And in terms of one lobbyist's latest news "alert," clambering for another moratorium, while giving away parts of both coasts, the idea of Ocean Sanctuary is indeed "out" Ñ completely out. In all of the 3,000 to 4,000 words of dense, statistic-filled text in this latest news sheet, not a single word supporting Ocean Sanctuary.
Admittedly, we ocean activists are frustrated. Perhaps, however, we can go forward if we learn something from some of the leaders of Redwood Summer. Judi Bari, Daryl Cherney, Betty Ball, Sequoia and a number of others recognized the fact that they no longer lived in the city; that they now live in the country. That means a shifting of gears and an awareness that they, as country folk, are politically, electorally impotent.
These individuals and their colleagues in Ukiah, Willits and points north acted on what they knew Ñ and that made the difference. Redwood Summer was more than stopping in their tracks clearcut-bound logging trucks.
Redwood Summer was also about getting other Judi Bari's from Baltimore (Judi's hometown), and people from Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles, Kansas City out here to the forests, educating them, and sending them back home activists.
Rural environmentalists saw themselves as catalysts, creating effective activists across the nation. Rural activists were seed planters. Sequoia for example, took in, and educated, the young people from San Francisco, San Antonio, wherever, and sent them back as activists, particularly back to cities, where the real political power lies.
The same thing is now happening on the coast. The only difference is logistical. Instead of bringing people here, we are taking our message to people "there."
"Only One Ocean," crafted by a professional and paid for by hard working volunteer fund-raisers of the Sierra Club's Mendocino-Lake Group's coastal committee is the message going out there. Only One Ocean is a brilliant, 24-minute computerized and taped sound and slide show, produced and written by Judith Vidaver, and narrated with eloquence and understated irony by Marco McLean, and ably edited by former Fort Bragg Advocate editor Brooks Mencher, who, by the way, won one of this year's prestigious Lincoln Steffens Awards for Investigative Journalism for his courageous series of articles on the fraudulent offshore oil study coming from the National Academy of Sciences.
Judith's words and images break new ground for the words-and-images medium. Without being affected or pretentious, Judy shows a series of arresting images, the first of which appear to be amoeba-like globs; beautiful, abstract, snaking rainbow-colored paintings, reminiscent of the water lilies painted by Monet. Finally, the series of globs ends with a black glob of oil, a variation of what had been shown all along, beauty at first, and then appalling, sickening ugliness, which, actually, is what oil on the water appears to be. In viewing these images we are stunned, immensely saddened, outraged. Then, we want to act.
Any legislative lobbyist showing this show to an audience might go looking for another job, because Only One Ocean is so Olympian, so global, so universal, so deeply ecological in its concerns, that it reduces the very idea of a moratorium to the frivolity of mendacious, macho, short-term legislative politics.
Thus far, Judith Vidaver and Coastal Conservation Educational Chair, Lorrie Lagasse, have taken Only One Ocean to Hawaii, where they showed it to a highly critical, and enthusiastic audience of marine educators. Although the program is aimed at a lay audience, these educators nevertheless learned a lot themselves. They learned that it's okay for detached, "objective" scientists to be angry, perhaps even to be activists.
Only One Ocean will next be shown in the Bay area at the Southwest Marine Educators Conference, at Sierra Club headquarters, and before David Brower and the staff and project directors at Earth Island Institute.
After that it will travel out to the grassroots, where its producers hope to create activists in all of the 154 Coastal Congressional districts.
It is not hard to imagine what would happen if the paid lobbyists and larger environmental organizations would take a page out of the Redwood Summer book and put their money, energy and time into organizing ocean activists around Ocean Sanctuary in the thirty coastal states, instead of expending so much of it on short term stop-gap measures that in the long run will burn everyone out and turn America's coasts over to the extractors.
1. Write moratorium lobbyist Richard Charter. Ask him to include support for Ocean Sanctuary in his mailings. Ask him to direct people to add a plea for Ocean Sanctuary to their letters or calls on any present or future moratorium. Write: Richard Charter, Box 583, Bodega Bay, Calif. 94923.
2. Write or call your elected representatives on the offshore oil funding moratorium, and also ask for Ocean Sanctuary.
3. Join the Ocean Sanctuary network. Fill out (or duplicate) and mail the coupon below to:
Sierra Club Coastal Committee
Mendocino/ Lake Group
Box 2330
Fort Bragg, Calif. 95437
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited