All posts in category Environment

Resist. Persist. Risk. Repeat. A mantra for our time.

February again. The sap is starting to rise here in New England. The blue ribbons of tubing snake through the maple groves, bearing the sweet elixir of life down to the saphouses, where the boiling pans await. The first snowdrops and pussy willows gleam, foreshadowing the great greening to come.

It’s been unnaturally warm this past week—almost 70 degrees here in western Massachusetts. We look at each other, enjoying the unexpected warmth, but with dismay and fear lurking behind our smiles. This is not right.

So much is not right in these first days and weeks of 2017 DTE (Donald Trump Era). You know the problems, I don’t have to list them. Each week brings a new outrage, a new shock, a new nadir. Just when you thought America couldn’t sink any lower in the eyes of the rest of the world, there they go again: insulting our allies, assaulting our citizens, making plans to frack and drill the whole globe to kingdom come.

I’m not the only one who foresees a repeat of the 9/11 playbook hurtling our way. It worked before, and although our eyes are opened this time, it will probably work again.

Manufacture an external threat—that’s not hard to do, any number of terrorist organizations would be happy to oblige—throwing the homeland into chaos and requiring a “state of emergency” that suspends all the usual processes of law. With everyone hunkered down in fear, the police state can be implemented and the cowardly Congress will do the bidding of the executive branch. The Supreme Court will stay quiet.

Order will be restored, but it will be the New World Order of the DTE: imperialist white industrial capitalism on steroids, the taxpayers obediently bending over to have their asses kicked as they foot the bill for the military and police to subdue any resistance to the corporate takeover of the entire planet by billionaire business and finance executives slavering over ever-ascending short-term profit.

Don’t like it? They’ll pull out the rubber bullets and throw you in prison—and oh yeah, the taxpayers will pay for that too. Or maybe you’d rather have a taste of what they do to people labeled “terrorist” in their secret rendition sites. Or let’s just get it over with, here’s a real bullet for your trouble. Sweet dreams.

So much is not right here.

The American liberal elite needs to be reminded, perhaps, that the rude shocks of the DTE era are nothing new. Americans of color, undocumented immigrants, people of color all over the globe have been living this nightmare for hundreds of years, ever since the European colonial onslaught began.

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In my memoir, What I Forgot…And Why I Remembered, I faced my own privilege as someone born into the New York City white liberal elite. I opened my eyes to the fact that my generation of urban “yuppies” lived comfortably on the backs of exploited workers, enjoying cheap oil and gas while ignoring the giant devastation of the Alberta tar sands, the Amazon forest, the Nigerian delta or the Arctic. I recognized my own complicity in ignoring the despair of millions of impoverished Americans and my complacency in foolishly imagining that the drones and riot cops would never be turned against me and my children.

I came to understand that I had to use whatever privilege I had, as a well-educated white American woman, to fight the dark, oppressive forces that are seeking to sink our entire planet into a violence, fear and deprivation.

But I didn’t realize, as I was writing that book, that I was standing on the brink of the DTE, a time when the boomerang of climate change would be exacerbated by the takeover of American government, business and military by vile haters and savage oppressors, eager to take sadistic pleasure in the subduing of all dissent and disobedience.

When I finished What I Forgot in 2015, I imagined that the worst problem facing us would be the runaway juggernaut of climate change. That still may be the case: we are seeing the disruption of the climate already, in tornadoes, floods, droughts, disease, loss of glaciers and other sources of drinking water for millions…with vast migrations of climate refugees underway.

Residences near the Novato RV Park wades through standing water along Armstrong Ave. on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017, in Novato, Calif. Residences were advised to shelter in place.(Robert Tong/Marin Independent Journal)

But now the DT gang in control of the American government seems maniacally intent on intensifying all of it. Naomi Klein’s “disaster capitalism” is blowing like a violent hurricane across our entire networked planet, and although the generals and ideologues in control of our government may think they can control it, as they did in the past (think Katrina or Baghdad) and make more billions (using taxpayer money) in the clean-up and reconstruction, I don’t believe they will be able to get the climate change genie back into the bottle now.

They may be able to subdue ordinary Americans with their violence and repression, but Mother Earth, once aroused, will sweep their guns and tanks before her like so many toys. She has her own agenda, our Mother, and she’ll do no one’s bidding.

So what is the task for those of us who are awake to the accelerating transition of our planet and the very real potential that we will be living through the decline and fall of Western Civilization?

Recognizing how terribly destructive and horrible Western Civilization has been for the natural world, indigenous peoples, and people of color all over the planet is a necessary first step. We have to recognize and come to terms with the key role America has played in the violence and havoc that has laid waste to so many communities across the globe, destroyed forests, grasslands and ocean reefs and pushed untold millions of beautiful flora and fauna into the dark night of extinction.

We did this. Or we stood silently by as it was done.

And we are living through the consequences now. They’ve taken everyone else, now they’re coming for us: starting with the most vulnerable here in America, and steadily racheting up the violence aimed at anyone who resists or dissents.

So much is not right here.

It’s our job to make things right. We were born in this time for a reason. It is a time of almost unbearable polarity and ever-accelerating change. We have to step boldly up to the challenges, look them in the eye, and link arms with others to take a stand for what’s right.

We might all rather go back to sleep—wake me when it’s over, honey!

But in the DTE, we don’t have that luxury.

Now is our time, and no one will save us if we don’t stand up for ourselves and what we love.

Resist. Persist. Risk. Repeat. A mantra for our time.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 26, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Leadership, Social change, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 26, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/02/26/resist-persist-risk-repeat-a-mantra-for-our-time/

Ghosts of Latin America: Will It Happen Here?

As a student of Latin America, I feel a strange sense of déjà vu lately when I follow the news.

A corrupt, shadily “elected” president putting his cronies in charge—check. An ineffective, corrupt congress with their fingers to the wind, more interested in their own political fortunes than in representing their constituents—check. Wealthy, corrupt businessmen put in charge of all the key government agencies—check. Environmental regulation be damned—check. The press muzzled and threatened for any whiff of dissent—check. And the people, oh yeah, them—they should shut their mouths, tighten their belts and work harder.

There have been many comparisons of the Drumpf era to the German Nazi era. What is less well known is how many of the Nazis fled to Latin America when the Third Reich came to an end. There they took advantage of the prevailing racism and whatever wealth and education they possessed to quickly rise into positions of power in industry and government. They lurked there, nursing their totalitarian fantasies and grooming their puppet politicos, until they were strong enough to start the process of taking over the levers of power and crushing dissent.

Latin America was also a field for the proxy wars between the Soviet Union and the United States, with lines being drawn being pro-business capitalists and pro-worker communists. Often the local people, native and mestizo, were caught in the crossfire between these mighty opposing ideologies, which laid waste to entire economies and communities.

If you want to look for the origins of the big migrations of Latinos northward, this is a good place to start.

As with the current situation in Syria and North Africa, people don’t leave their homes unless they absolutely have to. What would it take to get you to abandon your home and set off on the road with your little children and whatever you could carry? My ancestors did it in the late 19th century, fleeing the pogroms and conscriptions of the Jewish ghettos in Poland and Russia. During the 1930s the Dust Bowl refugees packed up their troubles and left the parched Midwest, heading for California.

We don’t know yet how far the Drumpf people and their Republican henchmen in Congress will go in pushing the American populace towards that level of desperation.

When they take away our health care and make the pharmaceuticals unaffordable, release the loan sharks on us and start taking our homes again; when they turn our public schools into boot camps for dumbed down docility and drug the kids who won’t obey; when they frack our neighborhoods and run oil pipelines through our waterways; when they turn our national parks into mines and hunting grounds—are we going to simply bow our heads and take it?

When they take away funding for the arts and public media, turn the scientists into their private industrial brain trust, alienate our closest international allies and ramp up the drilling, fracking, mining, logging, burning and chemical poisoning that is destroying our planet at an unprecedented pace—are we going to shrug and turn away?

When they bribe and coerce the judges, intimidate the press, militarize the police and start killing our sons and daughters if they dare to take to the streets in protest, are we going to stay quiet?

In Latin America, the repression of those who dared to speak out and organize against the dictators and capitalist bosses was brutal: I’m talking disappearances, torture, decapitations, burnings, destruction of homes…the old Spanish colonial playbook laced with a good dose of Nazi righteousness and American capitalist arrogance.

Will it come to that here? Will the plague of the Drumpf era bring us into another civil war?

Right now the Dow Jones is flying high and things are functioning smoothly enough at the local level. The majority of Americans—who, let us remember, did not support Drumpf–are anxious and unnerved but going about our day-to-day business while stepping up efforts to stay informed and figure out how best to resist.

We know we’re in one of those moments that will be discussed in detail by historians, assuming our civilization comes safely through to the other side of this crisis.

So many questions cannot yet be answered. Will Bannon, Drumpf and the Republicans start a new war, repeating the 9/11 playbook that worked so well to keep the population quiet while providing rich new markets for the military industrial complex?

Will the Supreme Court rubber stamp the new regime’s savage efforts to roll back civil rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, voters’ rights, environmental protection, consumer protection, financial regulation etc. etc.?

Will freedom of the press, freedom of religion and the right to peaceful assembly and protest be trampled on and curtailed?

Will Americans sit by passively and let this happen?

And what about climate change? We’re already seeing the effects more dramatically every month. The acceleration is almost unbelievable. Will Mother Nature intervene, throwing some icy water on the fossil fuel industry’s wet dreams of limitless riches?

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to rise.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 18, 2017  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Leadership, Politics, Resilience, social justice, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on February 18, 2017

https://bethechange2012.com/2017/02/18/ghosts-of-latin-america-will-it-happen-here/

Prayers for Standing Rock: Holding the Light

Sitting in my snug house, my thoughts turn constantly to the thousands of people camping at the Oceti Sakowin camp at Standing Rock, now under its first coating of winter snow.

I am not sure how to think about the 2,000 veterans who are arriving there this weekend with the intention of shielding the civilian water protectors from the brutal attacks of police.

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Although they come unarmed, in peace, it still seems like their presence may up the ante and draw even more violence from so-called “law enforcement.”

Violence is part of the mechanics of justice. Has there ever been a peaceful revolution? Power is never conceded without a demand, and rarely conceded without a breakdown of communication, a descent into the ancient human inclination to settle scores with our fists.

With the camp under an eviction order set for midnight Sunday, and the people there defiantly vowing to stay and resist, to hold their ground to protect the land and the water, it’s hard to know what to expect. Anything could happen. There is a lot of pressure being placed on President Obama to intervene, and he still might. Hope springs eternal.

What I know is that the Standing Rock confrontation is the strongest volley yet in the ongoing struggles to resist the might of the fossil fuel lords.

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Minutes later, these unarmed people, praying in and for the water, would be hit with mace by the police.

 

In Pennsylvania, when the frackers came and began leasing up the forests over the Marcellus Shale, the people there took it as an unexpected bonanza, and began signing eagerly on the dotted line. They couldn’t imagine what would happen next: the logging, the industrial-scale pumping stations, the noise, the tanker trucks, the poisoning of the surface and ground water with toxic chemicals.

Same thing in Oklahoma, where the people who sold their land rights could never have imagined that the fracking would start setting off earthquakes.

Ordinary people took the bait of short-term gains, accepting the fool’s gold of the frackers and drillers. In the Bakken oilfields of the Dakotas, as in the Alberta tar sands, it’s the same story.

But ordinary people are perhaps not quite as stupid as the fossil fuel magnates seem to think.

It may take time, but we do wake up. We are coming to appreciate the inestimable value of clean water, clean air, healthy ecosystems and a stable climate.

we-will-never-forgetBack in the 1990s–when Julia Butterfly Hill sat in Luna, the 1500-year-old redwood tree, to protect her from logging, and Rachel Corrie stood up to the bulldozers in Palestine and paid for her bravery with her life—news of their protests spread mostly through word of mouth. The mainstream media didn’t cover Rachel’s commitment to her cause until she was dead.

But now in the 21st century, we are all connected. I can bring the snowy camp at Standing Rock into bed with me on my smartphone. I can watch the police beating up elders and kids. I can see the exquisite dignity of the water protectors praying at the river bank. I can be with them, virtually, excruciatingly, in real time.

And that makes all the difference.

The days when corporate bosses and their hired goons could ride roughshod over protesters without anyone even knowing—those days are gone. We are all citizen journalists now, and each generation of digital natives is savvier than the last about how to use the communication tools available to us to spread the word and stiffen the spines of the larger circles of resisters and witnesses.

I fear another Wounded Knee could be in the making at Standing Rock. The police are trying to needle the water protectors into “riot” so that it will look justified when they call out the big guns to “keep the peace.” Will “law enforcement” actually take the risk of escalating from rubber bullets to real bullets?

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Water protectors being hit with water cannons in 28-degree (F) temperatures last month.

 

So far it’s been so inspiring to watch the Native leaders steadfastly resisting those incitements, standing firm in their commitment to a movement grounded in non-violent prayer.

This Sunday, December 4, 2016, we have all been called to pray with and for Standing Rock, and for the entire Earth—to pray that we human beings will come to our senses and stop destroying our home and each other.

img_0268Although I was not raised to pray in a formal way, I find myself increasingly drawn to a kind of prayer that borders on channeling: a deep meditation in which I ground my feet in the roots of a tree or a mountain, open up my heart to the high vibrations of the air, and let the streaming energy of the sun and the stars pour down through my head into the rich loam at my feet.

When I shared this practice with my Facebook tribe recently, others chimed in, saying they too had felt a similar call. I found it spelled out again by Sharon McErlane, who channels the “grandmothers of the light.”

We are being called to stand up for the light now, even as the darkness deepens around us, literally and figuratively.

We don’t need the Internet to connect our hearts and minds through the energy flowing down to us from the cosmos. We can do as the trees do, and turn that radiant energy to sweet nourishment.

Like every living thing on this planet, we were born to grow and to flourish. Human beings have been fulfilling that original mission all too well lately.

We need to learn to grow wisely now, in harmony with each other and with the vast pulse of life on the planet.

The protectors of Standing Rock are like the immune system of human civilization, come to fight off the aggressive cancer of short-term corporate profiteers. Let us join together to strengthen that immune system through our love and concern, our prayers and our actions.

I end with words from Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee that I return to over and over for guidance in these dark times:

….The ancient energies of the Earth are still alive and we do not begin to understand how they are responding both to the energy of change and our collective resistance. But rather than attempting any prophecy I would continue to be aware of what each moment is telling us, watching the signs in the inner and outer worlds just as a sailor would read the winds and tides.

And from within this darkening there arises a cry that we hold the light that is left, the light that is within our self and within the spiritual body of the world. So much as been lost, so much has been desecrated by our endless desires, but those of us who are aware of the sacred need to hold what is left, hold it in our hearts and real awareness. The light of the sacred needs our care and protection. Maybe at some time it will give birth to the child with stars in its eyes, to the future whose seeds are still all around us. Without our relationship to this light nothing can be born, and the darkness will devour any real hope. Those of us who are aware of what we were given, of the oneness that was awakening, are needed to hold true to life’s deeper purpose, the unfolding of the soul of the world. We need to stay attuned to the heart of the world and life’s essential message of love, however the drama in the outer world unfolds.

–from Darkening of the Light (Golden Sufi Center, 2013)

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Nova Scotia, Winter 2015

 

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 2, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Environment, Environmental Activism, Fossil Fuels, love, social justice, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on December 2, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/12/02/prayers-for-standing-rock-holding-the-light/

Finding Your Tree—Taking a Stand—on Thanksgiving 2016

When asked by young activists where they should direct their energies, Julia Butterfly Hill responds simply, “Everyone has to find their own tree.”

2049891Julia, you may remember, is the woman who in 1997, at the age of 23, camped out at the top of a thousand-year-old, 180-foot-high California redwood named Luna, to save her and others in her grove from death by logging. She stayed up there for two solid years, through winter snowstorms, attacks by helicopter and constant harassment from the company goons holding siege below.

She eventually returned to the ground when her mission was accomplished—she had persuaded the logging company to leave Luna and her stand of old-growth trees alone. It was an important battle on the way to having the 7,500-acre Headwaters Forest protected as an ecological preserve.

This week we witnessed another brave young woman warrior, Sophia Wilansky, standing up to the attackers at Standing Rock and getting her lower arm blown off by a grenade.

Compared to the scale of the harm inflicted by the U.S. military in places like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, a young woman losing her arm seems relatively minor. The water protectors are being hit with water cannons and mace, not cluster bombs.

But by the standards of what is considered acceptable behavior for American law enforcement against unarmed citizens, what’s been going on at Standing Rock is totally outrageous.

Without in any way undercutting the incredible sacrifice that young Sophia Wilansky has made, I want us to notice that when one white woman gets hurt, suddenly the outrage of the onlookers jumps up several notches.

Native people have been getting injured with rubber bullets fired at close range; elders are being beaten up; water protectors have been thrown into dog kennel cages and kept there in inhumane conditions; they’ve been attacked by drenching water cannons in 20-degree temperatures, with no way to get warm.

And there has been outrage and solidarity from onlookers: marches and rallies in many cities and towns, an outpouring of donations of food, warm clothing, camping supplies and money for legal fees and other expenses. The indie media and social media have been out in force, covering the scene.

But still, here we are on Thanksgiving, 2016, and Native Americans are being forced to fight, David vs. Goliath style, to defend their land and water from the rapacious appetites of the colonizers.

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On this Thanksgiving Day, please take a moment to say a prayer for the water protectors of Standing Rock, who are standing up for the right of every American to clean water.

And please take a moment to think about Julia Butterfly Hill’s advice.

What is your tree? What is the cause that is calling to you with such passion that your heart leaps in response? Where will you stubbornly take up a stand, vowing not to give ground until the battle is won?

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 24, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Community, Environment, Environmental Activism, Fossil Fuels, social justice, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized, women's leadership
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 24, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/11/24/finding-your-tree-taking-a-stand-on-thanksgiving-2016/

Honoring the Water Protectors of Standing Rock on Thanksgiving

So here we are at the start of the holiday season once again. The food stores in my New England town are mobbed with people loading up their shopping carts with turkeys and all the trimmings for a grand Thanksgiving meal. Christmas trees are beginning to appear at the farm stands and garden centers. The lights are coming on to ward off the early afternoon gloom. We are going through the motions.

On the other side of the country, there are some other kinds of motions going on this Thanksgiving season.

How about water cannons drenching unarmed and unprotected people peacefully protesting the pipeline that threatens their land and water?

How about mace, rubber bullets and all-night floodlights?

How about constant intimidation and harassment?

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This is what the Thanksgiving season is bringing to the good people of Standing Rock, North Dakota, and the friends and allies who are standing firm at the camp, determined to protect the water and resist the bullying from law enforcement and private security guards.

Yes, here we are at Thanksgiving, the holiday supposedly celebrating the way the Native Americans generously fed the European settlers, helping them avoid starvation during that first New England winter.

The Pilgrims didn’t repay the Native people well then, and that was only the beginning of the holocaust visited on Native Americans all across this continent.

In the history books, they make it sound like that was all a long time ago; like those old prejudices and oppressions are safely in the past.

But Andrew Jackson the Indian-killer is still on the $20 bill, and what we’re seeing in Standing Rock this Thanksgiving week shows that there is still no respect when it comes to Native Americans.

mapBe it noted that the Dakota pipeline was originally routed right next to predominantly white town of Bismarck ND. When the people there protested, the route was promptly changed. It didn’t require thousands of men, women and children, camping out for months; there were no water cannons, tear gas or rubber bullets used.

But when it comes to re-routing the pipeline away from Lakota sacred lands, and away from the Missouri River, which supplies millions of people with drinking water—the gloves come off immediately.

One shudders to think of how this might have been handled in the days before social media. In 2016, the North Dakota authorities are brutal, but they know the world is watching: there are many people, including celebrities, standing with Standing Rock in its quest to protect the water and land.

Still, here we are at Thanksgiving, and the news from Standing Rock is getting worse, not better.

President Obama has not responded to the pleas for help. There have been protests across the country, but with the sudden, unexpected ascension of Trump and the Republicans, Americans who might have thrown their weight behind Standing Rock have been distracted, making plans for the Electoral College March, the Million Woman March, and standing vigil at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

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From Trump Tower to Standing Rock, what we’re seeing is all part of a continuum of violence: violence against women, against less powerful identity groups, against animals and trees, against the land and the water and the oceans; against life itself on this great planet.

In the old days, what is happening now would have been depicted mythologically as a struggle between life and death, good and evil, the weak and the powerful.

But this time around a victory for the powerful is going to take us all a step closer to the Armageddon of climate change.

How can we open the eyes of the fossil fuel lords and the militarized police that are doing their bidding?

There are movements afoot to divest from the fossil fuel industry and from banks funding the Dakota pipeline. Money seems to be the only language these folks understand, so that may be an effective form of protest.

There are phone numbers to call, and plenty of opportunities to help out with much-needed supplies at the Standing Rock protest camps, as winter sets in.

This Thanksgiving, every American should give thanks for the Native Americans who, despite everything, are still standing firm as protectors and stewards of their lands.

People don’t like to think about this, but it’s true: there may come a time when we European settlers will once again call desperately on Native peoples’ deep knowledge of this land. Once again, Native generosity may be the only thing standing between us and starvation.

All over the world, as climate change sets in and modern industrial agriculture, trade routes and energy sources are disrupted, those who still remember how to nestle into the bosom of Mother Earth and live simply off what she provides—these will be the people who will survive the shocks that await human civilization in the Anthropocene.

Maybe the good people of North Dakota should think twice, this Thanksgiving week, before sending out the dogs and the water cannons, the tanks and the tear gas again.

May we all give thanks for the blessings Mother Earth gives us constantly, without reserve, seeking nothing in return. May we learn to be grateful, and as generous in our turn. May we humans—all of us—rise to become the Earth stewards we were always meant to be. May we give thanks and honor to the Native peoples for showing us the way.

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 21, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Environmental Activism, Fossil Fuels, Renewable energy, Resilience, social justice, Uncategorized
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Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 21, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/11/21/honoring-the-water-protectors-of-standing-rock-on-thanksgiving/

Luna Rising: Calling on Women to Rise for Our Communities, and for Mother Earth

A lot of women I know are taking the knock-down of Hillary Clinton personally. It’s as if she is standing in for all the women who have ever tried to climb the male-dominated career ladder, no matter the field, and found themselves finally up at the top only to realize that that ladder is teetering…so that we all found ourselves looking at each other through Hillary’s eyes on election night, with that sickening realization dawning that…we are going DOWN.

Yes, she won the popular vote, we remind ourselves, clutching at straws of self-respect. Petitions are circulating demanding that the Electoral College represent the will of the people and split its vote accordingly, state by state. Many women are writing letters to Hillary, thanking her for fighting the good fight, and vowing to keep it up, to fight all the harder for this disappointment.

Meanwhile the frat-boy bully, our worst nightmare of the sleazy underbelly of America, is now slithering into the White House.

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How different is this guy from George W. Bush, another frat-boy bully, an entitled scion of a rich family? Bush Jr. had more of a patina; he had the patrician Kennebunkport charm, even though it masked a profound idiocy that kept him dependent on scheming advisors like Cheney.

Trump is the brash New Yorker, the kid from the boroughs whose family ran a real estate mafia, getting rich one gouged rent at a time. Although he has a lot of sycophants and wanna-be besties around him, Trump follows his own counsel. I don’t think he’ll be as easy to manipulate as Bush Jr. was. That just makes him all the more dangerous.

Yes, he’s dangerous. He represents the ascendancy of the worst forms of hyper-masculine arrogance—the kind of guy who throws his weight around, shouts down any dissenter, insists on having his own way all the time. He will glory in uniforms and lust in the power of legions of men saluting and doing his bidding. He will raze forests just for the fun of it like a modern-day Gilgamesh. He will rape and pillage and laugh about the humiliation of the women he leaves behind moaning in the dust.

This man—our soon-to-be President of the United States—is as bad as any petty warlord. Although we can think of dozens of similar dictators and tyrants like him, I don’t believe we’ve ever had a man this bad in our White House. Not this unapologetically, energetically, gleefully BAD.

President Obama is calmly talking about passing the baton, sitting down with the President-elect to talk about the nuclear codes and other key levers of government. His preternatural calm, like Hillary’s unemotional concession speech, baffles and frightens me. Don’t they fear for our country? Is it forbidden for them to express rage and frustration? Or do they know, in some insiders’ way that ordinary folks like us can’t, that it doesn’t really matter who is in the White House, they’re all, as Obama put it, “on the same team”?

What team is that, pray tell?

The team of the rapers and pillagers of women and of the planet? The corporate-finance team that is hell-bent on enriching the richest while hitting up ordinary folks with usurious interest rates on the loans and credit cards we need to survive; casting our children into perpetual debt bondage in return for the education they need to find the jobs that don’t pay enough to live on; drilling and fracking and scraping and bulldozing the Earth to make her pay her way in fossil fuels, no matter that the burning of those fuels will send our climate to Kingdom Come….

Yes, I am angry. If Obama really thinks that he and Trump are on the same team, then that is not a team I want any part of. I don’t want the “peaceful transition of power” if it means power will now reside in the small fat hands of that hateful would-be dictator.

Deep breath. Deep breath.

There is value in anger, I think. We can’t go quietly into the night. We have to fight this menace, and I am glad to see Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Bill McKibben and Van Jones, Naomi Klein and Michael Brune and so many other good folks rallying for the fight.

But we have been fighting for a long time, and now to have this sudden loss of ground is disheartening, to say the least. It’s exhausting and demoralizing to see all those old bullies rallying around Trump—Giuliani, Gingrich and Christie, to name just a few—and know that this time around, with the power to appoint federal judges and justices, the way forward will be even harder.

I am wondering if there’s another way to fight this time. Yes, the street demonstrations are important; being visible is essential. The social media shares and livestreams are also key.

I’m just asking myself, what would it look like to launch a feminine response to Trump’s hyper-masculinity? Sort of like what Code Pink was doing in the Bush years or what One Billion Rising has done with dance flash mobs: meeting the gray sobriety of our corporate-militarized American “team” with the vibrant color and gay creativity of generative, nurturing freedom and joy.

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I think about the patience of Mother Nature, giving endlessly to all of her children, asking nothing in return but our success. I think about how no matter how fast we chop down her forests, she simply starts growing them again, even if the growth starts with the tiniest layer of lichen or moss. I think about the rhizomatic underground networks that support and nourish everything visible; the ones that persist and regrow no matter how much the aboveground targets are hit.

The Treesisters movement is promoting nature-based feminine leadership, specifically focusing on climate change as the global issue that unites all humanity. Climate change knows no national boundaries and it affects everyone—even the richest tyrant in his castle will eventually be starved out by the droughts and floods that will come once the warming has gone totally out of control.

With climate-change-denier Trump and his henchmen holding power in the White House and the US Congress, the whole world is in grave danger.

Feminine energy is needed now; the energy of nurturing and cultivating, the energy that is present in all humans but strongest in those whose bodies are made to bear life: women who are flooded with the loving, nurturing hormone estrogen before they leave their own mother’s wombs, and throughout their entire lives.

Women, now is not the time to shrink back in horror, to curl up and hide for four years hoping for a better champion the next time around.

Now is the time to look at our world through the eyes of Mother Earth, with compassion and benevolence, but also with the fierce love that can move mountains.

We have to rise for our daughters and sons, modeling for them not the passive acceptance of Barack and Hillary “passing the baton” to the bully, but proud and forceful independence that knows no humiliation and will not be intimidated.

There is a lot of talk right now in elite circles about trying to understand the Trump supporter better. I don’t think there’s a lot of mystery to why people in the rust belt are angry, frustrated and ready for change. The public education system is lousy, turning out people who are docile enough to follow a liar and a cheat over the cliff; and if you’re unhealthy from toxic chemicals, in debt up to your ears from huckster lenders, without decent jobs or any hope of improvement—well, it’s revolution time, and we know that people who have nothing to lose will often follow a charismatic leader, no matter what false prophets he is preaching.

A feminine-inspired leader, taking her cue from Mother Earth, will embrace these children along with all her children, trying her best to give them what they need to flourish and grow well. That means good nutrition, good education, healthy communities, a sense of purpose and ways to contribute productively to the common well-being. It’s not too much to ask. It’s what every American and every human being deserves.

At the same time, we know now that we would need six Earths to support the vaunted American lifestyle in its current incarnation, for all the billions of humans on Earth. We are going to have to shift away from the old idea of limitless economic growth, into a new steady state that consumes much less of Earth’s resources, much more efficiently, in ways that make more of us truly happy.

This can be done.

It must be done.

I am calling on women to lead the way here and now—to use the galvanizing push of this horrendous election to inspire us to rise up in our communities, everywhere in the world, to insist that the bullies will NOT have their way this time.

Not on their lives…and not on ours.

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PS: On Monday November 14 the Moon, whose magnetic pull sweeps the tides and the menstrual cycles of all mammals, will be as close to Earth as she’ll be until 2034. Women, let’s all honor Luna that day. Go out and gaze at her. Take her feminine energy into your hearts and then send it out into the world, bathing your communities in that peaceful pulse of pure white light. If we come together, our feminine power knows no bounds. We can do this. We must!

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 11, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Human Rights, Leadership, love, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized, women's leadership, women's rights
Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 11, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/11/11/luna-rising-calling-on-women-to-rise-for-our-communities-and-for-mother-earth/

The Soul Force We Need Now

When I wrote my last Transition Times piece, imagining the darkness that would descend on America if Trump should win the presidency, I didn’t believe it would happen. I trusted Americans to unite behind Hillary as the better choice; to defeat the bigotry and stupidity represented by Trump.

Hillary did win the popular vote, but she lost the electoral college. Is this a fair system, this winner-take-all system we have inherited? I don’t think so. But with Republicans gleefully about to control all three houses of government, I’m not expecting any changes on that score. We just have to deal with the cards on the table now.

The cards are not good. Not good for people, for animals, for wildlife, for oceans and forests and prairies. The setback is real.

But let’s not kid ourselves that a Clinton presidency would have been a walk in the park. There’s a reason so many of us were unenthusiastic about her candidacy, even while applauding her as a woman with enough grit and backbone to survive a punishing public life and continue in a historic bid for the highest public office in the land.

Yes, Hillary is tough. Yes, she made friends with the wealthy whose money she needed to make her run viable. Yes, she talked the talk and walked the walk that the Democratic Party wanted to hear. Yes, she won the popular vote in the end.

But not by a landslide. Not by enough. In the end, she could not go that final mile to victory.

The pundits are busy parsing out why the pollsters and journalists were so blindsided by the Trump insurgency. No one is talking fraud, but I wonder…all it would have taken is fraud in a couple of key states…say, Florida and Pennsylvania…to tip the electoral scales.

Even if there was no direct vote tampering, there was tampering of hearts…Trump’s empty sloganeering giving people something simple and digestible to hang on to, so much more appealing than Hillary’s endless fine print.

Bernie Sanders understood the profound despair and hopelessness of the American middle-to-lower class (the middle class slip-sliding away into the hanging-by-the-grace-of-a-credit-card class). And unlike Trump, he actually has some ideas about what to do for these suffering millions.

Hillary represented status quo stability, an extension of the relative peace, prosperity and even tentative progressive tiptoes that Obama brought us. That’s nothing to sniff at. But for people who weren’t feeling the benefits, it obviously wasn’t enough.

No use crying over spilt milk. As pundits around the globe are saying this morning, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and recommit ourselves to the struggle for a sane and livable world. People who believe in the ideal of social justice for all, who believe in preserving our environment as the essential pathway to a livable future—we have to come together now as never before.

That old Hopi prophecy about “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” seems to be awakening, both in the Trump camps and now in progressive circles. The good people of Standing Rock are already living it.

Obviously we can’t look to the Federal government for protection or support. But as Bernie proved in defying the Democratic Party last winter and spring, there’s a lot we can do at the state and local levels, with direct appeal to individuals who share our values and want to put their money and energy behind a shared vision of what America would look like if there was really “justice for all”—and I include all living beings in my understanding of that phrase, from the fish in the sea to the trees in the forests to the birds in the sky and on and on, our whole magnificent ecological web.

Mother Earth is in convulsions right now, thanks to the unchecked growth of us, her most successful species yet. We are over-populating like lemmings, and like lemmings we seem to be on track to restore stability by running off a cliff together—powered by our remarkable technology and the fossil fuels required by our machine-based lifestyle.

This is the bigger picture we must keep in our sights on this gloomy morning after the Trump win. It’s not about Democrats and Republicans, red or blue, elites or working class, or any other way of slicing and dicing our differences.

In the face of climate change, we are all the same in our vulnerability to the big shocks that will inevitably come if we don’t succeed in shifting away from fossil fuels. Trump in his faux-gold tower can’t survive long without the farmers of the world producing food, and the farmers can’t do that if the climate gives way to floods and droughts and storms. We are all connected. We are all connected. We are all connected.

As Charles Eistenstein memorably puts it, we are one being looking out at the world through a multitude of eyes.

The sooner we understand this and get beyond old tired habits of separation, the better chance humanity has of evolving into the great steward species we were meant to be.

That old Garden of Eden story was a warning about the dangers of knowledge without wisdom, a warning that we are still struggling to absorb and learn from (and no, it wasn’t Eve’s fault!).

What is the wisdom we can live by in the difficult era that’s now dawning?

We have to acknowledge the deep pain, disappointment and anger that the Trump voters are living. It’s real. Trump didn’t invent it or even cultivate it; he just understood it, and understood, as an entertainer and consummate con man, how to make it work for him.

He will have no balms for the disenfranchised. America won’t return to some mythic “great” past. The anger and bitterness will continue until we can come together as a society to find real solutions that give all people a sense of dignity and purpose; opening up accessible pathways to health and well-being, individually and as communities.

Behind the wish to “make America great again” lies longing for a time when we could believe in and work together towards a brighter future. I know we don’t all agree on what that future could or should look like. But we should be talking about it together, not walling off from each other in distrust and fear.

Can I listen to a man spewing vile hatred over me and my family and everyone I love? Can I try to understand where he’s coming from, as he shoves me under a bus?

I don’t know if I have that in me. But I do know that in these times that are coming, I must stand firm in human decency; stand up for justice and integrity and love; and let that soul force—called forth by Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and so many other social change agents from Jesus on down the ages—stream through me out into the world.

If enough of us do this, together we can make that stream a mighty river, and ride that river to a better world.

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Soul force

3 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 9, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Environment, love, New stories, Politics, social justice, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 9, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/11/09/the-soul-force-we-need-now/

What Victory Will Be Ours? Parsing the Personal, Political and Planetary in a Dark American Election Season

With two days to go before the election, the menace represented by Donald Trump and his fanatical followers is hanging over me like a dense cold fog, almost a shroud. Hillary may not be a knight in shining armor, but she’s all that is standing between us and the screaming hordes of misogynist, racist, violent bigots, who have been turning out by the tens of thousands for their orange-skinned leader.

This is a moment when I can palpably feel the personal, political and planetary spheres aligning, not in joy but in fear and awareness of what a Trump win would mean for me personally, for the tattered political system of America, and for our beleaguered planet.

Personally, as a woman of Jewish descent, as a feminist and an eco-feminist at that, I am squarely in the crosshairs of the Trumpist band of haters. Not only that but I married a Mexican, making my sons fair game as well! Yes, I would feel unsafe and threatened in a country that legitimized Trump’s bigotry by making him the leader of the land and commander-in-chief of our oh-so-powerful and oh-so-obedient police and military forces.

Politically, we see Hillary holding the status quo center, standing defiantly with the big banks and the corporations that have been fattening on our sick economy for a long, long time. Trump and Bernie Sanders take their stands in the right and left wings, Trump advocating for deregulation and a survival-of-the-mightiest economy, while Bernie is our modern-day Robin Hood, standing up for the poor and oppressed.

If Bernie had been allowed to finish his race without having his hamstrings cut by the media and the Democratic National Committee, we would have had a much more animated and perhaps even more polarized race. As it is, between the status quo or descending into fascist chaos, well, even many Republicans are going with Hillary, though vowing to tie her up in knots once she wins the White House.

On the planetary level, just check “none of above,” as far as either Trump or Clinton being advocates for the Earth. One will dig, drill and burn—the other will do it even faster and harder. The best we can say for Clinton is that she is a reasonable, rational person; she reads the fine print in policy reports; she is a mediating type who is likely to try to find solutions that please as many people as possible. I can see her pushing the fossil fuel industry to reinvent itself as a clean energy machine, even if I can’t see her standing with water protectors for a photo op.

This election won’t be over when it’s over. If Trump should win, it would send an immediate chill over the land, the gloom of winter shading into the dismal gray of the unhinged fascist capitalism represented by the self-aggrandizing faux-gold chrome of Trump. Remember the palette of the film 1984? That’s what I see coming our way with a Trump win.

If Hillary wins, the Republicans will be united once again through their common hatred of the Clintons, and will stop at nothing to obstruct her presidency.

I am already wondering how it could be legal for the U.S. Senate to refuse to do its job in holding hearings for Supreme Court nominees. Shouldn’t there be a way for the American people to insist that our representatives, whose salaries we pay, do the job we elected them to do?

Whatever happens on Tuesday, life will go on. Next weekend I’ll once again be retreating to the cozy Rookwood Inn to lead a group of women in aligning the personal, political and planetary in their own life stories, through my technique of purposeful memoir. We may linger a bit on the political this time, reflecting on how the political backdrop against which our lives have played out has influenced who we have become.

In fact, politics is more than a backdrop; it’s interwoven into the warp and woof of every minute of our lives. Liberal Americans, the coastal and urban blue types, have long had the privilege of believing that America really stood for “liberty and justice for all.” Our eyes have been steadily opened these past few years, as smartphones and social media have shown us scene after scene of the targeting of the less powerful by the security forces of the elites. Less visible perhaps, but no less damaging is the predatory stranglehold of the finance, chemical, pharmaceutical and military-industrial/fossil fuel complexes on our entire society.

Our immediate task, this week, is to take a strong stand against Trump’s would-be fascist dictatorship by electing Hillary Clinton—the first woman president of the United States!

And then—we need to look hard at the conditions that led to Trump’s insurgency, and start working on the deeper ailments of our society. Why are people so angry and afraid? Why are people so stressed, anxious, unhealthy and unhappy? What can be done to level the playing fields for our young people, eliminating the specter of debt bondage and supporting them as they get a fresh start on the journey of life?

How can we stop trashing our planet and start investing in economies based on renewable energy, permaculture and an awareness of the sacredness of all life? How can we shift our ways of living so that we are united by the solidarity of common purpose, buoyed by energetic hope and optimism in our future?

This past week, I have been reading The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein with my current leadership students. I’ll close with a passage (p. 201) to ponder:

“The best victory, says Sun Tzu, is the one in which the losers don’t realize they have lost. In the old story, we overcome evil and leave our enemies in the dust, wailing and gnashing their teeth. No more. Everyone is coming along for this ride. In the new story, we understand that everyone left behind impoverishes the destination. We see each human being as the possessor of a unique lens upon the world. We wonder, ‘What truth has this man been able to see from his perspective, that is invisible from mine?’”

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 6, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Environment, Politics, Social change, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on November 6, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/11/06/what-victory-will-be-ours-parsing-the-personal-political-and-planetary-in-a-dark-american-election-season/

The Epic Stakes of the 2016 Presidential Election—Electing Clinton is Just the Beginning

Yes, it’s exciting—thrilling, even—to see a female-bodied person finally heading the ticket for the Democratic Party. Yes, it’s historic that a woman will be President of the United States. And yes, when we are shown footage of the original Hillary, the idealistic young college student, the hardworking young lawyer/mom, we can see shadows of the woman we’d like to elect.

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But to contrast that earlier Hillary with the image of the tough-as-nails politician she has become is to understand why it’s so hard for women to succeed in the American political landscape—or the corporate workplace, for that matter. You have to learn the fine art of being a fe-male, a man in the guise of a woman.

unknownWhile outwardly conforming to the dominant beauty standards for women—dyed and coiffed hair, generous make-up, body-flattering clothing, heels—you also have to be commanding and aggressive, a no-nonsense sort of leader that everyone will automatically respect.

It’s no accident that our first woman president will be a woman in her golden years. Only when a woman has outlived the possibility of being a sex symbol can she command the necessary authority, with men and women alike, to hold the highest office in the land.

How many women have the stamina—to use a buzzword from the campaign trail—to stay the course over years of trials and hurdles, all the while walking the tightrope of being simultaneously attractive and authoritative?

Donald Trump, bless him, has brought right out into the open the everyday harassment that women have to deal with. Who is unluckier: the attractive woman who gets constantly groped and ogled, admired for her body while her ideas and smarts are ignored; or the unattractive woman who is ignored on both the bodily and mental planes, if not actively booed and hissed from the public arena?

gettyimages-613703308-0Trump is like a stand-in for every boorish man who ever held power in America, whether a boss or a husband, a rich client or a random stalker on the street. Men like Trump elevate their own fragile egos by putting down others, with women being a convenient, always-in-view set of targets.

Hillary has shown us just where to aim our defensive kicks, but she is also evidence of the toll this type of psychological warfare takes on a woman. She’s damned if she “acts like a man” and also damned if she’s “too womanly.” She basically has to become as genderless as possible, and we see that in her carefully chosen suits, cropped but coiffed hair, and in the cold tautness of her heavily made-up face.

I hope that when Hillary gets into the Oval Office, she will not pull up the drawbridge behind her, but will make every effort to use her power to make things better for the girls and women coming along behind her.

Women should not have to give up their femininity to become powerful. Men shouldn’t either! When are we going to understand that gender is a continuum, not a binary; that all humans have estrogen and testosterone running through them in different measures; that every human has the capacity to be both tender and tough, sensitive and aggressive?

29906170001_4818348677001_capturePerhaps that was part of what I admired so much about Bernie Sanders—his easiness with being nurturing and warm, even cuddly, on the campaign trail. No doubt this gentleness comes easier for men as they age and no longer have to prove themselves through aggression.

My dream is that it won’t have to take so long for women like Hillary and men like Bernie to be accepted in the American public sphere.

My dream is that our society will shift away from cheering on the superficial, cartoonish values represented by the Donald Trumps among us, and get back in touch with what really matters: living in right relationship—that is, in respect and caring—for every person, no matter what they look like.

And of course, my dream goes beyond this re-valuing of human rights to encompass the rights of every living being on the planet.

jb-solstic-mountaintop-copyWhenever I turn away from the glare of the brightly lit television screens and stage sets of our political moment, back to the green and gold of the forest, I am reminded of what really matters. The water protectors at Standing Rock know it; the Treesisters know it; the Bioneers know it; the Buddhists know it. Human beings have not evolved on this planet to rape and pillage and turn the green to dust. With our unique intelligence and capacity to understand time—history as well as prophecy—we are here to be the wise stewards of the planet, to nurture and protect the complexity of the ecological web that nourishes us.

I can’t say I trust Hillary Clinton to understand or undertake this role. She is a 20th century woman, still living out a 20th century drama of war and destruction. That is why we will have to follow Senator Sanders’ model in creating a drama of our own, too big and urgent for her and her business cronies to ignore. Mother Earth will do her part—we can see it already in the constant litany of storms and floods, wildfires and searing heat.

If we humans fail in our evolutionary mission of stewardship, the Earth will simply start over, as she has many times in the past. It’s time to do everything we can, each one of us, to head off that epic fail—starting with defeating Trump and installing Clinton.

And then we will continue stubbornly, with determination and love, the great work of transforming our society into one based on a new fundamental watchword: no, not freedom this time.

For the 21st century and beyond, our core value must be RESPECT.

3 Comments
by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 22, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Alternative Futures, Environment, gender studies, Leadership, Politics, Politics of Gender, Rights of Nature, Social change, Terrorism, Uncategorized, women's rights
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 22, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/10/22/the-epic-stakes-of-the-2016-presidential-election-electing-clinton-is-just-the-beginning/

For the Trees

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For North American tree lovers, October is a special month: the time of year when the trees get dressed up in their fanciest finery and show off just how wildly beautiful they are.

I pay attention to trees in all seasons, and have ever since I was a girl who loved to climb them, as high as I could go, and drape myself over a branch to feel the wind swaying us both gently.

My very first short story, written in pencil in a nondescript notebook when I was about 8, was about a tree nymph named Estrella, who gathered the animals around her in an urgent council, and set off on a quest to try to save her forest from destruction by humans. I never finished that story, mostly because I could not imagine a solution—how could a tree nymph and some forest animals stop the men with their bulldozers and chain saws?

Estrella haunts me now, prodding me to return to her story and persevere to the ending. Since those long ago days of my childhood, the pace of forest destruction has only increased.

According to National Geographic, if the current pace of deforestation continues, the planet’s rainforests could “completely vanish in a hundred years” (italics mine).

The fate of the northern boreal forests is no less dire. The Canadian boreal forest, an area more than 14 times the size of California, is being scraped away relentlessly for tar sands oil production, as well as being steadily logged.

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In the first 13 years of the 21st century, according to a report from the World Resources Institute and Global Forest Watch, “Canada lost more than 26 million hectares of forest, mainly in its boreal region. More than 20 percent of the boreal forest region (more than 150 million hectares) is now covered by industrial concessions for timber operations, hydrocarbon development, hydroelectric power reservoirs, and mineral extraction.”

A hectare is equal to about 2.5 acres. The scale of this deforestation boggles the mind. In fact, I think one of the reasons this vast destruction is continuing is because it’s so hard to wrap our minds around it. Outside of photos, very few of us tree lovers ever see a fresh clear-cut or a mine. We don’t see what passes for “reforestation,” the planting of millions of trees in straight lines, with herbicide sprayed below them to prevent “weeds” from growing, and not an animal or bird or butterfly in sight.

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Yet so many of us love birds and butterflies and animals. We put out our bird feeders in the winter and ooh and ahh over a sighting of a deer or a bobcat.

How can we be so loving on the one hand, and so callous on the other? How can we allow the relentless logging and scraping and dozing and burning to go on???

We seem to live with constant cognitive dissonance, whereby we know what’s going on, but resolutely shut out the knowledge. At least, that’s what I do. I know that every time I get in my car I’m being part of the problem. But I continue driving, nevertheless. We all do.

Human beings are profoundly social animals. The more I think about our behavior, the more I see our resemblance to ants, bees and termites. Especially ants, who are also wizards at reshaping the environment to suit their own needs. But no other species on Earth destroys its own habitat—and knowingly, at that!

A long, long time ago, the Earth was an anaerobic environment; there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. Then the plants came along and started turning carbon dioxide into oxygen, paving the way for all of us oxygen breathers who followed them.

Without the plants—without the algae, grasses, trees and all the other carbon-dioxide breathers—the Earth would become uninhabitable for us, just as it became uninhabitable for the anaerobic creatures millions of years ago.

So when we’re thinking about the trees, we owe them some gratitude. Some reverence and respect.

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I love trees because they seem majestic and wise to me. They live a long time, far longer than humans, and they exist both above and below ground in ways I can hardly begin to fathom. They are also patient and resilient. When you cut down a tree, its roots still feed the soil, and if left alone (ie, no herbicides), it will soon regenerate, calmly sending up hundreds of new saplings to take the place of the one who fell. It has time. There is no rush.

It’s human beings who are in a rush, all the time. In a rush to “harvest biomass,” policy code for cutting down forests. In a rush to figure out how to “manage ecosystem services,” ie, learning how to cut down, replant and cut down again at the fastest possible rate.

All this rush is sending us pell-mell off the cliff of climate change. We know this, but try not to think about it. It’s so much easier to go along with the flow of our dominant, fossil-fuel-based, wood-hungry culture than to try to resist. Especially when it seems like that’s what everyone else is doing too.

Charles Eisenstein says that “enlightenment is a group activity,” meaning that it’s almost impossible for us humans, social creatures that we are, to change our mind-sets alone.

What’s truly exciting about our time is that now, we are more networked and communicative than ever before, just like our cousins the ants and the bees. Our Internet has made group enlightenment (otherwise known as social change) possible at a speed and a scale never before possible for humans.

It’s no longer possible for us to simply not know when millions of acres of forest are being clear-cut. That kind of innocence is gone, and with knowledge comes the responsibility to act, to live up to our values. Happily, there are some potent actions going on right now on behalf of the forests and the waters—the lifeblood of our planet.

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Not surprisingly, it’s indigenous peoples, the ones who have stayed closest to the land throughout the whole horrendous onslaught of “Western civilization,” who are leading the way.

If you haven’t been following the protests at Standing Rock, North Dakota, where a massive pipeline project is underway, please inform yourself. The powers that be are trying to muzzle the media there, but that always backfires in the age of social media, doesn’t it.

Amy Goodman’s video report of dogs attacking peaceful protesters (they prefer to call  themselves as “water protectors”) has gone viral with more than 14 million views in just a couple of weeks. The more the oil moguls try to stamp out resistance, the brighter the glare of public awareness and outrage shines.

I’m also heartened by the response to the Million Trees Campaign started by Treesisters, an organization inspired by the Pachamama Alliance, which was itself sparked by visits with the Amazonian Shuar people who were reaching out to northern allies to try to save their forests.

Treesisters is funding local reforestation projects, focusing on the tropical rainforests that are so essential to the stability of the climate worldwide. Currently they are half-way to their goal of funding the planting of 1 million trees in the coming year—you can join in here.

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Estrella the tree nymph is never far from my mind these days, her great love for the trees and forests fueling her implacable determination to change the hearts and minds of the human beings that would destroy them.

One day I will finish her story. And I hope I can find my way to a happy ending.

 

 

 

 

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by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 16, 2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Activism, Alternative Futures, Environment, Environmental Activism, Spiritual Ecology, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D. on October 16, 2016

https://bethechange2012.com/2016/10/16/for-the-trees/

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