Opinion

Trump’s first SOTU

1 Comment / allies, Home, Opinion / By

Donald Trump gives his first official State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 30, at 9pm Eastern | 6pm Pacific. Even if you hate the guy (and you should), somebody needs to listed to make sure he doesn’t announce any stupid new ideas (like drilling for oil on the moon, or requiring every citizen to genuflect and donate $5 every time the pass an Exxon station). Our team will be listening in (and providing live color-commentary via twitter). And you can tune in with us! RSVP here and/or come back just before the speech starts Tuesday night and we’ll host a live stream of the speech, with running commentary from our team and a range of climate journalists, activists Climate Justice Warriors and more.  Live Blog State of the Union hate Watching party Trouble viewing the RSVP/Iframe? Click Here What to watch for: the Pre Game. Here’s some links and hot-takes before the big speech to give you an idea what to listen for. The Washington Posts pre-speech “what to listen for” isn’t bad The NPR politics podcast is a …

Trump’s first SOTU Read More »

The pipelines and the wave

1 Comment / Action, Home, Opinion / By

One of the things I’ve done for years now is help progressive, climate-action groups and people raise money online. Today is #GivingTuesday, so you can imagine that it’s been a bit of a whirl here at 198 methods. The idea of #GivingTuesday is nice – we all take a day out at the start of December, proximate to black Friday, cyber Monday, and other major moments in late America’s capitalist over-consumption, and we just … give. People donate to charities and non-profits of all sizes and kinds. Billions are raised on this day every year. And most of the groups I work with or know will ask for your help and raise some needed operating cash today. I’m doing that too – because we’re just getting our bylaws ready and filing as an official non-profit organization. And so, yes, it would be great if you can chip in a few dollars and help us expand our work in 2018. But I also want to do something a little different – because I think 198 methods is a little different. So I’m …

The pipelines and the wave Read More »

Taking action while waiting for Keystone.

Leave a Comment / allies, Home, Opinion / By

I hate waiting for news. And this morning, we were waiting on a doozy of an update: A few days after a massive oil spill on the keystone 1 pipeline, the the Nebraska Public Service Commissions (PSC) was to decide whether or not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline route. (See this post if you want to catch up on the spill.) They did, with a really important caveat. And now I’m thinking about what’s next. But as fortune would have it, I wasn’t stuck home alone, worrying about the vote; Or out at work trying to stay busy while clicking the refresh button on my news feed every few minutes. I was in Pittsburgh at the People Vs Oil & Gas conference, surrounded by pipeline fighters from British Columbia, Canada, South Texas, New York, California and everywhere in between. So when a couple friends from the local Rising Tide chapter asked me to pitch in (and do what 198 methods does — digital communications support for direct action campaigns), I said yes in a heartbeat; Even if it meant …

Taking action while waiting for Keystone. Read More »

About that Republican Carbon Tax

Leave a Comment / Home, Opinion / By

Editorial boards everywhere are positively swooning over the dulcet crooning of a new boy band called The Climate Leadership Council (CLC). That’s right, the carbon tax band is back together! But as usual, for backers of a carbon tax, the editorial boards are missing a fundamental truth: Climate change will not be solved by a bipartisan consensus of old white men. And we know this is so because 1) We’ve heard all this before; 2) This isn’t a sincere attempt to solve climate change, it’s grandstanding by paid pundits; and 3) Sincere, workable plans to solve climate change exist, but they’re never written by bipartisan old white men from the pundit class.

Disecting the #DistruptJ20 inauguration protest

Leave a Comment / allies, Opinion / By

It’s been more than a  week since the inauguration and the protest that denied Trump the crowds he craves, and helped reset the media narrative. We’ve got a lot to be proud of in the climate movement, and we’re struggling under the sheer weight of horrible news that’s been dumped on us in an unbelievably short period of time. Tillerson confirmed, Pruitt likely, the Muslim ban, the defections and failure to block cloture by Democrats. But let me direct your attention backwards, for just a moment, to consider what happened on January 20, and some (I think) important lessons it provides about how the Climate movement can and should lead the resistance, and how this project can help. Some beautiful folks holding space at the inauguration, saying NO to Trump’s agenda of fossil fuel cronyism. #disruptj20 #climatej20 pic.twitter.com/7sFVMDp6uE — Alex Doukas (@adoukas) January 20, 2017 First of all, thanks to all our friends who wrote up great accounts of the day have been written up by some friends. Special kudos to David at OCI and Farhad of the Chorus Foundation (nerd power!) for ones I …

Disecting the #DistruptJ20 inauguration protest Read More »

Start here?

Leave a Comment / Home, Opinion / By

I’ve been thinking about what to say. About what can be said. Where do we start with what just happened in this country? So I’ve been reading facebook and text messages like everyone else. I liked Farhad’s I see you and I need to be seen. I feel very viscerally everyone who’s just devastated: crying, inconsolable, destroyed by this news. I feel to the shock and numbness so many people speak of. I just went and stood in my own garden, as I usually do when I need to find my center, and there’s something unrecognizable about the whole world. Like some piece of gravity or physics has changed and I can’t fathom up or down yet. I don’t yet feel the anger, the determination, the drive to go organize and fight and win some speak of, but I understand it. I cringe at the finger-pointing, but I understand that too. This was a thing done to us, not a thing born of our inaction or complacency. We need to fight, I believe we will. Far and away the hardest to read and respond to are the posts …

Start here? Read More »

Scroll to Top