Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The ongoing ecological disaster has been “temporarily controlled” in Porter Ranch, California, an affluent Los Angeles suburb. Yet, families continue to get sick, and SoCalGas/Sempra wants to oversee the testing inside of homes. While the Regional Air Quality regulators requested they close the leaking well down, the AQMD failed to listen to community demands for a permanent shut down of Aliso Canyon Storage Facility.
Takeaways from a recent Green Festival Expo discussion on the Los Angeles River Revitalization include that the job of planning for water resiliency belongs to all of us, not Frank Gehry regardless of his recent charge, and we must also consider how public access, parkland, ecosystem restoration, cargo and passenger rail, bicycle greenways, and anti-gentrification environmental justice will fit into the mix. Collaboration is the key.
Big Bear in the San Bernardino Mountains has year-round outdoor attractions, including skiing, hiking, boating, and fishing. Yet long before the resorts, the area was called Yuhaviat, or “Pine Place” by the original inhabitants, the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians, with their sacred site of snow quartz called the Eye of God.
On July 11, Los Angeles joined communities across North America to call for a halt to shipping volatile and toxic crude oil via unsafe rail cars, which has caused numerous derailment explosions during the last six years as the practice has increased 4,000%. In particular, activists call for the City of L.A. to protect their communities and $1.3 billion river revitalization by opposing a crude by rail expansion in San Luis Obispo.
Jack Eidt of WilderUtopia spoke on the dangerous race for global control by the Chinese through mega-development projects such as the Gran Canal of Nicaragua and the Trans-Amazonian Railway, both with major human rights, ecological, and indigenous sovereignty consequences.
This is the first post in a series where I present the case for Geo-Fauvism, a growing movement of wild earth inspiration in art, literature, music and design. Taking off from the early 20th Century French art “Fauvists” or “Wild Beasts,” these cross-disciplinary creations respond to and react against the collapse of global environmental systems, the destruction of indigenous earth-based societies, and a narrowing of cultural opportunities in the mainstream corporatized media. Geo-Fauvists create to reconnect with the wild and heal humanity’s rift with the landscape, building a new community based on integration with the ecosystem.
What kind of President would Hillary Clinton be? According to her record, she has consistently favored big business, multinational billionaires and the national security state, at the expense of the “everyday Americans” she claims to “champion.” Not in the least progressive.