Autumn Fun(gus)

 

There is fun in the forest, fungus that is, a vibrant expression of the continuity of life, in the midst of an autumn that has not been without challenges and and discouragements. The glory of the Humboldt hills and the mixed forest of the North Coast always offers a chance to recharge with the persistence of the ages.

The umbilical to the land is a tether to the larger realities of this earthly existence. Breathe and feel the gratitude. It has been a totally gorgeous autumn.

Reporting From the Grassroots with KPFA Terra Verde

 

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2023

I have produced my last episode of Terra Verde for KPFA and the Earth Island Journal Podcast! Viva Terra Verde and thanks to KPFA and the crew at EIJ. It was a great run.

 

Here are my last episodes, it was a good way to go out! Amazing guests, great topics and some good informative listening.

 

Spotlight on Environmental Justice Implications of California Wood Pellet Export Scheme

 

Global Climate Politics and the Dangers of Solar Geoengineering

 

Major Carbon Capture and Sequestration Project Unveiled for SF Bay Delta Region

 

Economic Empire and the Raw Resource of the California Redwoods

 

Speculative ClimateTechnologies Perpetuate Racism

 

I like doing radio too much to say that I won’t find some way to get back to producing media like this again. Seven years of Terra Verde was simply enough, thank you and onwards!

 

ORIGINAL POST

One of my great satisfactions, as both a professional and personal expression, is radio programming, content development, interview hosting and audio production. I have been doing radio since I was in high school, learning the ropes on old school analog equipment. Holding down different volunteer stints over time has been my means of learning some radio basics. I continue to put energy into skills development, and by many measures the truth is that when it comes to production, I have been a slow learner. Yet radio has always been a fun and effective media for communicating and playing with my interests in politics and music. This VozSilvestre blog has long been a bit too quiet, let's celebrate some of the great programming I have developed with KPFA Terra Verde over these last few years. 

 

I can say with confidence that the matters that I have covered for KPFA and other radio platforms over these many years are extremely important -- and at the same time are definitely not getting the coverage they deserve by larger outlets. Getting on the radio and making our own media has always been a necessary communications tactic when challenging the abuses and media blackouts of wealth and power. As it has played out, I have taken some important steps in the last years in terms of becoming a more complete radio host. The pandemic, for better or worse, finally forced me to become a producer, learning some rudimentary productions skills, and not just a host who could show up at the radio studio and host a good live interview, letting the operations teams handle the board, which I have been doing for more than a decade (though I do have experience as a board operator too, as long ago it might be that I was engineer for the KMUD Evening News). Having to work the KPFA airwaves from home forced my hand, I had no other choice than learning how to package up a show from my laptop, now I am having more fun with radio than I ever did before. Imagine what might happen if I could really dedicate my time and energy to doing the deep stories on these transformative issues that just do not receive the coverage that they deserve. My dream job now is to work as a reporter producing longer form radio pieces to tell the stories that other media refuse to tell.

 

This sampling of linked episodes serves here as something of a representative portfolio of the KPFA Terra Verde episodes I have produced in the last couple of years. Give a listen, share, and help me get the word out and build an audience for this unique grassroots environmental reporting.

 

Here's to community radio! Support KPFA and all the other radio stations you know and love too!

 

The Politics of Climate Desperation and Tainted Narratives

As corporations and governments drive hard for ‘net zero’ and ‘carbon capture’ as a supposed climate solution KPFA Terra Verde is joined by writer and climate justice advocate Anthony Rogers-Wright to discuss his recently published essay Colonizing Calamity: Why Anglocentrism Exacerbates the Climate Crisis, in which he articulates the imperative of the climate community rejecting the white savior mentality.

 

Pomo Land Back Campaign Holds Powerful Rally At State Capitol

There is a bright light of grassroots environmental activism that is shaking up the status quo from the redwood region to the state capitol. The Save Our Pomo Homeland campaign is redefining forest and climate activism in California. This episode of Terra Verde highlights the March 25 rally in Sacramento to protect the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF, also known as “the Jackson”), a nearly 50,000 acre publicly owned state forest in Western Mendocino County that has become central to organizing for indigenous sovereignty on the North Coast. With unique audio from the rally on the Capitol steps this episode also features an interview with tribal elder Priscilla Hunter of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians.

 

Red Rock Biofuels: A Case Study in the False Promises of Bioenergy

Terra Verde does a deep dive into the curious bioenergy case study of Red Rock Biofuels, a woody biomass to aviation biofuels project that has received tens of millions of dollars of public money but has not yet produced even one gallon of fuel.

 

Feedstock Demand for Biofuels Creates High Risk for Global Forests

What if one of California’s most highly celebrated pathways for achieving ‘decarbonization’ could actually increase pressure on increasingly rare tropical forests? To look into this contradiction Terra Verde welcomes Dr Chris Malins, the founder of the private consultancy Cerulogy. In the interview we learn of his research on the global land use impacts resulting from providing feedstocks for the increased production of liquid biofuels across the United States, including at refineries in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

California Climate Policy Incentivizes Factory Farm Manure Gold Rush

One of the greatest climate challenges for Californians is coming to grips with the perverse outcomes of the states markets-based mechanisms for managing emissions. Public interest attorney Brent Newell joins Terra Verde to describe efforts to address the harms from factory farm pollution and the environmental injustice embedded in the false climate solution of biogas from industrial animal agriculture. In the second half of this hour long fund drive special of Terra Verde we hear from J Jordan, who works with Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability to design interventions in Sacramento that elevate the imperative of addressing these pressing issues.

 

Bioenergy and Geoengineering in California: Threats and Community Resistance

To open this week’s episode an attorney from Communities for a Better Environment joins Terra Verde to describe the rubber stamp permitting of the conversion of refineries in the SF Bay Area to high deforestation risk liquid biofuels. The second featured interview is with an organizer from the Indigenous Environmental Network who tells listeners how a delegation of indigenous stakeholders traveled from Alaska to California to Stop the Arctic Ice Project, a multi-million dollar geoengineering experiment that threatens ecosystems and violates indigenous communities rights to consent.

 

Fenceline Tour of Phillips 66 Refinery in Rodeo Exposes Hard Realities of Proposed Conversion to Biofuels

This episode of Terra Verde features field interviews with Contra Costa County residents with decades of collective experience in responding to the public health and safety threats of the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo, one of two San Francisco Bay Area refineries pursuing permits to convert their operations to high deforestation risk soy feedstock biofuels.

 

A sample of episodes is offered here, there are more links to episodes in the side bar of this blog, like what I am keeping at my Soundcloud page (more on that later!). Though I am still looking to see if I can establish my own radio show in the future, for now I am happy to say that I will keep producing occasional episodes for KPFA Terra Verde.

 

And now all the KPFA Terra Verde episodes are up as the Earth Island Journal podcast!

 

All we ask is that listeners post, listen and share!

 

 

Uprising for Land and Freedom

In a flurry of hours we brought the text together and made the deadline and we were published in Fifth Estate, the venerable and authentic anarchist magazine - "radical publishing since 1965." Sometimes I hardly qualify, but even when I have tried I never made a good mainstream sell out. So radical we remain. Hard copy and snail mail, like the good old days. Even though this is definitely not living in the past. Especially because what is happening in Chile right now is definitely about building and defending a shared future. Rooted in a deep sense of territory, with an unshakeable identity. Things are happening fast now, lots of important info spinning on the web. Look at this. Fotos pasted in a blog. All the same, special quality having the mag in hand. Hope folks find the time to take a read.

"This Is A Fight We Should Be Fighting All Around The World"

 

  

VAMOS PUEBLO!

 

UPDATE: I guess we're not really so old school after all because, even though it took a little while, the article is available online now on the Fifth Estate website, right here. Well, anyhow, it was still particularly cool to get the mag in the mail.

1312

No + $hile

A month after my return and feeling every bit of the recent visit. Honestly can't get it out of my mind.

My best experiences from this last trip were in the south under the volcanoes in Curacautín.

These fotos from the streets of Santiago however needed to get published here even if this is much later than sooner.

No more $hile. Chile despertó.

Es q no tengo las palabras para capturar todo de lo que acabo de vivir. Chile sí despertó.

These are not the only photos and words I have published from Chile - just long over due to share here on the Voz Silvestre blog, but they are here and it is documented that yes I went to Chile que ya no + $hile y lo pasé increíble. Q inspiración! Fuerza pueblo!

 Aguante Chile!

Legacy of Judi Bari

Half-measures and political equivocation were never the hallmark of Judi Bari.

We all know that.

I never really knew Judi myself, though I was introduced a couple of times, the first time late in Redwood Summer. Clearly she was not the only person who had influence on me, but definitely Judi Bari had an impact on the development of my personal and political philosophies.

Because of that influence, it seems timely to share some thoughts, as the North Coast of California, the bioregion that Judi Bari called home, is facing profound challenges. These challenges are threatening not only the natural landscapes we treasure. The rhetorical and messaging substance of these challenges also put at risk our understanding of the politics and power structures in which we live. Which then endangers our ability to influence outcomes, leaving us at the mercy of what is increasingly a predatory economic system.

Judi would be astounded at the degree to which extractive industry and the states largest landowners have successfully co-opted the symbolism, the language and even, in too many cases, the people of what was known as the environmental movement.

As many look back in history, fondly recognizing the significance of the political innovation inherent in Judi Bari’s legacy, slapping each other on the back with radical sentimentality, the larger question looking forward, as local and global environmental and political stresses amplify and intensify, is:

Will more North Coast activists step up their game? 

Props and gratitude to the crews that are taking the social and political risks that are characteristic of action that promotes real change. We are speaking of the individuals who are taking chances and getting in the way of business as usual. This includes finding the political pressure points that make the powerful uncomfortable. These are the local activists that need our support. We don’t need to share fotos of the climate glitterati that are public relations tools of green economy social engineering, clamoring for some ambiguous action that is vague on specifics. We know who it is that is fighting to expose greenwashing, to protect pubic health, to keep trees standing, and to keep fossil fuels in the ground, among many still relevant actions. We have limited resources, we must support those who are truly on the frontlines. And especially those who are not taking money from the corporations that are causing the damage.

Certainly in 2019 no one and no organization on the North Coast should be leveraging the legacy of Judi Bari for fundraising while at the same time failing to clearly and stridently identify the threats to natural and human communities embedded in the multiple False Solutions of green capitalism being thrust upon the Redwood Region.

Though it is truly impossible to know what Judi would say today, it is a worthy exercise to ponder just what she would say, and how she would say it, when bringing up her history and influence on our movement. Anyone who invokes the name of Judi Bari in 2019 needs to look in the mirror and ask themselves: what position would Judi take on the most pressing issues on today’s North Coast, such as carbon trading and utility scale energy development? What would Judi Bari say about one of the owners of Humboldt Redwood Company being a board director of the corporate green organization Conservation International while pushing forward the logging of Rainbow Ridge? What about a Democratic Party that takes campaign money from Big Oil and Big Timber and Big Ag?

Would she say something that would challenge economic assumptions and existing power and class structures? Would Judi Bari be afraid of offending status-quo social sensibilities about what it might take to begin healing our relationship to the land, about reasserting our relationship to our government and about standing up to the corporations that we shouldn’t allow to control our lives and communities?

Again, it is impossible to know for sure what she would say. This is clearly a hypothetical exercise. But it is relevant, in that we must be true to the spirit of those people who inspired us, and be true to what is the essence of that inspiration.

Fundamentally, to respect and honor the legacy of Judi Bari we must ask ourselves how we ourselves are handling these questions before we invoke her name.

Viva Judi Bari!

Viva wild Earth!

Environmental justice is social justice!

Bosque Protector Pañacocha

I recently was blessed con la suerte de poder realizar una visita íntima a un lugar precioso con alta relevancia en nuestra comunidad extendida de amantes de la naturaleza. Believe it or not I finally made it to Pañacocha, en el oriente ecuatoriano, down into the Amazon Ecuatoriano we went. I was nobody and then I finally made it to Pañacocha, and now I am somebody. Ahora entiendo bien lo que ya entendí bien:

El Bosque Protector Pañacocha es una joya de la naturaleza!

The Río Napo is a world all it's own, very possibly the largest river that I have ever really been on.

The Amazon is under assault from the global petro-chemical industry, all I need to say in this space is that they are laying pipe as fast as they can. This foto is a half-useless image of an effort to snap a shot of the seemingly endless number of trucks heading out into the Amazon carrying every imaginable diameter of this most likely Chinese fabricated pipe material.

As an example of how established protected areas in the Amazon are violated by industry while the true indigenous stewards of the rainforest are marginalized from decision making processes regarding these very same protected areas, totally undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of traditional Western nature protection practices, el Bosque Protector Pañacocha is increasingly isolated, an island of intact forest on the petrolero penetrated landscape, threatened by road building and held hostage by the fossil fuel industry. Still it remains a truly wild and natural expanse of the Amazon rainforest, hogar de los pueblos originarios, lungs of the planet and conservation imperative of humanity. While up Pañayaku exploring we could occasionally hear the hummmm of motors on the distant Napo, and even saw the apocalyptic pulsating flame light of pipeline and oil industry gas flaring in the distance against the clouds and fogs of the jungle night sky. It is all too clear that the extractivist pressure is unrelenting in the Amazon. This is simply not sustainable, it is suicide to exploit these remaining forests, and the clarion call that we must dramatically change the course of this industrial exploitation has never been louder. It is also clear that the efforts to protect Pañacocha will remain standing. I am so appreciative of having made the journey! Thanks and appreciations to those who have invested so much sweat and tears into the long term protection of the human and natural communities of Pañacocha, el Bosque Protector es tarea de tod@s! La vida es una fucking hermosura, DE LEY, no lo vamos a malgastar. Viva Pañacocha, viva Pañayaku, viva la Amazonas!