Thursday, February 4, 6-8pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Facebook Event

For several decades now, community activists and movement lawyers alike have actively opposed police brutality. They organized “Cop Watch” and legal observer initiatives across the U.S. and have made a real difference to folks on the ground.

Join Civil Liberties Defense Center [CLDC] and experienced panelists to learn more about how these projects document and push back against law enforcement abuses.

RSVP for this event by using this link.

Hosted by Civil Liberties Defense Center [CLDC].

Of all the daunting tasks Joe Biden faces, especially vital is the inspection of dangerously embrittled atomic reactors still operating in the United States.

A meltdown at any one of them would threaten the health and safety of millions of people while causing major impact to an already struggling economy. The COVID-19 pandemic would complicate and add to the disaster. A nuclear power plant catastrophe would severely threaten accomplishments Biden is hoping to achieve in his presidency.

The problem of embrittlement is on the top of the list of nuclear power concerns. The “average age”—length of operation—of nuclear power plants in the U.S., the federal government’s Energy information Agency, reported in 2019 was 38 years.

Now, in 2021, the “average age” of nuclear power plants in the U.S. is 40 years—the length of time originally seen when nuclear power began in the U.S. for how long plants could operate before embrittlement set in.

It seems so long ago. Another era. Another time. The economy was in crisis. The U.S. was immersed in two foreign wars. Activism was at a crossroads. The public was crying out for change. The year was 2009. In answer to those struggles, I wrote the essay, “Right Moral and Good,” which was emailed to the new president, Barack Obama in time for his inauguration. The Free Press published this essay again in 2016 as a harbinger of Donald Trump’s pending presidency.

Here we are in 2021 and another new president. A global pandemic has the economy in crisis. The U.S. is immersed in a violent domestic culture war. Activism still finds itself at a legal crossroads. Calls for change radiate from disparate realms. “Right Moral and Good” seems as relevant now as it was a dozen years ago.

The “Right, Moral and Good” graphic augments the essay and gives it visual context. Hopefully, both will make their way to the highest offices in the land and those who work there on our behalf.

“Be very still, and listen,” Paul DeMain told us. In the act of offering tobacco to the fire, he encouraged us to offer up that which we no longer wished to carry in our bodies, in our lives and in our souls. “But be careful what you ask to throw away, because the grandfathers will decide how that will happen in their own way.”

We were five minutes late for the start of the Full Moon Ceremony at the Line 3 resistance camp  in Pallisade, Minn. Fifteen masked and COVID-tested climate activists, we had driven 1600 miles from Maine and Massachusetts. If we hadn’t taken that time-consuming three point turn up I-94 toward Milwaukee we would have gotten there right on time.

But time zones and consumption patterns change, the border between ceremony and sunset is fluid, and the pattern of moonrise on macadam is malleable in the cold North Woods. In the offing, we were welcomed into the growing circle at the pipeline resistance camp with an offering of sweet smoke brushed over our heads and bodies from a brazier of burning sage, calming our jangled nerves and helping us plant our feet firmly again on solid, indeed frozen, ground.

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has taken over the Ohio Democratic Party (ODP), putting his protégé Elizabeth Walters in charge with the blessing of a handful of union donors.

On one hand, this could be good because Sherrod is the only Ohio Democrat who knows how to win statewide partisan elections.

It is less good when you consider that he lacked the coattails to pull any of the other statewide non-judicial candidates over the finish line in 2018.

On the other hand, the powerful labor donors have not been able to help Democrats regain control of the governorship and other statewide administrative offices and win more state legislative races.

It is less bad when you consider that Democrats have gained three Ohio Supreme Court justices in the last two elections and are on the verge of gaining a majority for the first time in a long time if they can turn one more seat in 2022.

David Pepper beat out a Sherrod-backed candidate for the ODP chair job six years ago. He compiled a record of mostly failures in statewide and legislative races, but won some key judicial races.