In addition to the usual recap of last week’s posts we include an urgent call to action, asking you to find the activist within you. We must begin assuming responsibility for redirecting our State and Nation.
Today’s post includes:
- a reminder about our panel tomorrow on democratizing energy;
- a call to action: let’s significantly grow our movement by emailing friends today, including a link to this post, and encouraging them to subscribe to this blog;
- The usual contents of Monday’s post: a look back at all the posts from the prior week, an apt introduction to Retake for your friends.
Tues., Oct. 1, 6:30-8:30pm, 1420 Cerrillos Rd., Center for Progress & Justice: A Panel Discussion on Democratizing Our Energy. Come learn about the transformative benefits of Local Choice Energy and Community Solar and how they are essential to a just transition in New Mexico. This is an opportunity to become better informed and turn your knowledge into effective advocacy at the local and state level.
Please RSVP by email to retakeresponse@gmail.com, or on Facebook — click “Going” at this link. Confirmed panel members include:
- Mariel Nanasi, Executive Director, New Energy Economy;
- Rep. Abbas Akhil, D-Dist 20, a retired renewable energy scientist;
- Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero, D-District 13, sponsor of the Community Solar Act;
- Les Rubin, Finance Director, Pueblo of Picuris, where a 1 Megawatt solar array project was completed in 2018;
- Mario Atencio, Legislative District Assistant, Navajo Nation, and Adjunct Professor, UNM Native American Studies.
A Call to Action: Time for Elder Commitment and Sacrifice
In the past ten days, Roxanne and I have participated in the Climate Strike, taken a Fracking Tour of the Greater Chaco Canyon area and met with youth activists who organized the Climate Strike. These youth have begun to develop a plan for sustained and ever more strident direct actions. It is abundantly clear that our national and state leadership are not prepared to take the steps necessary to address the climate catastrophe racing toward us, toward our children.
At the Strike we were moved by the speeches of youth and the stridency of their commitment. On the tour we saw first hand the devastation we are inflicting on the earth and on those communities without a voice or a seat at the table. And then we met with youth who told us: It is time for our elders to take action. We agree. And so Retake is asking you to expand and focus your activism, a request that can take various forms.
First: We have 2,500 people who subscribe to this blog. That is a good many people, but it is not nearly enough. We need to double that number by January 1 if we are to have a sufficient number of voices advocating at the Roundhouse. We need to pass Community Solar. We need to pass legislation to fund a comprehensive study of how to implement a just economic and energy transition. We need our Governor to call a climate crisis what it is: A State of Emergency.
I am asking each of you to look within and find the activist in you. What does this mean? It means that we need you to begin intentionally and consistently seeking to spread the word, to share information about Retake, to wear a Retake button and carry business cards (available at all Retake meetings), and to find ways to say: “This is a good way to keep informed and effectively active.” More specifically we are asking you to:
- Begin sharing posts regularly by forwarding to friends, whenever you find a post particularly important or when a post might be more relevant to specific friends. Include a note encouraging your friends to subscribe and telling them that the blog sends out important information on a regular basis, information that keeps you informed about issues profoundly effecting New Mexico and the planet.
- Initiate this TODAY by sending an email to as many friends as possible, sharing the link to the Friday post with the photo of our Governor. Click here to go to that post. It asks everyone to call and email the Governor to put Community Solar and Local Choice Energy on the call, to declare a climate emergency, and to advance legislation to fund a study to create a plan for a Just Transition.
- Our children and grandchildren are in grave danger and it is important that we all take this very seriously. We need to stop wringing our hands and use those hands to write to our friends to encourage them to become more involved.
A Look Back at Last Week’s Posts:
Greta Thunberg Condemns International Indifference to Climate Catastrophe in a Blistering UN Speech
Tuesday, Sept. 24. Video of Greta’s full address is included, along with a report on the disappointing response from world leaders. Trump spends only minutes at the Summit, leaving for a meeting with religious right, and later patronizingly tweeting about Greta.
Greta has launched an international movement that climate researchers and advocates indicate is moving the needle, a tribute to what one person can do. She started leaving school and sitting by herself at the Swedish legislature and less than a year later, climate strikes are occurring all over the globe. If you haven’t seen her five-minute talk to the UN, take the time now, as it is truly inspiring. For the first time, her voice is quivering with rage, a rage that should be shared by all of us.
Click here to view the video of Greta challenging the UN Panel to act and to read the report on the response from Trump and other international leadership.
Fracking Tour of Greater Chaco Canyon Area: Definition of a Sacrifice Zone
Thursday, Sept. 26. We report on our tour of Greater Chaco Canyon area fracking sites. I thought I knew a good deal about fracking in northwest NM, but Roxanne & I were shocked at what we saw and learned.
We include photographs from the tour, research documenting the health, environmental and economic impacts of fracking, and the degree to which it has decimated the Navajo community around Chaco Canyon. This is a must-read post and worth sharing.
Click here to read this report and please share.
Call The Governor & Ask Her to Act on the Climate Crisis
Friday, Sept. 27. f we want Community Solar, Local Choice Energy & funding for a plan for a Just Transition in the 2020 legislative session, the Governor must approved it by “putting it on the call.”
While the session is still three months away, right now is when the Governor and Democratic legislative leadership are making plans for the session and identifying bills that will be introduced. In a “short session” of only 30 days, leadership will likely be scrupulous in what is added to the call, as time is of the essence and only bills of significant impact and with evidence of significant support will be put on the call. We must demonstrate to the Governor that there is sufficient support for Community Solar and for funding a study of how to make a just economic and energy transition.
Please call & send a note to the Governor today. Click here to get speaking points & contact info, The post also includes an excellent commentary by Craig O’Hare on how such a study could be conducted and what could/should be included. Please share this with friends. We need to apply maximum pressure.
Sorting Out Whistleblower Claims, Impeachment, the Israelis Election Stalemate & the Implications for Palestine
Saturday, Sept. 30. This post includes an excellent description of eight key aspects of the whistleblower’s claims and their implications for the impeachment inquiry, along with a five-minute clip of Rep. Maloney’s questioning of the Acting Director of US Intelligence. Maloney does a tremendous job of surfacing the core issues and exposing just how unconstitutional the actions of the President were.
The post also dissects what is at stake in the Israeli election, which is stalemated now as Netanyanu and others try to form a new government. The implications of the final result of this election have profound implications for Palestine. As the post makes clear, the prospects for Palestine look dire indeed no matter how this drama plays out.
Click here to read this post and to watch video coverage of the Intelligence hearing.
Powerful New Gun Violence Prevention PSAs: We Need Something Like This for the Climate Crisis.
Sunday, Sept. 30. It is hard to describe how powerful these three new PSAs are. They dramatically display the ways in which gun violence is impacting children and parents as school is just opening.
These are the kinds of announcements that are desperately needed to educate and motivate people about the climate crisis, portraying life in 20 or 30 years and the questions youth will have of their parents and grandparents: You knew, but what did you do?
The post then switches gears with four Steven Colbert monologues that focus on some aspect of the mind-blowing events of the past week, from whistleblower to the initiation of an impeachment inquiry, from Trump’s “defense” to the buffoon who somehow once was Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. The first of the Colbert videos is especially worth watching just to witness the audience response when he announces the impeachment inquiry.
Click here to watch these videos.
In solidarity, Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Uncategorized
Why aren’t you discussing the proposed $13 billion for plutonium pit nuke warheads at LANL? This is a threat to the safety of our planet and local New Mexicans. All this warmonger money in the USA could be used for climate crisis mitigation and entrepreneurs to transition to wind/solar/electric cars!
I have written about it: https://retakeourdemocracy.org/2019/08/22/lanl-plans-expansion-of-nuclear-work-what-if/
Also have written about the chromium plume twice:
https://retakeourdemocracy.org/2018/10/23/los-alamos-labs-toxic-leaks-3-spreading-plumes-plans-to-insist-on-adequate-protection/
https://retakeourdemocracy.org/2018/11/01/beto-roaring-to-the-finish-ways-to-give-to-refugees-the-lanl-plume-update-new-energy-economy-scores-a-rare-prc-win/
Hope this answers your question. Always appreciate reader questions like this. Paul
Your mention in passing of elders highlights our society’s greatest weakness – we don’t have elders. Elders are not merely old people. They are people who throughout their lives have prepared themselves, and been prepared by society, to assume the roles of wisdom-keeper and guide. Eldership is a cultural tradition which helps societies stay within their means.
In western Europe and in the North American colonies, we ditched eldership and respect for elders long ago. A study referenced in a Mark Kurlansky book found that in the early 1600s, the seats of honor in American village churches were accorded to the community elders; by the mid-1700s, those seats belonged to the richest people. That early, we had already begun to change from respecting wisdom to honoring greed and avarice.
Why would we do that? Because elders would be the ones who would advise that building that salmon-killing dam or clear-cutting that forest or fracking for oil are bad ideas. Well, that flies in the face of our drive to get massively rich quickly, and we just couldn’t have that.
So here we are, a society in which young people, inexperienced as they are, have to step up and take actions no one should even need to take.
I don’t know whether eldership can be brought back.
nicely done Greg and of course you are correct, but it is the youth who have been using the “elder” terminology in relation to those older folks who are stepping up now and for some of them have been stepping up for decades.
The effect on our elders, has not been factually covered, even right here in our community. https://khn.org/news/starving-seniors-how-america-fails-to-feed-its-aging/ It is even worse than this. Our local healthcare system, makes millions on impoverished and isolated seniors. Most of them have Medicare, which means we all pay for this inequality. Here in Santa Fe, this misery and despair has been monetized. The heath insurance corporations, and health providers put out plenty of lies and propaganda about how we “Take care of elders.” From the data facts and statistics, and things are getting even worse.
The facts are not pretty. and no one knows how bad this is locally, except for the people living it.. Instead of factual information on any of it, we only get lies and propaganda. People have been so thoroughly Gas Lighted or brainwashed here, they think that “someone is taking care of it.” The state agency that was supposed to be, is not functional, they protect the profiteers, because that is where the money is.
The people who see this every day, don’t see it as a systemic problem. They are silent, which means they are complicit. No one around here seems to be paying attention. Our governor used to work for Aging and Long Term Services, but she does not seem to be aware of the problems. The same thing with the children, our policy makers, are under some kind of corporate funded denial.
I see people every day whose “golden years” are a horror. Most of them have to much pride and dignity to speak up, and we have the constant poverty shaming by our local politicians. In Santa Fe, preying on the vulnerable is a good business practice.
I had hoped that when the democrats took over things would change, but they did not they are all in denial. The HSA gave some of us the false impression that someone was paying attention. I doubt they can even recognize how even the data collection has been distorted, by industry interests and healthcare lobbyists.
What evidence do you have that HSA doesn’t understand the numbers and won’t be able to demonstrate the health and economic benefits in the study proposed?