Show Archive
Show #1 | Show #2 | Show #3 | Show #4
Show #5 | Show # 6 | Show #7 | Good People Gather | Riot in a Mic 11-6-07 | 5 Minutes on a Full Moon
goofing off on the phone | Lowry, --->Tubman, & ---> Amin | Where is the Water? Part 1 | Where is the Water? Part 2
Derrick Jensen & Radio Roxanne:  Premise One | Winter Solstice '08 | Women in Black-NYC-(Palestine & Israel) | Save Aaron | Questions from the Allegheny Forest | Oceans of Oil | Japan: As Crows Fly | Time Short, Stakes High-#1-"XL Excess"

XL Excess

Roxanne R. Amico, January, 2012

The phrase, “time short, stakes high” had been pre-occupying me for several years before the Occupy movement began.  Anyone paying attention to world news as much as I do would notice that talking heads are saying with a greater frequency how “time is running out” on (what they consider key) issues in our society. Given that most media outlets are corporate-owned and therefore profit-driven, no surprise that their reports are dominated by “budget deadlines”, “economic growth” (…woops, I mean collapse…), and “anticipated election results”.  As journalist Chris Hedges said recently, “…"The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. You won’t hear it on the corporate-owned airwaves and cable networks…"

So, one reason the Occupy movement is compelling is the bold act of large collections of people claiming public space is being heard and seen in at least some portion of the commons of our airwaves. This is important because our airwaves are one outlet for sharing our stories – an act which is a crucial component of creating and shaping culture.

Inspired by the Occupy movement, this audio segment initiates a series of interviews exploring three questions from the standpoint of people on the streets.  Following is 3-4 minutes of one self-described “representative of the 99%”, answering first, “What is at stake?”  Second, “What are we up against?”  And finally, “What can we do – what are we doing – about it?” 

My own commentary follows the statements of this Buffalo "Occupier"…

[If you enjoy this work, please consider supporting my work in independent media production at this link, http://www.spiritmorphstudio.com/support.html (or contact me directly at ra@spiritmorphstudio.com ) ] 

You're listening to Radio Roxanne and that was the first interview for "time short, stakes high".

 Clearly, the answers to the questions will vary depending in part upon who asks (like this independent media production), and upon whom we ask (like those devoted activists of the "Occupy" movement.)

 I was thinking about this the other day while walking under a sky suddenly stamped with hundreds of bobbing and slicing crows, occupying their morning staked on their next meal...  Just the night before, a firestorm of headlines claimed a victory for the “Obama Administration Rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline”...Bill McKibben’s statement that this is a "…victory for Americans who testified in record numbers" shows that from his political standpoint, what’s at stake is his “sense of accomplishment”, despite the fact that the Washington Post reported, "...The Obama administration was examining how it could reject the pipeline without killing Keystone XL altogether”. Contrast that with a report in The Vancouver Sun "…The proposed pipeline traverses the territories of 65 first nations, of which at least 61 have declared their opposition, because of the impact upon the communities downstream of the tar sands…” including the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, whose LIVES are at stake because they’re being diagnosed with high rates of cancer.  Meanwhile, Speaker of the House John Boehner’s stakes are his tens of thousands of dollars in stock of companies deeply invested in the tar sands, and TransCanada plans on making a new application that includes an alternative Keystone XL route – After the elections, of course.

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson warns of the true stakes for ALL of us, regardless of ideology or privilege… He says, "The worst thing that will probably happen—in fact is already well underway—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us." 

 Only TWO days prior to the XL pipeline-hype, I read about a recent study of rising CO2  “…posing a direct and previously unknown threat to sea life by affecting the brains & central nervous systems of sea fish…” YET, in the same week, even in the context of this further evidence of threats of extinction events, I heard a well-known local environmentalist speak of wanting to present the information of these threats on a happy note, as if what’s at stake is our mental health rather than frankly addressing that what is at stake is the very. Ability. Of. The. Planet. To. Sustain. Life – before it’s too late!

Most clear to me on a crow-sky time-shortened January day in 2012, when buds on magnolia trees and lilac bushes are already sadly, wrongly showing, and flocks of robins and even bees are eerily appearing in Buffalo, is that we must ask and answer, (repeatedly, because the answers will differ for different cultures, times, and conditions), questions of strategies for human survival, questions of strategies for resistance to the imperialist powers which consistently, criminally, choose profits over planetary survival, and questions of strategies for protection of all species most vulnerable in the multiple battles waged against us. The fish know this, first nations people know this, the youth active in the Occupy movement know this, and the crows, those clever carrion foragers, those sharpened black blades riding the winds to morning council at the cemetery know this, while just below them, is the sound of a car starting automatically, for a driver for whom the stakes are a warm commute to work.

 With that, stay tuned to Radio Roxanne for more on the "time short, stakes high" series.  I'm Roxanne Amico.  Thank you for listening to this production of Spiritmorph Studio & Earthstream Creative Projects, Inc!

[If you enjoy this work, please consider supporting my work in independent media production at this link, http://www.spiritmorphstudio.com/support.html (or contact me directly at ra@spiritmorphstudio.com ) ]