RSN: When I Dream of the Planet in Recovery, Bill Clinton Fundamentally Doesn't Understand What Black Lives Matter Is About,

Reader Supported News | 09 April 16

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Charles Pierce | Bill Clinton Fundamentally Doesn't Understand What Black Lives Matter Is About 
 
Charles Pierce, Esquire 
Pierce writes: "Here's a question for the poli-sci folks here in the shebeen: When did Bill Clinton become such a political maladroit?" 
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Sanders Will Travel to Vatican to Speak About the 'Moral Economy' 
John Wagner, The Washington Post 
Wagner writes: "Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, an enthusiastic fan of Pope Francis's work, plans to step off the campaign trail next week to speak at a conference hosted by the Vatican on social, economic and environmental issues." 
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Round Two: FBI Attempts to Force Apple to Unlock iPhone in New Case 
Kevin McCoy and Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY 
Excerpt: "The Department of Justice said Friday it is moving forward on a separate legal front to force Apple's assistance in unlocking the iPhone linked to a drug conspiracy case in New York City." 
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Pregnant, on Medicaid, and Being Watched 
Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept 
McLaughlin writes: "If you're relying on the public health care system, you're living your life under surveillance, says Khiara Bridges, a law professor and anthropology researcher at the Boston University School of Law." 
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Chomsky and Pilger Back teleSUR Against Macri's Attack 
teleSUR 
Excerpt: "Dozens of journalists, academics and activists - including Noam Chomsky, Danny Glover, John Pilger and Cindy Sheehan - have signed a petition against the government of Argentina's Mauricio Macri and his attempts to close the teleSUR office in Argentina, effectively shutting down one of the only alternative voices in Argentina's largely corporate media landscape." 
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Why a Conservative Legal Organization Is Desperately Trying to Kill the Indian Child Welfare Act 
Josh Israel, ThinkProgress 
Israel writes: "Last July, the Goldwater Institute waded into Indian law. It did so in the form of A.D. v. Washburn, a federal class action challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act." 
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Derrick Jensen | When I Dream of the Planet in Recovery 
Derrick Jensen, YES! Magazine 
Jensen writes: "We, living now, in the time before, have choices. We can remember what it is to be animals on this planet and remember and understand what it is to live and die such that our lives and deaths help make the world stronger." 
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American bison. (photo: Department of the Interior)

For decades, poet-philosopher and radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen has warned us about the problems of civilization. Yet he’s a tireless activist with hope for the planet’s future.

n the time after, the buffalo come home. At first only a few, shaking snow off their shoulders as they pass from mountain to plain. Big bulls sweep away snowpack to the soft grass beneath; big cows attend to and protect their young. The young themselves delight, like the young everywhere, in the newness of everything they see, smell, taste, touch, and feel.

Wolves follow the buffalo, as do mallards, gadwalls, blue-winged teal, northern shovelers, northern pintails, redheads, canvasbacks, and tundra swans. Prairie dogs come home, bringing with them the rain, and bringing with them ferrets, foxes, hawks, eagles, snakes, and badgers. With all of these come meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds. With all of these come the tall and short grasses. With these come the prairies.

In the time after, the salmon come home, swimming over broken dams to forests that have never forgotten the feeling of millions of fish turning their rivers black and roiling, filling the rivers so full that sunlight does not reach the bottom of even shallow streams. In the time after, the forests remember a feeling they’ve never forgotten, of embracing these fish that are as much a part of these forests as are cedars and spruce and bobcats and bears.

In the time after, the beavers come home, bringing with them caddisflies and dragonflies, bringing with them ponds and pools and wetlands, bringing home frogs, newts, and fish. Beavers build and build, and restore and restore, working hard to unmake the damage that was done, and to remake forests and rivers and streams and marshes into what they once were, into what they need to be, into what they will be again.

In the time after, plants save the world.

In the time after, the oceans are filled with fish, with forests of kelp and communities of coral. In the time after, the air is full with the steamy breath of whales, and the shores are laden with the hard shells and patient, ageless eyes of sea turtles. Seals haul out on sea ice, and polar bears hunt them.

In the time after, buffalo bring back prairies by being buffalo, and prairies bring back buffalo by being prairies. Salmon bring back forests by being salmon, and forests bring back salmon by being forests. Cell by cell, leaf by leaf, limb by limb, prairie and forest and marsh and ocean by prairie and forest and marsh and ocean; they bring the carbon home, burying it in the ground, holding it in their bodies. They do what they have done before and what they will do again.

The time after is a time of magic. Not the magic of parlor tricks, not the magic of smoke and mirrors, distractions that point one’s attention away from the real action. No, this magic is the real action. This magic is the embodied intelligence of the world and its members. This magic is the rough skin of sharks without which they would not swim so fast, so powerfully. This magic is the long tongues of butterflies and the flowers that welcome them. This magic is the brilliance of fruits and berries that grow to be eaten by those that then distribute their seeds along with the nutrients necessary for new growth. This magic is the work of fungi that join trees and mammals and bacteria to create a forest. This magic is the billions of beings in a handful of soil. This magic is the billions of beings that live inside you, that make it possible for you to live.

In the time before, the world was resilient, beautiful, and strong. It happened through the magic of blood flowing through capillaries, and the magic of tiny seeds turning into giant redwoods, and the magic of long relationships between rivers and mountains, and the magic of complex dances between all members of natural communities. It took life and death, and the gifts of the dead, forfeited to the living, to make the world strong.

In the time after, this is understood.

In the time after, there is sorrow for those who did not make it: passenger pigeons, great auks, dodos, striped rocksnails, Charles Island tortoises, Steller’s sea cows, Darling Downs hopping mice, Guam flying foxes, Saudi gazelle, sea mink, Caspian tigers, quaggas, laughing owls, St. Helena olives, Cape Verde giant skinks, silver trout, Galapagos amaranths.

But in those humans and nonhumans who survive, there is another feeling, emerging from below and beyond and around and through this sorrow. In the time after, those still alive begin to feel something almost none have felt before, something that everything felt long, long ago. What those who come in the time after feel is a sense of realistic optimism, a sense that things will turn out all right, a sense that life, which so desperately wants to continue, will endure, will thrive.

We, living now, in the time before, have choices. We can remember what it is to be animals on this planet and remember and understand what it is to live and die such that our lives and deaths help make the world stronger. We can live and die such that we make possible a time after where life flourishes, where buffalo can come home, and the same for salmon and prairie dogs and prairies and forests and carbon and rivers and mountains.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36206-when-i-dream-of-the-planet-in-recovery