SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
rosa parks
Thank you, Climate Strikers. Your Action Matters and Your Power Will Be Felt
Nothing is possible without action, and almost anything is when we rise up together, as you are today
Mar 15, 2019
I want to say to all the climate strikers today: thank you so much for being unreasonable. That is, if reasonable means playing by the rules, and the rules are presumed to be guidelines for what is and is not possible, then you may be told that what you are asking for is impossible or unreasonable. Don't listen. Don't stop. Don't let your dreams shrink by one inch. Don't forget that this might be the day and the pivotal year when you rewrite what is possible.
What climate activists are asking for is a profound change in all our energy systems, for leaving fossil fuel in the ground, for taking action adequate to the planet-scale crisis of climate change. And the rules we are so often reminded of by those who aren't ready for change are not the real rules. Because one day last summer a 15-year-old girl sat down to stage a one-person climate strike, and a lot of adults would like to tell you that the rules say a 15-year-old girl cannot come out of nowhere, alone, and change the world.
Sweden's Greta Thunberg already has.
They will tell you the rules are that those we see in the news and the parliaments and boardrooms hold all the power and you must be nice to them and perhaps they will give you crumbs, or the time of day, or just a door slammed in your face. They will tell you that things can only change in tiny increments by predictable means. They're wrong. Sometimes you don't have to ask for permission or for anything because you hold the power and you yourselves decide which way the door swings. Nothing is possible without action; almost anything is when we rise up together, as you are doing today.
I am writing you in gratitude and enthusiasm as someone who has lived for almost six decades, which has been time enough to see extraordinary change. To see what had been declared impossible happen over and over again. To see regimes topple when ordinary people rise up in nonviolent direct action. To see dramatic expansions of rights in both law and imagination. To see what were once radical new ideas about gender and sexual orientation and race, about justice and equality, about nature and ecology become ordinary accepted ideas - and then to see people forget how our minds were changed, and how much that process matters too.
The world I was born into no longer exists. The role of women has changed extraordinarily since then, largely for the better. The entire Soviet empire collapsed suddenly 30 years ago, a few years after the east bloc of communist countries liberated themselves through the actions of people who were themselves supposed to be powerless to topple regimes backed by great militaries and secret police. I saw apartheid fall in South Africa, and a prisoner doing life become its president. I was born into a world where to be gay or lesbian or trans was criminalized, and I watched those laws and attitudes be change in states, in my country, the US, and in many countries.
I saw wind and solar power go from awkward, ineffectual, expensive technologies only 20 years ago to become the means through which we can leave the age of fossil fuel behind. I have seen a language to recognize the Earth's environmental systems arise in my lifetime, a language that can describe how everything is connected, and everything has consequences. Through studying what science teaches us about nature and what history teaches us about social forces I have come to see how beautiful and how powerful are the threads that connect us. Here's one. Who did Greta Thunberg describe as a key influence on her actions? Rosa Parks.
That a black woman born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913 would influence a white girl born in Sweden 90 years later to take direct action about climate change is a reminder that everything is connected and your actions matter even when the results aren't immediate or obvious. The way Rosa Parks broke the rules and lived according to her ideals still matters, still has power, still has influence beyond what she could have imagined, beyond her lifetime, beyond her continent, beyond her particular area of activism.
The rules are the rules of the obvious, the easy assumptions that we know who holds power, we know how change happens, we know what is possible. But the real lesson of history is that change often comes in unpredictable ways, power can suddenly be in the hands of those who appear out of what seems to the rest of us like nowhere. I did not see Thunberg coming, or the Sunrise Movement or Extinction Rebellion or Zero Hour.
When I went to Standing Rock I never dreamed this indigenous-led uprising against an oil pipeline would inspire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for office. Nor that she would go on to win a victory that broke all the rules and become the great spokesperson for a Green New Deal. I didn't dream it, but I knew that something powerful, magical, alive with possibility was happening. That's why I wasn't surprised when it did, and why I don't assume we have seen all of what that gathering in 2016 achieved, either. It is not over, any more than Rosa Parks's impact is over. Good work matters. Acting on your ideals matters. How it matters is not always immediate or obvious.
Today you are standing up for people not yet born, and those ghostly billions are with you too.
What I see all around me is what I call climate momentum: people from New Zealand to Norway stepping up their response to climate change. I see pipeline blockades in Canada and the US, I see investors backing off from fracking and coal, I see universities and pension funds divesting from fossil fuel, I see solar farms and wind turbines going in all over the world and engineers working to make the technologies better, I see lawsuits against oil companies and coal companies, I see politicians, newspaper editorialists, businesspeople and others who have power under the usual rules getting on board in a way they never have before. There is so much happening, in so many ways, to respond to the biggest disaster our species has ever faced.
It is not yet enough, but it is a sign that more and more are facing the catastrophe and are doing something about it. I don't know what will happen, because what will happen is what we make happen. That is why there's a global climate strike today. This is why I've started saying, Don't ask what will happen. Be what happens. Today, you are what is happening. Today, your power will be felt. Today, your action matters. Today in your individual action you may stand with a few people or with hundreds, but you stand with billions around the world. Today you are standing up for people not yet born, and those ghostly billions are with you too. Today you are the force of possibility that runs through the present like a river through the desert.
Keep ReadingShow Less
International Women's Day--A Woman's Place Is Still in the Revolution
Now more than ever it is imperative that women are celebrated and elevated at the highest level for their immense contribution to shaping a world that is non-sexists, non-gender biased and unequivocally builds gender equitable systems for all
Mar 07, 2019
'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo'- You Strike A woman, You Strike Rock! Famous words by South Africa women resisting and standing up to racial oppression in 1956 when 20, 000 women of all races refused to be subjugated by the apartheid government. Although the women's March was against restrictive pass laws, this movement proved to be a turning point in the struggle against an unjust political system. The women's march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria led to significant changes in the law and the emancipation women in South Africa.
History provides examples of women who refused the status quo and forever changed the course of events. From American civil society activist Rosa Parks to Kenyan environmental and women's rights campaigner Wangari Maathai who are recognised for their contribution and their place in the revolution.
Today, nothing has changed. Women remain at the forefront of the civil society movement, ensuring their rightful place in bringing about peace and building equality in communities at national and international levels.
While there has been significant progress and commitments made in the gender narrative, we still have a long way to go to ensure women are no longer on the fringes of society. This is where education plays a crucial role as an equaliser and is an indispensable tool to truly transforming women's place in society. According to UNWomen, gender inequality still remains a vital cause of hunger and poverty. "It is estimated that 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women and girls" as stated by 2015 - WFP Gender Policy 2015-2020. When it comes to employment, men's average wages remain higher than that of women and women, the backbones of society, work longer hours than men. Women still lag behind men in decision making and leadership positions.
In education, gender inequality still exists. Women make up more than two-thirds of the world's 796 million illiterate people. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the highest rate of out-of-school children, girls are most excluded, with 24% of girls not in school compared to 18% of boys. In Northern Africa and Western Asia, 12% of girls are out of school compared to 10% of boys. These numbers indicate that the stakes are high when it comes to bridging the gender gap and ensuring that girls and women are not left behind.
The role of education in emancipating women
It goes without saying that an educated woman is more likely to have greater decision-making power within her household. Educated girls have great potential to bring about positive change to their immediate families and to society at large. A good example is the formidable Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Prize Laureate and staunch activist for female education and the young 16 year old Greta Thunberg, who is shaking things up in the climate movement.
TheGlobal Campaign for Education,is a worldwide civil society movement. The campaign is committed to defend education as a basic human right and mobilises public pressure on governments and the international community to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people, in particular for children, women and those from excluded communities. GCE recognises that gender equality is a human right and a requisite for achieving broader social, political and economic development goals, as stated in the Agenda for Sustainable Development.
This year the UN celebrates International Women's Day under the theme "Think equal, build smart, innovate for change" and spotlights innovative ways in which we can all enforce gender equality and the empowerment of women. In the 21st century, women no longer occupy undervalued roles in society. Now more than ever it is imperative that women are celebrated and elevated at the highest level for their immense contribution to shaping a world that is non-sexists, non-gender biased and unequivocally builds gender equitable systems for all.
GCE celebrates this day and enforces the call for education systems that take into account a full analysis of the gendered barriers girls and boys face to complete a free, inclusive, public quality education. In order to tell a different gender story next year, a wider systematic approach must challenge and transform patriarchal societies into ones that value equality and inclusion.
Keep ReadingShow Less
"Realists" Are Courting Global Devastation
Who are the true realists? Those backing the Green New deal, or those backing "ineffective half measures"?
Feb 23, 2019
In a recent confrontation with representatives of the Sunrise Movement, Senator Diane Feinstein referred to herself as a "realist" when challenged to support the Green New Deal.
She's not alone. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi referred to the GND as a dream, and nearly every article about it alludes to it being unrealistic, while the pundits pile on with charges of political doom for the Dems if they support it.
Ponder this for a moment. We are faced with a planet wrecking problem - something that, if left unchecked, could literally lead to the deaths of billions of people, the extinction of nearly half of all species, and the destruction of the ecological systems which allowed for the development of civilization - and the people who want to do something about it are labelled unrealistic, and those who advocate ineffective half-measures are considered "realists."
This tells us a great deal about the state of our politics, and none of it is good.
For starters, it tells us that our entire political process has been overtaken by monied interests. The Constitution and its principles have been discarded in exchange for campaign funds and a revolving door that allows politicians to cash in on public service.
It also tells us that leadership is a scarce commodity. The so-called "realists" read polls and try to regurgitate back in simple soundbites what the polls are telling them. This amounts to government by tautology, and it means politicians hone their positions to appeal to the least common denominator. In normal times this can work, but these are not normal times. We are actively sabotaging our ecological life support systems.
Not only is leadership a rare phenomenon, but when leaders do appear, they are assaulted by a collective, reactionary ignorance. Exhibit A has to be Bernie Sanders' 2016 run, in which the DNC, the press, big money and the punditry gathered against him in a confederacy of dunces. It's happening again, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, who the folks in the know are dismissing. It's happening with the GND, with proposals to tax the ultra-wealthy, with no-brainer issues like Medicare for All.
Now, it's worth noting that the ideas Sanders' introduced in 2016, which were dismissed as happy dreams, are now embraced by the majority of Americans. But the realists continue to talk about them as if they were pipe dreams, and offer up useless Pablum like paygo, instead. If you wanted to conjure up a way of depressing voter turnout, you couldn't do much better than what the "realists" are doing, and the only way Trump wins is if you depress turnout.
Admiral William Halsey Jr said, "There are no great men [or women] there are only great challenges that ordinary men [or women] are forced by circumstances to meet." Yet our history seems punctuated by people of great foresight and moral courage appearing on history's horizon when needed. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Mother Jones, Rosa Parks, Rachel Carson, Martin Luther King, Jr - each emerged at a critical juncture in our history, and each became a leader in the long march toward a just, fair, prosperous and sustainable society.
But today, the "realists" have a firm grip on our social, political and economic system, and they are doing a tremendous job at keeping us from seeing reality. The stakes of their failures have never been higher, the consequences never more dire. It is time for another hero to appear, and it must be us. We the people must rise up and demand more from our leaders than a faux realism rooted in greed, fear and myopia.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular