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Thursday, January 30, 2014
CHEMTRAILS: Video Presentation: Geoengineering Whistleblower
Geoengineering Whistleblower ~ Ex-Military ~ Kristen Meghan, Hauppauge, NY, January 18th, 2014
Video Presentation
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=AEF1F19C4AB1D064ECFDF66B39DFA1FA
The "FARM BILL"
However it took a Majority to Pass this..... That INCLUDES EIGHTY NINE (89) DEMOCRATS!
Ron Barber: AZ ........................... John Barrow: GA
Timothy Bishop: NY ...................... G.K. Butterfield: NC
Joyce Beatty: OH ........................ Cheri Bustos: IL
Ami Bera: CA .............................. Julia Brownley: CA
Corinne Brown: FL ........................ Lois Capps: CA
Sanford Bishop: GA ........................ John Carney: DE
Suzanne Bonamici: OR ....................... Andre Carson: NE
Bruce Braley: IA ................................. Kathy Castor: FL
Emmanuel Cleaver: MO ........................ James Clyburn: SC
Jim Costa: CA .................................. Henry Cuellar: TX
Susan Davis: CA .................................Suzan DelBene: WA
John Delaney: MD .............................. John Dingle: MI
Tammy Duckworth: IL ......................... Bill Enyart: IL
Sam Farr: CA .................................... Bill Foster: IL
Lois Frankel: FL ...................................... Marcia Fudge: OH
Tulsi Gabbard: HI ....................................... Pete Gallego: TX
John Garamendi: CA ................................. Joe Garcia: FL
Colleen Hanabusa: HI ................................. Denny Heck: WA
Ruben Hinosa: TX .................................Steven Horsford: NV
Steny Hoyer: MD ................................... Jared Huffman: CA
Eddie Bernice Johnson: TX ....................... Hank Johnson: GA
Marcy Kaptor: OH ................................. Robin Kelley: IL
Dan Kildee: MI .................................... Derek Kilmer: WA
Amy Kirkpatrick: AZ ............................... Ann M Kuster: NH
Rick Larsen: WA ................................. Dave Loebsack: IA
Dan Maffei: NY ................................... Sean Patrick Malone: NY
Doris Matsui: CA ................................... Betty McCollum: MN
Jerry McNerney: CA ................................ Michael Michaud: ME
Gloria Negrete McLeod: CA ........................ Patrick Murphy: FL
Rick Nolan: MN ..............................................Bill Owens: NY
Nancy Pelosi (F-ing A): CA ........................ Ed Perlmutter: CO
Gary Peters: MI .........................................Collin Peterson: MN
David Price: NC .......................................... Rick Rahall: WV
Cedric Richmond: LA ................................ Brad Schneider: IL
Kurt Schrader: OR .................................. Allyson Schwartz: PA
David Scott: GA ........................................... Robert Scott: VA
Brad Sherman: CA (Boo Hiss) ...................... Terri Sewell: AL
Carol Shea-Porter: NH ..................... Krysten Sinema: AZ
Albio Sires: NJ .................................. Bennie Thompson: MS
Mike Thompson: CA ............................. Paul Tonko: NY
Filemon Vela: TX ................................. Tim Walz: MN
Debbie Wasserman Schultz: FL ..................... Peter Welch: VT
Daniel Lipinski: IL ............................... Ben Ray Lujan: NM
Michell Lujan Grisham: NM (Neoptisim?)
And those who Did NOT Vote:
William Lacy Clay: MO ..................................... Mike Doyle: PA
Donna Edwards: MD ............................. Stephen F. Lynch: MA
Carolyn McCarthy: NY .............................. James P. Moran: VA
C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger: MD ................... Bobby L. Rush: IL
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Trending Now: VAPE: e-Cigarettes
What I learned was these "pipes" are "e-cigarettes".... They are filled w/ a liquid "smoke", which is supposedly non-cigarettes (a placebo) and non-addicting.
I, of course, became ever more curious (because they stink the same as cigarettes) and did more research. The liquid, called e-juice, is made up of; Propylene Glycol (FDA approved as food safe), Vegetable Glycerine, Liquid Nicotine, an optional "flavoring", and Pure Grain Alcohol
What I want to know is: "Why are these safer than cigarettes?" For what I know for a Fact Is: Nicotine Is a widely known POISON....
Most everyone knows that.
Ingesting it may be fatal and it is absorbed through the skin as
well..... For this reason you HAVE to Wear Gloves while making your own mixture. Smoking one to two different types of Alcohol isn't healthy either..... We know that because Drinking too much Alcohol may be Fatal.... So here a person is inhaling it along w/ nicotine?
WAKE-THE-HELL-UP!!!! Who is fooling who? This is not only addicting it is a well known killer......
Sheesh!
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Bringing the Rain
All forms of meditation, prayers & offerings that welcome & honor the Wakiyan are encouraged.
For more informatory on the importance of this mindful action, please follow the link:
http://lightenyourway.com/blog/help-bring-the-rain
Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST:
Please Join our Group Energy & Synergy
We in California and parts of Oregon know we desperately need rain. This Mercury News article
says “Last year was the driest calendar year in recorded history in
California in most cities, with records going back 160 years.” Yow!
We can individually, daily, put energy and intention into bringing the rain - and we can also come together as a group at a specified day and time to help heal this dryness.
In addition to our individual efforts, let’s create BIG SYNERGY (the vision of my friend Amanda)!! There is great power in focused attention and numbers. Amanda is working to coordinate with other friends who are “big into energy facilitation”. We need to do this soon while it's still the rainy season. We are planning on focusing our energy together, from wherever you are, on Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST. You can take just 5 minutes, or more - however you are guided to participate.
Like many folks, I have been praying for rain, and wondering what we can do energetically, spiritually, psychically, to help bring the rain. Today during my meditation I was excited to receive wonderful guidance. Use the ideas below as you are guided.
- Start with you! I believe “we are the world”, and “as within, so without”. Take care of yourself by drinking enough water - keep yourself hydrated, and remember to be grateful for the water. Also, find balance in your life. Where are you out of balance? Working too hard & not relaxing? Always taking care of others with no time for you? Try and find better balance!
- Remember that what we put our attention on we get more of - the basic “law of attraction”. Let’s put our attention on rain and moisture, not on dryness. Visualize, feel, smell, see the rain. Use all of your senses. Remember what the fresh moisture of rain smells like, remember what it feels like on you face. Feel, see, and smell the moisture.
- Imagine you are a magnet, and magnetize the rain to
you (or to California, if you don’t live in the state). Draw it to you
and feel it surround you and soak into the earth.
Now, for some energy healing ideas to help bring the rain: - Start by grounding, energetically connecting into the earth. Here is my grounding meditation (which offers one way to ground, not the only way). While grounding, feel energy from the earth running into your feet, through your body and out your hands. You can also use Reiki for this! Now put your hands in front of you or on your lap, 6 to 12 inches apart, palms facing each other. Imagine that between your palms is Southern Oregon and California. Include the high pressure ridge between your palms (see the picture from the Mercury News article). Now, imagine (and feel, if you can) energy moving back and forth between your hands, back and forth between the outside of the ridge (where the rain is), across and through Oregon and California, and back again. It is like running energy in the form of an infinity sign, back and forth, smoothing out the energy and balancing it.
- We can work directly on what one researcher is calling the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” (RRR) that is blocking the rain from coming to California. Imagine that the RRR is between your hands. Imagine doors and windows in the RRR. Staying grounded into the earth, run energy out of both your hands with the intention that it will meet in the middle of the RRR. It is like 2 waves hitting each other in the ocean. At the point that they hit, they can break up the mass, and/or create holes in it.
- Bring the atmosphere back into balance. After I read the article below, I realized the atmosphere is out of balance. There is high pressure off the coast, which is blocking the rain that we so desperately need. The simple visual I have is like a cake with all the frosting on one side - it needs to be smoothed out and balanced.
Here is a great article from the Mercury News.
From the article: “... meteorologists have fixed their attention on the scientific phenomenon they say is to blame for the emerging drought: a vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, so stubborn that one researcher has dubbed it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge."
Like a brick wall, the mass of high pressure air has been blocking Pacific winter storms from coming ashore in California, deflecting them up into Alaska and British Columbia, even delivering rain and cold weather to the East Coast. Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads.
"It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go."”
- See more at: http://lightenyourway.com/blog/help-bring-the-rain#sthash.ZlicxGo6.dpuf
Help Bring the Rain!
by jeanine.
Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST:
Please Join our Group Energy & Synergy
We in California and parts of Oregon know we desperately need rain. This Mercury News article
says “Last year was the driest calendar year in recorded history in
California in most cities, with records going back 160 years.” Yow!We can individually, daily, put energy and intention into bringing the rain - and we can also come together as a group at a specified day and time to help heal this dryness.
In addition to our individual efforts, let’s create BIG SYNERGY (the vision of my friend Amanda)!! There is great power in focused attention and numbers. Amanda is working to coordinate with other friends who are “big into energy facilitation”. We need to do this soon while it's still the rainy season. We are planning on focusing our energy together, from wherever you are, on Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST. You can take just 5 minutes, or more - however you are guided to participate.
Like many folks, I have been praying for rain, and wondering what we can do energetically, spiritually, psychically, to help bring the rain. Today during my meditation I was excited to receive wonderful guidance. Use the ideas below as you are guided.
- Start with you! I believe “we are the world”, and “as within, so without”. Take care of yourself by drinking enough water - keep yourself hydrated, and remember to be grateful for the water. Also, find balance in your life. Where are you out of balance? Working too hard & not relaxing? Always taking care of others with no time for you? Try and find better balance!
- Remember that what we put our attention on we get more of - the basic “law of attraction”. Let’s put our attention on rain and moisture, not on dryness. Visualize, feel, smell, see the rain. Use all of your senses. Remember what the fresh moisture of rain smells like, remember what it feels like on you face. Feel, see, and smell the moisture.
- Imagine you are a magnet, and magnetize the rain to
you (or to California, if you don’t live in the state). Draw it to you
and feel it surround you and soak into the earth.
Now, for some energy healing ideas to help bring the rain: - Start by grounding, energetically connecting into the earth. Here is my grounding meditation (which offers one way to ground, not the only way). While grounding, feel energy from the earth running into your feet, through your body and out your hands. You can also use Reiki for this! Now put your hands in front of you or on your lap, 6 to 12 inches apart, palms facing each other. Imagine that between your palms is Southern Oregon and California. Include the high pressure ridge between your palms (see the picture from the Mercury News article). Now, imagine (and feel, if you can) energy moving back and forth between your hands, back and forth between the outside of the ridge (where the rain is), across and through Oregon and California, and back again. It is like running energy in the form of an infinity sign, back and forth, smoothing out the energy and balancing it.
- We can work directly on what one researcher is calling the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” (RRR) that is blocking the rain from coming to California. Imagine that the RRR is between your hands. Imagine doors and windows in the RRR. Staying grounded into the earth, run energy out of both your hands with the intention that it will meet in the middle of the RRR. It is like 2 waves hitting each other in the ocean. At the point that they hit, they can break up the mass, and/or create holes in it.
- Bring the atmosphere back into balance. After I read the article below, I realized the atmosphere is out of balance. There is high pressure off the coast, which is blocking the rain that we so desperately need. The simple visual I have is like a cake with all the frosting on one side - it needs to be smoothed out and balanced.
Here is a great article from the Mercury News.
From the article: “... meteorologists have fixed their attention on the scientific phenomenon they say is to blame for the emerging drought: a vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, so stubborn that one researcher has dubbed it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge."
Like a brick wall, the mass of high pressure air has been blocking Pacific winter storms from coming ashore in California, deflecting them up into Alaska and British Columbia, even delivering rain and cold weather to the East Coast. Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads.
"It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go."”
Help Bring the Rain!
by jeanine.
Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST:
Please Join our Group Energy & Synergy
We in California and parts of Oregon know we desperately need rain. This Mercury News article
says “Last year was the driest calendar year in recorded history in
California in most cities, with records going back 160 years.” Yow!We can individually, daily, put energy and intention into bringing the rain - and we can also come together as a group at a specified day and time to help heal this dryness.
In addition to our individual efforts, let’s create BIG SYNERGY (the vision of my friend Amanda)!! There is great power in focused attention and numbers. Amanda is working to coordinate with other friends who are “big into energy facilitation”. We need to do this soon while it's still the rainy season. We are planning on focusing our energy together, from wherever you are, on Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST. You can take just 5 minutes, or more - however you are guided to participate.
Like many folks, I have been praying for rain, and wondering what we can do energetically, spiritually, psychically, to help bring the rain. Today during my meditation I was excited to receive wonderful guidance. Use the ideas below as you are guided.
- Start with you! I believe “we are the world”, and “as within, so without”. Take care of yourself by drinking enough water - keep yourself hydrated, and remember to be grateful for the water. Also, find balance in your life. Where are you out of balance? Working too hard & not relaxing? Always taking care of others with no time for you? Try and find better balance!
- Remember that what we put our attention on we get more of - the basic “law of attraction”. Let’s put our attention on rain and moisture, not on dryness. Visualize, feel, smell, see the rain. Use all of your senses. Remember what the fresh moisture of rain smells like, remember what it feels like on you face. Feel, see, and smell the moisture.
- Imagine you are a magnet, and magnetize the rain to
you (or to California, if you don’t live in the state). Draw it to you
and feel it surround you and soak into the earth.
Now, for some energy healing ideas to help bring the rain: - Start by grounding, energetically connecting into the earth. Here is my grounding meditation (which offers one way to ground, not the only way). While grounding, feel energy from the earth running into your feet, through your body and out your hands. You can also use Reiki for this! Now put your hands in front of you or on your lap, 6 to 12 inches apart, palms facing each other. Imagine that between your palms is Southern Oregon and California. Include the high pressure ridge between your palms (see the picture from the Mercury News article). Now, imagine (and feel, if you can) energy moving back and forth between your hands, back and forth between the outside of the ridge (where the rain is), across and through Oregon and California, and back again. It is like running energy in the form of an infinity sign, back and forth, smoothing out the energy and balancing it.
- We can work directly on what one researcher is calling the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” (RRR) that is blocking the rain from coming to California. Imagine that the RRR is between your hands. Imagine doors and windows in the RRR. Staying grounded into the earth, run energy out of both your hands with the intention that it will meet in the middle of the RRR. It is like 2 waves hitting each other in the ocean. At the point that they hit, they can break up the mass, and/or create holes in it.
- Bring the atmosphere back into balance. After I read the article below, I realized the atmosphere is out of balance. There is high pressure off the coast, which is blocking the rain that we so desperately need. The simple visual I have is like a cake with all the frosting on one side - it needs to be smoothed out and balanced.
Here is a great article from the Mercury News.
From the article: “... meteorologists have fixed their attention on the scientific phenomenon they say is to blame for the emerging drought: a vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, so stubborn that one researcher has dubbed it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge."
Like a brick wall, the mass of high pressure air has been blocking Pacific winter storms from coming ashore in California, deflecting them up into Alaska and British Columbia, even delivering rain and cold weather to the East Coast. Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads.
"It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go."”
Help Bring the Rain!
by jeanine.
Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST:
Please Join our Group Energy & Synergy
We in California and parts of Oregon know we desperately need rain. This Mercury News article
says “Last year was the driest calendar year in recorded history in
California in most cities, with records going back 160 years.” Yow!We can individually, daily, put energy and intention into bringing the rain - and we can also come together as a group at a specified day and time to help heal this dryness.
In addition to our individual efforts, let’s create BIG SYNERGY (the vision of my friend Amanda)!! There is great power in focused attention and numbers. Amanda is working to coordinate with other friends who are “big into energy facilitation”. We need to do this soon while it's still the rainy season. We are planning on focusing our energy together, from wherever you are, on Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST. You can take just 5 minutes, or more - however you are guided to participate.
Like many folks, I have been praying for rain, and wondering what we can do energetically, spiritually, psychically, to help bring the rain. Today during my meditation I was excited to receive wonderful guidance. Use the ideas below as you are guided.
- Start with you! I believe “we are the world”, and “as within, so without”. Take care of yourself by drinking enough water - keep yourself hydrated, and remember to be grateful for the water. Also, find balance in your life. Where are you out of balance? Working too hard & not relaxing? Always taking care of others with no time for you? Try and find better balance!
- Remember that what we put our attention on we get more of - the basic “law of attraction”. Let’s put our attention on rain and moisture, not on dryness. Visualize, feel, smell, see the rain. Use all of your senses. Remember what the fresh moisture of rain smells like, remember what it feels like on you face. Feel, see, and smell the moisture.
- Imagine you are a magnet, and magnetize the rain to
you (or to California, if you don’t live in the state). Draw it to you
and feel it surround you and soak into the earth.
Now, for some energy healing ideas to help bring the rain: - Start by grounding, energetically connecting into the earth. Here is my grounding meditation (which offers one way to ground, not the only way). While grounding, feel energy from the earth running into your feet, through your body and out your hands. You can also use Reiki for this! Now put your hands in front of you or on your lap, 6 to 12 inches apart, palms facing each other. Imagine that between your palms is Southern Oregon and California. Include the high pressure ridge between your palms (see the picture from the Mercury News article). Now, imagine (and feel, if you can) energy moving back and forth between your hands, back and forth between the outside of the ridge (where the rain is), across and through Oregon and California, and back again. It is like running energy in the form of an infinity sign, back and forth, smoothing out the energy and balancing it.
- We can work directly on what one researcher is calling the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” (RRR) that is blocking the rain from coming to California. Imagine that the RRR is between your hands. Imagine doors and windows in the RRR. Staying grounded into the earth, run energy out of both your hands with the intention that it will meet in the middle of the RRR. It is like 2 waves hitting each other in the ocean. At the point that they hit, they can break up the mass, and/or create holes in it.
- Bring the atmosphere back into balance. After I read the article below, I realized the atmosphere is out of balance. There is high pressure off the coast, which is blocking the rain that we so desperately need. The simple visual I have is like a cake with all the frosting on one side - it needs to be smoothed out and balanced.
Here is a great article from the Mercury News.
From the article: “... meteorologists have fixed their attention on the scientific phenomenon they say is to blame for the emerging drought: a vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, so stubborn that one researcher has dubbed it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge."
Like a brick wall, the mass of high pressure air has been blocking Pacific winter storms from coming ashore in California, deflecting them up into Alaska and British Columbia, even delivering rain and cold weather to the East Coast. Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads.
"It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go."”
Help Bring the Rain!
by jeanine.
Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST:
Please Join our Group Energy & Synergy
We in California and parts of Oregon know we desperately need rain. This Mercury News article
says “Last year was the driest calendar year in recorded history in
California in most cities, with records going back 160 years.” Yow!We can individually, daily, put energy and intention into bringing the rain - and we can also come together as a group at a specified day and time to help heal this dryness.
In addition to our individual efforts, let’s create BIG SYNERGY (the vision of my friend Amanda)!! There is great power in focused attention and numbers. Amanda is working to coordinate with other friends who are “big into energy facilitation”. We need to do this soon while it's still the rainy season. We are planning on focusing our energy together, from wherever you are, on Sunday, February 9, 10:30am PST. You can take just 5 minutes, or more - however you are guided to participate.
Like many folks, I have been praying for rain, and wondering what we can do energetically, spiritually, psychically, to help bring the rain. Today during my meditation I was excited to receive wonderful guidance. Use the ideas below as you are guided.
- Start with you! I believe “we are the world”, and “as within, so without”. Take care of yourself by drinking enough water - keep yourself hydrated, and remember to be grateful for the water. Also, find balance in your life. Where are you out of balance? Working too hard & not relaxing? Always taking care of others with no time for you? Try and find better balance!
- Remember that what we put our attention on we get more of - the basic “law of attraction”. Let’s put our attention on rain and moisture, not on dryness. Visualize, feel, smell, see the rain. Use all of your senses. Remember what the fresh moisture of rain smells like, remember what it feels like on you face. Feel, see, and smell the moisture.
- Imagine you are a magnet, and magnetize the rain to
you (or to California, if you don’t live in the state). Draw it to you
and feel it surround you and soak into the earth.
Now, for some energy healing ideas to help bring the rain: - Start by grounding, energetically connecting into the earth. Here is my grounding meditation (which offers one way to ground, not the only way). While grounding, feel energy from the earth running into your feet, through your body and out your hands. You can also use Reiki for this! Now put your hands in front of you or on your lap, 6 to 12 inches apart, palms facing each other. Imagine that between your palms is Southern Oregon and California. Include the high pressure ridge between your palms (see the picture from the Mercury News article). Now, imagine (and feel, if you can) energy moving back and forth between your hands, back and forth between the outside of the ridge (where the rain is), across and through Oregon and California, and back again. It is like running energy in the form of an infinity sign, back and forth, smoothing out the energy and balancing it.
- We can work directly on what one researcher is calling the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” (RRR) that is blocking the rain from coming to California. Imagine that the RRR is between your hands. Imagine doors and windows in the RRR. Staying grounded into the earth, run energy out of both your hands with the intention that it will meet in the middle of the RRR. It is like 2 waves hitting each other in the ocean. At the point that they hit, they can break up the mass, and/or create holes in it.
- Bring the atmosphere back into balance. After I read the article below, I realized the atmosphere is out of balance. There is high pressure off the coast, which is blocking the rain that we so desperately need. The simple visual I have is like a cake with all the frosting on one side - it needs to be smoothed out and balanced.
Here is a great article from the Mercury News.
From the article: “... meteorologists have fixed their attention on the scientific phenomenon they say is to blame for the emerging drought: a vast zone of high pressure in the atmosphere off the West Coast, nearly four miles high and 2,000 miles long, so stubborn that one researcher has dubbed it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge."
Like a brick wall, the mass of high pressure air has been blocking Pacific winter storms from coming ashore in California, deflecting them up into Alaska and British Columbia, even delivering rain and cold weather to the East Coast. Similar high-pressure zones pop up all the time during most winters, but they usually break down, allowing rain to get through to California. This one, ominously, has anchored itself for 13 months, since December 2012, making it unprecedented in modern weather records and leaving researchers scratching their heads.
"It's like the Sierra -- a mountain range just sitting off the West Coast -- only bigger," said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. "This ridge is sort of a mountain in the atmosphere. In most years, it comes and goes. This year it came and didn't go."”
Thursday, January 23, 2014
POISON In OUR WATER!
Thu Jan 23, 2014 at 12:06 PM PST
The News Just Keeps Getting Worse for West Virginia (and It Doesn't Stop There)
Earlier this week my West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said the
following about whether people should be drinking the water in
Charleston and downstream: "It's your decision....I'm not a scientist."
For the 300,000 people affected by the coal chemical spill from two weeks ago, I bet that's very reassuring. Quite a profile in courage, our governor. Even less reassuring, the news came out Wednesday that there was another mysterious chemical spill in that leak, and officials are now testing to make sure the water treatment facility removed that chemical.
For the 300,000 people affected by the coal chemical spill from two weeks ago, I bet that's very reassuring. Quite a profile in courage, our governor. Even less reassuring, the news came out Wednesday that there was another mysterious chemical spill in that leak, and officials are now testing to make sure the water treatment facility removed that chemical.
And it gets worse - how about this article featuring a former WV coal miner Joe Stanley, who says:
And here's the damning detail: "(B)ecause these contaminants are
released gradually and in some cases not tracked or regulated, they
attract much less attention than a massive spill such as the recent one
in West Virginia."
Coal-fired power plants are the nation's biggest water polluters, spewing millions of pounds of toxic metals and other pollutants like arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and selenium into surface waters each year.
Beyond West Virginia, need another example of how close to home this contamination can be? Duke Energy's coal ash pollution is contaminating North Carolina's Mountain Island Lake - a drinking water source for more than 750,000 people in the greater Charlotte area.
Additionally, Duke Energy's coal ash pollution from one coal plant in North Carolina kills 900,000 fish every year in Sutton Lake -- and that's just how it affects the fish!
In West Virginia, parents are wondering if they can let their kids drink the water, pregnant women are being told to drink bottled water -- and we don't even know yet the full effects of these leaked chemicals on the land and aquatic wildlife.
How much longer will we let the coal industry play fast and loose with our water? From coal processing chemicals, to the toxics scrubbed while burning coal, to the coal ash left behind - the industry is poisoning an element necessary for all life: water. It's time to close these water pollution loopholes once and for all.
"I watched the coal industry poison our water for years. Now they're telling us not to drink the water? We've been dumping this stuff into unlined ponds and into old mines for years," he says. "This MCHM was just one of the chemicals we were told was highly toxic but that we dumped into old mine shafts and slurry ponds, and it's been seeping into the groundwater for years."Stanley says he hasn't drunk the water for years and that no one else should either. We know the coal industry is getting away with poisoning our waterways nationwide, and a new study of federal data by the Associated Press shows just that. Coal industry chemicals and waste "have tainted hundreds of waterways and groundwater supplies, spoiling private wells, shutting down fishing and rendering streams virtually lifeless."It sounds bad even before Stanley explains that coal mines are constantly pumped to clear ground water, aquifers, and underground streams: "As soon as we're out of that mine it immediately fills with water. And where does it go from there? I don't know, your guess is as good as mine."
Coal-fired power plants are the nation's biggest water polluters, spewing millions of pounds of toxic metals and other pollutants like arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, and selenium into surface waters each year.
Additionally, Duke Energy's coal ash pollution from one coal plant in North Carolina kills 900,000 fish every year in Sutton Lake -- and that's just how it affects the fish!
In West Virginia, parents are wondering if they can let their kids drink the water, pregnant women are being told to drink bottled water -- and we don't even know yet the full effects of these leaked chemicals on the land and aquatic wildlife.
How much longer will we let the coal industry play fast and loose with our water? From coal processing chemicals, to the toxics scrubbed while burning coal, to the coal ash left behind - the industry is poisoning an element necessary for all life: water. It's time to close these water pollution loopholes once and for all.
Originally posted to DK GreenRoots on Thu Jan 23, 2014 at 12:06 PM PST.
Also republished by Climate Change SOS.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Eating Agent Orange
The USDA is about to approve a new type of GMO crop that is resistant to the herbicide called 2, 4-D, which was one of the compounds in Agent Orange. 2, 4-D is very toxic to humans, and can even be contaminated with Dioxin, the chemical in Agent Orange that caused so many problems. Tell The USDA: Don’t Approve New GMO ‘Agent Orange’ Crops: http://orgcns.org/1m9pWBF
Learn more about 2,4-D here:
http://orgcns.org/1mH89Vo and here:
http://orgcns.org/1cW6piF
A BIG Fracking Lie
Another must-read from our ally Bill McKibben of 350.org fame. This is what we're looking for Barack Obama to address in next week's State of the union - don't forget to RSVP on the WATCH LIVE tab on our page.
If you want to know just how bad an idea it is for America to ship “fracked” natural gas to overseas markets, travel the 65 miles from the White House to a place called Cove Point in southern Maryland.
There, right on the Chesapeake Bay, the Obama administration wants to give fast-track approval to a $3.8 billion facility (12 times the cost of the NFL Ravens stadium) to liquefy gas from all across Appalachia. The new plant, proposed by Virginia-based Dominion Resources, would somehow be built right between a coveted state park and a stretch of sleepy beach communities, with a smattering of Little League baseball fields just down the road. Along the Chesapeake itself, endangered tiger beetles cling to the shore while Maryland “watermen” hunt crabs and oysters in age-old fashion.
Right here, Dominion wants build a utility-scale power plant (130 megawatts) just to power the enormous “liquefaction” process for the fracked gas. The company will then build an industrial-scale compressor, a massive refrigeration system and an adjacent, surreal six-story-tall “sound wall” to protect humans and wildlife from the thunderous noise. The facility as a whole would chill the gas—extracted from fracking wells as far away as New York—to 260 degrees below zero so it can be poured onto huge tankers (with Coast Guard escort due to terrorism risks) and then shipped more than 6,000 miles to India and Japan.
Simply put, this gas needs to stay in the ground. If it’s dug up and exported, it will directly harm just about everyone in the U.S. economy while simultaneously making global warming worse. How much worse? Imagine adding the equivalent of more than 100 coal plants to U.S. pollution output or putting 78 million more cars on our roads. Yes, supporters say, but this gas would be replacing a lot of coal use overseas. And they’d be right. The only problem is we’d be replacing that coal with aggregate “life-cycle” emissions from gas that are almost certainly worse than coal, creating new net damage for the global atmosphere (more on this later).
Ironically, a recent sea-level rise report commissioned by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, reportedly a presidential hopeful, shows that climate change could soon wipe out the peninsula of Cove Point itself. The very point of land next to Dominion’s proposed facility—the whitewashed lighthouse, the country roads and homes and forests—would all drown if the world continues to combust oil, coal and natural gas at current rates, according to the Maryland report.
The “inconvenient truths” on liquefied gas also come—in different forms—from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere. On the economic side, a study commissioned by the DOE last spring found that exporting U.S. gas would raise the fuel’s price here at home. It’s basic supply and demand. More buyers overseas will drive up our domestic price by as much as 27 percent, according to the DOE. And that increase will reduce incomes for virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, from agriculture to manufacturing to services to transportation. No wonder manufacturers like Dow and Alcoa are resisting this emerging U.S. export policy for gas, forming a coalition called “America’s Energy Advantage” to push back.
The DOE found that only one economic sector wins from gas exports. You guessed it: the gas industry! This one special interest wins so big—hundreds of billions in profits—that the DOE now basically argues that it offsets the pain for everyone else, creating a perverse and tiny net bump in the nation’s GDP. If you’re a farmer or wage-earner, too bad. Dominion’s profits at Cove Point are more important than the financial lives of already-struggling average Americans.
The gas export calculations grow even more insane when you factor in climate change. The industry bombards the public with ads saying natural gas is 50 percent cleaner than coal. But the claim is totally false. Gas is cleaner only at the point of combustion. If you calculate the greenhouse gas pollution emitted at every stage of the production process— drilling, piping, compression—it’s essentially just coal by another name. Indeed, the methane (the key ingredient in natural gas) that constantly and inevitably leaks from wells and pipelines is 84 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 20-year period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The gas that doesn’t leak would be piped to export facilities like Cove Point in Maryland, where the damage continues. The liquefaction process at this one Maryland facility would be so energy intensive that the resulting pollution would make Cove Point the fourth-largest source of carbon dioxide in the state, ahead of four coal-fired power plants in Maryland, according to the EPA and Dominion’s own numbers. And this is just for processing the “clean” natural gas.
Then the liquid gas is put on tankers (more CO2), then re-vaporized in India and Japan (more CO2), then piped across Asia (more methane leakage) and finally lit on fire in New Delhi and Tokyo (more CO2). When you add it all up, using numbers from the EPA, the International Energy Agency and the U.S. gas industry itself, the final climate impact of fracked-and-liquified-and-exported Appalachian gas is basically as bad as burning coal in Asia. And that’s using really conservative pollution estimates. More realistic projections (i.e. assuming India’s pipeline leakage rate is higher than the United States’) would make our gas worse than coal. Worse! And Europe’s not much better. If we shipped our gas to France, for example, where the leakage rate of gas pipelines is confirmed at 3 percent, then our gas would—from day one—be worse than if the French just burned coal.
Why in the world, then, would we frack our mountains, lay disruptive pipelines across America, build gigantic, spewing liquefaction plants like Cove Point and inflict economic pain on U.S. consumers, farmers, and manufacturers—all for something tantamount to coal? The plan is radical and absurd on its face, benefits no one in the long run but the super-rich fossil-fuel industry and does real harm to an already ailing global climate.
And like the Keystone pipeline, real alternatives exist. Marylanders have organized a statewide “Crossroads” campaign to say no to Cove Point and say yes to a doubling of the state’s wind and solar power consumption over the next 10 years. A state policy committing to more clean energy will create many more jobs than fracking and liquefaction while virtually de-carbonizing the Maryland electricity grid by the year 2025.
Tragically, thanks to relentless advertising and pressure from the gas industry, President Obama has come to view fracked gas as the “good” fossil fuel and the export of it as a logical help to the struggling U.S. economy. Inconveniently, it’s all untrue. Obama should publicly oppose Cove Point and instead tour the country encouraging states to double and triple their wind and solar mandates without the need for approval from a Congress that has shown itself to be a tool of the oil and gas industry.
Then, one day soon, the short drive from the White House to the Chesapeake Bay will lead to a view of solar arrays in every community and offshore wind farms in the distant Atlantic. Not the dystopian vision of pipelines, power plants, compressor stations, liquid gas, tanker ships and—inevitably—more warming for everyone and economic pain for all but the richest gas tycoons.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
MORE F'ING SPILLS>>>>>>>>> Grrrrrrrrrr
From Daily Koz:
In an unprecedented move, the oil giant is using a U.S. law intended
to rein in mobsters to sue Servio's neighbors and fellow activists and
supporters -- branding them as criminals just for speaking out.
The Sierra Club and thirty other organizations have joined forces to call out Chevron for their dirty tactics -- but we need to keep the drumbeat going. These 10 powerful senators have a proven track record of taking on big corporations and winning. If they stand with us, then Chevron's evil tactics can be stopped.
In 1994, when Texaco was done pillaging Ecuador, it left behind a
toxic wasteland. More than 900 open and unlined waste pits dot the
landscape, overflowing toxic chemicals into the waterways that Servio's family and their neighbors rely on
for cooking and bathing.
Send your message and let's show Chevron it can't put profits over people!
Servio isn't alone. Emergildo Criollo lost his two sons and nursed a wife through uterine cancer. His family drank, bathed, and fished in water he now knows was poisoned with oil. He says, "I lost two children to Texaco's pollution and the company now calls me a criminal for daring to demand justice."
Despite Chevron's attacks, the brave people of Ecuador and their supporters aren't giving up the fight -- but they can't do it alone. Will you stand with them?
In it together,
Ashley Allison
SierraRise Senior Campaigner
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tue Jan 21, 2014 at 09:21 AM PST
The world's largest oil disaster just got worse
Never mind the name on the account - this was written by my colleague, Ashley Allison, SierraRise Senior Campaigner.
Standing eye to eye with Chevron CEO John Watson, Servio Curipoma fought back tears and bravely declared, "My mother died from your cancer. You killed my mother."
Servio, a cacao farmer from the small oil-ravaged town of San Carlos,
Ecuador, traveled thousands of miles to face down the CEO of one of the
world's most powerful companies. His goal: Hold Chevron accountable for polluting his once-pristine homeland with toxic
oil waste and killing his parents and his sister.
For three decades, Texaco, now part of Chevron, dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into the beautiful Ecuadorian Amazon. Servio's family and thousands like it were left suffering a plague of deadly cancers and devastating birth defects.
Now, despite losing a 20-year legal battle, Chevron continues to deny responsibility for the world's largest oil disaster.
The U.S. Senate has the power to investigate and help stop Chevron's outrageous attacks on those who stand up to corporate greed. But it is up to us to make sure they use that power.
Tell the U.S. Senate's top corporate watchdogs to investigate Chevron's attacks against the very people it poisoned. Let's flood their inboxes with 70,000 comments before Thursday's big press conference!
(More after the jump.)
Standing eye to eye with Chevron CEO John Watson, Servio Curipoma fought back tears and bravely declared, "My mother died from your cancer. You killed my mother."
oil waste and killing his parents and his sister.
For three decades, Texaco, now part of Chevron, dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into the beautiful Ecuadorian Amazon. Servio's family and thousands like it were left suffering a plague of deadly cancers and devastating birth defects.
Now, despite losing a 20-year legal battle, Chevron continues to deny responsibility for the world's largest oil disaster.
The U.S. Senate has the power to investigate and help stop Chevron's outrageous attacks on those who stand up to corporate greed. But it is up to us to make sure they use that power.
Tell the U.S. Senate's top corporate watchdogs to investigate Chevron's attacks against the very people it poisoned. Let's flood their inboxes with 70,000 comments before Thursday's big press conference!(More after the jump.)
The Sierra Club and thirty other organizations have joined forces to call out Chevron for their dirty tactics -- but we need to keep the drumbeat going. These 10 powerful senators have a proven track record of taking on big corporations and winning. If they stand with us, then Chevron's evil tactics can be stopped.
In 1994, when Texaco was done pillaging Ecuador, it left behind a
toxic wasteland. More than 900 open and unlined waste pits dot the
landscape, overflowing toxic chemicals into the waterways that Servio's family and their neighbors rely onfor cooking and bathing.
Send your message and let's show Chevron it can't put profits over people!
Servio isn't alone. Emergildo Criollo lost his two sons and nursed a wife through uterine cancer. His family drank, bathed, and fished in water he now knows was poisoned with oil. He says, "I lost two children to Texaco's pollution and the company now calls me a criminal for daring to demand justice."
Despite Chevron's attacks, the brave people of Ecuador and their supporters aren't giving up the fight -- but they can't do it alone. Will you stand with them?
In it together,
Ashley Allison
SierraRise Senior Campaigner
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tue Jan 21, 2014 at 02:12 PM PST
Oh, by the way, says Freedom Industries, there was a second chemical leaking from that tank
Chemicals, schemicals, you can't expect Freedom Industries to keep track of all of them.
Ken Ward Jr. at the Charleston Gazette reports:Federal and state investigators learned today that an additional chemical that wasn't previously identified was in the tank that leaked on Jan. 9 at the Freedom Industries tank farm just upstream from West Virginia American Water's regional drinking water intake. Company officials told investigators that the "Crude MCHM" that spilled also contained a product called "PPH," which stands for polyglycol ethers, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.The chemical, the company claims, has "low oral toxicity." Uh-huh. And it's probably as safe for pregnant women as the other stuff they spilled into the Elk River.
Monday, January 20, 2014
What Martin Luther King Jr. Actually Did
The following article is written by Hamden Rice courtesy of Daily Kos:
"This will be a very short diary. It will not contain any links or any
scholarly references. It is about a very narrow topic, from a very
personal, subjective perspective.
The topic at hand is what Martin Luther King actually did, what it was that he actually accomplished.
What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.
Head below the fold to read about what Martin Luther King, Jr. actually did.
What most people who reference Dr. King seem not to know is how Dr. King actually changed the subjective experience of life in the United States for African Americans. And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That's why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.
Head below the fold to read about what Martin Luther King, Jr. actually did.
I remember that many years ago, when I was a smartass home from first
year of college, I was standing in the kitchen arguing with my father.
My head was full of newly discovered political ideologies and black
nationalism, and I had just read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, probably for the second time.
A bit of context. My father was from a background, which if we were talking about Europe or Latin America, we would call, "peasant" origin, although he had risen solidly into the working-middle class. He was from rural Virginia and his parents had been tobacco farmers. I spent two weeks or so every summer on the farm of my grandmother and step-grandfather. They had no running water, no gas, a wood burning stove, no bathtubs or toilets but an outhouse, potbelly stoves for heat in the winter, a giant wood pile, a smoke house where hams and bacon hung, chickens, pigs, semi wild housecats that lived outdoors, no tractor or car, but an old plow horse and plows and other horse drawn implements, and electricity only after I was about 8 years old. The area did not have high schools for blacks and my father went as far as the seventh grade in a one room schoolhouse. All four of his grandparents, whom he had known as a child, had been born slaves. It was mainly because of World War II and urbanization that my father left that life.
They lived in a valley or hollow or "holler" in which all the landowners and tenants were black. In the morning if you wanted to talk to cousin Taft, you would walk down to behind the outhouse and yell across the valley, "Heeeyyyy Taaaaft," and you could see him far, far in the distance, come out of his cabin and yell back.
On the one hand, this was a pleasant situation because they lived in isolation from white people. On the other hand, they did have to leave the valley to go to town where all the rigid rules of Jim Crow applied. By the time I was little, my people had been in this country for six generations (going back, according to oral rendering of our genealogy, to Africa Jones and Mama Suki), much more under slavery than under freedom, and all of it under some form of racial terrorism, which had inculcated many humiliating behavior patterns.
Anyway, that's background. I think we were kind of typical as African Americans in the pre-civil rights era went.
So anyway, I was having this argument with my father about Martin Luther King and how his message was too conservative compared to Malcolm X's message. My father got really angry at me. It wasn't that he disliked Malcolm X, but his point was that Malcolm X hadn't accomplished anything as Dr. King had.
I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his "I have a dream speech."
Before I tell you what my father told me, I want to digress. Because at this point in our amnesiac national existence, my question pretty much reflects the national civic religion view of what Dr. King accomplished. He gave this great speech. Or some people say, "he marched." I was so angry at Mrs. Clinton during the primaries when she said that Dr. King marched, but it was LBJ who delivered the Civil Rights Act.
At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn't that he "marched" or gave a great speech.
My father told me with a sort of cold fury, "Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south."
Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don't know what my father was talking about.
But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.
He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.
I'm guessing that most of you, especially those having come fresh from seeing The Help, may not understand what this was all about. But living in the south (and in parts of the midwest and in many ghettos of the north) was living under terrorism.
It wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.
You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement used to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.
It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.
This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.
White people also occasionally tried black people, especially black men, for crimes for which they could not conceivably be guilty. With the willing participation of white women, they often accused black men of "assault," which could be anything from rape to not taking off one's hat, to "reckless eyeballing."
This is going to sound awful and perhaps a stain on my late father's memory, but when I was little, before the civil rights movement, my father taught me many, many humiliating practices in order to prevent the random, terroristic, berserk behavior of white people. The one I remember most is that when walking down the street in New York City side by side, hand in hand with my hero-father, if a white woman approached on the same sidewalk, I was to take off my hat and walk behind my father, because he had been taught in the south that black males for some reason were supposed to walk single file in the presence of any white lady.
This was just one of many humiliating practices we were taught to prevent white people from going berserk.
I remember a huge family reunion one August with my aunts and uncles and cousins gathered around my grandparents' vast breakfast table laden with food from the farm, and the state troopers drove up to the house with a car full of rifles and shotguns, and everyone went kind of weirdly blank. They put on the masks that black people used back then to not provoke white berserkness. My strong, valiant, self-educated, articulate uncles, whom I adored, became shuffling, Step-N-Fetchits to avoid provoking the white men. Fortunately the troopers were only looking for an escaped convict. Afterward, the women, my aunts, were furious at the humiliating performance of the men, and said so, something that even a child could understand.
This is the climate of fear that Dr. King ended.
If you didn't get taught such things, let alone experience them, I caution you against invoking the memory of Dr. King as though he belongs exclusively to you and not primarily to African Americans.
The question is, how did Dr. King do this—and of course, he didn't do it alone.
(Of all the other civil rights leaders who helped Dr. King end this reign of terror, I think the most under appreciated is James Farmer, who founded the Congress of Racial Equality and was a leader of nonviolent resistance, and taught the practices of nonviolent resistance.)
So what did they do?
They told us: Whatever you are most afraid of doing vis-a-vis white people, go do it. Go ahead down to city hall and try to register to vote, even if they say no, even if they take your name down.
Go ahead sit at that lunch counter. Sue the local school board. All things that most black people would have said back then, without exaggeration, were stark raving insane and would get you killed.
If we do it all together, we'll be okay.
They made black people experience the worst of the worst, collectively, that white people could dish out, and discover that it wasn't that bad. They taught black people how to take a beating—from the southern cops, from police dogs, from fire department hoses. They actually coached young people how to crouch, cover their heads with their arms and take the beating. They taught people how to go to jail, which terrified most decent people.
And you know what? The worst of the worst, wasn't that bad.
Once people had been beaten, had dogs sicced on them, had fire hoses sprayed on them, and been thrown in jail, you know what happened? These magnificent young black people began singing freedom songs in jail.
That, my friends, is what ended the terrorism of the south. Confronting your worst fears, living through it, and breaking out in a deep throated freedom song. The jailers knew they had lost when they beat the crap out of these young Negroes and the jailed, beaten young people began to sing joyously, first in one town then in another. This is what the writer, James Baldwin, captured like no other writer of the era.
Please let this sink in. It wasn't marches or speeches. It was taking a severe beating, surviving and realizing that our fears were mostly illusory and that we were free.
So yes, Dr. King had many other goals, many other more transcendent, non-racial, policy goals, goals that apply to white people too, like ending poverty, reducing the war-like aspects of our foreign policy, promoting the New Deal goal of universal employment, and so on. But his main accomplishment was ending 200 years of racial terrorism, by getting black people to confront their fears. So please don't tell me that Martin Luther King's dream has not been achieved, unless you knew what racial terrorism was like back then and can make a convincing case you still feel it today. If you did not go through that transition, you're not qualified to say that the dream was not accomplished.
That is what Dr. King did—not march, not give good speeches. He crisscrossed the south organizing people, helping them not be afraid, and encouraging them, like Gandhi did in India, to take the beating that they had been trying to avoid all their lives
.
Once the beating was over, we were free.
It wasn't the Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act that freed us. It was taking the beating and thereafter not being afraid. So, sorry Mrs. Clinton, as much as I admire you, you were wrong on this one. Our people freed ourselves and those Acts, as important as they were, were only white people officially recognizing what we had done.
A bit of context. My father was from a background, which if we were talking about Europe or Latin America, we would call, "peasant" origin, although he had risen solidly into the working-middle class. He was from rural Virginia and his parents had been tobacco farmers. I spent two weeks or so every summer on the farm of my grandmother and step-grandfather. They had no running water, no gas, a wood burning stove, no bathtubs or toilets but an outhouse, potbelly stoves for heat in the winter, a giant wood pile, a smoke house where hams and bacon hung, chickens, pigs, semi wild housecats that lived outdoors, no tractor or car, but an old plow horse and plows and other horse drawn implements, and electricity only after I was about 8 years old. The area did not have high schools for blacks and my father went as far as the seventh grade in a one room schoolhouse. All four of his grandparents, whom he had known as a child, had been born slaves. It was mainly because of World War II and urbanization that my father left that life.
They lived in a valley or hollow or "holler" in which all the landowners and tenants were black. In the morning if you wanted to talk to cousin Taft, you would walk down to behind the outhouse and yell across the valley, "Heeeyyyy Taaaaft," and you could see him far, far in the distance, come out of his cabin and yell back.
On the one hand, this was a pleasant situation because they lived in isolation from white people. On the other hand, they did have to leave the valley to go to town where all the rigid rules of Jim Crow applied. By the time I was little, my people had been in this country for six generations (going back, according to oral rendering of our genealogy, to Africa Jones and Mama Suki), much more under slavery than under freedom, and all of it under some form of racial terrorism, which had inculcated many humiliating behavior patterns.
Anyway, that's background. I think we were kind of typical as African Americans in the pre-civil rights era went.
So anyway, I was having this argument with my father about Martin Luther King and how his message was too conservative compared to Malcolm X's message. My father got really angry at me. It wasn't that he disliked Malcolm X, but his point was that Malcolm X hadn't accomplished anything as Dr. King had.
I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his "I have a dream speech."
Before I tell you what my father told me, I want to digress. Because at this point in our amnesiac national existence, my question pretty much reflects the national civic religion view of what Dr. King accomplished. He gave this great speech. Or some people say, "he marched." I was so angry at Mrs. Clinton during the primaries when she said that Dr. King marched, but it was LBJ who delivered the Civil Rights Act.
At this point, I would like to remind everyone exactly what Martin Luther King did, and it wasn't that he "marched" or gave a great speech.
My father told me with a sort of cold fury, "Dr. King ended the terror of living in the south."
Please let this sink in and and take my word and the word of my late father on this. If you are a white person who has always lived in the U.S. and never under a brutal dictatorship, you probably don't know what my father was talking about.
But this is what the great Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished. Not that he marched, nor that he gave speeches.
He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.
I'm guessing that most of you, especially those having come fresh from seeing The Help, may not understand what this was all about. But living in the south (and in parts of the midwest and in many ghettos of the north) was living under terrorism.
It wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.
You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement used to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.
It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.
This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.
White people also occasionally tried black people, especially black men, for crimes for which they could not conceivably be guilty. With the willing participation of white women, they often accused black men of "assault," which could be anything from rape to not taking off one's hat, to "reckless eyeballing."
This is going to sound awful and perhaps a stain on my late father's memory, but when I was little, before the civil rights movement, my father taught me many, many humiliating practices in order to prevent the random, terroristic, berserk behavior of white people. The one I remember most is that when walking down the street in New York City side by side, hand in hand with my hero-father, if a white woman approached on the same sidewalk, I was to take off my hat and walk behind my father, because he had been taught in the south that black males for some reason were supposed to walk single file in the presence of any white lady.
This was just one of many humiliating practices we were taught to prevent white people from going berserk.
I remember a huge family reunion one August with my aunts and uncles and cousins gathered around my grandparents' vast breakfast table laden with food from the farm, and the state troopers drove up to the house with a car full of rifles and shotguns, and everyone went kind of weirdly blank. They put on the masks that black people used back then to not provoke white berserkness. My strong, valiant, self-educated, articulate uncles, whom I adored, became shuffling, Step-N-Fetchits to avoid provoking the white men. Fortunately the troopers were only looking for an escaped convict. Afterward, the women, my aunts, were furious at the humiliating performance of the men, and said so, something that even a child could understand.
This is the climate of fear that Dr. King ended.
If you didn't get taught such things, let alone experience them, I caution you against invoking the memory of Dr. King as though he belongs exclusively to you and not primarily to African Americans.
The question is, how did Dr. King do this—and of course, he didn't do it alone.
(Of all the other civil rights leaders who helped Dr. King end this reign of terror, I think the most under appreciated is James Farmer, who founded the Congress of Racial Equality and was a leader of nonviolent resistance, and taught the practices of nonviolent resistance.)
So what did they do?
They told us: Whatever you are most afraid of doing vis-a-vis white people, go do it. Go ahead down to city hall and try to register to vote, even if they say no, even if they take your name down.
Go ahead sit at that lunch counter. Sue the local school board. All things that most black people would have said back then, without exaggeration, were stark raving insane and would get you killed.
If we do it all together, we'll be okay.
They made black people experience the worst of the worst, collectively, that white people could dish out, and discover that it wasn't that bad. They taught black people how to take a beating—from the southern cops, from police dogs, from fire department hoses. They actually coached young people how to crouch, cover their heads with their arms and take the beating. They taught people how to go to jail, which terrified most decent people.
And you know what? The worst of the worst, wasn't that bad.
Once people had been beaten, had dogs sicced on them, had fire hoses sprayed on them, and been thrown in jail, you know what happened? These magnificent young black people began singing freedom songs in jail.
That, my friends, is what ended the terrorism of the south. Confronting your worst fears, living through it, and breaking out in a deep throated freedom song. The jailers knew they had lost when they beat the crap out of these young Negroes and the jailed, beaten young people began to sing joyously, first in one town then in another. This is what the writer, James Baldwin, captured like no other writer of the era.
Please let this sink in. It wasn't marches or speeches. It was taking a severe beating, surviving and realizing that our fears were mostly illusory and that we were free.
So yes, Dr. King had many other goals, many other more transcendent, non-racial, policy goals, goals that apply to white people too, like ending poverty, reducing the war-like aspects of our foreign policy, promoting the New Deal goal of universal employment, and so on. But his main accomplishment was ending 200 years of racial terrorism, by getting black people to confront their fears. So please don't tell me that Martin Luther King's dream has not been achieved, unless you knew what racial terrorism was like back then and can make a convincing case you still feel it today. If you did not go through that transition, you're not qualified to say that the dream was not accomplished.
That is what Dr. King did—not march, not give good speeches. He crisscrossed the south organizing people, helping them not be afraid, and encouraging them, like Gandhi did in India, to take the beating that they had been trying to avoid all their lives
.
Once the beating was over, we were free.
It wasn't the Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act that freed us. It was taking the beating and thereafter not being afraid. So, sorry Mrs. Clinton, as much as I admire you, you were wrong on this one. Our people freed ourselves and those Acts, as important as they were, were only white people officially recognizing what we had done.
Originally posted to HamdenRice on Mon Aug 29, 2011 at 08:24 AM PDT.
Also republished by The Yes We Can Pragmatists, J Town, Black Kos community, Genealogy and Family History Community, White Privilege Working Group, Barriers and Bridges, Kitchen Table Kibitzing, Firearms Law and Policy, and Daily Kos.
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