Equal rights for everyone and everything! Just want to say there are some sis older white men in favor of equal rights. I’m calling on the dominant patriarchal paradigm to give up power. Our rights are not secure until everyone and everything’s rights are guaranteed.
This is from the intro to my show Talk is Cheap on KEPW.ORG. I guess These should be individual posts. I’m still trying to develop this site. 5-1-26
This is Talk is Cheap on KEPW LP 97.3 FM, Eugene PeaceWorks Independent Community Radio.
Rights of Nature PT1
All right, this week and next week in two parts, Community Rights Lane County,
Michelle Holman, and Community Rights Lane County got their county watershed protection measure on
the ballot. It’s 2373, so we need you to vote yes on 2373 to get rights.
uh of nature in lane county and um ultimately that could make clear cutting illegal because uh
clear cutting clearly uh destroys uh habitat and the environment there is no way to do that without
doing that so um and the mayday celebration april 26th eighth and oak uh boycott washing mushrooms
um
This Sunday is the Eugene Emergency Physicians meeting.
You can go to healthcareforall.org and find out about what’s going to happen with our Eugene
Emergency Physicians.
Let’s see. I’m calling for a debt jubilee. I think we’re going to need a debt jubilee here when the
economy crashes from $200 barrel oil. And we still don’t have an international force in Gaza.
to ensure that people get aid there, which they’re not getting humanitarian aid there because we
don’t have an international UN force in Gaza. Iran seems to be in control,
though, as of this taping. Let’s see, what else? Shout out to Radio4All.net for archiving
everything of Talk is Cheap, Radio4All.net. I just went to the anti-ice
symposium lecture from the Minnesota ICE people and but we couldn’t record that but I’ll be
updating you on that all the time I just want to say shout out to KLCC or NPR for finally reporting
on Rojava now that Rojava has basically collapsed Rojava The autonomous zone in Rojava has
basically collapsed. And this is an example of what NPR does, is they report things when it’s too
late to do anything about it. So, yeah, I’ll try to update you, keep you updated on Rojava.
They’re a model of direct democracy that is spreading across the world, and that’s what’s going to
save us, is direct democracy and mutual aid, classless society.
is what we’re all working on right now. So yeah, 2373 is the rights of nature.
And you know, right away, there’s going to be the Lars Larson crowd is going to be opposed to
making clear cutting illegal. But you know, the larger property that you own,
the more responsibility you have to the community and the more impact on the community you have.
So whether you’re a capitalist or not, there’s you still have obligations to your neighbors
warehauser and you know warehauser you’ve had a hundred year run of of slaughtering the trees and
decimating the forests uh you’ve had a hundred years you should have diversified long ago you’re
not being uh right to your shareholders by not diversifying you should have moved on to hemp long
ago can i suggest rooftop solar rooftop solar warehauser move on to hemp So,
yeah, you can also go to djsusd.org if you want to know more about me.
djsusd.org. And again, thank you to Radio4All.net. Thanks for supporting independent media.
Rights of Nature PT2
I am so delighted to see all of you here tonight. This is going to be a great evening and welcome.
I’m going to do a few announcements because we don’t want them to disrupt the program after we get
started, so I’m just going to get the housekeeping out of the way. For anyone who hasn’t been here
before, the women’s restroom is in the back there, or in the front I guess, and then the men’s
bathroom is in the back.
Tonight, our event is…
is the calling to water protection. It’s part of our water protection series that we’ve been doing
for a number of months, and those are all in support of our initiative to protect Lane County’s
water. Some things going on. We have an event that the Unitarian Church is putting on on the 10th,
which is going to be from 5 to 7, a conversation about protecting our forests. and we have some
flyers that are on the table. We have lots of materials on the table for you to take, and some of
them are on these tables. The key one is our new, literally printed just hours ago,
literature piece for measure 20-373. We hope you’ll take one, and once you’ve convinced yourself
to vote for it, then I hope you’ll find somebody else to give it to. We also have these window
placards.
They basically, some of them say vote yes for clean water, and some of them, we have a very small
number of clean water is good business. If you have a business in particular, we’d love you to have
one of these, and you can put that in your window if people can see it. We are going to have lawn
signs, and they’re arriving in a couple of days. And we’d love for any of you who have a place in
front of your house that people will see to have one. And there’s a form that’s on the table where
you can request it. You won’t have to do anything. As long as you request it, we’ll deliver it.
We’ll drop it by. We’ll put it in. We’ll make it happen. So we need to get those out as soon as we
get them.
We also need funds. We’re a small group, all volunteer grassroots group,
the Yes on Measure 2373 campaign. And it’s all just funded by regular people.
And there are QR codes strategically placed pretty much everywhere in this room. So if you can’t
find one, you’re not trying. But we can also take other checks and other stuff.
But you have to do a form because we’re a PAC. And that’s what it means when you’re doing an
initiative. So we can’t just take any anonymous contributions. But we’re going to have a great
program tonight. Kunu Bertram, he is one of the chief petitioners for Measure 20-373. He is from
the Ho-Chunk Nation and Northern Cheyenne. And he has been a great help to this initiative to get
us qualified and on the ballot and ready to go. And he’s going to talk about sort of what brought
him into this struggle for water protection. So Kunui, where are you Kunui?
Come on down. Hello
everyone, how y’all doing this evening?
Thank you for coming through.
Yeah, my name is Kunu Bercham. I see a lot of familiar faces here. I’m Northern Cheyenne and Ho
-Chunk Nation. I was born here, and now my son’s here.
I have a family here. My wife’s here. My in-laws are here. So many extended relatives,
and it’s an honor to be able to speak. today and share my experiences on how I have come to be a
chief petitioner for measure 20-373.
But before I share my story, I’d like to introduce some friends to help kind of set the scene here.
And so tonight I have a really good friend. mentor, family member,
Fish Martinez, and he’s going to be here to share some of his music,
and he’s a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians,
and as well, I am going to be bringing up,
one second here, Ashley Kyla Rose Hunt,
who is the Lane Community College Native American Student Association co-chair.
She is a U of O student and she is also a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and
I’m going to ask her to come and do a land acknowledgement for us before we start this event
tonight.
traditional homelands of the Kalapuya there was a genocide of our tribal people and there’s been an
ongoing forced removal from our tribal homelands and this is something that we’re still working to
correct and fight for our tribal rights it’s an ongoing process just take a moment to honor that
and recognize that these are the lands we stand on and these are the people we’re still here to
present or represent and to honor our ancestors and continue to do things like this and for the
rights of our land and our environment to protect our waters that’s something that is culturally
significant and deeply rooted in our tribal communities and something that we’re continuing on that
our ancestors have fought for for a really long time hi you mossy thank
you very much in uh in continuing with a kind of travel protocol i also would like to bring up fish
martinez to share an honor song and so for this i’d like you to stand if you can and also remove
your hats
Since 2016, the night is quiet and our senses are on high alert.
Every passing car and brake light in the distance is suspect. My cousins and I have been driving
non-stop from Portland, Oregon for about 19 hours now. Moments ago,
we were laughing and nervously checking our GPS to see if we were still on the route. And we were.
But the vibe had changed once we passed the first abandoned roadblock with razor wire.
Our phones told us we were about 15 minutes from Cannonball, North Dakota, on the unceded lands of
the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. We were told that we couldn’t drive from the city,
so we had to take some back roads, and we wanted to make sure that we were doing that at night so
as to not be stopped and searched on the way. We were bringing jet stoves to the encampment there
from a local… jet stove producer here in Cottage Grove. I forget the name,
but… What is it? At Probecho, yeah. So we were bringing jet stoves to our families.
We knew that winter was coming and that the camp, people in the camp were going to need them.
We had arrived at the sacred stone camp. There were tribal flags from nations all across Turtle
Island that lined our arrival. This was the first sense of calm that we had experienced in the last
few hours.
On the morning of October 27th, a call went out to the whole camp. We need horse riders.
Who can ride a horse? We need you at the front lines now. They’re bulldozing our inipi,
our sweat lodges, and we need riders now.
Both my cousin Toby and I grew up riding horses, so we thought, oh dang, we could do that.
But I was also coming with film equipment, and so I realized that I needed to,
we should probably hop in our car and drive to where we were needed at that time.
And so we hopped in the car, and even though we were visitors at that camp,
we were ready to help out however we could. And in the confusion, we hopped into our vehicles and
headed to the front lines.
It was there that we were met with military contractor agents of TigerSwan.
These agents were armed with live ammunition and dressed to the nines.
You can imagine they looked like stormtroopers from Star Wars. That’s what we called them.
It was about a month prior that I had first heard the term water protector. It was on Democracy
Now! with Amy Goodman. I felt an immediate sense of fellowship with the tribal people who are being
described over the radio.
And this is a cliche to say, but it’s something that I heard a few years ago by a speaker,
and it was, I’m forgetting the name right now, but it really made sense to me that,
so as Native people, we believe that we are We are the land defending itself,
and we are the water protecting its essence. And I’ve heard that before growing up,
but I didn’t really understand it until I heard it explained this way.
And so with that, I want to ask everyone in this room, how many generations do you have in America?
I mean, how many can you count?
Four, five, two, seven, twelve.
That’s a lot of years. That’s a lot of generations.
The DNA of my friends from the Siletz tribe here, you know, they’re mamas,
mamas, mamas, mamas, mamas, mamas, mamas, mamas, mamas. For,
you know, the concept of town immemorial really becomes evident.
And as I’ve grown older and attended many different types of funerals and…
and verse along the way, it really got me to thinking that, you know, like, yeah,
like we… we go to the earth when we’re done here. And so, you know,
for indigenous people, we really are of the land and in the land and connected in a way that just,
you know, it was profound. And so I say this also as a tribal member, as a tribal person who’s not
from these lands originally.
My Cheyenne people are from the front range of the Rockies and the Plains and the Woodlands area,
as far as we can track back. And then my Ho-Chunk people were from the Woodlands, from what’s now
called Wisconsin, central Wisconsin area.
But I was born here, and so I feel very connected to the land here.
Sorry, I have some written remarks, but I’m kind of freestyling it now.
But I say all that to say this, that the
calling to water protection is something that I feel right down into my DNA,
into my bones. And I’m
going to share a back story about my tribal people and how I feel this calling.
And it’s also, I want to acknowledge the church here, the First Unitarian Church,
right? Is that where we’re at? Sorry. United Methodist, oh my God, I’m sorry. I’m very nervous.
Thank you, United Methodist Church, for working with us with this measure and for hosting these
events.
When I think of the word calling and having a calling, I do think of religion and religious
callings, religious folks. And so I feel the same way with…
water protection for native people. The forests, that’s our church,
the land where we come from. And so I
feel like it’s fitting to be here talking about a calling. So as I said before,
I’m Northern Cheyenne and Ho-Chunk. And on both sides of my ancestral lineage, I come from people
who were forcibly removed from their homelands. and that were marched hundreds of miles away with
rifles pointed to their backs. This was a forced march.
This was a forced migration. And this was the Indian problem being marched to open-air prisons
called reservations, which were designed to slowly and cruelly kill their residents.
Both the Northern Cheyenne and the Ho-Chung people decided…
that they were not going to have the end of their story end up on a reservation.
And both the Northern Cheyenne and the Ho-Chung people decided to break out of these reservations
and head back to their homelands.
And when I think of this, I think of it in a way of nature,
like how a salmon heads upstream, or how…
butterflies migrate to where their ancestors were, not knowing, you know,
not living long enough to know exactly where that was, but they have some sort of a GPS inside of
them that knows that this is where they need to go. And it’s these movements and cycles in nature
that I was raised with in this indigenous way of thinking.
And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that It’s taken my whole lifetime to understand that this
way of thinking is opposed to the capitalist system that we’re living in,
that we were born into. And this system of exploitation, as far as I know,
doing my little research here, was born in the 16th century during the European Renaissance from
traders and businessmen who believed that the planet had infinite resources.
We know that’s not true. They also believed the Earth was flat. So we figured out a few things
along the way.
And so we’re still living with this capitalist system that leads our lives and the decisions we
make about money.
But this capitalist system, This process, it’s diametrically opposed to these indigenous ways of
thinking, of regenerative processes. And as I was thinking about this last night,
still writing about what I was going to say today, it
reminded me of the way of Native people all across the planet, and we all come from these
different… tribal ways of thinking to go far back enough. There’s always these petroglyphs and
these images of spirals and thinking of time in spirals and circles,
cyclical ways of thinking.
The corporate system that’s out there is only thinking in one line straight ahead.
The bits of time are the quarterly profits and losses and day trading and trying to amass as much
wealth in the smallest amount of time and using
all the resources they can to get there. So to
bring this back to this tribal way of thinking, has anyone here heard of the concept of seven
generations?
So with the concept of seven generations, we think about how we live our lives and how the actions
we have today, how they are going to affect our future generations,
seven generations down the line, and thinking of the wisdom and what we’ve learned from our
ancestors seven generations previous.
And so for me, I believe that… calling to water protection is a continuation of my people’s
struggle to maintain and steward the land that our tribal people originate from here.
And there’s this concept of needing to seek balance in the natural world.
And I believe the work that we’re doing with Measure 20-373
It’s a small thing we can do, but the work that we can do here will echo into the future for our
kids, for our grandbabies, and for these corporate entities that are going to be coming for the
water. These data centers that we see popping up all over the country. We already see in Hood
River.
I don’t know if it’s Google or it’s one of those data centers, is looking to purchase one of the
lakes up there that the people of Hood River depend on for their drinking water.
And it’s already happening all over the place, right? These corporate machines are coming in and
they’re taking the water and they’re destroying it and the local people don’t see any benefits.
from these businesses coming in. And so I believe we’ve already here had a few,
there’s been talk that someone wants to put a data center here as well. So if this measure is in
place, we have legal defense against this happening to our resources.
And like I said,
I’m nervous right now talking like so I don’t know if you know me I’m a musician I make hip-hop
music and I perform and to me that’s that’s easy that’s like riding a bike but to speak here to
speak my truth in this capacity is it’s a bit nerve-wracking so with that being said I’m gonna
bring Michelle Holman up here to to help me deliver like the nuts and bolts of measure 20-373.
And then after that, my idea is to have an open dialogue where we can ask questions and have
conversation. And then I’m gonna close it out and share some of my music with Fish Martinez,
AKA 2A The Native. We’re gonna share some music with you to close this out.
But again. this is my why i’m sharing my why with you and i hope that anything i’ve shared tonight
you know can can can touch your heart and know that um you know the reason i’m doing this is these
boys running around here you know it’s it’s for our kids and we are um we’re looking for ways to
protect our resources basically well
that’s straight from the heart and it really resonates um we do this work We don’t know,
we can’t see the future. We don’t have a crystal ball. We do this work because we have to do this
work. That’s why Coon was here. That’s why I stepped up to be a chief petitioner, to get a law on
the books, to challenge unjust corporate practices that harm us and the watersheds.
It’s up to us. We’re the people right here in this room. You can look to the left,
you can look to the right, but it’s right here. All of us have a calling to protect the earth.
We are the earth defenders. We wrote this law because we feel like nature’s rights have to be
elevated. We wrote this law because we care about the natural world,
we care about each other, and we want to honor those who have been harmed already. and are
continuing to be harmed by harmful corporate practices that lack respect for the natural world that
sustains us. We are only here by the grace of the natural world. We know that the harm is ever
-present and growing. It’s a steamroller. And without it being checked by people like us,
it’s limitless where it will go. off the edge of the cliff.
Some of our detractors and the opposition likes to say that this law is too broad,
that it could have unintended consequences. How about reality right here and now?
What about the consequences that we are living with right now? We know that cancer is on the rise.
We know that neurodegenerative diseases are on the rise. This is not This is not folly.
This is reality. This is what we live with. And we are the frogs in the water. It’s turning up,
turning up, turning up. Everyone in this room knows somebody who’s suffering from some kind of
health problem. And it can be traced back to nature’s inability to fight for itself.
So this puts nature actually…
elevated, and into a court of law when it’s harmed. Measure 2373 recognizes the rights of the
watershed to exist, persist, naturally evolve, and flourish. When nature can do that,
so can we.
It also requires that we, the people,
and all the living creatures have clean water. That’s a right. That would be a right that would be
ensconced in this law. And it would be done by curtailing harmful corporate and government
practices. Yeah, we’re talking about change. We’re talking about big change. We want to shake the
blanket here. The status quo isn’t working for us. And yeah, maybe there are unintended
consequences. Well, necessity is the mother of all invention.
We’re smart. If we have to stop using toxic chemicals to kill off plants,
plant life, we’ll figure something else out, right? I mean, it’s possible. The chemical companies
benefit, the big corporations benefit at our expense. So at this point,
we’re expressing our…
responsibility and our obligation to the land, to the precious planet we live on.
A couple things you can do. We have those QR codes all over. I always like to say I hope you enjoy
a really healthy relationship with your devices, but we are going to ask you to get onto social
media. It’s 2026, folks, and that’s how you run a campaign. So please get yourself on our QR codes.
Follow, like, and share our Instagram and our Facebook posts. You can also please,
please, please donate. As Rob said, we are an all-volunteer organization. None of us gets a dollar
doing this work. Why do we do this? We want to do this. We’re required to do this.
So we need some funds. because these things cost money. We’re getting lawn signs and door knockers
or door hangers. Door knockers. We’ll be the knockers. We’ll be knocking. Yeah, we are the door
knockers. And then we are amassing our ground campaign,
our field campaign, and that would be you folks right here and all your neighbors and your family.
We need people to get out on the streets because we don’t have the big bucks to get a… billboard
we don’t have the big bucks to get ads in the paper and on TV we we have to do this ourselves this
is a grassroots campaign and there is such honor in that this is not about money this is just about
the power of the people we can do this shit you folks we can do this so we want you to join us
there’s sign-up sheets on the table if you can get a yard sign and put it in your yard that would
be great Just consider that this is your time to step up.
There’s a lot going on in the world. There’s plenty of causes to be involved in,
and some of us are doing more than one. I can see people in the room I know that are doing more
than one issue right now. But this is the one we’re asking you to get involved in right here now,
May 19th. We have a choice. We can join the 670 other communities that have passed these nature
protective laws in 60 nations, 170 right here in the U.S.
Why not Lane County?
One
more time for Michelle Holman, please.
Why not Lane County?
Fish Martinez next here to share some music with y’all. He’s a hip-hop artist.
Once again, a select travel member. family to me, mentor in this music thing.
And from this point on, we’re just going to be vibing up here.
So feel free to stand up, move around if you feel like it. And I’m going to share some music after
that. And then I’d like to open it up for, yes.
It’s April 8th on Wednesday.
Yeah, this is the Philosophy Circle,
sponsored by the Eugene Library, is having an event on April 8th. So I think it’s a week from
Wednesday. And it is should nature have rights. And it’s going to be free at 6 o’clock at the
Eugene Public Library. It’s going to be really interesting. And actually, Craig Kaufman, who is a A
good ally of ours and a local expert on, actually a national expert on rights in nature,
who will be helping to set the stage for that. Thank you. Thank you,
Kunin. Thank you, Michelle. I think this is the part where we do the, you put your right foot in,
but no, it’s not. Still not. I’m trying. All right.
Yeah, so my name is Fish Martinez. On my mom’s side of the family,
I’m from here in the northwest. I’m Shasta. Shasta Costa, Tatutni, Modoc, and Yurok,
as well as part German. And on my father’s side of the family, I’m from the southwest.
And I am Mescalero Apache. And then further down in Mexico,
an area called Muchuacan. Some people know it as Teca. I’m learning more about it as this mestizo.
But I’m from that region of my ancestors, or from that region.
The whole thing with clean water is really important for me and the reason I wrote this song called
Water is Life is because I have a great aunt who’s passed away,
but she’s really well known throughout the entire world. Her name is Agnes Pilgrim,
and she was a woman who… did many things truck driver you know she was a bouncer she’s all this
crazy wild awesome stuff in life she had a full rich life but what one point in her life there was
i want to say it was the 13 grandmothers and so there was 13 grandmothers from all different parts
of the united states and all the parts of everywhere in the whole entire world right from new
zealand to all these places and She got these elders and they came together to talk about
protecting Mother Earth and protecting the water, having clean water, and what that meant to them
from their communities, from their homelands, from their tribes, from their ways of living,
to share that and come together. And so I’ve been able to participate in salmon ceremonies and also
been asked to… be somebody who stands up for our water and so be asked to come down here and
share the song that i wrote was also um takes me back to when kuni was just up here talking i know
he said he got really nervous but i was real good medicine to hear him talk about his experience
when he traveled to go support the folks you know in in the dakotas because that was what inspired
this song for me too was also all the things that I had experienced up to that point in my life and
wanting to reach out and help. So go ahead and push play and we’ll see what happens.
With an icy glass of solid state Or wait for the snowflake, beautify the landscape As it falls,
the roads are shaped Sip or drink, boil it, mix
Spend the weekend,
build a force, typhoon, or rip tides Recreate or seek to survive Worldwide,
all about that proper outbreak, don’t divide
Floodation, sweat it out, know the heat,
let’s eat yo Life cycles so we recycle. Water spouts and bubbles up and drops knowledge from the
clouds. Learn the lessons, no doubt. Good looking now. Protectors, not protesters.
Passionate activists, warriors in the game. It’s what you claim. All about the front lines.
Without the fame. Purse up, chill out, and hold it down. From yourselves to this universe.
Truth hurts, but not believe property. Water works.
Lake County watersheds. Check out that little googly, whatever thing you call it.
I don’t know what you call it, but your phones, right?
Water is life. Yo, check it out. Conscious as a water drop. I’m aligned with a modal’s mom through
the power of prayer. Bringing molecular change. Water crystals don’t have to stay polluted.
United. That’s how we do it with the hashtag. No devil, for example. Stand up.
and demand the corrupt stop raping her lambs what’s up billion dollar schemes manipulate manifest
destinations to control dig holes and act like they don’t mind illusionists with a twist why don’t
you put them on the terrorist list i’m about to head to north dakota to up the quota pull over i
gotta taste some of that nestle freeze straight from the spring stop any government that tries to
lie separate and divide yo
Water is life. Heal the abuse from the elders to the youth. Water is life.
Protect our access and water ways.
Thank you very much. Real
quick.
Oh, he’s trying to get me to do another song. I was ready. I was ready. I was ready. But that’s
okay. That’s for next time. There’s a gentleman from California. He goes by Rick Rocker. He’s a
producer of music. And when he sent me the beat, I was like, oh, this is awesome. I love it. I
can’t wait. What am I going to do with this? And then, of course, we were, Kuno and I were both
living in Portland at the time, and I used to teach preschool, among many other things. And at the
time, I was teaching preschool, and at the end of the day, we would go outside and meet with the
families, and we would talk. The kids finished playing, got their last little bit of hanging out
with their friends. And that was when I learned that, because see, I’m also from the city of
Eugene. This is my hometown also. So it’s always an honor and a pleasure to be asked to come back
into the community to support it. And so I found out that the mother,
she said, oh yeah, I used to go to Eugene. I went to this different school though. And I was like,
different school? Well, I went to a different school too. What school did you go to? Turned out we
both went to the same different school, which was here in the community was Magnet Arts.
I went to Magnet Art School when it was on campus on the building that’s now part of the University
Condon School or Condon Hall. So I went to it there, and then when it moved over to the Jefferson
over by West Mullen area, I went to it there as well. And so I just shared that because it turned
out that her and I knew all the same people. Well, you know, Kathy and Gwen and Carol and Carolyn
and Fred, this is how we knew. the teachers from our school we we got to use the first name basis
with them and we grew and it turned out that she is this amazing um jazz vocalist and her name is
jesse marquez yeah and jesse um yeah so so i was i was teaching i was teaching her daughter chloe
was in my um preschool classroom and then so then i got to know her and then she said oh and my
husband and then clay giberson he is this amazing pianist and was teaching piano at the time at the
Mount Hood Community College, but he’s also of the jazz community.
And I started, my brain started going, and there was a gentleman who plays trumpet, whose,
his name is Farnell Newton, and he had been playing with some of the, like, really awesome and
talented hip-hop musicians in the Portland area. And so this was my chance,
and I was like, you know. Jesse, Clay, what would you think about? Would there be a chance to like
maybe, you know, create some music and do something together? And they’re like, yeah, that sounds
great. And I was like, you don’t know Farnell? They gave Farnell! And then it just walked all into
place. So when you listen to that song and there’s that trumpet and that’s from Farnell and Jesse
is singing the harmonies and then Clay is doing all the different elements of the keyboard and the
song. So I just wanted to share that with all of you. Thank you very much.
The song? Yeah, it’s on YouTube, iTunes,
Spotify, all that. Oh, the song?
Yeah, for 1995. No, I’m joking.
So I’ve been doing music since 1993, and I go by the name of 2-8 the Native.
The 2 and the 8 are significant for me because of the numbers that they represented and how they
would be coming into my life up to that point. And then the Native.
Well, I’m an educator. I mentioned that before. I’ve been teaching for over 35 plus years working
with youth. I’ve been an infant, wild bird, toddler, preschool, head start teacher, and then I’ve
also done K through 12 and a little bit of college. And the the,
I had to misspell, okay? It’s hip hop, so it’s T-H-A. And then native,
I’m not sure why I did that, but we’ll just figure that out for yourself. And yeah, my music is
like… any musical platform that probably more than I’m even aware of. It’s called Water’s Life
featuring Farnell Newton. Yeah, you can check that out. And I’ve actually had the opportunity just
a few years ago with my uncle Brent Florendo. We came here to the community and we performed with
the Eugene Choir. So it was a 100-person choir. And we got to perform for the Music of America’s
performance at the Hulk Center, which was quite the honor. And I’ve performed this song,
not only for you guys here today, but I’ve performed this with the PJCE,
which is the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, which is a 12-piece jazz band from the Portland
community. So it’s 12 pieces, all horns, wind instruments, and then plus the pianist and drummer.
And then there’s also this small little group called the Portland Chamber Orchestra.
And I got to perform with them four times, like a 50-piece full orchestra under Rest His Spirit.
Yaki Bergman was the conductor from New York who I got to work with. So this song continues to
change and evolve. I’m actually going next week to Portland. And I’m going to be working with a
woman named Andrea Gonzalez and her husband. She’s a celloist. And we’re going to try to do maybe
like some type of acoustic set. So it’s always just an opportunity and an exploration.
And I really, really hope that beyond my music, that if anything, if you listen to it,
it inspires you to help support this build, this 2373,
and the rest of your community. I hope it empowers you to do these things because it is important.
We are protectors, and that’s what we do. No matter where you’re from, right, we’re all human
beings. And I hear it often said, oh, in the two worlds and these two. If the world goes to crap,
we’re all from the same world. It’s going to impact us all. So it’s important for all of us as
human beings to connect with one another, to support one another. Thank you.
A little bit more housekeeping. We have an announcement for the…
Native American Student Association. Yeah.
Hello again. On behalf of the Native American Student Association at Lane Community College,
as some of you may know, for 50, this will be 51 years, we have hosted the NASA powwow at Lane
Community College. Due to some circumstances and difficulties our Native students have faced at
Lane, we have voted as a team to postpone our powwow that usually happens in April,
the third week of April. We will now be hosting that sometime November, December. Hopefully,
if we’re able to put it together. But in honor of the space we hold for community in April and
having some type of community event where we can gather and fellowship and good food, we are
hosting a salmon bake and culture night at the LCC Longhouse on April 18th.
It will be 5 to 7. We’ll have some amazing speakers. and a great night and some great food so i
would love on the behalf of nasa to invite everyone here to share the date share the time again
that is april 18th 5 to 7 p.m at the lane community college longhouse and we would love to have
you join us hi you mossy oh
yes let’s plug the amazing artists we
have michelle holman there we’ve been full people they’re going to be sharing about the watershed
bill and also going to be performing some amazing music We’re also going to have somebody speak and
share about the cultural significance and importance of salmon to our tribal people. So it’s going
to be a great night, and we would love to see you all there. Thank you
so much. So I had this idea for how we’re going to close this.
So I just wanted to say, for me, it was really hard to recount those memories of being at Standing
Rock. I was writing about it last night. It was really heavy on my spirit because when I returned
home after being at Standing Rock, to be honest, I was feeling depressed.
I was feeling really, my spirit was down because even though it was beautiful to see all of that
support for the tribal nation there and to see people from around the world coming to support this
cause for really… respecting the rights of nature in that corner of the world.
I came home feeling very powerless. I was going to share some images,
but rather than doing that, I’ll just tell you,
there were paramilitary people there itching to do some real damage to the people that I was there
supporting. and um and to be there and to try to hold that space and peace and and non-violence um
you know it’s really it was really hard um and then coming home i didn’t really know you know what
to do with with that energy with that hurt you know but that feeling violated and so um luckily i
had music and you know i was was working with fish with with music in portland at the time and um
And I was able to produce an album. And the album that I produced was called Through the Battle
Smoke. And that is my Ho-Chunk Indian name, Ksiyamani, which means walking through the battle
smoke. And so with that album, I took my experiences and found a creative outlet.
And so I’m going to share one of the music videos that I made from that.
And I don’t want that to be the final thing you see and experience here. After that,
I’d like to bring Michelle up again, and we can maybe have a little bit of a conversation if you
have any questions on how you can support and what we have coming up next.
I’d love to finish in a positive way, knowing that we are here together supporting each other,
supporting this cause, and that’s a really beautiful thing. And I really appreciate everyone that
came out tonight. It means a lot to me. So thank you very much. I’m going to pop over here.
It’s going to take me a minute. I’m going to play a music video, and then I’ll be right back. Thank
you.
kind of sitting around talking about what do we do at design a petition? What do we do?
What’s up online? What do we do?
And how are these issues connected in ways that we can build movement around?
And how can we do the voice? So I hope to see there.
It will be a small group conversation.
Okay,
this says dedicated to all the water protectors and land defenders worldwide we do this work for
seven generations ahead and seven generations behind be a good ancestor
It’s so good.
We’re just going to open up for questions. People want to know something about the law.
It’s actually not a bill. It’s a law. It’s going to become law. So if you have a question,
Rob, myself, Kunu, we can answer it. I mean, here and now.
Are you just so awesome?
Well the short story is that it’s legal to do harm So
we think that that’s injustice and we want to we want to counter injustice we want to challenge
expose and write injustice so Through a law, if it’s okay to spray chemicals from helicopters after
a logging project, then what do you do about that?
Myself, you know, I live in the coast range. We’ve been fighting the aerial herbicide spraying from
helicopters since the 70s. So every time we did the thing you’re supposed to do,
you call your representatives, or you get in contact with the regulatory agencies,
or you talk to corporate heads, or you invite corporate heads to your community center like we did.
They all said the same thing. It’s legal. Yeah, we know it’s legal, and just because it’s legal
doesn’t make it right. So we are challenging it. We want to change the law. If this is a legal
practice, which it is, We have to make it illegal. And this is what the people do when the
government is on its butt. We’ve been begging our officials to change these laws.
But, you know,
elected officials have their campaigns paid for by big corporations, and we have not made headway
that way. We’ve tried all the avenues. This is what people do when it’s the last-ditch attempt.
And we feel like this, you know, the earth’s begging us to be active here we’ve got to do something
so this is this was what we chose the citizens initiative yeah and if i could just add i think the
reason why this is the right approach is the current system basically says that there’s a certain
amount of allowable harm, that we can pollute you this much, and we’re all allegedly okay with
that, which we’re not. And what this law does, it’s really a principled approach.
It basically says what the goals are, what the requirements are, which is that the watersheds have
a right to exist and to flourish and to regenerate and have sufficient flows to keep operating the
way that a healthy ecosystem can keep functioning. And that we, residents, have a right to clean,
safe drinking water, which seems so fundamental that we shouldn’t have to say it. But it does say
that. And it says that that clean drinking water is free of contamination from pollutants. And the
same is true for the watershed. So that’s really how it’s written in a principled way about what we
deserve. And then we can look at any harms against those goals.
And so that’s why we think it’s a good law. And it has a lot of other things to make it work. But
that’s why we think it’s a good approach. And so what are the practical implications?
you know, damages the water, then you can pursue them and you can justify it? Yeah,
yeah, exactly. I mean, basically anything that’s a violation would be judged against the harm,
and the law, the measure that we’re proposing, we’re hoping we’ll vote on and pass, would basically
say that when we… someone were to be taken to court and proven to have harmed the watershed,
it’s not an easy bar. You can’t just do that lightly. And you have to have a real standard of
evidence. And you have to also have science that shows that the actual harm occurred and that it
was caused by the person who’s being sued. So it’s a real process just like any other legal
process. But then if you prove that, then there are damages that are assessed.
And those damages are assessed… proportional to the harm. So what would it take to restore the
watershed to healthy? And that would be determined based on science, which is, we like science.
that there’s over 670 logs like this in existence right now. One of my favorites is the
Villacobamba River in Ecuador was severely damaged by a logging show,
not a logging show, I’m sorry, a mining operation. And the people said no.
They already had their constitution was amended.
to ensconce in law the rights of nature so the people said no the river went to court people were
there with the river as the plaintiff and the river won and the mining company had to make it right
big big penalties they had to clean up the mess and it was a victory for for nature and the people
yeah i
would like to read about um something that happened closer to home so Just now so Amazon is set to
pay 20.5 million dollars in settlement settlement money to In the citizens of Boardman,
Oregon, there’s a data center there that Completely contaminated the groundwater there and so The
contamination mechanism was that the data center draws water that’s high in nitrates because of you
know where the water comes from there but then it gets basically boiled down and concentrated and
so then these nitrates discharged into the groundwater there so contaminated the groundwater for
all the people and the plants and animals that live there but if they had something like this on
the books that probably wouldn’t have happened right and that is that is one of the talking points
about this is that Those AI data centers are salivating to come to Lane County and our Our laws are
just not robust enough to defend ourselves and this would be a way of Disincentivizing that kind of
corporate activity coming here. We don’t want that here Right now we don’t have much to do to to
protect ourselves, but this law would help us protect ourselves Yeah Yeah,
we We were very fortunate to have the good people at CELDEF,
the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, help us write this law.
So this is a citizen’s initiative, but we had attorneys looking at it all along. And yeah,
the dangers of toxic spray are many.
They like to say that these are very surgical operations and they know exactly what they’re doing
and they’re spraying only the areas that they say they’re going to spray. We all live downstream.
And that stuff drifts. And wind patterns change. And so it’s a little cavalier.
I mean, it’s massively cavalier to believe that you can be above a unit with waters.
and watersheds and rivers and people and animals living in this forest.
I’m a case. I had my daughter and then I had seven miscarriages before I had my son.
And then I had three more miscarriages. And my husband has Parkinson’s and he worked in the woods.
He was a horse logger and a tree planter. We know of other loggers in the Mapleton area with
neurodegenerative diseases. We know plenty of people in our area that, I mean,
per capita, it’s a high proportion of cancers in our area. So, you know,
atrazine was actually banned in the European Union. And one of the things,
one of the hallmarks of our law is that we employ the precautionary principle,
which is the better safe than sorry. Prove to us it’s safe before you get it out in the community.
That’s not what we do here. We are the guinea pigs. We’re the people that will find out.
So we’re trying
to stop harmful corporate activity. We like to say, why should big corporations have more privilege
and protections to do harm in our community than we have to protect ourselves from that harm? We
never consented to being sprayed. And this thing Rob talked about, parts per million.
The EPA says these are standards that are safe and allowable over a lifetime.
I mean, we didn’t consent to have toxins put in our waters. Eugene’s water comes from McKinsey.
You think you folks don’t get sprayed up there? If there’s logging going on,
they’re spraying.
of spraying from schools and streams.
Do you know that? Yeah, I think, well, I might not get this right, but I know we have some other
people here who know, but I think it was about 50 feet, and I think with this legislation that some
people will tout as being a big deal to change that, I think it got doubled to 100 feet. But when
we know that these sprays can drift for, you know, two, three, four or more miles. You’d be at an
extra 50 feet. That’s the distance between here and, you know, a little past Rio over there. That
is not going to keep you safe.
That’s kind of long.
Yeah, but do you think that’s not going to grip? Do you think that’s… That’s crazy. Yeah. I want
to tell you… So you’ve got to remember that all the small feeder streams have…
True enough. So that’s the real problem, is that they kind of pigeonholed it into, oh,
this is a salmonberry stream, or this is, like, the Mackenzie River. All the others only have 15
feet. which I think is now 30 feet, and anything that’s not a screen, which is all the water
running down, has no protection of all. So it’s laughable, really. And like when we do
presentations, I like to show a slide of a clear cut right behind the Triangle Lake School. And I
mean, the school where the kids would be is literally just, you know, just a short distance away.
And you know when you see that clear cut, that means they’re going to spread it. And they found
water at the school. They found poisons in the water at the school. So the kids’ drinking fountains
had to be turned off. And they were cartoning water in plastic bottles.
So they got their PFAS, too.
Hey, so for those of us that want to get involved, say we want to distribute flyers or posters,
or we have an opportunity for you to come speak and share this measure, what is the best, most
direct way to contact you? um well you can go to our website you can sign up you’re here so don’t
leave without signing up because we will we’ll we’ll let you know when and how you can get the
flyers how you can get the door hangers how you can get the yard signs um this is all this is We’re
just waiting for these materials to come from the printer. And so that’s probably within the next
week. The vote, it’s May 19th.
So we’re ready to get going. We’ll give people these tonight. If you’re committed to go into your
neighborhood, we’ll set you up. Yeah, we got a bunch of those.
Yes, Bernadette. I have a question about E-Web. And a lot of people think that
I’m not sure that they test for atrazine. They do some testing. They don’t do it all the time and
you know you have to continually test because we’re continually being sprayed.
They like to tell us that they’re in compliance and I believe them. They are in compliance with
standards that are far too low. They’re in compliance with standards that are basically legislated
based on aerial spraying being protected.
So, you know, this is kind of a madness. And I think if you’re not curious and you’re not
questioning these practices, then you’re not really doing your job.
And I would say your EWEB commissioners are not doing their job. And they really were not very
curious about this measure. They never contacted us.
They decided that they were going to write an opposition resolution. They did it.
We found out about it. We went to their meetings. Many of us in this room went to their meetings.
But we did find out that the author or the main spearhead guy who wanted to…
get this resolution in front of the commission, one of the commissioners.
His campaign was funded by Justina Timber, and he also takes PAC money from,
he takes campaign money from the PAC, he’s part of the PAC, the opposition PAC,
which they are calling themselves Protect Our County, which we think is pretty ironic that they
want to protect our county from people who want to protect our county. But, you know,
they like to sanitize their names. Well,
that’s
our intent. That is so much our intent. When this becomes law,
I don’t want to say if this becomes law. When this becomes law, It’s a law. You’re going to have to
abide by the law, so you’re going to have to use different practices. If your practices are harming
the watershed, you’ve got to find something else.
Is the development of the Willamette River extraction of water by UM, is that to prepare for
industrial uses for water? You might know more about that,
Zef.
I’m curious because I don’t really know of any of these projects,
but water is what we’ve got. Right? And it’s something,
it’s a resource that Lane County has quite a bit of with the Willamette, McKenzie, with various
other smaller screens. And so it makes me think that are they really just doing this for an
alternative source, which, you know, on the face value of that makes sense. But on another sense,
it’s like maybe they know something we don’t.
I’m suspicious. There are people who don’t know. Key Whip is currently in the early phase of the
stage of taking water from the Willamette to supplement what they control and supply to their
people, their repairs. Yeah.
Was there another question? Yeah, Shoshana. I’m just curious, you mentioned that the opposition is
saying that this measure is too broad, and I’m just wondering what the counter is to that, if that
comes up in discussion, how to counter that. It does come up all the time. This measure was written
broadly by design. All the rights of nature initiatives that are in good standing right now are
broad by design.
provide for the greatest interpretation of reality as it shows itself. Just like our Bill of Rights
is broad, just like the First Amendment is broad. It doesn’t say what you can say and what you
cannot say. It leaves it to the courts. Do you want to answer that, Rob? Yeah, I totally do
because, and I think I agree with everything that Michelle said, but I think we started out working
on this law in 2019 before the pandemic. We ended up stopping, you know, doing the petitioning
process because during the pandemic was a great time to be out with a clipboard, but we wrote a lot
of the law in 2019, and one of the things we think about when it being…
is that it’s both adaptable and flexible to to the needs that are changing and as we know with the
climate crisis the world is changing quickly and in 2019 there weren’t such a thing as data centers
to the degree they are now ai we were not there was not a chat gpt that these this ai function did
not exist then and yet we think we see now our law because of the the broadness that it was written
with can be used as a tool to something that we didn’t foresee then and so I think that’s really
true for something that might come five years from now.
Willie Pearl.
Yeah, sure. I mean, one, all of the opposition arguments come down to one thing.
They basically are saying that because our law has a citizen suit provision, the fact that in
addition to the county enforcing the law, that residents have a right to sue if we don’t think the
county is doing a good enough job. Everything that they’re saying all has to do with the fact they
think that citizens can and will sue excessively okay and the this notion of a citizen suit
provision it’s in the clean water act the clean air act the endangered species act it’s it’s in
many fundamental environmental protections and history has shown that they don’t get overused the
pittsburgh city of pittsburgh has a law it’s an anti-fracking law it’s been around since 2010 16
years and to our knowledge there has not been a suit from citizens taking action it also has rights
of nature and protections for their watersheds and it has citizen supervision just like ours it
seems to not have been used when lincoln county passed their aerial spray ball and prior to it
being passed all everyone all of the opposition was saying that there would be huge harm to
businesses huge amount of lawsuits didn’t happen That law was in place for two and a half years.
It didn’t happen.
The Americans with Disability Act, when that was being proposed or introduced as legislation, the U
.S. Chamber of Commerce, the mothership of the chambers that are opposing us here, was basically
saying this will be terrible for business. It will lead to a wave of lawsuits. The National
Federation of Independent Businesses said this would be a disaster for small business. And yet,
afterwards, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights basically did a study and said there was no
empirical evidence of any of that. happening. So this is the standard playbook for any kind of
opposition to any environmental law. It’s going to be bad for business. It’s going to lead to
lawsuits. All of that is nonsense. And so you’re going to hear that. It’s going to be an ugly
campaign. So just be prepared to tell them that that isn’t going to happen. So affordable housing
will not be stopped. And other restoration in the watershed will not be stopped.
This is just scare tactics because they don’t want us to vote for this.
So it’s just that the first thing I’m going to do is sue for them to stop clear-cutting and stop
factory farming. So would that be too far to go? Because, I mean,
why are you stopping at spraying? Clear-cutting ruins the watershed. Clear-cutting and aerial
spraying, those are the big-ticket harms. Those are the ones that we want this law for, but not
for, like… you know not for you know reasonable projects that are helping people in our community
that they’re trying to say that you know that like they’re saying that a piano teacher is going to
get sued because of some landscaping that it’s that kind of nonsense um but yes we are going after
creating a narrow thread that’s why we’re doing this so it’s not going to ruin it to go after clear
-cutting is not too far, is not beating into their litany. We talk about that.
We want to stop clear-cutting. We think that’s a harm to our climate future. I mean, when we clear
-cut the trees like we’re doing, we’re creating wildfire risk. We’re creating a much less good
future for our community. Well, one other thing is, the bigger, the more land I own,
the more responsibility I have, even in, I’m not defending capitalism, but even in their own
system, the more land, because I go down to the city council and they go for getting homeless
people in these abandoned housing. And they’re going, well, we can do, people can do whatever they
want with their land, is their answer, that people can do whatever they want with their land. But
that’s not really true, even in a capitalist system. The more land you own, the more responsibility
you have to the community that you’re around. Should have, yeah. Here.
So there’s no precedent. There’s nothing in law that is already there.
And this law actually is based on what is there.
It’s just elevating the law. It’s adding to. We think that the laws and the standards are too low.
We want to raise them. We think government’s doing a lousy job protecting us and our resources.
This is the citizens. This is we the people saying, we’re done.
Over. It’s going to change. It has to change.
Nature is treated just as property. It is not seen as any type of entity in the board.
Only humans have rights and corporations have rights. So this would change that status to say,
hey, we’re going to represent this river as its own entity to say that you can’t do whatever you
want to it.
Yeah, yeah. Ashley. I just wanted to speak about our selects tribe out in Lincoln County,
the band you talked about, the aerial spray band. Our tribe was a big part of supporting that.
And our tribe fought during the Pacific Mill in Toledo, Oregon for over 30 years. The health of our
river deteriorated so bad. We were having algae blooms. Our fish populations were dying.
The water wasn’t safe. It wasn’t even, let’s get to the point. It wasn’t safe for your kids to swim
in. Our tribe went through litigation with Georgia Pacific Mill for a long time. Our county fought
it for a long time. And in the end, Georgia Pacific, I don’t know how many years ago it was, but
Georgia Pacific had to create and then upgrade continually their water treatment processing system
so that the water that they were discharging into the bay and into the river wasn’t as damaging as
it had been for a really long time. And the point I make in this, is profits don’t have to be put
over people profit in the health of our environment and our people can coexist georgia pacific
still makes their money nobody lost their jobs they still operate but our community is protected
due to people like us that fought and went through litigation for many many years to have laws put
into place that protect our water one
of my favorite um Memories of having Ernie Nimi here. He was here last month.
He’s a natural resource economist. And he said that in Lane County,
timber used to be king. It isn’t anymore. Recreation is…
There are more jobs in recreation. So we have to protect our natural world.
We can have both. We can have an economy that’s healthy, and we can have… protections for nature
i think we have to wrap it up yeah um so we could continue the conversations but in uh travel
protocol i’d like to bring fish up here to close this out and share another song song with us so if
you could please stand up once again and um you take your hats off thank you pokey
pokey real quick did you have a question or something you wanted to ask i saw you
A lot of times we were in this area, it’s a lot of older folks, you know, and it’s not a lot of us
younger generations, and even those aren’t teenagers really, you know, so you’ll be the bridge to
it. Like, it should go down to you, and I’m just looking forward to, like, a little bit of you
inspired. Thanks for being here. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it.
So
they’re neighborhoodanarchist.org for them
Still Trying to Decide how to set up a weekly post . Should it be here or a new heading on the page each week.
This seems too long to navigate weekly additions here.
https://www.radio4all.net/program/122290
This is Talk is Cheap on KPEW, LP, 97.3 FM, Eugene Peace Works, Independent Community Radio.
All right, this week from the May Day celebration of April 26th,
I went around and interviewed a few people. This is Justin Phillip, who’s the Green Party candidate
for Congress. And then I have a brief little thing from the
Lane County Immigrant Defense Network. talking about the importance of Labor Day.
And then we have Cloud Out Loud, the music of Cloud Out Loud. For about 20 minutes they played some
really incredible guitar and drums. So just the commentary for this week,
you know, and please research this yourself. This is just my own observation that I’m just
wondering, questioning. You know, It is true that,
I believe it was a faction of the Republicans that did, Ray McGovern talks about this,
that they did, there was a dossier that they did try to blackmail Trump. And I’m not defending
Trump in any way. They blackmail every president that goes in there. Obama too, you know, that’s
why he was the deporter in chief and was killing people with drones is because,
and barely got healthcare passed, is because they basically… tell you what’s up as soon as you
get in office.
I’m just wondering why you would totally ruin the economy. What I think they’re doing, what they’ve
always been doing is ruining the economy so that they can tap into healthcare and Social Security.
That’s an entitlement program that they want that money. George Carlin has said this too. They’re
coming for that money. They’re going to figure out a way to do it. That’s what all this is about
and why they’re running. the economy into the ground and but I wonder too if there and some people
are kicking this around that Trump is being blackmailed by it’s not really Israel it’s the military
industrial complex is basically who would be blackmailing him and so I think the mega people are
hip to this too though that whether whether this is and this is conspiracy theory anyway but it
sure it sure looks like it and of course they do No president goes in there and does what he
promises to do because there’s too much corporate influence on the president.
So, yeah, so boycott Sunnyside mushrooms, Sunnyside Washington mushrooms.
What else? Yeah, Gaza, we need… We need food relief and a military force,
an international military force to ensure food relief in Gaza.
What else? Don’t forget Radio4All.net.
Let’s have May Day every day. And, you know, this is why I’m calling for a debt jubilee is because
they’re going to run the economy into the ground and we just got to stop them from… from taking
Social Security, and they’re going to have to do a debt, there’s going to have to be a debt
jubilee. And so also very important on this coming up,
this ballot initiative, this measure 2373 is the rights of nature initiative that we need this
passed to end the destruction of our watershed by corporate greed.
The more land you own, the more responsibility you have for that land. Most of these companies have
had a lot of 100-year run for Weyerhaeuser, and they’re not doing right by their shareholders.
They should be diversified long ago into hemp or solar panels or something else.
In fact, I just was reading a 2024 article that Home Depot…
who is selling your forest, they’re selling your future over there at Home Depot by selling off
forest non-sustainable lumber. And even the shareholders of Home Depot tried to stop this,
and they were not able to. So that’s the type of things that we’re up against, and that’s what
we’re up against. I’m already hearing ads against this 2373, and their argument is there’s going to
be a bunch of lawsuits. Well, we have… Let them spend the money on lawsuits.
We have public defender, we have people that will volunteer pro bono to do these lawsuits to stop
clear cutting and stop ruining our watershed. So that’s, vote yes on 2373 here.
I believe it’s May 19th. You should have your, I have my ballot already. It’s on my ballot. I voted
yes on 2373. Don’t, don’t fall for the Lars Larson’s of,
Oregon and the multinational corporate rapists have to be reined in because they’re not even
capitalism. They are fascism full-blown. That’s what fascism is, state-sponsored corporatism.
Alright, so thank you for supporting independent media. You can get the PIRC hotline at PIRCoregon
.org. PIRCoregon.org can tell you how to fight back against these ICE,
because what they’re telling us is now they’re going undercover.
They’re going to just do things more undercover, so we need to be even more vigilant against ICE.
5-25-26
This is Talk is Cheap on KEPW LP 97.3 FM Eugene Peace Works Independent Community Radio.
Alright, this week continuing on with the April 26th May Day celebration from 2026.
Oregon-WildHorses.org is saving wild horses and working,
you know, we’re working to save grasslands and rangelands and we can all live symbiotically with
The Buffalo and Wild Horses and stay within Earth’s cycles.
So, yeah,
Boycott Sunnyside Mushrooms.
The Emergency Committee for Rojava.org is where you can get information on Rojava and we can help.
There’s still a possibility of helping Rojava. The Emergency Committee for Rojava.
is where you can get information on Rojava. So on 2373,
like I said, the Lars Larson crowd, already the big money,
big timber, big forest, is trying to stop measure 2373,
which is the rights of nature legislation for Lane County, which Michelle Holman at Community
Rights Lane County.
as they said that it would. So what I notice is in these ads, what they’re saying is,
first of all, they’re saying that it’s going to increase the danger of fire. So this has absolutely
nothing to do with fire. It would take me hours to explain this. And this is what the, this is the
type of things that the opposition propaganda does, is they blow, it’s called the big lie.
This is from, straight out of Nazi Germany. You create this big lie and this panic. and then people
vote no on it. So it has absolutely nothing to do with the burning fire in the forest.
It does have everything to do with the forest.
So then they’re also saying there’s going to be a bunch of lawsuits. Yes, there probably will be a
bunch of lawsuits. And what we’re trying to do is instead of suing you for the cancer and diseases
and damage that you cause with your practices on this huge amount of land that you…
own or control uh and have a responsibility for to the community for with uh because you keep um
doing things that cause people harm we keep having to sue you for the harm that you cause so
instead you’re gonna have to sue us for the use of that land to make sure that you’re using it
within the earth’s cycles and um You know, the watershed is basically a living organism that we are
a part of and we have to work within its cycles. So that’s what we’re saying with this,
that the watershed is now going to be treated as a living organism, as the living organism that it
is. And not a living organism like a mule that is just whipped into shape,
whipped into doing what you want. No, we work within, as a stewardship.
to the watershed. So that’s what they’re saying. Let me just give you an example from my own past.
My father had a GI Bill. He was in World War II and when he got out,
I think they had a loan program or a GI grant or something for small businesses.
And he partnered up with some guy that I think he met him in the military. I don’t know all the
details of this story, but he had a used car lot. And of course, used car lot and restaurants,
the most risky business there is. And of course, they couldn’t make a profit.
Guy takes off with the money, his partner. So what my dad told me was, you want to make sure that
they have to sue you, not that you have to sue them. You want to make sure they have to spend the
money to sue you, especially when you know you’re in the right. And so yeah,
there is going to be a lot of lawsuits, but we have a lot of non-profits behind 2373 to service
those corporate lawsuits that are from corporations that just want to make money off the forest.
So yeah, very important to vote yes on 2373. This is something that can take off across the world.
and basically turn the world back into the living organism that it is instead of just the thing
that we are to extract from. All right. Thanks for listening.
Tell your friends. Support independent media. Radio4All.net is where you can get archives of this
show. I really thank them for what they do. Oh, and it’s nice to know that Ceasefire has…
joined the list of words that seem to have absolutely no meaning in the Trump administration in
regards to Gaza and Iran and several other countries that have a marginal air force and huge
amounts of resources that can be extracted for weapons sales. And it joins the list of truth,
justice, and the American way. words that no longer have any meaning.
Part 2
This is Talk is Cheap on KEPW 97.3 LPFM, Eugene PeaceWorks, Independent Community Radio,
also archived on Radio4All.net, that’s Radio, the number 4,
All.net, basically the last of the Independent Media Center’s projects.
Please use your own brain at all times, and none of this is financial advice.
Seek a financial professional. Alright, so today I’ve got, continuing on with my May Day pieces,
Extinction Rebellion, a very important organization to support,
and Night Sky is talking about, try to keep your lights out so that we can see the stars again,
and other fun music stuff. So my comment for this week,
you know, I’m not doing anything on the police. thing because if you haven’t figured out by now
that we need restorative justice and not punitive justice,
that we’ve been punishing people for 2,000 years, how’s that working for you? So all this money
that we spend on war could be spent on rehabilitating and restorative justice in the world.
And that’s what we should be doing with the police. Also, we shouldn’t even need police anymore if
we spent the money that we spend on preventative and restorative justice,
spend it on that instead of punitive justice that has not really worked.
And, of course, the economy, I think, is going to collapse so badly that it’ll work in our favor
because we’ll have to do a debt jubilee. And that’s what Trump will do is they’ll come up with some
social rebate that’ll just add to the devaluation of the currency.
They’ll come up with a tax program to give you some relief from the giant oil,
the huge inflation that’s going to come from this oil shock. But of course,
again, that is adding to the debt without really doing anything. for the economy,
they’re not giving you infrastructure, they’re just blowing up bombs with your money, they’re just
blowing up, yeah,
bombs, and that’s where your money is really going,
instead of something that you can actually use.
So yeah, we’re going to need a debt jubilee, I’ve got to reiterate, what the hell is up with media,
even the liberal media, So the crux of the Iran war is that they have nuclear weapons,
and Trump doesn’t want them to have nuclear weapons. But Israel has nuclear weapons.
So don’t you think that that should be at least mentioned in negotiating that Iran doesn’t have
nuclear weapons, shouldn’t have nuclear weapons? And of course, Iran is an oppressive regime. They
kill their activists, and so something definitely had to be done with that.
But again… could have used restorative justice and it would be a bargain and spread the wealth
out by fixing the Iran problem with reparations is how we should have fixed Iran and stopped
sending weapons to Israel. And of course, Gaza is a complete mess and we cannot seem to get aid to
Gaza. And I don’t understand why the UN can’t get an international force in there.
Actually, I do understand why it’s the US military industrial complex that is putting a stop to
that.
And then I just wanted to mention, you know, I thought, you know, Kennedy came up with the SEALs,
and I thought that that’s what they were for, is to capture the head of a repressive regime and
bring them to trial. And then that trial would show the multinational corporate military industrial
complex complicity in whatever that regime was doing in Central and South America.
That repressive regime would be tied. You would see the ties in the trial to corporate malfeasance.
That’s what I thought the whole thing was about capturing heads.
Instead of going to war, we would capture the heads of these. countries that are fascists and bring
them to trial, then the information would come out of how this was corporatism that has caused this
corporate colonialism and state-sponsored colonialism with multinational corporations that has
caused the regime in the Central American country.
So if I haven’t belabored that, if I haven’t made that clear, So that’s what I, I’m a dreamer.
That’s what I thought was going to happen. So thanks for supporting independent media. Coming up,
Extinction Rebellion and Night Sky. Please support these organizations and independent media.
