CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #98

 

98.  CLIMATE MEMO MONDAYS, #98, OCTOBER 24, 2022

Robert Shetterly.  Portraits of Earth Justice [People] Who Tell the Truth.
Ferreira and Ferreira.  Making Sense of the Media: Paolo Freire’s 3-step methodology for democratic education.
Madeline Ostrander.   At Home on an Unruly Planet.  Four communities facing “impossible decisions”  

 

Robert Shetterly.  Portraits of Earth Justice: Americans Who Tell the Truth.  New Village P.  2022.   

Publisher’s description:  Five compelling essays and fifty stunning portraits and profiles of American environmental activists
This second volume in the Americans Who Tell the Truth series features Robert Shetterly's magnificent color portraits and profiles of fifty environmental and climate activists—people who diagnose the truth of the greatest crisis humanity has ever confronted and take action. The book also features original essays by revered environmentalists Bill McKibben, Leah Penniman, Diane Wilson, Bill Bigelow, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose words illuminate the plight and its causes, and point a way forward.

Along with the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the institution of slavery, the third tragic and persistent mistake of the leaders of this country was to attempt to separate economic and political culture from the laws of nature—to operate on the basis that nature could be exploited endlessly for profit. The damage done to the Earth and to the future of life on the planet is incalculable. The people portrayed here have brought warnings, offered solutions, and organized movements to restore ecological sanity.  [Even these truth-tellers cannot NAME THE CAUSE OF HUMANITY’S “GREATEST CRISIS” EQUAL IN HARM TO THE GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS AND SLAVERY.  CAREFUL, THE THOUGHT POLICE MIGHT BE NEAR.  Maybe it’s safe to whisper: CAPITALISM.  --Dick]

 

Eleonora CastaÑo Ferreira and Joao CastaÑo Ferreira. Making Sense of the Media: A Handbook of Popular Education Techniques.  Monthly Review P, 1997.  A curriculum workbook of techniques for developing critical thinking against corporate mass media.  it provides Paolo Freire’s 3-step methodology for democratic education that can be applied to resist wars and warming: ask participants to identify the problems and their link to them, ask them to investigate the causes of the problems, and discuss and carry out short and long-term actions. 

Danielle Renwick.  “Q&A: Madeline Ostrander.”  The Nation (9.5-12.2022).  Ostrander is the author of a new book on four communities on the front lines of the climate crisis, all facing “impossible decisions”:   At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth.  Our homes are starting to change, and that puts into focus what we are willing to fight for.