Since many were not focused on politics last week, A Look Back covers how California is using its public bank to fund its Green New Deal, how it has banned future fracking, and what that could mean for NM. Plus an Amazon Action Alert.
Action Alert: Cancel Your Relationship with Amazon Today. Les Lakind, a long-time supporter and local activist, sent me info on this Threshold campaign. It is so simple and elegant that it warrants being shared. Threshold has an approach to boycotts that may just have a greater impact. Rather than people tearing up credit cards or stopping their shopping at Amazon individually, they ask people across the country to pledge to do so and then when the total of those committed reaches one million, they activate the pledges, reaching back to folks to tell them it is time. The target has been met.
In this context, that would mean that on one day Amazon would be hit with one million folks canceling their Prime account, tearing up their Amazon credit card, and stopping their shopping at Amazon and Whole Foods. Click here to join me in making the pledge. It will literally take 10 seconds. That will send a far more powerful message than a trickle of actions over time. But to have the maximum impact, when you are done pledging share this post with others and encourage them to also pledge and share. The only way this works is to “pledge and share.”
First, LANL Nuclear Weapons Research Coming to Santa Fe? On Tuesday, we will examine one of the proposals for developing the Mid-Town campus in Santa Fe, sometimes called The Heart of the City. Imagine if the anchor to this development is an expansion of Los Alamos National Labs. What if the heart of our city would be devoted to researching ways to expand our capacity to conduct nuclear war? We have more digging to be done, but one of the proposals submitted to the City It is hard to imagine a more offensive heart of our city. Please put Sun., Dec. 8, 11am on your calendar and plan to attend Journey at Collected Works bookstore in Santa Fe for a presentation on the LANL mid-town proposal. We need to make it clear just exactly how unwelcome LANL’s nuclear research would be in our city. Stay tuned.
A Look Back at A Different Kind of Thanksgiving & Important News from California
Speaking Truth but Keeping Peace on Thanksgiving
Tuesday, November 26. We provide two suggested blessings to offer at the Thanksgiving meal, both designed to elicit conversation on the truth about Thanksgiving and to spur thinking about the climate crisis. Both blessings were designed to not provoke argument or defensiveness, but rather simply to ask your Thanksgiving companions to think for a moment about living on stolen land and then to consider our unique opportunity to be involved in preserving the planet. We hope you had a meaningful holiday weekend. May you return inspired, motivated and committed to the work to come. Click here to read the full post.
Diné Artist Lyla June on the Truth of Thanksgiving + Poem from US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Muscogee Nation
Thursday, November 28. We offer more material to provoke thought and conversation during the Thanksgiving holiday. No better source than two important indigenous artists: Joy Harjo and Lyla June. The post includes a short video from Lyla June on the truth about Thanksgiving and a poem from Joy Harjo describing how so many important moments in our lives occur while sharing community around a table. Click here to read the full post and to watch Lyla June’s video.
California Bans Future Fracking & Can Use Public Bank to Finance Green New Deal & Just Transition
Saturday, November 30. We could learn much from what California is doing: its legislators and Governor are not captive to the gas and oil industry. North Dakota has used its public bank for a century, weathering economic ups and downs and serving as a partner to state and local government, local banks and credit unions.
In NM, a public bank could be the financial engine driving the transition to a just and sustainable economy instead of our relying on continued fracking revenue. California has begun the just transition by officially slamming the door on future fracking in the state. Kudos to them. Shame on us. The post includes links to our Governor, Speaker Brian Egolf, and Senate Leader Peter Wirth. We encourage you to write to them all and include a link to this post. Click here to read the full post.
In solidarity,
Paul and Roxanne
Categories: Uncategorized
We roughly need 3,000 Santafeans with one voice demanding a different use for the ‘heart of the city’. And about 6,000 SFC residents to help.
Is that all? 😉
I disagree with “Kudos for them. Shame on us.” “Them” being California; the issue being their recent move to halt all fracking. No question they are years ahead of us (perhaps even light years ahead). Yes, kudos to them.
But they have three significant advantages over us in this particular race. For one thing, while we’re a blue state, they are crawling with Democrats, so much so that California almost always gives its electoral college votes to the Democrat.
But far more important is their economy. California has the world’s fifth largest economy. Can any of us grasp that? Where is our Silicon Valley, our Hollywood, our fruit and vegetables exported in all directions? Sure they will be giving up oil and gas revenues, but how much? Do they have anything comparable to even a corner of the Permian Basin or the gas reserves in the NW of NM? Not on any maps of fossil fuel reserves I’ve seen.
Their third “advantage” is truly terrible, the kind that concentrates the mind. When Americans first noticed climate changes here and now, the saw rising sea levels in Florida streets, super storms hitting the east coast and Gulf, months of Midwest flooding, and, tragically, California wiildfires. Thankfully, own wildfires just aren’t as spectacular. Our megadroughts don’t seem that different from our always dry land. Just because we’ve by and large lost our monsoon rains, that doesn’t make converts of deniers.
At the same time that California’s halt of fracking is to be celebrated because it helps us all, when we in NM do our own ban on fracking—and we MUST, no matter the cost or the pain, and sooner rather than later please—ours will be a much more monumental achievement precisely because as a poor state, we’re likely to become that much poorer without O & G.
California might risk becoming what—the world’s sixth or seventh largest economy? Oh, the poor dears.
I think LANL should be re-purposed as a laboratory for the people of this region. In particular, they should be available for agricultural testing and research help. At present, if I want my soil tested, I have to send samples to Colorado or even farther afield. Let LANL do it, and let’s stop making nuclear weapons parts.