EcoJustice Radio

On this episode, Mark Morris speaks with Madeline Merritt, Core Organizer for Public Bank LA and Member of California Public Banking Alliance. She speaks about the campaign supporting AB 857, The Public Banking Act, in an unprecedented partnership between the grassroots and lawmakers. She is a water protector and community organizer who seeks to transform global systems to put the long term interests of people and planet over the short term interests of the few.

Public Banks and the Green New Deal: https://californiapublicbankingalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Public-Banks-and-GND.pdf

https://californiapublicbankingalliance.org/

https://publicbankla.com/

https://www.divestla.com/

Interview by Mark Morris

Host: Jessica Aldridge

Engineer: Blake Lampkin

Executive Producer: Jack Eidt

Show Created by Mark and JP Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 33

Over the past few years, there has been significant growth in US politics of women candidates (especially women of color) and for many this being their first run for office. As of today, there exists a record number of women in congress and more young women and women of color than ever in US History.

On this show, Jessica Aldridge talks with Aura Vasquez, Environmental and Social Justice organizer and Candidate for Los Angeles City Council District 10, on how we change the “old boys club” and what this could mean for bringing social equity to the table.

Bio

Aura Vasquez is an Afro-Latina immigrant, community leader, fearless advocate for environmental and racial justice issues and running to be the first woman elected to represent Los Angeles Council District 10. As the first immigrant and the youngest to be appointed a Commissioner for the L.A. Department of Water and Power, Aura supported millions in investments in sustainable energy and incentives to lower power bills for all residents. In 2018, she coached Democratic candidates across the U.S. and helped flip the U.S. Congress to a Democratic majority. Her commitment is to give a voice to people who have been, historically unheard, and help them build a prosperous future for themselves and their families.

Learn more about Aura Vasquez Campaign for the People of District 10.

https://www.aura2020.com

Follow her journey in Social Media:

Instagram: @Auravasquezofficial

Facebook: @Auravasquezofficial

Twitter: @Auramvasquez

For questions, comments, and suggestions email Aura anytime! [email protected]

Interview by Jessica Aldridge from SoCal 350 and Adventures in Waste.

Engineer: Blake Lampkin

Executive Producer: Jack Eidt

Show Created by Mark and JP Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 32

Photo Credit: Christina House / Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles is the nation’s garment production capital and the city’s second largest manufacturing sector, yet workers face injustice, usually associated with the developing world, right here in one of the largest cities in the United States.

Unbeknownst to most, sweatshops are a reality in Los Angeles, California and are directly tied to some of the most notable and loved brands. However, accountability and human rights are not always being addressed by these brands and the manufacturers they use.

How are sweatshops and labor practices intrinsically tied to environmental issues?

Our host, Jessica Aldridge, interviews Mar Martinez from the Garment Worker Center a worker rights organization leading an anti-sweatshop movement to secure social and economic justice for tens of thousands of Los Angeles garment workers.

Bio: With two garment workers as parents, Mar Martinez witnessed first-hand the harm that the garment industry creates due to low wages and unsafe working conditions. As Organizing Coordinator and Wage Theft Clinic Coordinator, Mar has helped recover over $900K in stolen wages for garment workers and fight for greater brand accountability in the garment industry in Los Angeles.

Garment Worker Center is a worker rights organization leading an anti-sweatshop movement to improve conditions for tens of thousands of Los Angeles garment workers. Through direct organizing, GWC develops leaders who demand enforcement of strong labor laws and accountability from factory owners, manufacturers, and fashion brands. We center immigrant workers, women of color, and their families who are impacted by exploitation in the fashion industry.

Website: http://garmentworkercenter.org/

Interview by Jessica Aldridge from SoCal 350 and Adventures in Waste.

Engineer: Blake Lampkin

Executive Producer: Jack Eidt

Show Created by Mark and JP Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 31

When we get dressed in the morning, most of us don’t consider the environmental costs and human rights issues that may be attached to the clothing on our bodies. Jessica Aldridge interviews two women who have made it their business to not only consider how to clean up the global fashion industry, advocating for environmentally-supportive and equitable solutions to water pollution, pesticides, microfibers, and waste associated with making, washing, and disposing of our clothing.

Bios:

Andrea Plell - For over a decade San Francisco Bay Area based writer and sustainable fashion consultant, Andrea Plell, has fostered community in the effort of supporting systemic change in the apparel industry. In 2016, she co-founded The Sustainable Fashion Alliance a member-based organization designed to empower small and mid-sized sustainable brands with resources, shared opportunities and creative avenues to market. She is also the West Coast Regional Coordinator for Fashion Revolution, a not-for-profit international movement that calls for greater transparency in the global supply chain.

Jennifer Gilbert is a respected fashion recycling industry expert and is currently the Chief Marketing Officer of I:CO (short for I:Collect), a leading global solutions provider for the collection, sorting, reuse and recycling of apparel, footwear and other textiles. In her role, she works with some of the largest fashion brands to take on end-of-use product responsibility and help them transition towards a more circular fashion industry.

Resources:

Instagram - @jenniferdgilbert @icospirit @Fash_revusa @sustainablefashionalliance @ecologiqfashion

Website - http://ecologiquefashion.com/ https://www.fashionrevolution.org/ https://www.sustainablefashionalliance.com/ https://www.ico-spirit.com/en/

Books -

Magnifeco: https://www.amazon.com/Magnifeco-Head-Toe-Ethical-Non-toxic/dp/0865717974

ECOrenaissance: https://www.amazon.com/ECOrenaissance-Lifestyle-Cocreating-Stylish-Sustainable/dp/1501123564

How to Shop for Shi(f)t: https://www.amazon.com/How-Shop-Shi-Shopping-healthier/dp/0692968709

Interview by Jessica Aldridge from SoCal 350 and Adventures in Waste.

Engineer: Blake Lampkin

Executive Producer: Jack Eidt

Show Created by Mark and JP Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 30

From the Personal Carbon Footprint to a Green New Deal

Massive climate disruption continues to strike all over the world, one disaster after another, droughts, wildfires, typhoons, mega-floods, with glaciers melting and methane escaping from deep under the permafrost. The UN IPCC said we have 12 more years to stabilize greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere to avoid runaway climate change. We need solutions to this problem to spark a climate revolution. Jessica Aldridge speaks with NASA climate scientist and author Peter Kalmus and Sam Berndt also a scientist and a coordinator of the Sunrise Movement Los Angeles.

Peter Kalmus is author of the book 'Being the Change: Live Well and Spark A Climate Revolution'. He is a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and he is speaking on his own behalf. Peter's main research interests are cloud physics and ecological forecasting. He's the recipient of NASA's Early Career Achievement medal and he makes an effort to avoid burning fossil fuel, in order to shift the culture and pave the way for policy-level change. He lives on about a tenth the fossil fuel of the average American, and he enjoys it!

Peter's website: https://beingthechangebook.com/

Buy the Book: https://www.amazon.com/Being-Change-Spark-Climate-Revolution/dp/0865718539

Sam Berndt is an Engineer and the Coordinator for the Sunrise Los Angeles Hub. Sam recently moved from Michigan to LA in order to pursue his dream job as a software engineer at JPL. He is also speaking on his own behalf. When he heard of a direct action at Nancy Pelosi's DC office demanding a Green New Deal, he was inspired to take his own action and help found and organize the Sunrise Los Angeles hub.

Check out Sunrise: https://www.sunrisemovement.org/

Interview by Jessica Aldridge from SoCal 350 and Adventures in Waste.

Host and Engineer: JP Morris

Executive Producer: Mark Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 29

Join Stephanie Mushrush and Carrie "Cc" Curley Strong as they share about the Apache Stronghold spiritual movement to Save Oak Flat (Chi'chil Bildagoteel). Apache Stronghold, led by Wendsler Nosie, Sr. for the last decade, is a spiritual movement to protect the Apache Way of life: their sacred sites and cultural and spiritual heritage. The movement is committed to preventing Resolution Copper, a foreign mining corporation & subsidiary of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, from desecrating the San Carlos Apache Nation's ancestral lands.

Resolution Copper proposes building an environmentally destructive "block cave" copper mine on Oak Flat, which would gravely threaten land, water, air quality, cultural and sacred sites, including areas with petroglyphs and burial grounds of the Apache. In 2015, a deceptive land swap hidden in the Defense Authorization Act, aimed to give the ancestral Apache lands of Oak flat to Resolution Copper.

Having been deemed "Forest Service land" as a result of colonization, Oak Flat was to be exchanged for private "conservation" lands throughout Arizona. Since 1955, due to the Oak Flat Withdrawal, Oak Flat had been protected from all forms of public appropriation as part of the Tonto National Forest. Oak Flat advocates assert that President Eisenhower initiated this withdrawal to effectively protect the area from mining due to its cultural and natural value. The Save Oak Flat Act, recently reintroduced in Congress (sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Representative Raul Grijalva in the House) would repeal the Oak Flat Land Exchange Act, and prevent Resolution Copper from developing and operating a large-scale copper mine on sacred territory of the Apache, essential to their practices of cultural and spiritual renewal.

Both diverse artists in their own right, Stephanie and Cc share how artivism informs the breadth of their activism and how their spiritual journeys marching to Oak Flat have distinctly empowered and forever transformed their own lives.

Stephanie Mushrush is a Co-Founder of Red Earth Defense, a grassroots indigenous-led LA community organization; a Many Winters Gathering Of Elders - Core Committee member; and an organizer with Apache Stronghold to protect Chich’il Bildagoteel aka. Oak Flat in Arizona. Stephanie is a member of the Washoe Tribe of NV & CA and identifies as an urban Native, as well as half Filipina. After working at Sherman Indian High School for nearly a decade, Stephanie earned her Master of Social Welfare from UCLA in 2013. She now works as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker at American Indian Counseling Center for LA County. She is also a singer/musician under the artist name Sallee Free. Her debut album, inspired by intergenerational healing, will be released in early 2019.

Carrie "Cc" Sage Curley is a key member of the Apache Stronghold spiritual movement to Save Oak Flat, Chi Chil Bildagoteel. She resides on San Carlos Apache Reservation, and her clan is K'aitsehit'i'dn'. Cc is among the Stronghold that maintained an Oak Flat occupation that lasted over 1.5 years, extended from the first annual gathering in February 2015. As a longstanding artivist, Cc uses art as her “weapon” to support and engage people in the Apache Stronghold spiritual movement to “Save Oak Flat,” the movement to stop copper mining on the sacred ancestral lands of the San Carlos Apache Nation. She has murals across Indian Country, including a piece representing four generations of women, on Los Angeles' own Winston Street Alley, aka. Indian Alley. By depicting indigenous peoples, she educates and inspires others about Apache culture and their Earth-honoring wisdom traditions. Dedicated to her community, Cc teaches art to Apache children and contributes daily to an indigenous farm project.

Interview by Carry Kim

Host and Engineer: JP Morris

Executive Producer: Mark Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 28

Erik Ohlsen is the director of the Permaculture Skills Center, a vocational training school that offers advanced education in ecological design, landscaping, farming, and land stewardship. Creator of the the Eco-Landscape Mastery School online training program, Erik is also founder of Permaculture Artisans which specializes in design and installation of ecological landscapes and farms throughout California. An internationally renowned, certified permaculture designer and practitioner, Erik has taught ecological landscape design and implementation to thousands of students and clients around the world since 1999. He has special expertise in water harvesting systems, food forest design, and community organizing. His primarily goal is helping people connect deeply with nature and themselves. He resides in Sebastopol, California with his wife Lauren, raising a family, building a homestead and running their businesses.

Website: https://erikohlsen.com/

More info: https://www.wilderutopia.com/ecojustice-radio/creating-resilient-ecosystems-regenerating-the-planet-with-erik-ohlsen-ecojustice-radio/

Interview by Carry Kim

Produced by Mark Morris

Engineering and co-host J.P. Morris

Original Music by Javier Kadry

Ep. 27

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL or Rocketdyne), north of Los Angeles, burned in the November 2018 Woolsey Fire, threatening toxic exposures from contaminated dust, smoke, ash, and soil. In the 1940s, SSFL with its 10 experimental nuclear reactors was developed for research and weapons testing. In 1959, it suffered an uncontained partial meltdown of at least one sodium reactor referred to by experts as the worst nuclear disaster in U.S history, and the fourth largest release of iodine-131 in the history of nuclear power. Until 1979 the incident and the toxic waste byproduct that still pollutes the ground water, air, and soil was kept secret.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) denied risk from the fire that it created by delaying the long promised cleanup. Their statement failed to assuage community concerns given DTSC’s longtime pattern of misinformation about SSFL’s contamination and its repeated broken promises to clean it up.

Jessica Aldridge from SoCal 350 and Adventures in Waste discusses the issues with Denise Duffield, Associate Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, and Melissa Bumstead, Mother and local advocate, and a founder of Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab.

No More Kids With Cancer: Clean Up the Santa Susana Field Lab Petition: https://www.change.org/p/no-more-kids-with-cancer-clean-up-the-santa-susana-field-lab

Interview by Jessica Aldridge from SoCal 350 and Adventures in Waste.

Host and Engineer: JP Morris

Executive Producer: Mark Morris

Music: Javier Kadry

Episode 26

Photo: Getty Images/ Sandy Huffaker

Ku Kia'i Mauna: The Mauna Kea Movement to Protect Sacred Sites, Waters and Indigenous Legacies Worldwide

Part 2

Kumu Mikilani provides an update on the status of Mauna Kea and the inspired movement to stop the construction of the 30-meter TMT telescope, anticipated to be the Northern Hemisphere's singular largest telescope sponsored by CalTech, University of California and the countries of India, Japan, and Canada. Twelve telescopes have already blighted what native Hawaiians consider their most sacred mountain and pinnacle of their origination cosmologically.

The proposed TMT telescope would disturb the fragile ecosystem of the summit which was traditionally accessible only by the high chiefs and priests on rare occasions as well as compromise cultural and spiritual practices of native Hawaiians. Construction of the proposed telescope favors astronomical advancement and development at the expense of designated conservation lands, and would gravely threaten unique flora, fauna and wildlife as well as potentially impact the water table. Mauna Kea is a precedent-setting movement, propelled largely by Hawaiian natives and cultural practitioners who are insisting upon land usage which respects, preserves and honors indigenous cultural and spiritual preservation, as well as protects the vast ecosystem in which their Ancestors live and thrive.

Interview by Carry Kim from EcoJustice Radio.

Host and Engineer: JP Morris

Executive Producer: Mark Morris

Episode 25

Part 1 of 2

Ku Kia'i Mauna:

Kumu Mikilani Young discusses with Carry Kim from EcoJustice Radio about the proposed, highly controversial 30-meter TMT telescope which would be built atop "ceded" conservation lands on Mauna Kea, considered the most sacred mountain for native Hawaiians or Kanaka Ma'oli. The TMT telescope would be the largest telescope in the Northern Hemisphere and is being spearheaded by the University of California, the California Institute of Technology as well as: Japan, China, India and Canada.

Mikilani also speaks on her aims and actions to unite First Nations of California as well as indigenous peoples globally to protect sacred ancestral territories, living waters and the heritage of indigenous peoples for future generations. In this episode, Kumu Mikilani shares the meaning of oli (prayerful chants of Hawai'i), intricacies and origins of the Hawaiian language, the sovereignty and "occupation" of Hawai'i, cultural appreciation vs. appropriation and a conversation about who is "indigenous." Learn more about the culture of "Aloha Aina," the "birthright" of Kanaka Ma'oli (native Hawaiians) and their living relationship to Ke Akua (Creator), Na Kupuna (Ancestors) and Na Aumakua (deified Ancestors) — their gods and Ancestors.

Interview by Carry Kim from EcoJustice Radio.

Host and Engineer: JP Morris

Executive Producer: Mark Morris

Episode 25

Image: Aerial view of Mauna Kea with Gemini North at center of foreground ridge | Gemini Observatory | Dr. Richard Wainscoat.