Spokeswomen for Canada's First Nation, welcome additions to the event, said that thirty-five tribes across their country are working together in opposition to the pipeline construction. When asked, one of them told me that actually they were communicating with Native Americans and also indigenous people throughout the Americas. People of the First Nation, though pressured, have refused to assimilate into mainstream Canadian society. The national government refers to these outspoken rebels as enemies of the country and extremists.
"First Nation Ladies" by Marta Steele
Colorado's Navahos, Hispanics, blacks, and whites were all
specified as "relatives." Even the grass and trees are relatives. Disaster
doesn't discriminate--we all bleed the same color. Mother Nature could destroy
us with the shake of one shoulder; instead she nurtures us, but there are signs
aplenty that we are destroying her.
"Is the economy more important than land and water?" they
asked.
This rally is the beginning of a change. A four-month-old infant was identified as the youngest present today. "Will she be here in fifty years?" asked one speaker. And will the environment be tolerable? Will President Obama get rid of the three hundred coal mines throughout the country that are so violating its ecology? Will he choose to be on the winning side of history?
An old chant out of my early days as an activist was heard: "The
whole world is watching." I've heard it time and again since then, but not
recently.
Some of the world is way ahead of us. I heard one journalist
tell another that Germany is 80 percent energy independent. If the whole world
were watching, would it make a difference? We are accomplishing something rare:
educating "developing" areas about the horrendous devastation wrought by hydrocarbon
pollution by our destruction invasion of their pristine domains, be they the
Peruvian Amazon; Prince William Sound, Alaska; Greenland, a new treasure trove
revealed by melting glaciers, or any number of other age-old wildernesses now
being ravaged.
Sixty-five percent of the American population supports the
goals of Forward on Climate. Though the sponsoring organizations were referred
to as "most of the progressives," it struck me as odd that Jill Stein,
presidential candidate last year representing the Green Party, was not allowed
to speak, though she did attend.
"Left of center, but not by much," I mused about the event as a whole. We all know what's right, especially the Green Party. Steering left, the project endorsed today, involves a sense of direction. An iconic participant in the march that followed the event, from the Washington Monument to the White House, was a paper, [presumably] life-sized replica of a piece of the Keystone XL pipeline. But a colossal rendition of the Statue of Liberty that loomed high above the heads of those carrying it was painted green.
"Pipeline simulation" by Marta Steele
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