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My Neighbor Ratted Me Out for Watering My Garden. Bring It On.

by JeroldMcmullen Posted on May 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last summer, one of my neighbors in Oakland, California, anonymously reported me to the East Bay Municipal Utility District for wasting water. I’d been dousing my front yard once or twice a week with arcing sprays from three huge Rain Bird sprinklers. Upon receiving written notice of the complaint, I called the utility and learned that I wasn’t actually violating water use rules, but the incident got me thinking. My ample vegetable garden was certainly green. Other yards the neighborhood were going brown. Did my neighbors think I was a water hog?

Confronted with a fourth year of drought and mandatory conservation measures, California has become a minefield of water politics. Snared in the web of blame are almond eaters, rice farmers, out-of-state grocery shoppers, rich people, China, and even hipsters. In cities and suburbs, the owners of dust-bowl lawns have squared off against their neighbors, including those of us who hand-water a few flowers or tomato plants at dusk while nervously looking over our shoulders. There’s a name for our fear: Drought shaming.

Drought shaming isn’t just for celebrities or the rich. Smartphone apps such as Vizsafe, H20 Tracker, and DroughtShame allow users to snap and post geotagged photos of alleged water abuse. In Los Angeles, the infamous “water crusader” Tony Corcoran, a.k.a. YouTube’s Western Water Luv, bicycles around town videotaping homeowners with modestly sized green lawns who dare venture outside with a hose in hand:

Few water scolds take such a confrontational approach. Most don’t have the time to hunt down gushing sprinklers or the inclination to anger their neighbors. More common is the mild, polite sort of water shaming that a next-door neighbor directed at me last week, suggesting that I cover my garden in a layer of moisture-retaining bark mulch. I’d already felt pangs of guilt watching her irrigate her ragged flowers with a watering can filled with leftover dishwater.

With many California cities facing mandatory water cutbacks of 25 percent or more, it’s probably for the best that keeping up with the Joneses sometimes means not keeping up your yard. After all, most utility districts lack the will to cut off people’s water or the manpower to send out a fleet of water cops. And tiered water rates aren’t a silver bullet, either; they face new legal challenges and aren’t really steep enough to be all that effective. Ultimately, peer pressure is pretty much all we’ve got.

But here’s the problem: Even as progressive urbanites police each other’s water consumption, many California communities continue to treat water as a bottomless resource. In hose-happy suburbs such as Palm Desert, you’re still more likely to be treated as a pariah if you let your lawn die. Even in my own water district, some neighborhoods over the hills stubbornly cling to the East-Coast ideal of glistening Kentucky bluegrass and fluffy hydrangeas.

A tech startup has figured out how to bring a measure of constructive drought shaming to communities that were once impervious to it. San-Francisco-based WaterSmart sends out individualized reports that show water users how they stack up against their neighbors. Using insights gleaned from behavioral science, the reports essentially traffic in the same kind of peer pressure one might get from living in, say, a Berkeley enclave of graywater guerillas. The result is an average water savings of 5 percent—a big deal at a time when every drop counts.

WaterSmart

The goal, says WaterSmart marketing director Jeff Lipton, is to coax out the feelings of tribal affinity that drive human behavior. “As we evolved, humans turned to the tribe and the behavior that was normal in that group as a survival mechanism,” he says. “There is sort of an existential threat of not fitting in. So it’s not shame and it’s not competition; I think it is a little more abstract than that.” And a lot more wonky: WaterSmart has a 19-page paper on this stuff, including the science of “goal setting,” “feedback,” and “injunctive norms.”

Though the WaterSmart interface seems simple, the calculations behind it are not. Two households of the same size can’t be expected to use the same amount of water if one has townhouse without a yard and the other a suburban spread on half an acre. That’s why WaterSmart combines utility data with property records to control for variables such as lot size, house size, microclimates, and the likely age of a home’s appliances. Users can further tweak their homes’ specs. If you have a large yard, WaterSmart will suggest installing drip irrigation and drought-tolerant plants. If you live in an old apartment building, it may prompt you to install a low-flow toilet or shower head.

Founded in 2009 by Peter Yolles, the director of water resource protection for The Nature Conservancy, WaterSmart grew slowly for several years, hindered, in part, by the low cost of water across the United States. Then came the drought. Last year, it tripled its customer base to 40 utilities in six states that represent 2 percent of all residential water meters in the country. It’s expecting a similar rate of growth this year. “I think we are at the very early stages of a transformation of the industry,” Lipton says.

WaterSmart still faces obstacles. Only about 20 percent of municipal utility districts employ advanced meters that can transmit residential usage in close to real-time, making it possible to frequently update customers on their water use. And glaring inefficiencies in agriculture, which uses 80 percent of California’s water, provide a convenient scapegoat for homeowners who’d prefer to keep running their taps.

Some users may interpret their favorable WaterSmart reports as an excuse to use more water. I asked the company to crunch the numbers for my house. Comparable dwellings, I learned, use an average of 336 gallons per day during the summer. In the summer of 2013, my house used 156 gallons per day. Behavioral scientists call the impulse that I might feel to use more water “the boomerang effect.” WaterSmart expects that it can keep the boomerangers in line with the virtual equivalent of a scowling neighbor, a frowning emoji.

Of course, the true dynamics of social pressure can be much more complicated. Last summer, my house used a whopping 591 gallons of water a day. I feel bad about this, but not that bad; most of the water went toward irrigating plugs of festuca rubra, a native grass that doesn’t need any summer water once it’s established. Now that it has taken root and I’ve mostly stopped watering it, I expect to easily best my neighbors’ water savings this year and still have an attractive lawn. Other than my fescue, the greenest thing in the neighborhood will be all the envy.

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My Neighbor Ratted Me Out for Watering My Garden. Bring It On.

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Breaking: California Farmers Agree to Water Cuts

by LannyCurtiss Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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As California endures its fourth year of grueling drought, officials are getting more serious about mandatory water cuts. Gov. Jerry Brown imposed the state’s first-ever water restrictions last month, ordering cities and towns to cut water by 25 percent. But the vast majority of water in California goes not to homes and businesses but to farms, which so far have suffered minimal cuts.

Today, the state’s Water Board approved a deal with farmers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in which some farmers will voluntarily reduce water use by 25 percent in exchange for assurances that they won’t suffer reductions later in the growing season. “We’re in a drought unprecedented in our times,” said Board Chair Felicia Marcus. “The action we’re announcing today is definitely unusual, but we are in unusual times.”

Here’s a primer on how farms are using water now, who holds rights to it, and what restrictions may come next.

How much water do California farms use?

Farms consume about 80 percent of the state’s water supply, and use it to grow half of the fruits and veggies that are produced in the United States. Almonds and alfalfa (cattle feed) use more than 15 percent of the state’s water.

What are water rights?

Water rights enable individuals, city water agencies, irrigation districts, and corporations to divert water directly from rivers or streams for free. The rights are based on a very old seniority system: “Senior” water rights holders are the first to get water and the last to suffer from cuts. There are two primary types of these senior holders: Those who started using the water before 1914 (when the water permit system was put in place), and “riparians,” who own property directly adjacent to streams or rivers. Water rights often, but don’t always, transfer with property sales.

Who are senior water rights holders?

Senior water rights holders are the corporations, individuals, or entities who either staked out the water before 1914, when the state started requiring permits and applications for water; those who live directly adjacent to a river or stream; or those who have bought property with senior water rights. This system made sense in the era of pioneers settling the Wild West: As the Associated Press recently put it, “Establishing an early right to California water was as simple as going ahead and diverting it. Paperwork came later. San Francisco got the Sierra Nevada water that turned its sand dunes into lush gardens by tacking a handwritten notice to a tree in 1902.” Today, there are thousands of senior water rights holders; most of them are corporations, many of which are farms. The holders include utilities company Pacific Gas and Electric, the San Francisco water agency, a number of rural irrigation districts, and Star Trek actor and rancher William Shatner.

What water cuts were announced today, and what’s coming next?

Today, the Water Board announced that it would accept a voluntary deal in which riparians in the 6,000-acre Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (shown in the map below) would reduce their water use by 25 percent, or fallow 25 percent of their land. In exchange, the Water Board promised them that they wouldn’t suffer cuts in the coming year. There are about 1,000 water holders in the area who could be candidates for the deal, which will be enforced by a combination of a complaint system, satellite imagery, and spot checks.

In addition, the Board will announce mandatory curtailments to other senior water holders next week for the first time since the 1970s. The Board is still figuring out the location and percentage of these cuts.

So before today’s cuts, farmers were just using as much water as they wanted?

Well, not exactly. Farmers with “junior” (post-1914) rights in the San Joaquin and Sacramento River basins, home of the normally fertile Central Valley, were ordered to stop using the river’s water a month ago. But the regulations are enforced by the honor system and reported complaints; so far, only a fifth of junior water holders in the area have confirmed that they are complying.

The Department of Water Resources has also made substantial cuts to the state’s two major water projects—a system of aqueducts, dams, and canals across the state that distributes water from water-rich Northern California to the water-poor Central Valley. Growers who use water from the Central Valley Water Project are only receiving 20 percent of their allocated water, and farmers of the State Water Project aren’t receiving any at all.

All of this has led more and more farmers to rely almost exclusively on groundwater, but it’s undeniable that the drought has led to less farming overall: Last year, five percent of irrigated cropland went out of production, and officials expect that number to rise this year.

What is groundwater, and how much of it are farmers using?

Groundwater is the water that trickles down through the earth’s surface over the centuries, collecting in large underwater aquifers. It’s a savings account of sorts—good to have when it’s dry but difficult to refill—and it wasn’t regulated until last year, when Gov. Brown ordered local water agencies to come up with management plans. The water agencies are still in the process of implementing those plans, and in the meantime, no one knows exactly how much groundwater is being used. We do know this: Groundwater usually makes up about 40 percent of the state’s total freshwater usage, but lately, the state has been running on it. It made up 65 percent of freshwater use last year, and may make up as much as 75 percent this year. As a result of overpumping, the land is sinking—as much as a foot a year in some areas—and officials are worried that the changing landscape threatens the structural integrity of infrastructure like bridges, roads and train tracks.

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Breaking: California Farmers Agree to Water Cuts

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Multimillionaire Carly Fiorina Took 4 Years to Pay Staffers From Her Last Campaign

by ShellyTurpin Posted on May 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Carly Fiorina, the Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO, is marketing herself as a pragmatic, fiscally responsible businesswoman—the only GOP candidate who knows, as she says, “how the economy actually works.” Yet during her unsuccessful US Senate bid in 2010, her opponents slammed her record at HP. When she led the firm, it laid off 18,000 workers, and its stock declined by 41 percent. Eventually, she was forced out of the company but departed with a $21 million golden parachute. Now she may need to answer for another managerial blunder. For more than four years, she was a deadbeat and didn’t pay the bills she owed for her Senate campaign. She only settled these outstanding debts just before she jumped into the 2016 race.

Until late last year, Fiorina was close to $500,000 in debt from her 2010 run, nearly all of it in unpaid compensation to campaign staffers and outside consultants, according to Federal Election Commission filings. In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Fiorina owed serious cash to former campaign operatives, several of whom were unsure about when they would be paid for their work. And they complained they were not getting clear information from Fiorina about when she would get them their money. At that time, she owed $60,000 to her 2010 campaign manager, Marty Wilson; $20,500 to Beth Miller, a consultant and former aide to California Gov. Pete Wilson; and $30,000 to the firm of veteran GOP political consultant Joe Shumate.

Shumate, who also worked for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, died suddenly during Fiorina’s Senate race. John Allan Peschong, another adviser whom the campaign owed money, told the Chronicle, “I would hope that Carly Fiorina would pay his widow the money that was owed him at the time of his death.” Wilson, Fiorina’s campaign manager, said in 2013 that he didn’t recall if he “got that granular” with Fiorina regarding the campaign’s mounting debt near the finish line. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that the compensation delay had left her former staffers bitter.

Postcampaign debt is not uncommon, particularly in close and expensive contests. Carly for America press secretary Leslie Shedd, in a statement to Mother Jones, points out that Hillary Clinton owed a substantial amount of money after her 2008 defeat. “There was some leftover debt with Carly Fiorina’s Senate campaign in 2010,” Shedd notes. “However, this issue has been resolved and the campaign debt has been paid off in full.”

But the matter wasn’t settled until Fiorina, who lost her Senate race by 10 points to incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, was on the cusp of a new political endeavor. In January, Fiorina—whose own wealth is estimated up to $120 million—personally donated $487,000 to her Senate campaign, and then she made good on the back pay, including the money owed to Shumate’s family, according to a February 2015 Federal Election Commission filing. Two months later, she officially entered the presidential race.

The question remains: Why did it take this multimillionaire so long to pay her staffers?

But for Wilson, it’s now water under the bridge. “I’m glad Carly satisfied the debt,” he says. “We’re happy campers.”

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Multimillionaire Carly Fiorina Took 4 Years to Pay Staffers From Her Last Campaign

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Religous Zealot Would Like to Talk to You For a Minute About the Drought

by TiaJobsonzedf Posted on May 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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As you may know, there is a drought in California. The water? It’s gone! The state? It’s dry! The consequences? Very bad, indeed.

Where did the water go? I have no idea. I’m not a private detective who specializes in missing water.

Why did the water leave? No clue. Maybe it’s climate change or almonds or squirrels or people or agricultural blah blah blah. Maybe the water saw Thelma & Louise and got inspired. Again: If you’re looking for answers, you’re reading the wrong writer. But you know who else has no idea why the drought happened? This idiot.

Conservative journalist Bill Koenig suggested that the drought in California is a result of the state’s support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights: “We’ve got a state that over and over again will go against the word of God, that will continually take positions on marriage and abortion and on a lot of things that are just completely opposed to the scriptures and unfortunately a lot of times when it starts in California it spreads to the rest of the country and even spreads to the rest of the world. So there very likely could be a drought component to this judgment.”

The end-times crowd always does this whenever there is a natural disaster or terror attack or anything. They always finger the same suspect. Gay people. 9/11? Gays. Katrina? Gays. Drought? Gays.

Social conservatives are the guy in the movie theater who keeps whispering to his friends, “I KNOW WHO DID IT.”

Pundit blames California’s catastrophic drought on the gays. http://t.co/Xt101dJfKz

— HuffPost Green (@HuffPostGreen)

The thing is, the lunatic premise that God is punishing California for being less inhospitable to gays than Bill Koenig would like wouldn’t even lead to the conclusion that the drought is the fault of gays and LGBT allies in California. The conclusion it would lead to is: it’s God’s fault.

If someone stole some fruit and the store manager caught them and punished them by murdering their entire family and everyone they’d ever met, the headline would not be, “Millions Dead, Fruit Thief Blamed,” it would be, “Maniac Murders Millions.” The fruit thief wouldn’t even be mentioned until the fifth paragraph.

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Religous Zealot Would Like to Talk to You For a Minute About the Drought

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After a Mother Jones Investigation, Starbucks Says It Will Stop Bottling Water in California

by PhillipR65 Posted on May 8, 2015

Mother Jones

On the heels of a Mother Jones investigation last week that found that Starbucks sources its bottled water from a spring in the heart of California’s drought country, Starbucks announced yesterday that it will phase out use of its California bottling plant for Ethos Water over the next six months. Because of “the serious drought conditions” in California, the company will transition to its Pennsylvania supplier while looking for another source to cover the western United States, Starbucks officials said in a press release.

The California counties from which Starbucks sources and bottles Ethos have been in a drought emergency for years now. Placer County, where Ethos’ spring water is drawn, was already declared a natural disaster area by the USDA because of the drought back in 2012. Reports from more than a year ago noted that the county was already scrambling to deal with the area’s “extreme drought.” Merced county, where the bottling facility is located, declared a local emergency due to drought more than a year ago, as “extremely dry conditions have persisted since 2012.”

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania county to which Starbucks is now shifting its entire national production of Ethos Water is itself facing drought conditions. While not as catastrophic as California’s historic water emergency, Luzerne County, where Starbucks’ east coast supplier sources and bottles Ethos, was declared to be under Drought Watch by Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection back in March. DEP issued the declaration after below-normal rainfall over the past year has led to low groundwater levels in the region, which the agency noted has the potential to cause well-fed water supplies to go dry. The state is asking local residents to voluntarily reduce water consumption and to “run water only when absolutely necessary.” DEP has put large water users on notice to plan for possible reductions in water supplies.

Nevertheless, Ethos’ Pennsylvania bottler, Nature’s Way Purewater, which bottles a number of other brands at its facility, announced in January that it planned to double production going forward.

This article was reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with support from the Puffin Foundation.

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After a Mother Jones Investigation, Starbucks Says It Will Stop Bottling Water in California

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These satellites are keeping an eye on California’s underground water

by RoyGreenway Posted on May 7, 2015

Taking the 100,000-foot view

These satellites are keeping an eye on California’s underground water

By on 7 May 2015commentsShare

One more thing space is really good for, besides wow factor: Giving us a place to keep an eye on things happening on Earth — or in some cases, even things happening under the earth — with satellites.

Specifically, these satellites can help us keep an eye on our hidden water supplies. At the moment, California’s surface water is so scarce that the state has been sucking it from underground at an incredible rate. Groundwater reserves (like aquifers) are built up over decades or centuries, but they can be emptied in just a couple of years of industrious pumping. As water is vacuumed out of these huge underground lakes, the land above them starts sinking — and it turns out satellites can track the changing elevation better and more cheaply than eyes on the ground.

Here’s the story from Wired:

Earlier this week Tom Farr, a geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, completed the first of many maps for the California Department of Water Resources with data collected by the European Sentinel-1 satellite. That map, of the state’s agriculture hub in the Central Valley, is part of a larger project to use NASA expertise to study—and try to help combat—California’s drought.

There are non-space-based ways to assess groundwater levels, but those are expensive and (face it) way less cool:

The state can monitor groundwater directly by measuring water levels within wells—but digging new wells is expensive, and existing wells may be on private land. …

Traditional land surveying techniques can also track water—but that method is labor-intensive. After days of painstaking measurements taken with tripods and levels, a surveyor will be left with one small area of measurement. Surveyors can also use GPS data, Farr says, but there are very few GPS stations in the Central Valley.

A better way, Farr says, is to use interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR. This technique, first developed about a decade ago, monitors changes in ground formation.

The satellite method — involving radar beams! sine waves! snazzy acronyms! — still needs some refining to be able to accurately assess groundwater, but the technique remains promising.

Jessica Reeves and Rosemary Knight, geophysicists at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, were among the first people to apply this technique in this way, and Knight’s team continues to refine the calibrations linking ground level to groundwater levels.

The sinking that they’re tracking—as much as a foot a year in some places—threatens to become an enormous problem. That’s not just because the water will eventually run out, which (if pumping continues unabated) it will. It’s a more immediate threat to surface-level infrastructure: aqueducts, bridges, roads and train tracks. Damages due to sinking land in Santa Clara Valley is estimated at more than $756 million.

So to the list of benefits satellites offer us — rural HBO, prank calls from Antarctica, galactic posters — we can now add “monitoring California’s drinking problem.” Thanks, satellites.

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How Satellites Can Monitor California’s Underground Water

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These satellites are keeping an eye on California’s underground water

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Drought has killed 12+ million trees in California’s national forests, millions more to come

by Myrna Posted on May 6, 2015

Millions more are expected to die over the summer, as the situation becomes ever more incendiary. More: Drought has killed 12+ million trees in California’s national forests, millions more to come ; ; ;

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Drought has killed 12+ million trees in California’s national forests, millions more to come

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Tales From City of Hope #11: We Have Liftoff

by LawerenHeard Posted on May 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday’s white blood count went from just under 0.1 to just over 0.1. Let’s call it 0.05 growth. Today’s count is 0.2. That’s growth of 0.1.

And that, my friends, is exponential growth. Sure, we could use another data point or three. And some more significant digits. And if we’re being picky, a coefficient or two. But screw that. To this Caltech1 dropout, it looks like exponential growth has kicked in. Booyah!

In more visually exciting news, I know you all want to see my shiner, don’t you? I can feel the bloodlust all the way from my hospital bed. So here it is, you ghouls. As usual with these things, it looks a lot worse than it feels. In fact, I can barely feel it all. But it’s clear evidence that, yes, the bathroom really is the most dangerous room in the house.

1Did you know that the proper short form for California Institute of Technology is Caltech, not CalTech? They’ve been trying for decades to get the rest of the world to go along, but with sadly limited success.

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Tales From City of Hope #11: We Have Liftoff

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The 10 American Cities With the Dirtiest Air

by LashondFairclot Posted on April 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Nearly 44 percent of Americans live in areas with dangerous levels of ozone or particle pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report, published yesterday.

The good news is that’s actually an improvement over last year’s report, which showed that 47 percent of the population lived in these highly polluted places. Overall, the air has been getting cleaner since Congress enacted stricter regulations in the 1970s, and the American Lung Association report, which looked at data from 2011 through 2013, showed a continuing drop in the air emissions that create the six most widespread pollutants.

But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. Many cities experienced a record number of days with high levels of particle pollution, a mixture of solid and liquid droplets in the air that have been linked to serious health problems. Short-term particle pollution was especially bad in the West, in part due to the drought and heat, which may have increased the dust, grass fires and wildfires. Six cities—San Francisco; Phoenix; Visalia, California; Reno, Nevada.; Yakima, Washington; and Fairbanks, Alaska—recorded their highest weighted average number of unhealthy particle pollution days since the American Lung Association started covering this metric in 2004.

Los Angeles held its rank as the metropolitan area with the worst ozone pollution, even as it saw its best three-year period since the first report 16 years ago: the city experienced a one-third reduction in its average number of unhealthy ozone days since the late 1990s.

Meanwhile, states on the east coast showed the most headway in cleaning up their air, with major drops in year-round particle pollution. The American Lung Association attributed the improvement to a push for cleaner diesel fleets and cleaner fuels in power plants.

“The progress is exactly what we want to see, but to see some areas having some of their worst episodes was unusual,” said Janice Nolen, an air pollution expert with the association, referring to the record-breaking days of short-term particle pollution.

Data is missing for some of the dirtiest cities in the Midwest, including Chicago and St. Louis, due in part to problems at data labs in Illinois and Tennessee. Similar problems in Georgia also prevented researchers from assessing changes in Atlanta, another city notorious for air pollution.

Outdoor air pollution has been linked to about 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide, by causing or exacerbating lung cancer, chronic obstructive lung disease, acute lower respiratory infections, ischaemic heart disease, and strokes. And unfortunately, it seems people of color and with low incomes are often exposed to the dirtiest air.

Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Lung Association ranked cities around the country in terms of their year-round particle pollution, or the annual average level of fine particles in the air. These fine particles can come from many sources, including power plants, wildfires, and vehicle emissions, and breathing them in over such long periods of time have been linked to lung damage, increased hospitalizations for asthma attacks, increased risk for lower birth weight and infant mortality, and increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Here are the 10 cities with the lowest levels of year-round particle pollution:

1. Prescott, Arizona

2. Farmington, New Mexico

3. Casper, Wyoming

3. Cheyenne, Wyoming

5. Flagstaff, Arizona

6. Duluth, Minnesota-Wisconsin

6. Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida

6. Salinas, California

10. Anchorage, Alaska

10. Bismarck, North Dakota

10. Rapid City-Spearfish, South Dakota

And the cities with the most year-round particle pollution:

1. Fresno-Madera, California

2. Bakersfield, California

3. Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, California*

4. Modesto-Merced, California

5. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California

6. El Centro, California

7. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, California

8. Cincinnati; Wilmington, Kentucky; Maysville, Indiana

9. Pittsburgh; New Castle, Ohio; Weirton, West Virginia

10. Cleveland-Akron-Canton, Ohio

To see city rankings for short-term particle pollution and ozone pollution, check out the report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the state in which Visalia, Porterville, and Hanford are located.

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The 10 American Cities With the Dirtiest Air

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"Violence Is Not the Answer": Baltimore Icon Ray Lewis Calls For Peace

by InesSochaak Posted on April 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Athletes and celebrities have taken to social media to call for an end to the Baltimore riots that flared overnight after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody having suffered a spinal cord injury.

Ray Lewis, who played for the Baltimore Ravens for 17 years before retiring in 2013, posted this fiery speech to residents on Facebook on Tuesday, asking for peace: “Young kids, you gotta understand something. Get off the streets. Violence is not the answer. Violence has never been the answer.” (Ray Lewis was charged with murder in 2000 after a brawl in Atlanta, but those charges were later dropped.)

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I’ve got a message for the rioters in Baltimore. #BaltimoreRiots

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Ray Lewis on Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Professional basketball player and Baltimore native Carmelo Anthony delivered this message to his hometown.

We all want Justice. And our city will get the answers we are looking for. My deepest sympathy goes out to the GRAY Family. To see my city in a State of Emergency is just shocking. We need to protect our city, not destroy it. What happens when we get the answers that we want, and the media attention is not there anymore? We go back to being the same ol Baltimore City again. If not yourself, then Think about the youth. How this will impact them. Let’s build our city up not tear it down. Although, we want justice, let’s look at the real issues at hand. For example, When was the last school built in Baltimore? That’s just one example. I know my community is fed up. I’m all about fighting for what we believe in. The anger, the resentment, the neglect that our community feels right now, will not change over night. Continue, fighting for what you believe in. But remember, it takes no time to destroy something. But, it can take forever to build it back up. Peace7. #Thisonehitshome #BeMore #LetsNotFallForTheTrap “Please Understand What State Of Emergency Mean”(Destroy and Conquer) #StayMe7o

A photo posted by @carmeloanthony on Apr 27, 2015 at 8:16pm PDT

Washington Wizards forward Paul Pierce also denounced violence, recalling the Los Angeles riots after the 1992 beating of Rodney King by police, which he witnessed as a teenager in Inglewood, California:

Comedian Cedric The Entertainer, who was born in Jefferson City, Missouri, linked the upheaval to what happened in Ferguson (near his hometown), after the death of Michael Brown, a young unarmed black man shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson.

At least 15 police officers were injured in Monday’s riots. On Tuesday morning, about 2,500 residents responded, sweeping debris throughout the city left in the wake of buildings destroyed by fires and looted businesses.

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"Violence Is Not the Answer": Baltimore Icon Ray Lewis Calls For Peace

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