March 2005
The Promises of Gov. Gregoire
Now that Chris Gregoire is governor—can we agree on that already?—Evergreen News will begin regular updates on her progress toward meeting campaign promises. As early endorsers of Gregoire (see our Feb. 2004 issue), EM hopes to report many promises delivered.
First, let’s talk reality. You are only as good a leader as the top officials in your administration. So far, so good for Gregoire.
She named Seattle attorney and longtime environmental activist Jay Manning to be the state’s ecology director (a position Gregoire once held). Manning has been president of the private Washington Environment Council. He is a good choice, especially as someone who can speak his mind and not worry about political fallout.
Case in point: In a Post-Intelligencer guest column last spring, Manning and co-writer Billy Frank Jr. took former Gov. Gary Locke and the state legislature to task for “trying to pull a fast one in the wee hours of the regular session and pass bills that would have weakened our state’s water laws.” Frank is chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.
Manning and Frank went on to explain that state industry and agriculture represent more than 80 percent of the public water supply used each year. The guest columnists were most alarmed at the proposed exemptions from clean water laws granted to big water irrigators and others.
It’s good to know Manning will be watching our water from his place in Gregoire’s inner circle. One environmentally friendly heads-up: Manning will take on a brainstorming project during his early months on the job to “decide as a state what we want our environment to be like 15 years from now,” said Gregoire.
One likelihood: That environment will include a smoke-free indoors in all public places (look out, bar smokers). When the governor reappointed the popular Mary Selecky to another term as director of the state Department of Health, Gregoire and Selecky both pledged to work toward a statewide smoking ban in all public places. They plan to make their case based on secondhand smoke.
Gregoire has indicated she might be willing to accept compromise legislation that still allows smoking in bars and other places frequented only by adults. Let’s hope the former state Attorney General who led 46 states to reach the monstrous Big Tobacco settlement reconsiders any softening of a total public smoke-out. In any case, EM will be watching and reporting. —Bob Condor
This Thrift Shop Saves Money, Pets
Money doesn’t usually do two things at once; it generally pays for one item and does that very well. But what if your dollars could do more than that? If you are a thrift store shopper, there is a new store where profits go toward low-cost animal spay/neuter clinics.
Project Hope for the Animals, a nonprofit, has set up Altered Space Thrift Store at 12529 Lake City Way in Seattle for just that purpose. Billions of dollars are spent nationwide on putting down unwanted animals. Patty Yount, manager of the thrift store, hopes that supporting spay/neuter services will decrease number of pets killed.
“States spend many millions of dollars each year providing animal control services, operating animal shelters for homeless animals, and a horrific amount of those funds are spent on the actual killing and disposal of animals that never find homes,” says Patty. ”We hope to take a more proactive stance and promote prevention.”
Donations (which are tax-deductible) and volunteers will be critical to the success of Altered Space as well. “And besides,” Patty adds, “[the thrift store] is recycling, so it’s good for the environment, too.”
For more information, call (206) 365-1666 or go to www.projecthopefortheanimals.org (under construction). —Miryam Gordon
PBS Debuts First Show on SRI, Biz
Ethical Marketplace, a media company that reports on the growth of responsible business in the global marketplace, has announced the national premiere of “Ethical Marketplace,” a new half-hour weekly television show airing on PBS stations nationwide, debuting March 15. “Ethical Marketplace” will be television’s first national show dedicated to reporting the news, trends, and stories of companies, governments and people worldwide who are redefining success with socially and environmentally responsible practices, investments and lifestyles.
A “financial lifestyle” show, “Ethical Marketplace” will focus each week on the triple bottom line of planet, people and profits. The host will be Simran Sethi, a former MTV news anchor and producer.
“Ethical Marketplace” is the only program to report on these unaccounted-for assets through weekly topics such as FairTrade, renewable energy, and socially responsible investing (SRI), a market that has grown to represent 11 percent of all U.S. investments under professional management, roughly $2.2 trillion.
Each episode of “Ethical Marketplace” includes in-studio and field-based segments such as “Walking the Talk,” and examines the overall topic from multiple viewpoints such as “Appreciating Assets” and “Earth Ethics.” Every company featured on “Ethical Marketplace” is vetted by a screening process to ensure that it supports a socially and environmentally responsible business model. The “Ethical Marketplace” series is being made possible by underwriting from the Media Venture Collective. —B.C.
Cyber Learning at Fremont Center
Sooner or later, your computer will outlive its usefulness—for you. InterConnection, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization, knows just the right person to take it off your hands. It recently opened a computer reuse and learning center (CRLC) in Fremont. The Center takes in used computers, monitors and computer peripherals, teaches computer maintenance and repair skills to local community members, recycles non-working computer items and provides refurbished computers to volunteers and nonprofit organizations.
The program provides a free computer and monitor to volunteers who help out at the
Center. Volunteers include students from Ballard High School, low-income folks who can’t afford computers and disabled people from the Tacoma-based nonprofit CenterForce.
Computer monitors contain heavy metals that are harmful to the environment and are not accepted by solid waste agencies, so Total Reclaim, the local electronics recycler, recycles monitors for InterConnection.
All personal computers, working or not, are accepted at no charge. Monitors, printers and scanners are accepted for minimal fees. A charitable tax-deductible receipt is provided for all donations of computer items. There is no limit on the number of computer items that can be donated. All hard drives are removed from computers and erased using Department of Defense standards.
Hours to donate equipment are 1 to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 to 3 p.m. Saturday. Donation site: 124 N. 35th St., Seattle. For more information, go to www.computers.interconnection.org. —M.G.
The Death of Liberal Education?
Inside the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Norlin Library, generations of students have long scurried past a large wall covered with black and white 8 by 10 photographs. Seldom does anyone stop to examine the hundred or so portraits of smiling professors, generally benign and usually unremarkable. But the picture of longtime American Indian Movement advocate and Ethnic Studies prof Ward Churchill is legendary. His wiry, shoulder-length hair, stoic expression and signature dark sunglasses give off a defiant revolutionary vibe, provoking many a double take and furthering the 57-year-old intellectual and activist’s on-campus air of intrigue.
But the Che chic doesn’t fly for conservatives who see Churchill as the ultimate poster boy for the left-wing radical monopoly that has infiltrated higher education. In Colorado this carries a special weight, as Republican Gov. Bill Owens has sought legislation to “diversify” faculty hiring practices to get more conservative instructors on university rosters. The state is also home to a voracious College Republicans network that, under the guidance of a local libertarian think-tank, has made Colorado a major front in the campus conservative movement’s national war against their progressive peers and professors.
This battle once again flared to a head early last month, when an essay written by Churchill in 2001 incited what bizarrely became national controversy. In the essay, written in the hours after the September 11 attacks, Churchill poses contentious questions about America’s role in provoking the assault. In its more incendiary moments, Churchill’s essay compares those killed in the World Trade Center to Nazis, calling them “little Eichmanns,” technocrats who had a role in their country’s economic power and its foreign policy, which included the 1991 Gulf War. The essay went under the radar for three years until February, when Churchill was invited to speak at New York State’s Hamilton College. Students and families of 9/11 victims staged protests, and Hamilton officials eventually cancelled the event, citing “death threats.”
Highlights of the media feeding frenzy that followed included Churchill’s story making its rounds through the major national news outlets and even onto the floors of the Colorado House and Senate, where in a resolution his sentiments were officially denounced as “evil and inflammatory.” Gov. Owens called for him to resign or be fired, and talk-radio wonks demanded his arrest for sedition. In an act of contrition, Churchill resigned from his position as chair of the ethnic studies department, though at the time of this writing he still retains his tenured professorship and continues to stand by his scholarship. His continued lack of repentance has prompted some of the state’s Republican lawmakers to propose a cut to CU’s state funding in the amount of Churchill’s salary, $100,000, unless the school fires the outspoken activist.
At the center of this controversy is the very real and growing threat to campus free speech. As some have pointed out, Churchill—with his deliberate extremism and self-made image as a political provocateur—is an easy target. Still, the ongoing intensity of outrage over a paper published years ago by a man who has been a liberal firebrand for decades sends a clear message to outspoken professors nationwide. —Jared Jacang Maher
Greenpeace Gives Peace a Chance
At a time when environmental groups are facing questions about their own mortality and rethinking strategies for surviving Bush’s second term, Greenpeace USA—the environmental group best known for in-your-face, laws-be-damned direct action—is getting in touch with its inner Gandhi.
In the last few years, the group has trained activists for such harrowing and gymnastic acts as scaling the 700-foot smokestack of a dirty Pennsylvania coal plant, ambushing a cargo boat carrying mahogany from Brazil, and battling logging operations in Oregon and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
This year’s biggest planned action? A kayaking and trekking expedition through the Arctic. And the goal is not to face off with Exxon folks on oil rigs or shield baby seals from club-brandishing hunters, but to document the magnificent yet melting ecosystem and beam images of it to the Greenpeace website and hopefully beyond. Some say this represents a softening of tactics. Greenpeace USA executive director John Passacantando begs to differ.
He maintains that a peaceful presentation of compelling images from the threatened Arctic will be a powerful tool. “It’s time to rebuild the base. First you have to help people see that which they love—pristine nature, children—then you can show them the destruction and they can get angry,” he said. “But they need to love it first. The public needs to be inspired to understand why saving green earth and public health matters. We have to speak to their hearts with stories that are dramatic and stunning and beautiful.”
In other words: Time to back off from battlefield tactics and try to win over the hearts and minds of those who’ve lost touch with the values of the movement.
This thinking is right in line with arguments coming out of the Death of Environmentalism debate: that environmental activists have fine-tuned the art of scaring the public (and, with prattle about parts per million, boring them), but still have no grasp of how to inspire people. It also reflects a growing realization among progressives that a litany of detailed policy prescriptions doesn’t win as many votes as a simple, values-based story line.
And then there’s the fact that battlefield tactics have brought Greenpeace more trouble during the Bush administration than in previous years. In 2004, more Greenpeace activists faced felony charges than ever in the group’s history, according to Passacantando. In fact, criminal charges were brought against the organization as a whole by John Ashcroft’s Justice Department in response to a 2002 protest against mahogany shipments from Brazil, an unprecedented government move to quash environmental direct action.
Passacantando doesn’t believe that all the old Beltway strategies of environmental organizations should be thrown out, but, he says, “The current political moment calls for a shift in tactics. We appreciate that there are those in the D.C. trenches fighting the rollbacks, but we believe that ever since Bush has come into office there’s less to be gained there than in efforts to rally the base.... [W]hen you get into an era when the forces of government are aligned against you, then your efforts are best spent elsewhere.”
Even as he steers Greenpeace in a new direction, Passacantando isn’t ruling out the possibility of old-school, down-and-dirty pranks: “If people think we’re going soft, all the better. It’s always good to have that added element of surprise.” —Amanda Griscom Little (writes the Muckraker column for Grist Magazine)
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