Homeless Youth - This Week at Arise

Kei'shairra is an amazing young woman who walked into Arise earlier this summer and has now organized a youth committee.  She's also been doing summer activities for the kids at a local park, including some kids from a homeless family we helped get into shelter.

Yesterday she returned from the park with a young man, we'll call him Neal-- homeless, gay, Puerto Rican, very hot and very down in the dumps.

There are a couple of programs that take in youth under the age of 18, but Neal, unfortunately, turned 18 a few months ago.  Still, I called around to see if anyone could make an exception, and lucked out-- the Gandara Center had just opened a new program for homeless youth eighteen to twenty-four!  They found a temporary foster situation for him and when he came to visit today, he was in a much better place.

Unfortunately, the next young person-- a woman--  who came to us was twenty-five.  Miguel King, our former Senior Aide who we found a way to hire when we had to hire him or else lose him, helped her think through job training and housing options.  There was no immediate fix for her except the Worthington shelter, but fortunately, they had space.

Earlier this week the employer of a young woman who had been living in her van with her dog and her cat called us-- the woman was at the end of her rope.  Could we help?  Dakin Humane Society used to have a program that could board animals of homeless people until they could get back on their feet, so I called them, but that program has ended-- lack of funding. One of our members was able to take them in for a while, while the woman figures things out.

It was quieter on the homeless family front.  Liz met with a couple of families facing homelessness and helped to prepare them for applying for shelter to DHCD.  Meanwhile the Go Fund Me page that Joanne Ehret set up for us-- to have a little slush fund to place homeless families in a motel overnight when necessary-- inches toward its $1,000 goal.  Please contribute if you can.

Aaron McBryar, our STEPC intern from UMass, is almost finished with updating our Food Pantry Guide and Homeless Singles Survival Guide, and we'll be passing them out this week wherever people are most likely to need them.

Arise and Springfield No One Leaves folks also met to talk about the major housing action we are planning for September 22nd.  Both of our organizations are members of  Right to the City/Homes for All, which is coordinating a National Day of Action for Renters' Rights.  Stay tuned!

This could be a big week for the Environmental Justice work we're doing.  Health Commissioner Site Assignment Hearing-- that is, have we provided enough evidence to convince her, as we convinced the Public Health Council, that the threat to public health and our environment from Palmer Renewable Energy's proposed plant requires a hearing?  And the Conservation Law Foundation will be in Springfield on August 3 for oral arguments on their/our challenge to the issuance of an air permit for the incinerator.   

Helen Caulton-Harris says she'll decide this week if the biomass incinerator we've been fighting for eight years deserves to have a

I found out this week that Pat Sullivan, head of Parks, Recreation and Facilities for the City of Springfield, has gone ahead and posted Fish Advisory signs ahead of the city council taking up our ordinance (proposed through the Green Committee).  Most people don't know that freshwater fish in Massachusetts are contaminated with enough mercury that women of childbearing age and children under twelve years of age should NOT eat them. (Really, should anybody?)

Our organizers Lisa Torres and Jesse Lederman met this week with Steve Bryant, President and CEO of Columbia Gas, to continue negotiations around sealing the "super emitters" of gas leaks in Springfield and around the state.  Climate Action Now has taken this up as one of its major campaigns. 

Not last and far from least, those of us who helped to organize the Black Lives Matter/#FedUp413 rally against police shootings on July 11 are meeting this week to plan a large community meeting.

So much more I could tell you about from last week....Want to get involved in organizing for social justice?  Call Arise, 734-4948 or email us at Ariseforsocialjustice@gmail.com.

How Not To Be An Activist

A friend sent me a link to this blog, I liked the title so I went on to read it. When I'm at work and trying to read, I usually end up talking at the same time but to day I just read and then read it again. It makes perfect sense to me.

I frequently get asked why I do this kind of work and most often I'm at a lost for words to explain but this does it. You can read the rest of the blog at Just a Rez Chick...How not to be an activist.

 

 

How Not To Be An Activist

I never thought of myself as an activist. The first time someone called me an activist, was an internationally well known activist in a message to me on Facebook. She told me to keep up the good work and always stand up for what I believe in. That the life of an activist wasn’t easy. But to keep doing what I do.
“Wow” was what came to mind. “Really? Me? An activist?” I was shocked and honored. I’m a writer who feels very passionately about what I write for. I’m not on the front lines, yet. Legally, I can’t afford to be out there-yet. I have always cared about the wrongs of the world, talking in extent to both my parents about it all the time. I sit home and write about what all the wonderfully courageous people who have crossed paths with me by caring about the same things I care about are doing to make the world a better place. I respect that they care enough about the drinking water of grandchildren they will never meet. Or that they care about the future generations of our little brown Native children and their rights, without even knowing how this world will be at the time. Whether it will be better or worse, but hoping in their hearts, what they do here and now will make it better. Or they care about all the lives lost to alcohol two miles away from the reservation. That they care about a piece of land so sacred and important to The Creation Story of our people that it is considered The Heart Of All That Is, that they would help spread the word via social media. And all the Indigenous people who live in colonized governments who are sending support to the First Nations of Canada by saying enough is enough Idle No More as a globalized, unified movement with a heartbeat so strong, you can hear it like a drum beat in your soul. Like the game Jumanji is buried nearby.

Beat Beat Back the Frack Attack! - Don Ogden

Most of us already know about fracking for gas (oil too!) done by the fossil fuel corporados and the damage that drilling process does to the air and water. The film "Gasland" by Josh Fox a few years back helped to raise awareness of the issues. In the movie a resident of Pennsylvania, where a lot of fracking takes place, actually lights his tap water on fire. It seems the largely undisclosed list of chemicals used in the drilling process are flammable as well as toxic. Not surprisingly the public is not privy to information about those chemicals. As noted on the Gasland site: "In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole."  As you may know, Dick Cheney and Halliburton are joined at the hip. Like so much of what goes on in Corporate America, industry and government have merged. However, on the state and local level daylight can still be found showing through here and there between those two entities. This means we, the people, still have a chance to protect our families and the environment from this particular assault.

Apparently, fracking has another drawback that fewer people know about. There have been reports over the past few years of Earth tremors associated with fracking. Recently a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) team presented a paper that made this astonishing claim about the Raton Basin of Southern Colorado/Northern New Mexico: "the majority, if not all of the earthquakes since August 2001 have been triggered by the deep injection of wastewater related to the production of natural gas from the coal-bed methane field here.”  Similar discoveries came from Ohio as well as questions about large sinkholes opening up in populated areas. It will be interesting to read what comes out of the USGS conference taking place as we speak.

Fracking is also a big issue in our neighboring state of New York where the Marcellus Shale deposit extends northward from PA. Presently, there's a big drive to get Gov. Cuomo to ban fracking. Occupy Wall Street has taken up that cause in a big way.  All of this might lead you to believe that we here in Massachusetts will not have to endure this particular disaster-in-the-making. I wish that were true........but it's not. Just recently we've learned from The Valley Advocate that another gas deposit called the Hartford Basin that extends deep into our Valley may be on the industry's hit list. The Advocate article notes: "On December 13, a conference organized by a group of engineers and industrialists calling itself the American Groundwater Trust (GT) will be held at UMass to provide a venue for discussion of what may happen when natural gas companies begin extracting gas from sites in this area."  We went to the Groundwater Trust website and frankly, we don't trust the Groundwater Trust. Remember Halliburton? One of their representatives sits on the GT Board  and presenters at the conference represent Cabot Oil & Gas, some of the worst frackers in NE Pennsylvania. In other words, the $100 a pop conference at UMass is most likely a greenwashing dog & pony show. The Groundwater Trust wants all "stake holders" to attend. Given that we're talking about the air you breath and the water you drink (and perhaps the ground you walk upon) that means YOU. Grab your stakes and head over to UMass, Amherst and join with students, Pioneer Valley Green-Rainbow Party activists, the Western Massachusetts chapter of Progressive Democrats of America and others this Thursday December 13 in the basement of the Campus Center at 1pm. There's no need to bring $100 (even if you had it!) because there will be plenty of free opportunities to let your voices be heard.

More information on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/enviro.show/allactivity#!/events/473791522664454/

Photo from Billb's photostream at Flicker.

What kind of Springfield do YOU want to live in?

OK, so the following is a press release, and as cynical as I feel sometimes, I do believe it's absolutely urgent to participate in this process to Rebuild Springfield.  if our voices are not heard, at least we know we did not remain silent, and we can go from there.  Sign up for the online discussion, and go to the meetings! 

Springfield Residents Urged to Show up and Be Heard at Neighborhood and Citywide MeetingsRebuild Springfield Planning Meetings begin week of October 11
Springfield, Mass., October 6, 2011—Rebuild Springfield, an initiative of DevelopSpringfield and the Springfield Redevelopment Authority, kicks into high gear with the first series of three neighborhood meetings during the week of October 10th, followed by a citywide meeting on Saturday morning, October 15th. Residents and stakeholders are asked to help create a vision for Springfield that will ultimately help form the master plan for both the tornado-impacted and related areas of the City of Springfield.

According to Bobbie Hill of Concordia, the firm retained to lead the master planning effort, “These meetings are critical to the planning process. We need to hear, firsthand, from a diverse array of residents from the impacted neighborhoods as well as the City at large. A successful plan is one that meets the needs and hopes of the city’s residents and stakeholders.”

Concordia is a 28-year old firm at the forefront of research and best practices related to planning for disaster recovery. They have applied their model to facilitate the collaborative design of neighborhoods and buildings for cities, most recently post-Katrina New Orleans.

The first round of neighborhood meetings will be held next week:

Sixteen Acres, East Forest Park
Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 6:30pm-9:00pm
Holy Cross Gymnasium, 221 Plumtree Road

Six Corners, Upper Hill, Old Hill, Forest Park
Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 6:30pm-9:00pm
J.C. Williams Center, 116 Florence Street

Metro Center (Downtown) & South End
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:30pm-9:00pm
Gentile Apartments Community Room, 85 William Street

The week will end with a city-wide meeting—all residents and stakeholders are encouraged to attend—on Saturday, October 15 from 8:30am-11:30am at the MassMutual Center. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss issues and opportunities that affect the city as a whole.

Residents are also encouraged to learn about Rebuild Springfield and to submit their ideas at the online conversation at http://www.rebuildspringfield.com. For information, residents can call 413-209-8808.

There are two more rounds of meetings planned in November and December respectively, the dates and times are to be announced. The final meeting in January will be the presentation of the master plan for Springfield, incorporating the ideas and needs of the residents and stakeholders.

Nick Fyntrilakis, Chairman of DevelopSpringfield stressed the importance of community engagement. “Working together, we have an opportunity to create a vision for a stronger Springfield that builds upon our rich history while focusing on our future.”

Can Communities Reclaim the Right to Say "No" to Corporations?

YES! Magazine / By Mari Margil

4 COMMENTS

Many communities trying to stop fracking, drilling, or big box stores out are finding they don't have the legal right to say no. So they are trying to change the structure of law.

August 24, 2011 |

It's no wonder that many communities want nothing to do with the natural gas drilling procedure known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."

The practice, which involves pumping chemical-laced water underground at high pressure, results in millions of gallons of frack wastewater that's been found to contain dangerous levels of radioactivity, carcinogenic chemicals, and highly corrosive salts. Last year, 16 cattle died after being exposed to the wastewater; a famous scene in the documentary Gasland shows a resident lighting his tap water on fire.

But communities trying to protect their drinking water from fracking haven't found it at all easy to do.

No Right to Self-Government?

In June, the city council of Morgantown, West Virginia--which draws its drinking water from the Monongahela River, just downstream of a new natural gas well--passed a ban on horizontal drilling and fracking within one mile of city limits. Two days later, a company seeking to drill sued Morgantown, claiming that because drilling is regulated by the state, it wasn't within the city's authority to keep fracking out.

In August, a circuit court agreed, invalidating the city's ordinance. In her decision, Judge Susan Tucker ruled that municipalities are but "creatures of the state" without jurisdiction to legislate on drilling or fracking within their borders. Tucker further wrote that "the State's interest in oil and gas development and production throughout the State...provides for the exclusive control of this area of law to be within the hands" of the state of West Virgina. The environmental concerns of the residents of Morgantown, she determined, were not relevant to her ruling.

Morgantown is far from the only town to have discovered that it doesn't seem to have the legal authority to say "no" to drilling and fracking. When communities try to exercise such authority to protect themselves, they are met with threats of corporate lawsuits and state efforts to override their decisions.

Why is it that cities and towns facing the direct impacts of these and a wide range of other harmful corporate activities do not have the authority to determine whether they should occur? How is it that corporate directors who live hundreds if not thousands of miles away--working hand-in-hand with the state and federal officials that residents often expect to protect them--are able to override local, democratic decision making like Morgantown's?

Since the early part of the 19th Century, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted ever-expanding rights and protections to business corporations under the Commerce and Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Corporations use these "rights"--originally intended for actual people--to challenge laws protecting the environment and public health.

At the state level, once an activity is deemed a "legal use," communities are legally prohibited from banning it. Legal uses include everything from drilling and fracking to factory farming and corporate water bottling projects. When state governments legally authorize corporations to conduct fracking, they simultaneously prohibit communities from saying "no" to it.

When a community finds itself facing fracking and drilling, it learns that its municipal powers are very limited, largely confined to influencing site selection by zoning. If it attempts to use zoning to ban drilling or another legal use, it finds itself violating the corporation's "right" under the law.

This is why communities engaged in traditional "site fights"--trying to stop an unwanted corporate project by appealing state-issued regulatory permits that allow corporations to site a new drill well, factory farm, Walmart, or other unwanted activity--are relegated to fighting about limiting traffic, noise, or odor, instead of about whether the activity should be allowed to occur at all.

Communities are therefore left with a choice. They can fight the traditional site fight, or they can decide to take a different approach, one that challenges the fundamental structure of law that allows corporate interests to override the best interests of people, communities, and nature.

To read the rest of this interesting article:

http://www.alternet.org/story/152167/can_communities_reclaim_the_right_to_say_%22no%22_to_corporations?page=entire

The worst is yet to come

Does anyone think, this morning, that the debt ceiling crisis has been "solved?"

I'm no political analyst and it's going to take me (and the rest of the country) some time to figure out exactly how bad the pending deal is going to be for poor, working class and middle class people of this country.  But I got a big hint this morning of where we're headed next during CNN's interview of Sen. John McCain.


McCain mentioned that as a way to stimulate the economy and get businesses investing, he'd like to see a two year moratorium on all government regulations.

Following is a list of some of the federal agencies and bureaus that would be affected by McCain's plan.  Take a look and use your imagination: Just how might the robber baron corporations exploit lack of regulations, both those that currently exist and those that might be proposed?


Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Bureau of Prisons, Commission on Civil Rights, Council on Environmental Quality, Department of Agriculture,
Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services,Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, Equal Employment Opportunity Division, Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Maritime Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Fish and Wildlife Service, Food and Drug Administration,Food Safety and Inspection Service, Housing and Urban Development, Justice Department, Labor Department,Marine Mammal Commission, Mine Safety and Health Administration, National AIDS Policy Office, National Park Service, National Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Public and Indian Housing, Veterans Health Administration.

Well, I can give you a hint: as of last Friday, 39 anti-environmental riders were attached to the 2012 spending bill for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.  If passed, they would mean that for a year: no greenhouse gas regulations, no new auto efficiency regulations,  no limits on mountaintop coal removal, no strengthening of protections for wetlands, no labeling the toxic ash from coal-fired power plants as hazardous waste-- and much more.  You can read some details in a Sunday Editorial in the New York Times.

So what are we to do?  Our options on a federal level may be limited at the moment, but as a lifelong community organizer, at least one course of action is clear to me: fight for local control on every front of this war against us.  Build our strength and our skills to challenge, from the bottom up, the corporate control over our lives.  Tell the truth!  Oppose illegitimate authority!  Start taking back our power-- at the next street corner, at the steps of city hall, at our state capitals.  And do it now.

Only after the last tree has been cut down.
Only after the last river has been poisoned.
Only after the last fish has been caught.
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

                                           ~ Cree saying

Take 12 minutes to understand climate change (and why we're in big trouble)

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.
We had a great supper yesterday with the New England Climate Summer riders.  There was so much good conversation going on, I forgot to take pictures-- but we did get to see a short video on climate change.

Someone asked me the other day why Arise is working on environmental issues.  "That's not about what  poor people need, that's not what poor people care about," he said.  Well, I beg to differ, at least in part.  If we can't have clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, and food free of chemicals to eat, we get sick.  And it's our job, as community organizers, to help our people to make the connections.

But we need to get the big picture stuff, too--like, we all live on just one planet, and we can't go anywhere else.  Keeping our planet safe is like not letting our house burn down.

Watch this great short video to understand how our planet works, why we're in trouble, and what we can do about it.

Join Arise and the New England Climate Summer riders Wednesday for food and conversation!

Wow!  Last week the Springfield Institute organized to community to participate in an Environmental Justice Bike Tour.  This week, the New England Climate Summer riders will be in Springfield, and tomorrow, Wednesday, will be joining us at Arise for a potluck supper and great conversation.  Join us and help build the connections between climate change and our local fights for clean air to breathe and a green city to live in.
Wednesday, 5:30 , Arise, 467 State St.

What's Climate Change Summer?  (from their website):
New England Climate Summer is a summer internship program for college students, graduate students, and recent graduates. Climate Summer riders travel exclusively by bicycle in small teams across New England, spending approximately one week in a community before biking on to the next. While in each town, riders connect with community leaders that are actively addressing society's addiction to fossil fuels by crafting local solutions that strengthen communities. Riders bring with them a movement-building perspective and ethos, empowering those they meet and helping to highlight the important work of local organizations with the local press as well as in the 2011 State of the Movement Report, which will catalogue the efforts of groups in all the communities the various teams visit.

What's their philosophy?
From southern Connecticut to northern Maine, from the Massachusetts coast to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, communities across New England are actively addressing society's addiction to fossil fuels through local solutions and building a more sustainable world. We know that these communities are leading the way, but recognize that their stories are not being shared. They are not getting the respect and attention they deserve, and their ideas are not traveling as quickly as they need to.
Over 9 summer weeks, Climate Summer bikers learn from, cross-pollinate and spotlight these initiatives by working with community leaders to connect diverse constituencies and weave a powerful movement for a better future. Riders live their values as they travel exclusively by bike and join the next generation of movement leaders.

Graphic by Carrie Watkins