[Vision2020] Award Well-Deserved

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (April 27, 2012) Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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Award well-deserved

Dan Carscallen wants everyone to know that the Mayor's Earth Day award to megaload protesters was not his idea (Letters to the Editor, April 20).

Perhaps he is smarter than the climate scientists who decry mining the Alberta Tar Sands as the final act of irreversible, anthropogenic climate change. Perhaps he doesn't mind that indigenous people of northern Alberta are suffering from alarming rates of rare cancers and being robbed of their livelihood as fish and other wildlife are poisoned.

He bemoans the lack of respect given for drivers and flaggers who were "just earning a living." There were employees at Auschwitz who were just doing their jobs too. And he cites the need to have police "out in force" because "there was no telling what a protester might try." This statement implies that police were needed to prevent protesters from committing some unknown but apparently heinous act Carscallen imagines us to be capable of.

Police outnumbered protesters most nights because they were hired to protect the interests of ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil, not because there was any real threat to the transports. It would make more sense for our police to protect the citizenry from this rapacious corporation, rather than the other way around. Did we really need local, county and state police officers to intimidate protesters as we exercised our constitutional rights?

We chanted, we held signs, we played horns and drums, we sang songs and, yes, some of us entered the crosswalk. All of these are perfectly legal actions except, apparently, when our state officials (and some local ones) invite Big Oil to use our roads on their climate-killing, genocidal mission.

Perhaps they'll remember us when they plan their next route. To Mayor Chaney, thank you. To Dan Carscallen, you're welcome.

Jeanne McHale, Moscow

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Earth Day Award for Megaload Protestors - April 16, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm64L_ozZwQ

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"If not us, who?
If not now, when?"

- Unknown


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