fuck yeah derrick jensen!

[clouds-of-wings]

I’m so glad Derrick Jensen has the same problem, I thought I was just stupid. [x]

[wordsnquotes]

“There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists.”

— Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

[kit-power]

Okay y'all here’s a thing… in my little non-profit career I’ve never been in charge of a whole fundraiser…. until now!

I work for Park Center, which is an organization that works to empower people with severe and persistent mental illnesses and substance use disorders to live and work in their communities. We have day programs, disability access coordinators (that get people disability in average 60 days and a 99% approval rate!), homeless outreach housing navigators, actual subsidized housing (we’re the largest housing provider in Davidson county for people with mental illnesses and substance use disorders!), intensive outpatient services…. we also have a really cool employment program where people come to us and tell us what kind of job they want and we go out and find it for them! Instead of just saying “hey I’ve got a cleaning job at the auditorium or a cleaning job at the hospital, which do you want” - we actually figure out what they’re interested in and then go out and meet with those businesses. We do so ‼️ much ‼️ good ‼️ work ‼️and I am SO PROUD to work for Park Center.

We have been participating in Brackets for Good, which is a competitive fundraising venture. It started with 64 non profits in a March Madness-style bracket, who are trying to our-fundraise each other in each round, and the winner of the championship gets a $10,000 grant. Well GUESS WHO HAS MADE IT TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

We’re up against some very difficult competition, though, and are a little bit behind. The Championships end Friday 3/29 at 8pm CST…. I would be SO GRATEFUL if you could pitch in $5 or however much you are able to.

If we win the grant, we can continue to offer affordable housing for people who need it (including those with severe and persistent mental illnesses, who are chronically homeless, etc), keep doing our person-centered, strengths-based day programs, our IOP/OP and therapy, our homeless outreach program…. etc.

Here is the direct link to our donation page: nashville.bfg.org/cart/checkout/park-center

[vero-in-technicolor]

Part of Nature by Stuart McMillen

[pastafrescaputtanesca]

this is almost making me cry ;~;

[deepgreenresistance]

From the Earth At Risk 2014 conference in San Francisco, a fantastic interview with Derrick Jensen (Deep Green Resistance Advisory Board member) on Love, and Resistance:

"Make your allegiance with the victims of this culture absolute. Our identification needs to be with the real world. The real world needs to be protected. We’re in an emergency and we need all hands on deck. The big distinction is not between whether we need or don’t need militant resistance. The big distinction is whether we do something or nothing.

Teachers and Parents: you have a sacred task. You have a choice as to where you’re going to lead these beautiful young minds. Get your kids outside, it takes a long time to get to know where you live. The average child nowadays spends 15 minutes a day outside.

Children: your job as a child is to play - your job is not to save the planet! The reality of the situation is that we shouldn’t be having to say anything else to children besides “go play, imagine, and dream”

Adults: it is adult’s role to change things, to be the kick-ass activist your theoretical kid would have been, if you would have had a kid.”

"We need to remember that Love is a verb - it implies action. The problem quite honestly is that most people don’t love the earth, and don’t love themselves. Love is the core. The problem is that we love the wrong things in this culture. And what we think we love is not what we love, it’s an addiction… Love is absolutely crucial, you have to love yourself enough to not put up with the world being murdered. All this stuff in the culture is based on hatred of the body, hatred of the self. When I think about Love, I think about a mother grizzly bear.

We have to deconstruct this culture’s notion of Love. Because Love has been pornographied, turn into a control thing, and a possession. And this bizarre notion of Love is central to patriarchy.”

http://ift.tt/1yQFCD4

[laboratoryequipment-blog]

Ozone Layer is Recovering Earth’s protective ozone layer is beginning to recover, largely because of the phase-out since the 1980s of certain chemicals used in refrigerants and aerosol cans, a U.N. scientific panel reported in a rare piece of good news about the health of the planet. Scientists said the development demonstrates that when the world comes together, it can counteract a brewing ecological crisis. For the first time in 35 years, scientists were able to confirm a statistically significant and sustained increase in stratospheric ozone, which shields the planet from solar radiation that causes skin cancer, crop damage and other problems. [Read more]

[biodiverseed]

It’s nice when the news isn’t all apocalyptic.

[deepgreenresistance]

Rich countries pay huge industrial “fishing” boats to roar over the ocean and vaccum up the sea at US$5 billion a year for their plundering, ecocide, and devastation to future generations.

The industrial fleet that now drags the high seas for fish has a combined engine power 10 times stronger than it did in 1950. Its nets are so huge that they’re sometimes big enough to hold 12 jumbo jets. And it is largely thanks to this all-out assault on high-seas fishing stocks that two-thirds of those stocks are at the brink of collapse—or well past the edge. Without the subsidies, most of these businesses would fail.

So thoroughly have industrial fleets overfished the seas that they couldn’t afford the fuel to travel the ever-increasing distance needed to catch the same amount of fish if their governments didn’t lavish public funds upon them.

In economics, you’d call these zombies—unprofitable companies that would fail if governments didn’t prop them up. If industrial fleets weren’t subsidized, they’d go out of business. Small-scale fisheries that don’t need enormous amounts of fuel to catch huge hauls of fish—i.e. the ones using life-respecting fishing practices—would then in theory thrive. Many of these fishermen are in poor countries whose governments can’t afford to compete in the industrial looting.

But instead of discouraging this trend, rich countries are paying those vessels to perpetrate oceanic ecocide like there’s no tomorrow. Japan, China, the US, the EU and other countries pay $27 billion to subsidize these vessels - and, 90% of the large fish from the sea are GONE. This is why Deep Green Resistance says that industrial practices are incompatible with life on this earth, and that we need to dismantle the infrastructure of oppression.

http://ift.tt/15Dit6r

Image: Global Ocean Commission, an independent body of international leaders focused on ocean conservation policy. http://ift.tt/1mijcoi

[khofnak-deactivated20160409]

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness—and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling—their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Arundhati Roy, World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil (via lehaaz)

[earthstory]

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences” Winston Churchill The 12th of May 2014 brought with it the sobering news that the catastrophic collapse of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet is underway.  Well, it’s not like we weren’t warned. For decades, scientists have emphasised that our planet is warming at an unprecedented rate and if we do not act we will reap the consequences. The Antarctic Peninsula has been warming rapidly for at least a half-century, and continental West Antarctica has been getting steadily hotter for 30 years or more and we are now (and have been for a while) seeing the consequences.  Two independent studies have now confirmed that the biggest glaciers in West Antarctica are losing ice without anyway to curtail the loss. The researchers from the University of California have stated that “These glaciers will keep retreating for decades and even centuries to come and we can’t stop it,” and similarly, the other research group from NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory have stated that “A large sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has passed the point of no return.” So what does this mean? Unfortunately, this points to a much feared and long predicted symptom of an ever warming climate- the domino effect, whereby the entire ice sheet is likely to melt, whether or not greenhouse gas emissions decline. Essentially, we have missed the boat.  The west Antarctic ice shelf has been melting from below, rather than from above due to changing wind patterns which are driving warm water up beneath West Antarctica’s glaciers. The rapid retreat seen in the past 40 years indicates that in the coming decades, sea-level rise will likely the projections of 90 centimetres by 2100, issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If all of West Antarctica melts, which is predicted to occur as soon as 200 years from now, this will raise sea level by 3.3 to 4 meters; changing coastlines on every continent.  -Jean Please check out NASA’s press release for more information: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasa-uci-study-indicates-loss-of-west-antarctic-glaciers-appears-unstoppable/#.U3IHYvldXTp Previous TES post on the collapse of one of these glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, and why this collapse is occurring: https://www.facebook.com/TheEarthStory/posts/629734093754305

[ted]

So that’s a weird list. Where did it come from? Here’s where you can read more about the changes we might see in the years to come:

These studies say crime will rise when people are hot and bothered.  

If you want to get even more freaked out, here’s more on violence.

Animals might get it on more, but we’re not so sure about humans. 

This whole climate thing is a big mental burden, according to these people. 

A study says we’ll get lazier, but don’t try that excuse on your boss.

And let’s all hope that this study isn’t prophetic.

Here’s why climate change might be the end of sea turtles. We’re too upset to read it.  

And if you’re mourning the real-life Pokémon, read this and this and end with this. 

Remember how everything is melting? That could affect trade like this and this.

Siberia might explode. Let’s hope it doesn’t. 

It’s really not the best time to buy a house on the water.

And finally, we might stop buying tons of crap. Hallelujah. 

[urendimaleldil]

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There’s no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter that these people’s dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I — or does anyone else — have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?

Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization (via effervescentreflections)

[emerycatt]

There’s something interesting about the rate at which men in prison are raped: it’s lower than the rate at which women are raped in the culture at large. Most studies suggest that 25% of women in the United States are raped during their lifetimes, and another 19% have to fend off rape attempts. I suppose you could say that for women—and not just those in prison—rape is “a fact of life.” When a man goes to prison, everyone seems to think: “Oh, shit, he’s going to get raped.” But every day, women walk down the streets, or stay in their homes, and face that same possibility.

Derrick Jensen: The Culture of Make Believe (via emerycatt)

[latinagabi]

So yes, I understand that men are taught to not feel. Yes, I understand that the cult of masculinity is all about not feeling. I understand that must be hard. But honestly, I don’t give a shit about understanding the emotional state of members of the cult of masculinity, except insofar as that understanding might help stop them. It’s a bit late in the game to be worried about the feelings of perpetrators. The ones I care about are their victims, because the man box isn’t about putting men in a box, it’s about putting everyone else in a box, the box of other, of less than, of trophies, the box of the violable, the box of targets, the box of victims, the box of the violated, the box of proof of the men’s own manhood.

THE MAN BOX AND THE CULT OF MASCULINITY- Derrick Jensen

(via latinagabi)

[distempered]

Grades are a problem. On the most general level, they’re an explicit acknowledgment that what you’re doing is insufficiently interesting or rewarding for you to do it on your own. Nobody ever gave you a grade for learning how to play, how to ride a bicycle, or how to kiss. One of the best ways to destroy love for any of these activities would be through the use of grades, and the coercion and judgment they represent. Grades are a cudgel to bludgeon the unwilling into doing what they don’t want to do, an important instrument in inculcating children into a lifelong subservience to whatever authority happens to be thrust over them.

Derrick Jensen (via distempered)

[weknowsolittle-deactivated20150]

Do you ever have those moments where suddenly you make a quantum jump in understanding, where you see the world so differently that you cannot imagine how you could have perceived it any other way before? Do you have those times when this new understanding makes you feel as though up until that moment you must have been deluded or asleep or just plain stupid?

Derrick Jensen. Endgame, Volume II: Resistance, Page 530 (via weknowsolittle)

[geometricallypure]

If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your food comes from the grocery store, then you are going to defend to the death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on them; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and it’s very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.

An Interview with Derrick Jensen (via geometricallypure)

[fullpraxisnow]

You can talk all you want about violence, as long as you don’t mention social change… Similarly, you can talk all you want about social change, so long as you never mention violence. But you must never put them together. "Why not?" …[It’s] why it’s okay for the military to teach so many people how to make and use explosives, and why it’s okay for the military to blow people up all over the world. That’s sending violence down the hierarchy. That’s why it’s okay for corporations to teach people how to make and use explosives to put in a mine and destroy a mountain. That’s sending violence down the hierarchy. But if you mention explosives and the possibility of using them to go not down but up the hierarchy, you must be punished.

—Derrick Jensen, Endgame Vol II: Resistance

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."

(via america-wakiewakie)