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.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy