After church yesterday, at Pastor Rutledge’s urging, I read Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”—a justly famous missive, which makes the case for nonviolent direct action and calls out those who condemn it as a tactic. MLK said he was disappointed most by white moderates, stating, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling … Read More
The Killing Heat (Pt. 3)
Image by DarrenRD via Wikipedia Commons The irony of The Beast ravaging Fort McMurray–which, at the height of the tar sands boom, was nicknamed “Fort McMoney”–was not lost on climate activists. Elizabeth Kolbert, writing for the New Yorker (in an article entitled “Fort McMurray and the Fires of Climate Change“) noted, “The town exists to get at the tar sands, and … Read More
Protest Poem #2: On Behalf of Whales
Last week was the closest I have ever come–my husband and I stood watching along the Pacific coast as three or four whales turned flips, close enough for us to see bumps and barnacles, glistening. * Friends, let us not consent to despair. * Let us not give up on the Great Barrier Reef, on the songbirds, the bees, and the … Read More
