"All things change in a dynamic environment. Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."~ Ghost In The Shell, 2.0
I was debating whether or not to write this here or elsewhere, like the Greenloop blog or Green Nuclear Butterfly, but I figured, since of late, my stance on things and choice of strategy seems to hurk the peanut gallery, I'd remain safe in the comfort of my own mini-media. I won't reach as many, but at least I get to try and make sense of things.
There's a few emergencies happening around the world, in this country, that are game changing. The collapse of certain institutions, desperatly trying to survive, while jobs keep vanishing to slave labor camps, under the guise of affordable prices. It can be heart wrenching. And yet, when offered a solution to shake the foundation, restore a sense of honor, place and destiny, most people look in fear at their pockebook, take a back seat chanting: "you go do it, you go do it!" So why don't I feel like anyone's got my back?
We duck, it's human nature. We're willing to speak out, outspoken in private. Talking shit about everyone and everything. But when comes push to shuv, to go on the record, we buckle under like little girls terrified at what nanny will do. And the song remains the same. In this case a stupefying rebirth of the nuclear power industry from the ashes of cosmically horrendous disasters, despite all the evidence. For sheer force of evil will and corrupt financial empires.
I created Rock The Reactors in 2006 with one objective in mind, shut down Indian Point, the old nuke on the Hudson river, a ticking time bomb threatening the lives and livelyhoods of millions of people in the New York region. A couple of friends and I came up with a full proof plan. And then we started to fight amongst ourselves, lost traction, while the nuclear power industry, with the millions at their disposal, reconsolidated, used our own arguments against us, and now have the gawl to host their annual public meeting for Indian Point on Earth Day April 22, making sure few environmentalists already committed to fairs and forum all over congressman John Hall's 19th District won't be able to attend.
Busloads of Union workers in new non-organic t-shirts with green slogans on them, wearing shiny new baseball caps on their head, will be there to greet busloads of black folk brought in from the South Bronx for a buffet lunch, so they can all hold signs for the cameras about how coal gives them asthma, and how Prius driving Westchester liberals are trying to exterminate them. All this while the plant leaks, and cancer rates go through the roof, and terrified illegals in Peekskill have no place else to go but the free clinic bought and paid for by Entergy!
The idea behind Rock The Reactors was this... bring attention to the issue after years of neglect by the media with the old tried and true: put a pretty girl in the picture. And it worked. By the NRC's own admission, Betcee May, now May Lindstrom, a green makeup artist in Los Angeles, instantly became the most downloaded pin-up by nuclear power workers. They tagged her in the mess hall. She inspired both sides to pick up arms, and go at it once again, just like Helen of Troy!
I hooked up with a genius madman, Sherwood Martinelli, who ended up almost single-handedly writing over 150 contentions and petitions against the relicensing of Indian Point. Our tireless efforts made the pages of the New York Times! But after he called one of the NRC judges a prick, well deserved, but ill-timed, was bounced from the legal proceeding, how convenient, while the good ladies of the Hudson valley, scurrying in fear of all that testosterone, appropriated our materials, refiled them as their own. Still, the NRC threw everything out on its ass, like so much detritus, because without Sherwood, his ranting and his raving, and foaming at the mouth, let's face it, nobody had a clue what to do.
The good ladies of the Hudson Valley hosted a concert with Ani DiFranco and Pete Seeger, my double bill idea mind you, which was meant to payback the thousands of dollars that came out of Sherwood and I's own quickly dwindling bank accounts... they kept all that money also! So it makes it a little difficult for Rock The Reactors to forgive and forget and act as if none of it happened, especially after their remorseless leader tried to have me thrown in jail for calling a spade a spade, costing me yet more resources I didn't have in legal fees! Nuff said.
Took a few months to restore Rock The Reactors to its former glory... lots of events, lots of networking, lots of going around helping people with their own thing in the remote hope they would put a little back in. All this is chronicled in pictures on the website. And here we are, 4 years later... Indian Point still ticking away, with dire news from the inside, as to working conditions and equipment safety.
In a few days, Fortune magazine will be hosting their Brainstorm Green conference, with half a dozen pro-nuke speakers, heralding the second coming of the peaceful atom, coming out with their Earth day green issue, praising nuclear as the solution to global warming, pale disguise for the fourth horseman of the Apocalypse if you ask me. All that money Obama and Chu are promising these knuckle dragging engineers, is going to buy them into the LED, EV and Hydrogen industry, as the tail that wags the dog, the kings of baseload, with roots deep down into the realm of black budgets, national security, energy conversion technologies and the blanket secrecy decades of cold war strategies wrapped all that stuff in.
Someone well informed once told me, to shut down Indian Point, you have to take down the entire nuclear power industry, DoD and DoE, and now Homeland Security, they got it set up that way. Well I sure hope not, because that would guarantee an accident we can't walk away from up the Hudson. All the green things we do in New York won't amount to a hill of beans if anything happens there. The people of Vermont, through their legislature, voted to shut down Vermont Yankee after the cooling tower collapsed of old age, and years of leaks were discovered, covered up by the lies of plant owner Entergy, same as Indian Point.
New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo, after only saying he just wanted to make the plant safer, finally went on the record opposing the relicensing, falling off the fence on the side of anti-nuclear wackos! That's us, and proud of it! Few days ago at the Go Green Expo, actor and long time environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. threw his hat into the ring, reinvigorating this anti-nuclear revival. He's a launch partner of Beyond Nuclear, a grassroots based anti-nuclear organization with quite a few celebrities on board, a fact seldom mentioned by his friends at the Planet Green channel, owned by Discovery, which more or less has an unwritten rule that nuclear never gets challenged on its network.
All this paint tell tale signs we're getting geared up for a big fight, to finally finish the job all these hippy dreamers, Congressman John Hall among them, started with the No Nukes concert series back in 1979. Where are you Mr. Bobby Kennedy Jr, sir? We need you now, more than ever! I don't care if they think they can build faster, better, cheaper nukes today than they did back in the 1960s. Indian Point has no business on the Hudson, it's sheer insanity, a disaster waiting to happen, already costing billions, and billions more to decommission and dismantle.
We're quietly organizing a big rally at the Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan on Bastille Day July 14, hoping New Yorkers won't let us down. Many of the contestants on Project Green Search, the green modeling competition I created with Aysia Wright of the Greenloop, support our anti-nuclear sentiments, some even put in time helping with Rock The Reactors actions. Green Drinks in Connecticut have become a support network for our organization, since in Fairfield County we're downwind, in fact more at risk than New Yorkers from the radioactive gases the plant vents daily.
It's a lot to keep track of, trying to make everybody happy. The common denominator nukes have with the fashion community is the soft tissue cancer link. Women are assaulted from all sides, by the cosmetics they use, the food they eat, the air they breathe, and the close proximity to radiation sources, both ionized and electromagnetic, like cell phones. We're slowly coming to understand the electrical properties of cancer cells, and how the disease is triggered. Comes a time when the best genes just can't stem the tide of all the stress the breakdown in our environment is causing our metabolism.
My role, after years in the trenches making green cool, is to make anti-nuke cool again as well. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, for sure, but it's also what shines through a person's heart. Consumerism with a conscience... the guilt both men and women start to feel when they understand the consequences of their purchases. I tried to make revolutionaries out of beauticians, I tried to force their hand a little, make them realize the connectivity of things. Lost a few feathers. I always wanted to be James Coburn in Our Man Flynt.
So forgive this old dude his ill manners, and help out any way you can, we beg you, cause time is running short. There's no time right now for luxurious resorts and pampering. This is a lot like Soddom and Gomorrah, or the time of Noah... you're all dancing on the ruins! And yet it wouldn't take much to at least assure New York a few more years of respite from the downfall of Western civilization, even maybe allow it a green rebirth. But Indian Point's gotta go people. It's holding everything back. Everything. What will it take for all of you to see that? To see the politics, the connective tissue to everything that is wrong with the way our society malfunctions.
All it would take is one phone call from a man who has become the public face of dozens of secret societies, the captain of the Federal Bank reserve, the old man himself, who now owns an organic farm just a few miles from the old broken down wreck they call Indian Point. Yes, I'm talking about David Rockefeller, who is very old now, and about to make way for his son, David Rockefeller Jr. who has been sailing the seven seas as an environmentalist for the past 20 years! What will it take for all these illustrious people to realize our fate, and maybe the fate of the entire nation, rests in their hands, in their decision to thumbs up or thumbs down the relicensing of Indian Point?
Let the dream go... the Jetson's 50s... that retro-future, was fun in comic books. It's over. There's better now. But the best things that are yet to come won't see the light of day if plants like Indian Point are allowed to break down and decay, laying waste on the land and our genome. We can retrain all these plant workers. I have friends who worked there who are now making a good honest living, selling solar and geothermal, making more electricity than they ever have, safely, cleanly, who now feel good about themselves!
On June 12, in Los Angeles, the Women of the Green Generation are getting together at an event which hopefully will integrate many of these different aspects. There's a lot happening with Green Hollywood, and organizations like Environmental Media Association, Earth Communications Office and now Global Green USA. A lot of money and influence which needs to realign with the root source of where the environmental movement came from, the Clamshell Alliance of the 60's... thousands protesting nuclear power, and for good reason, giving birth to grassroots solar and wind companies.
Let it be is one thing... One green little thing at a time is another... but in the shadow of aging nuclear power plants, the dream of green is an illusion, and it need not be that way. Realign yourselves with those who have never stopped fighting the nuclear power industry. They deserve your attention and your support.
~ Remy C.
Rock The Reactors
