HERD ABOUT IT?

by Ana Grarian

Ana has been in a turmoil for quite some time now. What to write when everything is important and yet everything seems hopeless as well.

In January I attended a Lobby Day against Fracking in Albany, NY.  600 people from all over NYS signed up to visit with lawmakers. More came to lend support and attend the rally. Josh Fox was there and Sandra Steingraber. A Pastor from the Presbyterian church spoke. Patrick McElligott, who has been on a hunger strike since january 16th was there and spoke. Wide Awake Bakers brought a hundred plus loaves of artisan bread baked from locally grown and milled grain to demonstrate to Gov. Cuomo what will be lost if the drills and spills come. (Cuomo of course refused to see us) More and more people from all walks of life are gathering together, paying their own way, taking time off from work and giving up down time to petition their governments – local, state and federal- to protect us from this scourge. And still our legislators don’t have the courage to buck the buck$. 

If all of us who came to speak to lawmakers pooled the money it cost us,

we couldn’t have matched one industries “donation” to one lawmaker.

The XL Tar Sands project is just as infuriating if not more so. We are being asked to risk the environment of a swath running the length of our country to benefit the oil industry raping Canada’s environment to export oil overseas.

I read my news feeds.

Monsanto hires Xe (Blackwater) to counteract against protesters. Former Monsanto VP appointed as food czar at the FDA.

Obama said, “no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas” Isn’t he aware that Jeffrey Immelt, the man he appointed to head his jobs council,the CEO of GE, heads a company with most of its workers employed in foreign countries, a corporation that makes 82 percent of its profit abroad and has paid no U.S. taxes in the past three years?

The insanity goes on and on. I keep hearing that we must continue our growth. WHY!?! The US already uses way more of the planet’s resources than we are entitled to. Most of us have more than we need of stuff.

We NEED clean air and water and healthy food, and work that treats us with respect. We NEED to stop taking the resources of other countries including the productivity of their people and giving back mostly our garbage. We NEED to behave in a Family Values Christian attitude that is proclaimed in sound bites by the same people who are asking little Juan to clean Jonathan III’s toilet, and calling for orphanges (I suppose to hold all those non-aborted children) while denying living wages and health care to those families.

And then there’s the elections. Good grief! Money has always paid to play in elections, but at least they use  to back somewhat reasonable candidates. I thought the circus starring Sarah Palin was ludicrous, this election cycle needs multiple tents to house all the clowns! Any reasonable candidate on the Republican side is simply not being heard. Even the quality news organizations are forced to cover these goons because that’s who is being offered up for voting!

Every day the crap flies harder and faster.

I’d like to see the sun break through, but I fear a storm is brewing.

Will it be the apocalypse of environmental disaster, or will it be the people finally saying ENOUGH!