have not proven wholly effective. In fact, local clergy and community leaders have lamented their inability to control the protestors, many of whom are under 30 years old and, frankly, able to stay awake and out in the streets far later than their elders. Ferguson is a rage that has grown beyond the control of traditional non-violent protest tactics. Perhaps fueling this rage is the disappointment in the outcomes of the civil rights years, not only the police violence, but the unfulfilled expectation of good jobs, housing, and peace in our communities. Just as our ancestors experienced the fearsome and effective backlash of the white citizens movement at the end of Reconstruction, African-Americans of the last half of the 20th century have experienced an organized reaction, fueled by the defection of southern Democrats to the Republican Party, and the refuge they have taken in the toxic rhetoric of welfare reform, gun rights, drug wars and zero tolerance education policies.

Those of us who made class moves away from historically black communities or embraced the delusional prosperity gospel of the 1990s megachurch frequently choose to blame those literally imprisoned, or living under a kind of occupation, with the constant reminder of their conditions of servitude: no or poorly paying jobs, underfunded schools, and a punitive law enforcement that guarantees no one strays from physical and psychic boundaries.

There has always been a black underclass. During segregation we had to live in close proximity to

Howard University Students #Don'tShoot

each other. As a post-voting rights era class divide has emerged and become a permanent feature of the African-American community this underclass has become more isolated and frequently demonized by those who have climbed (and forgot to lift up the community with us). So now we wring our hands, sick with outrage and shame.

As I finish this, with no real conclusion to offer, the National Guard is on its way to Ferguson.

Return Community Control of East Akron Community House

2014-07-19T15:39:00.000-04:00

Local organizing is really hard here in Akron, Ohio. There aren't

many social justice organizations and the ones that exist are under-resourced and politically marginalized. I have chosen to throw in my lot with the East Akron Community House. Here is a link to an Op-Ed I was privileged to have published today in the Akron Beacon Journal: Building Capacity and Honoring Our History at EACH.

Because of the political situation in Akron I am asking all my out-of-town friends and colleagues to sign the MoveOn.org petition in support of EACH and community control of the building and programming. The editorial describes the situation. Please consider signing EACH Petition. #ReachforEACH. Thanks.

New Communities Legscy

2014-06-14T09:18:00.001-04:00

At Cypress Pond in Georgia w/ the Southwest GA Project, Charles & Shirley Sherrod honoring the ancestors at the reincarnation of New Communities Community Land Trust -- RESORA. Pictures to follow.

Before Memorial Day Was Militarized There Was Decoration Day

2014-05-26T12:11:00.001-04:00

Today I will go to Mt. Peace cemetery, clean everyone's gravesite and have a picnic. I will not be alone. The cemetery will be full of African-Americans, white Appalachians, and others who have

picked up the habit of Decoration Day. The lawn will be littered with picnic baskets and little chairs. Relations chatting and enjoying the presence of the dearly departed. Before there was a Memorial Day, upland Southern folk celebrated a late spring holiday where we cleaned and decorated the graves of our ancestors (Hansen, Arkansas Review, 2009) so I am always disconcerted by the militaristic tone of Memorial Day, not in small part because so many have died to violence, their lives unacknowledged.

Recently I went to Tennessee looking for the grave of Ed and Ora Gooden, the grandparents of my cousins, whose son plays a prominent role in my manuscript, Love's Bright Fire. Really, I was looking for the son, Albert, and figured he had been buried near where his parents would later rest. It was near the end of March, I was happy to escape the endless cold that had settled over Akron during the winter 2014. I went in secret -- I didn't want to talk about my goal, which was two-fold, to find Albert's true death location, the site of his murder, as well as where he had been buried in 1937.

I drove from Memphis to Tipton County, just outside Mason, past the recently planted cotton. It is most pretty as it just reaches it's full height, tiny buds forming that will burst open into the white fruit that will become the t-shirts, pants, tablecloths we take for granted in our daily life. The green of the young plant is quite seductive, not unlike the green cauliflower -- a little lime, a lot of light. Other things were growing, soybean, corn, but cotton always catches my eye.

There are two Belmont cemeteries, one white and one Black. Ora and Ed are buried in the one the Goodens owned and managed for years. I pulled off of Belmont Road onto Old Route 59. Some men

were trying to complete the burial of a Gooden cousin. They were stymied by the numerous unmarked graves. The gravediggers were happy to spend some time chatting, giving me the tour. There were many handmade grave markers, poured cement with the carefully etched name of the deceased. establishing I was from out of town, but familiar.

Ora was easy to find. Ed is unmarked, as is Albert. I knew my responsibility. I left to buy gardening tools and flowers. Ora's tombstone had sunk deep into the turf. The dates of her birth and death obscured. I dug as deep as I could with the hand trowel, tore away the turf. Mr. Melvin Johnson ("Ah Yes, you the Hickory Withe Johnsons. The bright Johnsons, as opposed to the dark Johnsons. But we are all cousins, right?") told me that there were many Goodens interned without

The Light Wasn't Great: Ora Gooden

markers. I could just make out the contours of some of the plots. He said they would all be buried facing east, "you know, for the resurrection." I could just make out the contours of some of the plots.

May 30, 2011 Op-Ed NY Times, Owen Freeman

I understand the impetus, almost 150 years ago, for the celebration by the recently liberated slaves in
Charleston SC, their need to memorialize the valiant dead who had made their freedom possible. I don't want to forget the time before Decoration Day became militarized, used as a justification for all kinds of military adventures, and as a justification for white, southern grievances against those freed people.

Honor the Waters Vigil, January 21, Akron OH

2014-01-20T16:55:00.001-05:00

Japanese Lantern Ceremony Forest Hills Cemetery

Join me tomorrow to Honor the Waters Candlelight Vigil, in solidarity with the people of West Virginia and my friends at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. I will be at the bottom of N. Maple St., on the Towpath Trail by the Little Cuyahoga River in Akron, OH. Bring a candle.

When: January 21
Where: Towpath Trail, N. Maple St.
Time: 6 p.m.
Bring a candle and your favorite poem about water.

The water disaster in West Virginia could happen to any of us who depend on a river or public body of water for our water supply. Some version of it is probably happening every day to those of us who live near fracking, coal mining, oil refining, and chemical processing. Oops, that would be almost all of us.

Martin Luther King Day In A Time of Environmental Crisis

2014-01-20T16:31:00.001-05:00

By way of Langston Hughes (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722):

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Queer Dreams & NonProfit Blues

2013-10-04T09:01:00.001-04:00

Here among the queer social change glitterati @BCRW. Follow the conference on twitter #queerdreams. Hoping to say hi to the fabulous Abe Rybeck. Follow me @Rebeccaojohnson

Heading for the Lincoln Memorial

2013-08-28T10:28:00.001-04:00

Many people who have never been to a demo, both black and white. They want to sing but don't know the lyrics, can't maintain a complex chant. It gives me new respect for Bayard Rustin and the effort to bring the first March into reality. Dignified, organized, disciplined.

Environmental Racism 50 Years After the March On Washington

2013-08-28T07:37:00.002-04:00

There's a kind of busy-ness that overwhelms a girl hanging out in our nation's capital. I had the privilege of attending a wonderful fundraising event with the leadership of Southern Echo on Monday night (goal met! thank you to all my friends who gave!). And yesterday, among other activities I had the opportunity to share a meal with Michele Roberts, coordinator of the Environmental Justice and Health Alliance. As we discussed the groups and places we love: Mossville and MEAN, Black Women for Wellness in Los Angeles, the folks in Delaware trying to rein in the refineries, the fracking threat to my own home area in northeast Ohio, it became apparent how much race and poverty determines who is most burdened with the worst effects of extractive industries in this country as well as how communities respond to those threats.

Michele Roberts Representing!

As a proposal is floated to make Mississippi a radioactive waste repository and the good people of Mossville struggle to attain a fair relocation agreement with Sasol, the South African chemical processor, which will mean the physical end of almost 150 years of free black people living and working in the community their ancestors founded at the end of the Civil War, and uranium mining is being proposed for West Virginia (I could go on and on here) we have to recognize that communities of color and poor communities are the least protected but frequently the most unified in seeking solutions that will protect their land, their health, their very lives.

I don't have a sign on me but hopefully today I'll be able to march next to Michele and her sign declaring, STOP ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM NOW!

Check back in. I'll be live blogging from my phone, in the rain, at the Lincoln Memorial.

So, My White Activist Peeps, What Are You Going To Do?

2013-07-14T11:04:00.002-04:00

I began composing this post in my mind before the George Zimmerman verdict. When the House of Representatives passed a food bill stripped of food stamps benefits I began to wonder, "Do these congressional representatives, in highly gerry-rigged districts, not have any constituents who

are poor, working folks, who need the pitiful little help with getting a decent meal that food stamps represent?" And I answered myself, "Of course they do, they are poor and working white people, and they don't vote."

And these white people live with the illusion that black people are the problem, the enemy, the cause of their misery. And, of course, we all know that none of this is true. So my white activist friends, whatever the analysis you bring to your work -- whether it is based on class, anti-racist analysis, feminist post-structural theory, whatever -- you must recognize that black people cannot solve the problems like economic inequity, broken criminal justice system, and the multi-dimensional travesty that is the state of Florida. Poor white people have to recognized their interest in these problems.

I love all of you, believe many of you do great work, but I live in a bifurcated world -- on one side I teach in a school that is overwhelmingly white and privileged, on the other side I live, volunteer in and consult with organizations that are overwhelmingly populated by my people, black and brown people. I appreciate your good intentions, the excellent work you do with immigrants, domestic workers, low-income communities of color, and many other efforts that seek to address the grievous injustices that people of color experience every day. But the changes we want -- immigration reform, food justice, health care for all, end to the school-to-prison pipeline, a livable minimum wage, I can go on -- will only become real when marginalized white people can see their interests are our interests:

We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes

Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons
Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons

We who believe in freedom cannot rest, We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

                  "Ella's Song", Bernice Johnson Reagon

I don't know what it will take for you to begin to engage your own people, but I suggest you figure it out, and soon. While we may not be able to rest, some of us are getting mighty tired.

Stand Up for Ohio! Stand Up for Returning Citizens!

2013-05-29T12:52:00.001-04:00

Let me just say, sleeping on gym mats is just as uncomfortable at 58 as it was at 18. I was never very good at roughing it, but at least this time it was for a worthy cause. For two days, April 30 and May 1, I was on a statewide tour with the Stand Up for Ohio campaign of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative.

I joined the bus in Youngstown (the fabulous Patricia Maher agreed to ferry me from place to place). The gym mats were at the Youngstown YMCA. The tour had started in Akron on Sunday. We had a lively opening rally and then proceeded to a little direct action at the home of David Brennan, owner of White Hat Management. Brennan operates the largest for-profit charter school network in Ohio (and one of the largest in the country). The experience of Akron parents is that Brennan doesn't actually educate their children but makes big bucks not doing it -- he collects 95% of the $816M allocated to charter schools each year while most of his schools are performance ratings are Ds and Fs.

But Brennan, as shameless as his profiteering might appear, is not the focus of this posting. Returning Citizens, many of them the victims of Ohio's unwillingness to provide good educations to all it's children, are who I want to tell you about.

Returning Citizens are our brothers and sisters, cousins and parents who are returning from prison. This appellation is one of the gifts of moving back to Ohio. I have found that organizers in other states are using it but I first encountered it here in Akron, and just this year. The Stand Up for Ohio Rally focused on Returning Citizens was in Newark Ohio. It was a splendid, community wide demonstration of concern for those returning, analysis of why so many black and brown people end up in prison and call to action: end the war on drugs, focus on treatment, get the drug dealers out of low-income communities and end the school to prison pipeline.

Zero tolerance policies, classrooms with too many kids, a focus on

Here's a rendering of me leading a workshop
on the bus! Thanks Assata!

test-taking rather than critical thinking, and poor funding in general result in schools that are being locked down and young people being put out of, pushed out from, or bored out of their minds in school. Many end up in places like David Brennan's Life Skills Centers where less than 15% of kids graduate.

I encourage you to find folks in your community working on the school to prison pipeline or with Returning Citizens. Give them your energy and support. I know I will.

William Gordon Johnson, May 20, 1953 - March 20, 2013

2013-05-13T07:47:00.002-04:00

William "Bill" Johnson was my brother. I always called him my biggest brother but there was no other -- he was my only brother. That he passed away almost two months ago and that I am only now writing my memorial to him is a failing on my part. I was caught off guard by his death.

Here is the text of his obituary, what he wanted written about himself:

William G. Johnson, age 59, of Akron passed away at his home March 20, 2013 after a brief illness.

Bill was born May 20, 1953 in Akron to the late Edna M. Johnson. He was a 1971 Graduate of St. Vincent High School and attended Akron University. He worked many years in Quality Control.

Bill loved music, he enjoyed playing the Bass Guitar and listening to jazz and rock music especially Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis. He loved to read, enjoying history and all types of machinery from cars, trucks, trains, to tanks. He was very knowledgeable about cars, able to pick out the make and model of a classic at any distance. Bill was a natural athlete, a long distance runner in his youth, and long distance cyclist on his Green Raleigh Bike later in life. He loved the Summit County Metro Parks, he spent many hours enjoying the parks. He also enjoyed photography of all kinds, especially taking photos of his children.

He is survived by his wife and best friend of 37 years, Virginia Johnson; his daughter, Alania Claire Johnson (Boyfriend, Andrew Mason) of Kingsville, Texas; his son, Miles William Johnson (girlfriend, Jennifer Patchen) of Berkley, California; his sisters, Becky Johnson of Akron, and Gena Johnson of North Hollywood, California; his father-in-law, George Botzman; and many brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews.

Bill had a huge soft spot for cats, he would feed any stray that would stop by, because of his love, memorial contributions may be made to One of a Kind Pets, 1929 W. Market St., Akron, Ohio 44313

There are no calling hours or services. Private interment of his ashes will take place at a later date. Please visit www.dunnquigley.com to share condolences and memories at Bill's book of memories.

####

I want to share one memory that speaks to my brother at his best: playful, subversive, proud of himself and his black brothers.

We went to Catholic schools, first St. Bernard's grade school then St. Vincent High School (now St. Vincent-St. Mary's) in Akron, Ohio. Bill was two years older than me so when I got to St. V he was a junior. At the time, St. V was publicly renowned for its athletics (as it is occasionally today) but for those of us who navigated its hallways, it was notorious for a kind of thuggishness that sometimes comes with athletic attainment. And there weren't many black students. In Bill's class there was one girl, I think, and four or five boys. He was friends with Steve and Tony.

My recollection of dates is fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure it was the school talent show of my freshman year. I don't think I told anyone but I was terrified of the junior and senior class boys, brutish Polish and Italian linebackers (Akron was a very ethnic place back then) who tormented their underlings. I digress.

Everyone was required to attend talent show. My brother and Tony performed. Tony, who I think was a running back for the football team, had a black belt in karate. Both Bill and Tony had glorious afros (as you can probably tell from the photo). Tony, with Bill's able assistance, proceeded to break things with his hands. Boards, bricks, stuff. Neither said a word. Just bowed and walked off stage, leaving their handiwork behind.

Everyone knew that was my brother and his friend. All eight of us scrawny, black and brown freshmen knew we were safe.

And lastly, for Bill, for all of us, a poem by Lucille Clifton. This gave me the courage to finally write this remembrance (I realize now that all 3 men have now passed away -- Bill and Tony, and Steve, their friend):

you are not

your brothers keeper

you are

your brother

the one

hiding in the bush

is you

the one

lying on the grate

is you

the mad one in the cage

or on the podium

is you

the king is you

the kike is you

the honky is you

the nigger is you

the bitch is you

the beauty is you

the friend is you

the enemy oh

others have come

to say this

it is not

metaphor

you are not

your sisters keeper

you are

your sister yes

From The Ones, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

(thanks to Jean Riesman for sending just what I needed)