 Jimmy Carter with Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a reception for the National Association of Women Judges on Oct. 3, 1980. (Photo: Jimmy Carter Presidential Library) STOP, LOOK, LISTEN! by Kathy Sherretts Back where I came from We can keep up with the appalling US political news from anywhere in the world, but there seem to be some things I hear about only on American soil. For instance, everybody is suddenly worrying and talking about Real I.D. —and I swear I never heard about it before. Also, there is this stupid new front in the culture wars: "Make Straws Great Again". And I guess this commercial has been around for a couple of years, but I saw it for the first time this afternoon and have not gotten over it yet. --Kathy Sherretts Article: Slate: Carter’s Quiet Revolution by Mark Joseph Stern President Jimmy Carter’s diversification of the judiciary is one of the most important and least acknowledged achievements in presidential history. Carter was the first president to alter the federal judiciary to look much more like the country it served. Today Donald Trump is undoing that legacy, nominating more white male judges from the Federalist Society's wish list. Article: ProPublica: A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children by Ginger Thompson With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. “Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.” Video: CNN: Trump reacts to woman's harrowing survival story (3 min) The president meets with Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad, along with other refugees and victims of religious persecution. Here’s an idea: VNExpress: Vietnamese supermarkets go back to leaves, leaving plastic bags by Thi Ha, Dat Nguyen  Supermarket chains in Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia are testing banana-leaf packaging. (Photo by Perfect Homes Chiangmai) Ready to do more? Learn about the Green New Deal. If you missed our roundtable discussion, you can read the presenters' notes here. Read the Indivisible Guide 2.0, a new strategy for a new congress. Check out the weekly action plan from Progressive Action, Global Exchange (PAGE) which mobilizes progressives living overseas. Sign up for the Americans of Conscience Checklist, a weekly action list that also provides encouragement and good news. Learn more about solutions and actions at ClimateRecovery.org, a new group organized by members of American Resistance Sevilla and other community activists. 
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 "Editorial cartoonists also have the power of satire at their disposal. Many people confuse satire with humor. But satire isn't always funny. Satire is also exaggeration and ridicule.The cartoon that placed me in the center of the social media tsunami depicts Trump at the border playing golf with that now famous picture of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria. Óscar and Valeria drowned crossing the border. It's not funny in the least. It is an exaggerated depiction of what's really going on in the U.S. — when you cut through all the noise generated by talking heads and talking points." Excerpt and cartoon from Michael de Adder's My editorial cartoon satirizing Trump and the border crisis went viral. Then I lost my job. STOP, LOOK, LISTEN! by Kathy Sherretts Standing Room Only Last year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services changed its mission statement to eliminate the wording that describes the U.S. as "a nation of immigrants." Back in April, the president announced that the country was full. The administration continues to endorse the detention and inhumane treatment of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, and once more threatens immigrant communities with planned deportation raids in major US cities. We really can’t make room for this kind of ugly attitude toward immigrants. Contact your representatives in Congress to demand humane treatment of detained immigrants. --Kathy Sherretts Podcast: CNN/Reliable Sources: Florida news outlets band together to cover climate crisis (23 min) The effects of climate change are being felt early and acutely in Florida, at a time when resources for reporting on the crisis are shrinking. Article: Daily Mail: Trump axed Iran deal to spite Obama: British ambassador says Trump's actions 'diplomatic vandalism' by Isabel Oakeshott and Glen Owen The Iran memo was sent in May 2018, after Boris Johnson – then Foreign Secretary – tried to persuade President Trump not to abandon the Iran nuclear deal. Website: Cool Effect: www.cooleffect.org You can reduce your own carbon emissions—and explore ways to buy offsets to directly support carbon-reducing projects in vulnerable areas of the world. Graphic Novel: Business Insider: We rewrote and illustrated the Mueller report so you’ll actually read it by Mark Bowden and Chad Hurd Buried within the Mueller report, there is a narrative that reads like a thriller, like a comedy, like a tragedy — and, most important — like an indictment. The story just needed to be rearranged in a better form.  Ready to do more? Learn about the Green New Deal. If you missed our roundtable discussion, you can read the presenters' notes here. Read the Indivisible Guide 2.0, a new strategy for a new congress. Check out the weekly action plan from Progressive Action, Global Exchange (PAGE) which mobilizes progressives living overseas. Sign up for the Americans of Conscience Checklist, a weekly action list that also provides encouragement and good news. Learn more about solutions and actions at ClimateRecovery.org, a new group organized by members of American Resistance Sevilla and other community activists.   Illustration by Robert A. Di Ieso, Jr. for the Baffler STOP, LOOK, LISTEN! by Kathy Sherretts Walk it off Every list of actions to support climate recovery recommends walking when possible – it’s good for your health, your wallet, and the planet. Walking slows you down and connects you with your neighbors, your environment, and your own thoughts. But being a pedestrian is a challenge. If you actually want to get somewhere, you will have to negotiate routes and spaces with other traffic. A lot of the time it's you against the cars—and lawmakers, city planners, and automobile designers have ensured that the cars will always win. In this article from The Baffler, Jordan Fraade examines how car vs. pedestrian conflicts played out in the early history of the automobile, and how blaming the pedestrian is really about maintaining the privileges of car culture. David Levinson at The Transportist has compiled a Pedestrian Bill of Rightswith the input, via Twitter, of a community of weary foot travelers. Until it is adopted, the onus is on us as pedestrians to keep our wits about us. Be careful out there! --Kathy Sherretts Article: New Yorker: The “Star-Spangled Banner” Hysteria of 1917 by Alex Ross Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem at 49ers football games. Black US medalists responded to the anthem with the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics. During the Vietnam War, Jimi Hendrix twisted the tune into a dissonant wail. Long before these incidents, a 1917 anthem controversy involving the Boston Symphony led to the arrest of one of the world’s leading conductors. Article: Popular Information: These rainbow flag-waving corporations donated millions to anti-gay members of Congress by Judd Legum Major corporations like Verizon, Pfizer, FedEx, GE, and others have supported Pride Month as a way of courting the LGBTQ community. But do they really support the LGBTQ movement? Here are nine rainbow-flag-waving corporations that gave $1 million or more to anti-gay politicians in the last election cycle. Article: Sierra Club: Who Wants to Kill the Electric Car This Time? by Ben Jervey Senator John Barrasso is the third-highest recipient of campaign donations from Koch Industries. As chairman the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senator Barrasso introduced a bill to end the federal tax credit for plug-in electric vehicles and establish an annual "highway user fee" for all "alternative fuel vehicles"—just one example of how the Koch brothers are working to decelerate the country's transition to electric cars. Podcast: New Hampshire Public Radio/Civics 101: Checks and Balances (15 min) Our system of government is designed to counterweight itself, so each branch has the power to stop the others from going too far—the only catch being, they have to actually exercise that power. This episode explains what those checks actually are, and how the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches (ostensibly) keep things democratic.  Ready to do more? Learn about the Green New Deal. If you missed our roundtable discussion, you can read the presenters' notes here. Read the Indivisible Guide 2.0, a new strategy for a new congress. Check out the weekly action plan from Progressive Action, Global Exchange (PAGE) which mobilizes progressives living overseas. Sign up for the Americans of Conscience Checklist, a weekly action list that also provides encouragement and good news. Learn more about solutions and actions at ClimateRecovery.org, a new group organized by members of American Resistance Sevilla and other community activists.  What Can We Do to Support Climate Recovery? Show, don't tell, on that family visit In the last two entries in this series, Karen listed ways to cope with eco-anxiety and tips for sustainable travel. Our annual US visit encompasses both factors, I think, with a dose of superadded family dynamics. Generally, I feel pretty good about living sustainably at home in Sevilla, where I bike, take the bus, shop in the local market, and manage the hellish heat with persianas and fans (before resorting to the aire!). But when I’m a guest, it’s out of my control. In the States, I will be visiting in the homes of beloved family members who turn on the TV as soon as they wake up, blast the AC, and leave them both running while they leave the house to drive a mile for milk. They burn trash outdoors, they buy individually plastic-wrapped cheese slices. They pre-wash their dishwasher-bound plates. Now, none of these individual actions is going to sink us, any more than me filching a Coke can out of the trash is going to save us. As Eve Andrews points out in this Grist article about environmental anxiety, there are a million ways to attack a problem as big as climate change; a single one of them can’t fix the problem, but each chips a small piece off the carbon burden. And showing is better than telling when it comes to climate action in someone else’s home. It all serves as a useful corrective to my urge to slap the styrofoam takeout container out of my sib’s hand. —Kathy Sherretts  Do you really need to pre-wash your dishwasher-bound plates? STOP, LOOK, LISTEN! by Kathy Sherretts Cry havoc… Our 4th of July celebrations are a commemoration of the US War of Independence—the fireworks that echo that origin are my least-favorite thing about the holiday. (Ask any dog.) Now, elements of the Trump administration are pushing for a literal war with Iran. The conflicting messages about the status of Iran relations and more recent news about North Korea and the G20 summit make it hard to know where we stand now. Please, contact your elected representatives this week to remind them that Congress has ultimate responsibility for declarations of war. —Kathy Sherretts Article: Mother Jones: One Man Is Trying to Fight Climate Change By Mobilizing an Unlikely Team: Iowa’s Farmers by Brian Barth “Nobody’s giving them credit.” Article: Pacific Standard: Do Debates Change Voters' Minds? Here's What the Research Says. by Rebecca Worby There is plenty of time for US voters to shape and reshape their opinions of the 24 contenders for the Democratic nomination. Will debates actually change how voters feel? Another one rides the bus: Grist: Why is bus ridership falling almost everywhere except Pittsburgh? by Eve Andrews I can hardly wait to renew my pass! Pride Month WrapUp: WaPo/Retropod: The First Pride Parade (3 min) It’s not what you think… Philadelphia, July 4, 1964.  Matt Russell directs the Iowa branch of Interfaith Power and Light, a nonprofit that promotes a religious response to global warming through sustainable farming. Image: Marco Cibola Ready to do more? Learn about the Green New Deal. If you missed our roundtable discussion, you can read the presenters' notes here. Read the Indivisible Guide 2.0, a new strategy for a new congress. Check out the weekly action plan from Progressive Action, Global Exchange (PAGE) which mobilizes progressives living overseas. Sign up for the Americans of Conscience Checklist, a weekly action list that also provides encouragement and good news. Learn more about solutions and actions at ClimateRecovery.org, a new group organized by members of American Resistance Sevilla and other community activists.  |
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