Coming Stories and the Perils of Industrial Society

I am excited about upcoming issues of Whatcom Watch. In the February issue, we will publish a wrap-up of the September 2013 Totem Journey from the Powder River Basin in Montana, through the Columbia River Valley, and up the coast through Seattle to Cherry Point, with the final location of the Totem at the Tsleil Waututh Nation in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Look forward to reading personal recollections of the journey, feeling what the travelers felt as they participated in sacred ceremonies with other Tribes along the way, and the impacts the Totem and the participants’ activities have had across the Pacific Northwest.

In the March issue, we will publish another large color insert prepared by Michael Riordan about the scientific case against the Gateway Pacific Terminal at Cherry Point. On page one of this issue, you can read an abridged preview of what Michael’s larger article will contain. The insert will also include numerous maps and photographs to bring his in-depth research to life.

I was saddened to see initiative 522 go down to defeat. In the simplest terms, it means that most voters believed the glossy-flyer lies that the No campaign distributed just prior to the election. My sympathies are with the majority of the Washington electorate for being deceived once again by big money and corporate power. The single item that I am sure voters fell for is the claim that our groceries are going to cost $350 to $400 more per year. It wasn’t true when it was said and it isn’t true today.

But more important, congratulations to Whatcom County voters for not buying into those deceptions and for passing the initiative that would have required labeling for all GMO foods on the shelves of our grocery stores.

If we do not understand that corporations do not care about us, they do not care about our health, they do not care if we contract cancer, they do not care if our children have asthma, ADHD, autism, leukemia, and the myriad of other diseases that our industrial society has spawned into existence, we will be doomed to continue making the same bad choice about I-522 that was made on November 5.

And for concrete evidence about what I say, read “A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry” by David A. Kessler (2002), which describes the deception and malicious behavior of the tobacco industry to prevent the truth about cigarettes from being revealed. Or read “Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things” by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie (2009), an account of the myriad toxic substances in our immediate surroundings. Or read “Lead Wars and the Fate of America’s Children” by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner (2013), where they describe what the lead industry and its industry association did, first, to conceal the dangers of lead to humans and, second, to halt the efforts to remove lead from the environment to prevent the poisoning of millions of children in the United States. For a television version of the story, Moyers and Company televised an interview with Markowitz and Rosner recently which you can find on their website at billmoyers.com (http://billmoyers.com/segment/david-rosner-and-gerald-markowitz-on-toxic-disinformation.)

This is not trivial. We are being poisoned daily and we don’t seem to care. I will continue to do everything I can to educate people to the perils of our industrial society so we can make it better and more livable for everyone, but most importantly, for our children and our children’s children. As James Wells, my friend and a writer for Whatcom Watch, intones as a closing to his emails, “We shall not participate in our own destruction.”