Feb 15 2011
The Activist Beat – 02/15/11
The Activist Beat with Rose Aguilar, host of Your Call on KALW in San Francisco is a weekly roundup of progressive activism that the mainstream media ignores, undercovers, or misrepresents.
This week, environmental activists and members of Kids vs. Global Warming and Generation Hot are in Washington DC confronting what journalist Mark Hertsgaard calls climate cranks. These are the people in Congress, the media, and corporate sector who consistently lie about global warming.
In his new book, Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth, Hertsgaard writes: “Our plan is to confront the climate cranks face to face, on camera, and call them to account for the dangers they have set in motion. We will highlight the ludicrousness of their antiscientific views, which alone should discredit them from further influence over US climate policies.”
Let’s hope they get the media coverage they deserve.
Over the past month, there’s been a lot of activism on the environmental front.
On January 3, over 700 people gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol to protest the inauguration of newly-elected Governor Scott Walker. In addition to demanding good paying jobs, citizens also expressed their opposition to the Governor’s decision to kill the proposed Madison to Milwaukee high-speed rail line, which would’ve created 13,000 jobs. Governor Walker said the federally funded $810 million project was a symbol of excessive government. He called the U.S. Department of Transportation’s plan to withdraw the grant a “victory.”
The first anti-inaugural event in Wisconsin’s history failed to receive coverage in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the state’s largest paper or on most local TV stations.
Milwaukee Labor Press editor Dominique Paul North told me that if there’s a peace rally or a worker’s rights action, you might find a reporter or two. If the tea party gather five people on the corner, every reporter would be there.
Ohio Governor John Kasich also refused federal stimulus money for a 258-mile high-speed rail project linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, calling it “one of the dumbest ideas” he’s ever heard. The $400 million project would’ve created approximately 8,000 jobs.
On January 8, hundreds of Ohioans stood in subfreezing temperatures outside a pre-inauguration event at the Columbus statehouse. It was so cold, the bullhorns wouldn’t work. But that didn’t stop citizens from expressing their disgust with Governor Kasich. They also condemned his plans to raise tuition at colleges and universities, repeal the state’s collective bargaining law for public employees, and privatize Ohio’s state prisons.
The money that would’ve been used for high-speed rail in Wisconsin and Ohio will be divided among other states, including California and Florida.
Also last month, dozens of Nebraskans gathered on the steps of the Capitol to express their opposition to a proposed $12 billion pipeline that would carry 900,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada’s tar sands to Texas refineries.
30 members of Congress have written a letter urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department to approve TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline. According to Reuters, if the pipeline is approved the big winners would be the billionaire tea-party funders Charles and David Koch.
On January 30, police in riot gear arrested 25 people for trespassing as over 1,000 people protested outside a four-day meeting in Rancho Mirago held by the Koch brothers, conservative activists, and politicians – all climate change deniers.
Jeff McCall, a 67-year-old retired teacher protesting the meeting told the LA Times “It’s not who you vote for, it’s how much money you’ve got.”
Activists say they are planning future actions to expose the Koch’s corporate agenda.
3 Responses to “The Activist Beat – 02/15/11”
Continued defense and support of Climate Change’s unstoppable warming is hurting the planet as it divides environmental efforts and stalls progressive social reforms. The UN had allowed carbon trading to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 25 years of climate control instead of needed population control. Obama blew off climate change in his Feb. speech and none of his thousands of consensus scientists raised a fuss over it. They were paid. Real scientists would be marching in the streets. This IS after all the biggest emergency ever, unstoppable warming, not bad weather. Why are the scientists not leading this insanity, instead of the politicians promising to lower the seas with taxes? If climate change was true these scientists would be on every news cast and every front page and on every talk radio show. This was our Iraq War of climate WMD’s. System Change, not climate change.
“Ohio Governor John Kasich also refused federal stimulus money for a 258-mile high-speed rail project linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, calling it “one of the dumbest ideas” he’s ever heard. The $400 million project would’ve created approximately 8,000 jobs.”
This is false. The rail project for Ohio was not a high-speed line. It was a traditional “choo-choo” train on a refurbished line, top speed 40mph. That was the whole problem with the proposal to begin with.
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