Category: Community Blog

BRIDGET HANNA, BHOPAL MEMORY PROJECT, DECEMBER 5, 2006 Bridget Hanna at work in the Sambhavna Clinic, Bhopal It’s December again, time for Christmas music, office holiday parties—and the anniversary of the world’s worst industrial catastrophe, the Bhopal gas disaster. Twenty-two years ago this week in Bhopal, India, a midnight feast of methyl isocyanate and hydrogen…

CUDDALORE TO CHENNAI CYCLE TOUR Day 2 – First milestone, Pondycherry Reported by Nityanand Jayaraman The day stated as usual, two cycles broke down and had to be loaded onto the car and sent to Semankuppam for repairs. The trip to Semankuppam was excellent we were at just the right time for pamphleteering, it was…

Chennai, November 27, 2006 CLICK HERE FOR A FULL-SIZE JPEG IMAGE OF THIS POSTER Report From Nity: DAY 1, 11:00 pm We set off on schedule at 11.00 am and the first cycle crsis occurred within 20 metres of the start. We got cycle fixed at Old Town, Cuddalore and carried on. Earlier the flag…

Rafe Mair, The Tyee, November 13, 2006 Rachel Carson: Spun in her grave and other PR half-truths. Most people don’t much give a damn about the environment – at least they won’t take responsibility for it. No matter how bad the news gets, the public wants nothing to do with the story except to complain…

A picture of Sunil hangs in the Yaad–e-Haadasaa, the Bhopali people’s museum commemorating the disaster, which Sunil inaugurated in December 2005. In Bhopal and in villages and cities around the world, trees were planted in memory of our friend Sunil Kumar. Chennai, India Dharmesh Shah writes from Chennai, “We had a very small yet remarkable…

The ‘One Billion Eyes’ annual Indian documentary film festival was launched in August 2005 by the Prakriti Foundation, Chennai. The aim of this festival is to promote documentary films and the filmmakers who push intellectual, political and cultural boundaries and explore issues that are relevant to the Indian context today. (The first festival in 2005…

BY DIANE WILSON Had a visit this morning from a little green forest ranger – the forest in this case being Lafette Park. She cautioned us. Again, again she said, that we had to sit within 3 feet of our cloth banners because otherwise its like luggage left unattended in an airport and is liable…

BY DIANE WILSON Let’s talk about *buffalo wings. Conversation came up the other day from Geoff Millard, an Iraqi War veteran who had been speaking out against the war. He was from Buffalo, New York and wanted to know why everybody called buffalo wings ‘buffalo wings’ while the folks from Buffalo call them ‘chicken wings’?…

BY DIANE WILSON Fast wise, this day isn’t much different than yesterday. But im not fooled. Eleven days into a fast is the equivalent of 200 feet in a mile run. Best policy is to take it one day at a time. And interesting enough, one sure thing that a fast will automically deliver to…

BY DIANE WILSON Holding this water bottle pretty close. I try not to use a different plastic bottle every day and end up polluting the earth with more trash. We’ve got enough landfills. The car that has the water jugs is out at the capitol so ive got an empty water bottle. Oh well, so…

BY DIANE WILSON I started a letter on the first day but pooped out. Probably it was that 2 mile walk in the hot hot sun that did it. Dick Gregory, who’s famous for his hunger strikes on the Viet Nam war, made a speech under the trees and said if you’re on a fast…

BY DIANE WILSON The first hunger strike I did on a shrimp boat in Texas is kinda like that tree in the forest illustration. You know, does it make a sound if nobody hears it. I was hunger fasting on a shrimp boat and that was 1991 and I was still ignorant of the uses…

DIANE WILSON, OUTSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON DC When I did my first hunger strike on a shrimp boat in Texas in l991, an environmentalist friend said it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard of. “Nobody does hunger strikes in Texas!” Still, I sat, not eating, until a local shrimper threatened to throw…