Aside from being focused on the Western mind, and the Western
way of doing things, this week’s newsletter examines militarization, and
pipelines, linking them to climate collapse, and the over-all need to
de-carbonize the economy. Both issues point to a PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT. If that
sounds like the blind men palpating the elephant, by the last sentence,
elephant anatomy should become clear.
Today the Bay Area joined many other U.S. cities celebrating
April 29 in the biggest ever turnout for re-claiming the climate the Bay Area
has ever seen. In the process of handing out nearly 300 flyers—two even went to
Barbara Lee, our stand-alone voice for restraint in the US congressional cowboy
cabal—I stumbled on any number of people I knew. Stumbled because most of the
time the crowd was so dense, I couldn’t even see where I was going, let alone
where they were coming from.
(For additional facts and links and how you can reprint both
two-sided flyers—they’re open source—see below).
And before any of that happened, I formed part of a ragged
little band of uppity Code Pinkers shutting down a Wells Fargo Bank, one of
some 20 banks capitalizing Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation backing
the Dakota Access Pipeline. “You won’t mind if we just run this pipeline
through your bank,” we shouted as we unspooled a 20-foot long collapsible black
pipe displaying the message #DIVEST FROM SUPPORTING THE DAPL.
Trump’s technocrats to the contrary, the culture seems
finally to have made the connection that human activity is causing global
warming and eventual climate collapse. In the history of human affairs this
ideational breakthrough parallels that other great aha! moment, when some
less-than-dim-wit discovered that certain human activity refreshes the supply
of tiny humans.
Fact: In its
efforts to “secure” (Ambrose Bierce: secure-steal) the oil under their sands, the Pentagon burns 340,000
barrels of oil a day, 80% of Federal
energy demand, creating a spiraling vicious circle: the more oil under
their sands, the more oil gets burned getting it.
We need to think about the
connection between warmaking and climate collapse.. As the planet heats up,
there will be massive displacement, resulting in massive civil unrest. Power of
the people to push back requires a nation-wide PEACE
IN ACTION MOVEMENT.
Military
Fossilization’s evil twin: Civilian Pipelines
Fact: Pipelines
and their construction is the CIVILIAN
TWIN OF THE PENTAGON. At the height of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest,
the National Sheriff’s Association lobbied
for more military gear and (under the auspices of FEMA “Garden Plot” and
“Cable Splicer”) law
enforcement officials began pouring into North Dakota.
The PennEast
Pipeline would lead to annual emission of 49 million metric
tons of carbon dioxide equivalent like adding 14 coal plants or 10 million
passenger vehicles; the Atlantic
Coast pipeline would harm agricultural producers, and lead to annual emissions of over 69 metric tons of
carbon dioxide equivalent, like adding 20 coal plants or 14 million passenger
vehicles; the Mountain
Valley Pipeline would lead to annual emissions of
over 89 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, like adding 26 coal
plants or 19 million passenger cars, and in the Appalachian Basin, there are 19
key new proposed natural gas pipelines. Not to mention inevitable “spills.” Just this week,
Energy Transfer Partners Rover Pipeline Project spilled 2 million gallons of
drilling fluid into the Ohio wetlands. I all, FERC
approved 38 new pipelines in 2016.
VIDEO: Outdoor theater spices up 2012 Deepwater Horizon Oil
Spill protest
The movement to de-carbonize the
climate needs to find itself under the
PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT, pushing back against the two evil
twins: Pentagon and Pipelines (This newsletter’s Cowboys
& Indians, Part I addresses how corporations appropriating ancestral
native American lands to lay pipelines opened up yet another chapter of the
American Indian Wars. Part
II describes how FEMA used the reservation to develop population control
procedures).
The time to organize a massive PEACE IN ACTION MOVEMENT is NOW.
WHAT YOU CAN DO.
•Sign
Oilchange’s “Keep It in the Ground” petition.
•Move your money
to a credit union, or other institution not capitalizing the Dakota Access
Pipeline.
•Write your
retirement fund urging it to divest from supporting pipeline
infrastructure, complicit banks, and warmaking industries.
•Join (or start)
a people’s budget initiative in your community.
*Use outdoor theater
strategy to bring your point home
•Reproduce and
circulate the two-sided flyers copied below:
DIVEST FROM BANKS
FUNDING THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE
Please consider withdrawing your money if you bank at any of
these institutions:
Citibank (CitiGroup) Bank
of America Tangerine
Bank
Wells Fargo JP
Moran Chase Royal Bank
of Scotland
Barclays Sumitomo
Mitsui Bank BBVA Securities
Deutsche Bank Societe
General Bank of Nova
Scotia
Morgan Stanley Credit
Suisse Royal Bank
of Canada
Bank of Tokyo Intesa
SanPaolo Citizen’s
Bank
Goldman Sachs UBS
HSBC Bank Comerica
Bank
TD Securities Natixis U.S.
Bank
Credit Agricole BayernLB PNC Bank
Bank of the West ICBA
London SMBC Nikko
Securities
DNB Capital/ASA ABN
Amro Capital DNB Capital
Mizuho Bank Sun
Trust Origin
Bank
and writing to their headquarters (see http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/how-to-contact-the-17-banks-funding-the-dakota-access-pipeline-20160929 for names & addresses) explaining why;
and please re-deposit your money at your local credit union.
For other redeposit suggestions: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/is-your-bank-funding-dapl-heres-how-to-find-one-that-isnt-20161201
URGE RETIREMENT FUNDS
TO DIVEST FROM FUNDING THE DAPL
If you contribute to or benefit as a retiree from a pension
fund please consider urging your fund managers to divest from any entities
capitalizing the DAPL.
Here is a sample letter:
It has come to my attention that ________ fund benefits from
the Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, and other entities
capitalizing pipelines:
I cannot in right conscience benefit from retirement funds
so-derived because:
1. Fossil fuels are contributing to climate collapse.
2. The probability is that an oil leak will contaminate the
water that over six million (that’s 6,000,000) people depend on for drinking, irrigating, cooking and
eating.
3. The land is designated by the Sioux as a sacred site.
4. The DAPL was re-rerouted through indigenous lands ceded by the U.S. to the Sioux Nation by the treaties
of Fort Laramie of 1851 and 1868.
5. The so-called easement allowing the pipeline to run
through Standing Rock is illegally
issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.
For these reasons, your board has the imperative necessity
to divest forthwith of all entities capitalizing the Dakota Access Pipeline and
all other pipelines.
Thank you.
TAKE THE NATURAL GUARD PLEDGE
•Speak out about how militarism’s consumption of fossil fuel impacts
the climate.
•Engage in discussions reminding others of the cost of waging wars
in terms of fuel consumption and resulting pollution of air, water and soils.
•Remind others of the need to examine the role of the Pentagon and
war contractors in contributing to planetary warming.
•Join (or start) a people’s budget initiative in my community.
•Investigate my suitability for war tax withholding. http://nwtrcc.org/war-tax-resistance-resources/pamphlets/practical-war-tax-resistance-1-controlling-federal-income-tax-withholding/
•Reduce my and my household’s consumption. https://www.treehugger.com/culture/10-tips-make-every-day-earth-day.html
•Reprint and circulate this flyer.
Flowers Amidst This Week’s Thorns
For the third time, a
Trump immigration policy has been struck down on unconstitutional grounds
by Judge William H. Orrick of the 9th District Court. What about unconstitutional don’t they get?
News comes from the good-for-nothing Dems that a
majority of House Dems now support medicare for all bill. Shall we hold our
breath?
California legislators take the first step banning
state government contracts for any company that helps build Trump’s apartheid
wall.
Louisiana Governor John Edwards calls
his state’s disappearing coastline an emergency hoping to
draw attention to the issue of global warming.
Bay Area Non-profit Project Equity transforms businesses into
worker-owned cooperatives.
California
may lead the way to universal health care. Sen. Ricardo
Lara and Sen. Toni Atkins lead the way.
Ninth
Circuit upholds Berkeley cell phone warning law: radio frequency radiation
may be bad for your brain tumors.
City
of San Francisco at work to create its own net neutrality on the assumption
that the internet is a right for all.
Cities to divest from Wells Fargo: Alameda, Davis, and now Berkeley
is expected to join them, moving its money to the public bank of Oakland
now on the drawing board.
District
of Columbia indemnifies Occupy DC activists for overlooking their civil
rights, arresting them at Bank of America subprime mortgage protest.
Visionary
police reforms in Providence, RI, provide an
example for the rest of the country.
Berkeley Energy Group is putting
coal miners back to work installing the largest solar project in Appalachia on
top of a closed mountaintop strip mine, just one
example of a massive retooling of the energy
industry throughout the country.
Because it’s Harvard: Harvard
U elects to “pause” its investments in some fossil fuels.
Brazil
calls a general strike to oppose austerity measures and serious curtailment f workers’ rights. Can you say greve geral?
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