Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 06.16.10

[David Shove (shove001]

            P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R   06.16.10

1. Anti-torture vigil 6.16 5pm
2. Protest Emmer      6.16 6pm
3. Rima/Egypt/sustain 6.16 7pm

4. Steven Higgs - America's worst generation

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From: Women Against Military Madness <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: Anti-torture vigil 6.16 5pm

Anti-Torture Vigil
Wednesday, June 16, 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. Peace Bridge, Lake Street/
Marshall Avenue Bridge Spanning the Mississippi River between
Minneapolis and St. Paul. Joins others at the weekly Peace Bridge
Vigil for a special focus on torture in recognition of Torture
Awareness Month. Sponsored by: the WAMM Tackling Torture at the Top
(T3) Committee. FFI: Email tacklingtorture [at] gmail.com.


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From: Brad Sigal <bradsigal [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Protest Emmer 6.16 6pm

Protest Anti-Immigrant Policians and Laws - Protest Tom Emmer!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Historic Heights Bed & Breakfast
3980 5th St NE, Columbia Heights, MN

Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for governor who called the hateful
Arizona law SB1070 "A wonderful first step" will be the keynote speaker at
a fundraiser for another Republican candidate.

In 2008, Emmer also co-authored HF4087, an English-only bill that included
additional extremist anti-immigrant measures. We will make sure he knows
that Minnesota is not Arizona and that we will not stand for those kind of
racist laws in our communities!

More info on the fundraiser:
http://mngopcd5.org/the-news/158-tim-utz-fundraiser-with-tom-emmer-june-16

More on Emmer's English only bill:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H4087.0.html&session=ls85

RSVP on facebook NOW! http://bit.ly/9OCtRS


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From: Richard Kotlarz <rkotlarz [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: Rima/Egypt/sustain 6.16 7pm

An evening with Sam Rima
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
City of Lakes Waldorf School, 2344 Nicollet Ave. S, Minneapolis, MN
Hosted by: Twin Cities Anthroposophical Society

Presentation & Conversation - 7:00 to 9:00 PM
Doors open at 6:15 PM
(Press buzzer and someone will let you in)
(Feel free to come early & bring snack, but not required)

Sam Rima will be reporting on his recent trip to SEKEM in Egypt, a
community founded in 1977 that is already recognized around the world for
its visionary work to realize sustainable human and ecological development
based on a synthesis of Anthroposophy and Islam.  Through biodynamic
practices, it has transformed an expanse of Saharan sand, literally, into
rich agricultural land.  Through its example it is revolutionizing the
agriculture of Egypt, especially as related to cotton.

It has begun to extend its experience and acquired knowledge to a wider
circle that includes India, Palestine, Senegal, Turkey and South Africa.
Through its business enterprises it has become an exporter of fresh
produce, medicinal herbs, herbal teas, beauty aides and other products to
Europe and beyond.

It has become a leader in Waldorf education, with its students being drawn
from both Christian and Muslim backgrounds.  It has established a major
vocational training center.  It is a center for social and cultural
innovation.  It is in the process of founding the "Heliopolis University
for Sustainable Development," for which Sam has been invited to preside as
Provost and Director of the Heliopolis Social Innovation Center.  He will
be relocating to Egypt to assume the post in the near future, and we are
fortunate to have the benefit of his experience and insight before he
departs.

Sam is the present Director of the Doctoral Program and Faculty at the
Center for Transformational Leadership, Bethel University, St. Paul, MN.
He is the author of four books, including "Overcoming the Dark Side of
Leadership" and "Spiritual Capital and Economic Transformation".

- Free will offering -


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Who's Really to Blame for the Gulf?
America's Worst Generation
By STEVEN HIGGS
CounterPunch
June 15, 2010

For we radical environmentalists, whose warnings and arguments have been
ignored, maligned and ridiculed since the Reagan Revolution dawned three
decades ago, the Gulf of Oil disaster evokes a wicked brew of emotions and
attitudes.

On the one hand, we feel the pain and horror of the unfolding
environmental disaster as acutely as those who occupy the bioregion. We
radicals have spent our entire lives fighting to protect the wildlife and
natural features of the Gulf and every other coast, shoreline, riverbed or
stream bank, wherever they've been threatened, which is everywhere.
Despite the ennui that comes from witnessing first-hand decades of
unrelenting ecological degradation, we still feel the pinch every time a
special place is lost.

We can't help but revel in the never-ending spew of vitriol and venom
aimed at BP, one of the planet's most contemptible corporate polluters. We
delight in watching the arrogance and hypocrisy of the drill-baby-drills
and political pimps - like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and U.S.
Senators Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, John Cornin from Texas and Lamar
Alexander from Tennessee - exposed with such laser-clear light.

And seriously, who can't muster a little chuckle watching the nightly
images of those who have built careers emasculating the federal government
whining because the feds aren't there to save their asses? Democrats and
Republicans, they need to burn-baby-burn at the polls every November until
they are all gone. {Amen -ed] And then they should be prosecuted for
crimes against democracy and the environment.

Naturally, we're not surprised that President Barack Obama again has been
caught clueless. He did put Ken Salazar in charge of the Department of the
Interior, with responsibility for regulating oil rigs like the Deepwater
Horizon. Days before the platform exploded and the gushing and lying and
despoliation commenced, the president declared deep-water drilling safe.

And he still wants to drill. He thinks nukes are clean energy, for god
sake. The guy is clueless.

We do empathize with those whose lives and livelihoods have been
destroyed, even if the Karma at work is elementary. (Lie with bugs, you're
going to get bit, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama.) Most of us
became radical environmentalists because similar fates befell people or
places we love.

But on the other hand, the blame game that consumes the mainstream media's
attention is downright infuriating.

BP is no more responsible for the Deepwater Horizon explosion and leak
than a 14-year-old kid is for skipping classes when her parents don't
care. BP and other oil companies tap oil wells a mile below the sea's
surface with inadequate disaster plans because they are allowed to.
They're guilty. But they're not to blame.

Barack Obama inherited the government that Ronald Reagan envisioned when
his revolution took root - emasculated, ineffective, incapable of acting.
He can't save the environment or the people in the Gulf. He bears no blame
for it, no matter how dense he is.

***

If blame for this catastrophe must be assigned, the far-and-away largest
chunk goes to the baby-boom generation.

The boomers came of age during the Great Society and were among the most
educated and enlightened generations in history. They engaged politically
in their youth and learned how to make democracy serve the best interests
of its citizens. They opposed and eventually stopped an immoral war,
helped drive the Civil Rights and Women's Rights agendas and ushered in
eras of unprecedented creativity, freedom and expression.

They also understood Silent Spring and grasped the significance when the
Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland in 1969. Richard Nixon didn't sign
the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act or the National Environmental
Policy Act because he cared about the environment. He did so because the
public, driven by the boomers' agenda, left him no political choice.

But when Ronald Reagan asked in 1980 if they were better off than they had
been four years before, the boomers reacted as if he were swinging a
bright, shiny object before their eyes, a la a Twilight Zone episode. They
forgot where they had been, what they had learned, and what they stood
for. They internalized the fundamental principle of Ronald Reagan, that
selfishness and greed are laudable human values.

They turned off, tuned out and dropped off the face of the political
planet.

They devolved from citizens to consumers and spent the next three decades
gorging themselves on fossil fuels. Climate change be damned. More gas.
More oil. More petroleum. They drove out of the cities, built bigger
houses, bought bigger vehicles (an SUV for every kid!) and didn't give a
damn about anything or anyone other than themselves.

Through their political detachment, they enabled the liars and thieves who
have engineered as great a transfer of wealth from the many to the few as
the world has ever witnessed. They turned blind eyes to the blatant
plutocratic corruption that plagues the political system at every level.
Enough of them voted for George W. Bush that Big Oil was able to steal two
presidential elections and lay the framework for the Gulf of Oil disaster.

As pitifully as the truth about the environment has been presented to them
by what passes for the "news" media in our age, Earth Day-raised boomers
didn't have to put themselves out to get the facts. Driven by the hubris
of human beings like BP's Tony Hayword and Texan John Cornin, their
environment, indeed their own bodies, are soaked with poisons, the most
dangerous of which are derived from oil. It ain't quantum physics. It's
common sense.

The facts are now, and always have been, readily available for those
boomers who cared enough to be informed. Hell, all they had to do was look
at their children and grandchildren to realize something is wrong at the
most elemental levels of life. As former New York Times environmental
reporter Philip Shabecoff and his wife Alice detail in their book Poisoned
for Profit, one in every three American children today has a chronic and
usually incurable illness or condition - a developmental disability like
autism or ADHD, a birth defect like cleft palette, lead poisoning, asthma
or cancer. If obesity is added to the list, it's almost half - 45
percent.

Have the boomers really not noticed?

No, environmental reality couldn't have been more clear. But in their
self-indulgent, Reaganite mindsets, the boomers ignored, maligned and
ridiculed the truth. They punted. And four decades after Silent Spring and
Cuyahoga, their children's bodies are brimming with pesticides, and the
Gulf is on fire.

The boomers are to blame. Any honest book about them would have to be
titled America's Worst Generation.

Steven Higgs is a Bloomington, Ind.-based freelance writer, who publishes
The Bloomington Alternative and writes the "Autism and the Indiana
Environment Blog." He is the author of Twenty Years of Crimes Against
Democracy: A Grassroots History of the I-69/NAFTA Highway and can be
reached at editor [at] BloomingtonAlternative.com.


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
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