Click here to view the embedded video.

You can give up your car, and maybe even heat to your house, but can you give up the oil that has been plowed, planted, fertilized, harvested, stored, dried, canned, frozen, processed and transported by oil?

Farm for the Future

This event is open to all levels of participation. Choose your challenges, or go all the way off the grid. As Sarah Moore writes, “Power Down Week will be a game, a challenge, a dare, a drill. It’s real and it’s play. It will be hard, it will be fun. It’s workshops, it’s a conference of neighbors, it’s the best staycation you will ever have.”

We will bike, walk and bus. We will cook and bake in solar ovens. We’ll shut off our computers, turn our refrigerators into ice boxes, and exchange our cell phones for a 24-hour central communications headquarters. We will attempt to eat locally grown, organic food.

We will call back the spirit of our ancestors and call forth the spirit of a future generation who will discover new ways to power our world, free from our current addiction to oil, coal and nuclear power which are destroying our planet.

We will find better ways. More creative ways. Ways that may take longer, but which build stronger relationships and deeper understanding of the way things work.

You decide how far you want to go: Help with planning, attend or host events, join in on the challenges, or lead others in a tour, a demonstration or a reskilling.

This is a community event. All people on all levels are welcome. The challenge will be living without things we’re accustomed to. The game will be discovering the fun of closer human interaction, of doing things in community, and of learning new skills that will change us for the rest of our lives. These will be experiences to remember!

If you have any area of skill or just an interest, let us know. We are looking for both leaders and learners. Examples include: building solar ovens, knitting, darning socks, weaving classes, broom making, slingshot making, beekeeping, food fermentation, composting, making hand crank or bike generators for radios, mills or whatever.

The heart of the event will happen in Riverwest, but we’ll also be arranging for tours all over Milwaukee.  If you have favorite  sustainability or natural environment places or projects, let us know.

We will attempt doing all of this without money changing hands, by using the new Milwaukee Area Time Exchange, time for time. Please sign up now.

And last, this will be one long party! Look for the creative side: poetry reading by candle light, human powered fun, yoga, group solar showers, backyard bonfires and drum circles. Planning has just started — join us for the fun of dreaming it up!

To get involved call (263.1513) or email Sura, or Sarah Moore (372.3824)

This is an attack on people who are trying to protect our economy, our environment, our health and our future. Our job now is to speak out against it, before it’s too late. Remember history. Protect our children’s future.

In order to call attention to this, we are hoping to inspire the planting of 350 fruit and nut trees, bushes and vines in the Milwaukee area.  Not only do food producing trees and plants reduce CO2 via photosynthesis, but they provide local food which reduces our reliance on planes and trucks that bring us food now.

More, from the 350.org website:

Our mission is to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis—to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet.

Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. But 350 is more than a number–it’s a symbol of where we need to head as a planet.

To tackle climate change we need to move quickly, and we need to act in unison—and 2009 will be an absolutely crucial year.  This December, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to craft a new global treaty on cutting emissions. The problem is, the treaty currently on the table doesn’t meet the severity of the climate crisis—it doesn’t pass the 350 test.

In order to unite the public, media, and our political leaders behind the 350 goal, we’re harnessing the power of the internet to coordinate a planetary day of action on October 24, 2009.  We hope to have actions at hundreds of iconic places around the world – from the Taj Mahal to the Great Barrier Reef to your community – and clear message to world leaders: the solutions to climate change must be equitable, they must be grounded in science, and they must meet the scale of the crisis.

Please take the pledge.

The agent told me that he got my name from someone in an environmentalist group as a person who is knowledgeable about the environmental movement and development in Riverwest.  He alleged he wanted to speak to me in order to help reconcile the two groups.

I asked him what he was talking about and he responded that he just told me.  I asked who gave him my name and he refused to tell me, stating it was requested that he keep it confidential. I asked again for a specific reason he was calling.

Multiple times he said, “If you don’t want to talk to me…” and I said, I’m happy to talk to you if you ask me a specific question and can be honest about why you’re calling. and then he’d say again, “I told you why.”

So I told him, Look, I don’t believe what you’re telling me. First, everyone knows that I’m active on development and environmental issues in this neighborhood. This is no secret. I’m very public, so there would be no reason for anyone to request anonymity. Second, the FBI doesn’t work on reconciliation (this is something he brought up at least 2-3 times).

I told him that if they are calling me because I have posted publicly that we need a radical environmental organization in this city, he should look up what radical means–it means going to the roots.

I asked him to give me one example of the FBI working on reconciling these two groups ANYWHERE. and his response was that the FBI sometimes protects protesters. Poor guy. I had to inform him that this is not reconciliation.

After we hung up, I posted this on Facebook.

Then, someone posted a link to a booklet called “Operation Backfire: a Survival Guide for Environmental and Animal Rights Activists” which is put out by the National Lawyers Guild on my facebook wall.  (if you can’t open that, you can see it here)
It starts out, “In 2004, several separate FBI investigations into the animal rights and environmental movements were combined into Major Case #220, also called Operation Backfire. Shortly after, the FBI’s top official in charge of domestic terrorism announced that ‘The No. 1 domestic terrorism threat is the eco-terrorism, animal-rights movement.’”

The link was removed w/in 2 minutes. Are they monitoring my facebook page? my phone? my email? I don’t know. I reposted the link myself, so if you are a facebook friend, you can view it.

I am concerned that this kind of harassment and intimidation is going to be a challenge for future environmentalists in Milwaukee. As more and more activists work to protect our resources, corporations will be working to take them away, and take the activists down. What easier way than to delegitimize the movement?

If you hear anyone else who has been contacted,  have any ideas about what inspired the FBI would be contacting me, I’d love to know.

I realize it’s possible that this isn’t related to development in Riverwest, but has to do with something else I’m active on (Israel/Palestine, water, etc…).

In any case this kind of non-transparent intimidation is scary and creepy, even knowing that I have done nothing against the law,  I understand that this might not matter at all.

I hope this is the end of it.

Now, the Horizon namebrand will be slapped on non-organic products, angering customers and putting organic dairy farmers in deeper distress. Dean is putting their profiteering before customer health or industry integrity (is there such a thing any more?).

Dean also recently quietly switched almost all their Silk soymilk line to conventional (aka “natural”) instead of organic soybeans, without lowering their price. Some retailers are now dropping the Silk products.

Dean Foods may call their products “natural, but will not be able to say they are produced without pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and other drugs,  genetically modified feed crops, or that the cows graze in pastures rather than be confined to factory farm feedlots.

Dean’s WhiteWave-Morningstar division controls the Horizon, Organic Cow, Silk, and other specialty brands.

More from the Organic Consumers Association http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18437.cfm

This land belongs to us. It’s ours, and not a bountiful commodity to be sold or given away piece by piece.

When are you voting, and are you taking additional comments?

Sura Faraj

Who's Lake? OUR LAKE!

Duluth
Milwaukee
Toronto
Chicago
Detroit
Windsor
Toledo
Buffalo

If you guessed that we’re all on the largest freshwater basin in the world, you guessed right.

I believe we need a coalition of Great Lakes citizens to work together  for the purpose of protecting the water for our children, our planet, our neighbors and ourselves.

Fresh water is a depleting resource. Agrichemical and other industrial corporations continue to pollute our water by polluting air,  rivers and lakes. And those same or other corporations come in to “buy” the rights to filtering, distributing, cleaning and selling the water.

Let me be blunt. Privatization of a water system is stealing water. Water is a human right, a natural resource that is necessary for all life on the planet. It can’t — or at least shouldn’t — be sold to a venture whose purpose is to make a profit.

As citizens, we’ve been negligent  in allowing corporate control over this precious, life-giving resource. Milwaukee,  and many other cities are experiencing the water grab and we’re beginning a public battle to keep our water in the hands of the people.

Join us.

Email me here to get in touch.

So why would we sell it to another corporation? (Answer: Because city leaders lack the creativity or guts to figure out other ways to increase revenue or decrease spending). This is a critical issue and here’s how you can help:

1) Sign the petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/Stop-Water-Privatization-Wisconsin

2) Come to the Common Council’s public hearing on Monday, June 15 at 12:30, at City Hall. 200 East Wells. (Some of us will bike or carpool together — depending on weather — from Riverwest on Monday. Email me if you’re interested.)

3) Call your alderperson and tell them NO to privatizing our public assets. 414 286-2221

The City of Milwaukee Water Works is a well-managed, efficient public utility. As a result, water rates are relatively low and the water quality is high.

Clean water is vital for families, businesses and community safety. It is a major resource for jobs and economic development.  But now, in a desperate effort to generate revenue, some city leaders have proposed privatizing the system through a long term lease. Privatization in other cities has led to soaring water rates, unhealthy contaminants in water, declining investment in water system infrastructure, political corruption, and a lack of accountability.

This plan hurts the people of Milwaukee.  We have already seen the private corporation operating MMSD dumping raw sewage into Lake Michigan to save money.  If the city privatizes drinking water system, costs will soar and water quality will go down as has happened in other cities, including Indianapolis, Cleveland, Stockton, Gary, Peoria and others. We can find other ways to support city services.

Many water companies are foreign-owned. That means taking our money as profit and sending it overseas. The following are just some of the foreign owned water companies, including those with American names: American Water Works, Illinois-American Water Co, RWE, Siemens, Suez, United Water Resources, U.S. Filter, US Water, Veolia, Vivendi.

We need to ask our Mayor and Alders “Whom are you representing — Multinational corporations or the people?”

KPOW! (Keep Public Our Waters)