The Sun News Blog

2007-09-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

New Mexico Bioneers Conference Comes to Santa Fe

The New Mexico Bioneers Conference takes place October 19-21 at the College of Santa Fe. It is related to, but separate from, the national Bioneers Conference that takes place in San Rafael, California at the same time. Santa Fe is one of 20 sites around the country that contract with the Bioneers organization to hold a simultaneous "satellite" conference.
Each morning, the Santa Fe Conference will receive a live satellite broadcast of the plenary speakers at the main conference. In the afternoons, we have numerous breakout sessions that involve local experts and leaders that conduct workshops, panels, and discussions.

The speakers cover a variety of environmental and social justice issues, including green building, renewable energy, food and farming, community building, ecological design, sustainable economies, civic engagement, indigenous knowledge, social and environmental art, ecological medicine, and many others.

The California plenary speakers that will be seen on a big screen during the conference here, and their topics, include: Winona LaDuke, Seeds the Creator Gave Us; John Abrams, Thinking Like Cathedral Builders; Judy Wicks, Local Living Economies: Green, Fair and Fun; Eve Ensler, V to the 10th; Jay Harman, Designing the Next Golden Age: A Progress Report; Charlotte Brody, Chemicals - The Sea Around Us, The Environment in Us; Evon Peter, An Indigenous Perspective on How to Survive the Next Hundred Years; Wallace J. Nichols, A Brave New Ocean or an Ocean Revolution; Paul Anastas, Green Chemistry - From Here to Sustainability; Majora Carter, Green the Ghetto; Judy Baca, The Interactive Digital Mural: A Tool for Social Reconciliation from the Local to the Global; Edward Tick, Return of the Ghost Dancers: Modern War's Devastation...and Healing; Carol Bebelle, Culture & Re-building: Re-membering New Orleans/Re-weaving its Social & Cultural Fabric; Ka Hsaw Wa and Katharine Redford, Earth Rights: Linking Human Rights and Environmental Struggles in the Age of Globalization; and Van Jones, Toward a Green Growth Alliance: Birthing a New Politics.

Visit www.nmconference.org to learn about the speakers and other activities, and to register online. Or call 505-428-1227. Information is also available on the website about becoming a sponsor, an exhibitor, and a volunteer.

2007-06-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

Rural Communities Exploited by Nestlé for Your Bottled Water

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted May 30, 2007.

Bottled water costs way more than the few bucks you pay at the store. Across the U.S., rural communities are footing the bill for the booming bottled water industry. Nestlé's advance on a small town in California is the latest example.
Across the country, multinational corporations are targeting hundreds of rural communities to gain control of their most precious resource. By strong-arming small towns with limited economic means, these corporations are part of a growing trend to privatize public water supplies for economic gain in the ballooning bottled water industry.

With sales of over $35 billion worldwide in the bottled water market, corporations are doing whatever it takes to buy up pristine springs in some of our country's most beautiful places. While the companies reap the profits, the local communities and the environment are paying the price.

One of the biggest and most voracious of the water gobblers is Nestlé, which controls one-third of the U.S. market and sells 70 different brand names -- such as Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Perrier, Poland Spring and Ice Mountain -- which it draws from 75 springs located all over the country.

Nestlé's latest target is McCloud, located in the shadow of Northern California's snow-capped Mt. Shasta. The town of McCloud has worked hard to try to reinvent itself in recent years. McCloud is a former timber town that is learning how to stand on its own feet again after the lumber companies bottomed out and took off.

The town has less than 1,400 people and a high school of four students. But one thing McCloud does have is an abundance of water -- pristine spring water that comes from Shasta's glaciers and feeds some of the world's best fly-fishing rivers.

The water hasn't just brought outdoors people to the area; it's also brought a new industry that seems strikingly similar to the timber barons who came before -- taking resources, reaping profits and moving on.

Four years ago, residents learned that Nestlé, the world's largest food and beverage company, intended to build a 1 million-square-foot water-bottling facility in McCloud. Without any public input or environmental impact assessment, the multinational was given a 100-year contract to pump 1,600 acre-feet of spring water a year and a seemingly unlimited amount of groundwater.

Although residents were caught off guard by the company's interest, they have been organizing and litigating and educating. As a result, the majority of residents in McCloud are concerned with Nestlé's project. A survey done in 2005 showed that 77 percent of people were against the contract, and public opinion has shifted even more since then as people have learned the details of the plan.

"There is concern about traffic, air pollution, what is going to happen to our water," said Debra Anderson, head of the McCloud Watershed Council, a citizen group that organized in the wake of the announcement. "What if there is a drought? They have the right to continue to pump. What happens to the town of McCloud, the people in it?"

Read the rest of the story at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/52526/

2007-06-07T09:16:00.001-07:00

JUNE EVENTS TO PROMOTE PEACE IN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE

Four New Mexico peace groups are calling for the end of the 40 year occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. Vigils are happening around the world from June 5-10 commemorating the 1967 War that left thousands of Palestinian as refugees in their own land.

Tues. nights talk was sponsored by Albuquerque Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance. Only 24 hours back Iris Keltz and Rita Erickson gave very moving personal stories about their trip with Sabeel. It raised over $500 for Katherine’s trip to the Middle East and for MEPJA. Iris said: Life (in the westbank) is Kafka-esque, (seen on a poster also in a refugee camp). Rita: You have to get a permit to get a permit. Iris quotes from sayings on the Apartheid Wall: "God is too big for just one religion", "Wall=Land Grab", "The Wall will fall" and "Welcome to the Wall of Tears". Rita described all the non-violent actions taken by Palestinians daily: raising their families, going to funerals, living daily lives, and keeping shops open--all are non-violent acts under great stress.

Iris Keltz and Mikalya spoke beautifully on KSFR-Santa Fe radio yesterday, interviewed by Diego Mulligan.

Today-Albuquerque Vigil with Women in Black - Thursday June 7 on Lomas between 3rd and 4th streets from 12-1 PM. Women please join other women wearing black for a silent demonstration.

Santa Fe Vigil--Friday June 8, 2007 at 5 PM at the Roundhouse by the Peace tree along Paseo de Peralta–Men welcome. Wear black and bring a heart shaped stone, poem or song. We will have signs. Dinner after at near-by restaurant. Rita and Joan are leading carpools from Alb., meeting between 3 and 3:30 at the nw corner of Lowe's on Paseo del Norte, just east of I-25. Joan: 341-2306.

Radio interview with Iris Keltz--Saturday, June 9 on Women's Focus 12-2pm on KUNM, 89.9 FM.

Films on Israeli-Palestinian conflict-Saturday June 9 from 3-5 PM are Living in Conflict, a film by Mikayla Lev about five Israeli and Palestinian individuals who use art, science, music, and poetry as a way of surviving the on going conflict. and Can you Hear Me? Israeli and Palestinian Women fight for Peace, a film by Lilly Rivlin which explores the role of women peace activists to bring an end to this conflict. Mikayla is a local film maker who will be present at the event for a question and answer session. Film Center, 1616-St. Michael’s Drive, Santa Fe.

Fundraising BUFFET DINNER with Gaza Dr. Mona El-Farra of the Middle East Children's Alliance--June 18, Monday, 7 pm at an Alb. north valley home. RSVP to Joan Robins by friday, June 15: 341-2306 or 1Robins@SWCP.COM. $25 suggested per person donation. This will be Dr. El-Farra's only speech in New Mexico and she has just left Gaza which has been under Israeli seige for many weeks now and the situation is worsening. She has much to say.

Albuquerque and Santa Fe events are being sponsored by Women in Black Santa Fe, Code Pink Santa Fe, Women in Black Albuquerque, and MEPJA (Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance) Albuquerque. The sponsors say: We ask for peace with justice, and that basic human rights be observed. We say No to violence, No to occupation, and Yes to human rights and upholding international law.

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If you would like Iris or Rita to speak to your group, you can contact them at rerickson56@comcast.net or irisk13@earthlink.net.

2007-06-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

The “Daniel Pennock Democracy School”, Returns to New Mexico

How Corporate Constitutional Rights Trump The People’s Inherent and Inalienable Right to a Republican Form of Democratic Self-Governance, and What Some Communities Are Doing About It. A weekend-long school conceived, designed, and run by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (www.celdf.org) and Richard Grossman (co-author of Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy).

When and Where: Friday evening, June 22, to Sunday afternoon, June 24th, 2007, at the Buffalo Thunder Resort in Pojoaque, NM 20 minutes north of Santa Fe, NM

Overview: Attendees explore the limits of conventional regulatory organizing and learn how to reframe single issues to confront the rights used by corporations to deny the rights of communities, people, and the earth. Lectures cover recent organizing in Pennsylvania by communities confronting agribusiness, sewage sludge, and quarry corporations. Attendees receive over 350-pages of reading material, and practice the organizing strategy by reframing a single issue selected by the group. (For a look at this work in action, see the feature article that appeared in Orion Magazine at http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/03-6om/Kaplan.html.)

To register, please first contact Elaine Cimino at (505) 424-3630 or ecimino@cybermesa.com to check for available space.

2007-06-04T19:45:00.000-07:00

OCA'S BOYCOTT OF HORIZON CONTINUES AS COMPANY'S STOCK PLUMMETS
by Craig Minowa and Ronnie Cummins
April marked the one year anniversary of OCA's[Organic Consumers' Association] boycott of factory farmed dairy products produced by Horizon Organic and Aurora. Ninety-six percent of Organic Bytes readers, in an online survey in 2006, voted to launch a boycott of so-called "USDA Organic" brands sourcing dairy products from intensive confinement feedlots where the cows have little or no access to pasture, and where many of the calves have been purchased from conventional farms. A loophole in the USDA Organic Standards has allowed two companies, Horizon and Aurora, to buy their milk from "organic" factory farms where as many as 10,000 cows are packed into feedlots. Although Horizon claims the OCA boycott has not affected sales, Executive Gregg Engles recently admitted to investors that profits for the year have been much lower than projected. The company's stock market price has recently dropped 11 percent. In addition Wal-Mart, Wild Oats, Safeway, Costco, Woodstock Farms, Publix, and other private label vendors of Aurora's feedlot milk are coming under increasing criticism from consumers.
Learn more about this campaign and take part in the boycott: http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm

2007-06-04T17:34:00.000-07:00

Activists Ask Congress to Improve Farm Bill
by Leland Lehrman

At a recent gathering in Santa Fe - sponsored by La Montanita Coop, Cloud Cliff, Edible Santa Fe and others - distinguished local and national members of the organic farming and environmental movements gave terrific presentations regarding the so-called Farm Bill. This $90 billion piece of legislation, up for renewal this year, is responsible for food stamp funding, agribusiness subsidies, conservation projects and a few much smaller programs designed to help organic farmers and communities. Given that most of the funding that is not set aside to pay for food stamps is allocated to chemical and genetically modified agribusiness, the Farm Bill is now subsidizing an agriculture policy that contributes measurably to the nation’s nutritional emergencies and has created a 7,000 square mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico because of chemical runoff in the Midwest. Similar and related problems exist in the Chesapeake Bay, nationwide and around the world.

2007-06-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

Albuquerque to Domenici: We Want the Truth, It's Time for You to Go

At noon on Friday, June 1, demonstrators gathered in front of Sen. Pete Domenci's office to demand that he come clean about his actions pressuring U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to inject politics into indictments, and pushing the U.S. Justice Department and White House to fire Iglesias because he wouldn't play ball.

One protestor at the event was Evangeline Donkersly (above), a lifelong Albuquerquean who has grown disenchanted with Domenici. Donkersly, who worked on Domenici’s municipal campaigns in the 1960s, will not be voting to return the senator to Washington. “He’s not the same man he used to be,” said Donkersly. “He’s been in Washington too long and it’s time for him to come home to stay. We need someone else.”