IEN: Call to Action - Trump Can’t Build DAPL Without a Fight

 IEN: Call to Action - Trump Can’t Build DAPL Without a Fight

Water Protectors, cold and exhausted, are rallying again. All i have done thus far is send some coats, and forward some posts. But as the veterans and the native americans and the allies of various kinds out there huddled in tents on the Dakota plains rally for a last stand, I want to know what more I can do. Listen to our three part series on the recent history of NODAPL activism on the digital media platform "It's Hot in Here" to get oriented, if you are only now getting involved.

Meanwhile, the term "intersectionality" has worked its way into the activisit lexicon, and the word "nasty" is getting appropriated and ever better defined to mean creative, disruptive, hard hitting--but not hateful nor illegal--actions (embedded in this show is a great discussion of just that term).

Last sunday, at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Ann Arbor, from the sanctuary during the sermon I heard a great formulation of the intersectionality question. Actually, I heard it on loudspeakers while sitting in the social hall, typing in information on recommendation letter forms for my students who seek to move on from school and make at least a living wage making the world a better place. This is really not corporate consulting, i fear. Then again, maybe the intersectionality of social movements is like a whole new meaning for "mergers"?

While i pondered this, our interim Minister asked:

"why would we hone in on single issue action? None of us leads single issue lives...."

Amen.

So whether water is your thing, or indigenous rights, or fossil fuel transcendance,  be alert (sooo much nuance to the information out there; so many versions of reality...did anyone hear the BBC interview this morning on Russian domestic politics?) We need critical thinking skills more than ever to discern different vantage points and assess them against evidence. Tune in or turn out. Work on a brief or help out on a blockade. Stay hopeful.

SNRE Campfire Again...

It is that time of year again, and how i love the leaves, the logs, the legacies...

http://biotically.blogspot.com/2012/10/spy-in-house-of-logging.html

Country Bee, City Bee

The way Philippe Huau and Jean Francois Mallein handle bees is mesmerizing. They are methodical, almost meditative. Often the only sound I hear above the hum of buzzing bees in their beeyards is an occasional guttural sigh of regret if ever they crush or damage a bee. Mostly they don't. 

Over years of visiting their collaborative queen rearing operation in southern France, my daughter and i have learned to trust their mostly Buckfast bees, which are among the most docile and productive on the planet. We now work without veils, gloves, or even long pants, enjoying the sunny afternoons in the sunflower-strewn countryside. We can feel the breeze of bees' wings near our ears--or the curious crawl of their feet on our forearms--without any alarm (photo of Jean Francois right, by Austin Martin).

To me, it is a dream come true. The U.S. Peace Corps taught me to keep bees in the region of Bukavu (then Zaire), and deployed me in the Central African Republic, with hundreds of hives of Apis mellifera adansonii to monitor. Those bees are far more defensive. That means you spend more time running crazily through underbrush trying to lose the cloud of them that are after you than you do watching their work or tasting their honey (think winnie the poo...but more deadly). For Peace Corps me, it also meant a lot of fat lips, swollen eyes, and itchy fingers or ankles after evenings out with the bees. They seemed expert at finding ways in around the edges of my veil, gloves, socks and shoes. When i think of all the bees that stung me--each one that died to defend their community from my blundering interest in their inner workings--I feel strangely grateful. 

What i should feel is embarrassed.  I looked like I belonged in a P4 containment lab, or a some NASA craft, with all my light colored protective gear covering every square inch of my flesh. The beekeepers i worked with would bother the bees only to harvest honey, and then shimmy up into trees half naked, moving lighting fast with a burning torch of particular grasses prone to confuse or sedate the bees, but ready to burn them if things got out of hand.  I imagine when they think of me they feel amused, for I was the sting magnet--contrasting with the darkness in my white cotton, slower to move through the landscape, sweaty and scared.  But i was hella good natured about it. You have to hand it to Americans for that. When i think of themi feel awe (and of course, concern...many have had to give honey and other food to militias at gunpoint in recent years, or have had to abandon their bush beekeeping altogether for fear of being kidnapped, or worse--if only Americans weren't implicated in the political economies that have armed so many Africas so disastrously). But I digress. 

Today on It's Hot in Here, we'll be talking about a different kind of beekeeping. Not out in the sudano guinean plateaux, nor in the medieval villages of rural France, but right smack in the middle of downtown Philadelphia, city of brotherly love, and bee lore. We'll be talking to Don Shump, a city guy who has seen his share of country beekeeping in Pennsylvania, too. We want to have a conversation about the different cultures of keeping bees that span farms and towns (Photo of Don, left, from his website Philadelphiabee.com, accessed October 7 2016). 

With the first bees ever making it onto the endangered species list this month, those of us behind the radio show want to keep on having the pollinator conversations; you can find some from our archives about urban beekeeping in Detroit,  and about wild bees on Michigan farms, along with more info about Jean Francois Mallein and Philippe Huau. 

Wish JF and Philippe were here this evening, to sit down with Don around a glass of Pastis. I know we'd talk of the politics of selective breeding in bees...does colony collapse disorder warrant such blatant manipulation of nature? Do farmers who need their crops pollinated see the answer to that differently than the boutique beekeepers of urban parks and rooftop gardens? 

Tune in to learn more, and start your weekend with a little Friday afternoon buzz...stream us live at wcbn.org (or get the fab new app for that from the apple store). 

Environmental justice: are organizations making fair progress? - environmentalresearchweb

And the beat goes on...Alejandro Colsa Perez wrote from London this week,

 with news that people are still thinking through our first flush of questions on how grassroots environmental movements formalize into Environmental Justice Organizations, and what challenges that presents for accountability to their original bases and places.

Great to get science media attention for such social questions. Check out the story here:  Environmental justice: are organizations making fair progress? - environmentalresearchweb

We also found formalization creates opportunities to expand networks, and knowledge bases. This teamwork connects our graduates across their respective work places in upstate New York (Sarah), coastal Michigan (Katie), Washington DC's EPA circles (Bernadette), and European policy Circles (Alejandro). New networks, still being developed and some using the EJOLT atlas and academic partnerships with Barcelona, will connect our new cohort of environmental justice students. Hope they can build on the legacy of this careful work to identify not only organizational trends but also empirical evidence about the top 40 most influential environmental justice cases in the US since the movement's inception.  Stay tuned...

and thanks for your legacy here Alejandro!

Krampus Dance

After doing the rounds of a few earnest and convivial holiday parties in Ann Arbor last Saturday night, I struck out for Ypsilanti's Krampus Ball. From the demon jingle babies in the windows of the Dreamland Theater upon arrival, it was clear this would be a change of pace... 

So many people were doing so much work to make the Krampus magic. Steadfast radio personality Mark Maynard manned the keg, ceaselessly filling cups with cold amber ale. The dj's flung confetti intermittently on the dancers, while feverishly consulting about what tunes to play and pointing the strobe where it most needed to go. The puppeteer climbed up and ensured his characters were dancing to the beat, working both hands as his associates lovingly fed him speared sausage chunks on toothpicks so as not to interrupt the dance of those tiny creatures. 

There had clearly been hours of prep work in some of the costumes, from the elaborate makeup with chiaroscuro effects drawn on the naked torso of the most terrifying and regal Krampus, to the blood smeared dentist elf from rudolf like you have never seen him...





Then again there was the work of WEARING these no doubt unbearably hot and sweaty getups, especially a carpet-like goat costume, or the taped together crutches and stilts of the largest Krampus, whose embrace i won't soon forget. On the dance floor as during the parade he made me feel like beauty, with her beast who lumbered painstakingly, purposefully through the crowds. 

All of this was a labor of love, that had no apparent qualms about being  obvious, messy, collective, boisterous, creative, and self consciously counter-commercial-christmas-culture. It was a night of play but also work, together, to resurrect and celebrate the spirits of christmas that cannot inhabit the bourgeois mantle or hearth; that are anathema  to expensive parcels arranged under glowing trees in grand foyers with the clink of ice cubes that signals the single malt has begun. PBR cans littered the countertops and arms of chairs, and were handed out merrily more or less regardless of participants' ability to pay (thank you, Ypsilanti!). Debauchery never seemed so democratic. 


Switches were wielded with delight, as were dry ice, balloons, beautiful strange puppets,strobes, curtains  (and yes, you can pay attention to the man behind the curtain). The final implements emerged during the parade at the end, which featured electric base and lit torches that brought bar-goers into the streets, woke sleeping dogs and brought residents to their windows (see footage, here). 

The torches, far from being a symbol of those coming to inflict terror and torture on those who might be magical--or even just different-- instead took their place alongside the brightly colored lit wreaths on each lamp post of Michigan Avenue. They marked this season's rituals and helped all of us move through the darkness of these times, together.

A jolt of environmental justice

What are the top forty environmental justice cases in U.S. history in terms of media attention, litigation, policy shifts and public opinion?  

You can read the list and learn about how we made it by reading an article published by Bernadette Grafton, Alejandro Colsa Perez, Katherine Hintzen, Sara Orvis, Paul Mohai and myself in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities available at Taylor & Francis Online.   We produced this recently published work with a diverse team of masters students in deep dialogue with activists and practitioners who have created this field and taken it to where it is today. 

Interested? There are several ways to learn more. Take a look at the website for the pioneering EJOLT project that set us on this path, and look out for a forthcoming article in Environmental Research Letters that goes into more depth on our interviews with leaders in the EJ field.  Or take a look at the start and end of the videos here (and below) from a panel on gender and environmental justice at the Environmental Justice Symposium hosted at Purdue University in April 2014 where I spoke alongside three remarkable experts:  Laura Zanotti, Sharlene Mollett, and Rosemary Ahtuangaruak.    

Following Rosemary's lead in beginning by thinking about our mothers, I reflected on gender inequalities in my own family, and also in field sites and institutions within which  I have learned and worked. Rosemary's words helped me think about the ways our research only scratches the surface of EJ in the USA, in terms of types of conflicts, who studies them, and ways of experiencing them that are mediated by gender and generational issues. More broadly, I argued against the feminization of "applied" versus basic research, and of collaborative versus solo authored work in many fields. 

 

This recent publication affirms the potential of unabashedly "applied" and "collaborative" research, whether in the forests of the Central African Republic with foragers and engaged anthropologists like Melissa Remis and her students, or online with maps and networks about inequality and environmental rights with visionaries like Joan Martinez Alier, Paul Mohai, and these young professionals. These are not just two different "sites" from which my "lab" extracts "data." These are places I where I have apprenticed. Gender specialized labor in forest foraging has taught me much about how to engage in balanced reciprocity in my collaborations with others, and how to navigate the academic forest, with its seasonality, its bounty, and also its dangers.

    

As for current transnational unfurling of the EJ banner, there is a strong need for further research, and it is voiced powerfully by Rosemary, in this earnest question and answer session  on Africa, Amazonia, Panama and the Arctic. The entire group at Purdue's EJ symposium was stellar; you can get a sense by reading the special issue of the journal, or watching the videos, recorded for live feed (or "Boilercast"--no, really...listen to the Q and A sessions and you'll hear how that term rolls off the tongue!) 

Thanks  Boilermakers!

Cage Free...a magic remedy?

Recent news only confirms the continuation of strong consumer preference for cage-free eggs; a few years back, it tipped even fast food giant Macdonald's into making that change in their food supply chain (see the NPR  source for this picture of a cage-free facility in Hershey, PA; see also  Wall Street Journal).

It throws me back to days on friends' farms in recent summers, collecting eggs. My friend Marie until recently ran an egg farm near Montluçon in the heart of the French region known as L'Allier. She was ahead of the current cage-free curve. She kept her hens inside a large stone barn, with a doorway where they could also walk outside into an outdoor pen. Neither space was very large, nor did either boast the newest technologies for what the industry terms "manure removal" from cage free egg production facilities. But it produced lots and lots of tasty fresh eggs, and people came from miles around to pick them up, or met Marie and her partner, Bernard, at local markets to pick up their eggs.

Marie also grew gorgeous vegetables and herbs in and around huge hoop houses full of cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, verbena. The contrast struck me and my (then) seven year old daughter--such a difference between the sunlight and freshness of the plant production areas, and the dank, feather-strewn muck of the hen house (of course fresh straw went down as often as possible...but let's be honest, chickens are pretty filthy). But it wasn't just muck that struck; there was also the cluck. As we went to collect eggs or scatter grain outside in the  yard for them to eat, we joined many more timid hens in dodging the aggression of the bigger bullies. Many of the hens seemed stressed, racing around noisy and alarmed;  still, none were confined.

Our own quarters that week were the airy rooms of the old farmhouse, renovated for weekend visitors and tourists. The pastel wall paper, original woodwork, and new skylights were completed with en suite showers. In the morning we would creak open the old wooden shutters, then throw the french windows wide to take in the breeze and golden rays of rising sun on the eastern side of the building. At that hour, all was more or less quiet on the western, egg producing front.

But that belies the fact that almost any farm is a mucky, clucky, multi-species system.  In this case, a purebred german shepherd was variously doted upon and chained or reprimanded. His presence helped keep the hens safe from predators, but his purview seemed cruelly restricted...no roaming the hills with sheep for him. And Marie herself was moving slowly, having made a miraculous recovery from a tractor accident that had left her all but brain dead. Bernard had painstakingly stripped and repainted the guest rooms, renovating as she lay in the hospital for nearly a year, telling himself each day that she would again be awake to accompany him in the work, and enjoy the newfound beauty of the historic structure.

One day she did wake up; but this is no fairy tale. Farm life is hard on the humans and animals involved. It is  less amenable to reform and improvement than one might assume, given naive consumer preference for a label like "cage free." I was reflecting on this one evening, as Bernard stood in the historic old farm kitchen making us a spectacular chicken and cured lemon tagine in moroccan earthenware, Marie rolled cigarettes by the hearth, watching him with the German Shepherd at her feet. They spoke of their unhappiness in that life, of the lack of friends and community, the crushing regularity of the daily tasks.

Marie comes from a long line of sheep farmers in that very region. Returning home to her roots she was realizing a dream of having her own farm there. She was raised as the one girl in a family of five or seven strapping boys, but she can shear a herd of sheep faster than any of her brothers.  Bernard's past is far more wide ranging; his talents are many, his parties are legendary (if one can recall anything in detail about them) and his frustrations with closed, normative social worlds--urban or rural--lead him perilously close to rage at times.  To make matters more complicated, Bernard's appetite for talking of sex is insatiable--during my visit I came to think of him as a kind of sexual extension agent amidst the sometimes prudish, often stoic denizens of cage-free countrysides where talk tends more to the weather, or the whereabouts of a missing animal.

I was glad for the language barrier excluding my daughter from the detailed discussions. As she nibbled tender chicken from the bone, Bernard happily crowed from the cookstove where he was already on to his next triumph: a molten chocolate dessert made from loads of eggs and butter. His grey ponytail bobbing up and down as he gesticulated, he told us all about the wealthy girls from Neuilly whom he had made scream for more in their pantries during his younger days as a cook and caterer, working parties in the Paris area. Marie chuckled patiently, until he got so carried away that he burned the chocolate a bit. Cursing, he threw the concoction in the sink and, stopping only to remark briefly on the shapeliness of my knee poking out from under my skirt, dashed out to a local patisserie for an approximation of his intended dessert that nonetheless delighted my daughter.

He and Marie did sell the farm near Montlucon, and instead bought an historic inn closer to the heart of Auvergne, Le Buron de la Coudaire in Renaudie. This spectacular and relatively empty rural region Puy de Dome boasts loads of what the french call "baba cools" or hippies, returning to the land as farmers. Bernard and Marie spent happy years before his death last summer, focused more on producing food for their visitors at the auberge, gathering mushrooms, nuts and plants, and making their own pottery. I like to think it suited them better. I don't know what happened to all their hens, but I also hope the German Shepherd, who went with them, was happier too.


Meanwhile, back in Michigan, Naina and I have found fresh eggs to gather closer to home. The hens on Sandy Acres Farm live in conditions that seem to me much more humane than most...they  have a very large yard in which to roam, and a few of them roam even beyond the fence, which doesn't seem to bother our friends Shelley and Joe, the couple who built and run the farm. "Oh, there is a rogue hen or two, don't worry about them" they said, as they left us to farm sit for a few days this summer (I snapped the photo on the left at a fall harvest event on the farm).


There are turkeys, too, at Sandy Acres, and large families of wild turkeys strutting lazily across the fields where sheep and cattle graze, and gaze quietly at the birds' ceaseless scrabbling for scraps from the huge organic vegetable garden out back. When night falls at Sandy Acres the poultry retreat to a small henhouse they share with some rabbit cages. The rabbits, too, now have an outdoor yard for their daytime pleasure...it has taken years for this farm family to install all the fencing, shedding, and interior space they need. With each passing summer more gets completed, and they breath a sigh of relief at the gradually improving quality of life for themselves and their various animals. I am always mindful of the sweat and tears involved in every single post hole...the farm is made of straw bale adobe construction, and is entirely solar powered, so heavy equipment is limited to a minimum (see photo, by Oliver Uberti, for a feature on the Trumpeys as Homesteaders of the Year in last year's Mother Earth News).

The whole operation is a life dream concocted over ales during a study abroad in Scotland, where Joe and Shelley met. But this is no fairy tale either. The Sandy Acres chickens likely have a richer and more varied diet than almost any on the planet. The chemical free farm has a density and diversity of insect life that has made it a haven for bees when beekeepers for miles around are losing colonies each winter. My daughter and I were delighted by the brilliant yellow yolked fresh eggs for breakfast each morning, but terrorized by the roosters as we collected  eggs each morning. We couldn't help noting with consternation the number of hens missing feathers, or even suffering from lacerations on their backs from the roosters' reproductive attentions. We would always keep an eye on the hoses lying around the farmyard, lest we needed to turn them on those aggressive roosters ourselves. It all brings home the dynamics of aggression that are inherent in much animal life, and that are managed in part through large scale killing of male chicks in favor of females who can produce eggs for human consumption. Guiltily, we often longed ourselves for a barnyard with fewer roosters. 

Robert Paehlke talks in his book Democracy's Dilemma  (MIT Press, from which I borrow this photo) about major historical moments in the evolution of capitalist and democratic systems: agrarian, industrial, and finally today's "electronic capitalism." He notes in his conclusions to that book that in an era of electronic capitalism, the conscience of the system as it struggles with democratic principles and processes will perforce reside with consumer concerns and choices. Such concerns and choices DO drive the mass production of female chicks for the mass production of eggs in massive facilities that are by most metrics inhumane. So, what are the politics of possible futures from the vantage points of producers? where are their voices and visions in the system? What of the fact that more and more of us are trying our hand at production as one step on the path of what indigenous scholarship terms "restoration of right relations"? 

Steps indeed: small increments of movement in the right direction, on long, and perilous paths to change.  So few simple fixes exist for the quality of life of production animals. Incremental improvements are crucial, even if they appear to some as steps backward in terms of the cleanliness or technological sophistication of large scale agriculture. As for any complex system, management measures must be adaptive, and honestly acknowledge big challenges that defy the arrogance of "management." 

When it comes to our food, we must render more visible the various forms of violence, from structural and technological to relational and physical, that have for so long characterized human manipulations of other life forms upon which we rely.  They are, after all, not only about our "dominion" over nature; they are about our destiny as a species in relation to one another.  John Lewis began his graphic novel, March, a chronicle of a formidable career in civil rights and advocacy for democratic process in...the hen house. Growing up on his family's farm, it was grappling with the birds' alertness and vulnerability, their ineluctable fate of becoming and making food, that sensitized him to what justice could mean among men and women.