Environmental Justice

[Dennis R Redmond <dredmond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Craven, Jim wrote:

> As a native Washingtonian I grew up with whales since my childhood. I too
> would morn the wholesale slaughter of industrial-for-profit whaling. But you
> know, I have never seen any of the whale watchers or protectors putting on a
> wet suit to swim with the whales in Puget Sound or in the ocean; they would
> look too much like a seal or a whalrus and might easily get eaten by their
> whale "brothers and sisters"; or perhaps just get crushed. I never see any
> of these PAWS or PETA types liberating lab rats or even minks (minks can be
> quite vicious when held) I have never seen any of them protesting against
> turning Indian reservations into toxic waste dump sites (last year the EPA
> published a list of 73 toxic/radioactive waste dump sites and 72 were on
> Indian reservations);

This flies in the face of the environmental justice movement, which has
been making these kinds of connections for at least a decade. All the way
back in 1990, at Redwood Summer, a protest shindig in northern Cali
against the cutting of old-growth, the protestors were very careful to
distinguish corporate greedheads like Weyerhauser and Pacific from the
local indigenous American tribes, who ran their own logging operations.
The folks at the Rainforest Action Network have been acting in solidarity
with Fourth World peoples for years.

-- Dennis