It's going to get blistering in the next couple days here in Southern Wisconsin and across the Midwest as a huge high pressure dome caps our climate. Weather alerts on the ready for high heat and humidity. I hope everyone is prepared for dangerous weather.
It's going to be hot in Washington, too. I read this morning that President Obama is "fed up" with the Republicans and their waffling, lying, maneuvering and walked out yesterday on the stalemated discussions. What that actually means is anyone's guess at this point. But it is the 15th of July and no deal in sight yet. Talk about a heat index!
Also read an article by Bill McKibben (one of my heroes) on the dangers of the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport tar sands oil across Canada and down the U.S. to the Gulf of Mexico making, as McKibben says, North America into the Saudi Arabia of the West. McKibben and others have started a website - www.tarsandsaction.org - to invite people to come to Washington D.C. between August 20th and September 3rd to peacefully protest. As McKibben says in this AlterNet article:
"it could result in the largest civil disobedience actions in the climate-change movement’s history on this continent, as hundreds, possibly thousands, of concerned activists converge on the White House in August. They’ll risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico that would vastly increase the flow of tar sands oil through the U.S., ensuring that the exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands will only increase."
Sounds like Washington will be hit with a heat wave this late summer! Good - we need to exercise our right to speak out when our lives and the health of the planet is at stake and to demand that our lands remain untouched by further "development".
And how do we know that peaceful protest actually can make a difference? Because I have the giddy pleasure of passing on something that tells me this is true. Did you hear the story of Julie Bass? She lives in Oak Park, Michigan and after the city of Oak Park ripped up her front yard to do some work, she was left with a mess. Instead of planting a new lawn - what a hassle that is! - she decided to grow a vegetable garden to help her feed herself and her six children. What a great idea! Until the city saw her flourishing garden where neighborhood kids were coming to help and threatened Julie with a misdemeanor charge and 93 days in jail. The outcry was deafening. People started petitions, wrote letters, made calls to the city planner's office. People from all over the world converged, virtually, to aid Julie and to let the Oak Park city officials know this was a waste of resources and quite plainly, stupid. It worked! Julie is not going to go to jail for growing broccoli, squash, beans and flowers in her front yard.
Now that is what I'm talking about! Power to the People!
We've got more work to do in Wisconsin. More protests, more letter writing, more calling. It's hard work but it is also important work. The ole cow hands on the Double Cross Ranch aren't going to take a long vacation so we can't afford to take one either. When the real Democrats won this week I thought I saw some bread crumbs leading towards Wisconsin's Moral Compass. Might be wrong but just maybe, just maybe there's a path to that critically needed direction finder.
Meanwhile, take a moment to send up a blessing for Julie Bass and her kids - for the neighborhood kids, too. It's one of those stories that constitute bread crumbs for me. It's a moral compass kind of story. We the People knew what was right and spoke the truth of it to the powers and supported a person we didn't know. Now she's a new friend, long distance, and we can think of her and how her garden is growing. Nice.
Power to The Common People!
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