Above all, the worldwide People’s Climate March on Sept. 21 must bury King C.O.N.G.: Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas.
Which also means abolishing corporate personhood and saving the internet.
The fossil/nuclear corporations have been given human rights but no human responsibilities. They’re about to gut our most crucial means of communication.
They’re programmed to do just one thing: make money. If they can profit from killing us all, they will.
Ironically, we now have the technological power to get to Solartopia—a socially just, green-powered planet.
But our political, economic and industrial institutions answer to Big Money, not to us or the Earth.
On Sept. 21 some of us will carry to the UN a petition with more than 150,000 signatures, demanding that Fukushima be turned over to a global authority.
This petition was personally delivered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last Nov. 7. We’ve never gotten a response.
Meanwhile, Tokyo Electric Power makes huge profits from the “clean-up” at Fukushima. It’s turned much of the labor force over to organized crime. And more than 300 tons of radioactive liquid still pour into the Pacific every day, while downwind children suffer a 40-times-normal thyroid cancer rate.
A powerful new insider report says another Fukushima could easily occur at California’s Diablo Canyon, surrounded by FIVE known earthquake faults. Similar dangers plague other reactors worldwide.
Nuclear power makes global warming worse.
So do coal, oil and gas.
March organizer Bill McKibben says fracked gas is just as bad for global warming as coal. Oil is even worse.
But we’re in the midst of a great revolution. Solartopian technologies—solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels, mass transit, increased efficiency—are all plunging in price and soaring in efficiency. They can completely green-power our Earth. They can allow individuals and communities to control our energy supply, democratizing our society.
But they can’t come without transforming the corporation.
As long as our chief economic engine has no mandate but to make money, dominates our political system, claims legal personhood and is not held accountable for the damage it does, our species is doomed.
Congress is now debating a constitutional amendment to strip corporations of their illegitimate, illegal personhood. This must happen to save our democracy and our eco-systems.
But the debate appears virtually nowhere in the corporate media …
…Except for the internet, which the Federal Communications Commission may soon gut by killing net neutrality.
Without a free and open internet, and without ending corporate personhood, our efforts to stop King C.O.N.G. and save our ability to live on this planet will go nowhere.
So as we march to stop climate chaos, as we contemplate divestiture campaigns, as we demand a global take-over at Fukushima, as we work to win a Solartopian future … we must see the whole picture.
The corporate beast that’s killing us all draws its power from a lethal mutation with no basis in law or sanity.
Without a free and open internet to bring it down, our struggle to survive is in serious jeopardy.
We can win.
But to do so we must preserve net neutrality, transform the corporation and bury King C.O.N.G. in the Solartopian compost heap.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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