#youth climate activist

[ihhfhonao3]

I’m a firm believer in the passive and small acts of activism.

You’re actively fighting capitalism by resting and taking a break. You’re actively fighting homophobia by wearing a rainbow pin to signify to others your allyship. You’re actively fighting climate change by air drying your hands after washing them. You’re actively fighting childism by letting a minor talk to you about how they’re doing. You’re actively fighting oppressive systems by simply existing.

There have always been others like you, and there always will be others like you. Your existence is rebellion. As long as you’re alive, conservatives and bigots have lost.

You’re a rebel. You’re a warrior. You’re a fighter. And you don’t even know it.

[bumblebeeappletree]

‘Our land is sick … We need to care for it’ — 14 youth plaintiffs are suing Hawaii’s Department of Transportation. Here’s why.

Originally posted on YouTube on November 1st, 2023.

[feckcops]

Students occupy schools and universities across Europe in climate protest

“In Germany, universities were occupied in Wolfenbüttel, Magdeburg, Münster, Bielefeld, Regensburg, Bremen and Berlin. In Spain, students in occupation at the Autonomous University of Barcelona organised teach-outs on the climate crisis. In Belgium, 40 students occupied the University of Ghent. In the Czech Republic, about 100 students camped outside the ministry of trade and industry. In the UK occupations were under way at the universities of Leeds, Exeter and Falmouth.

“The most radical actions were taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, where youngsters occupied seven schools and two universities. On Thursday, occupying pupils forced one high school to remain closed for a third day, while students at the University of Lisbon’s faculty of humanities barricaded themselves in the dean’s office.

“Young people also stopped traffic in the Portuguese capital with street blockades in solidarity with the occupations. The radical action comes despite harsh responses from teachers at one school who called police to evict pupils who began occupations last week ...

“A statement by the campaign read: ‘End Fossil: Occupy! is radicalising the youth climate movement in tactics and demands. Occupations instead of strikes. End the fossil economy instead of listen to the science. End Fossil: Occupy! is reigniting the fire of the youth climate movement last seen in 2019.’”

[hope-for-the-planet]

Under what legal experts called a “historic” settlement, announced on Thursday, Hawaii officials will release a roadmap “to fully decarbonize the state’s transportation systems, taking all actions necessary to achieve zero emissions no later than 2045 for ground transportation, sea and inter-island air transportation”, Andrea Rodgers, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case, said at a press conference with the governor.

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - November 8-14

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. Agrivoltaics for sustainable food, energy and water management in East Africa

“[… C]ertain crops […] thrived under the partial shade provided by solar panels. The shade also helped to reduce water loss through evaporation, leading to more efficient water usage. Additionally, rainwater harvested from the panels could be used to supplement irrigation needs.”

2. The world’s largest wildlife crossing is now standing in California

“The structure crosses a 10-lane freeway and has been built to help protect all sorts of wildlife[….] And it’s not just for fauna: some 5,000 plants grown from seed collected within a five-mile radius have been nurtured in two specially created nurseries. The bridge will be topped with wildflowers, shrubs and native grasses that will also benefit insect populations.”

3. Judge rules the military must cover gender-affirming surgery for members' dependents

“[Judge] Torresen found that [gender-affirming] surgery is indeed medically necessary and that the Defense Department had not shown that any important governmental interest was advanced by denying the coverage.”

4. Social Media Can Boost Caracal Conservation

“The team found that searches on the species doubled after the project [using “social media to educate about the caracal”] launched. […] ”The research demonstrates how a public interest in urban ecology and the global phenomenon of ‘cats on the internet’… can be harnessed to leverage conservation action.””

5. US Labor Board Bans Captive Audience Meetings to Ensure 'Truly Free' Worker Choice

“[T]he National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday ruled that employers cannot force workers to attend anti-union speeches. [… W]orkers will no longer have to take part in so-called "captive audience meetings," which employers often use as a union-busting tool and a form of coercion.”

6. Study links grazing with plant phenology and abundance

“In general, plants where caribou or muskoxen were present experienced earlier green-up and greater abundance later in the growing season. “We're used to thinking of the timing of plant availability as impacting the productivity of grazing animals, but not the reverse," Post said.”

7. Frog populations once decimated by disease mount a major comeback

“"These results provide a rare example of how reintroduction of resistant individuals can allow the landscape-scale recovery of disease-impacted species, and have broad implications for amphibians and many other taxa that are threatened with extinction by novel pathogens."”

8. California Announces Special Session To Protect Trans People

“Newsom’s directive is clear: safeguard reproductive healthcare, support immigrants, and shield LGBTQ+ people from what is viewed as existential threats to civil rights and democratic norms. […] California has a unique opportunity to set the blueprint for other states in resisting a Trump administration[….]”

9. When ‘OK, Boomer’ Means ‘Let’s Go Protest’

“Youth activists across the country recognize the efforts of their eco-minded predecessors and welcome them as mentors, role models, and collaborators in their battle against the climate crisis. […] “The idea that Boomers don’t care, he said, is “just misinformation.””

10. How Aussie Waste Warriors are Redirecting Excess Food to Those in Need

“A growing movement is working to reduce perfectly good food going to waste by redirecting it to homes and charities. [… C]haritable organisations [… are] transforming fresh produce that would otherwise have gone to waste into millions of cooked, nutritious meals for people in need each year.”

November 1-7 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[fairuzfan]

Have you heard about the global day of action on March 2?

Yes! I have! Here's more info about it (click). Here, from the "About" section:

There is a growing global movement for a Free Palestine. Across the world, millions of people are engaging in demonstrations and organizing major marches in solidarity with Palestine. Our demands for an immediate ceasefire, cutting all aid to Israel, and lifting the siege on Gaza have broader support than ever. On November 4th, over 500,000 gathered in Washington DC for the largest march in recent times to stand in solidarity with Palestine. Protests with half a million people erupted on the streets of London, constituents across Canada occupied over 17 MP offices from coast to coast, and Belgian dock workers' unions have refused to transport weapons by plane or sea that are destined for Israel.  We must keep building momentum and increase the pressure with more marches, walk-outs, sit-ins, and other forms of direct action directed at the political offices, businesses, and workplaces that fund, invest, and collaborate with Israeli genocide and occupation. NOW is the time for our mobilizations to grow in size, frequency, and focus; building a political climate that makes Israel’s business of genocide unsustainable.

Already protesters have shut down highways, train stations, and bridges in the United States; activists have targeted Israeli weapons manufacturers; Belgian dockworkers’ unions have refused to handle weapons transports to Israel; Bolivia has cut diplomatic ties with Israel while Jordan, Chile, and Colombia have recalled their Israeli ambassadors. Be part of the change, take action, and make your voice heard as the global struggle for Palestine enters a new phase.

Join the Shutdown for Palestine on Friday, December 8, 2023. We call on movements, organized labor, youth, students, media and healthcare workers, and all members of society to join us in demanding an immediate ceasefire, cutting all aid to Israel, and lifting the siege on Gaza. This call to action started on November 9, but we will continue to build up the momentum with ongoing days of action. No business as usual until Palestine is Free!

Walk out from work and/or school

Picket Israeli embassies and consulates

Picket against companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Elbit Systems)

Host speak outs

Wear kuffiyehs

Wear black armbands

[world-of-wales]

NEWS-

THE 2024 EARTHSHOT PRIZE NOMINEES!

The Prince of Wales has unveiled the nominees for the 2024 Earthshot Prize.

PROTECT AND RESTORE NATURE

Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative 🇰🇿

Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance 🇪🇨

NatureMetrics 🌎

CLEAN OUR AIR

d.light 🇮🇳 🇰🇪 🇳🇬 🇹🇿 🇺🇬 🇿🇲

GAYO - Green Africa Youth Organisation 🇬🇭 🇺🇬

MYCL 🇮🇩

REVIVE OUR OCEANS

Coast 4C 🇵🇭

High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People 🌎

MiAlgae 🇬🇧

Build a Waste-free World

Ferment'Up 🇫🇷

Keep It Cool 🇰🇪 🇺🇬

Natural Fibre Welding 🌎

FIX OUR CLIMATE

Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems 🇺🇸

Build Up Nepal 🇳🇵

Equatic 🇨🇦 🇸🇬 🇺🇸

Read more about the nominees below -

[capricorn-season]

10 JUNE 2020

J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues

This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Berns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people.  The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much.  It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Popular Youth Movement protest in front of a Coca-Cola factory in Brazil

'Raise forests, overthrow capitalism' was the motto of the event that organized the action

On Saturday (6), young activists from Brazil’s Popular Youth Uprising (Levante Popular da Juventude, in Portuguese) held a protest outside a Cola-Cola factory in Curitiba, Paraná’s capital city. The demonstration took place during the movement's state meeting, whose motto was "raise forests, overthrow capitalism", addressing the climate crisis and its consequences for young people.

In an interview with Brasil de Fato Paraná, Fernan Silva, from the group's state coordination in Paraná, explained the reason for holding a protest known as “escracho”. “For the fourth year in a row, Coca-Cola is number one in the ranking of companies that pollute the environment the most, as well as being involved in several accusations of crimes against Indigenous communities, in addition to land grabbing," he said.

During the demonstration, the protestors wrote on the asphalt in front of the company: "Coca-Cola, the enemy of nature". They also staged a performance of a person drowning in a wave of plastic packaging, chanting in chorus: "Coca-Cola, the enemy of people and nature.”

Continue reading.

[cognitivejustice]

Hundreds of people, and a handful of grassroots cooperatives, collectives and networks, are trying to figure out how to build an alternative to capitalist industrial agriculture, and not a moment too soon. 

25% of children in London face hunger during the school holidays. A total of 3.2 million adults in the UK reported not eating for a whole day because they couldn’t afford or access food. 70% of our wildlife has been obliterated in the last 50 years, 64% of our insects in the last 20. Crops contain 40% fewer nutrients than they did 100 years ago. 99% of London’s food comes from outside the city, while almost one third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, one fifth being from transporting it alone.

Where do you even start when the industrial model has wrecked so much? As the Zapatistas say, there are many yeses and one no. Twenty years ago, a group of young growers persuaded Waltham Forest Council to lease them 12 acres on the edge of the city, to start a cooperative farm. Today, OrganicLea distributes hundreds of veg boxes each week at tiered solidarity prices and has trained hundreds of new growers. This is a flagship `Yes’, but there are others. Several food cooperatives redistribute surplus food and buy produce in bulk to cut costs. At least three community cafes sell high-quality food at variable rates people can afford, providing vital refuges in a gentrifying, hostile city. And dozens of community gardens practice regenerative ways of caring for the land, reclaiming small pockets of the city and tending the otherwise eroded agency of its inhabitants. 

From the food forest started in an abandoned church garden by XR activists, to the healing herb gardens cultivated by the Community Apothecary (a collective offering affordable herbal medicine) to Time To Grow! (TTG) a project helping people grow food for the community in unused private gardens, there’s an endless appetite here for experimenting with localised alternatives to capitalist agriculture. And in these times of worsening climate unravelling, of desperate isolation, of profound (however artificial) resource scarcity, growing food with each other feels like a wise move. 

The youth-led collective Climate Vanguard explains how growing food in the community can be part of building a transformative mass movement by thinking of them as “climate survival programmes”. Just as the Black Panther Party’s breakfast programs were key to building popular power, growing can be a way to ameliorate the worse effects of climate breakdown and build the power we need to transform the economic system causing it. 

[rjzimmerman]

Montana’s top court delivers rare victory for climate activists. (Washington Post)

Excerpt from this story from the Washington Post:

Montana’s permitting of oil, gas and coal projects without consideration for climate change violates residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, upholding a landmark ruling in a case brought by youth activists.

The 6-1 ruling is a major, and rare, victory for climate activists, who have tried to use the courts to force action on government and corporate policies and activities they say are harming the planet. In their decision, the Montana justices affirmed an August 2023 ruling by a state judge, who found in favor of young people alleging the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by promoting the use of fossil fuels.

Melissa Hornbein, a senior attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center and attorney for the plaintiffs, said the decision would force Montana state agencies to assess the greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts of all future fossil fuel projects when deciding whether to approve or renew them.

“This ruling clarifies that the Constitution sets a clear directive for Montana to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which are among the highest in the nation on a per capita basis, and to transition to a clean, renewable energy future,” Hornbein said in a statement.

In a statement issued after the ruling, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) said the justices’ ruling would lead to “perpetual lawsuits that will waste taxpayer dollars and drive up energy bills for hardworking Montanans.”

Sonny Capece, the executive director of the Montana Petroleum Association, said the ruling could have wide-ranging effects on industry as well as other sources of greenhouse gas emissions, such as landfills, local government services and universities.

[meret118]

But Black Friday has also reached beyond U.S. borders. In the past decade, reports of other countries adopting post-Thanksgiving shopping deals—usually without the Thanksgiving—have proliferated. So has the chaos associated with the shopping frenzy. In Brazil, hordes of people flooded malls in 2017 for Black Friday deals on TVs. In France, climate activists held “Block Friday” protests in 2019 to denounce the rampant consumerism of the day. (“Work, consume and shut up, that is the message given to our youth,” demonstrators who gathered outside a mall chanted.) And this year, Amazon workers around the world will stage strikes and protests for better working conditions to coincide with Black Friday for the third year in a row.

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Oh, no! I had no idea this craziness had infected other countries. :(

[adventures-in-mangaland]

I've been seeing posts about Scooby Doo popping up, so I thought I'd share this:

(Source: The Scots Magazine, Feb 2023) Full text below.

This actually happened. I am obsessed!

The passion! The energy!

Amazing!

Such signage!

(Images: Daily Record)

A brilliant effort all round! The children of Scotland saved a pop culture powerhouse the world would be poorer without. I can't believe this. I love this so much.

Text of the article:

FROM THE VAULT

Strange tales from the archives. This month – How furious fans of cancelled cartoon rose up in protest.

By CHRIS Ferguson, Jan 12, 2023 (The Scots Magazine)

THROUGHOUT the ages, principled protest has been a hallmark of youth – a rite of passage for many. Today it is Greta Thunberg and her army of teen climate activists, or Extinction Rebellion protesters, who make headlines.

In the 1960s it was the Vietnam War objectors and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament believers who set out their political agendas.

In later decades young people swelled the ranks of those demanding an end to apartheid in South Africa.

They were at the barricades as then-pm Margaret Thatcher introduced the poll tax and back out again to try to stop the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Another generation, too, had the courage of its convictions. In 1971, youngsters rose in anger at a threat to remove cowardly canine Scooby-doo from their television screens.

This was in February after the cartoon had been running for two years. Although the decision not to commission another series had been taken in the US, the BBC was the target of fans’ fury because it had to pass on the bad news to young viewers.

Within days of the announcement, an army of parka-wearing children sporting knitted jumpers and questionable hairstyles was formed.

Across Scotland children grouped together with placards, just like so many other worthy protesters before them. In Glasgow, the massed kids marched on the BBC Scotland headquarters and, in Dundee, they gathered in outrage in City Square.

Petitions were raised and demonstrations took place across the country and, by April, the BBC announced a further series had been commissioned in the US.

Legend has it these Scots Scooby fans had persuaded the American television executives to reconsider.

Hanna-barbera, the animation company behind Scooby-doo, never forgot the Scottish reaction.

A spokesman for the company said, “We’d never had a response like that before, it was very exciting.”

[Beneath the main text of the article is an illustration of Scooby Doo and the gang accompanied by the pull quote: “An army of parka-wearing children was formed”

The title and byline of the article are also accompanied by a black and white photo of a boy in school uniform sitting with a little black dog in his lap, grinning and holding a sign reading "We've saved Scooby Doo" with an illustration of Scooby. The caption reads: Jimmy Brown fought to save the cartoon."]

[ohholydyke]

The saints manifesting as their patronage

Finding the fiery eyes of St Michael in the freedom fighter, standing in the protest in black bloc and hurling a tear gas canister back at the cops before it can hurt anyone.

Finding St. Paul in the person producing scathing zine after zine, scattering them throughout churches when the sanctuary’s empty and in the streets, filled with long letters criticizing the failures of those who do not love as they ought to love.

Finding St. Hildegard in the chronically ill academic, gifted with extraordinary visions and analysis and channeling it into frenzied work between pouring her heart out in advice to anyone who needs it late at night in the school library.

Finding St. Julian in the old lady at the bus stop who shares a cigarette and tells you that it’s okay, honey, everything’s about love, and god doesn’t judge you for feeling like you’re at rock bottom.

Finding St. Theresè in the nun, the custodian, the lunch lady, the street sweeper, the child who stays behind to pick up after the others before leaving, serving others in love and humility with a smile on her face and moving others to gentleness in return.

Finding St. Francis in the park ranger, in the conservation activist, in the climate advocate, demanding care for the poor and the non human peoples of the world.

Finding St. Joan of Arc in the youth movements for justice, in the young students catalyzing change by refusing to just be seen and not heard, in the community leaders and defenders and your older sibling who teaches you how to hold your head up and punch harder if someone tries to punch you.

Finding St. Dismas in the shoplifter, who meets your eyes before you look away and pretend to not see anything, in the confession booth, in the person shunned by the rest of the parish who lives and breathes devotion

Finding St. Martha in the housewife, the cleaning lady, the waitress, the service worker, who shoulders the weight of responsibility with ease and strength beyond imagination.

Finding St. Mary Magdalene in the death doula, the mortician, the funeral agent who prepare the body after death, and ensure it is properly cared for during and after the burial.

Just….seeing the saints in our human community as well as our spiritual one.