Worldwide Climate Rally and Strike September 20, 2019

Today, September 20, 2019 over 2,800 actions took place over the world, which aim to “disrupt business as usual in order for people to know that this is a really serious moment,” says rally co-organizer Ashley McDermott, who also heads the Asheville chapter of the national Sunrise Movement (Asheville Climate Rally).

This was the largest climate march ever. According to the environmental group, 350.org, four million people participated worldwide including 300,000 in New York. Before the huge Manhattan crowd, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg said, “Our house is on fire. We demand a safe future. Is it too much to ask?” (New York March).

Mika Baumeister Unsplash

This Monday, September 23^rd is the United Nations Climate Summit and on September 21^st is the first UN Youth Climate Summit. The United States will not be represented as we pulled out of the Paris Accords, unfortunately. Greta Thunberg will be speaking at the UN, representing her group, Fridays for Future, and continuing to be a shining example, inspiring other youth to take action on global warming since she believes adults are not doing much to prevent a climate disaster.

It is hard to argue with her logic. She is confused that in the United States, science is disparaged by some leaders, and it is debated. In Sweden, from which she comes, climate change is considered a scientific factual reality, and is not debated. 

If we don’t listen to the youth leading the climate movement, and if e continue to go on with our lives with our heads in the sand, ignoring global warming, melting of polar ice, escalating frequency and severity of storms, dying of the oceans, burning of the Amazon and other forests, extinction of thousands of animal species every year, loss of animal habitat, rising of the oceans, flooding of coastal areas, parching of once verdant earth, and on and on, what will become of us? What will become of the earth on which we depend for our very existence?

Let’s all take the earth pledge and then live by it. Let us cherish, honor, and take care of  our Earth Mother.

Pledge to the Earth

I pledge allegiance to the Earth

And to all life it nourishes:

All growing things, all species of animals,

 all races and genders of people.

I promise to protect all life on our planet.

To live in harmony with nature.

And to share our resources justly.

So that all people can live with dignity.

In good health and in peace.

What Role Can Men Play in Promoting Gender Equality?

Samantha Sophia Unsplash

Gender equality is often seen as a woman’s issue. Yet gender equality for women is good for men as well as women. I’m listing here a few steps that men can take to become allies to women in our struggle for gender equality.

1.    Acknowledge male privilege. Since men were born into a system in which men hold power and women are mostly excluded from it, they tend not to realize the benefits they are getting just from being born a male. A man who transitioned to a woman was amazed at what he was expected to endure as a woman that he does not have to put up with now as a man. 26-year-old Alex Poon, a Wellesley graduate, who transitioned from being a female to a male said, “Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man.” Crossing the Divide

2.    Become allies with women. Simply not displaying male superiority is not enough. Women need men to be allies against all forms of discrimination and abuse. If someone catcalls a woman, call him down. If a man mansplains to a woman, point it out and expose it as demeaning to her. If women are not given proper scope to express their voices, advocate for them with other men.

3.    Challenge toxic masculinity. Don’t buy into stereotypes in which men have to be tough and cannot express their feelings. Become positive role models for other men, to show that caring for ourselves and the well being of others is not just a feminine trait. Listen more than you talk. Encourage boys to respect girls and treat them with kindness and fairness rather than feeling they have to make them into conquests to prove themselves. Girls everywhere are undervalued, undermined, and underestimated.

4.    Help transform power dynamics and support women taking the lead Men often fear that the empowerment of girls and women will mean losing some of their own status, but equality benefits us all. For example, distribution of child care and domestic tasks in the home encourages more satisfying and happy relationships. In the labor force, greater equality leads to better levels of production and satisfaction. Promoting women and girls’ leadership will create positive change in the whole community. Gender equality is not only a human right, but it is the foundation upon which we can build a better, more sustainable world.  We need both men and women fighting together to build an equal, inclusive, progressive society. Are you with us, men?

Pledge to the Earth

I was pleasantly surprised early Friday morning when I heard my elementary school students reciting "The Pledge to the Earth" instead of "The Pledge of Allegiance." I thought perhaps my ears were deceiving me, but then I noticed a huge poster propped up on the whiteboard with words to this Earth pledge. It was exciting! When I substitute teach, at the start of each school day, when the pledge is broadcast over the PA system, I  do not repeat it. I have been refusing to repeat this patriotic pledge decades before NFL football star, Colin Kaepernick and his '49ers teammate Eric Reid, starting taking a knee during the National Anthem played at NFL games. 

The Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United State of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (Francis Bellamy, 1892, socialist minister) 

The words, 'under God' were added by the direction of President Eisenhower, to counter what he believed was the communist threat. Rev. Bellamy's daughter objected, but to no avail.

Not saying the Pledge of Allegiance and not standing for the National Anthem is essentially the same issue. I no longer believe that the U.S. government is upholding human values, much as Kaepernick wished to call attention to the racism and police brutality practiced in the U.S., which is inconsistent with values stated in the National 
Anthem.

Kaepernick and Reid Protesting Racism

 Kaepernick has pretty much been blackballed by the NFL, not being picked up to play in 2017 and subsequent years. His protest has been misconstrued as unpatriotic by the President, some NFL coaches and others. He wasn't protesting the flag and national anthem. He was using his social platform to protest police brutality and the lack of accountability of the justice system toward African Americans.  Healthy protest should be encouraged, not punished. 

I feel a bit apprehensive every time my students watch me as I am silent when I am supposed to be leading them in the "Pledge of Allegiance." I hope I don't get reported to any school administration for my lack of acquiescence to this practice. So far, so good. I am waiting for a student to ask me why I don't recite the pledge. That could be a tricky question to answer.

Here is the "Pledge to the Earth" written by teachers at a school here in Asheville, North Carolina. I added the "and genders" part.

Pledge to the Earth

I pledge allegiance to the Earth

And to all life it nourishes:

All growing things, all species of animals, 

All races and genders of people.

I promise to protect all life on our planet.

To live in harmony with nature.

And to share our resources justly.

So that all people can live with dignity.

In good health and in peace.

Ricardo Resende Unsplash

I love this new pledge. I can get behind it. It is based on neohumanism, a theory which includes all people, plants, animals, and the environment in one interconnected whole, the circle of life. It's a pledge every person in the world could take. I hope we all do. Yay, Mother Earth!

Pull on Those Covers! School Has Started.

For the first time this summer, I woke up at night because I was chilled and had to pull on more covers. Brr! Technically, we still have summer for another month, until September 23rd, the autumn equinox. Yet the weather already feels a little fall-like, Personally, I associate the beginning of the new school term with fall, and since schools have already started up, for me, it is fall.

Photo by Oliver Hale, Unsplash

Why did schools start beginning their fall terms in August, rather than September?

"Some have called long summer breaks a holdover from our agricultural past. That is not true. In fact, in the South, for much of the 20th century, schools took shorter summer breaks so that school could be dismissed in the fall, allowing children to help their parents pick cotton." (https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/opinion/20101126/editorial-longer-summer-breaks-good-for-students-parents)

 When I attended public school in the 50s and 60s, school started after Labor Day. So why did the fall back-to-school time get pushed up to August? Daphne Sasson, an Atlanta native, discusses the issue in an article on CNN. She says that in Atlanta schools first started beginning in August in 1996.She gives some reasons for a start date earlier than the traditional Labor Day date. 1.)There is more instructional time before spring assessments. 2.) Students can finish first semester before the December holiday break, so teachers won't need to review when school starts in January. (https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/living/school-start-dates-august-parents-feat/index.html)

Well, yes, I do get it, but we get less and less summer every year. I know the tourist trade would love for schools to get back to a September start date. Not that I am a fan of the tourist industry, yet in this case, I agree. Students need a longer summer vacation.  Families need time to go on vacations. Children need time to play with their friends.

Photo by Jon Tyson, Unsplash

Maybe it is nostalgia, but I yearn for the days when cooler weather meant that it was the end of summer and kids would start getting ready to go back to school. It seems like we are  rushing kids so much these days. They have to learn facts to regurgitate on assessments. Teachers have to teach to these tests, rather than instilling the love of learning and giving students tools with which to learn. These standardized assessments have changed the way teachers have to teach, or get fired for low scores of their students on the tests. They have changed the way students learn. Instead of learning to solve problems and become critical thinkers, they have to devote much of their time and energy to memorizing and learning the facts that may appear on these tests. So much for progressive education...

I know about this because as a classroom teacher, I was forced to teach to these tests. Some teachers were threatened that if their students didn't measure up, they would lose their jobs. Hard to do in an inner-city school in which my 10th grade students were reading on a 6th grade level when they arrived in my English classes. Some students did better, but a great number needed remedial reading instruction.

My students were not dumb. But school had become so much more than a place to learn. It was a place that if they wore the wrong color, a rival gang member might beat them up. School was a place to either score drugs or try to avoid running into pushers and druggies. School was a place they could get beaten up if they wore expensive athletic shoes that someone else wanted to steal for themselves. School was a place you had to avoid avoid bullies. In other words, the culture of school often overshadowed the instruction that was taking place in the classroom. And so many of my students were homeless or in homes in which parents were drug users and not supporting their child's school life.

My point, I guess, is that the defective educational curriculum with its standardized test requirements drives more than the earlier start dates of schools. Schools must work to collaborate with parents and teachers to create curricula that work for each locality. We must realize that social issues crop into our schools, and hinder learning. We must work to address these non-instructional needs of students--safety, hunger, homelessness, poverty, abuse, teen pregnancy, drug use, gang violence, school shootings, and so much more.

Photo by Jonathan Borba, Unsplash

Today's public school students have so many more challenges they face in school than I did  decades ago. With funding for public schools being cut, and charter schools and expensive private schools getting more and more of the resources, I don't see the problems with public schooling getting better any time soon. We need a transformation in educational pedagogy, which can only happen with an administration that believes in education as a right for all, regardless of race, gender, and social class. We must advocate for such a change. Children are our future.

Bears Then and Now

About a week ago, I ran over a bear on the highway. What was a mamma bear and two cubs doing crossing a major highway? Well, it was a total shock when my car came upon them. I slowed down and swerved, but though I missed the mamma bear, my car struck one of the cubs.

Such a pity! Later when I surveyed the damage to my car, I was not happy to see the driver side front fender hugely dented and the headlight skewed out of place. Thankfully, it still works. Worse is the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think of the baby black bear I killed. In a few seconds, a life was extinguished!

I am reminded of the big brown bear that I saw in a cage at Brown County State Park in Indiana when I was four or five. My Aunt Mickie had a souvenir stand at the park. She took me with her to peddle her wares a few times. What I recall most about those visits to the park was watching the big brown bear in the cage. It was horribly abused by tourists and children who would throw things at it and torment the poor animal. This had to have been one of the few remaining bears in the state as all the bears in Indiana had pretty much been exterminated by hunters around the turn of the 20th century, about the time Charles Major, a resident of my hometown, Shelbyville, wrote his book, Bears of Blue River.

I recently saw the newly refurbished statue of Balsar and his bear cubs on Shelbyville's town circle. He had killed their mother and so made the cubs his pets. At least I had not meant to kill a bear. In Balsar's time, late 1880s to early 1900s, bears were hunted for their fur and to eat. Hard to take that in.

I believe in totems, though I don't think that my totem is a bear. I do
have a sentimental attachment for bears, and have spent many hours on the banks of both the Little Blue and the Big Blue River in Shelbyville, though there were better rivers to fish, as the Big Blue had been polluted by a factory's dumping waste in it for decades. I did love to sit by the rivers and ponder my life. Once I went on a boating excursion to pick up trash off the river. It was pretty disgusting to see how much trash was in my rowboat and in my brother's rowboat when we finished that river trip. Below is a photo I took of the Big Blue a couple of years ago. Pretty muddy!

I am reminded of many trips my best friend since we were six, Bonnie, and I took to that river, picnicking, or just sitting on the banks talking about our lives and our dreams. Beautiful, relaxing times with someone I knew and loved best in the world. Bonnie was struck and killed by a truck two years ago, when she was crossing a highway at night. That was a big loss. She was right by my side when I snapped this photo. Bonnie, who had a tender heart, would have cried with me about the death of that baby bear.

I need to reread Bears of Blue River.There is something mystical about the bears that flow through my life. I will think on that. As in the movie, The Lion King, there is a circle of life. Someone dies, someone is born. I know there will be a new baby bear born somewhere. These thoughts I find soothing. The words of a song I sang in Girl Scouts as a child, come to me. "Peace I ask of thee, o river. Peace. Peace. Peace."

Why Do Some Women Marginalize Other Women?

Recently I had an upsetting experience in which an organization I had been in a leadership role for nearly a decade, abruptly ousted me from that role for a period of time. When that time period was over, we had a meeting which I thought would be about how I would resume my former duties. Instead, I was asked to help rescue a project which the current group could not pull in on time.

I was dumbfounded. When I later asked re: my reinstatement to the board, I was told that there would have to be elections, and I would need to apply. Since I had restarted this organization about ten years ago and had been the key organizer for most of this time, I felt disrespected and cast out for no good reason, except for a conflict with another member, which she has consistently refused to work out.

It caused me to think of how my chorus, Womansong, has chosen to deal with conflicts which come up from time to time. We hired a couple of fantastic diversity trainers who gave us workshops and also some reading materials to support our transition to a more inclusive organization. One of those works is White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun. We identified two of the descriptions of this culture for the chorus to work on together: right to comfort and fear of open conflict.

In these two interlocking issues, leaders of a group  look at those who bring up issues as bringing discomfort, which supersedes any willingness to look at the issues the person is bringing to light. It is typical in white culture that we may feel that our own personal needs and egos need to be protected. We may fear the message of the person who brings up the issue. We may want to keep the status quo.

Some antidotes to these damaging attitudes given by Tema Okun are:
 •role play ways to handle conflict before conflict happens; distinguish between being polite and raising hard issues; don’t require those who raise hard issues to raise them in ‘acceptable’ ways, especially if you are using the ways in which issues are raised as an excuse not to address those issues; once a conflict is resolved, take the opportunity to revisit it and see how it might have been handled differently

•understand that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning; welcome it as much as you can; deepen your political analysis of *racism and oppression so you have a strong understanding of how your personal experience and feelings fit into a larger picture; don’t take everything personally (changework.net)

*I would add sexism, ageism, and classism as I have experienced all these -isms in this and other organizations, unfortunately. 

   It is by looking deeply at the conflicts we encounter in our work with others that we, ourselves, grow, and then, as a result of our own personal growth through the conflicts, allow our groups to come out the other side bigger, better, and more inclusive.

   Racism, sexism, ageism, and classism are regressive and hold us back. Let's begin anew to throw off the inertia and stereotypes of the past and embrace the new, ever more beautiful, and accepting attitudes of the future. Diversity is our strength.

Women's History Month Marches On

Time is running out on Women's History Month. It seems as though it just began and now it is nearly over. Where does the time go?

Women's History Month was created as a national celebration in 1981, when Congress declared the week beginning Mar. 7, 1982, as Women's History Week. In 1987, it became Women's History Month. It's a good time to  celebrate how amazing all women are, and to quote some women who have been role models for me. 

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style." — Maya Angelou, author and poet

"Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture."

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author

"I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim, or to someone else's ignorance." — bell hooks, author and feminist scholar

There are many more women who have inspired me and inspire me still; however, Maya Angelou, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, and bell hooks have been on my mind and there words in my heart this March Women's History Month. May their words inspire you, too. Goodbye, Women's History Month of 2019.