Tag Archives: protest
Mess with a Texas pipeline now and you could end up a felon
Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Paradise, Uncategorized
Tagged alo, climate & energy, dakota access pipeline, news, Ona, permian highway pipeline, pipeline, politics, protest
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Texans could get a year in prison for protesting pipelines on their own land
Ilhan Omar’s 16-year-old daughter is co-leading the Youth Climate Strike
Freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is championing one of the boldest climate policies in America. The Minnesota representative grew up in Somalia before immigrating to the United States as a refugee, so she was able to see firsthand the consequences of drought and make deep connections between climate change and all aspects of human society.
“I’m one who is urging my colleagues to really take this opportunity to not just issue resolutions and talking points, but for us to actually put a real bill on the table and to allow us to have a real conversation on this issue,” Omar recently told Minnesota Public Radio.
But Omar is not the only environmental influencer in her family — her daughter Isra Hirsi, 16, is one of the three youth leaders planning the U.S. component of Friday’s International Youth Climate Strike, in which young people will walk out of class in order to call for urgent climate action.
I had a chance to talk with Isra about how her efforts are already making a huge impact, and how her passion for the environment has influenced her family.
Update: In response to this piece, Omar wrote on Twitter: “Proud mom here! I hope other Members of Congress will join me in this strike. We need to listen to the wisdom of our kids!”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q. What’s it been like for you getting this all together?
A. It’s been a lot. There’s just a lot going on. Every 10 seconds there’s something else that pops up that you wouldn’t expect. It’s been crazy. There are so many people involved and so many things you have to do. It’s been really stressful. It definitely does interfere with school. I respond to texts and messages during the school day, and then I come home at four and that’s when I start doing all my calls. I have calls every single night. It’s kind of go-time. It’s all over the place. It’s a lot of work, more than I expected.
Q. How have you influenced your family by taking this on? Have you been able to teach them things about why you feel so strongly about this?
A. My parents are already kind of on top of it, a little bit less so my siblings. But my little sister is really young and so she kind of gets it. I told her that she should go to the strikes and she’s was like, “yeah I want to go.” So my dad is going to take her to the capital. She’s really interested. My parents definitely understand and are up with everything.
Q. How old is your sister?
A. She’s 6.
Q. Are you going to be speaking at the strike at the capital?
A. I’m going to D.C.
Q. Oh cool. With your mom?
A. Yeah.
Q. She just announced she’s going to be attending. (Editor’s note: so far, Omar is the only member of Congress who has confirmed she will be attending this Friday’s nationwide school strike for climate change)
A. Yeah, she’ll be speaking too.
Q. How do you feel about that?
A. I mean, I kind of got her to. It’s good. I kind of wanted to get people there. We invited some other people like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Bernie Sanders and we’re just hoping they all come.
Q. How was that conversation with your mom to get her to speak there?
A. It was just a matter of, she wanted to go — she was probably speaking about it that weekend, and she said, “I’ll be in D.C., I’ll go speak.” So I’m going to fly out from Minneapolis and then fly back with her, so it’s just perfect.
Q. How has your family influenced you? You said both of your parents “get it.” Where do you feel most of your inspiration is coming from?
A. I wouldn’t say it would be my parents. I would say more of the spaces that I’m in. Learning more about climate change and what it does, all of the different things that impact it. I learned about things like Line 3, and wildfires in California. There are so many things that got me realizing how important this is. It’s important to talk about what climate change does to marginalized communities, what it could do to your community. I think that’s a really great way to get more people involved.
Q. And watching the whole national conversation over the past few months.
A. Especially Sunrise. They’re very big now. Reading about the Green New Deal, it’s inspiring. Learning about all these things is kind of interesting. And Sunrise has helped put women of color at the forefront.
Q. Why do you think it’s important to have women of color leading the climate change movement?
A. People of color are disproportionately affected by climate change and that kind of just gets ignored. People are living with these things right now. Accessibility, when it comes to fighting for climate change, also gets ignored. Every interview I have, they’re like, “Are you striking every Friday?” And I’m like, no, I can’t. There’s no way. People say, “Oh you’re not vegetarian!” And I say, “Well, my family is not from this country. They grew up as meat-eaters, I can’t control those things.”
It’s important for people to step back and realize that they’re not the only people. Environmental racism is a really big thing. The environmental movement is still predominantly white, how do we change that conversation? Having women of color leading is one way to do that.
Q. How is your school reacting? Is your school supporting you?
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A. I recently sent an email to my teachers explaining the climate strikes and what I was doing. A lot of them brushed past it and were kind of ignoring it. Some were really interested. It’s also awareness for them to understand that students won’t be in school on Friday and this is definitely a conversation we should be having. My peers and I are going around to science classes and talking about the climate strike and all the teachers are letting us. Some teachers are even giving kids extra credit if they go to the marches.
Q. There are some high schools that are actively supporting kids who go. Has your principal made any sort of announcement?
A. The problem isn’t my principal; it’s my district. They’ll definitely count it as unexcused. But my school is really supportive. A lot of the students are also apolitical, they don’t care. It’s not really a question of the teachers or the principal, it’s more like will the high school students actually attend.
Q. But if they see role models, if they see you up there …
A. That’s true, but last year I tried to get 1,000 kids from my high school to go to something and I only got 200.
Q. That’s pretty good.
A. Well, there are 2,000 kids at my school. We’re in the middle of Minneapolis, we’re super close to the light rail, we can easily go over to the state capitol building.
Q. So, what’s your strategy? Do you double down on the kids that get it?
A. Yeah, we’re really just focused on the students who actually care. We go into those classes and get the teachers to talk to those students who are actually interested. It’s easier. It’s still worth it to get the kids who care. The climate strikes are a great way for young people to get involved pretty easily. It’s also a way for politicians to understand that young people really care.
These strikes are happening all over the world. Getting young people out, going to state capitols, going to city halls, going to the nation’s capital and talking about these things, that says something. That’s what we’re trying to do: Change the conversation not only about things like the Green New Deal but so much more. Obviously, one strike isn’t going to change everything, but this isn’t the last strike.
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Ilhan Omar’s 16-year-old daughter is co-leading the Youth Climate Strike
Singing protesters interrupt a White House presentation at COP23.
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Singing protesters interrupt a White House presentation at COP23.
Mark your calendars! The March for Science is happening in D.C. on April 22.
The People’s Climate March will descend on D.C. with an intersectional coalition of green and environmental-justice groups, indigenous and civil-rights organizations, students and labor unions. The march will take place on Saturday, April 29, exactly 100 days into Trump’s presidency.
In January, the Women’s March gathered half a million demonstrators in D.C. alone. There have also been talks of an upcoming Science March, which has no set date but almost 300,000 followers on Twitter.
April’s climate march is being organized by a coalition that emerged from the People’s Climate March of 2014, a rally that brought 400,000 people to New York City before the United Nations convened there for a summit on climate change. It was the largest climate march in history — a record that may soon be broken.
“Communities across the country have been working for environmental and social justice for centuries. Now it’s time for our struggles to unite and work together across borders to fight racism, sexism, xenophobia, and environmental destruction,” Chloe Jackson, an activist with Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, said in a statement. “We have a lot of work to do, and we are stronger together.”
Link:
Mark your calendars! The March for Science is happening in D.C. on April 22.
Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Hipe, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Ringer, Uncategorized
Tagged climate march, green, Hipe, justice, march for science, missourians, protest, rex tillerson, science, trump nation
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A man drove a truck through a crowd of protesters as tensions over the Dakota Access pipeline escalate.
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton appeared side-by-side in a Miami campaign stop that framed the climate-change challenge in an unusually optimistic light.
“Climate change is real. It’s urgent. And America can take the lead in the world in addressing it,” Clinton said. She focused on the U.S.’s capacity to lead the world in a climate deal and as a clean energy superpower in a speech that mostly rehashed familiar policy territory.
Clinton ran down her existing proposals on infrastructure, rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and more, though she omitted the more controversial subjects, like what to do about pipeline permits, that have dogged her campaign.
Though Clinton and Gore largely framed climate change as a challenge Americans must rise to, they didn’t miss an opportunity to jab at climate deniers.
“Our next president will either step up our efforts … or we will be dragged backwards and our whole future will be put at risk,” Clinton said.
Besides Donald Trump, Florida’s resident climate deniers Marco Rubio and Rick Scott got special shoutouts.
“The world is on the cusp of either building on the progress of solving the climate crisis or stepping back … and letting the big polluters call the shots,” Gore said.
Original article:
Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Nissan, ONA, Ringer, solar, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Wiley
Tagged building-on-the, clinton, donald-trump, hillary, lead-the-world, marco, oil, protest, wiley
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Martin Luther King, Jr.: ‘All Life is Interrelated.’
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Tagged Air, fight, health, issues, life, other holidays, protest, regulations, rights
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Animal Rights Activists Make Off With One Hundred Mutant Mice
Photo: Rick Eh?
Animal rights activists may have good intentions, but on Saturday in Italy, a protest at a scientific lab ruined research on autism, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. The activists entered labs at the University of Milan, where they released, stole and mixed up labels on mouse and rabbit cages. The scientists say it will take years to recover their work, Nature News reports.
The activist group, called Stop Green Hill (in reference to a questionable dog-breeding facility), had staged a 12-hour demonstration at the university. Then five of them snuck into pharmacology labs:
The lack of signs of a break-in suggests that the activists may have used an illegally acquired electronic card, says pharmacologist Francesca Guidobono-Cavalchini, who works there. They prised open the reinforced doors of the facility on the fourth floor, and two of them chained themselves by the neck to the main double doors such that any attempt to open the doors could have endangered their lives.
Around 800 animals, most of which are genetically modified to serve as model organisms for testing new drugs, live in the lab. The activists brought along food, water and sleeping bags, Nature reports, and said they would not leave until they could collect all of the facility’s animals. In the end, they left with one hundred of the rodents, most of which will likely die shortly after leaving the lab since they are bred to have extremely weak immune systems.
So far, no arrests have been made, but the university will likely press charges. Meanwhile, Nature adds, around 60 scientists organized their own protest against the “bullying tactics” of groups like Stop Green Hill. Here’s the argument for animal testing, from The Society of Toxicology:
Research involving laboratory animals is important to people and to our quality of life. In the past century, most inhabitants of this planet have experienced an unprecedented rise in living standards, life expectancy and personal opportunity, in large part due to the many ways chemicals have been put to work for us.
In the absence of human data, research with experimental animals is the most reliable means of detecting important toxic properties of chemical substances and for estimating risks to human and environmental health.
While animal testing is not ideal, it more often than not is the only way to determine whether a new treatment is safe and effective for use in humans.
More from Smithsonian.com:
Should Dolphins and Whales Have Human Rights?
Feeding Animals at the National Zoo
Link:
Animal Rights Activists Make Off With One Hundred Mutant Mice
