12 June 20
Donations at this point are barely trickling in.
It looked like we were gaining a little momentum late last week but we’re back to a handful of very small donations.
Again what we are talking about is 50 readers out of 30,000 saying on any given day, sure I’ll support this organization, what they’re doing is worth it.
In earnest.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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11 June 20
RSN: Norman Solomon | Corporate Media Are Focusing on Race - and Dodging Class
Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "The last two weeks have opened up a lot more media space for illuminating racial cruelty. But what about economic cruelty?"
Norman Solomon, Reader Supported News
Solomon writes: "The last two weeks have opened up a lot more media space for illuminating racial cruelty. But what about economic cruelty?"
rassroots outrage and nationwide protests after Minneapolis cops murdered George Floyd have pushed much of U.S. corporate media into focusing on deadly police mistreatment of black people. The coverage is far from comprehensive on the subject of racism in the “criminal justice” system – we’re still hearing very little about the routine violations of basic rights in courtrooms and behind bars – yet there’s no doubt that a breakthrough has occurred. The last two weeks have opened up a lot more media space for illuminating racial cruelty.
But what about economic cruelty?
Media outlets routinely detour around reasons why African Americans and other people of color are so disproportionately poor – and, as a result of poverty, are dying much younger than white people. The media ruts bypass confronting how the wealthy gain more wealth and large corporations reap more profits at the expense of poor and middle-income people.
The statistics are grim. For every black person killed by police, vastly more are dying because of such conditions as a threadbare safety net, a lack of adequate employment, and scant access to health care or social services.
Readily available numbers are indictments of systemic racism. At the same time, numbers tell us virtually nothing about the human essence of widespread, tragic and fully preventable suffering that, in the words of Marvin Gaye’s brilliant song “Inner City Blues,” make me wanna holler.
News media habitually tiptoe around deadly realities of economic oppression that are hidden in plain sight – so normalized that they’re apt to seem perversely natural. Meanwhile, government is routinely portrayed as inherently hamstrung, lacking in funds and unable to cope. But from city halls and state legislatures to corridors of power in Washington, the priorities that hold sway are largely imposed by leverage from big corporations and the wealthy who want their financial interests protected.
"When we say #DefundPolice,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted days ago, “what we mean is people are dying and we need to invest in people's livelihoods instead. Example: Detroit spent $294 million on police last year, and $9 million on health. This is systemic oppression in numbers."
The official city bar chart that accompanied Tlaib’s tweet amounts to a smoking gun of a ceaseless class war raging across the United States and far beyond. Huge numbers of people whose names we’ll never know are casualties of that profit-driven war.
From slavery onwards, vicious economic exploitation has been central to the oppression of African Americans. In spite of that reality – and because of it – the prevailing power structure and its dominant media arms are eager to separate racial justice from economic justice.
Yet the separation is absurd and disingenuous. “A close examination of wealth in the U.S. finds evidence of staggering racial disparities,” the Brookings Institution reported this year. The latest figures show that “the net worth of a typical white family is nearly 10 times greater than that of a black family.” Those wealth gaps “reveal the effects of accumulated inequality and discrimination, as well as differences in power and opportunity that can be traced back to this nation’s inception.”
It’s symbolic that while we’ve often heard that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the historic march on Washington in 1963, the fact that it was called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” isn’t often mentioned. Five years later, King was murdered while in Memphis to support a union struggle by exploited sanitation workers as he was immersed in planning the next stages of the Poor People’s Campaign.
Today, the humongous gaps between wealth and poverty – and the lethal consequences of those gaps – are rarely in mass-media focus. Empathy for low-income people might be fine in medialand, but they’re commonly portrayed as victims of bad luck or personal failings rather than the prey of victimizers who profit from immiseration.
As a practical matter, the economic ladder that keeps some people trapped on the lowest rungs is central to the health vulnerabilities of so many African Americans. Economic injustice is vital to the entire U.S. power structure. While many people of all races suffer as a result, people of color are at much greater risk.
In effect, corporate capitalism has proven itself to be fully capable of methodical sadism in the pursuit of maximizing profits. That ongoing reality, 24/7/365, is so routine – and so powerfully entrenched – that even U.S. news outlets doing decent coverage of police violence can rarely supply clarity about the “free enterprise” economic violence that is taking countless lives.
Norman Solomon is co-founder and national director of RootsAction.org. He is a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
A protester grabs the hat of Donald Trump supporter Michael Rooney during a protest outside of the Des Moines Police Department on Friday, May 29, 2020, in Des Moines. (photo: Bryon Houlgrave/AP)
Jessica Valenti | Not All Opinions Matter
Jessica Valenti, Medium
Valenti writes: "Let's say it again, once and for all: Free speech doesn't mean that you get to say whatever you want, wherever you want, without consequence."
Jessica Valenti, Medium
Valenti writes: "Let's say it again, once and for all: Free speech doesn't mean that you get to say whatever you want, wherever you want, without consequence."
Freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism, and whether your opinion is bad, boring, or brilliant — no one is required to listen to it, or to give you a platform.
I make this clarification because while police across the country are violently attacking peaceful protesters — actual state suppression of speech — powerful people are working hard to characterize disinterest or criticism as some kind of horrific rights violation.
In just the last week, Ivanka Trump bemoaned “cancel culture and viewpoint discrimination,” because a Kansas college rescinded their invitation for her to give a digital commencement address; Sen. Tom Cotton accused leadership at the New York Times of “surrender[ing] to a woke child mob” after editors apologized for running Cotton’s op-ed calling for the use of military force against anti-racist protesters; famed Harry Potter author JK Rowling called the backlash against a series of her transphobic tweets, “woman-hate;” and New York Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan was turned into a free-speech martyr because his editors simply weren’t interested in his take on the Black Lives Matter protests.
What these people have in common is not a moral concern that all controversial speech will be silenced — but a fear that their speech won’t be prioritized or applauded.
By mischaracterizing criticism as censorship, people with millions of followers, the ability to set national policy, or column space in some of the most renowned publications in the country are able to paint themselves as victims. But a newspaper or a school is not a statehouse: They are under no obligation to carry your column or subject their students to your speech.
While powerful people complain about their columns and speeches being censored, actual threats to speech are everywhere. On the day that Ivanka Trump tweeted about “cancel culture” to her nearly 9 million followers, a Maryland man was arrested for assaulting teenagers putting up anti-police brutality posters. And while Rowling — who makes about a million dollars a week — was complaining about criticism against her anti-trans tweets, a reporter covering the Minneapolis protests was recovering after being shot in the eye with a rubber bullet, permanently losing half her vision.
In the same way “free speech” outrage is disproportionately concerned with protecting the most powerful, the opinions deemed the “bravest” overwhelmingly seem to be those that hurt the most marginalized.
Here’s just one example: There were no frenzied columns on “safe spaces” when a Republican legislator suggested jailing librarians who carry books deemed sexually suggestive — but when The Atlantic rescinded a job offer to a man who called for women who had abortions to be executed, conservatives decried the “censorship.”
The controversy over Sen. Cotton’s piece is just the latest example of the free speech fallacy. Before top Times opinion editor James Bennet apologized and resigned, he defended the decision to run the op-ed as a commitment to show readers “counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.”
The piece — which relied on false information debunked within the paper’s own pages — argued for “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain, and ultimately deter lawbreakers” during a week when police violence was on stunning display. Dozens of Times employees tweeted that the op-ed put black staffers in danger, and the union that represents Times staffers released a statement calling the decision “likely to encourage further violence.”
In response to the controversy, Times writer and bad-opinion enthusiast Bari Weiss described the anger in the newsroom as a “civil war” and suggested that those upset by the decision were neglecting free speech in an effort to feel “emotionally and psychologically safe.” That same evening, two police officers in Buffalo, New York, shoved an elderly man so hard into the ground that he began bleeding out of his ears and is now in critical condition. (Here’s hoping he was at least emotionally safe.) It’s not that the Times shouldn’t publish conservative viewpoints — they do, often. But pieces like Sen. Cotton’s — which editors themselves admit was not up to the paper’s standards — promote violence like we’ve seen in Buffalo, Minneapolis, New York, and beyond.
Ironically, the people who bleat the loudest over free speech are often the ones most eager to suppress it when it doesn’t suit them. After Weiss tweeted about her colleagues’ supposed obsession with “safetyism,” it came out that she had reported a Black editor to Times leadership for politely declining to get coffee with her. And Bret Stephens — who has made his career in part arguing that college students are coddled for wanting break out rooms with counselors during talks on sexual assault — is apparently well-known in the Times newsroom for trying to get colleagues in trouble if they criticize him on Twitter.
It is not a coincidence that powerful white people are painting themselves as the victims at the same time Black Americans are on the streets demanding to be treated with some semblance of humanity. For the first time perhaps ever, the national conversation is solely focused on racism and anti-Black police violence. For those who are accustomed to holding all the power and attention, that shift in focus feels “oppressive.”
That’s why we’ve seen everyday criticisms of powerful people described as “Maoist” or chilling warnings of a future without freedom. But as Osita Nwanevu put it last year in the New Republic, “Perhaps we should choose instead to understand cancel culture as something much more mundane: ordinary public disfavor voiced by ordinary people across new platforms.”
No one is owed a national stage for their opinion — no matter how powerful they are, and no matter how many people may believe it right alongside them. And despite protestations from mostly white-male media leadership and conservative pundits, denying someone a platform does not quash their speech, it just declines to elevate it.
We are witnessing actual speech suppression every day: members of the press beaten and arrested and peaceful protesters gassed on American streets. Those are the violations worth fighting.
In this June 1, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump departs the White House to visit outside St. John's Church, in Washington. (photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)
Gen. Mark Milley Apologizes for Participation in Trump's Church Photo-Op
Robert Burns, Associated Press
Burns writes: "Army Gen. Mark Milley, the nation's top military officer, said Thursday he was wrong to accompany President Donald Trump on a walk through Lafayette Square that ended in a photo op at a church. He said his presence in uniform amid protests over racial injustice 'created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.'"
Robert Burns, Associated Press
Burns writes: "Army Gen. Mark Milley, the nation's top military officer, said Thursday he was wrong to accompany President Donald Trump on a walk through Lafayette Square that ended in a photo op at a church. He said his presence in uniform amid protests over racial injustice 'created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.'"
“I should not have been there,” the Joint Chiefs chairman said in remarks to a National Defense University commencement ceremony.
Milley’s statement risked the wrath of a president sensitive to anything hinting of criticism of events he has staged. Pentagon leaders’ relations with the White House already were extraordinarily tense after a disagreement last week over Trump’s threat to use federal troops to quell civil unrest triggered by George Floyd’s death in police custody.
Trump’s June 1 walk through the park to pose with a Bible at a church came after authorities used pepper spray and flash bangs to clear the park and streets of largely peaceful protesters demonstrating in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. Milley’s comments Thursday were his first public statements about the walk with Trump, which the White House has hailed as a presidential “leadership moment” akin to Winston Churchill inspecting damage from German bombs in London during World War II.
Milley said his presence and the photographs compromised his commitment to a military divorced from politics.
“My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” Milley said. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
After protesters were cleared from the Lafayette Square area, Trump led an entourage that included Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper to St. John’s Episcopal Church, where he held up a Bible for photographers and then returned to the White House.
Esper has not said publicly that he erred by being with Trump at that moment. However, he told a news conference last week that when they left the White House he thought they were going to inspect damage in the Square and at the church and to mingle with National Guard troops in the area.
The public uproar following Floyd’s death has created multiple layers of tension between Trump and senior Pentagon officials. When Esper said last week that he had opposed Trump bringing active-duty troops onto the streets of the nation’s capital to confront protesters and potential looters, Trump castigated him in a face-to-face meeting.
Just this week, Esper and Milley let it be known through their spokesmen that they were open to a “bipartisan discussion” of whether the 10 Army bases named for Confederate Army officers should be renamed as a gesture aimed at dissociating the military from the racist legacy of the Civil War.
On Wednesday, Trump said he would never allow the names to be changed, catching some in the Pentagon by surprise.
The Marine Corps last week moved ahead with a ban on public displays of the Confederate Army battle flag on its bases, and the Navy this week said it plans a similar ban for its bases, ships and planes. Trump has not commented publicly on those moves, which do not require White House or congressional approval.
Milley used his commencement address, which was prerecorded and presented as a video message in line with social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic, to raise the matter of his presence with Trump in Lafayette Square. He introduced the subject to his audience of military officers and civilian officials in the context of advice from an Army officer and combat veteran who has spent 40 years in uniform.
He said all senior military leaders must be aware that their words and actions will be closely watched.
“And I am not immune,” he said, noting the photograph of him at Lafayette Square. “That sparked a national debate about the role of the military in civil society.” He expressed regret at having been there and said the lesson to be taken is that all in uniform are not just soldiers but also citizens.
“We must hold dear the principle of an apolitical military that is so deeply rooted in the very essence of our republic,” he said. “It takes time and work and effort, but it may be the most important thing each and every one of us does every single day.”
Milley also expressed his outrage at the Floyd killing and urged military officers to recognize it as a reflection of centuries of injustice toward African Americans.
“What we are seeing is the long shadow of our original sin in Jamestown 401 years ago,” he said, referring to the year in which the first enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of colonial Virginia.
Milley said the military has made important progress on race issues but has much yet to do, including creating the conditions for a larger proportion of African American officers to rise to the military’s senior ranks. He noted that his service, the Army, has just one African American four-star general, and mentioned that the Air Force is about to swear in the first-ever African American service chief.
Covid-19 patients arrive at the Montefiore medical center in the Bronx, New York City. (photo: John Moore/Getty)
'An American Fiasco': US Hits Grim Milestone of 2 Million Covid-19 Cases
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "For Americans, coronavirus went from being a mysterious affliction that occurred in far-off lands to 1m confirmed cases on US soil within 14 weeks. Now, just six weeks later, the US has broken through the grim milestone of 2m positive tests for Covid-19, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker."
READ MORE
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "For Americans, coronavirus went from being a mysterious affliction that occurred in far-off lands to 1m confirmed cases on US soil within 14 weeks. Now, just six weeks later, the US has broken through the grim milestone of 2m positive tests for Covid-19, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker."
READ MORE
U.S. senator Rand Paul. (photo: Getty)
Rand Paul Stalls Bill That Would Make Lynching a Federal Hate Crime
John Wagner and Mike DeBonis, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., acknowledged Wednesday that he is holding up a bill with broad bipartisan support that would make lynching a federal hate crime, saying he fears it could allow enhanced penalties for altercations that result in only 'minor bruising.'"
READ MORE
John Wagner and Mike DeBonis, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., acknowledged Wednesday that he is holding up a bill with broad bipartisan support that would make lynching a federal hate crime, saying he fears it could allow enhanced penalties for altercations that result in only 'minor bruising.'"
READ MORE
The Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) conducting underway operations on Tuesday in the South China Sea. (photo: Samuel Hardgrove/U.S. Navy)
Michael Klare | The New Cold War With China, How Will It Affect You?
Michael Klare, TomDispatch
Klare writes: "America's pundits and politicians have largely concluded that a new Cold War with China - a period of intense hostility and competition falling just short of armed combat - has started. 'Rift Threatens U.S. Cold War Against China,' as a New York Times headline put it on May 15th, citing recent clashes over trade, technology, and responsibility for the spread of Covid-19."
READ MORE
Michael Klare, TomDispatch
Klare writes: "America's pundits and politicians have largely concluded that a new Cold War with China - a period of intense hostility and competition falling just short of armed combat - has started. 'Rift Threatens U.S. Cold War Against China,' as a New York Times headline put it on May 15th, citing recent clashes over trade, technology, and responsibility for the spread of Covid-19."
READ MORE
Composite Ocean 2. (photo: Handout)
'I Raised Hell': How People Worldwide Answered the Call of World Oceans Day
Jessie McDonald and Guardian Readers, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them."
Jessie McDonald and Guardian Readers, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them."
From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean
orld Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.
Watamu, Kenya
Steve Trott, 58, projects manager at Watamu Marine Association
Our association is based in one of Africa’s oldest marine protected areas: the Watamu National Marine Park. One of our major concerns is plastic pollution. Plastic bags and materials are ingested by endangered sea turtles, which mistake them for jellyfish. Plastic also pollutes the sand, making it unsuitable for turtles to nest on the protected marine park beaches, which are some of the most important nesting sites in Kenya.
Over the past 10 years in Watamu we have created a circular economy, employing local people to clean beaches and providing work for plastic recyclers. On World Ocean Day we cleaned our marine park beach with the Kenya Wildlife Service and 100 local community members, who will receive an income to help them support their families during these difficult Covid-19 times. We collected just under 1,000kg of waste in one day.
Mumbai, India
Volunteer, 25, working with Anam Prem Parivar group
Our group Anam Prem (which means Anonymous Love) has been carrying out activities with local fishing communities. Commercial fishing has caused major shockwaves to traditional fishing communities in India. Most members of our group are based in Mumbai, which still houses traditional fishing communities in the midst of bustling trade and commerce.
On account of Covid-19, restrictions are in place for group gatherings. But on World Oceans Day our members living near the sea visited in small numbers and offered prayers, at the same time spreading awareness about the oceans and involving local fisher communities.
Isle of Skye, Scotland
Gill Williams, 58, underwater photographer
I spend almost every day in the waters around Skye, photographing what I see, good or bad. I spent World Oceans Day painting a picture of one of my images. For me, this peaceful kingdom needs protection from the human race who are doing so much damage to it. The oceans are the planet’s controlling factor: you lose the health of the oceans, you lose our planet.
I worry about the fish farms around the coast of Scotland. I was in the water only a few days ago and was immediately faced with a wall of green slurry as a result of practices at the nearby fish farm. We have a seal colony here. How are these creatures being affected by toxic waste and the underwater crow scarers going off all the time?
Ocho Rios, Jamaica
Richard Marsh, 59, retired scuba operation manager
Jamaica was made from coral, it is what made the beaches, the white sand. The reefs are still damaged from Hurricane Allen in 1980. Algae-eating fish have been over-caught, there’s not many left, and the algae is overgrown. I am concerned about deforestation, a lot of which is caused by agriculture, especially young trees being cut down to make “yam sticks” (yams grow on a vine which is supported by the sticks). This causes the soil to erode and flow into the water, which kills the corals.
I grew up near the ocean and studied marine ecology before working in the scuba industry. I stopped diving after I had a car accident, but it would be depressing to go back to it now: there’s less fish, more algae, less coral, less life. I am about to start a land-based coral nursery in a tank to help rehabilitate the reef nearby, at the White River fish sanctuary. Is there a global movement to protect the oceans? I’d like to think so.
Okinawa, Japan
Kyoko Harukawa, 52, eco-tour guide and co-founder of Miyakojima Sea Environmental Network
The amount of coastal garbage is terrible on the north-east coast of Miyako island, Okinawa. Most of the marine garbage here drifts from overseas from China, Korea, Taiwan or south-east Asian countries due to the Kuroshio current. Therefore, local people blame foreigners for “bad behaviour”.
However, in fact, local people are throwing a lot of rubbish into the sea and they don’t know this garbage flows to the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean. As the sea has no borders, it connects people all over the world. Both treasures and trash flows along the coast. We organise marine observations on Ikema island or at a mangrove area to mark World Oceans Day each year to raise awareness.
Bergen, Norway
Marion Casey, 66, English teacher at Austevoll Vidaregåande Skule
I work in a maritime school, an hour by catamaran ferry from Bergen. Most of the students are between 16 and 19 and the school trains them for work on fishing boats and supply boats. Some will eventually become captains and ship officers, others are doing qualifications to work on fish farms. For me the sea is a place to relax, a means of travelling round the country, and a way of earning a living for my students.
Usually on World Oceans Day the school borrows many small boats and the 140 or so students are distributed among them and each boat cleans a series of beaches and inlets. It is horrendous what we find. We couldn’t have the whole school out because of Covid-19 restrictions this year, but some students went out to clear rubbish from the little islands near our school.
Makarska, Croatia
Ana*, 30
During the war years in 90s Croatia, the sea was a reliable source of nutritious food for my family and, equally important, a source of an awful lot of fun for us kids. I will always be thankful for that. There are fishermen in my family. I saw first-hand how sustainable fishing, with small wooden boats and rudimentary equipment, works. I grew up swimming and diving on Makarska Riviera and as a child I used to regularly see lots of fish, starfish, seahorses, seagrass, corals, crustaceans, sea cucumbers.
Unfortunately, there is nothing to see now. The extension of beach areas by throwing soil, building material and stones into coastal waters has been going on for years along the entire Dalmatian coast and has led to the disappearance of sea life in shallow underwater areas. It’s a treatment known as dohrana plaže (“feeding the beach”). I pity younger generations who most probably will never have the joy of enjoying the sea the way I did. Wherever I go, I always miss the Adriatic.
St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
Dennis Kimberley, 78, retired professor
I live on “iceberg alley”. I see first-hand the large increase in the loss of sea ice and what it means for humanity. I see first-hand the loss of polar bear habitat. I see the arrival of birds and sea animals that aren’t native to our environment. Very scary. We use the term “snowmageddon” to refer to the recent exceptionally dangerous and record-breaking snow falls. The ocean here is a source of life and employment, as well as of striking beauty. I celebrated it by visiting the ocean at the weekend and thanking my close fisher friends who fish sustainably.
San José, Costa Rica
Elke Sauter Ortiz, 32, geo-data specialist at Space4Good
Together with the Mothership team, we just finished the Big Blue Mission, a coding project dedicated to exploring the world’s coastal ecosystems and fragile ocean environments using satellite technologies and AI. Coder teams developed solutions for: spotting ocean sedimentation on coral reefs, developing a monitoring system to detect sand theft on beaches or dredging by boat, and improving flood prediction mapping.
Playa Samara, Costa Rica, is a second home for me and my family. Being able to bring groups of people together to contribute their coding skills to conserve to a space close to my heart is as rewarding of a job as it can get.
Maui, Hawaii
Lani*, 29, conservation coordinator
My biggest concern for environmental protection is the inequality in society. We can not effectively engage with global communities and ask for their help in this fight to save our planet when many wake up every day worrying about their basic human rights. I live in a place where the natural resources are exploited by visitors and left degraded and unusable for the native people of these islands. Subsistence fishing is their birthright; the degradation of the marine environment is a violation of this right.
On World Oceans Day my organisation took part in an in-water scuba clean of our reefs. The debris collected will be counted and catalogued. I also took part in a “dawn patrol”, which is a fancy way of saying I walked the beach really early in the morning to look for evidence of nesting turtles in an effort to ensure the safety of the nests and maximum return of turtles to the sea. It’s weird to see it so empty here on the island because of the lack of tourism right now.
Canoas, Brazil
José Truda Palazzo Jr, 56, marine conservation writer and consultant
I am deeply concerned that Brazil is abandoning its responsibility as steward of an immense area of the south Atlantic Ocean. Over the last few decades, and thanks mainly to civil society mobilisation, Brazil has taken an active role in ending whaling, supporting protection for endangered marine species, promoting the concept of a global agreement for biodiversity conservation beyond national jurisdiction and establishing several marine protected areas (MPAs).
The current government, unfortunately, has abandoned all these gains. It sees environmental issues as a “globalist plot” and has halted proper implementation and enforcement of our MPAs. The world needs to wake up to this as well as to the destruction of the Amazon. I celebrated World Oceans Day by continuing to raise hell for policymakers. I want my grandson to be able to enjoy a healthy, living ocean as part of his generation’s well-being and natural heritage.
Palmela, Portugal
André Amaro, 50, artist
My art studio looks over Lisbon to the north and the mighty sandbanks of Tróia to the south. I collect ocean plastics and make clothing, interiors and art pieces. My artwork is about the profound choice we as humanity make for comfortable living, with no regard to the Earth we live on. I collect the waste in Tróia, and on the amazing beaches on the peninsula just south of Lisbon – their beauty is astonishing. On World Oceans Day I worked on a new art piece made from ocean plastics.
Zanzibar, Tanzania
Asma Hamad, 34, assistant biology lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar
The major concern here is mangrove degradation – mangroves are targeted by local people for production of charcoal and firewood. Many people think of the consumptive value of mangrove, they are forgetting that there would be no fish or crabs without them. Mangroves protect us from strong waves, storms and erosion. We are vulnerable to the rise in sea level – the impact is already evident in many places of the island.
To me the ocean is an identity, you cannot talk about islanders’ life without touching on the role of the ocean. I volunteer with Zanzibar Volunteers for Environmental Conservation and we cleaned Uzi beach on Monday to mark World Oceans Day.
Newfoundland, Canada
Gerard Neil, 49, social enterprise manager
Our activism focuses on synthetic fishing rope used in industry. There are 75,000 people employed in fisheries in Canada and almost all use synthetic plastic rope, which breaks down to micro-particles and is the greatest pollutant in local waters. We advocate a return to natural fibre rope to greatly reduce ocean micro-plastics and to limit modern fishing methods and the weight that monster trawlers can pull (natural rope would break at those weights), promoting sustainable practices.
We hand tie and sell “wits” (rope formed into a circle, used to hold oars to boat thole-pins or to form the entrance to lobster pots), using the money to direct attention to our cause. On World Oceans Day we once again made an effort to focus attention to this cause.
*Names have been changed
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