SAGE Class on Election Issues 2022

Would you like to dive down beneath the surface of political advertising dominating the media and study major crises facing our state and nation this election season?  SAGE (Seniors Achieving Greater Education) is sponsoring Election Issues 2022 focused on major problems confronting voters. We will be discussing and evaluating proposed legislative solutions. Classes begin 10-3 and meet weekly until 10-24 for 2 hours each session. It is a hybrid class available via ZOOM and also in person at UMPI. For the full brochure listing other classes click here. You will find forms and instructions about how to register on the last 4 pages of the brochure. For questions about the class or the instructor, message Moore Bowen on FB. 

Instructor bio: Alice Bolstridge, Ph. D. in English Literature is a retired English instructor and a long-time volunteer activist for solving social problems through the legislature. 

Prospective Schedule

 

On the War in Ukraine

I do not understand the purpose of a Facebook post about U. S. culpability in causing the war in Ukraine. Is it supposed to somehow bring about peace in Ukraine? Or is it to defend the Russian government for waging the war? Or is it just to persuade us that the US government sucks, too, and should back away from defending Ukraine?

 I asked these questions in a comment. One person responded  that the post is meant to look "behind the curtain of propaganda" and to apply "critical thinking skills" to the US involvement. The value of that, she said, should be obvious.

 I still don't get what I'm looking for.. I want to hear  What do we do with what we learn about the war, about the world-wide rise of autocracy and its use of forced or violent oppression, including in US? As a pacifist, I really want to know the answers to these questions. If there are answers.

 It seems this thread is a fight among people with common values for peace and democracy. Could it be that in seeing the problem as dualistic (Ukraine vs Russia or US vs Russia or east vs west or leader vs leader etc.), economic and class systems that cause world conflicts and war mostly get lost? Might it be more useful to focus on the systemic problems and seeking solutions to them? For alternative analysis of the problem and possible solutions, see Richard Woolf "Democracy at Work,." 

Is glyphosate safe to use as directed: Open letter to Governor Janet Mills

Dear Governor Mills,

Is glyphosate safe for the environment and the health of humans and other animals when used as directed? The legislature’s vote in favor of LD 125, the tough aerial spray ban on glyphosate, indicates our legislators have listened to the environmentalists’ science instead of the industry’s.

There is abundant scientific evidence that glyphosate is not safe even when used as directed.  Furthermore, according to theplantway.com,

 the toxicity of Roundup, and indeed other products that use glyphosate, is increased by the surfactants and adjuvants and other compounds added to the mixture.

This makes the product wholly more toxic than the active ingredient alone.

One study tested Roundup and glyphosate independently on human placental cells and found that Roundup was twice as toxic compared to glyphosate.

This tells us that testing isolated glyphosate alone does not give us a complete picture of the impact of herbicides on human health. Indeed, the problem is likely to be far bigger than we realize. (https://www.theplantway.com/glyphosate-safe/)

If the glyphosate industry and all other supporters of its use in Maine are not outright lying, they are in denial.about the hazards.

Either way, you now have the chance to mitigate some of the harm that glyphosate is doing to Maine forests,  soils, water, and health. If you have any doubts about the safety of glyphosate, please read the article @ https://www.theplantway.com/glyphosate-safe/. And then, please sign LD 125 into law.

Respectfully,

Alice Bolstridge, Ph. D.

Ted Talks on Democracy

SAGE course coming in February to the comfort of your own home via ZOOM.

Dates and Time: Tuesdays, February 2, 9, 16, 23, 9:30-11:30.

Description: Using videos and discussion, this course will explore questions about democracy ranging from basic to more complex and thorny issues: What is democracy? Why does it matter? What role does it play in our government? What are the constitutional issues? What are benefits and risks? What are threats to it that pundits keep warning us about? And more as the interests of the class dictate.



Instructor bio:
Alice Bolstridge, Ph. D. is a retired English instructor, writer, and activist for peace and justice.

Registration
 https://msad1.coursestorm.com/course/sage-membership-registration3   

 

Message to Maine Land Use Planning Commission

September 16, 2020 

Dear Chairman Wooster and members of the Land Use Planning Commission:

For nearly 5 years, I was involved as a volunteer foot soldier in the struggle to save Bald Mountain in my home-town area from water pollution and other environmental, health, social, and economic damages of metallic mining. Now Wolfden Mining Company poses a similar threat to Pickett Mountain alarmingly close to my home area, and is petitioning the LUPC to rezone the area to allow metallic mining. I write to urge you to deny WMC their requests to “exclude from its evaluation of ZP 779 considerations that the MDEP Chapter 200 rules address, including noise, financial practicability, waste disposal at the mine, surface water quality, groundwater quality, and avoidance or mitigation of impacts on natural resources.”  

I know workers in the original exploration of Bald Mountain in the 1970s who were sickened just from the drilling. From extensive research during the Bald Mountain threat, I know that mining massive sulfide deposits anywhere in the world pollutes surrounding waters to such a degree that they destroy an economy such as ours dependent on clean water for sustainable outdoor sports of fishing and hunting. The highest paid miners are migrant, brought in from outside and leaving when the mine closes. Any possible economic boom from metallic mining is always temporary, leaving the area as soon as the metals are depleted or the company goes bankrupt and leaving behind a legacy of social disruption and pollution that extends into perpetuity.

I urge you to deny the WMC petition to rezone this area so close to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.

Covid 19 Exposes Systemic Failures

Lisa Savage, Maine candidate for the U.S. Senate, promises the most comprehensive plans for systemic changes needed to meet escalating crises exposed and worsened by the Covid 19 pandemic, crises that have been building for decades. We in Aroostook are as vulnerable to these crises as those elsewhere.

This pandemic exposes justice inequalities that lead to increased crime, social unrest, drug addiction, and mental illness, all problems that are increasing here in Aroostook. In both local news and News Hour reports, I hear almost daily how Covid 19 disproportionally afflicts racial minorities and the poor. Lisa promotes changes that will directly address causes of these problems: police brutality targeting minorities; mass incarceration of black and brown people; and discrimination against women, LGBTQs, native Americans, immigrants. Her changes will provide justice equality for all.

Extreme income inequalities in our economic system victimize the poor regardless of race. Lisa will work for a minimum wage of $15 an hour, greater democratic involvement of workers in business and banking, fair-share taxing of the rich, and trade agreements that treat workers fairly. Competing with Canadian workers, Aroostook woods workers are especially vulnerable to trade agreements with Canada.

Covid 19 exposes inequities, inefficiencies, and poor outcomes of our Health care system. Millions are uninsured. According to Physicians for a National Health-Care Program and Dr. Sachin Shah of Doctors for America more than 30 % of health-care expenses go to administrative costs, much of that in the form of outsize profits and executive salaries for the health-care industrial complex. Lisa promotes expanded and improved Medicare for All that will provide cost savings in the system and better health outcomes for all. Such a system will help to level the playing field for woods workers here. Canadian workers can work here for lower wages because they have a universal, single-payer system and don’t have to pay the high premiums and co-pays that we have to pay.

In various PBS News Hour interviews, Jane Goodall explains how environmental health and human health are closely related. She says habitat destruction forces greater interaction between wild animals and humans that allow increased transmission of disease which is what scientists think happened with Covid 19. We now have to worry about ticks and Lyme disease creeping into Maine because of global warming. Covid 19 won’t be the last pandemic we face. We need to pivot to the Green New Deal Lisa will work for that will employ millions in clean energy solutions improving health and the economy as well as turning the disastrous tide of climate change.

Injustices in our elections system have been growing for decades here in Maine as well as in the nation: voter suppression; an undemocratic electoral college system; campaign finance laws that result in the richest big-money interests controlling legislators. These problems have led to politicizing and worsening the pandemic.  Dark-money powers are financing both Susan Collins and Sara Gideon with attack ads against each other that inflame division in the legislature and in the country. These ads neither educate the public about the full context of the most serious problems we face nor offer much by way of solutions. Refusing to take corporate campaign contributions, Lisa Savage is the one with immunity to big-money corruption. Her website states that she will promote “a government that works for us, not the big banks, weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel giants, and corporate lobbyists,”  and she will “work for a new system that puts people, planet, and peace over profit.”

We need legislators with an expansive view of how all of our most serious problems are connected and with a vision of the future focused on solving the problems. Lisa Savage has that view and vision.  Please mark her # 1 on your Ranked Choice Voting ballot which allows voting your values without fear of the spoiler effect.

Published in "The County," 8-5-2010.

SomeSources:

https://pnhp.org/resource/pnhp-research-the-case-for-a-national-health-program/

http://www.drsforamerica.org/blog/the-cost-of-for-profit-health-care

https://lisaformaine.nationbuilder.com/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/why-jane-goodall-says-human-disregard-for-nature-led-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic

Lucy Pulls the Ball on Charley Brown Again

"Lucy can only pull the ball so many times before Charley Brown punches her in the face" (Wesley Lowery on "Face the Nation" today). The murder of George Floyd challenges my pacifist soul--along with all the previous incarnations of police brutality against Afro-Americans, and along with all continuing discrimination against all other racial, ethnic, religious minorities, "essential workers," and the desperate poor. And what about Lucy? What motivates her cruelty? Shouldn't we pay attention to that, too?