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[quote="homercocktail" pid='351' dateline='1761077640']
[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]I posted this to Maniac Nebula in June of 2015.  My rocky history with traditional politics led me to becoming independent.  I am currently registered as a Libertarian.[/font][/color][/size]
[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]— Homer Cocktail[/font][/color][/size]

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[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody][img]https://cdnuploads.aa.com.tr/uploads/Contents/2017/03/19/thumbs_b_c_800e5ad995f7b990d5b7f36c151ff584.jpg?v=155310[/img][/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]6/9/2015[/font][/color][/size]
[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]In the summer of 1996, I read "Earth In Balance" by Al Gore.  I had picked ecology as my major at one of the Claremont Colleges.  When I was young, I used to get shortness of breath after playing outside in filthy Southern California air.  I figured, "Why not go into environmentalism? Who doesn't want clean air and water?"[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]If there were never con artists going town to town selling miracle cures such as snake oil, there would be no reason for government regulation.  What we have found is that corporations pollute our air and water and desire to pay zero taxes which would fund clean up.[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]I was pretty mainstream when I started studying ecology but I had pals that were involved in radical groups such as Greenpeace, Earth First!, and later Earth Liberation Front.  "The Monkey Wrench Gang" by Edward Abbey was a popular book that went around.  We used to go to Bioneers conferences in San Francisco during the autumn.  I watched a great one-person play dipicting the life of Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring.  I watched Ralph Nader speak at our campus.  I studied methyl bromide, the pesticide used in strawberry fields.  A group of us spent time at the United Farm Workers headquarters near Bakersfield.  Many people here talk about Saul Alisky.  He was a personal mentor of Cesar Chavez.  Crop dusters dropped pesticides on farm workers while they were still in the fields.  There was a black and white photo exibit from David Wells at out school showing the gruesome methods and effects of the agribusiness.  It affected my life.[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]In the spring of 1998, I was part of a group project called "Save Ward Valley".  Nuclear waste can be high-level (stuff coming from reactors) or low-level (stuff coming from biotech).  Yucca Mountain was being prepared for high-level stuff.  Ward Valley was meant for low-level waste.  There were many issues.  US Ecology was to run the place and they had a history of leakages.  Ward Valley was on Native American land, the land of the Aha Macav, about thirty miles west of the Colorado River.  There were issues with ground water, a rare tortoise, and treaty issues.[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]I spent the night at Ward Valley for part of my research.  It was a beautiful thing.  There were Native Americans and anti-nuke people sharing company around a campfire. I brought my guitar and let one of the guys play.  Excellent ecclectic music.  It changed me.[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]I never meant to "go radical" and I wonder if I did.  We filmed the Ward Valley area.  At the entrance to camp, there was a large inverted American flag.  Some people believe that means you hate America but what it really stands for is a distress signal.  My job as a student is to have candor and integrity and to report things as they are.  How can saving ground water from nuclear contaminants be radical?  I remember showing the video of Ward Valley to my dad, an Air Force veteran.  Usually, he was overly supportive of anything I did at school.  When he saw the inverted flag, he walked away and didn't say a word.  Our relationship became rocky after that point and hasn't quite been the same ever since.[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]My godparents are millionaires and staunch Republicans.  They have had mansions in Lake Tahoe, Ventura, Oxnard, Encino and Laguna.  I used to spend my summers at their beach houses.  They offered their Tahoe home for a Pete Wilson fund raiser and they were members of the Lincoln Club.  Politics are a strange thing and I always tried to put family first.  In the Autumn of 1998, there was a family funeral and my rich cousin wouldn't look in the direction of me or my dad.  Besides being an Air Force veteran, he was a union electrician and it no longer felt like my cousins wanted to treat us as equals.[/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]I had done an internship for the AFL-CIO in Seattle 1997.  I worked with the same people that organized the world famous ruckus against G7 practices in the summer of 1998.  Like I said, I never wanted to be radical.  When I was a kid, you throw a plastic wrapper in the garbage and it disappears.  Where does it go?  Who cares?  It's someone else's job!  When you grow up, you realize, "Oh!  I'm that 'someone else' to someone out there!"  It was difficult, though.  I'm convinced that those on the far right perceive those on the left as crazy.  My family sure the heck treated me like I was crazy when I got involved in ecology and labor movements.  The point I want to make is that none of this would happen if the people in leadership were sensitive and responsible.  Why do you need to earn four hundred times the amount of your average employee as CEO?  Why are you dumping toxic waste in rivers?  Why are you moving every single industrial job to China where there is absolute slave labor?  And then... having the gall to call everyone lazy when MBAs can't find work![/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]I've waited a long time to get some of these things off my chest.  I write fiction because it's therapeutic.  I'm not necessarily trying to "name names" but I feel cheated.  I wonder what the crux of our problems are.  Our world population doubles roughly every generation but we're moving further and further away from the coast to drill for oil.  Our topsoil us disappearing.  It's DOOOOOM!!![/font][/color][/size]

[size=large][color=#000000][font=UICTFontTextStyleBody]Good luck, guys.  It sounds like you're trying to get to the bottom of it.  My experience with ecologists is quite mixed.  I'm all for clean air and water.  Who isn't?  I had a hardcore falling out with my ecology advisor in Claremont.  The radical people have serious issues.  I don't want nuclear sludge in our rivers, but I shouldn't feel like I'm in a crack-pot cult.  It was peculiar.  There would be shame if you weren't out there chaining yourself to an old-forest tree.  Here come the lumberjacks and bulldozers!  Time to die like Rachel Corrie!!!! ![/font][/color][/size]

:cow:
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