#HereUsNow's statement is a comprehensive embrace of problems related to the
rapidly retreating dream of higher education accessible to everyone.
Not just rich people's kids.
Environmental risks + economic
exploitation + militarization on behalf of the 1% + equality for ALL
= Included. Nice.
“You can preach economic growth all day but there are no jobs on a dying planet." Tabitha Skervin, Michigan State University
Bill McKibben could take a leaf from
their journal. His "Global
Warming's Terrifying New Math" in Rolling Stone
earlier this hot, hot summer was a great focus on global
warming/carbon's defining numbers, and on identifying an enemy for
the purposes of movement building. It's the petroleum companies (not
the banks who bankroll them, bet on them, and manipulate their share
value, or the government officials that allow it.)
McKibben's reductionist approach makes
for clear communication, but it seems to ignore a couple of elephants
in the room: how petroleum companies use military spending to keep
demand for their product high while scrambling after more of it, and
of how much that adds to CO2, as well as how that affects our
governance abilities here in the self-styled experiment in democracy.
When I'm working against war and
militarization, I feel like I'm resisting the bulldozing of olive
trees in occupied Palestine, and D.U. contamination all over Eurasia,
and the gutting of education and other social programs to pay for
continuing to degrade our natural environment, planet Earth. (And
don't even get me started on the takeover of what paltry school
funding there is by more and more corporate recipients under the No
Child Left Behind Act, which Obama has continued to renew. And
whether that generation will receive its notions from the market of
free thought, or the market of selling to children.)
It's all connected. Thank the goddess
for bright students interested in connecting the dots, and standing
up and fighting back on behalf of humanity.
Source: Pictures of Afghanistan, photo by Teddy Wade |
1 comment:
This is one of my favorite blogs. Always insightful and informative.
Pat Taub
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