/israel/palestine/war/reflections - Dr. Gabor Maté a renown speaker and holocaust survivor, shares reflections with his daughter, Hannah Maté, on Israel/Palestine events following October 7th, 2023 and the history that caused these events. He shares the emotional difficulty of speaking, learning, and engaging civil discourse, and yet the critical need to do so. The father and daughter share a number of resources presenting facts and perspectives in the video for those who care to dig deeper.
/ukraine/peace conference/Malta - On October 28, 2023 a third round of Ukrainian-backed peace talks opened in Malta that included a focus on Ukraine’s 10 point plan for peace. President Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan covers restoration of Ukraine's territorial integrity, withdrawal of Russian troops, protection of food and energy supplies, nuclear safety, and the release of all prisoners.
National security delegates representing a reported 65 countries attended the meeting.
In his opening remarks, Malta's foreign minister, Ian Borg, said the high attendance, compared to earlier talks, was a “vote of confidence in Malta as a peace broker.” (The Mediterrean island would have preferred to remain neutral but given the extent of war crimes supported Ukraine’s position).
An EU official said that against the backdrop of the Hamas-Israel war the higher attendance also showed "that restoration of just peace is important beyond Ukraine, it is about a global plea for respect of international law.”
Officials along with President Zelenskyy said they hoped that the outcome of the weekend's gathering, partly in person, partly virtual, would be an agreement to hold a global peace summit later this year.
At the last minute China did not attend the Malta meeting despite efforts from Ukraine to get Beijing to send a representative. Russia was not invited. A spokesperson said the peace talks are biased against Russia.
Given the extent of atrocities committed by Russia that has affected all aspects of Ukrainian life and the future of the country, including ecocide, the issue of achieving justice versus ending the war represents perhaps the greatest challenge to future peace negotiations.
/war crimes/israel/palestine/definition - Ione Belarra, leader of the left-wing Unidas Podemos party, called on Spanish citizens to take the violation of the rule of law to the streets. Belarra accuses Israel of carrying out a “planned genocide” in the Gaza Strip “… leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity, food and water” and bombing the civilian population “as a collective punishment, in serious breach of international law and which could be considered war crimes”.
If the International Criminal Court (ICC) took on the question of “war crimes” in regard to Israel (unfortunately given the self interests of some of the world’s largest countries that is a big if) it could led to the charge of “crimes of aggression” which bring the top leaders of countries into account. Some definitions are found in the PSM archives.
/war/israel/Palestine/the troubles/ireland/history - Richard Haas writes in Foreign Affairs, October 15, 2023 “Hamas is as much a network, a movement, and an ideology as it is an organization. Its leadership can be killed, but the entity or something like it will survive.”
An everyday simple man, an irishman moved to the US because he fell in love with an American woman and married her. Having lived through the troubles he wondered about the Israeli /Palestinian state of affairs. He asked, “ why can’t they learn from the troubles? You will never ‘eliminate the other side' through war.”
In August 1969,….after the Battle of the Bogside, at age 22 Bernadette Devlin toured the United States with a stark message to American audiences. You think the troubles is about religion. It is not. It is (to paraphrase) about bread and dignity…and no country escapes this reality.
Today, this message resounds in the words of both Israel and Palestinian former heads of state, through those who have lived and understood the history of the Mideast, through thousands of people in the streets around the world.
/california/censorship/teacher - In EdSource today, Temcula valley high school, a public high school for grades 9-12 in California lost a teacher; one of many increasingly worried about what to teach and what not to teach. Drama teacher, Greg Bailey, received a three-month suspension. He returned to teaching after his suspension but censorship remains a reality. The school board has banned since the school board banned critical race theory, temporarily removed the Social Studies Alive! curriculum over a mention of LGBTQ+ activist Harvey Milk and passed measures that would require school officials to notify parents if their child shows signs of being transgender.
/surveillance/schools/technology - Also in the news, the ACLU released a research report on the growing educational surveillance business. The message is surveillance technologies make schools safer. The ACLU report says many of these hard-sell technologies do not make schools safer and harm students.
/public libraries and schools/book bans/ The American Library Association (ALA) reports that “The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubled the number reported in 2021. The number of unique titles targeted marked a 38% increase over 2021.
Between January 1 and August 31, 2023, there were a reported 695 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles - a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022, which saw the highest number of book challenges since ALA began compiling the data more than 20 years ago."
Not all unreported data is readily available however during tthe 2023 period ALA's preliminary data shows that 3923 titles were challenged in 531 attempts to censor books.
The largest contributor to the rise in both the number of censorship attempts and the increase in titles challenged continues to be a single challenge by a person or group demanding the removal or restriction of multiple titles.
The ALA finds that the data represents book ban incidences as evidence of well coordinated efforts to remove books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health
The majority of book ban challenges in schools and libraries were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community (a challenge may result in access being retained, restricted, or revoked at a school or public library).
The loss of black and ‘alternative’ histories due to fear and ignorance is a loss of perspective and a significant loss to future generations as to the histories of men and women who, whatever the tensions and injustices, built this country from the ground up .
Under trying and frequently deadly circumstances Black men and women have often taken the lead on positive social change, including voter education, and at critical times in history white and Black citizens have worked together for that social change.
/pesticide use/conferences - Beyond Pesticides presents its second 2023 conference titled Foraging a Future with Nature: The existential challenge to end petrochemical pesticide and fertilizer use featuring Marcos Orellana and Jayson Maurice Porter will be held on October 24, 2pm to 3;30PM EDT. Registration is available. A third session will be held in November (TBA). Past webinar session recordings and materials are available online.
/Pennsylvania/ fracking/policy change - Pennsylvania, Texas, and North Dakota (the latter has experienced a boom and bust fracking economy) have the highest rates of widespread fracking in the US. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) held its first public meeting on October 16, 2023. State residents have until November 30 to submit their views on a new policy direction for the state. Among other concerns a new policy direction would consider the impacts of fracking more inclusively. Public input will include the views of environmental justice communities which make up about 20% of the state.
These communities are part of a nationwide designation that was initiated by Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D, founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. Called the “father of environmental justice.” Dr. Bullard has authored a number of books on the subject.
/Upstate New York/salt mining/amazon/indigenous/Cargill- In Amazon Watch, one of the indigenous leaders of the Munduruku people in the Brazilian Amazon travelled 4000 miles with the help of Amazon Watch to confront Cargill’s exploitation and destruction and violations of her home. She was forced to deliver her letter to security and was denied access to Cargill’s Minneapolis office. Cargill is currently the largest agribusiness in the world.
Reported in Clean Cayuga Lake, Cayuga Lake, one of 11 lakes called the Finger Lakes located in New York State, has been a lucrative salt mining business for Cargill. Notifications regarding the company's divesture of this particular business have brought serious environmental concerns on the part of activist organizations, including the potential salinization of Cayuga Lake. Via an online petition Clean Cayuga Lake has asked New York governor, Kathy Hochul to require that the company pay a $10B environmental bond which would be forfeited in the event of a mine collapse or any related event that leads to salinization.
Two disparate groups who lived thousands of miles apart recently met under a common cause which is the heavy impact of the oil and gas industry on their communities. Their goal: to take action and build evidence against the impacts of fracking practices of the industry by installing air quality monitoring equipment on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota.
A Detroit coalitional group headed to the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota to meet with indigenous activists from the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. Their activist counterparts in North Dakota were from the Dakota Resource Council and the Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights (POWER).
The league from southeast Michigan who delivered the equipment to the Reservation and swapped stories and insights with the Three Affiliated Tribes about the problems they faced with fracking included representatives from the Green Door Initiative, the Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, the Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, and the Ecology Center.
/US Supreme Court - What's next for the US Supreme Court and the fallout for the rest of us as of October 2, 2023? Politico gives an overview of key issues. There is the small matter (to writ really large) of the Court's ethics and how that will be addressed. Then there is a lot of clean-up from sweeping decisions such as Roe v. Wade and the matter of gun control based on logic from early American History (so what about that niggling matter of domestic violence and gun ownership. There is the matter of censorship and social media platforms. Then there are the unprecedented attacks on federal agency powers, notably at the moment the "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP). Hang on to your hats. It will be a bumpy ride.
/cop city - Reported in the Guardian on October 16, 2023, the state of Georgia refuses to release evidence associated with the killing of Manuel Paez Teran (Tortuguita) to the public or the family citing an ongoing criminal investigation (RICO). The evidence includes "photographs, audio witness interviews, crime scene drawings and reports" including forensic lab reports, and including audio and video recordings from a body camera. Jon Feinberg, incoming president of the National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) called the announcement "unique and chilling...the message that it communicates is...that police offiders can kill you and hide details, because you are a member of a movement."
According to a new report from UNICEF Over 11,000 children crossed the Mediterranean without their parents in 2023. The number of children losing their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean has risen to 4% of all deaths, up from less than 1% in 2014. That represents over 1,100 children.
An ACLU long-term class-action lawsuit, Ms. L., et al. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al., represented 4,000 migrant children separated from their families under the Trump administration which instituted an inhumane "zero tolerance" family separation policy. The federal injunction will curtail such practices but it is not the end of the story. There is no reparation involved, many missing children are still separated from their families, and there is no serious guarantee that future families will not be harmed.
/protest/US/new york/israel/palestine/ - On October 28, 2023, a march organized by the Palestinian-led community group Within Our Lifetime, and participants stretched for several blocks as they traveled from the Brooklyn Museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, chanting “Free, free Palestine!” Hundreds of people, under “Not in Our Name” were arrested when police broke up a large demonstration of mostly Jewish New Yorkers who had taken over the main hall of Grand Central station. To protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. They are asking for a cease fire. Several hundred protesters were arrested.
/protest/cop city/atlanta/ - Called Block Cop City, a planned peaceful day-long occupation of the Atlanta training center site is scheduled for November 13, 2023. Atlanta Georgia’s Cop City movement has drawn national and international attention over the past three years. The hope is to draw participants from 80 plus cities numbering a thousand or more people from across the country in defense of the increasing militarization of police, deforestation of a vulnerable ecosystem in Atlanta, and in protest of a history of anti-democratic tactics used by Atlanta City officials and the state of Georgia.
A second event to be held the week before November 13 is a “Black-led week of action the week before to reach Black audiences. The events are being held following exhaustive years of pursuing legal means given serious constitutional violations in the disparate treatment of protesters, and the refusal of Atlanta officials to recognize a valid referendum to bring the matter of the large training center to a vote and a refusal on the part of officials to provide records in response to open records requests.
In Georgia Public Broadcasting, Diana Bagby reports that regarding the referendum, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled December 14 to hear oral arguments regarding the city of Atlanta’s challenge of a federal judge’s ruling which would have allowed DeKalb County residents and others, mostly Black residents not living in the city who are most affected by the proximity of the training facility, to collect signatures as part of a referendum petition drive calling for a public vote. Meantime on Oct. 19 Atlanta City's Mayor Andre Dickens assured Buckhead Young Republicans, (representing one of the wealthiest zip codes in Atlanta), that the training center is nearly 40% complete and vertical construction is set to start in January.
/protest/cop campus/san pablo - In a related story, plans to build a police facility have sparked a movement called the Stop Cop Campus Coalition in San Pablo California. The 42,000 square-foot police training facility is expected to be completed by February of 2025. The cost is $43.6 million. Part of the cost will be covered by COVID relief funds.
The city is already financially challenged and will be paying interest on borrowed money over the next few decades. Cop Campus represents 65% of the $66 million budget the city spent last year.
Protestors say the money could be put to better use. The population of San Pablo is around 30,000 residents. Sixty percent of the population are Latino and San Pablo has a lower income compared to surrounding cities.
Additionally, the proposed site is on unceded Ohlone land and borders Wildcat Creek which contains threatened species. Groundbreaking for Cop Campus has not been scheduled yet.
/wall/border/migrants/migration/environment - an expanding shadow of the Trump era's Title 42 threatens wildlife and cultural histories with ecological destruction along the US southwest border as President Biden fast tracks 'The Wall' and as US environmental laws are set aside (see psm archive). As reported in Common Dreams, The proposal was announced a month after the federal government's watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, released a report a month earlier regarding existing damage caused by border wall construction including damaged native plants, a spread of invasive species, disrupted migration patterns for endangered species, and destroyed Indigenous burial grounds and sacred sites.
New York City/environment/trees - From New York City, US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recently announced a $20 million plan to plant trees to protect underserved New Yorkers from extreme heat. The program will also benefit green job training and forest restoration careers as well as providing educational programs for children.
/white house/gun violence/department - President Biden has announced the establishment of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. There is no policy direction mentioned yet but Biden says he took his action to "send a clear message... ".
/healthcare/maternity/Netherlands - In the Guardian, everyone who gives birth in the Netherlands has a legal right for at least eight days of trained maternity care support after giving birth with a relatively small co-pay. This support, called Kraamzorg includes help running a household, some medical assistance, and guidance on caring for a newborn. The Netherlands has a higher than average rate of home births. The Kraamzorg system grew out of informal networks of postnatal carers that existed to support home births.
/Farm Bill 2023/food/low income/SNAP - The Farm Bill is omnibus legislation that is passed once every five years. It covers both the production of food and access to food for low income Americans through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP) along with a range of smaller nutrition programs.
Food prices have risen dramatically as has housing costs and concurrently food insecurity has increased making SNAP even more of a critical lifeline for a growing number of households.
The pandemic related safety net, which included a SNAP emergency allotment program, clearly made a difference to families and individuals. That program ended, rising prices did not.
The five-year expiration date for the farm bill was September 30, 2023. The Farm Bill is currently on autopilot following the 2018 guidelines. An extension proposed in the Senate would push passage of the Farm Bill into 2024 (greatly due to chaos in the House).
As reported in The Hill (October 27, 2023), a number of moderate Republican and Democrat House members are now pushing to finalize passage of a new Farm Bill before funding runs out.
Several proposed changes have included more climate-related content to help farmers. However, SNAP benefits, which make up 80% of the Farm Bill are falling under the far right minority politics of a highly conflicted House.
Want to know more about SNAP? (dig deeper with the Journalists Resource's three-part series)
/seed banks/doomsday vault/food shortages - The Svalbard Global Seed Vault's 15th birthday will be held through October 23-27. The world's largest seed bank, located in Norway's artic, has opened three times in 2023 to accept new seeds from the world’s gene banks.
The Global Crop Diversity Summit (in person or virtual attendance) is another event to be held under the auspices of the Crop Trust on November 14 2033. The title of the summit is Empowering Seed Banks to combat the Climate, Biodiversity and Food Crises.
As reported in the Guardian, “Dr. Cary Fowler, who is also known as the “father” of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is a global store of seeds for the most significant crops, said studies by agricultural economists showed the world needed to produce 50-60% more food by 2050 in order to feed its growing population. But crop yields rates were projected to decline by between 3-12% as a result of global heating.”
In a worse case scenario, no global seed storage could mean no food. (PSM archives) Seed banks are a public trust that defends against the possibility of widespread starvation. In Notes on Seeding the Future. There will be food shortages well beyond what we've had in the past.
The 22nd International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (IOPD) International Conference will be held in Rio de Janeiro from November 6 to 8, 2023 at the Cidade das Artes cultural complex. (dig deeper below)
/women/ERA/US/UN/Iceland - It is a little hard to practice participatory democracy when over half the US population is left out of the equation. The ERA Coalition is taking the "pressing" problem of the failure of the ERA to become a constitutional reality to the United Nations as part of the global landscape of human rights and gender equality. The coalition is asking the United Nations asking for a recommendation that will urge the US takes the necessary steps to implement the ERA as the 28th Amendment. This amendment would explicitly prohibit sex-based discrimination and empower Congress to enact laws addressing gender inequality.
The Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced in Congress on December 13, 1923.
Meantime, the women of Iceland, a country ranked by the World Economic Forum for 14 consecutive years as the "most gender-equal country in the world", continue to stay front and center in terms of representing women's rights following a "Women's Day Off" in 1975 which led to the election of the world's first elected female president five years later along with the evolution of other successful outcomes.
Vigdis Finbogadottir, a divorced single mother, held the job for 16 years.
The 2023 Women's Day Off strike includes the participation of the country's leader, Prime MInister Katrin Jakobsottir, who has joined the strike in protest against a continuing pay gap and the persistence of "toxic masculinity".
Why strike? Freyja Steingrímsdottir, communications director for the Icelandic Federation for Public Workers, in an interview with Reuters said, that while some might question the need for today’s action, Steingrimsdottir answered that it was precisely because of Iceland’s global reputation that it had a responsibility to live up to expectations.
/environmentalism. north carolina//leadership - Sometimes it only takes one voice to make big changes. Council, 31, moved into a home with forgotten land overrun with invasions and past practices involving sprayed pesticides and herbicides. He reforested with native trees and converted a barn into a one room cabin. He wanted to share his commitment to a clean environment and sustainable housing in a North Carolina county where 40% of housing was occupied by second homes and tourists staying in Airbnb's. He spearheaded a movement to bring affordable housing to the county and worked on projects including restoring land designated as a contaminated brownfield. Regarding the toxic elements in the county affecting the water supply, he said, "I'm big into environmental causes, but for me it's not about altruism. I want to have clean water to drink."
artists/art/writing/social/nonfiction - Manual Munoz's nonfiction stories captures the life of Mexican American communities in California's Central Valley wtih empathy and intimacy. He received a MacArthur fellowship no-strings grant for $800,000. in his public announcement Munoz said, "...My stories are not essays or tracts, nor do they merely refute bias or prejudice. They are evidence of our existence and the very human emotions that coil around our lives." Oswaldo de Leon Kantula is a visual artist who creates textile art to send a message about his people - the Kuna of South America - and climate change. He says, "I consider my art to be a cry for help."
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