Mendocino Environmental Center

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist the dare thing. Honestly, these days it seems like you are taking your life literally into your hands or putting it in someone else’s just to speak the word PEACE. What is that about? Since when is it political to mention something that has been around as a spiritual, philosophical, and just a natural concept for millenia? Spin. That is what it is. We see it all the time, ‘we’ meaning those of us who stand up out loud for peace and don’t shut up when confronted about our beliefs… which is a bit ironic, admittedly.

So, what do you do to engender peace? How do you keep your own peace of mind when it is confronted, or even conflicted? How do you stay congruent to the idea of being at peace when all around us seems to be in flux, in conflict, in constant stressful change and seriously off balance?

Me, I meditate, I pray, I do a thing called spiritual mind treatment to remember those qualities I want to experience more of and to cleanse my mind from the stuff that creeps up and takes my mind away from expressing things like love, peace, and joy in life.

Beyond that, I write poems, I make someone a meal or a gift, and I do any kind of creative expression I can think of and get my hands into and get finished soon. Thanks to all my former therapists, teachers, healers and family for teaching me that last bit. It is always a good idea to consider how long of an investment the project is going to cost you in time. The one thing each of us has is a limited time on this planet in this one life… well, outside of the alternate lives and transpersonal psych stuff that some of my woo-woo friends know all about and upon which I usually fall pretty darned mum… not for lack of interest, I dare say, but for lack of intimate knowledge of the same.

This is the life I inhabit, I trust it, I know that it is me for now and that is as far as I can stretch at this point in my human brain and body, so that’s about it for me. If you know better, I salute you. Me, I’m meat, breath, bones, and blood… okay, 90% water, too. I am as peaceful as I have a mind to be, and I welcome you to remind me to be more peaceful if your awareness is greater than mine as I recognize a need to grow ever more conscious of life and the depth of living that is within the concept of PEACE.

So, what is new with you?

In case you are interested and not yet clued into activist networks in the Bay Area who are promoting this, allow me to now invite you to celebrate peace in a demonstration rally in San Francisco on the Sunday closest to the 5 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Believe me, we are really wanting out of that war, of the others, too, and out of the mindset of endless and needless wars. So, if you care to join us, we will be car pooling to the city on Sunday, the 16th of March. Call me if you want more data: 463-8653 my name is liz.

For more info on the 5 years:

www.5yearstoomany.org
www.unitedforpeace.org

For ideas of how to organize locally for the actual 5 year mark which is March 19th and upon which day (Weds.) we will be holding a vigil outside the county courthouse just to remind folks locally that we think it is 5 too many years of war, I give you these ideas straight out of the annals of some nationwide Code Pinks:

March 18: CODEPINK day of action to Restore the Constitution
Before WWI there were women activists who created a pageant in DC; in the spirit of creating something striking we thought we’d create a passion play in 3 acts:

Starts at National Archives with tattered constitution and actors playing dead torture victims, iraqis, soldiers; and 100 people lined up in formation around constitution, with coffins that say the amendments and have american flags with bloody hands; Greek chorus moaning for loss as each coffin goes up; at end, see coffins lining steps with the things we’ve lost from the constitution written on them. Greek chorus cares for dead after procession. Peel constitution pieces off the coffins and put them back on the constitution

Department of Justice: Lady Justice with bandages and wounds, signs with the things the justice department has fallen down around; turn signs into what is needed to restore justice, actor restores Lady Justice to balanced scales and healed wounds

IRS: sucking money from people to war; we give money instead to education, healthcare, stop paying war tax, put $ into life-affirming activities

Play shows what’s wrong and then how to restore it
Go to Capitol Reflecting Pool at Congress and take an oath in the place of Congress failing their oath

Instead of the chaos and beauty of a march, this action will have the discipline and elegance that will make the people we’re speaking to feel safe instead of alienated
Will make Washington say “wow, this is anti-war activism?!”

Evening panel/teach-in at Bus Boys and Rev Billy Concert

March 19:
CODEPINK 7:30 am panel at Take Back America
United for Peace and Justice civil resistance to focus on pillars of war
Various affinity groups focusing on places such as recruiting stations (SDS), K Street Lobbyists (No War No Warming), and other actions, CP joining War Tax Resisters League at the IRS

Evening civil resistance march to the DNC office
Nighttime dance party

Actions will also include facepainting modeled after women of the Philipines photos

IVAW may set up a field hospital outside walter reede
or throw medals over the fence at the white house

Many roles for those who don’t want to get arrested too, of course

Leslie’s fast update: Leslie has fasted for 25 days, Ellen Taylor is going to take over the fast for Leslie tomorrow, taking on the baton, fast will be a rolling fast
Now 469 people who have signed on to fast! Plus the Gandhi Peace Brigade fast that’s over 600 people doing the rolling fast!
SF sends love to Leslie!

UfPJ Call to locals: Jodie and Rae
District visits RE funding bill on 19th (funding battle postponed till after March 31)
Winter Soldier solidarity actions/viewing
Ideas for local March 19 Activities

As you plan your local events, think about how they can help activate new people, outreach to other movements and reach the media. The aim of organizing 435 events (at least one in each congressional district) is to keep the pressure on Congress to act to end the war, especially in the context of the 2008 elections.

1.Visibility events: Massive candlelight vigils in community centers, banner drops, leafleting in shopping areas, door-to-door canvassing, voter registration and education. Events that can attract the attention of your communities and engage new participants.
2. Nonviolent direct action: Choose a location which symbolizes a roadblock to ending the occupation or as a pillar actively supporting the war — a warmongering senator or congressperson, headquarters of a war profiteer, corporate media headquarters, military recruiting centers, etc. Find resources here.
3. Town Hall meeting: This could be a hearing where Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and military families present testimony and elected officials are invited to listen. US Labor Against the War is working with IVAW to initiate such meetings in a number of cities. Your group could do the same if one is not being done in your area. Check the US Labor Against the War website for more information: www.uslaboragainstwar.org.
4. Media events: press conferences, ads in local papers, public service announcements.
5. In the run-up to March 19, initiatives that expand alliances with social and economic justice organizations should be considered. For example, a sample sign-on letter is being drafted to circulate to community leaders and groups. The letter could be delivered to congressional or senate offices on March 19 by a delegation of community leaders followed by a press conference.

I certainly hope you will consider becoming an advocate of peace in whatever capacity that works for you.

love, Liz

Cuyahogo County, Ohio is appealing for our help. They are sending business leaders to Mendocino County to appeal for any extra dollars we can send their way to help them in this, their time of need. They have kids to feed and house payments to make, and unless we can step up now, reach deep into our pockets, and share some of our own hard-earned dollars, their way of life may be lost forever.

I know this may not be a good time for you. Food and gas prices are rising rapidly, and some say a recession is looming. But we’re all in this together, and when those in need travel long distances at their own expense to reach out and make appeals, we need to listen and respond from our own hearts despite the needs we may have here in our own county. I’m sure they would do the same for us. So please, anything you can do will be most appreciated. Masonite Building Fund, Developers Diversified Realty Corporation (DDR), 3300 Enterprise Parkway, Beachwood, OH 44122.

Dave Smith

Commemorating the 5th Anniversary of the War in Iraq
Wednesday, March 19th marks the 5th anniversary of the day that President Bush declared Shock and Awe on Iraq and the first US bombs dropped on that country.
The community is encouraged to join together to commemorate the deaths of 4,000 U.S. soldiers and 600,000 Iraqi civilians, as well as countless others who have been wounded both physically and emotionally as we peacefully call for an end to the occupation.
The Peace Vigil will be held in front of the Mendocino County Courthouse between 5-6 p.m. on Wednesday, March 19th. Feel free to bring peace signs with your personal message.
Contact number: 468-8785.

Food is the one consumer choice we have to make every day. We can use that buying power in a transaction that burns excessive fossil fuels, erodes topsoil, supports multinationals that pay their workers just a few bucks a day — or the same money could strengthen neighborhood food economies, keep green spaces alive around our towns, and compensate farmers for applying humane values. Every purchase weighs in on one side or the other. ~Barbara Kingsolver

Go To: Dave Pollard Blog

Dave

Go to: New Victory Garden Movement

Dave

This is a slightly altered version of a Letter to the Editors publised several weeks ago in the Ukiah Daily Journal and Anderson Valley Advertiser. Several people commented how much they liked it, so I’m submitting it here in our blog. ~Dave Smith

For the past thousands of years we have enjoyed an abundance of food, energy, and water. Here in North America, we’ve been so gifted by nature’s seemingly unlimited storehouse that profligacy hardly mattered. There was always more from wherever it all came from. Chopped most of the trees down here? No problem. We can get more from over there. Waste? Dump it over the hill, or into the water. Pollution? Let it dissipate into the ocean and air. Just put it somewhere else and get it out of sight. Someone will deal with it later.

Well, it didn’t dissipate, it is now later, and we’re the “someones.” Disastrous climate change is caused by energy usage waste products that did not dissipate as planned. We are having now to deal with the consequences of energy profligacy, both from its waste, and its depletion. As Richard Heinberg writes in his book, Peak Everything: “Our starting point, then, is the realization that we are today living at the end of the period of greatest material abundance in human history – an abundance based on temporary sources of cheap energy that made all else possible… our central survival task for the decades ahead, as individuals and as a species, must be to make a transition away from the use of fossil fuels – and to do this as peacefully, equitably and intelligently as possible.”

Does that mean that the good times are over? Maybe not. They could be just beginning. Think that Hummer driver is happier than you? Think again. “International studies of self-reported levels of happiness show that once basic survival needs are met, there is little correlation between happiness and per capita consumption of fossil fuels.” (ibid.)

Happiness comes from living meaningful lives and has nothing to do with money or using up our heritage of abundance. The old fashioned value of conserving is the way to preserve abundance for our shared future… and it is a value recognized across the political spectrum by those who really care. And what can be more meaningful than helping one’s community transition to an abundant future based on renewable resources rather than polluting, depleting ones stolen from others now that our own are running out?

Gifts conserved are gifts with meaning. The sun pours out its life-giving abundance. The earth pours down its waters, and pushes up its plants and trees. Sun, soil, and water are the true basis of abundance and are freely given. Our care and usage, or carelessness and waste, says who we are as a community.

Just what would be a “peaceful” transition to the future? It will be a movement from our giant industrialism to human-scale, sustainable economies with secular values similar to agrarianism, distributism, cooperativism, community money, and guilds. Wendell Berry (Fatal Harvest) defines it: “…whereas industrialism is a way of thought based on monetary capital and technology, agrarianism is a way of thought based on land… [it] rises up from the fields, woods, and streams – from the complex of soils, slopes, weathers, connections, influences, and exchanges that we mean when we speak, for example, of the local community or the local watershed. The agrarian mind is therefore not regional or national, let alone global, but local. “

Conserving our local gifts of productive land begins with protecting and preserving. Only then do we contemplate usage, and only the local community must decide that usage because it is only our local community who knows and cares about protection and preservation of the whole.

A colonizer from outside only cares about exploitation of their piece: piece of land, piece of the market, piece of the resource. The whole — what is vital to those of us who will live out our lives here together as a community – is not of their concern. Therefore our decisions as a democratic community are prior — take precedence — over the colonizer’s. We trust our elected public servants to serve our community, not them; our interests, not theirs; our future, not someone else’s… by properly designating usage through zoning.

Our local agrarian future, based on the whole of our land and relationships, informed by an ethic of conserving and the reality of resource depletion, requires that Ukiah Valley land be preserved for engaging with a very different future than was once planned. It is not some distant future; it is coming now with every new drought, ice melt, rising sea, fiercer storm, and resource war, reported daily. It will be a local future, whether we like it or not, because of continually rising energy costs. It will be a smaller future, based not on grandiose money-making schemes, but on local farming and local, small-scale enterprise.

Whether or not we have an abundant and meaningful future here in Mendocino County depends entirely on us and how soon we start planning and transitioning to it. The gift of precious, close-in ag land, and industrial land preserved for human-scale enterprise based on renewable energy and appropriate technology, are crucial to our future. Keeping the zoning based on community needs for our future independence, or losing them now to outside colonizers intent on their own personal wealth accumulation, may make the difference between a future of abundance and happiness, or one of struggle and pain.

I vote for stopping the headlong rush by county civil servants and elected officials to foist property zoning changes on our community, paid for in various ways by devious outside colonizers.

I vote for a meaningful future of conserving, local independence, abundance, and good times.
~~

This is my first post for the new Mendocino Environmental Center website.  I want it to be fun, inspiring, heroic, and meaningful.  Well, actually, all I’d like to talk about is another board meeting.  Sounds boring, right?

Actually, ever since I’ve been on the MEC board, the meetings have been anything but boring.  Well, maybe there was one back there somewhere that just didn’t flow well, but all in all, it’s actually the most productive and interesting group I’ve ever worked with.  In each meeting, we use the system of consensus, to the best of our abilities, generally with a great deal of success.  I’ve heard some negative reviews about that style of processing, but here I’ve learned how functional it can be.  Each issue that comes up is presented to the group, discussed, and we are usually able to agree on what needs to happen.  The last few meetings in particular, we’ve gotten quite a bit accomplished.

Last night at the meeting a number of fun community activities were approved.  In the next 3 or 4 months the MEC is going to have 5 or more opportunities to party!  The first event will be on Feb. 15 at Ukiah Brewing Co.: Chris Skyhawk will be playing his unique political acoustic music,  there will be a silent auction, friends, food, beer, and some other entertainment to keep you enthralled.  This will be a benefit for KMECLP radio, the MEC’s low power, community-centered radio station.  On March 1 is the 20th anniversary of the MEC!  How did it happen that the place has been there that long and you just now noticed it? Find out at the potluck and community acoustic jam that night at the Center.  Also, a way off but last year was a great time, is the second annual Earth Day Celebration with booths and music in an outdoor setting.  We’ll also be celebrating spring on the Spring Equinox with another great event.  So start thinking about these dates and look for more information concerning  them to be posted soon.  If you’re interested in helping to organize or volunteer to help make it happen, contact the MEC and we’ll help you help us!

  If you have an idea for a fundraiser or event that you would like the MEC to be a part of, contact us so it can be put into motion.  That’s what the Center is about:  creating fun and peace through the ideas of many different people from many different places.

  As the MEC and it’s board move away from just making sure we’re standing on solid ground, to actually creating a place for activism to be put in motion and parties to be held again, things are more fun all the time.  We need folks like you to help keep the momentum up, so come on down to one of our events and introduce yourself.  We are a diverse group of hodge-podgers and do-gooders that love more opportunities to integrate members of the community.  Ukiah is a beautiful place, a secure home, and a nice place to be.  I’m glad to have the MEC and KMEC to keep the fun rolling.  PEACE

Audio files are available now from “Masonite, The Discussion,” a lively presentation and discussion about the consequences of our upcoming decision about zoning for the former Masonite site. Should the property remain industrial land or should it be rezoned to allow for large scale retail development? How might these different outcomes affect Mendocino County in the long-run?

Govinda Dalton, Simka Leha, Dave Smith, Tonya DiAndrea and Sean Re of MEC/KMEC handled the live broadcast. The audio can be downloaded from KMEC-LP 105.1FM’s Homepage (viewers may also play either hour directly from the webpage also.)

The program featured a presentation by Michael Shuman. Mr. Shuman is an economist, attorney, nationally acclaimed author (The Small-Mart Revolution and Going Local) and is a co-founder of the Business Alliance for Living Local Economies (BALLE). Time then was provided for perspectives from local planning and land use professionals. Audience questions followed the presentation. Moderated by KC Meadows, Editor of the Ukiah Daily Journal.

Event was sponsored by the Ukiah Main Street Program, City of Ukiah, Greater Ukiah Localization Project, Ukiah Valley Chamber of Commerce, Ukiah Valley Smart Growth Coalition, The Hampton Inn, Penofin Performance Coatings, Inc., and Tribal Economic Development.

The current mission statement, as adopted and modified by the board of directors over the years:

The Mendocino Environmental Center (MEC) works through educational outreach, nonviolent direct action and the legal system to uphold and promote environmental and social justice in Mendocino County and beyond. The MEC is a resource center which offers support to grassroots community groups and empowers individuals to work for positive change. The MEC networks with a politically and socially diverse community, encouraging integrity, tolerance, nonviolence and a sustainable future.