Luck, Solidarity, Liberation
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
This is the beginning of a speech given by legendary US socialist Eugene Debs after being convicted of sedition due to his resistance to the World War I draft. It is one of my favorite quotes of all time, and I was so inspired seeing it in this amazing story about Jaz Brisack, the key organizer in the first unionized Starbucks store that started a prairie fire (the latest count is 97 stores filing union petitions).
This quote is a powerful and concise articulation of an ideology and practice of solidarity that I try to embody in how I view the world and in my actions (easier said than done, of course). I am not better than anyone else, not even the cruelest people in the entire world; for better or worse, who I am is a matter of luck, the product of conditions outside of my control. But in being lucky enough to understand this now, I can act to not only change myself but change the conditions that destroy the living world, form a lower class, cause people to do harm, or put people in cages.
These conditions, these systems of exploitation and oppression, are not inevitable or immutable; they are human creations that can therefore be unmade and replaced. The liberation of humanity is a collective project that can only be formed on the basis of recognizing and acting on our interdependence with each other and with nonhuman nature. To be in service of something much larger than yourself that is at the same time ultimately the best thing for yourself and everyone else is the premise and promise of socialism.
Protecting old-growth forests, full of trees that are hundreds of years old, is one of the most important environmental tasks right now because they are massive stores of carbon and bastions of biodiversity. Thanks to the protection that came with public ownership under communism, Romania is home to one of the largest old-growth forests in the world, but it is increasingly under threat from Ikea-driven logging now that private ownership is involved. However, dedicated activists are fighting back at great risk to themselves. Incredible reporting from Alexander Sammon.
In a new study published in Environmental Health, 32.5% of participants had high urine concentrations of 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), one of the most commonly used herbicides in the US in lawn maintenance and agriculture. 2,4-D is an endocrine-disrupting chemical that has been linked to cancer, birth defects, hyperthyroidism, and other health problems. Alarmingly, the authors found that children were twice as likely to have high concentrations of the pesticide than adults were in this study. We desperately need to overhaul the way our country regulates pesticides. That will necessarily mean a different food system and maybe rewilding some lawns.
At the risk of overvaluing branding or messaging, this is a good article by Rebecca Leber about why we should rename natural gas to something more appropriate, like methane gas, fossil gas, or simply gas. Natural connotes positive, green qualities, and helps the fossil fuel industry in its effort to portray gas as a clean fuel when it is anything but. This is a small thing but I think it makes a difference.
The African Green Revolution is neocolonialism under the guise of aid and “modernization” from western governments and entities like the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. Smallholder farmers with expertise in sustainable agriculture based in local ecology are dispossessed of their land and/or forced into debt and made to use industrial methods that rely on chemical inputs, and to add insult to injury they are paternalistically told it is for their own good.
