Category Archives: Citizen Action

Observation Deck of the USS Pandemic

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FROM THE OBSERVATION DECK OF THE USS PANDEMIC

Report Submitted March 31,2020

  1. Skies clearing; increased visibility; waters clearing, increased depth perception.
  2. Fault-lines in leadership and economic security readily observable.
  3. Man in the White House teeths on the Presidency; ingenuity and capacity for loving from American families and citizens observed. Leadership flipped: mayors, governors, and institutional leaders rise to the top.
  4. The youth of America sing in their nests like spring fledging ready to fly into their new lives and destinies.
  5. The elders reflect on time past, time of their parents, of the great war, the depression, and the war of the world. They search for its lessons. They fear death for the virus has found a particular berth in their cabins. They await the outcome.
  6. Sunrise at 6:39 a.m. EST and Moonset at 1:29 a.m. EST. Birds and mammals move free and unburdened. They build their nests and hunt on soft paws among the trees. Bees appear, rotund and smeared with yellow pollen. Dolphins rise.
  7. Humans huddle in their homes waiting, wondering, mourning, and angry. It is their turn. The viral hordes rage with insatiable greed and ambition, good capitalists all.
  8. Doctors, nurses, emergency technicians, receptionists, firemen, and all the frontline warriors are risking their lives with no time to wonder about it.
  9. Nets of commerce are tangled on the waves for all to observe. Barrels line docks; mountains of boxes press upon the earth; an eerie silence encompasses the market places. All those lampshades, trash baskets, ric rac, thumbtacks.
  10. The landfills grow as humanity burns through it’s useable goods.The top layer is PPG: effluvium of the pandemic. The next layer isTP and hand wipes.

The warning whistle blows. The crew awaits the captain’s call. Will it be new coordinates to awakened ports of call?

The crew stands All Hands A Deck

Our environmental practices make pandemics like the coronavirus more likely

If I Were Elizabeth Warren

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I wonder what Elizabeth Warren is doing right now? My hope for the leader I have backed with my money and political support is that she is in her pajamas taking it easy. If I were there, I’d serve her a good strong coffee and cook her an omelette and potatoes. Then I’d order her a bodywork specialist, and arrange for a manicure and pedicure, and lavish all manner of care upon her travel weary person. For Elizabeth is fighting The Good Fight in the American Political Arena.

Why did I support her? Elizabeth Warren has seen the truth about capitalism from very early in her career of public service: it works for the top few percent and less so as you go down the economic/social agency scale. The reason: there is a concurrent scale of opportunity shrouded by American society’s propensity to worship rich people and turn away from the poor – or rather, people perceived as poor.

Warren worked tirelessly in government to rectify that inequity. This is the Great Work. What did she accomplish? If you have credit cards, loans, bank accounts then you are benefiting today from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which she fought for over the years of her public service. She worked to create and sustain a Middle Class while making it possible for families with lesser means to educate their children for economic mobility. Warren was ever on that path to ameliorate free market economics to make it fair to all Americans. She kept kids in mind. Maternity and family leave, sick leave and medical care, a good education — these are fundamental rights of all Americans she believes.

Well, Elizabeth I bet is resting, but her mind is spinning on how to keep the Good Fight going. She has always been and always will be an American leader. As a voter and citizen I will do my part to see that she has a place in the new Administration if she wants it, a Vice Presidency or key cabinet position.

One key thing: she is persistent. Women have that. Endurance. And, our networks are ever stronger and larger. One day a woman will lead this country and we’ll be better for it. So rest, Elizabeth. And thank you from my heart.

 

Civil Disobedience for Climate Action

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Democracy Now has been following the Fire Drill Fridays sparked by Greta Thunberg’s clear voice — a youth crying in the wilderness of world and national houses of legislation which remain deaf to the urgency of acting to protect the planet and life everywhere. Jane Fonda is busy stirring a national day of civil disobedience EVERY Friday on the steps of Capitol Hill. Listen in:

https://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2020/1/13/jane_fonda_fire_drill_fridays_washington

World Waking Up to Climate Change

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Photo by Susan Feathers

In the past few days we have learned that major investors and businesses are getting in step with climate action. BlackRock investing firm announced they would no longer invest in businesses that are not meeting climate change objectives.

“Awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance,” Mr. Fink wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.” ~ New York Times 1-14-20

Microsoft announced a Net Negative carbon footprint plan to reduce its emissions and to eliminate its carbon footprint completely by 2030.

The scientific consensus is clear. The world confronts an urgent carbon problem. The carbon in our atmosphere has created a blanket of gas that traps heat and is changing the world’s climate. Already, the planet’s temperature has risen by 1 degree centigrade. If we don’t curb emissions, and temperatures continue to climb, science tells us that the results will be catastrophic. ~ Microsoft Commitment to Sustainability

COP 25 Comes to an Ignoble End: Not Surprising

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The most recent Climate Change Summit (COP 25) came to an ignoble end with few agreements among the member countries on coordinated decrease in carbon dioxide and methane pollution. This in the midst of reports flooding media about new or more advanced warming impacts on ecosystems pole to pole, ocean to ocean.

Yet this sad result is not surprising, is it? With one of the largest, and longest contributors of CO2 to the atmosphere bailing out of the Paris Agreement (US), it has complicated and weakened the coordination and commitments of countries to less than 2 degrees Celsius warming by 2050.

What’s more ,the most vulnerable places, already experiencing life threatening changes in the earth, sky, and waters, can’t pay for the kind of adaptation necessary to assure some form of well-being, forcing migrations and/or conflicts. All results that are predictable due to a lack of responsibility for each other.

Regionalism and nationalism are dangerous in light of global problems that we can only solve or mitigate together. Why should Americans care that our President, White House, and half the voting public have chosen to turn their backs on the world of which we are an integral part? Because it is just ignorant not to recognize that the well-being of countries worldwide benefits us in terms of security, wealth, and health. Any grade school child can conjure that.

All political affiliations of voters must urge their representatives to get off the barge heading for annihilation and start building in the safe guards for what is already wide spread destruction. We are right now teetering on massive problems caused by ever greater warming.

Its great we have a strong economy, wonderful. We’ll need it. Let us not bury our heads in the sand. If Climate Change goes against your religion, I suggest you sit down for a long chat with God. I am sure our Creator does not want his progeny to kill life everywhere so that we can have more money in the bank.

A great country must be a wise one. A great  citizenry must strive to use logic and prudence when playing with the very requirements for life. We cannot play God by tweaking the stock market. But, that is what we are doing. Chasing the Almighty Dollar, eyes shut, bellies full, and souls in tatters.

NPR Report on COP 25

 

 

 

A Celebration of Friendship and Community

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Photo by Susan Feathers

Tomorrow I am flying to New York for the 39th Harry Chapin Run Against Hunger. This year’s race is very special because the community of Croton-on-Hudson is honoring the life and legacy of Carol Falter, daughter of my friends Betty and Bill. Carol lost her battle with pancreatic cancer at age 39, in the fullness of her life as a dynamic leader in education and youth development.

The race, which is run to honor the legacy of Harry Chapin, who was also taken in the prime of his life, is a fitting place to celebrate family, friends, and the principle that any one life can remake the world through passion for a cause greater than themselves. Below is what I will share with the community on October 20 – Race Day:

Thirty-nine years ago, this race was born in the office of Pastor Sandra Myers at Asbury United Methodist Church. Sandra called me to her office one Fall day in 1980 to help her establish a fundraising event for the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR).

Later that day I met up with my running buddies, who are here today, to celebrate the life and legacy of Carol Falter and this amazing community in which she was nourished as she grew.

Molly Connors, Kate Glynn, Betty Falter, Dot Janis, and I were training for a Leggs’ Mini-Marathon in Central Park. Let me set the context for you. Women were just discovering they in fact could run long distances without their uterus dropping. Yes, that was a falsehood perpetuated during the women’s movement to keep her out of the long-distance running competition. Katherine Switzer broke that barrier in 1967 — with the aid of a man, I might add — who held off a race official who sought to kick her out of the Boston Marathon. It would not be until 1972 that women were allowed to run that race.

On our run that day, we discussed a 10K race for Pastor Myers’ idea as a community project. Croton had long been a running community. The first U.S. chapter of the Hash House Harriers took root here. The dream of a race over the iconic dam and backroads of this beautiful place hovered in our minds. Pastor Myers named it the “Run Against Hunger” or RAH.

In July of 1981, Harry Chapin’s life ended in a car crash on Long Island. Harry had helped establish President Carter’s Commission on Hunger and Poverty, donating a third of his band’s earnings to charity, and established World Hunger Year. In his last three years, he raised $3M to end poverty.

A Croton resident and producer of Harry’s music asked that we make the RAH a tribute to Harry’s life and work, donated t-shirts, and that is how this race came to be in October 1981. We marvel at this community’s commitment to continue the work.  Carol Falter loved this race.  She later became an ultra-marathon runner herself – maybe because she first ran in the Fun Run here with her parents and brothers. She herself left an abiding legacy of work on behalf of youth and education, answering Harry’s challenge when he wrote these lyrics:

Oh, if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man’s life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world*

                                Carol and generations of women have since changed                                                                     the pronouns to be more inclusive!

*Lyrics from the Chapin song: I wonder what would happen (Gold Medal Collection Album)