Our climate-change numbers

e.e. cummings answered one question: "The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches." What's unanswered is, whether those of us who are alive give enough of a damn about being "touched" by Global Warming, which lays down its "touches" in the form of extreme weather.

I inserted no pics today. It's all about numbers and begins with a simple one. 350. The best scientific estimate about preserving a planet livable for our species, and many others. 350 parts of carbon dioxide per 1,000,000 parts of gases in the atmosphere, or p.p.m. More than that is not livable, another way of saying--extinction for homo sapiens. Currently, the number hovers around 400. For maybe the 1st time in the last 3,000,000 years.

We're not living on borrowed time; that point (350ppm) was passed in the late 1980s. Over 20 years ago. I checked today's numbers; they are at 397ppm. And will rise this year, next year, every year, the way our species and our country are headed. Unless we change the number, stop it, reverse it, permanently.

The climate is a tolerant, superior phenomenon that doesn't give a soft white damn whether it falls on Anglos, blacks, Chicanos, Hispanics, L.A., Denver or Tokyo. Even the 1% have resources to survive only a little longer than the rest of us.

Here are more numbers:

The 21st of September coming up in 8 days. The date of the People's Climate March in New York City.

50 - the number of states that will be represented at the march

http://peoplesclimate.org/march/?r=350

374 - buses and trains listed for travel to NYC for the march.

26 - city blocks the NYPD has reserved for assembling before the march

1100+ - community, labor, environmental justice, faith and progressive groups that endorsed the march [More join every day.]

28 - different religious faiths and denominations that will be represented

20 - the minimum number of marching bands expected

300+ - college campuses where students are mobilizing to go to NYC

1500 - actions planned worldwide that weekend in

130 - countries

40,000 - people at last year's Forward on Climate march in DC, the largest US climate march to date

401 parts per million - the peak concentration of carbon in the atmosphere measured by the world's leading scientists this spring

0 - the amount of progress made if everyone stayed home

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ – the number of us that will take a stand in NY and other cities.

The climate's numbers will continue rising.

More vacations will be ruined from more, severe hurricanes or snowstorms or disrupted airline flights.

More of our lawns will bake brown.

Or more trees die from excessive rainfall.

Or homes float away from flooding.

Or burn from drought and firestorms.

Obviously, all of that is less important than the number of us, our children and grandchildren who will be around to survive climate change catastrophes created by our species. A number that could go to

0.

Before that, head to NYC for the march.

If you can't get there, then to Denver.

Or to one of 2 in the L.A. area. Or find one nearest you.  

Even if you're in another country where snow never falls.

You can also send funds if you're unable to send yourself.

Es todo, hoy, except where the snow doesn't give a soft white….

RudyG, a.k.a. Rudy Ch. Garcia - 1 who plans on marching and more

Keystone XL pipeline–big nail in Aztlán's coffin

A flashback from Chicano Movement history hit me today, because of what now sits on President Obama's desk that will severely damage more than just the Southwest. It began with recent news.

"In China, the drought dried up a 1300 square mile lake four times the size of NYC.

"In the American Sierra mountains, bears are not hibernating because it is too warm.

"In Australia, blistering heat chased koalas out of trees, sickening many, and baked 100,000 bats to death.

In Clovis, N.M., tumbleweeds are eating the town. "Up to four feet of tumbleweeds cover the ground. Some residents can't leave their house. Thousands of tumbleweeds from a freak weather pattern that's becoming the new normal." [The full article.]

If you're a Chicano in Clovis, you might be a little worried what the Keystone XL Pipeline will do to speed up Global Heating. Or not. Or you might have noticed the flood of Oil and Gas Industry commercials that make it sound like there's nada to worry about.

China? That's on the other side of the planet, you might think. Bears, koalas and bats? My kids can see them on the Internet or in the zoo, you might say. But, you might think other thoughts.

Polar bears threatened by Arctic drilling and polar icecaps that are melting from Global Heating are both colored white. But--silly analogy--that doesn't make them just a white Anglo problem. Anymore than smog is just a Chicano problem because it's brown.

Latinos and blacks flexed their political muscles and helped elect the first non-Anglo President, Barack Obama. So, we matter, when we decide to move into action.

The same as in 1967 Martin Luther King's 1967 speech when he spoke out against the War in Vietnam and the 1970 Chicano Moratorium against the War. Chicanos and blacks added their voices and bodies to oppose the War. That contributed to the U.S. 1970 talks with the North Vietnamese, and the U.S. Vietnamization policy that began pulling U.S. troops out of Viet Nam. All of Washington, D.C. gets nervous when browns and blacks start showing up in the middle of a lot of whites.

Every day, I receive Internet news and Email from throughout Aztlán and the U.S., from latino community, cultural and student groups struggling with issues like poverty, miseducation, Chicano studies, healthcare, and the list goes on and on. Obviously, these are important and I'm not suggesting they be thrown away to work on stopping Global Warming.

But Global Warming affects the health of inner-city children, abuelos, todos, not just those in Clovis, N.M. Toxic spills from fracking and pipelines won't go around Latino neighborhoods. Pollution is not prejudiced.

All this led me to imagine the following dynamic:

That when latino neighborhood organizations begin passing more resolutions against fracking-drilling near their communities;

When Chicano, dominicano, puertoriqueño high school and college groups take time from their actions defending minority studies, in order to add their bodies to "Stop the XL Pipeline" pickets;

When latino artists, authors, musicians and groups add their arts' perspective to widen the anti-fracking works that primarily appeal to Anglos;

When latino leaders--political, community, social--add their votes and resolutions to the resistance movement against the oil and gas industry;

When many, many more latinos decide that the air they breath, water they drink and dirt their children play in should be as natural and untainted as that of the Anglos,

THEN the struggle against Global Warming will take on a multinational character that polluters and political supporters of pollution will worry and do something about. Especially, at this moment, Obama.

Yesterday the U.S. State Department released its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on Keystone XL, the countdown to a final decision by President Obama on approving the pipeline. [Info on its environment impact.]

"The report does not take a stand on the pipeline’s climate impact -- leaving the ball entirely in President Obama’s court. The fossil fuel industry wants you to believe that today’s report means this fight is over. And that’s one difference between us and them."

Organizations made up mostly of Anglo activists, such as 350.org, and others are coordinating mobilization [a la Chicano Moratorium] for this year to help Obama make up his mind in a way that will keep our agua cleaner, our air more breathable and our lands more livable. They need the latino voice, leadership and numbers. And the blacks. Don't worry about the indios who are tied stronger to Nature; they have been in or led the struggle from the beginning, from Canada to Mexico.

If this post sounds like a 60s or 70s grito, blame my Chicano Movement upbringing. If it sounds like an old vato trying to relive the past, blame young activist Chicanos I've met who are involved or leading the anti-XL Pipeline struggle. If this sounds like something you don't think latinos must join, you only have to wait a little for it to come to your doorstep.

If you don't want to wait, here's what's happening, beginning Monday.

If you're in college or part of a church, here's how students and members are cutting their institutions from supporting pollution.

The largely Anglo movement against Keystone XL and Global Warming doesn't know well how to appeal to latinos. They don't always translate flyers to attract the mexicanos. Etc. Etc. They obviously can't do it without our expertise.

Perdón por mis recuerdos políticos, pero es todo, hoy,

RudyG

(My new unpublished YA novel includes a Global Warming mini-theme.)

1st Novel - http://www.discarded-dreams.com/

Author FB - rudy.ch.garcia

Twitter - DiscardedDreams

Raza climate change. Indio writing opp. Snowden award. Comic relief.

Climate change affects Raza más

When the next major summer heat wave hits East Los or other barrios, you'll want to remember Tony Barboza's July article on urban heat islands. He cites a new study of the effects of extreme heat waves on minorities--us brown ones, too.

Michael Sedano foto, East Los

The UC Berkeley study focused on neighborhoods with few shade trees and muchísimo street pavement, concrete and roofing. Microclimates that get a pinche 5–10º hotter during heat waves. Where latinos are 21% more likely to live than Anglos  (blacks, 52% more). The heat-absorbing barrios and ghettos. Call it racial-climate-change segregation.

As TonyB says, these "heat waves are expected to become more intense, frequent and long-lasting as cities heat up."

He also quotes, "The study recommends city planners plant more trees, paint highly reflective roofs, use pavement that absorbs less heat and consider racial and ethnic inequalities in decisions about adapting to a changing climate."

I disagree with the city planners. Raza, we gotta take what they suggest as our due. But stopping the sources that create climate heating would end the problem. Like: Stop Keystone XL Pipeline!  Or at least donate to the campaign. 

Go here to read all of TonyB's piece and leave him some chignón comment.

Imagining Indigenous Futurisms

From Cynthia Ward, comes this: Imagining Indigenous Futurisms is an annual writing contest that recognizes authors who wield science fiction as their weapon of choice in the pursuit of social justice. Such sci-fi writers focus on Indigenous futures. The contest offers a $1000 award and is run by Grace L. Dillon, editor of Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (University of Arizona Press, 2012), and professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies program at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.

  

4th Annual Science Fiction Writing Contest open to any [indio-descent] emerging writer with an interest in exploring Indigenous issues through the medium of science fiction.

Submit: One paragraph personal statement containing background and goals in sci-fi. A previously unpublished sci-fi writing sample up to 4,000 words.

By November 1, 2013

To: Professor Grace L. Dillon (Anishinaabe) dillong[ala]pdx.edu

Judged by acclaimed sci-fi, experimental, and horror writer Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet tribe).

You can read details and join Imagining Indigenous Futurisms on Facebook.

Gringo Finalist For European Human Rights Award

Edward Snowden is a finalist for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. He is maybe currently in Russia, with temporary asylum and is a U.S. fugitive charged with espionage. I guess Europe sees the world more like me than like Obama.

"The Sakharov Prize honors 'exceptional individuals who combat intolerance, fanaticism and oppression," [from their website]

"The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time," Snowden said in a statement to the Parliament. The winner is announced on Oct. 10.

Go here to read details.

In San Antonio today:

Comic relief

 

If you don't know where your government is and it's still shut down, you might need a break from The Reign of Morons. 

You can go here and leave a comment or maybe add a cartoon of what else should be shut down, now that we're drifting leaderless.

I would add Gitmo, Congresspeoples' salaries and expense accounts, and ex-Presidents' pensions, but that's not enough.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Hot jazz. Hot cubana. Hot art. Hot fighting the heat.

Denver's Five Points Jazz Festival today

Experience the music, culture and roots of Denver's historic Five Points neighborhood at the free 10th Annual Five Points Jazz Festival today, Saturday, May 18. Along Welton St. from 11am to 8pm, six stages present many of Denver's finest jazz musicians. Other events include tennis lessons for kids under 10, food vendors, beer and wine, kid-friendly lectures, art exhibits and more. Click here to see the music lineup!

KUVO Denver 89.3FM station's founder Florence Hernández-Ramos [aka novelist Manuel Ramos' wife] will be recognized for her significant contributions to jazz with a Five Points Jazz Tribute Award. Flo helped to found KUVO and became the first female Hispanic president of a public radio station, holding that position for 23 years. She is now Executive Director of the Latino Public Radio Consortium. Other award recipients will be drummer Nat Yarbrough, posthumously, and vocalist Hazel Miller.

Rebel – 

A Voces on PBS Special

Friday, May 24, 10:00 PM ET

[Rec'd from Kirk Whisler, Hispanic Marketing 101]

Rebel is the story of Loreta Velazquez, Confederate soldier turned Union spy. She was dismissed as a hoax for a hundred and fifty years, but new evidence shows Loreta, a Cuban immigrant from New Orleans, was one of an estimated 1000 secret women soldiers of the American Civil War. Deftly weaving lush dramatized scenes of Loreta's riveting tale, vivid storytelling, archival material, and animation, this is a film about a woman, a myth and the politics of national memory. Who was Loreta Velazquez? Why did she fight? And what made her so dangerous she was erased from history?

Art in Sacramento:

Global warming fight ready for more Latinos

• 1,000,000th public comment opposing the Keystone XL pipeline was submitted to the U.S. State Department. At about the same hour President Obama put out an Earth Day proclamation saying "nothing is more powerful than millions of voices calling for change." Now we see if he means it! If not . . .

• Students at Rhode Island School of Design, occupying their president’s office last week to demand divestment, lowered a banner out the window: “We May Be Art Students, But We Can Still do the Math.”

• Mayors announce commitment to fossil fuel divestment

11 cities committed to divestment, to keep city funds out of fossil fuel stocks and push their employee pensions to divest from polluting corporations. Cities extend from tiny Bayfield, Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to international icons, like the City of San Francisco, where Supervisors voted unanimously to push the city’s retirement fund to divest $583 million from fossil fuels.

In Ithaca, NY, Mayor Myrick, one of the country's youngest mayors committed to divestment after high school students asked him to protect their shared future.

Since last fall, this divestment campaign has spread to over 300 colleges and universities. Now, there are over 100 petitions on the GoFossilFree.org website targeting cities, states and religious institutions. Sign a petition, here.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping end apartheid in South Africa, said:

“The divestment movement played a key role in helping liberate South Africa. The corporations understood the logics of money even when they weren’t swayed by the dictates of morality. Climate change is a deeply moral issue too, of course...Once again, we can join together as a world and put pressure where it counts.”

Chief Theresa

From 350.org: In June, Fearless Summer protests will take place at mining and drilling sites around the country. In Canada, First Nations peoples connected to the Idle No More movement are hatching plans for Sovereignty Summer to coordinate nonviolent direct actions on Indigenous lands in the midst of fierce anti-extraction battles.

As the planet lurches past 400 parts per million concentrations of CO2, the moment has come. The following phase of the fight is called Summer Heat.

During the final weeks of July, from the Pacific Northwest to the coast of Maine, from the Keystone pipeline route to the White House, to the Utah desert where they’re getting ready for the first tar sands mine in the US, there's one essential message: it’s time to stand up – peacefully but firmly — to the industry that is wrecking our future. Click here for more info: joinsummerheat.org/map

Summer Heat will be a powerful focus for thousands to show the courage needed to lower the temperature, before your home is demolished by the next Hurricane Sandy or an oil pipeline bursts in your backyard.

This summer can be an historic show of solidarity not just with the Americans who suffer most from fossil fuels, but with people across the planet whose lives are at risk as the world warms.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Young Chicano writer not burned out by Global Heating

On August 29, 1970 in East Los Angeles, the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War staged a march and rally that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators, most of whom were Chicanos. Prior to that, the anti-war movement had been largely an Anglo student led struggle. The Chicano Moratorium changed that and eventually helped end an unjust war killing brown and black boys at higher statistical rates than Anglo kids. Some of the older Chicano writers of today were a part of that effort and many of their stories still need to be told.

Denver last week

In the last months, my wife and I have participated in actions to the stop the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline that will transport tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast. The dirty oil will worsen Global Heating, multiply incidents of pollution and make more of the environment toxic to all forms of life.

At a demonstration a week ago at Sen. Michael Bennet's office in Denver, I wasn't surprised to see very few Chicanos in the crowd. It was déjà-vu, pre-Chicano Moratorium, all over again.

When this primarily Anglo movement finally links up to the Chicanos and mexicanos, it will become as powerful as demonstrated in the votes for Obama in the last election. To do that, they will need to cross the ethnic fence, produce written and oral material in Spanish readable by la gente, among many other things. The time will come.

In the meantime, there is at least one Colorado Spanish-surnamed kid involved in leading this movement. His talk at the rally was inspirational, at least for this old Chicano. It gave me hope that even though few old Chicanos are involved yet, this one young man put himself forward to say some things. That he'd been studying to become a writer, but was considering dropping out of college, seemed too ironical to be ignored by a Chicano literary website, like La Bloga.

If you think the XL Pipeline will somehow be good for or Canadians or humans in general, you can read passages that I excerpted below and go to the sources to read the entire pieces.

Words from a young Chicano:

"We are here to mourn our future, but I am also here to mourn for the people already impacted by climate change and the fossil fuel industry. I am mourning for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation where industry has stolen land in order to extract the tar sands, and where people are getting more and more sick. I am mourning for the community of Manchester, the Valero refinery in Houston, where childhood cancer rates are ten times higher than the state average.

"People talk about how bad things are going to be in thirty or forty years for the privileged, but they often ignore how bad things already are for the marginalized communities.

"I keep hearing from people that my generation--I'm 22--doesn't care or that we are too complacent. I've been thinking a lot about that, and the real reason we may seem disenfranchised is because it's your job, as the past generation, to convince us to buy what you're selling. And you've failed.

"At my age it is hard to see the power structures fail and become completely obsolete, but that is the case. There is no progress within the current system. The future you have left for us is a miserable one, so I don't want to see you act happy about that. I am tired of reading reports, and scientific studies that tell me this planet may not be hospitable for me by the age of retirement. And it will be even worse for my children, and the future generations.

"That is why I am here fighting, alongside many others my own age, and younger and older. Fighting to change things, fighting to change the flawed system that I was born into, and fighting for the future." - Mark C.

Some older people took offense at some of his words that day. I wasn't one of them because taking personal offense at the truth seems petty, ignoring the decimated forest for the one tree you planted.

I was there and can attest that this young man's words had much more emotion in them that the text indicates. I detected frustration and spirit, anger and love, youthful angst and intelligent insight. It moved me at least to post this with the intention of spreading the word to stop this degradation of people, countries and planet. Below you'll see that ethnic minorities already suffer greatly, yes, Chicanos too.

People of color paying for extraction

"The Canadian oil company Transcanada will be cleared to transport bitumen, or tar sands oil, from Canada to the Gulf Coast for sale on the open market following refinement. This process is said by locals who live near refineries in Texas to be poisoning the environment of especially low-income communities of color.

"Sylvia McAdam of the Idle No More Movement of Canada told The Nation Report today that the water around Fort McMurray at the source of tar sands extraction is not only no longer fit to drink, but that 'indigenous people are not hunting around that area anymore'. She went on to say that locals can no longer use their local water to even bathe."

Go here to read the entire piece.

Native Americans and their caribou in the crosshairs

"The cultural heritage, land, ecosystems and human health of First Nation communities including the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Fort McMurray First Nation, Fort McKay Cree Nation, Beaver Lake Cree First Nation Chipewyan Prairie First Nation, and the Metis, are being sacrificed for oil money in what has been termed a “slow industrial genocide'.

"Infrastructure projects linked to the tar sands expansion, such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline, threaten First Nation communities in British Columbia, Canada and American Indian communities throughout the United States. Community resistance is growing and Indigenous peoples throughout North America have mounted substantive challenges to tar sands expansion.

"Stories of cancer epidemics in the community of Fort Chipewyan, massive wildlife losses related to toxic contamination, environmental degradation and increased vocal resistance from impacted communities have shattered the ‘everything is fine’ myth propagated by the Canadian and Alberta governments. The Athabasca delta has been completely altered from a pristine boreal forest, clean rivers and lakes to a devastated ecosystem of deforestation, open pit mines and watershed where fish regularly exhibit tumors and birds landing on contaminated tailings ponds die instantly.

"Each barrel of oil produced from tar sands requires 2 to 6 barrels of water.

In 2007, Alberta's government approved the withdrawal of 119.5 BILLON gallons of water for tar sands extraction. 82% of this water comes from the Athabasca River. Toxic wastewater is discharged in holding or tailing ponds that leak 11 million liters of toxic waste per day into the Athabasca and seep into the ground water. This water flows northward (downstream) further into Indigenous territories. Since this toxic waste has been flowing into the river and seeping into the groundwater - rare and virulent cancers have affected many of the Indigenous Community members- and fish and game have been found with physical abnormalities and deformations and tumors in fish.

"In 2006, unexpectedly high rate of rare cancers were reported in the community of Fort Chipewyan. In 2008, Alberta Health confirmed a 30% rise in the number of cancers between 1995 -2006. However, the study lacks appropriate data and is considered a conservative estimate by many residents.

"Caribou populations have been severely impacted by tar sands extraction. The Beaver Lake Cree First Nation has experienced a 74% decline of the Cold Lake herd since 1998 and a 71% decline of the Athabasca River herd since 1996. Today, just 175–275 caribou remain. By 2025, the total population is expected to be less than 50 and locally extinct by 2040."

Go here to read the full article.

Bus Trip - CO to KXL Hearing in Nebraska

Our government is holding only one open hearing about the construction of this pipeline. In Nebraska, where attendance would obviously be limited. Buses from other states will head there with people willing to go. Check here for Colorado info.

If this pipeline is stopped, a major contributor

to Global Heating will never happen.

If it is constructed, plan on Global Heating accelerating.

Es todo,

RudyG