Today

by Miep

Funny how these are called diaries. That dates back some.

This is a diary. It's about my life, today, maybe last few days. Also about a lot of stuff I've been thinking and writing about.

I hope y'all appreciate this.

continued at Daily Kos....

UPDATED: Van Jones' msg to liberals: Don't give in to despair! (now with hate mail!)

by Eclectablog

Cross-posted at Eclectablog.com.

Last week in Ann Arbor, Van Jones spoke at the Ecology Center's 40th anniversary. Held on the campus of the University of Michigan, the event was a fundraiser but also an opportunity for Van Jones to share his thoughts on Michigan's role in the environmental movement, the success of places like the Ecology Center and why now is not the time for progressive liberals to give in to despair. In fact, NOW, he said, is the time when we're most needed.

Ecology Center 40th Anniversary Celebration at the UofM Michigan League

continued at Daily Kos....

Farmworkers exposed to Pesticide? No More Silent Springs

by We Want Change

When I was 16 years of age and in high school, I had an English teacher who I especially liked. She made learning fun teaching the class new words every week and making us look up their meanings so that we could use them on book report assignments. When I look back and remember what she taught and shared with me, I suspect that she was probably one of the first Environmentalists that I or my classmates were ever exposed to. Follow me below the fold for a story about how young people can be influenced to care about the environment and change the world for the better. We must never stop trying. My diary is focusing on farmworkers who have no voice against those in power who have used poisons on them as they work in the fields in the past, and who are still working today under similar dangerous working conditions. Would you work under these conditions? Stephen Colbert has a show this week in which he will be presenting a tongue-in-cheek show called "Take Our Jobs" campaign.

continued at Daily Kos....

Unexpected Environmental Alliances Amidst The Oil Spill: 'Jesus Will Rip Your Head Off'

by PaulLoeb

In the wake of the BP disaster, we've heard powerful stories from fishermen whose livelihoods may have been destroyed for decades or longer. However long it takes for the Gulf's fish, oyster and shrimp harvests to recover, those who've made their livelihoods harvesting them will need to create a powerful common voice if they're not going to continue to be made expendable. A powerful model comes from Seattle and Alaska salmon fisherman Pete Knutson, who has spent thirty-five years engaging his community to take environmental responsibility, creating unexpected alliances to broaden the impact of their voice, and in the process defeating massive corporate interests.

"You'd have a hard time spawning, too, if you had a bulldozer in your bedroom," Pete reminds us, explaining the destruction of once-rich salmon spawning grounds by commercial development and timber industry clearcutting. Pete could have simply accepted this degradation as inevitable, focusing on getting a maximum share of dwindling fish populations. Instead, he's gradually built an alliance between fishermen, environmentalists, and Native American tribes, persuading them to work collectively to demand that habitat be preserved and restored and to use the example of the salmon runs to highlight larger issues like global climate change.

continued at Daily Kos....

Saving history...or trying to do so

by rserven

I decided that under the current circumstances, providing some distraction would not be unwarranted...and I have a bit of an update to pass along.

Tonight will be another meeting of the West Orange Zoning Board...concerning the desire of Seton Hall Prep and the Archdiocese of Newark to turn McClellan Old-Growth Forest into sports fields and parking lots.

For those who haven't been following, that is General-in-Chief of the Union Army George Brinton McClellan, who was fired by President Lincoln

If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.

--Abraham Lincoln

...and subsequently ran against Lincoln for president as an anti-war Democrat in 1864.  McClellan was also governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881.

continued at Daily Kos....

Violating Civic Decency

by rserven

I've posted a few pieces about the ongoing saga of the McClellan old-growth forest in West Orange, NJ, which Seton Hall Prep and the Archdiocese of Newark want to turn in to something "productive", like baseball fields, rather than what it is now, which is a possible home for endangered animals. Save the Trees Saving the Trees...and maybe the bats Working to Save our Environment This is an update.  The photo on the right shows the remnants of the deceased 90-year old Japanese Yew.  More on the story inside.

continued at Daily Kos....