Toban Black

A post that I put together for the Waging Nonviolence web site -
“An invitation from the Mobilization for Climate Justice coalition”

This post introduces the U.S.-based Mobilization for Climate Justice, as well as similar critiques and activism associated with that Climate Justice coalition. As I indicate, the organizers in and around that coalition also address a range of energy & carbon issues (including tar sands pollution, and biofuel land grabs) — along with interrelated and more apparent global warming concerns. Their approach to these ecological issues is based on prior environmental justice critiques and activism, as well as wider opposition towards corporations, and other international market structures.

Climate Justice Action is another “climate justice” coalition. They seem to be a lot more connected with countries outside of North America — whereas The Mobilization for Climate Justice is very U.S.-based.

The phrase “climate justice” also is used by various other people — some of whom probably wouldn’t know anything about Climate Justice Action or the Mobilization for Climate Justice. The concept of climate justice was around for years before those two coalitions were formed, so the phrase has wider traction. Of course, the actual uses of that term are somewhat inconsistent; there is no absolute consensus about what ‘climate justice’ is.

Michael Glotz-Richter (in this post) -
“Studies have shown that, on average, most cars are parked for 23 hours a day. Do we really want to use so much valuable space for storing vehicles?”

The start of that post conveys how parked cars are like elephants in our rooms (so to speak); that is, the post elaborates on how we refuse to acknowledge and re-assess how much space we are devoting to automobile parking.

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Matthew Blackett on the Spacing Toronto blog -
“42 Folding Bikes vs. One Car”
( “Sometimes it takes a visual illustration to make the strongest argument.” …)

(Here is a larger version of the second image shown there.)

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John Bennett (in this post) -

“Instead of making more room on the street for idle cars, we should be making room for more people. We should [claim] space to stroll, shop, sit and socialize.”

“Our unrelenting fixation on cheap and easy driving has blinded us from recognizing this simple fact: More than five decades spent adding capacity is proof that increasing the parking supply will not solve the problem. We have to decrease demand.”

“Unfortunately we’ve come to regard suburban retail [complexes], with their acres of parking lots, as the norm. As a result, we insist that a convenient parking place should be waiting for us at the end of every car trip. How much longer will we try to satisfy such an unrealistic expectation? How much are we willing to sacrifice to perpetuate this fantasy? When will we realize how much we’ve already lost in this foolish pursuit?”

(As I occasionally do, I have replaced a couple of the words there with slightly different ones that fit better with my own point of view.)

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‘Natural’ scents

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Paul Bloom (in this article) -

“People like to be close to oceans, mountains and trees. Even in the most urban environments, it is reflected in real estate prices: if you want a view of the trees of Central Park, it’ll cost you. Office buildings have atriums and plants; we give flowers to the sick and the beloved and return home to watch Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. We keep pets, which are a weird combination of constructed things (cats and dogs were bred for human companionship), surrogate people and conduits to the natural world. And many of us seek to escape our manufactured environments whenever we can — to hike, camp, canoe or hunt.”

“Many studies show that even a limited dose of nature, like a chance to look at the outside world through a window, is good for your health. Hospitalized patients heal more quickly; prisoners get sick less often. Being in the wild re­duces stress; spending time with a pet enhances the lives of everyone from autistic children to Alzheimer’s patients. The author Richard Louv argues that modern children suffer from ‘nature-deficit disorder’ because they have been shut out from the … benefits of … contact with the natural world.”

Yet, while “some of the natural world is appealing, some of it is terrifying and some of it grosses us out. Modern people don’t want to be dropped naked into a swamp.”

“You might think that technology could provide a simulacrum of nature with all the bad parts scrubbed out. But attempts to do so have turned out to be interesting failures. There is a fortune to be made, for instance, by building a robot that children would respond to as if it were an animal. There have been many attempts, but they don’t evoke anywhere near the same responses as puppies, kittens or even hamsters. They are toys, not companions. Or consider a recent study by the University of Washington psychologist Peter H. Kahn Jr. and his colleagues. They put 50-inch high-definition televisions in the windowless offices of faculty and staff members to provide a live view of a natural scene. People liked this, but in another study that measured heart-rate recovery from stress, the HDTVs were shown to be worthless, no better than staring at a blank wall. What did help with stress was giving people an actual plate-glass window looking out upon actual greenery.

All of this provides a different sort of argument for the preservation of nature. Put aside for the moment practical considerations like the need for clean air and water.” “Look at it from the coldblooded standpoint of the enhancement of the happiness of our everyday lives.” “Natural habitats provide significant sources of pleasure for modern humans. We intuitively grasp this, and this knowledge underlies the anxiety that we feel about nature’s loss.”

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Related points from Janet Kauffman (in this article) -

“Recent research shows that if a stream looks ‘cleaned up’ to the [modern] human eye, it’s a disaster for the stream and everything in it. A stream needs a … mix of shrubs, a layering of foliage and root systems, and leaf litter and woody debris in the water to stay healthy and thrive.”

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A tree and a patch of grass in London, England

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“INDUSTRIAL WORKERS of the world
SOLIDARITY forever”

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Those photos were taken in an alley in London, England.

To be more specific: the mural is in the Whitechapel district — beside the anarchist Freedom Press and Bookshop (which is at least in the same area of the city where a Whitechapel Anarchist Group is based).

(There also was anarchist graffiti in the area. Here is an example.)

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The clutter in front of the mural was blocking it even more when I first noticed it; I moved some of it out of the way before I took the photos. Later, I blurred out the waste pile on the ground to draw some attention away from it.

The pile of waste and those efforts to get it out of the way are symbolic, I think. As wtih a lot of social movements, this statement about worker solidarity had been obstructed and obscured. Clearly the message has been underappreciated. Waste even was left in front of it.

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Surely most people wouldn’t associate labour organizing with street art. I appreciate the exceptional flair that this mural brings to those labour issues (even though I don’t actually like the swirls, the dots, or the blobs at the top of two the letters; but I’m just nit-picking now).

I also appreciate how that message is presented at street level (even if it is hidden away in an alley). For the sake of contrast, the Trades Union Congress in London is a very relevant case in point. As an organization based out of an office building there, that Congress often is distant from street settings and outsiders (despite its connection with the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival, and despite a public statue displayed outside of the Trades Union Congress office building — to give a couple of counter-examples).

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A guest post on the Waging Nonviolence web site -
“Toronto’s “garbage strike” elicits public outrage and labour disunity”

(To be fair, I should point out that I edited that write-up with Bryan Farrell.  There are words in there which he had added himself while we were editing it.)

(Here in London, Ontario, Canada)

“FREE GAZA”

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Who Profits from the Occupation?

“Israeli and international corporations are directly involved in the occupation: in the construction of Israeli colonies and infrastructure in the occupied territories, in the settlements’ economy, in building walls and checkpoints, in the supply of specific equipment used in the control and repression of the civilian population under occupation.”

“Currently, we focus our attention on three main areas of corporate involvement in the occupation: The Settlement Industry, Economic Exploitation and Control of Population. At this stage in our project, we are not investigating the vast industry of military production and arms trade. The information we provide on the exploitation of Palestinian labor and production is also very limited.”

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Those images are small thumbnails from a set of photos from Israel that Alex Segre has posted on Flickr.

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Bryan Farrell on the Waging Nonviolence blog -
“Nonviolence goes overlooked in Palestine”

“joy_in_palestine” on their In Palestine blog-
[ Nonviolent Palestinian resistance ]

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Gwen on the Sociological Images blog -
“ ‘1 SHOT, 2 KILLS’ [Israeli] army t-shirts” (March 24th)

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Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler (in this article) -

A recent “Human Rights Watch (HRW) report focuses on six cases of Israeli drone-launched missile attacks in which 29 Palestinian civilians, eight of them children, were killed. Based on cross-referenced eyewitness accounts corroborated by doctors, as well as ballistics and forensic evidence collected on the attack sites, the report asserts that ‘in none of the cases did HRW find evidence that Palestinian fighters were present in the immediate area of the attack at the time.’ ”

“Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at the emergencies program of HRW, estimates that at least 87 civilians were killed in 42 drone attacks.”

“Israel is the world leader in drone technology.”

“Israeli drones have advanced sensors, combining radars, electro- optical and infrared cameras, and lasers providing real time imaging by day and night.”

“According to Palestinian sources, 900 civilians were killed during the military operations, among a total of more than 1,400 killed. The HRW report says a third of the fatalities were from drone-launched missiles. Israeli sources put the civilian death toll at 300.”

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(Photo by “TLV REVOLTER“)

In Israel

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The David Suzuki Foundation (on this page) -

“Although aviation is a relatively small industry, it has a disproportionately large impact on the climate system. It presently accounts for [approximately] 4-9% of the total climate change impact of human activity.”

“A special characteristic of aircraft emissions is that most of them are produced at cruising altitudes high in the atmosphere. Scientific studies have shown that these high-altitude emissions have a more harmful climate impact.”

Contrails, “the long plumes of exhaust that can be seen in the sky behind airplanes,” “trap heat that would otherwise escape from the earth, which contributes to global warming.”

“Right now there is no climate-friendly alternative to the kerosene fuel burned by airplanes, and there is no indication that solar or hydrogen-powered aircraft can be expected anytime soon. In terms of efficiency, it appears that improvements in current aircraft technology have nearly reached their limit.”

(There is additional information about these global warming impacts on that page.)

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Richard Heinberg on societal changes that he foresees in upcoming decades -

“Today businesspeople and middle-class vacationers regard air travel as a normal and affordable, if increasingly tedious, option for getting from anywhere to anywhere else in a few hours. But as fuel becomes scarce and costly, airlines will go bankrupt and consolidate; most planes will be grounded and mothballed; routes will be cut. Small cities will lose commercial service altogether. Whole terminals at larger airports will be closed permanently.

Air service will continue to connect large cities, but flights will be fewer and slower (speed reduces fuel efficiency), with every seat filled. And those flights will be much more expensive.

In short, we will be returning to the days of the Jet Set, when only the wealthy flew. People were simply less mobile in the 1950s than they are today. And the future will likewise be characterized by declining mobility. The implications are far-reaching and take a while to appreciate. Think of the impacts to tourism, (including all its subsidiary components such as the hotel industry and the car rental companies), universities, far-flung families, the entertainment industry, scientific research. . . . ”

(Those remarks are linked to the more in-depth energy analysis in Mr. Heinberg’s books.)

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“You can’t be sexy without consuming.”
- Julie (in this Feministe blog post)

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In London, England

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Three posts from Lisa on the Sociological Images blog -
- “The Economics of Beauty”
- “Sexualization and Adultification of Young Children of Color”
- “The Beauty Industry: Spending And Routines”

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(Photo by Orin Optiglot)

In Melbourne, Australia

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George Monbiot (in this article) -
“Blaise Pascal (’the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room’) couldn’t have been more wrong.”

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(Photo by Antonia Schulz)

Public art in Berlin

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Edited exerpts from an article by Joe Bageant -

Americans “remain one of the most controlled peoples on the planet, especially regarding control of our consciousness, public and private.”

“I know it doesn’t feel like that to most Americans. But therein rests the proof. Everything feels normal; [almost] everybody else around us is doing the same things, so it must be OK.

This is a sort of Stockholm Syndrome …, in which the prisoner identifies with the values of his or her captors, which in our case is of course, [American corporations, the American state, and a wider status quo -- including] its manufactured popular[ized] culture.

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