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Kitchen Safety: Orientating Kids to the Kitchen

Friday, March 15th, 6-8pm
Kitchen at the Cass Corridor Commons (4605 Cass AvenueDetroit, Michigan 48201)

Adults often get anxious about children’s safety while cooking. Even small children can help out in the kitchen in a meaningful way. We’ll share resources and strategies on how to orient young ones to the kitchen and the joys of home cooking. We’ll discuss child-lead cooking and kid-friendly snacks. is interactive workshop is a space for families to connect and learn a long lasting life skill. All ages welcome. All PKD Skill-shares are FREE for CHIRP-participating families. Sliding scale $5-10 for everyone else. 

Accessibility: Please message us if you have accessibility needs so we can make the space comfortable for everyone. A wheel chair accessible ramp is located off the Forest Street parking lot. 
RSVP to Angela at angela@peopleskitchendetroit.org, or by calling 313.444.3593. Bring a container to take goodies home.

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When the climate crisis merits civil disobedience

When the climate crisis merits civil disobedience

With the announcement that the Sierra Club will engage in an act of civil disobedience for the first time in its 120-year history, this grassroots environmental organization is stepping up to join a long and honorable American tradition that civil rights advocates and so many others have used to strengthen American values.

In the 19th century, the searing injustice of slavery inspired Henry David Thoreau to lay out the principles of civil disobedience, even as he and other antislavery activists helped fugitive slaves reach freedom in Canada via the Underground Railroad. In the 20th century, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a courageous campaign of nonviolent resistance that ultimately prevailed over a caustic national legacy of racism and segregation. Now the threat of climate disruption, hammered home last year by wildfires, droughts, and superstorm Sandy, again tests our moral values.
Civil disobedience is the response of ordinary people to injustices committed by powerful and entrenched special interests. The NAACP and the Sierra Club share a long history fighting for justice. Both of our organizations recognize that environmental pollution and recklessness causes enormous suffering in communities of color, where people still face a hugely disproportionate share of the burden. From “Cancer Alley” on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, to the brownfields of Camden, NJ, to the coal-ash–contaminated lands of the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians in Nevada, good people with little power suffer from the indefensible actions of rich and powerful corporations — and no corporations wield their power to more corrosive effect than those in fossil fuel industries.  

Simply facing a powerful foe does not justify civil disobedience. Anyone familiar with the histories of the Sierra Club and the NAACP knows that both organizations have long and proud traditions of working within the system to effect change — through the courts, public opinion, community organizing, and the ballot box. How, then, do we choose the moment that demands something more? In truth, it is the moment that chooses us.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1956, her action that day was the result of decades of frustration in the struggle against segregation. Although declared illegal, the Montgomery bus boycott that followed her arrest lasted 381 days and ended only after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on busses was illegal. From the beginning, Martin Luther King, Jr., made it clear that more was at stake than one policy: “We are in the midst of a great struggle, the consequences of which will be world-shaking; but our victory will not be for Montgomery’s Negroes alone; it will be a victory for justice, a victory for fair play, and a victory for democracy.”

That victory has reverberated for generations. And although we haven’t yet eliminated all racial injustice, few could have guessed in 1956 that, 54 years after Rosa Parks refused to stand, an African American would take his seat in the Oval Office.

The lesson of the civil right struggles of the 20th century is that fighting injustice demands courage as well as political capital. More than a decade before President Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Truman (who did use his executive authority to desegregate the Armed Forces and forbid racial discrimination in Federal employment) was forced to give up on passing civil rights legislation. What made it possible for Johnson to succeed where Truman failed? The courage of countless ordinary Americans and extraordinary leaders who peacefully and at great personal risk stood up for right versus wrong.

That courage is inspirational as we face a critical moment in human history. The threat to our planet’s climate is both grave and urgent. Fittingly, President Obama, during his inaugural address, also recognized that taking action to meet this threat is fundamentally a moral challenge: “The failure to do so,” he said, “would betray our children and future generations.”

Yet the power, wealth, and enormous political influence of the fossil fuel industry have kept our government from acting. And although President Obama has declared his own determination to act, much that is within his power to accomplish remains undone. Worse, he could make decisions, such as allowing the construction of a pipeline to carry millions of barrels of the most-polluting oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. — that would make it virtually impossible to stop climate disruption from spinning out of control and “betray[ing} … [his word] future generations.”

This is the moment that has chosen us. We must seize it.

Though at times it tested his leadership to the utmost, Martin Luther King, Jr., successfully set the standard for effective civil disobedience:  peaceful, principled, dignified, determined, and strategic. To stand before one’s fellow citizens and declare, “I am willing to go to jail to stop this wrong,” remains the most powerful expression of free speech we have. The environmental crisis we face today demands nothing less.

Bond, a civil rights activist, is former chairman of the NAACP, first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and helped create the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Brune is the executive director of the Sierra Club, America’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization.

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Who’s really talking about gentrification, education, land justice, and building a better Detroit?

 A quick reminder that this is coming up on Saturday!

The Young Activists of YEA! 

Come join the conversation THIS SATURDAY! info below:
Feed 1 Teach 1

What’s up everybody? The Young Educators Alliance is personally inviting you to come be apart of our Feed 1 Teach 1 event in response to Gentrification in Detroit. 

What is Gentrification? The displacement of the low-income community due to the increase of property taxes and rent. 

Last year we did a feed 1 teach 1 in response to Governor Rick Snyder’s financial cash assistance cuts. 

Food will be served, discussions/activities and live performances. We will also be premiering our brand new video of the untold story of Detroit. So please come out support and be the change!!



Saturday, February 16, 2013
1:00 - 4:30 PM

4605 Cass Avenue
Detroit, MI 48201

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Climate Justice Alignment Statement of Solidarity with Idle No More

We, members of Climate Justice Alignment, stand in solidarity with Idle No More!

 

We stand in solidarity with Indigenous Sovereignty and the rights of Indigenous communities to govern and defend their traditional lands, waters and natural resources for the health and wellbeing of present and future generations. As allied activists and grassroots organizations rooted in Indigenous, African American, Latino, Asian Pacific Islander, and working class white communities, we support the grassroots leadership of all Indigenous nations opposing colonial governments and the corporate empires they serve. We honor the powerful ways that First Nations communities have survived centuries of colonial oppression and continue to stand tall in opposition to the harm of land and life.  

 

We honor our Indigenous sisters’ and brothers’ history of resistance to the Canadian government’s racist, exploitative and harmful policies and practices. Standing in solidarity with the Idle No More Movement, we recognize our common commitment to justice, including our resistance to the corporations driving today’s global ecological crisis through extreme energy and resource extraction industries, industrial agriculture, toxic pollution and waste, water privatization, trade liberalization and the commodification of all life.

 

We recognize and respect the critical role of traditional Indigenous knowledge in the defense of Mother Earth, for building community resilience. Idle No More provides us all an opportunity to re-think social, political and economic relations to include environmental, spiritual, and communitarian values. Such values can guide our movements to overcome climate change, poverty, war and oppression, and help us build local living economies with community-led solutions.

 

Our organizations shall stand by your side, seeking liberation for all our communities through common struggle - the struggle between colonial cultures of hoarding and traditional cultures of sharing; between globalized exploitation and localized democracy; between the shackles of the market and the web of life.

Peace, Justice and Solidarity!

 

Alliance for Appalachia, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy, Center for Social Inclusion, Center for Story-based Strategy, Citizens Environmental Coalition, Communities for a Better Environment, Community to Community Development, Cornell Global Labor Institute, East Michigan Environmental Action Coalition, Energy Justice Network, Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Global Justice Ecology Project, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Grassroots International, Greenaction for Health and  Environmental Justice, Indigenous Environmental Network, Institute for Policy Studies, Just Transition Alliance, Jobs With Justice, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Labor Community Strategy Center, Labor Network for Sustainability, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project, Movement Strategy Center, NAACP Environmental & Climate Justice Program, People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights, POWER, Right to the City Alliance, Rising Tide North America, Ruckus, Southwest Organizing Project, SouthWest Workers Union, 350.org, UPROSE, Vermont Workers’ Center

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Disco Tech 3 (by dcommunicator)

The Commons Community Media Project continues with this video from long time community activist, Vincent Martin. Vincent points to the absolute importance of education around the environment, in particular, how is all this pollution changing the very make up of our bodies?

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Disco Tech 2 (by dcommunicator)

One in a series of vlogs created by community members for the Commons Community Media Project facilitated by East Michigan Environmental Action Council in Detroit Michigan.

In this vlog, a resident of 48217 in Detroit Michigan answers the question: what is the most pressing environmental concern in your neighborhood?

The thing that I love the most about this cyber quilting project (the idea that we got here) is how the multiplicity and difference in our communities is uplifted. If we are all looking in the same direction, what are we missing? What are we ignoring?

What do ruin porn narratives or hope porn narratives about Detroit miss because they’re so intent on looking in one direction?

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Whole Foods confirms it knowingly sells products containing Monsanto’s genetically modified corn: Don’t ask, don’t tell!



Whole Foods confirms it knowingly sells products containing Monsanto’s genetically modified corn: Don’t ask, don’t tell! 
Thursday, October 04, 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association has been protesting Whole Foods for several years, demanding the company label the GMOs it sells. Whole Foods management has foolishly ignored him.

In fact, until recently his efforts achieved relatively little traction, but all of a sudden “he appears to be a prophet,” a friend told me yesterday. Yep, Ronnie Cummins was right, and the fact that Whole Foods has sternly resisted labeling the GMOs it sells has the company in a virtual P.R. panic.

Why? Because Whole Foods CEO John Mackey confirmed in a blog post three days ago that Whole Foods knowingly sells Monsanto GM corn in numerous products. And yet at the same time Whole Foods refuses to make its day-to-day shoppers aware of this horrifying fact. He says:

The YouTube video showing our store Team Members giving conflicting responses to a question about GMOs reminds us that while we try to keep all our 70,000 Team Members up-to-speed on the latest information, clearly we need to do more. Some products in our stores DO contain GMOs…

As a result, masses of Whole Foods customers and even employees are operating under the illusion that Whole Foods sells no products containing genetically engineered ingredients. This was confirmed by the recent Organic Spies video which was censored by YouTube because it dared to tell the truth about Whole Foods.

Whole Foods shoppers have been betrayed

Imagine the shock of brutal reality when Whole Foods shoppers learn the truth. They will be appalled. They will feel lied to… betrayed. Wasn’t Whole Foods supposed to be a place of TRUST? Where the food could be trusted? Where people don’t have to conduct their own investigations of all the ingredients because Whole Foods has already done that for them? Isn’t that why people are willing to pay a premium for the groceries they buy at Whole Foods?

It turns out that Whole Foods sells a surprising amount of the same GMO-infested processed junk foods that you can buy everywhere else: Safeway, Kroger, etc. It’s all emblazoned with the “Natural!” claim, of course, which usually means “Contains GMOs” because the word “natural” has absolutely no regulatory meaning whatsoever. And instead of doing something about it, Whole Foods CEO Mackey just says GMOs are “pervasive” as if there’s nothing that can be done about it. Does he not understand that Whole Foods could simply refuse to BUY foods containing GMOs?

Does Mackey not realize that if he had listened to Ronnie Cummins two years ago, his company wouldn’t be in this P.R. nightmare right now, with its own employees caught lying about the genetically modified foods sold by Whole Foods? When corporate giants fail to listen to intelligent critics, they only end up destroying themselves, of course. And Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFM) may yet see extreme losses to investors and shareholders if it doesn’t get in front of this GMO issue immediately.

If I owned any stock in Whole Foods — which I don’t, of course — I would be SELLING it like mad right now… especially since I have a fairly good idea of what’s yet to come out about Whole Foods. It’s hard-hitting, I tell you. Their P.R. train wreck is about to get much worse before the November vote on Proposition 37. (There is a solution Whole Foods could immediately embrace to end all this, by the way. Simply announce a $2 million donation to Prop 37 and all the critics are immediately silenced. Problem solved.)

Introducing WholeSanto, the genetically modified corporate logo

All this also means that Whole Foods is a huge indirect financial supporter of Monsanto through the food supply chain. Whole Foods takes money from customers who buy things, then it sends that money to food producers who, in turn, send that money to farmers growing GM crops. Those farmers, of course, send that money to Monsanto for genetically modified seeds. So buying these GMO products from Whole Foods is essentially stuffing dollars into the pocket of Monsanto.

That’s why I developed the following image, which I call a “genetically modified corporate logo.” It’s a hybrid, actually, of Whole Foods and Monsanto:


 

Luther E. Brooks Jr.
If you are not your own reality then who’s illusion are you?
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This past weekend, we at this blog took part in the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition’s latest “disco tech” (or: discovering technology). At the disco tech, there were skill shares set up at different stations where community members (in this case, the Southwest community) could get hands on learning around different types of technology.

The skill share we ran was focused on vlogging. Community members practiced making their own videos that focused on answering the question “what is the most pressing environmental concern in your neighborhood?” While not ALL of the videos focused exclusively on this question (or even got around to answering it, looking at you, children who just love to make goofy faces for the camera!! lol), we felt that the point was that whether there was powerful testimonials or silly laughter—all of it was media made with and inspired by community.

Which is the way we think all media should be made.

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