Stop Torture Now vigil Saturday

NC Stop Torture Now ( www.ncstoptorturenow.org ) will hold a short vigil at the Johnston County Airport, home base for torture taxi and CIA front company Aero Contractors, Ltd, this Saturday (the 27th) at 9:30am.  They are pushing for the release of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on the treatment of CIA detainees before Congress recesses.  Aero Contractors is allegedly mentioned by name in the report.  Participants should wear orange and bring signs to the new terminal, at 3149 Swift Creek Road in Smithfield.

STN adopted Swift Creek Road through the NC Adopt-a-Highway program and will pick up trash after the event.  Anyone age 12 or over is welcome to participate (but kids age 12-17 have to be supervised by an adult).        

Report back from the people's climate vigil in Chapel Hill

I saw about 80-100 people at the vigil at Peace and Freedom Plaza in Chapel Hill. It was just across Franklin Street from UNC, but it looked like the crowd was mostly from the community (though it was almost all white), with a range of ages.  Solarize Chapel Hill (solarizechapelhill.org) had a table offering a free residential or business solar assessment (but only for Orange County locations) and information about financing and how fast solar would pay for itself.  There will be a NC Conference on Religion and Climate Change Monday, October 13, 10am-3pm at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Raleigh, on "the moral duty to take care of creation" (RSVP www.eventjoy.com/e/creationcare , contact info is northcarolinacreationcare at gmail). I might have missed some other flyers.  The founder of UNC Freedom Club (uncfc.web.unc.edu , also on Facebook and Twitter) spoke and gave out some literature.  When things are looking bleak, I often wonder if human civilization and nature in general are fundamentally incompatible (also emerging technologies versus human life), and major changes are definitely needed, but this seems to be anti-industrial anarchism I can't agree with, being more optimistic about technology and a Marxist.  

Trekking around the UNC campus afterward I found flyers for a Spartacist League "Meet the Marxists" event September 18th.  They probably do this every fall, but I doubt there is a club at UNC.  FRSO (the one that publishes Fight Back!) seems to be gone, leaving anarchists as the only trend left of liberals organized at UNC.  I don't think there is even a Green group.  An SDS zine came out in the spring, promising activity this semester, and advocacy groups like Student Action with Workers and SEAC are still around, but not many political groups.              

More local people's climate actions

You can find other People's Climate Mobilisation demonstrations at:  http://events.peoplesclimate.org/event/peoples_climate/search/

Around here, it does not list the event in Raleigh, but I didn't know about the march at 2pm tomorrow on Duke's West Campus.   

Besides tomorrow's day of action around climate change, there has also been a lot of talk about resisting the new war in Iraq and Syria, but so far it is mainly about lobbying Congress. If the Administration knows what it is doing, I see this war against the Islamic State as a pretext to control Iraq and topple the secular government of Syria, and there will be "boots on the ground."  And all of this relates to oil and the climate change resulting from powering civilization with oil.        

Vigils for climate justice this Sunday in NC

For people not taking the Greenway Transit bus from Durham to NYC for the People's Climate March this Sunday, there will be vigils for climate justice Sunday (the 21st) in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Asheville:

Vigil 2-3pm at Peace and Justice Plaza in Chapel Hill (in front of the Post Office on Franklin Street, opposite UNC).  It is being organized by the United Church of Chapel Hill's United Earth Ministries.

There will be a prayer vigil at 4pm at the Community United Church of Christ in Raleigh (814 Dixie Trail), organized by the Triangle Interfaith Alliance, but with other sponsors, such as the Wake County Audubon Society.

There will be a vigil and voter registration 1-3pm at the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville.

This seems to be a religious initiative (see NC Interfaith Power & Light for more information: http://www.ncipl.org/event/local-vigils-and-rallies/ ), but people of all faiths and none should demand that action be taken to deal with climate change.  This year should be a wake up call for our area.  It is probably impossible to say if our greenhouse gas emissions caused the unusual weather patterns this year, but the impacts have been obvious and may be long-lasting.  After the repeated and late cold snaps and ice last winter, there have been very few butterflies around this summer, in numbers of individuals and diversity of species.  That was followed by an unusually cool and wet summer, which helped my corn, but I wonder if this strange weather heralds another bitterly cold winter.  Note that our winters could get worse for a while even though the Earth as a whole is warming up; snow isn't evidence that human-caused climate change isn't happening.