THE ROCKS
Words and Music by Jim Robbins
After the rain, newts plodded
over moss and leaves, recoiling
as we stepped near them. They blended
so well with the wet leaves
that we had to watch each step.
We would stop at an outcrop of rock,
sliding our fingers over soft, wet moss,
and we would swear that the rocks--
harboring other creatures, sprouting
star moss--are as significant
and mysterious as ourselves.
In the sycamores, a phoebe chirped,
the steward of the confluence of the creeks.
People who once ground acorns
by the creeks have vanished,
their descendants building casinos
on nearby reservations. Sometimes
we would honor friends, who, fighting
for wildness, had been threatened, blackballed
or ruined. I once believed we would fight
for wildness the rest of our lives together,
but now you're gone, and I slowly
build a fortress with mossy rocks,
for a moment no longer a trespasser,
my chants protecting the solitude
of the heron, the granaries of the woodpecker,
the ranges of the newt and bobcat and all
the tribes of trees and flowers,
my magic gathered from wetness,
mossy rocks, fallen leaves.
I lost my job as the director of an environmental organization when the Fresno office was shuttered due to personnel problems and lack of funds. In retrospect, I don't think that it was a coincidence that as soon as the group became effective, it suffered a deluge of problems: a woman submitted a dubious sexual harassment lawsuit against one of the field managers; another field manager formed a bogus organization with a similar name but no board of directors; break-ins occurred regularly; my group was evicted from our office because of overdue late charges, and the list goes on and on. Administrators in the main office back east provided no support at all. I ended up seeing the worst in people—lying, backstabbing, betrayal, all of which undermined the great work we had been doing in the community to protect air and water quality.
After my experience in the political arena, I have concluded that we live in a faux democracy where elected officials pretend to represent the public during interminable meetings full of legal and bureaucratic jargon, working instead behind closed doors for the contributors who backed them. At all levels of government, corporations and the super-wealthy have captured politicians through campaign contributions, and the powerful turn off the money spigot anytime politicians don't do what they want. Corporations and the wealthy exalt profit above people and ecosystems and even the planet. Other creatures and even humanity at this point have very little chance of surviving this system. Our economic and political system is no longer sustainable.
When I was the Field Director for this environmental organization, I feared that global warming would probably impact the environment in such a way that some insect species would catastrophically disrupt the environment and human society. Thirty years later, after an increase of only one and a half degrees Celsius world-wide, the bark beetle has infested and killed millions of trees. There is not enough water due to continuous drought for trees to create enough resin to drown the beetle as they burrow into the bark. The inferno that eventually results kills everything in the ecosystem, even the healthy trees and plants, leaving only a desert of dirt and ash.
Thirty years ago, my superiors focused on building coalitions, both with like-minded groups and individuals as well as with traditional adversaries. In other words, our group first worked to decrease air pollution, which kills a significant percentage of crops in the San Joaquin Valley every year. We hoped to form coalitions with farmers and establish their trust in order to eventually restore dead rivers and wetlands in the Valley through water conservation and rational changes in water policy. Then, we hoped to work with a larger coalition of diverse interests to address larger issues such as global warming.
Baby steps. But the capitalist system does not respect rational efforts to establish and maintain a sustainable society. The capitalists who control the politicians long ago stopped caring about the public good or the health of the planet and focused on their bottom line. They continue to commodify and exhaust people and resources. The capitalists who are the source of some of the worst crises, such as global warming, are also the ones who gouge us at the pump and the grocery store. (Cattle are the number one agricultural source of greenhouse gases, for instance.) They make insane profits as they destroy our future.
Locally, stop one bad project and zoning changes are made for others. Not even a well-funded organization can keep up, especially if that organization is paralyzed by personnel problems. Even if a grassroots organization manages to whip up enough public opposition to stop egregious projects, other bad projects soon appear in the pipeline. I might sound paranoid, but a successful effort to undermine an effective citizens' group is good for the capitalists' bottom line: Without fresh air and sunshine, business as usual remains highly profitable for the top few percent. The San Joaquin Valley has often been compared to a toilet bowl. I have little hope for the foothills and mountains or the world as long as our political and economic systems remain the same. If concerned citizens cannot work effectively on a local scale, how can we work effectively on a global scale?
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