Why Do We Let Them Do This To Us?

Why Do We Let Them Do This To Us?

by Redd Phlagg

Answers staring us straight in the face aren't always easily discerned.

July's Lake Erie algae bloom as seen from space. (NASA Earth Observatory)

Our so-called "Environmental Protection Agency" does everything but protect us and our environment. It allows corporations to dump their chemical wastes wherever they like, whenever they like essentially at the cost of cutting a Congress-member a campaign check. Factory farms are allowed to cage animals into pens for the duration of their meager existences--and then they make sure there are laws outlawing the filming of these deplorable conditions. To top it all off they dump the "manure ponds" from their feedlots into the fields and drainage areas of our rivers and lakes--the same rivers and lakes where we take our drinking water. Cancer is on the rise and toxic blue-green algae blooms are practically an everyday occurrence. So, here's the thing--

We know what is killing us. Why do we let them do this to us?

Another day--another mass murder taking place in the good ol' US of A. It seems Americans have become immune from the onslaught of violence wrought by the gun manufacturing industry. If a classroom of elementary school students dead on the floor isn't enough to start a weapons buy-back program in our cities and the enactment of sensible gun laws nationwide, then what does it take? We have shootings in schools, churches, shopping malls and concerts. We have shootings in synagogues, mosques and parks. We have shootings at festivals, weddings and birthdays. About the only place and time we don't seem to have any mass shooting is in our statehouses and at the Capitol building in Washington D.C. when they're in session. Perhaps that's intentional?

We know who is killing us. Why do we let them do this to us?

Bernie Sanders proposes Medicare for All and ending student loan debt. Immediately, the mainstream media propaganda machine swings into action to paint him as a pie-in-the-sky idealist or a cranky old man who, surprisingly enough, can still run marathons. Yet the vast majority of Americans are desperate for his kind of leadership and these kinds of programs. The broadcast networks and the party apparatus will undoubtedly force him out of the race for the presidency once again. The corrupt establishment will do anything to convince us to vote against our best interests. They will tell us that we have no choice--it's either "sh*t sandwich red" or "sh*t sandwich blue." Pick your poison and choke on it.

We know the system is killing us. Why do we let them do this to us?

There are enough natural predators in the world we should be wary of--and a few extra man-made ones in the form of climate crisis-induced super hurricanes and fracking earthquakes. Why do we allow the continued burning of fossil fuels to add energy to the already coming climate catastrophe? Why doesn't our government encourage the development of green energy and mass transit? Why can't we just keep the oil in the ground so we can keep our planet at a comfortable average temp instead of turning the Earth's surface into a broiler?

We know the Big Oil companies are killing us. Why do we let them do this to us?

Answers aren't always easily discerned--but apathy is. We let them do these things to us because we can't be bothered to care about what happens to us. We don't give a rat's backside about our future. It's like we think we deserve to be treated like sh*t. Maybe we do. But not all of us on this spinning globe are pieces of sh*t. So wake the hell up and give a sh*t about them. Ask the hard questions and demand straight answers of the EPA, of the system, of Big Oil, of our elected representatives. And take action.

The Global Climate Strike week is scheduled from September 20 - 27 and is dedicated to climate actions worldwide while the United Nations is in session discussing the climate catastrophe. Extinction Rebellion and the Movement for a People's Party are planning a shutdown of Washington, DC on September 23. Millions of others in thousands of cities will do similarly.

Be there. No excuses.

Let's don't allow them to continue screwing us. Let's take our destiny back. Let's save the world and its people.

BIO: Redd Phlagg won't let the corporate establishment cause any more harm to people and the planet on his watch.  There are climate actions planned for nearly everywhere and you are encourage to plan your own too. Now's the time to make our voices heard as one! To find an action near you and for more info: https://globalclimatestrike.net/



If you don't believe how severe the climate crisis is, maybe this Honest Government Ad will change your mind:

https://youtu.be/cOmdkN6MOwU

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Anti-Rights of Nature Provision in Budget Bill Authored by Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Handed to State Representative

Columbus, OH: An email exchange between the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and the office of Ohio Representative James Hoops has been made public after a records request by a board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network. 

The emails reveal Zachary Frymier, Director of Energy and Environmental Policy for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce (who has since been promoted to State Government Affairs Manager for American Electric Power), expressing concerns about the Lake Erie Bill of Rights and requesting language revoking legal standing for nature and ecosystems be added to the Ohio budget.  

“We have some language that we’d request be considered for the budget. Though obviously it would have to be submitted after tomorrow’s deadline we’d still like to have a conversation,” 

Legislative services commission staff questioned the necessity of the language. Frymier defended the language, to Hoops’ legislative aide, arguing the “language in this amendment stating that [nature and ecosystems] do not have standing is essential to what we’re trying to accomplish. If we could get that added I would be very grateful,” citing the passage of the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in Toledo as his reason.

 

“The Ohio Chamber of Commerce is rewriting Ohio law, handing it off to supposed ‘representatives of the people,’ in order to try to ban a people’s movement. But Rights of Nature is a movement whose time has come. The genie is out of the bottle, and not the state, not the courts, and certainly not the Ohio Chamber of Commerce can stop it. All that is uncertain, is which side of history those in power will be on,” said Toledo organizer Bryan Twitchell. 

 

”These emails prove what the Ohio Community Rights Network has been trying to educate communities about for the past seven years,” stated Tish O’Dell, an Ohio community rights organizer. “Industry and government are colluding to make sure laws are written and passed in the best interest of corporations. Yet people continue to obediently follow these laws that have been written at the expense of people and nature.  The people of Ohio are the only ones who can put a stop to this.”

The 2600+ page budget bill is overwhelmed with non-budgetary provisions in violation of the Ohio Constitution’s single-subject provision. The government violates the constitution, misses deadlines, and allows corporate lobbyists to write it’s laws. But rather than the new budget, it is the Lake Erie Bill of Rights that is under threat for being unconstitutional.

Ohio Communities Part of Growing Movement 

Ohio residents are advancing Community Rights as part of the broader Community Rights Movement building across the United States, where other localities are advancing similar measures to establish and protect their rights to a healthy climate, clean air and water, and the right to local community self-government. 

To learn more about the Ohio Community Rights Network, visit ohiocrn.org.

https://celdf.org/2019/08/media-release-exposed-chamber-of-commerce-wrote-ohio-law-banning-rights-of-nature-enforcement/

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Innocent people in St. Louis are forced to pay $300, plus $10 a day, to be monitored by police before they even get a trial. We're organizing to fight this, and we want you to join us.

From	the Color Of Change:

Imagine paying $10 a day to be monitored by the police.

Hundreds of people in St. Louis are forced to do this. For these innocent people awaiting trial, electronic monitoring bracelets cost them $300 up front, $10 per day, plus a $50 installation fee. People often have to start second jobs, sell TVs and laptops, or take kids out of childcare just to pay these fees.¹

And all of this money goes to a private company Eastern Missouri Alternative Sentencing Services (EMASS). This company is profiting off of innocent, low-income Black people under the facade of offering “alternatives” to money bail.
The St. Louis court system's business partnership with EMASS is undermining our work to transform criminal justice, and we won’t stand for it. We’re training community members in St. Louis as Court Watchers so we can collect proof of the electronic monitoring crisis and force lawmakers to confront it. 

Our program is scheduled to run through November, but we already know it will take more time to win. Will you donate $5 so we can continue our Court Watch program to expose this blatant exploitation of innocent Black people?
Electronic monitoring puts people in an electronic cage. If you’re wearing an EMASS electronic ankle bracelet, you have to charge it for an hour and a half every day while it’s still on your leg, making it difficult to work full-time jobs or travel for extended amounts of time. In a 2011 survey, 22% of people reported being fired from a job because of their ankle bracelets.² And that’s if they’ll even hire you in the first place with a bulky bracelet in plain view. Over 200 people in St. Louis were forced to wear these bracelets last year.¹

To push back, we need the data to prove how this is impacting Black people in St. Louis. Since this information isn’t easily available to the public, we’re gathering it ourselves. So far, we’ve trained over 30 St. Louis community members in our Court Watch program: they attend hearings and take notes on every decisions judges make, including when people are put on electronic monitors.

In November, we’ll be releasing a public report of our findings, which will:

• Ensure activists and lawmakers in St. Louis have statistics about the courts to help them back up their campaigns to end electronic monitoring and other racist practices
• Give us the data we need to push Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to call on judges to reject electronic cages, holding him to his campaign promise of transforming criminal justice in St. Louis County
• Show judges in St. Louis County that the public is watching them, and that we will hold them accountable if they continue to target low-income Black communities

It's rapidly nearing time to launch the next phase of our campaign to end electronic monitoring in St. Louis. Will you chip in $5 to help us keep our Court Watch program going after our report releases?

Our work has already uncovered some alarming patterns. Different judges are inconsistent, some assigning electronic monitors all the time while others rarely do. Some waive the monitor fees, others don’t. Some issue arrest warrants if people don’t pay their debt to EMASS, others turn their head.¹ These choices are all in the hands of individual judges who can only be held accountable if people know what they’re doing.

Our Court Watch program is the most powerful tool we have to expose electronic cages for the racist, profiteering scam they are. Your support will help us implement the findings from our November report, train more people in St. Louis to be Court Watchers, and hire more staff to run the program.

Please-- help us tear down these electronic cages. Donate $5 to keep our St. Louis Court Watch program going now.

Until justice is real,
Arisha, Jenni, Charles, Daniel, Tammi, Scott and the Color Of Change team

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Sources

1. "Digital jail: How electronic monitoring drives defendants into debt", Pro Publica, 3 July 2019, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/178305?t=7&akid=35439%2E3399430%2EkDnvKD
2. "Electronic Monitoring", National Institute of Justice, September 2011, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/178306?t=9&akid=35439%2E3399430%2EkDnvKD

The Actions of Other Human Beings

It's one of "those weeks" in America. You know the kind--one where people are mowed down in public places by racist shooters and even more are allowed to die because of lack of health care and income inequality. Typical week, really. If we're not watching our neighbor suffer, then what would we do for entertainment? CNN provides an answer:

https://youtu.be/M0lQ1XM30MY

Naomi Karavani in the above video covers some recent mainstream media stories that glorify the suffering of the poor. Why would any empathetic person think this is a good idea?  

The following further drives Naomi's point home:

Jon Sobrino, from Spirituality of Liberation: Toward Political Holiness--

The reality posed by the poor, then, is no rhetorical question. Precisely as sin, this reality tends to conceal itself, to be relativized, to pass itself off as something secondary and provisional in the larger picture of human achievements. It is a reality that calls men and women not only to recognize and acknowledge it, but to take a primary, basic position regarding it. Outwardly, this reality demands that it be stated for what it is, and denounced....But inwardly, this same reality is a question for human beings as themselves participants in the sin of humankind....the poor of the world are not the causal products of human history. No, poverty results from the actions of other human beings.

The Actions of Other Human Beings

by C.A. Matthews

From an early age we learn about the consequences of our actions. Or at least in theory we should.  You grab the squeaky toy from the toddler sitting next to you on the blanket, and she'll whack you hard and make you cry. You peek into your sister's diary--she's going to snitch on you to Mom.  You cheat on a math quiz, and you'll find yourself in the principal's office. 

For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction we hear in physics class. If this is true, what action other than a handful hoarding extreme amounts of wealth could explain the growing number of poor in the world?

The concept that the state of poverty was created to serve a purpose--to bolster the wealth of the elites--doesn't come naturally to most Americans. We want to believe that the poor deserve their lowly state. They're ignorant. They're lazy. They made bad decisions with their money and choice of profession. They're drunks and/or drug addicts. But to simply state the rich are "better" or "smarter" or more deserving of praise than the poor is to deny the reality of the Donald J. Trumps of the world and the harshness of life in 21st century America. 

Poverty is a weapon. It is wielded by those in power to control access to resources. The land, air and water of the masses aren't theirs as long as there are greedy men coveting these necessities of life. Your tiny house is on land they want to build a factory on? Eminent Domain is their tool. Their factory poisons your air and water? A well-placed lobbyist makes sure the laws are in their favor. 

By preventing universal health care for all Americans, poverty is inflicted by the one-percent through the means of life and death itself. It's no surprise that the majority of bankruptcies in the US are due to medical bills. It's what the system was designed to do. 

The gun lobby tells our elected officials that daily mass shootings are necessary to protect our Constitutional rights. What's another dead body when there are  gun sales to be made? A permanent underclass makes for many targets and much in profits.

The time has come to end the suffering of the poor and attack the selfishness of the elites. Choose your side. Choose wisely. Raising taxes on the wealthy never killed (or particularly inconvenienced) a rich person. Your neighbor living on Social Security, however, needs every single penny of it to keep the heat on in the winter.

The actions of other human beings are the source of all misery in this world. It's high time we took action against the misery bringers. It's time to build a new social order--one that doesn't allow the actions of the few to dictate the health, safety and happiness of the many.

Gustavo Gutierrez, from The Power of the Poor in History:

If I define my neighbor as the one I must go out to look for, on the highways and byways, in the factories and slums, on the farms and in the mines--then my world changes. This is what is happening with the "option for the poor," for in the gospel it is the poor person who is the neighbor par excellence....

But the poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and it is not ethically innocent. The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.

These quotes come from a book worth reading:
Pathologies of Power, Dr. Paul Farmer, University of California Press, 2005.
www.ucpress.edu

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Enlist Today!

Poor People's Army

We are building a force of our own to battle the rich and powerful. They have their armies and police, we need our own troops.

(Our side needs just as much training, education, experience, and discipline to fight for justice for poor and working people, though with different, emancipatory tactics.)

We are part of an international movement challenging poverty and capitalism.

Learn More/contact: ppehrcorg@gmail.com

215-869-4753

economichumanrights.org

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Is Trying to Silence People Whose Communities Are Polluted. Stop This Now!

Sign Now

It's apparently time to rename the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the "Environmental Destruction Agency." Their new mission, under the deliriously corrupt Trump administration, seems to be to utterly wreck the planet as fast as they can. In their latest horrible move, the EPA is planning to weaken rules that enable communities to have a voice in how much pollution is allowed in their area. The EPA currently issues "pollution permits" that entitles power plants and factories to emit specified levels of pollution into the nearby towns and natural environment. This means that the air or water that whole neighborhoods rely upon could end up contaminated. For the past 25 years, though, members of the community have at least had some form of recourse. Individuals or advocates were able to appeal these pollution permits to a board of judges. Now they will not even have that small way of speaking out. Yet, of course, fossil fuel corporations still get a huge voice. Everyday people are the ones who suffer directly from increased pollution. Meanwhile, these companies profit off of their suffering, with absolutely no interest in or regard for these individuals' imperiled health. We cannot let the very agency meant to protect the environment actually work to completely destroy it. We have so little time to address climate change. We must be moving in the right direction — not hurting people while moving away from climate solutions. Sign the petition to ask the EPA not to silence the very people who will suffer from increased pollution! Thank you for all that you do, Miranda B. The Care2 Petitions Team P.S. The U.S. government wants to let corporations poison communities with more pollution, and then silence the very people who are affected. Sign the petition to tell the EPA not to pursue this terrifying policy!

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Your voice is needed. For though the resistance at Standing Rock has been forcibly paused and oil now flows through the Dakota Access pipeline, the struggle to protect the health and safety of the tribe and people downstream isn’t over. Quickly and quietly, Energy Transfer Partners is planning to more than double the amount of oil DAPL carries, to more than a million barrels a day. And they’re doing this — once more — without the consent of the people.

It’s time to stand again with Standing Rock. We interviewed leaders from Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Pine Ridge, and Rosebud — and together we’re demanding transparency and input through a public hearing. Will you take a moment now to join us? You can use our form to send an email telling North Dakota’s Public Service Commission that the people must be heard!

Lakota leaders (clockwise from top left: Rosebud Sioux Tribe President Rodney M. Bordeaux, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier, Phyllis Young of LPLP and Standing Rock, and Oglala Sioux Tribe President Julian Bear Runner) have come together to call for a public hearing on a proposed expansion to the Dakota Access pipeline.

Big Oil assures us that increasing oil flow through pipelines isn’t dangerous, but U.S. regulators say their information doesn’t back that claim. And tar sands crude — the type of oil DAPL carries — is a special threat: corrosive to infrastructure, it caused a million-gallon spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan not long ago. The United States suffers hundreds of liquid pipeline incidents every year. Why should we trust Big Oil’s word?

Between now and the deadline for input on Aug. 9, we will do everything we can to ensure a public hearing — the first step in stopping DAPL from becoming twice as dangerous. The Black Snake’s presence must not be allowed to fester and grow without pushback from every corner of Turtle Island. Will you stand with us once again to ensure the safety of our people and our sacred land and water?

Wopila Tanka — Thank you for making a difference! Mni Wiconi.

Chase Iron Eyes
Lead Counsel
The Lakota People's Law Project