Will You Fight To Protect Your Water? Because You Are Going To Have To Fight Long And Hard

Cynthia Howard at yesterday's "Water Is Life" rally in Bangor (wabi.tv coverage here and MPBN coverage here)

By now we all know about targeted internet advertising. Like most artifical intelligence, it often misses the mark by a mile and sometimes in funny ways.

For example, I often see ads for military clothing or military facebook groups because I read articles about the metastisizing U.S. military and its deadly misadventures around the globe. 

Also, I keep seeing ads for the exact dress I just bought to wear to a family wedding. What is the point of that?

This morning I clicked on a shared article from Essence magazine titled "Why Supporting 'Wonder Woman' Is Dangerous For My Black Feminism And Liberation." The weekend is when I get time to do a lot of reading around the internet, finding authors I've not read before and exploring areas I don't know enough about. I'm vaguely aware of the controvery around the Israeli army veteran who plays Wonder Woman, and more aware of a general trend in the U.S. mass media culture to portray woman as violent, aggressive and allegedly desirable on those grounds. 

Imagine my surprise when a pop up ad blocked the Essence article to brag about how the Nestlé corporation has captured the watershed just miles from my home.

Of course the word Nestlé is never used because that multinational water thief hides behind the local Maine label of a company they purchased years ago. The hubristic brag of the tagline "greatness springs from here" is a hint at the men behind the curtain.

Why am I seeing this ad? Because yesterday I attended and posted photos from a Penobscot rally to protect the water upon which all life depends? I didn't even post a photo or report the words of Nickie Sekera who spoke for Community Water Justice and urged all of us to return home and seek local water sovereignty ordinances in our towns in advance of Nestlé coming for our aquifers.

I did post a picture of the amazing Elizabeth Ann Mitchell at the rally. (You can read her guest post here about how she disrupted Democratic Attorney General Janet Mills on behalf of the Penobscot watershed.) 

And just a few minutes ago I shared a link to a WERU community radio "Radioactive" podcast about the Maine so-called Department of Environmental Protection granting permission to expand the Juniper Ridge Landfill.

This toxic waste dump receives truckloads of debris from outside our state, and it leaches into the Penobscot watershed. Perhaps Casella, which operates the landfill at a proft, and Nestlé, which trucks out our water in plastic bottles at a profit, will go head to head over water quality someday soon?

That would be a battle I'd be far more likely to watch than a comic superheroine battling fake forces of evil.

My biggest takeaway from yesterday was a telling of the Penobscot story about Glooskap and the Black Snake. Dawn Eve York prefaced her sharing of it by saying that her amazing young daugher tells it better. Someday I hope to hear Woli tell it; maybe I will be so lucky at the upcoming ceremony for Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island on the Penboscot reservation (you can donate to support travel expenses for the indigenous elders who are coming here).

These stories are meant to be told, not written down so I'll just summarize here: Wabanaki hero Glooskap returns home from a long trip to find a bad smell emanating from the water. As he travels upstream he realizes it is coming from a black snake and he begins to fight the snake. He is helped by a woodpecker who indicates the weakest point to strike, and when the snake is killed the river is stained red with its blood. Glooskap touches the head of his friend the woodpecker with some of the blood; a red spot remains, and the water transforms back to its pristine and lovely original condition.

The black snake of oil pipelines is foretold in the prophecies of various native groups in the Americas, and there were many veterans of the stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline present at yesterday's rally.

Sherri Mitchell also reminded us yesterday that it is the Penobscot Nation that fought to restore their river to a condition that did not raise sores on the skin of their children after swimming.

Industrial pollution still continues to threaten: besides the landfill, there is a massive mercury deposit in the riverbed upstream of Indian Island from a defunct paper mill.

We of the industrialized and colonized USA have much to learn about stewardship of our relatives the plants, the soil, air and water -- in other words, the sustenance of life.

Governments both at the state and federal level have abandoned protection, instead viewing water and land as commodities to be consumed in the pursuit of private profits. I learned yesterday that Nestlé is one of the fastest growing corporations on the planet, and that bottled water is one of its fasting growing sectors.

Capitalism loves growth of profits and will die without them. It willingly pollutes waterways and drains aquifers, even during periods of drought, as a path to more "growth" for its executives and shareholders.

We should love clean water because we will die without it. That is what mni wiconi means in the Lakota language.

Will you fight to protect your water? 

Vigil At Poland Springs Today With Stop The War$ On Mother Earth Peace Walkers

The 5th Maine Peace Walk arrived in my area in the late afternoon yesterday. It was great for members of my old peace and justice community around Waterville to come together and enjoy the privilege of feeding the walkers and hearing their stories. 

We are older, tireder and grayer these days but our group was enlivened by the presence of 10 year old boy who is on his 5th walk (!), my 20 month-old granddaughter, and a 22 year old musician walking for the first time. Given that the oldest walker is nearly 80, it was a lovely range of humanity that sat down together to be nourished.

Chanting and drumming led by monks of the Nipponzan Myohoji order signaled the walkers' arrival in a quiet residential neighborhood amid the blaze of color that is October in Maine.

The stops planned to connect with the theme "Stop the war$ on Mother Earth" have been rich with connections between corporate profiteering and disrespect for life.

The walk began on Indian Island in the Penobscot Nation in solidarity with the Justice for the River campaign, recognizing the wisdom of Maine's original people advocating for the Penobscot River which has been severely polluted by industrial use. 

Walkers then stood in solidarity outside the Cianbro Corporation in a vigil organized by grandmothers opposed to the East-West Corridor. Cianbro stands to make a lot of money if this private highway and fossil fuel pipeline project ever succeed in slashing through some of Maine's most pristine forests and waterways. 

Just prior to Waterville the walk reached Unity where Maine's environmental school Unity College is found, spending the night on the grounds of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA). Maine has a long tradition of growing local food communities who recognize that life depends on defending the soil, water and seeds from corporate control.

Today the walkers make their way to vigil outside Poland Spring, the site of international water thief Nestle's faux-Maine brand bottled water plant. 

Nestle pumps out aquifers around the planet and sells the water back to people in little plastic bottles. Even though Maine has been in an historic drought all summer, the pumping goes on. An executive of the company has commented on record that he does not consider access to water a human right. Penobscots and peace walkers disagree with the absurd notion that profits have a higher value than human life.

U.S. militarization has enshrined the notion that profits trump human life, and the walk will end at the southern border of Maine outside the Kittery naval shipyard. Here obscene profits are made building weapons of mass destruction. Walkers will call on the Maine community to recognize that basing our livelihood on "defense" contracts is a dead end street. Advocating for the conversion of our industrial capacity to build for sustainable energy solutions, walkers will uphold a vision of Mother Earth as sacred, her health fundamental to the survival of human life.

If you want to join the walk, details may be found here on the website of Maine Veterans for Peace.

Stand On The Side Of The Planet And Free Speech

When we become aware of a great moral issue, it's good for the soul to decide which side we will stand on: with the riot police, or with the defenders of the coral reefs? This anonymous woman visiting South Korea from Hawaii was honored by villagers of Gangeong village on Jeju Island. They gifted her with the traditional Korean robe she wears so beautifully here, and she responded by playing a concert to lift the spirits of the activists. They have been standing firm for years now against the entombment of their beloved coastline and fisheries, against the destruction of the natural resources that gave them life for so many generations.

The photo above was posted by one of the bravest of many brave activists, Sung Hee-Choi, who has been arrested as well as physically attacked for putting himself between the UN World Heritage Site and the trucks that the Samsung corporation is using to destroy it. 

Source: http://www.iied.org/iucn-world-conservation-congress-begins

South Korea has been required by the U.S. to build a deep water port from which to menace the South China Sea. It needs to be big enough to handle ships like Aegis destroyers.

Aegis nuclear-equipped destroyers are ships which are built far away, at Bath Iron Works in Maine. Maine's newest Senator Angus King visited the General Dynamics facility this week to pay homage to his campaign contributors, and to vow to fight cuts to the Pentagon's budget (currently at 57% of total discretionary spending) to save the 5,500 jobs there. "Jobs" being a mythically powerful word that is repeated like an incantation by politicians looking to deliver on the favors that corporations purchase at election time.

Angus was once a hippie who hung around in the north woods smoking pot and building geodesic domes. Somewhere along the line he succumbed to either greed (he became quite wealthy on industrial wind investments) or the lust for fame. Possibly both. 

Now Angus favors fracking because his aide told me "it can be done safely" and anyway we must do it because heating oil is too expensive and we need natural gas as a "transition fuel."

Source: 8020 Vision -- Use their inteactive diagram to see what fracking does to ground water.

The inspiring example of the Jeju Island resistance will be useful when Mainers are resisting the planned corporate looting of our own wealth of natural resources. Tar sands pipelines, an East-West Corridor with mining rights and hundreds of feet wide right of way, private-public partnerships to cash in on eminent domain, a mammoth (13 stories high) LP gas tank on the Penobscot Bay, mountain top removal open pit mining, and expansion beyond the seven already existing wells to pump out the spectacular Maine aquifer are all planned.

Hearings where you can stand on the side of Mother Earth include Searsport High School on Monday, Feb 25 at 6pm with Thanks but no tank, and Fryeburg.

SAVE THE DATE - Mark your calendars! There will be a PUBLIC HEARING in Fryeburg, Maine on Thursday, March 7, 6pm at the Fryeburg Legion Hall on Bradley Street across from the Fryeburg Academy gym next to the baseball field about Nestle having an unprecedented long term contract with the Fryeburg Water Company, a public utility.

Source: Defending Water For Life in Maine

Indigenous people of Hawaii have lived for generations with corporate degradation and pollution of their island paradise. Jeju Islanders have called on international solidarity in their struggle. Idle No More has connected the First Nations of Canada with earth defenders all over the planet.

Which side will you be on? I'm happy to say I will be on the side that has the best culture workers -- the artists and musicians and dancers and writers who lift our hearts while we struggle on in the face of the obscene wealth and greed of corporations who think they own the Earth.

Today I'll be standing in Portland, Maine for information hero Bradley Manning. February 23 is his 1,000th day in jail for sharing news of war crimes and U.S. State Department complicity in corporate hijacking of resources all over the planet. Here's the poster that Kansas artist/activist Marc Saviano made specially for the occasion:

1% Steal Public Water, Sell It Back In Plastic To The 99%.

Nestle's "Back to School" ad co-opts images of powerful women & girls and their lifeblood, free access to potable water. I mean, which would you rather be? The cute, affluent, pink sweatered mom and daughter above...

or these youngsters spending hours each day carrying water for their families in Uganda? Source: The Guardian

From the facebook post of the first photo:

Back-to-school for your family? Don’t forget to stock up on Nestlé® Pure Life® Purified Water!

From the moment I learned decades ago that  Nestlé corporation was profiting from the starvation of infants they hooked on formula that was costly, unsafe, and destructive of their own mothers' milk supply for them (supply and demand being deeply, inextricably linked in this case) I have been on a boycott of all things Nestlé.

In the 80's and 90's bottled water became fashionable -- remember the  cachet of Perrier, and Calistoga Water in northern California, and Poland Springs in Maine?

But then I learned that Nestlé owned the Poland Springs brand and, far more importantly, its access to the great aquifer of the northern reach of Appalachia.

A decade or so ago I saw a film in which water rights activist Maude Barlow said that the most powerful thing a private citizen could do to protect common access to pure water would be never to buy it bottled, as a commodity. And I thought, now there is something that I can do.

Still struggling. Doing it most all the time except when traveling, and beginning to get my act together there, too. #1 Dump out metal water bottle before submitting to the hell that is TSA. Once in gate area, refill bottle and take it on plane. #2 Fill bottle from friend's Brita pitcher when staying over at her place. #3 Purchase portable Brita bottle to fill from taps when out and about, and then squeeze water through filter on demand. #4 Think about what it would take and what kind of grant to write to get my tiny little school off the endless supply of shrink wrapped "Poland Spring" water in plastic bottles that Nestlé supplies "free" while trucking off the Maine aquifer. And so on.

Source: Emily Posner / Eric Ruin Block Print 10 Plague Series

Thank the goddess there are fierce advocates for the 99%, defenders of water rights right here in my woods who have kicked some Nestlé butt in the past, blocking the corporation from further access to pump out the water table from under the citizens. Right now I'm helping them bring pressure on the PUC for a public hearing before granting Nestlé even more access in Fryeburg, up in the western mountains, where they are already pumping. Defending Water for Life in Maine shines the light I will follow into the gathering darkness, my kids not wrapped in the plastic cocoon of ignorance.