Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [60]
Methodically, step by step, letter after letter, meeting after meeting, month after month, we worked toward our goal. We educated the public about toxins to garner support. We wrote countless Letters to the Editor in our local newspaper. We were interviewed on weekly radio programs. Threats against us increased and so did our fear of being victims of retribution.
One year later, exhausted but not defeated, we made it happen. DTSC took over as the lead oversight agency. We were relieved, and at the same time aware that our work was far from finished.
Today our continuous attention is needed to help ensure that a thorough clean-up takes place. It took a decade to get here. We have successfully engaged Georgia Pacific and Koch Industries to use bioremediation and mycoremediation—a process using mushrooms to uptake toxins from soil. People faced with similar issues across the country call us, wanting to know how we accomplished this seemingly impossible task.
I know this story is but a microcosm of the challenge our world is currently facing. I also know that a small handful of people, through a shared vision and commitment, created an important change.
This place where I have chosen to live and raise my child reflects the boundless love I carry in my role as a mother and citizen of this planet. I must not only protect and nurture my daughter; I must include the community she is growing up in, the air she breathes, the food she eats, and the water she drinks. On a global scale, the same is true if we are to survive.
We currently live in one of the most challenging times in our planet’s history with the rapid destruction of the environment and daily extermination of entire species of plants and animals. Many people today are disillusioned and looking for an alternative to the dead-end system that is responsible for the ongoing desecration. Under the shadow of corporate greed, the price of human suffering and a poisoned world is causing our quality of life to deteriorate rapidly.
No ordinary human would have the inclination to spend his or her life working endlessly toward solving the problems of the world. There is no money to be made, no fame or power. And yet, many people around the globe are standing up to save the planet, deeply trusting what they know to be right.
The world is in crisis and the problems to be solved are endless. We don’t need to take them all on, but ultimately we need to stay awake and remember that whatever befalls this planet affects us all. Conscious thought, small actions, large actions—all of these count toward redirecting the destructive course we are on. There is no guarantee that we will be successful, but that is not the point. The point is that the only way things are going to change is through us making it happen.
Thaïs Mazur is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and author of Warrior Mothers: Stories to Awaken the Flames of the Heart. She is renowned for her in-depth reporting, including a four-part story on Aborigines and uranium mining and breaking the story on the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. She is a founding member of North Coast Action and is one of the leaders promoting mycoremediation to cleanup toxins on the Georgia Pacific Mill Site in Fort Bragg, California. Currently, she is producing and directing a documentary about mycoremediation on the Mendocino coast of California. The film trailer can be seen at www.earthbeatmedia.org.
Nothing Else Matters
DERRICK JENSEN
We need to stop this culture that is killing the planet. Nothing else matters. NOTHING else matters. The only measure by which we will be judged by the people who come after is the health of the land base, because that is what is going to support them. They’re not going to care about how hard we tried. They’re not going to care about whether we were nice people. They’re not going to