Reclaim the Land draft proposal (urban farm/community garden for Stevens Point WI)

February 26th, 2010

Reclaim the Land Draft Proposal
Prepared by Katie Kloth 2/20/2010

  • Plot Section: Lullaby; North of Centerpoint Mall, Main St.
  • (Potential) Plot Subsidiaries: Eagle Plumbing and Heating, Portage Street; Adjacent vacant house and lot south of Eagle Plumbing and Heating, 3rd St; Sorenson’s Green House, Main St.
  • Plot Owner: City of Stevens Point (WI)
  • Price of plot for sale (vacant lot excluding buildings only): No set price (as identified by Mike Morisee, Zoning Commission, City of Stevens Point (WI)
  • Means of Obtaining Plot/Plot Deed: Deeded over for $0.00 to “Focus Group Collection” (TBA), Down with Caps Kollective, and/or ownership to remain under city as “Humanitarian Project: Public Urban Farm Land (Project)
  • Proposal: The Lullaby plot’s intention for use upon obtaining the deed to the land would serve as a public space allotted for communal urban farming and composting. Access for all and freedom from user fees, the Lullaby plot is intended to accommodate at least 150 people with seasonal vegetables, ad year round compost, as well as serve as an educational center for local peoples of all ages; as a working CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, or similar entity, produce would first be offered to volunteers and ‘workers’, and ¼ of the land’s production would be allotted for dispersal amongst food banks, farmers markets, and other charitable causes and/or events/programs.
  • Structure to organize workers: Non-hierarchal
  • Approximate Growing Season (outdoors; excludes potential subsidiary of Sorenson’s Green Hose): Late April- early November
  • Seed and seedling source of origin: Local-organic farm donations/purchases, as well as “Seed Savers”.
  • Staff: There are potentials for paid full time staff; if owned by the city, funding allotted for primary caregivers (2)/farm hands to be negotiated through the proper city channels.
  • City Involvement: Partnership and Expansion from the City of Stevens Point’s “Neighborhood Gardens” Project.
  • Other Potentials: To work in cooperation or partnership with the university via Director of Dining Services Mark Hayes, and the Shared Governance Entity that governs dining, to provide a substantial amount of local and organic produce to the food system, depending on produce availability, existing and to-be-determined contracts/agreements, as well as an adequate budget for UWSP’s Dining Services is to be provided.

Posted in Biodiversity, Co-operation, Economics, Ecovillages, MicroEcoFarming, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability | No Comments »

“Resiliency”: How could Portage County prepare for the peak oil crisis?

February 22nd, 2010

There’s a new term out there, one that’s quickly entering common usage: “resilient communities” as one definition suggests, it has to do with a community’s ability to survive an extended disconnection from the global grid in areas including energy…

Here in Portage County, what have local leaders at the County Board level been doing to make our county communities resilient with respect to energy? If you’re scratching your head, searching for something in your memory on this topic, you’re right. Not that much is being done to prepare for the coming decline in petroleum motor fuel product availability (gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, kerosene, jet fuel) which is part of the global peak of oil production problem. This problem is so far, not on the radar screen for the Board.

The problem of peak oil has not, in my memory, been publicly admitted by any of the County Board supervisors, nor by the current County Executive.

One hopes that candidate Patty Dreier, with her extensive connections into the sustainability movement in our region, will have some plan, some political programme, to deal with this problem.

One County Extension fact sheet notes this about County governments in Wisconsin:

“(Sec. 59.03(2) Wisconsin Statutes)…This home rule authority has allowed county government to gradually expand as a regional government in areas such as recycling, water quality management, transportation planning, and zoning review, but only in cases where a municipality or group of municipalities have requested the county to do so on their behalf through voluntary agreements.” (From this Extension fact sheet).

Note that there is one major area–planning for re-zoning–where our County Board and Executive could be preparing us for the disruption promised by the arrival of a) even higher price spikes in oil prices than we saw in 2008, along with b) frank shortages of many products. Peak oil will impact us far more than in the prices we pay for these refined products, once we reach the stage where there is no gasoline (or diesel or anything else) available at any price at your local filling station.

The County Board could be hard at work in completely overhauling the zoning codes in this county, by taking a leadership role in convincing municipalities–cities, villages, townships–that it is in their interests to abolish the old pattern of city centers and “bedroom towns.”

The “bedroom town” is going to have to quickly become a distant memory if we are to have any “resiliency.” This material was already well-covered in the film End of Suburbia. Portage County has its share of bedroom towns, many of which fit the definition of “food deserts.” A town like Rosholt fits several categories of desert: food desert, hardware & home improvement desert, drug/pharmacy desert, auto parts desert, etc. A family has to pile into the car (more likely, 2 or 3 cars) and head off to Point to get many of their needs met. How is this going to play out when petroleum depletion starts to hit home?

You can use your imagination. You can also use it to imagine a much different pattern, one that might work better in peak oil conditions. Higher-density housing patterns, housing co-operatives that perhaps share 20, 40, 80 or more acres useful in food production, for woodlots and wildlife habitat, but with housing sited densely on just a few of those acres, perhaps owned by many unrelated people, held in common. That would be one alternative, not currently in zoning Sharia law.

After putting the current zoning code through the shredder and using the shreddings for mulch or compost, next the zoning committees could take a look at the restrictions on ag land. Perhaps owners of smaller parcels could be allowed to pursue agriculture, from 5 acres on down to less than an acre. Perhaps family farmers could be allowed to site several family members’ houses on their property, without having to carve it up subdivision-style. Already-denser areas such as Merryland Drive between Rosholt and Polonia could be encouraged to develop in unincorporated municipality style, bustling with new start-up taxi and ride-share services, particularly those catering to seniors lacking mobility. If fuel is going to be scarce, we’ll have to learn to share.

In cities, villages and townships, the restriction against conducting a business from one’s home is a throwback to the heyday of the suburbs and the bedroom town, not at all adaptive to the coming era of declining fuel supplies. The zoning codes need to be rewritten so as to allow people to combine business pursuits with their living quarters, so as to provide stability and resilience in both the housing patterns, and the small-business sectors.

From the end of World War II, this bedroom town pattern has been okay with planners at local levels of government. It seemed to work well. Real estate salespeople and developers prospered. The landscape took on a kind of fairy tale look, with houses perched nicely atop kettle moraine landscapes, with gigantic lawns spread out before them. This was the era when employment was provided by giant corporations–many of which have completely pulled out of much of the United States and have relocated production entirely out of the country.

In the depths of the current recession, with 400,000+ people filing new unemployment claims each week, the outmoded dependency on large corporations to save our local economy stands out starkly. It is as if local governments were living in a fog of wishful thinking, magical thinking, eternal optimism based on “the way we were” back in the 1950s.

It is often said (way too often, in fact) that small business is the engine of economic growth, growth in the number of new livelihoods as people take risks and provide themselves their own job by starting up a new business. Yet zoning laws prohibit many people from starting up these businesses using their homefront as storefront. Perhaps the idea was that mixing business with bedroom town would lower the property values. The deflation of the housing bubble seems to have done much to lower property values, all on its own momentum.

In Stevens Point–and many other Portage County municipalities–you aren’t allowed to put a greenhouse in your yard, at your home. Anyone who might want to start a small-scale eco-agriculture business can’t do the startup from home.  The zoning ordinances may have been written to protect larger-scale businesses against the threat of small-timers getting a foothold and perhaps contending on the basis of better quality or service or lower cost. Or, it would seem that would be one motivation for such zoning restrictions.

But if growing local food on a serious scale is considered, such restrictions have got to go. Green Giant is not going to be spearheading the local foods movement, I hope our business/govt. leaders realize.

As we approach an era when motor fuel is going to be absurdly expensive, and oftentimes, downright unavailable at any price (even absurdly expensive), it would seem prudent for our local government officials to start to get a handle on this peak oil issue. I attend any number of “sustainability”-oriented talks, film showings, forums, informal meetings, and whatnot, yet I never see Stevens Point City Council members, nor County Board members, at these sorts of events.

I take that to mean that these leaders don’t regard sustainability as an issue even deserving of their thoughtful attention, nor for engaging with other citizens in meaningful discussion about them. Perhaps it is because there’s been no executive leader guiding the overall direction?

Except, of course, for Patty Dreier, candidate for County Executive. That’s one more reason I’ll urge you to vote for her for County Exec. in the April elections.

Bobby G

Stevens Point WI

Posted in Biodiversity, Co-operation, Ecovillages, MicroEcoFarming, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, ecology, subcultures | No Comments »

Criminal Justice: Can Portage County opt-out of Incarceration Nation?

February 21st, 2010

Here’s what Charles Shaw, author of Exile Nation, says about our incarceration rate:

“The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. Criminologists have found that when too many people are incarcerated the crime rate actually increases. Imagine if we spent some of the $60 billion a year prisons cost on education, job training and healthcare. Paul Butler, a law professor, former federal prosecutor and author of “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice” (click) suggests ways to undo the damage caused by overincarceration.”

Could our County opt-out of the War on Drugs just a little bit? Instead emphasize Harm Reduction and Alternatives to Incarceration? Is the Get-Tough-On-Crime (especially victimless crime like drug use) really sustainable? Is the Incarceration Nation sustainable, along with the rest of our macho national profile? Is a macho militarized empire really sustainable? (Especially when funded by borrowed $$ and borrowed fuel?)

“Major responsibilities required of the county include the provision of most social service programs (child welfare, juvenile justice, senior citizen services, public health, mental health, jail, developmental disabilities, etc.) and responsibilities for local and state road maintenance. Counties also provide the majority of cultural and recreational amenities (e.g. parks, libraries, and snowmobile trails), law enforcement, health services, zoning and road maintenance for citizens in rural, unincorporated areas within their borders.” from this County Govt. in Wisc. fact-sheet from UW Extension.

In other words, the County can choose to some degree how to prioritize whether to emphasize law enforcement, prosecution, and jailing, or a social services approach to the problems I mention.

Ask many a voter “do you favor getting tough on crime, and locking up a lot of bad guys?” and you’d probably get a “yes.” Then ask, “do you favor an unsustainable, never-ending, ever-growing incarceration system paid for by ever-increasing taxes on you, the taxpayer, to accomplish this?” and you’ll probably get a Sarah Palin Tea-Party resounding “HELL NO!”

See, we Americans are capable of holding two completely mutually-exclusive contradictory ideas in our minds at the same time, and attempting to act on them simultaneously. That’s where real leaders distinguish themselves from people who are just going along to get along in the status quo. Good leaders cut through the cognitive dissonance and suggest a clear path out of a quagmire such as our current “criminal justice” system.

And that’s another reason why I’m endorsing Patty Dreier for our County Executive here in Portage Co., Wisc. While she doesn’t yet have available a fleshed-out position on county government’s role in the larger prison-industrial complex, I believe she would look at these issues with a far more open mind than Jim Gifford, the long-time county board member who has NOT been raising the issues of excessive incarceration, de-criminalization, alternatives to incarceration, and other notions of reform. His pitch has been: “I’ve been in County Govt. a long time, I have the experience.”

Perhaps, but it’s the kind of experience that keeps us trudging down the same old, dead-end road. As soon as the voters had defeated a $72 million referendum on a new Justice Center, the County Exec. and Board began trying to find a way to build the thing anyway, deciding to pursue a $29 million Courthouse expansion first (with the $43 million jail expansion to follow soon thereafter, no doubt). Perhaps this decision to thwart the voters played some role in the defeat of the sitting County Exec?

Perhaps if the Board and Exec. will take some time and allow the economy to recover (as everyone expects), then pursue a big new building project several years from now under a new economic boom (which everyone expects), this will sit better with voters. What will have been lost in taking more time, getting more real input from citizens, and studying alternatives to the prosecutorial, jail-prone methods now in use? Could we lessen the pressure on the criminal justice system, along with the need to proceed toward that expensive new set of buildings?

Major props and thanks to Charles Shaw for keeping this issue in the front of my mind, too.

Bobby G
Stevens Point WI

Posted in Peace, Political Economy, Sustainability | No Comments »

“Sustainability” activity: a four-legged table with one leg missing?

February 9th, 2010

Here’s some questions to take into the upcoming Roundtables and other meetings on sustainability. Some of these are posed by this story on Colorado Springs’ severe budget cutting. Budget cutting this severe would most likely impact new programs such as sustainability planning first, so these questions aren’t merely hypotheticals.

Suddenly, the people who have been invisible all this time–the working poor–are made visible by virtue of their diminishing tax payments. Why isn’t the money flowing in to the public coffers so quickly any more?

Something is clearly missing. Missing not only from tax revenue totals, but from the whole “sustainability” movement, I would boldly assert. And I wonder, am I the only one noticing what’s clearly missing?

If you go and review your Natural Step conditions for a sustainable society–and Natural Step is said to be the gold standard–you’ll find this system condition, #4:

“people are not subject to conditions that systemically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.”

Yet, with this deep recession steadily eroding the living standards of working class people everywhere, it’s clear that people most assuredly ARE being subject to conditions systematically undermining our capacity to meet our needs.

You don’t hear much mention of this deepening crash of living standards of working people in the torrent of good news about “sustainability”–locally, nationally or globally for that matter. The prospect for millions upon millions of Americans returning to some sort of right livelihood in which they would like to be engaged is steadily slipping away from millions of us, but the literature is silent on this.

I’d number those millions of us now marginalized to a clearly unsustainable mode of life in the neighborhood of 60 million. Maybe add ten million more to that, I don’t have exact numbers, just a sense of what’s going on. I call this group of us the OtherAmerica: working poor, people without health coverage, children, many youth under 25.

Doesn’t some discussion of what’s happening over here in the OtherAmerica belong in Rountables, seminars, webinars, lectures, and planning meetings on “sustainability?” Who will raise these questions?

This capitalist system no longer has a need for OtherAmerica, neither as producers-workers, nor as consumers. They’re trying to stage-manage this “recovery” with only 80% of the population needing to participate to make it credible. For us in the working poor, sustainability is further away than it was a decade ago, when the esoteric sustainability discussions began among the professional class in academia, in urban design firms, in select sub-committees in city and county governments, and in big non-profit NGO think tanks.

Neither neoliberal nor conservative politicians have any plan to restore to us any measure of dignity, but instead I believe we’re in for a long period of a kind of warehousing, like the Prawns in District 9, a systematic undermining of our capacity to meet our needs. I dread to learn what sort of fate they have planned for us, but I’m sure it will be dreadful.

Neither the Administration’s neoliberal friends-of-bankers, nor the overtly fascist Tea Partiers, have the welfare and well-being of working-class Americans (or workers anywhere) at heart. In fact, during deep recessions, working poor people become a big target market for overt fascists masquerading as right-wing “populists.” You already see an upwelling of this tendency in full effect in the USA, in Europe, and globally.

Yet in this kind of environment, we’re being told by the professional classes that we’re moving full speed ahead toward “sustainability.” A kind of American-exceptionalism Natural Step where only the first three conditions matter. Will the meeting of those conditions be accomplished by a Green Technocracy, guided and led by the leaders of the local plutocracy, whoever these may be in each locality? William Domhoff explained the methodology needed to get at who your local plutocracy may be, in his classic of sociology, Who Rules America?

One important point seems to have been missed, in this headlong rush into a technocratic sustainable geekdom filled with LEED buildings and renewable gadgets all smart-gridded together into a seamless wonderland: The corporations are still behaving as corporations. That is, they are working full-time to slow down or prevent any meaningful progress toward real “sustainability.” Yes, despite the fact that National Public Radio now gladly advertises Monsanto’s commitment to “sustainble agriculture,” in fact, Monsanto is still part of the problem, the crisis of sustainability, not part of the solution.

“Corporations” are not just some kind of hard-working communities of dedicated people fulfilling a mission statement to the benefit of society. They’re a legal creation of the state, aimed at maintaining the power status of their largest shareholder-owners, the wealthiest members of society, affectionately known to Marxists as “the ruling class.” A class understanding of corporations and their peculiar power over us is missing from the sustainability literature.

Threats/Obstacles to Sustainability

As people settle in to the rountables, planning meetings, seminars, and sub-committee meetings, I would urge folks to keep these questions in mind:

Has the mortgage crisis really been solved? How could that be, when Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, quasi-public corporations, now carry the vast majority of mortgages as assets on their balance sheets as banks are bailing on holding them?

How much further will house prices continue to fall, in the face of steady, ongoing erosion of the employment base in this nation? If house prices do continue falling, perhaps as much as 30-40% as the editors of The Automatic Earth blog have suggested, how can we possibly avert an even deeper mortgage crisis?

What is to be done about the steady erosion of real wages–actual purchasing power–of increasingly large segments of the working class who remain employed? Won’t this erode the tax base for all levels of government, whether township, village, city, county, state or federal?

In our local food groups, why is the expression “cheap food isn’t good; good food isn’t cheap” still in use? What does this even say to working poor families whose spending habits have to be “cheap” out of necessity? What can be done to make fresh, healthy, organic food affordable to working poor people?

Why are things being done FOR the working poor–food pantry distributions and the like–rather than BY the working poor, on their own behalf? Why is there so little mutual aid, self-help, co-operative self-organization by the workers for the workers?

Are the neoliberal governors of troubled states such as Wisconsin’s Gov. Doyle really being honest about the depth of the budget crises that still lie ahead? If the bulk of the state budget crises are still on the future segment of the timeline, what will this do to the remainder of the economy? Until now, state employees and to some extent, municipal and county employees, could be counted on as stably employed citizens who could drive a consumer economy, since production stopped being “our thing” in the USA. What will happen to these top-tier workers and their way of life?

“Green jobs” are expected to replace only about 25% of the massive losses in employment since 12/07. What about the rest?

What impact will the peak of global oil production have upon a struggling economy barely able to stave off even worse losses in employment? Why have sustainability groups completely stopped talking about the question of peak oil?

Are we supposed to believe that the problem has gone away, that the predictions were all wrong of peak oil production having already occurred 2005-2006 (Laherre, Simmons, Pickens, Heinberg); to occur in 2010 (Petrobras); to occur in 2012 (Colin Campbell’s original estimate) or even, to occur in 2030 as the ever-optimistic IEA says?

Why is climate change denial politically incorrect, while peak oil denial is the new coolness?

And, finally, when is this problem going to be addressed in the sustainability movement: Tens of millions of us in the USA being “subject to conditions that systemically undermine our capacity to meet their needs.”

At the upcoming meeting, don’t put any your laptop or any heavy objects on that end of the table with the missing leg ,the 4th system condition. And be aware: the building where the meeting is being held is a four-pillar edifice, one pillar missing.

Bobby G.
Central Wisc. USA

Posted in Co-operation, Economics, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability, Uncategorized, globalization, subcultures | 2 Comments »

Colorado Springs cuts city services deeply. Very deeply.

February 5th, 2010

Colorado Springs’ deep budget cuts are a harbinger of what’s to come for many, many cities in the USA.  Reading this article will give you some idea what may develop in a medium sized city near you before too many months go by.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

US invades South Florida

February 3rd, 2010

We happened to catch the nightly news, the one that features Katie Couric.

Watching the desert-khaki clad, machine-gun toting “Police” on maneuvers for “Super Bowl security” in Miami, I commented to my wife, “hey, it looks sort of like Baghdad or Kandahar, but without all the bombs going off.”

There were the heavy, armored troop-transport vehicles. The circling helicopters. The usual manhandling suspected “domestic terrorists” and throwing them on the ground, intimidating people in vehicles, all the stuff you’d expect at a Baghdad checkpoint. Without, of course, the up-close explosions and depleted uranium rounds thudding in the distance.

Not that I’d ever want to attend a Super Bowl game anyway. Or any other corporate spectacle these days, for that matter… But what if I wanted to attend a, for example,protest march? Would that be my lot, slammed to the ground, perhaps deafened ppermanently with high-decibel hearing-damage equipment such as police forces are ready to deploy in Vancouver against the Olympics protests?

This week, of course, all the heads of US security forces were in front of Congress whipping up the fear and anxiety level about an “imminent attack” from the usual people who terrorize us, including of course Mr. Bin Laden, now long dead.

It’s just too bad that all hints of a US movement for peace and in opposition to militarising every aspect of our “civilian” lives have now evaporated. It’s easier to accomplish that goal under a “liberal” administration instead of a hated “neo-con” administration, ever notice that?

Alas, we’ll have to rely on the workers, peasants, and slum dwellers in distant parts of our globalized world to do the heavy lifting in opposition to US militarism and imperialism. Much as the Haitians used to attempt to do, before being completely crushed in 1994 and 2004.

Bobby G
Central Wisc.
http://twitter.com/BioDiverseCity

Posted in Peace, Political Economy, globalization | No Comments »

Need continues to rise in our area’s food pantries

February 2nd, 2010

The story is from the Stevens Point, WI Journal, at this link.

Mary Ann Krems wins today’s award for talking accurately about reality, instead of sugar-coating things:

“Mary Ann Krems of Portage County Hunger and Poverty Prevention Partnership said the economy is to blame for the increases, but it’s hard to tell what the future holds.”I think a lot depends, because the jobs are still going down the tubes,” she said. “We’re expecting and anticipating an increase.”

While this increase in need at food pantries is coming during a time of supposed “job-less recovery” (an Orwellian doublespeak term if ever there was one), all the while, there is a “perfect financial storm” still coming.

Welcome to the perfect financial storm  (click)

I’d say the food pantry business is in for some, as they say, “robust growth” in the next 24 to 60 months, wouldn’t you? Story is below my initials, in case the link doesn’t work.

b.g.

—————–

Food requests continue to increase at Portage County food pantries.

Data from the Portage County Hunger and Poverty Prevention Partnership show the number of people unable to afford an adequate amount of food is continuing to rise in many pantries.

Operation Bootstrap, an emergency pantry, saw the largest increase between October and December, when it provided food for 259,749 meals in Portage County, and filled almost 700 requests for emergency assistance, said director Roseann DeBot. Last year during that time, she said, it provided food for 252,722 meals.

Operation Bootstrap received a check for $30,000 from an anonymous donor at the Community Foundation of Central Wisconsin on Jan. 21, which will help address an increased demand for emergency services in Portage County, she said.

“This will help us really across the board continue all the good projects we have going and meet the increased demand,” said. “We’re going to be able to continue with … granting people money for prescriptions and dental, which are two of the biggest needs in the community.”

The money also will go toward fresh food, milk and other products that Operation Bootstrap provides to people in crisis.

St. Vincent de Paul in Plover also saw an increase in demand. It periodically provided food to 1,673 households between April and June. Between July and September, that rose to 1,748, and to 1,876 during the fourth quarter.

The Salvation Army is seeing the same trends, though the numbers dropped slightly because it was under construction for several months in 2009.

Bob Quam of The Salvation Army said in general, more people are coming in for meals. The center served 4,809 meals during the third quarter and 4,574 during the fourth.

“Right now our pantry is in pretty good shape. We can always use (donations), and I always know other food pantries that aren’t in as good a shape,” Quam said.

Mary Ann Krems of Portage County Hunger and Poverty Prevention Partnership said the economy is to blame for the increases, but it’s hard to tell what the future holds.

“I think a lot depends, because the jobs are still going down the tubes,” she said. “We’re expecting and anticipating an increase.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Do you believe Friday’s economic “good news?”

February 1st, 2010

Friday’s economic news was abuzz with the announcement that Gross Domestic Product grew by 5.7% in the previous quarter of 2009.  Now, have the economic wizards in Washington/Wall Street figured out how to keep the economy growing with only 80% of the population participating in it–I’m subtracting the 20% of us who live in what I call the “OtherAmerica.”  Can they actually keep it limping along as each week, another 400,000+ workers are added to unemployment rolls?  Can you run an eight-cylinder economy on just six cylinders this way?  For how long?

Is my outlook too negative? Why don’t I publish more “good news?”

The answer is, I’m trying to accurately reflect the reality that I see facing the 20% of US population now living in the “OtherAmerica.”  Who are these?  It’s the people now permanently unemployed. The people living on part-time incomes who really can’t afford to live on part-time incomes.  The 40 million (or whatever the real number is) who are living without health insurance. Or enough health insurance–just one major accident or illness away from full bankruptcy.  The people living at or below the federal poverty line.  That’s our “OtherAmerica.”

And for us, the economic news is unrelentingly bad. Day after day, week after week, month after month.  There is no recovery out here in OtherAmerica, sorry to report.

I don’t believe the good news on the GDP.

B.G.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Why I’ll Vote for Patty Dreier for Portage County Executive

January 31st, 2010

Here in Portage County, WI, there’s a primary election on Feb. 16th 2010 for the County Executive. Of the three candidates, I think Patty Dreier offers the best prospects for a different approach to the problems this county faces. Other candidates are the current County Executive, Mark Maslowski, and County Supervisor Jim Gifford.

In his appeal to voters, Maslowski seems to stress the fact that he’s been the County Exec. for the last four years, and is “proud to have served the people” during that time. Going forward, the big project that seems to appeal to Mr. Maslowski is the building of a new courthouse for Portage County, with the current estimate being $29 million to build it.

Keep in mind: the voters rejected a $72 million referendum to build a new “justice center” (courthouse plus jail) in the County last November. One does get the sense that the County Exec. and the County Board would like to sneak this project past the voters in incremental stages–$30 million here, $20 million there, perhaps another $24 million elsewhere, until we end up with their original goal, the $72 million new “justice center.”

Sustainability activists have noted the lack of any commitment by the County Exec. even to making this new courthouse a truly “green” sustainable building project.

Criminal justice activists may note the lack of commitment to de-criminalizing certain activities, for example, small amounts of marijuana possession. Instead, we have the prison-industrial complex mentality still in full force in Portage County. Marijuana busts are annoyingly routine and highly touted in the press, as the prosecutory system ruins countless lives over activities that should carry no criminal penalties whatsoever, not even a fine.

Unfortunately, Jim Gifford offers, as the reason to vote for him, the fact that he’s been in County government a darn long time. Seventeen committees he’s served on. Experienced. Ready to keep leading the county using the paradigms and thought processes that served us so well 10, 15, or 20 years ago. He also would like the expensive, new edifice constructed for the County Courthouse, again without any (apparent) thought to its green credentials or inclusion in any sustainability plan. At least, that’s not on his website.

In short, I think you’ll find the two men, Gifford and Maslowski, amount to clear votes for what is known as the “old boys’ network.” You know, the guys who know which guys to call when you need things done the good, old-fashioned, back-to-the 90s (or ’80s, or ’70s, or someplace in the wayback machine) Way We’ve Always Done It.

I’ve never heard a peep from Maslowski nor Gifford addressing the need for less fossil fuel reliance, understanding the Peak Oil problem, addressing sustainability, considering the urgent need of the youth for some means of livelihood and sustaining themselves, worrying about the overuse of groundwater by Big Agriculture in our region, thinking about whether it’s really okay to allow the constant urban sprawl that seems to be this county’s signature passion.

In fact, when the Stimulus package was announced last winter, local officials (city, county, state) for the most part fell all over themselves looking for projects to keep the Old Ways going for another decade or two: “shovel-ready” projects, keeping the highways growing, the highway bridges in tip-top shape, more roadwork, more whatever it takes to keep using petroleum-fueled personal automobiles, in disregard of the fact that petroleum-fueled vehicles are fully obsoleted by the approach of the downslope of global peak oil production. Well, you can’t expect imaginative new solutions from gentlemen whose vision is locked in the rear-view mirror of their 450-horse V-8 SUV, can you?

With Patty Dreier, I do get a sense, on the other hand, that she is aware of these issues. You see her at local food group breakfasts. You see her reaching out to younger people, calling meetings that focus on students, and wondering how things can be done in a more sustainable, “green” manner. You actually get the sense that Patty is listening to you, when you raise difficult questions.

There is experience to consider, and Patty’s work in grant-writing for the County, as well as working for the Central Wisc. Environmental Station as Director, and a solid background in biology and natural resources, are key experiences that will serve a County Executive well in going forward into an era when nature matters, more so than the needs of developers and construction firms.

Even further, I get the sense that even if Patty Dreier doesn’t win this election, she’ll still be there at the local food group events, or reaching out to sustainability-oriented people, or mixing it up with students and younger people to sketch out the future that these younger folks are going to have to contend with.

I decided not to run for the County Board again this election cycle, because I wanted to put full efforts into the work of doing community-supported agriculture and marketing the local food idea to the local communities. So, instead, I’m throwing what little weight my words may have behind getting you to first go out and vote in the primary election on Tues. Feb. 16th, 2010. Then, when she secures a spot on the April ballot, go out and vote for her again.

Especially if you’re a student of voting age, I’m urging you to vote. Every year, 9,000 students become part of our County’s population base. In order to maintain the good old status quo, Way We’ve Always Done Things, our local elected officials count on minimizing or just ignoring the issues, needs, and contributions of college, technical school, and recent high school graduates. I think with Patty Dreier’s campaign, you’ve got at least a shot at having those issues, needs, and contributions acknowledged.

I’m Bobby G, and I wrote this blog independently of any campaign, and I’ll take the flak for whatever I just said that might irritate some folks.

Bobby G.

Posted in Economics, Peak Oil, Political Economy, Sustainability | No Comments »

Ended, Tree Sit to Stop Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

January 30th, 2010

Friday, January 29th, 2010
posted by norag

Tree Sit Ends, Sitters Vow Not Over Until Blasting Stops
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: 304-854-7372, news@climategroundzero.org
Note: For more info, see : www.climategroundzero.org, www.mountainjustice.org

January 29, 2010

PETTUS, WVa—After blocking Massey Energy’s operations on the Bee Tree Permit for nine days, Amber Nitchman, 19, and Eric Blevins, 28 descended from their respective trees. They had occupied the two oak trees—originally accompanied by a third tree sitter, David Aaron Smith, 23—to protest mountaintop removal and the blasting of Coal River Mountain. Upon descent, they were immediately arrested by West Virginia State Troopers. The sitters’ decision to leave the trees was made in light of the recent drop in temperature.

After a week of Massey security harassing the sitters with deafening sirens and air horns, acall-in pressure campaign was launched by Climate Ground Zero, Mountain Justice and other anti-mountaintop removal groups. The receipt of hundreds of calls from around the country led to an emergency meeting with Climate Ground Zero volunteers, the Raleigh County prosecutor and Governor Manchin. The meeting resulted in the moratorium and a call for aninvestigation of the abuse.

The tree sit represents Climate Ground Zero’s most sustained intervention in mountaintop removal mining operations since its campaign of nonviolent direct action began last February. Volunteers know that the fight is far from over and expect work to commence on the Bee Tree site immediately. However, they see this tree sit as a victory. “It halted blasting for nine days. I think they’ve wildly succeeded with their goals,” said Climate Ground Zero volunteer Mike Bowersox. In a final communication from her perch, Nitchman captured the group’s resolve. “Its not over until the blasting is stopped,” she said.

Posted in Economics, GeoEngineering, Political Economy, Sustainability, ecology, globalization | No Comments »

« Older Entries