The pipeline, expected to be operational in 2023, would transmit 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, crossing through the US Midwest. Environmentalists believe that should the pipeline succeed, it will commit North America to continued investment in fossil fuels, dooming any realistic effort to curb climate change.
“The reality of the footprint is so much beyond what the pipeline itself is just doing. [There are] spills and leaks and those kinds of risks, but folks living there are already experiencing increased truck traffic and risks of Covid,” said Gabby Brown, the senior press secretary of the environmental organization Sierra Club.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has attempted to push through construction under Permit 12—a fast-track water crossing permit. But a federal judge, in response to a lawsuit filed in July of last year by members of the Northern Plains Resource Council and other environmental groups, prohibited the Corps from using this permit. Plaintiffs claim that the Corps violates the Clean Water Act and challenges the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. “The idea that a foreign country could impose imminent domain and violate the sovereignty of another country with the support of our so-called leaders is unbelievable…. What is the benefit? A few short-term jobs and longtime destruction?” Dena Hoff, a plaintiff and member of the Northern Plains Resource Council, said to me this month.
To add to the destructive legacy of the Trump Administration:
Hypocritical. If Judge Amy is true originalist she should have automatically disqualified herself as framers did not think women were fit to vote nor be counted as full person.
DENMARK – Sen. Bernie Sanders will be making a donation to Denmark residents following his recent trip to the town.
Sanders’ campaign stated that the Democratic presidential candidate’s visit with Denmark citizens prompted him to make a donation of water at a rally scheduled to address the city’s issues
“Following Sen. Bernie Sanders’ visit to Bamberg County, where he met with those impacted by the ongoing Demark water crisis, Bernie 2020 South Carolina State Director Kwadjo Campbell will join with residents and community leaders in Denmark at the Rally for Safe Clean Water,” a campaign press release says.
The rally, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 199 Coker Ave. at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 25.
“In addition to echoing Sen. Sanders’ call for immediate action to resolve the crisis and ensure that all Americans have safe, clean drinking water, Campbell will deliver 500 cases of bottled water, donated by Sen. Sanders and the campaign, to help ease the burden of families in Denmark facing the constant threat of toxic water,” the release said.
During his campaign stop, Sanders visited the home of Denmark residents Pauline Brown and her husband.
Sanders stated that water safety is an issue all over the country.
WJBF-TV recently reported that the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control surveyed the town’s water system in April and gave it an “unsatisfactory” rating. Its water quality was rated “satisfactory.”
Bernie Sanders still has my full support. I don't know of any other candidate that is so deeply for regular folks and poor folks. Anyone else gone to Denmark, SC to learn about their water crisis which rivals Flint's? Anyone else even KNOW about Denmark SC's water crisis?
Bernie in Augusta, Courtesy of Channel 12, Augusta
Bernie Sanders continued his southern state swing yesterday in Orangeburg and Denmark, SC. As reported at TPW yesterday, Sanders held a town hall in Orangeburg, SC to discuss issues surrounding education justice. Educators testified about dwindling resources for schools, as well as issues of bureaucracy and lack of reliable broadband that is affordable for low income households. From WIS news:
“Every child has a right to a quality K-12 education, regardless of your race, regardless of your income, and regardless of your zip code. For too long, we have seen devastating education funding cuts used to pay for massive tax breaks for a handful of corporations and billionaires,” Bernie Sanders said. “When we are in the White House, that greed is going to end. We will make a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools to guarantee a quality education as a human right for all children.”
He says with district-by-district disparities in education funding, he wants to add new investments in programs that serve high-poverty communities, support special needs students, and integrate school districts.
“By reducing racial and economic segregation, in our public schools, make sure we attract the best and brightest young people to become teachers reestablishes a positive learning environment for our children in our K-12 schools.” Sanders said.
Sanders says he wants to make sure taxpayers are not funding charter school, and banning those for-profit.
The plan also touched on teacher pay, proposing that the starting salary for educators is no less than $60,000.
Sanya Ahmed Mohiuddin, a teacher who attended his campaign rally said, “This is so incredible it’s so important for us to do. I’m a special education teacher myself, first year teaching and I’ve seen so many problems and issues within the school that needs to be fixed.”
“We need a president with morals and values, a president that will bring us together and not separate us.” Adeline Yon, an Orangeburg resident said.
As Sanders runs for president a second time, Jalal Hakmei, who attended rally said, “I think the first one showed that there was a lot of energy for his ideas and I’m hoping the second run will cement that.”
At the townhall, Bernie laid out am inclusive “Thurgood Marshall” Education Justice Plan (named after Thurgood Marshall who was the lead attorney in Brown vs Board of Education):
Build on the Strength in Diversity Act to increase, not cut, federal funding for community-driven strategies to desegregate schools.
Triple Title I funding to ensure at-risk schools get the funding they need and end funding penalties for schools that attempt to desegregate.
Execute desegregation orders and appoint federal judges who will enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act in school systems.
Address disciplinary practices in schools that disproportionately affect Black children.
Establish a dedicated fund to create and expand teacher-training programs at HBCUs, minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and tribal colleges and universities to increase educator diversity.
Fully fund the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and remove current protocols that allow for arbitrary dismissal of complaints.
Fund school transportation to help integration, ending the absurd prohibitions in place.
Increase access to English as a Second Language instruction.
End the Unaccountable Profit-Motive of Charter Schools
Rethink the link between property taxes and education funding.
Establish a national per-pupil spending floor.
Eliminate barriers to college-readiness exams by ensuring states cover fees for the ACT, SAT and other college preparatory exams for all students.
Triple Title I funding to ensure at-risk schools get the funding they need and end funding penalties for schools that attempt to desegregate.
Provide schools with the resources needed to shrink class sizes.
Provide $5 billion annually for career and technical education to give our students the skills they need to thrive once they graduate.
Ensure schools in rural communities, indigenous communities, Puerto Rico and other U.S. Territories receive equitable funding.
Give schools the funding needed to support arts, foreign language and music education to provide all students with important learning opportunities.
Strengthen the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Significantly increase teacher pay by working with states to set a starting salary for teachers at no less than $60,000 tied to cost of living, years of service, and other qualifications; and allowing states to go beyond that floor based on geographic cost of living.
End racial and gender disparities in teacher pay.
Ensure professional development for all teachers, including continuing education and mentorship programs.
Protect and expand collective bargaining rights and teacher tenure.
Provide year-round, free universal school meals; breakfast, lunch and snacks through our school meals programs, and offer incentives for sourcing food from local sources.
Expand Summer EBT across the country to ensure no student goes hungry during the summer.
Fully close the gap in school infrastructure funding to renovate, modernize, and green the nation’s schools.
Make Schools a Safe and Inclusive Place for All
One person on twitter cheered one of the ideas of the plan:
BERNIE JUST CAME OUT FOR UNIVERSAL SCHOOL MEALS. THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!
Sanders also went to Denmark, SC, and held a townhall to hear concerns about tainted water. Residents said they had not felt comfortable in drinking the water in 10 years. Josh Fox, an environmental activist and film maker, was on the panel. A video clip about the water issue, which is not just a SC issue, Flint, MI. has been battling contaminated water for nearly 6 years.
The campaign journeyed on to Augusta, GA and Sanders was sharp in his criticism of new abortion laws in GA and AL. That wasn’t all:
“This time the democrats will have an opportunity to interview several candidates and have a robust debate about the needs of the people and I am quite confident that Senator Bernie Sanders stands light years ahead of any other candidate in this race,” said Nina Turner, national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign.
The sweltering temperatures [94 deg] didn’t stop a crowd of more than 1,000 [1576] people. Senator Sanders’ discussed hot topics from his platform like immigration, education and President Donald Trump.
“We are sick and tired of a president who demonizes undocumented people,” said Sanders.
Sanders said on prison reform,“How about instead of investing in jails and incarceration, we invest in jobs for our young people and education?”
One attendee said that Sanders had done his homework this time:
He’s done his homework this time,” said Kenneth Sullivan, a 25-year-old African-American voter. The Augusta resident said he noticed black faces everywhere behind the scenes, although there still weren’t many in the crowd of nearly 1,600 people who attended Sanders’ speech at the Jessye Norman Amphitheatre on the shore of the Savannah River.
With those events yesterday, volunteer Tom Davis posted at Reddit that Sanders campaign had at least 100,000 attendees at campaign events this year so far. In comparison to 2016, Sanders had only spoken to 1% of the 1.6 million that attended his events.
While in Atlanta, Sanders made an appearance on Meet the Press. He was questioned about health care, abortion, foreign policy, and the horse race.
https://youtu.be/N0MmfO62dig
Of course, Todd couldn’t resist the red-baiting.
Afterward being on MTP, Sanders stopped by the Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta this morning. He’s not the first pol to have made a speech there.
Sanders will be traveling to Birmingham today for a rally at 4 pm. Here’s the link:
NEW: @BernieSanders will march tonight w/ abortion rights activists in Birmingham. He will go to the march directly after his rally there this afternoon.
A welcomed judicial pushback on Trump assault on the environment, this time in the form of a judge overruling Trump’s efforts to remove grizzlies from the threatened species list.
Judges in the US ordered protections to be restored to grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park, halting plans for the first licensed trophy hunts of the bears in the region in more than 40 years.
US District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula, Montana, sided with environmentalists and native American groups by overruling the President Donald Trump’s decision to strip the grizzlies of their status as a threatened species.
The ruling came as the Trump administration is seeking to rewrite regulations that scientists say would erode wildlife protection for the benefit of commercial interests.
While the decision only affects about 700 of the remaining 2,000 grizzlies in the ‘lower 48’, it’s a great step towards protecting the magnificent beast known as the grizzly!
The de-listing, welcomed by big-game hunters and cattlemen, had applied to about 700 Yellowstone-area grizzlies in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
Grizzlies, which are slow to reproduce, number fewer than 2,000 bears across the Lower 48. That is far below an historic high of 100,000 before widespread shooting, poisoning and trapping reduced the bears’ population to just several hundred by 1975, when they were placed under federal protection.
Environmentalists have said that while grizzlies have made a comeback, their recovery could falter without continued federal safeguards. They point to, among other things, alterations in the bears’ food supply from climate change and high levels of human-caused mortality.
And a win for Native American tribes as well!!
Native American tribes, which revere the grizzly as sacred, sought reinstatement of its threatened status as essential to protecting their religious practices.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and group of climate change activists spoke about the importance of reducing fossil fuel emissions at an event in Lisner Auditorium Wednesday.
Sanders along with Bill McKibben, the co-founder of the climate group 350.org, Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., the president and CEO of the community activism group Hip Hop Caucus and other activists discussed the importance of respecting the environment and staving off the impacts of climate change by moving away from fossil fuel and toward alternative energy sources.
The event, “Fossil Free Fast: The Climate Resistance,” was organized by a group of environmental organizations to discuss climate issues the day after President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address.
…
Over the course of the night, activists from many different backgrounds — black, white, Native American, male, female, gender non-binary and undocumented immigrants – spoke about their experiences and how they related to climate change and environmental justice.
“We cannot separate climate and environmental justice from other struggles for justice,” said Jameka Hodnett, a national field organizer for the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 Campaign, which aims to encourage cities and towns to commit to getting 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources.
Jacqueline Patterson, the director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program and the first person the NAACP ever hired to work solely on climate justice, took to the stage and said that minority groups are the ones that suffer the worst effects of climate change and pollution because major plants are often built in low-income and minority communities.
“At the NAACP, we know children, like Elijah, from Indiantown, Florida, who lives near a coal plant and has such severe asthma that he is dependent on taking a handful of drugs every day in order to be able to get through the day so that his air passages are open and he’ll be able to survive,” Patterson said.
The speakers also recognized that the movement for climate justice extended beyond the United States’ continental borders, adding that their organizations are challenging the use of coal-fired power plants all over the world.
Good Morning Birdies! I’ll start with a bit of Bernie news, then all of us can pitch in with other progressive news or excerpts to interesting things we’ve seen around the Net. Last night, MIC news reported that Bernie has come out against a new energy bill that supports fracking and continues to uplift the Oil & Gas Industry. From the article: With the Senate focused on health care reform, a little-noticed bill that could increase America’s production of fossil fuels may see a vote on the Senate floor as soon as next week. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) does not plan to …Continue reading →
Good Evening! It’s been quite a conference so far. And McCormick is a huge convention center! I just saw Rob Quist and Rep Pramilla Jayapal. Great talk. More in the comments! Nina is busy at her new job with The Real News. This evening’s keynote speaker is Senator Bernie Sanders. The title of the program is The Political Revolution Now. It’s scheduled for 7-8:30PM. The livestream link is below, once you click on it, it takes you to a yet link. People’ Summit via Our Revolution
The large sinkhole that caved in a tunnel filled with radioactive waste at a sprawling Washington state nuclear waste repository may have gone unnoticed for days before its discovery because workers do not patrol tunnel sites daily, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday.
The sinkhole was found Tuesday, prompting an emergency at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation with evacuations of some workers and orders for others to stay inside buildings scattered across the 500 square-mile safekeeping location for radioactive waste dating from World War II.
Authorities plan to investigate why and when the roof of the tunnel suffered a partial cave-in, creating the sinkhole that poured dirt into the tunnel containing railroad cars with nuclear waste, the agency said.
The cave-in could have happened as many as four days before its discovery on Tuesday, said energy department spokesman Mark Heeter.
“We don’t know exactly when it occurred,” Heeter said.
..
Washington state officials were taken aback upon learning after the collapse that tunnel inspections were made on what they called an infrequent basis.
“It’s not acceptable that the hole could have been open for four days,” said Alex Smith, nuclear waste manager for the Washington state Department of Ecology, which helps regulate the Hanford site.
