The above photo may look pedestrian, but don’t be fooled. What you see is Bloomington’s City Councilman Dave Rollo reading aloud, for the record, the full text of
Res16-02 – FINAL, as revised, passed and signed
Nearly two dozen of us sat in the audience, with bated breath, thrilled that our own City Council had taken up this cause, and equally thrilled to see just how deeply they had researched the TPP’s eventual ramifications for our local community — and local communities everywhere.
The local Herald-Times was even present, with the following write-up. My only complaint is that they hid the story on page three, rather than streaming it across the top of page one.
City Council OKs resolution opposing US trade deal
Actually, no. That’s not my one complaint. Another is that the headline downplays the significance of this resolution. “OKs”? No, resoundingly proclaims: The TPP stops here. Plus, the headline should have included the word “unanimously,” and it should have identified the name, Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement or at least TPP, to alert (potentially active) citizens still sleepwalking through (increasingly impoverished) consumer hell.
Every opportunity for education must be made now. We must take the above resolution (tweaked to reflect your local research as to how other “free trade” deals, like NAFTA, have already affected your communities) to our City Councils large and small, all over this vast land. We must insist that they take up this cause, that they unanimously oppose this end-game draconian transnational corporate stealth maneuver to not only decide how we shall live, and what and whether we shall eat, and how we shall heal ourselves of illnesses created, in large part, by environmental poisons corporations have already spewed unto the land and waters and air, but will squeeze the 99% still further of their bankster fiat money needed to survive, and worst of all: will set end runs around and thus vitiate local state and national laws, thus stripping people along the entire Pacific Rim of the last vestiges of sovereignty.
Please. Don’t just call your senators and representatives. Of course, call them. Also, get active! Trot this resolution on down to your City Council as a possible template for your town. On a national level, oligarchy has hijacked democracy. We must reignite democracy, each of us doing our part, here at home.
BTW: The one new person on the Council, young Allison Chopra (the woman above, in the photo with Rollo) had entered the room that evening thinking she would have to study the issue, and “wished I had a foreign policy advisor.” But by the time a great variety of extremely knowledgeable Bloomington citizens in the audience had arisen to speak about the diverse affects of this new trade deal on our lives and livelihoods, she said she had heard enough to make up her mind. It was her vote that made the nine-member Council’s decision unanimous.
I, myself, spoke on this issue both last night, and during the Citizen Comment section of a City Council meeting few months ago. That time, when I was done I handed my statement to the clerk and walked out of the room. Councilman Rollo followed me, excited. Said that he and Councilman Andy Ruff were already preparing a resolution. I was so glad and grateful! Then I sent in a long statement to the Herald-Times, and a few weeks ago they finally published it, unedited, as an Opinion piece.
Please, please, speak up! Let’s wrestle back this nation from the ugly, ignorant, fascist, demogognic nightmare that begins to infect us, like a great beast in the night, hungry for blood and treasure. Get in your face with those who claim to represent us! This is no time for wimpery. Or for standing aside, wringing our hands and “hoping” for “change.” The future is up to us. And everybody’s voice counts. There has never, ever, been such a fraught time when not just democracy, but Life itself on this precious blue globe has felt so precarious, so fragile, and of such immense value.
Oh yes, and by the way, at the very beginning of the City Council meeting, both Rollo and Ruff paid tribute to the recently completed lives of Carrol Krause and Lucille Bertuccio , both of whom exemplified, through generous and passionate advocacy via their own specific talents and skills, what it means to serve the whole community as a citizen.
Another person who operates as a true citizen in her own locality, fellow permaculturist and blogger Laura Bruno up in Goshen Indiana, was the one who spurred me to actively take up this issue here — and not just write about it, as I did here, back in 2013.
A Primer on the TPP
Thank you, Laura!
One by one, we help each other wake up and speak up and act up. With kindness, compassion, courage, and unswerving, dedicated devotion, we aim to heal ourselves, our communities, and our common planetary home. Nothing stops us once aroused. Together, we will transform the world.
