AM I A FANATIC? OH, YES!
I am a fanatic for love of this earth and the earth’s creatures which include a few people I have to admit, that I don’t even like. But yes, I am a fanatic For Gaia. For the mother in us all, men and women alike. For the mother consciousness in us who recognize that the recent earthquakes, storms, landslides, fires are not Gaia's revenge as one popular book contends, but Gaia's sorrow and Gaia's increasingly very public global warnings. But what do these warnings mean?
That we all must become fanatical if the earth itself is to remain a place where humans can breathe and live out human lives? I believe Gaia is telling us this. She is speaking to us. She is calling us to action. You don’t want to do actions? Well, I didn’t either. But I became consumed with the necessity of doing them anyway twenty years ago when I was living in the Clayoquot Sound. The unbelievable disintegration of the mountains and streams due to clear cutting made me a true believer.
Gaia is a tough taskmaster. She guides me into peaceful civil disobedience, out on to the various blockades, both in urban spaces and public forests, into the courts, into prison, into the political area, speaking, writing, wherever the struggle for the earth is going on, which is everywhere. Can everybody do this? No. People have jobs, kids, financial responsibilities, schooling, health problems, all of the preoccupations of necessity that modernity brings. But any social revolution has two different thrusts, one consisting of actions and one of support for the actions.
Our political, economic, legal and military leaders are guiding us to a collapse of the earth’s life support systems. We have to get out from under the political and legal structures that allow corporations and governments who manage corporations to accelerate the destruction of our very earth.
I have tried to sue Kevin Falcon and Kiewit Sons and the West Vancouver Police for malfeasance and collusion to deprive all of us protesters at Eagleridge Bluffs of the protections of the criminal code. But there is this handy bit of legal ruling in place to protect corporations and governments from serious legal challenges: citizens cannot sue on the grounds that injunctions are injurious to citizens and should not be used in eco disputes because this is called a collateral attack on the injunction that one was arrested under. It is fixed in law that one cannot complain about the very unfairness, called abuse of process, of a ruling that sends one to prison simply because there’s a legal rule that says this isn’t allowed. Isn’t that incredible? However, the judge has ruled that I can go forward, with some stipulations, with that part of my suit that is claiming assault for virtue of an action by a Kiewit employee which was encouraged, I claim, by the inflammatory public utterances of Kevin Falcon, Minister of Transportation. So we’ll see.
But the courts of BC are only one area where Gaia is beckoning. Our rivers are calling us. They are being dammed, privatized, fish killed. The wild animals are calling us from dying, denuded forests. They want to
Thank you, Betty, for helping me remember that there are kindred spirits and like-hearted souls out there, also doing the good work.
ReplyDeleteI received this in an email exchange today with a good friend in Toronto: "I know how you feel, I know it's bigger than important, I know it is your calling, but try and remember that not all of us think of it all day all the time."
Here's what I said in return: "Here's my wish. That everyone who is privileged enough to know where their next meal is coming from give some of their time, money and/or energy to the global climate change fight to save the world. I'm not saying that everyone has to become an eco-activist and no longer have any fun (geez, even Peter and I have fun sometimes, and we're at this full-time), but that everyone who possibly can should become a defender of the future, for the sake of all future generations, of all species.
"So if you're an executive assistant, you're now an executive assistant *and* someone who helps fight global climate change. If you're a teacher, you're teaching whatever you teach in a way that creates the best possible future. If you're an executive with a large salary, you're also an investor in and promoter of renewable energy technologies (which are, by the way, bringing double digit returns on investments!). If you're a doctor, you're a doctor AND someone who helps heal the Earth. If you're an actor, you act and activate and motivate. If you're a grocery store clerk, you talk with the people whose groceries you check through about how we're going to save the world for your children and grandchildren.
If we all did our little bit, no one would have to do it all."
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Betty, for doing your FANATICAL little bit to help leave behind a planet worth living for.