There was Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, #metoo and Black Lives Matter. Protest is how our freedom grows and when it happens it is precious; when it happens, you gotta drop what you are doing and hit the streets.
The Democracy movements are always in the streets and court rooms and everywhere we are having heated debates, in kitchens, at the ballpark, in jails, on podcasts. And in this time of ferment, all the protest boats are rising.
Movements that are influential on our work at the Church of Stop Shopping? Certainly ACT UP, and the brave Appalachians facing Mountaintop Removal Coal-mining. The labor struggles at Starbucks and WalMart. The fight against Monsanto-Bayer’s “RoundUp” the carcinogenic herbicide is a resistance struggle we shared with Daryl Hannah and Neil Young.
Where do the uprisings take us? For one thing, the movements are connected. Let’s not isolate with our issues. We are marching today after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and the warrantless home invasions by ICE. Yet the struggle also relates to the violence against farm families and gardeners by Monsanto/Bayer’s “RoundUp”.
The weakening of enforcement of the 1st Amendment Rights runs parallel to the right to clean air and water. We need strong, healthy bodies to exercise those freedoms of worship, press, speech, gathering and protest. Thousands are sick and dying from RoundUp. Now it appears likely that the corrupted EPA’s shielding of the Bayer/Monsanto from the impact of “RoundUp” could very well be upheld by Trump’s Supreme Court.
This summer, when the conservative court moves to nullify billions of dollars ear-marked for the surviving family members of RoundUp (Estimates of the number of lawsuits against Bayer, many of filed by farm widows, runs up to 170,000.) We should be protesting this summer at the court in Washington. Like our current protests, here is deadly injustice. In this case, the victims were not shot like Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti, but died slowly and painfully over years of cancer affliction.
Fighting ICE now with the force we have shown so far, we are shaking the institutions that aid and abet the criminals. Hotels that give ICE rooms (Hilton), weapons dealers, retailers that allow access (Target). I believe that marches and rallies in the streets help re-balance the rights of everyday people and the powerful violent institutions. Our unstoppable protests now, full of the fury against injustice, are helping freedom-fighters on many fronts for years to come.
Rev. Billy