Maura Stephens

Well-informed people working together can reverse slow our rush toward environmental, economic, and political chaos.

 

I do believe this, or I wouldn't do what I do. I can attest that an effective antidote to the very normal reactions of grief, fear, and rage is to fight fossil fuel and other deadly heavy industries as well as, more importantly, the further corporatization of our governance structures.

 

But we can't keep doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. That's the very definition of insanity. And stupidity. And futility.

 

It's time for creative solutions. Our species' -- and many others' -- survival is at stake.

 

If you're still tuning in to mainscream media (including most offerings of US "public" media), for the most part you're getting corporate spin, not real news, and that means your thinking is being deliberately colonized for the benefit of multinational corporations and the political operatives who abet them. Please check out some of the independent media sites linked below, and start getting an unfettered story.

 

I hope if you haven't already you'll join a grassroots group in your own community working to stop fossil fuel use and related waste dumping and heavy infrastructure, which all contribute to ill health as well as hastening catastrophic climate change. You'll meet wonderful people!

 

And please join a national group fighting to get big dark money out of US politics -- a necessary first step if we are to win the monumental battles we face. I support the grassroots Move to Amend as well as Free Speech for People, both of which are working on this front.

 

And don't forget to celebrate and spend time with the joyous things and beings (Earthlings, as the late great Richard Grossman liked to call us) we're fighting so hard to protect: the natural world, the other species that still inhabit it with us, the visual arts, music, dance, theater, literature, extraordinary human endeavors, laughter, and, always, those we most cherish.

 

Hugs are beneficial. Mine go out to those who envision a just, sustainable, beautiful, unfractured world. The rest of you can, well, as my Mom always said, go jump in a lake. Make that a frack-waste pit, where you'll be right at home.