Preserving the potholes

No, not the holes in the highways--those can be filled and good riddance to them, though I know they will come again every spring. The potholes we need to preserve are the prairie potholes, those sloughs and swampy mini-lakes that dot the countryside, growing cattails and providing homes for ducks and egrets and herons.

Photo by Pete Baer, licensed by Creative Commons.

Tom Meersman has a good article in the Strib about prairie potholes. He describes the way that millions of these humble wetland areas across Minnesota and the Dakotas absorb rainwater and run-off, thereby slowing sedimentation of rivers, preventing soil erosion and purifying water. For years, farmers have been paid to keep these potholes alive. No more.

Farmers in the area signed 10- to 15-year conservation agreements in the 1990s to set aside grasslands and prairie potholes for wildlife habitat, he said, but many are converting the land back to crops as soon as those contracts expire.

Between the expiration of the conservation easements and the rising prices of land, farmers are finding it tough to justify keeping any land out of production. While corn prices were high this past winter, that's not enough to make up for decades of uncertain pricing. Moreover, high corn prices drive land prices higher. Higher land prices mean higher property taxes, since the taxes are based on the land's market value. Farmers have to produce saleable crops in order to keep the land.

Habitat for wildlife, clean water, saving the land for future generations -- priceless. But property taxes, mortgage payments, fuel for tractors and, yes, feeding the family -- these all come with hefty price tags. And some farmers will be draining and plowing the potholes to pay the price.

Burning what?

I've read, researched and written extensively on Rock-Tenn, the paper recycling plant, and plans for its energy future. I spent more hours this weekend editing articles about Rock-Tenn, and more hours continuing to read the e-mails that flow back and forth along the Rock-Tenn Community Advisory Panel listserv.

Last year, the questions and answers about Rock-Tenn seemed a lot simpler. The plant was losing its steam line because Xcel was closing the coal-powered High Bridge plant. Rock-Tenn's alternatives were to burn fuel oil and natural gas in its existing but long-unused boilers or to build a new power plant that would use a less expensive fuel. With the support of the City of St. Paul, Ramsey County and the St. Paul Port Authority, Rock-Tenn planned to build a plant to burn refuse derived fuel (RDF).

Most people living near the plant found it easy to oppose burning RDF. RDF is processed garbage (municipal solid waste.) There are many good reasons to oppose RDF. Concerns include potential health effects from emissions and tax subsidies required for processing RDF. Opponents point to the inefficiency of RDF as a fuel. Critics also say that focusing on incineration means de-emphasizing strategies for reducing and recycling waste.

As public consensus against RDF grew, the questions about power for Rock-Tenn multiplied and got more complex:

1. What kinds of fuels are available and economical?

2. What kinds of fuels are unhealthy and what kinds are safer?

3. What is the impact of various fuels on global warming?

4. What is the right size for a Rock-Tenn power plant? Should it just produce enough heat for Rock-Tenn's manufacturing process or should it also produce enough energy for a district heating and cooling system in the immediate area?

5. Would a district heating and cooling system significantly reduce overall emissions by eliminating individual, inefficient HVAC systems?

Ramsey and Washington County governments like RDF. They should -- they keep agreeing to pay millions of tax dollars to the Newport processing plant to convert municipal solid waste into RDF. Subsidies have to flow to garbage haulers to pay higher tipping fees at the Newport plant. More subsidies go to Xcel Energy to induce them to take the processed RDF from the Newport plant and burn it (in Red Wing), because RDF is an inefficient fuel.

Early in the debate, it looked like the environmentally-friendly answer was that the plant should burn "real" biomass. (The legislature classified RDF as biomass, but most people don't buy that designation.) "Real" biomass might be corn cobs and stalks or oat hulls or wood and wood waste or prairie grass. Today, many involved in the debate are denouncing any kind of burning and insisting that no kind of biomass is good fuel.

RDF clearly has enormous problems -- economic, environmental and political. The quickest way to move the process forward is by unequivocally taking RDF off the table. The Port Authority, District Energy and Rock-Tenn need to renounce the use of RDF. So far, they have refused to do so.

Even if RDF were taken off the table, the next question is right-sizing the energy operation. The debate started with Rock-Tenn's need for steam. A plant large enough to provide steam for peak operations needs also would produce surplus heat and energy. That opens the door to a new level of energy politics.

Xcel Energy (privately owned, for-profit company) wants exclusive rights to purchase any excess energy generated at Rock-Tenn. They almost got the legislature to sign on to this deal last year. Any time a seller (in this case, Rock-Tenn) has just one buyer, that buyer can set the price. Being the sole eligible buyer of Rock-Tenn's surplus energy would put Xcel in a good position to bolster its bottom line and increase its profits.

The St. Paul Port Authority (quasi-governmental, non-profit municipal corporation) wants a district heating and cooling system, like the one that District Energy operates in downtown St. Paul. The Port Authority distributed a propaganda piece called "The Energy Independent" in several neighborhood newspapers in early November, saying that a district heating system will be built in the area.

That raises a political problem. The Rock-Tenn Community Advisory Panel has not made any recommendation on a district heating and cooling operation. Now it seems that the Port Authority has made a decision to proceed regardless of what the panel recommends. What does that say about the whole process of citizen input and, when you come right down to it, about participatory democracy?

A district heating and cooling system would mean building -- at Rock-Tenn -- a plant that is significantly larger than needed just to supply Rock-Tenn with steam. Within the panel, and within the community, there is significant opposition to building such a plant.

Facts and figures are missing. What area would the Port Authority plan cover? What are the current and projected heating and cooling needs of that area? Who lives there? What businesses operate there? How are they now heated, and what kind of air emissions do they now generate?

Until that information is on the table, no one can know whether a district heating and cooling plant, located at Rock-Tenn, would increase or decrease air polution.

A whole set of related questions come back to the fuel issue. What kind of fuel would be used? Where would the fuel come from? How would it be transported to the plant? What is fuel availability for the smallest-size plant-- one that would be adequate to generate steam for Rock-Tenn and nothing more? What is fuel availability for the district energy option? What are the comparative costs for various fuels? What kinds of environmental impact (both on air quality and on global warming) does each fuel have?

These questions are complex and require a fair degree of research by people with technical backgrounds. One step, however, is simple: taking RDF off the table would help everyone to focus.

A tip about journalistic practice

On November 8, NPR aired the story of a waitress who talked to Hilary Clinton on the campaign trail.

"Anita Esterday, a waitress at the Maid-Rite in Toledo, Iowa, told NPR's David Greene in a report that aired on Morning Edition Thursday that "nobody got left a tip" on Oct. 8, when Clinton sat at the lunch counter and ordered up the restaurant's famous loose-meat sandwich."

The tip, or non-tip, was part of an eight-minute story on the campaign, but it quickly became the focus of bloggers across the country. The Clinton campaign responded quickly, insisting that a $100 tip had been left at the diner. The controversy continued, with another report on November 9 analyzing who had or had not been tipped and who had said what about tips. Perhaps the most interesting part for reporters and editors was a small piece of the November 9 report that dealt with the way the story was reported. [Transcribed from NPR media player. Full clip is 4:19. This interchange runs 3:23-3:52. Emphasis added.]

Renee Montagne: David, would some of this have been avoided if you had taken it to the campaign beforehand, especially about the tip, I mean, wouldn't that be a pretty basic thing to do?

David Greene: Yeah, I .. I .. since Anita Esterday had said on our air that nobody got tipped that day, which is different from saying that just she did not get tipped, she said that no one was tipped. I should have asked the campaign before the story aired if they could say if anyone was tipped and how exactly that happened. That would have made the tip, I think, a lot more of the focus of our story than I had intended, but it's clear I should have gotten their reaction up front. That's the way it's done.

Renee Montagne: David, thanks.

David Greene: Thanks, Renee.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16143435
Clinton Campaign Says It Tipped Maid-Rite Waitress

by Renee Montagne and David Greene

Morning Edition, November 9, 2007 · A waitress causes a stir on the political blogs. The waitress at a Maid-Rite restaurant in Iowa says she did not get a tip after serving presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat from New York. But the Clinton campaign says a $100 tip was left at the diner.
Election 2008

Editor's Note: The Tale of the Tip

NPR.org, November 8, 2007 · It started as an aside in a longer interview, but it became an Internet sensation within hours. [for full story, click here.]

Citizen journalism in action

Did you read about the Finnish musicians who were harassed, detained, intimidated and generally mistreated by U.S. immigration/homeland security agents at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport? Rich Broderick broke the story in the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

This is a prime example of citizen journalism. Broderick spoke directly to the people who were involved. He wrote the story and, since it included a heavy dose of his opinion about the way that immigration and homeland security function, the story ran as a blog, not in the news columns.

Some people questioned the accuracy of the report. They seemed to feel that the story was suspect, because they had not seen it in the mainstream media. In fact, the story finally was published in the Star Tribune more than two weeks later.

Broderick's report shows how citizen journalism works and why it is important.

Citizen journalism works because individual people have information to share, and believe their information is important. In this case, Broderick heard about a newsworthy event. He spoke directly to the people who were involved and investigated the story. His account linked the individual incident to broader concerns about civil liberties in the post-9/11 "security" regime.

Without Broderick's reporting (and without a Daily Planet to publish the story), this incident may never have been known outside the small circle of those immediately involved and their friends and families. The mainstream media has relatively few reporters. All of us walking around in our communities, talking to our neighbors, listening to musicians at Tillie's Bean, talking to workers at the Hard Rock Café, snapping photos of the new Midtown Greenway bridge – all of us together have more information about our communities than a few reporters can gather. To put it another way, all of us together are better-informed than any one of us.

One reason that citizen journalism is important is that citizens use it to report important news. That's part of the reason the Daily Planet exists.

A second reason is that the mainstream media listens, at least some of the time. Journalists look for news. Many of them read the Twin Cities Daily Planet and other citizen journalism sites.

I am glad they do. I want them to pick up our stories and, with their far greater resources and audience, take those stories to the world.

Rich in Reading

I feel rich tonight, though I don't have a dollar more than I did before I sat down at my computer. I feel rich because there's a new issue of Minnesota Women's Press and a new issue of the Park Bugle and they both have wonderful writing that brings comfort and challenge and humor.

Want to read about hummingbirds, flashing like jewels in the Andes and in a St. Paul yard? Or about the meaning of home, and two people who open their very different homes to a late October home tour? Check out the Park Bugle, which will also tell you about horses at the U of M's farm campus.

For intensely personal articles about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, a fantastic book group opportunity to read about women and war with Toni McNaron and Susan Cygnet, and a refugee woman making Minnesota her home, read Minnesota Women's Press.

And if reading doesn't make you rich, it may make you feel that way.

Surging in ... Anbar Province?

Bush visited Anbar Province this week, in a photo op that his handlers insisted was not. Now newspapers are reporting that Anbar demonstrates a modicum of success for the "surge." One problem with that analysis: the surge was not aimed at Anbar. The surge was supposed to make Baghdad safe. Here's what Bush had to say on January 10:

So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -- five brigades -- will be deployed to Baghdad. These troops will work alongside Iraqi units and be embedded in their formations. Our troops will have a well-defined mission: to help Iraqis clear and secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs. ...

The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: "The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation."

Not Anbar province -- Baghdad. Eight months later, Baghdad remains mired in violence.

Ordinary disasters

The big bridge breaks in half, falls in the Mississippi. The skies open over southern Minnesota, sweeping houses away as people cling to the roof, opening a road to swallow cars. We come together to respond, to give aid, to console the bereaved and one another.

And yet. Every day small tragedies play out. A teenage boy is thrown out of his home by his parents, again. An elderly mind drifts deeper into the fog of Alzheimer's. A young father/brother/son dies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia.

The big disasters are safer. The bridge and the flood are contained, defined. Such disasters happen only once in a long while. By focusing on the big ones, we can pretend that disasters do not lurk in daily life.

Hope and heroism on the bridge

The kids on the bus call Jeremy Hernández a hero. He calls them his little brothers and sisters.

When the I-35W bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River, people around the world watched the orange school bus that fell with the bridge. That bus was filled with 50 kids and eight young staff members from Waite House, along with the bus driver and her two children, all returning from a field trip to the Bunker Hills water park.

On the orange bus on Wednesday evening, kids kept asking Monica Segura, "Are we almost there? Monica, Monica, are we almost there yet?" She tried to distract them, leading them in a song about elephants. She remembers checking her watch at about 6 p.m., thinking that they were running late and parents would soon be calling Waite House to see where their children were.

When they got to the bridge, Monica remembers, kids got up out of their seats to look at it, pointing at the river. She told them to sit down—every counselor knows you have to keep the kids in their seats on the bus. Then she saw a semi truck swerving, and the bridge went down, "like in the Power Tower at Valley Fair when it just lets you go."

"I grabbed the two kids I was with to keep them from hitting their heads," Monica recalled. "All we saw was all this dust—no heads, nothing. We were quiet a minute until Jeremy got up and jumped over the seats and opened the door—that's when we all reacted."

The kids call 20-year-old Jeremy Hernández a hero. He was asleep when the bus got to the bridge, worn out after getting up early and then spending a long day in the water park with the kids from Waite House. One of the kids woke him up when they reached the bridge, and the next thing he heard was a big bang. "I thought we were in a car accident," Jeremy said. "The bus crashed down ... then it crashed again and it stopped. You could hear the kids moaning and crying and you couldn't see them because of the dust."

Jeremy reacted instantly, diving for the back door and then superintending a speedy evacuation of children, staff and bus driver. "I just remember grabbing and putting them down, grabbing and putting them down, handing kids to the guys who came to help." Jeremy didn't leave until everyone was off the bus, and then he checked around the bus to make sure that no one was lingering near it.

"They're like my little brothers and little sisters," Jeremy said at a press conference on Thursday. "I've been working here for five years. It's like they are a part of me."

Monica agrees. "Our youth program is like a big family. We are really close with the kids and their parents. We love every single kid."

On Thursday, a reporter at the press conference asked whether the very young staff had been trained for the emergency. "We never had a training like this before," Monica replied, "because who would imagine 'Oh, what if the bridge falls off?' But we do have training in first aid and to get the kids to safety."

She described what happened after the kids were off the bus, but panicking and crying and afraid the bus would explode. "We gathered all the kids up. Once I got them all in one section, I told them to line up – there's air conditioning and water and I'll buy you guys something to eat. All the staff helped with all the kids. My co-worker was the one who made the whole list to see if all the kids were there."

"We always knew where all the kids were at."

The young staff come from the Waite House neighborhood. "I came here when I was a kid," said Monica. "I volunteered, and I've been working here for five years."

Waite House is in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. U.S. census figures from 2000 showed a median household income of $21,353 in Phillips, compared to a citywide average of $37,974. Some 31.9 percent of Phillips families lived in poverty, compared to 11.9 percent for the city as a whole. Unemployment was more than twice the city average.

Tragedies shine a light on heroes. After the cameras and national press move on, the hard work of daily, dedicated service will continue.

The fifty younger kids and their older "brothers and sisters" are at Waite House every day. Every day, the staff—including the teenage staff—encourages, prods and praises the younger children into learning lessons in discipline and leadership, into practicing cooperation and fair play, into an appreciation of education. Youth program participants earn points by reading books and by community service, and those points earn field trips and recognition.

"Our workers grew up here," says John Richard, head of adult education programs at Waite House. "They are the slum kids everybody says are the problem. Some are from immigrant families. It was their coolheadedness and clear thinking that saved the day. If this isn't an example that inner city kids can be part of the solution, not the problem, I don't know what is."

The focus of Waite House's youth programs, director Francisco Segovia says, is leadership development for youth. At Thursday's press conference, Segovia and Pillsbury United Communities executive director Tony Wagner stepped back out of the spotlight and let their young leaders shine.

Helping the heroes and the hurting

The kids on the school bus need our help. Jeremy Hernández—named a hero by the "little brothers and sisters" he guided to safety—had to drop out of Dunwoody College last year because he didn't have enough money for tuition. Julia—the youth director at Waite House—is still in the hospital with a broken back and two broken feet and more than 150 stitches in her arm. Many of the younger kids on the bus lack medical insurance.

We can all help. Donations for scholarships and medical care can be made over the phone by calling toll free 888-642-3040 or by mail to the Pillsbury United Communities, Development Office, 1201 37th Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55412. Please specify the Waite House Bridge Disaster Fund when mailing in donations. You can also donate through the Pillsbury United Communities web page and can designate that your donation go to Waite House.

If you go to the website, take a look at the descriptions of Waite House and Pillsbury's other community centers. They are doing everyday, grassroots work in our communities with families and kids who need a helping hand. Monica Segura of Waite House said it well: "Our youth program is like a big family. We are really close with the kids and their parents. We love every single kid."

The family needs help. Let's give them a hand.

Birmingham Sunday 2007

On this Sunday, I visited the 16th Street Baptist Church, where Addie Mae Collins, 14. Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley were struck down by hatred and racism. On September 15, 1963, Ku Klux Klan bombers killed four young girls and wounded more than two dozen other people in a church on Sunday morning. Their deaths came just a few weeks after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington and gave his famous "I have a dream" speech.

I'm traveling with the Chicago Children's Choir, as they celebrate their 50th anniversary with a concert tour of civil rights sites in the South. It is a privilege to spend time with these young people and a joy to hear their music. And I am on pilgrimage, walking on sacred ground, standing in the places I could only watch on television and pray over as a young teenager on a Minnesota farm in the early 1960s.

Today in the 16th Street Baptist Church, the choir sang "Birmingham Sunday."

On Birmingham Sunday a noise shook the ground.
And people all over the earth turned around.
For no one recalled a more cowardly sound.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

I know we were standing on sacred ground. This is the very church where Denise and Addie and Carole and Cynthia prayed and sang and went to Sunday school. This is the very church where, on Monday night after Monday night, brave people gathered from 1958 onward to plan and work and organize to win freedom and justice and equal rights. I stood with members of the congregation and guests and two choirs and we all linked arms and sang "We Shall Overcome" in the same church where Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Ralph Abernathy and Dr. Fred Shuttlesworth sang the same anthem.

This morning I talked with elders in Birmingham. Some of them were not much older than me, but we are the elders now. They marched and they shrugged off threats and they persevered in the civil rights movement. It's better now, they said, but not all better.

The world is better now, they said, because Birmingham is integrated and so is the whole country. It's not better because integration has not ended prejudice or discrimination—that will take generations, one told me. He also said that he saw the same divisions, setting one race against another, playing out again as politicians try to turn African Americans against immigrants, black against brown, inciting and pandering to prejudices.

Another way in which it is not all better is that the children and grandchildren do not feel the same things we felt. "The same things" does not signify the pain and the fear and the loss of so many good people. "The same things" signifies the commitment to struggle for a justice, the joy in comradeship in the struggle, the faith that a better world is possible and that it is our job and our privilege to build it.

I hope that this tour gives at least some of our children a taste of the past, a taste of the struggle for justice and the joy that is in it, a taste of the faith and the hope that are needed to join in that still-vital struggle for peace and freedom and justice.

The Sunday has come and the Sunday has gone.
And I can't do much more than to sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
And the choirs keep singing of Freedom.

[The song, "Birmingham Sunday," was written by Richard Fariña]

End times

What do you say as life winds down? I know it is right to visit old friends and family, but I don't know what to say. And that's complicated further as family paths diverge so far that the only bridges are shared names, weddings, births, deaths.

I could talk about next week's trip to the South, next month's work, impending graduation and college plans, but I cannot banish the looming thought that the person I tell the stories to will not be here to see the graduation, indeed might not be here when we return from the southern trip.

What if I asked outright how he feels about life coming to a close? But the immediate family doesn't want to talk about this, and it's not my place to raise the questions they so gracefully avoid/evade. So I sit in the room, listening to the conversational patter about relatives I don't know and the stories so well-worn that even I remember them.

I hope that just being present serves as a sign of respect and affection. That may have to be enough.

Juana

I met Juana in May. She was one of the people who fasted for ten days to try to move the conscience of the nation toward comprehensive immigration reform. I wrote an article about Juana and the fasters then. A few weeks later, I saw another article about Juana, this one written by a student in a journalism class at St. Thomas.

And today was the third time that I saw news about Juana. Yesterday the immigration agents found her and took her away in handcuffs. Today I saw her nine-year-old daughter crying. Today I stood with Juana's friends, and I cried, too. Patrick Ness, a stalwart young activist, said, "Our hearts are broken tonight." And not just for Juana Reyes, but for every immigrant mother torn away from her children because the laws give her no way to be here legally. A few weeks ago, another immigrant mother who had lived in Minnesota for more than a decade was deported, leaving behind her husband and children. They have legal status. She does not.

For Juana and for Sarah, the law gives no way out of their predicament and no way into the United States. For millions like them, there is no line to stand in to become legal residents.

In a few days, I will be going on a Freedom Tour of cities where the battle for civil rights was waged four and five decades ago. I believe that the plight of immigrants like Juana and Sarah challenges us to another battle for human rights.

The precautionary principle and RDF

I'm ready to put up a Neighbors Against the Burner sign in my yard, because I'm convinced that burning refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is a bad deal – economically and on environmental/health grounds. On the other hand, I want to be clear that this doesn't mean I'm against any power plant going up across the freeway at Rock-Tenn. I'm not. I believe that a power plant burning non-RDF biomass fuel can and should be built to provide affordable energy for Rock-Tenn's recycling operation, and possibly also for district heating in some part of the Midway neighborhood.

For background on Rock-Tenn and why it needs a new power source, see
Re-fueling Rock Tenn: environmental and economic challenges
Who's on First? Keeping track of the players
Following the money: who pays and who profits
Garbage or green energy: a look at the issues around RDF

The economic down-side of RDF should be easy to see. For starters, consider the fact that the current RDF production plant in Newport has been subsidized by taxpayer dollars since its beginning. Or the fact that the RDF fuel produced in Newport is so undesirable that the plant has to pay Xcel Energy to take it and burn it. If taxpayers are going to pay millions of dollars in subsidies every year, I'd rather see the money go to paying farmers to grow prairie grass for fuel and/or to increasing the Twin Cities' recycling percentage, currently about 40 percent to something closer to the 60 percent recycling/composting for municipal waste reached by the Netherlands and Austria. or the 69 percent recycling/composting rate achieved this year by San Francisco.

Health and environmental issues are harder to pin down. Hours of discussion at public meetings and hundreds of pages of reports do not conclusively prove that burning RDF causes cancer or heart attacks or other health problems. Note the weasel word: conclusively.

The British Society for Ecological Medicine's report says:

There are no certainties in pinning specific health effects on incineration: the report makes that clear. However this is largely because of the complexity of exposure of the human race to many influences.

Cancer may take 10 or 20 years to develop. Birth defects may have multiple causes. Some people are more vulnerable to contaminants than others. Some contaminants build up in the body over time. Some contaminants interact with others in ways that have not yet been identified. People move, so studies of public health around incinerators do not find all of the exposed population.

So scientists speak cautiously. The evidence linking municipal waste incinerators to health problems "is consistent with" causality for adult and childhood cancer and birth defects. The evidence "suggests" a wide range of illnesses connected with municipal waste incinerators.

The British medical report goes on to discuss the precautionary principle.

This principle involves acting in the face of uncertain knowledge about risks from environmental exposures. This means public health measures should be taken in response to limited, but plausible and credible, evidence of likely and substantial harm.

When it comes to RDF, plenty of evidence points to probably dangers. The garbage that goes into the system includes a wide variety of toxic materials. Burning RDF has produced fine particulate emissions (a health hazard in themselves), as well as toxic metals and hazardous organic compounds. Burning RDF also leaves a residue of ash, which is classified as hazardous waste and has to be put somewhere.

Proponents of RDF talk about new emissions control systems and about gasification. Of course, they also say that current systems work just fine.

I don't buy the arguments. If ever there was a case for the application of the precautionary principle, RDF incineration is that case. We do not need to add more fine particulate emissions to the Twin Cities' already-polluted air. We do not need to risk emissions of heavy metals and toxic organic compounds. We do not need to make our city the laboratory for conclusively proving –twenty or thirty years from now – that RDF incineration actually causes pulmonary or cardiac illnesses or cancer or birth defects.

Time and time again it has been found that what we did not know about chemicals proved to be far more important than what we did know. As an incinerator generates hundreds of chemicals, including new compounds, we can expect many unpleasant future surprises.

There are alternatives to RDF. We do not need to take a chance with the health of our cities and of future generations.

Paranoia updated

Paranoia strikes deep—into your life it will creep. Buffalo Springfield, 1967

The U.S. Army now classifies the media as a threat – along with Al Qaeda, warlords and drug cartels. The classification is part of an Army slideshow, which you can download on-line at http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/opsec-blog.pdf.

There's a man with a gun over there, telling me that I've got to beware.

Besides the media, soldiers and their families are apparently security threats. A 79-page order, issued April 19, warns about breaches of operations security—OPSEC in the military jargon—by soldiers writing e-mails home and blogging about their experiences in Iraq. Soldiers must clear e-mails and blog posts with their commanding officers before sending them (2-1(g). Failure to comply with OPSEC "may be punished as violations of a lawful order" under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). And those "not subject to the UCMJ who fail to protect critical and sensitive information from unauthorized disclosure may be subject to administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action."

There's something happening here, and what it is ain't exactly clear.

Disclosure of "sensitive and critical information" violates OPSEC. What is "sensitive and critical" info? Giving an explanation, Maj. Ray Ceralde, the Army OPSEC program manager, explained that increased numbers of parked cars in a Pentagon lot and increased Pentagon pizza orders on January 16, 1991 could have signaled the next day's beginning of Operation Desert Storm. That meant these facts were "sensitive and critical information." (There's some speculation that the whole pizza/parking lot story is an urban legend—but what do the facts matter, when security is at stake?) Some "critical and sensitive" information is specifically listed, and its disclosure prohibited, by the order, including photos of "Improvised Explosive Device (IED) strikes, battle scenes, casualties, destroyed or damaged equipment, personnel killed in action (KIA), both friendly and adversary..."

Though the 79-page order provides several descriptions of "sensitive" and "critical" information that may not be communicated, none of them provide much guidance to the soldiers, civilian employees, family members, or media who are the targets of the OPSEC order. In a neat Catch-22, the order itself is classified as "For Official Use Only (FOUO)", and paragraph 1-6e says that FOUO information is "sensitive." That means the order itself is "for official Government use only" and may not be distributed or circulated. (If you are not afraid of prosecution, you can download Army Regulation 530-1 at http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/army_reg_530_1_updated.)

Bottom line: virtually any information of any kind could become part of a complicated puzzle that could aid the enemy. Virtually any soldier, civilian employee or contractor could be prosecuted for communicating the wrong information. The only way to be sure you are not breaking the rules is to keep your mouth shut and tell no one back home what is actually going on.

That means no pleas for body armor. (E-mails in 2004 broke open the story of unprotected U.S. soldiers.) No scandals about unarmored Humvees (2004-2007). No reporting on torture of prisoners (Abu Ghraib). No truth-telling to families about death-by-friendly-fire (Pat Tillman). No whistle-blowing on a squad that rapes a fourteen-year-old girl and murders her whole family (Mahmudiya). No leaks about massacres (Haditha).

Remember: the media is the enemy. War is Peace. Slavery is Freedom. Ignorance is Strength.

Safe schools ... where?

On April 16, a gunman shot 32 students at Virginia Tech University and then killed himself. In the United States, flags flew at half-staff the next day, as the nation mourned a senseless massacre by a single deranged man who legally purchased his gun just a month ago. Millions of Americans know Cho Seung-Hui's name, his nationality, his story.

How many Americans know the name of Jaafar Hasan Sadiq and Talal Younis al-Jalili. Hasan Sadiq, a professor at the University of Mosul's college of arts, was shot and killed on Monday. So was Talal Younis al-Jalili, dean of the university's college of political science.

After the Virginia Tech shooting, pundits pontificated about school security and recalled Columbine High School (17 dead, 1999) and the clock-tower shooting at the University of Texas in Austin (16 dead, 1966). Threats and fears sent lockdowns rippling across the country, including high schools in Pennsylvania, Florida, Nevada, and Missouri.

More than 230 university professors have been killed since the beginning of the Iraq war, some 56 are missing, and more than 3,000 have fled the country. Some 70 people died in suicide bombings at Mustansiriya University in Baghadad in January. Another suicide bomb in February killed 40 more students, faculty and staff.

On the bridge again

We went to the bridge again last night, carrying candles to stand in vigil and protest on the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. The candles were not much use, as daylight savings time has begun, and the sun doesn't set until after 7:30, but we stood in the biting March wind as it swept down the Mississippi, in company with a hundred or two others of all ages, shapes and sizes.

The Lake Street bridge over the Mississippi is designated as a Peace Bridge, and every Wednesday afternoon sees a vigil for peace, which began as a protest against sanctions many years ago. Sanctions then, war now, the same bloody, evil policies of a government, our government, that sees power as a blunt instrument to batter those who will not bow.

This is not the Zocalo in Mexico City, filled with tens or hundreds of thousands of protesters, but it is one of our spaces for public standing. What has changed is not the commitment of the protesters, but the attitudes of those driving past. A few years ago, on a Wednesday afternoon, Molly and I stood there and counted the number of passing cars showing approval versus the number showing disapproval -- thumbs up or down, peace signs, honking. Most, of course, went by without a signal at all.

Tonight, I saw only a single thumbs-down and no middle finger salutes, but what was more remarkable was that the vast majority of all the people in cars driving past on Lake Street honked in agreement, showed peace signs, waved, gave a thumbs-up signal. I know the polls say that we-the-people overwhelmingly oppose the war, but here was the actual, physical sign. The people have changed, the votes have chagned Congress--and yet the war continues.

We cannot stop at vigils, when they do not change realities. What's next?

All in Minnesota

This is what democracy looks like. Fifty people at the table—Barbara, Yusef, Pablo, Anne, Yasim, Antonia, Martha, Ricky, Woli, Iztchel. New immigrants and old immigrants, representing all parts of the world. New immigrants tonight speak with accents of Liberia, Mexico, Russia, Ecuador, Somalia and more.

Tonight we gather, representing a few dozen organizations or ourselves as individuals. AFFIRM—the Alliance for Fair Federal Immigration Reform of Minnesota—has convened this community meeting to share concerns about immigration issues and, possibly, to find common ground and a way to work together.

One woman brings her niece and granddaughter, a few couples come together, a few more people bring little children. Many teenagers are here—tonight's discussion on immigration hits close to home for them.

D--- is a senior in high school. She wants to go to college next year. She has gone through high school in Minnesota, but she does not have immigration documents.

The Minnesota Dream Act, now before the legislature, could make it possible for many of them to go to college. The federal DREAM Act, now re-introduced in Congress, could provide them a path to legalization and citizenship.

W--- does not say what country she came from, only that she was tortured, a lot, before she got out many years ago. And that she values her association with the Minnesota Center for Victims of Torture.

R--- sells real estate, is nearing completion of a B.A. in business at Metro State and plans to continue for an MBA at St. Thomas. We joke about how many houses he will have to sell to pay for that tuition. He tells me that 70% of the Mexican immigrants to Minnesota are, like himself, originally from the Mexican state of Morelos.

G--- insists that the state demographer undercounts Russian immigrants, saying there are only 15,000 Russian immigrants in Minnesota. He is sure the real number is 50,000, and wants to do something about the undercounting.

Another woman brings her concern about foreign professionals to the table, saying that Minnesota will not allow foreign doctors to serve as interns or residents here, though other states do so. She wants a way for immigrants who are professionals to become licensed and work in their fields.

M--- wants a path to legalization for her husband. She is a U.S. citizen. He is not.

Another woman raises concerns about her Liberian-Minnesotan community, who now face an end to the Temporary Protected Status under which they have been living for years. Now the U.S. government has decreed that Liberia is no longer dangerous and that they must return by October, abandoning homes, jobs, and families here.

So many people, ages, jobs, nationalities. One hope—to continue to live together as Minnesotans.

Making Citizenship Harder

Every year, 600,000 people apply to become citizens of the United States. To become a citizen, immigrants first have to live here for a number of years (usually five years). Then they must apply for citizenship, demonstrate their ability to speak and read and write English, and pass a test on U.S. government and history. (There are a few exceptions to residence and testing requirements, such as adopted children.)

This year, the federal government is making it harder for immigrants to become citizens. First, it changed the written test to make it more difficult. Now, it proposes to increase the application fee from $330 to $595. (And that's only for the application—fingerprint fees and other charges increase the total cost even more.)

The increase in naturalization (citizenship) application fees is only one of many proposed immigration fee increases. The fee for adjustment of status, to become a permanent legal resident, will go up from $325 to $905. Other fees also increase, by an average of 66 percent.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank, "Naturalization of immigrants in the United States brings significant benefits for the country. First, obtaining citizenship allows immigrants to participate fully in the civic life of the country by permitting them to vote in elections, run for office, and work in many government jobs. Further, naturalization is a powerful symbolic gesture of commitment to the United States. In taking the oath of citizenship, naturalizing immigrants pledge to support the values and laws of the United States and renounce their allegiance to any other country. Naturalizing citizens also commit to serving on a jury if called to do so. Further, in order to naturalize, immigrants must learn a basic level of English and study U.S. history and government. The ability to naturalize provides a strong incentive for immigrants to deepen their integration into the country by improving their English and learning more about their country of residence."

Refugees and new immigrants typically have lower incomes. The fee increases hit them especially hard, as they struggle to learn English, support themselves and their families, and become part of their new country. The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) is one of the immigrant advocacy organizations opposing fee hikes. SEARAC warns that, "The increased fees may further prolong the citizenship process for many whose incomes are dependent on their attainment of citizenship such as elders and disabled refugees who receive SSI benefits. The inability to obtain their citizenship after the allotted timeframe will result in the termination of their benefits."

The fee hikes do not have to go through Congress. They are set by administrative regulations. But Congress—and individuals—do have a voice in the administrative process. The fees were proposed February 1, beginning a sixty-day public comment period. Along with SEARAC, the National Immigration Forum is urging people to voice their concerns about the fee increases. To comment on the fee increases, email OSComments@dhs.gov. The e-mail message should refer to the docket number of the regulation—DHS Docket # USCIS-2006-0044. (For more information about the comment process, go to www.regulations.gov.)

Worthington, immigration and the devilish details

One mother was reunited with her baby. One father was released from jail to undergo the testing that might make it possible for him to donate a kidney to his (U.S. citizen) son. But most of the rest of the 230 families whose fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters were arrested in Worthington on December 12 are gone. Many have been shipped out of the country. Most of the rest are still in custody, far from Worthington and far from Minnesota.

On February 14, the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota reported on the heroic work done by attorneys from not only their office but also from the Detention Project (ILCM, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, Centro Legal) and the private immigration bar and volunteers. The stories were still heart-wrenching, and showed more clearly than ever the inhumane, broken system that is U.S. immigration law.

The thirteen-year-old girl, left without parents when her mother was shipped to Mexico and her father disappeared. Days later, he was found in detention in Atlanta.

The twelve- and thirteen-year-old U.S. citizen children, the only safe members of their families, who had to look for missing relatives, shop for groceries, seek help.

The parents, trying to get passports for their U.S. citizen children, so they could take their sons and daughters away from the towns where they were born and raised and go to school to return to a "homeland" that offers no opportunity for parents or children.

The convoluted laws benefit predators who target immigrant families. "Within the first days, we heard five stories of people who had paid notary publics $3,000 to do the paperwork for them, in full belief that this would get them legal status," reported Cynthia Anderson. "And, of course, it didn't. People fly in, even from other states and charge people money to do nothing."

Even worse, people's desperate attempts to get jobs and support their families, here and "back home," get them in even deeper difficulty. A 1976 law means that anyone who uses false documents to claim legal immigration is barred from immigrating legally in the future. That means that someone who uses another person's birth certificate to get a job—even with that person's permission—is barred from legal immigration in the future.

For people who try to stay within the law, the news is bad. ILCM director John Keller tells the story:

Take, for example, a married couple. The husband is a U.S. citizen and the wife is undocumented. Even though the law allows him to file a petition for her, the "devil is in the details," as they say. As a lawyer, I must inform them that under our current laws and system, the processing of the paperwork will probably take one and one-half years. Not so bad, they think. Wait, there's more ... I have to tell them that after the first one and one-half years, since she entered the U.S. without a visa, she will have to return to her home country and wait, in a worst case scenario, up to ten years, without being able to legally return to her husband and children. Eleven and one-half years for a U.S. citizen to legally immigrate his wife. This is the legal process we want millions to go through? At this point, the U.S. citizen usually says: 'Well, wait, but we have a child, or two children, born in the United States. Surely, that will help ... the government doesn't expect us to separate the little children from their mother ... does it?' That is a difficult question to have to answer. I tell them that the government lets you choose if your U.S. citizen children will separate from you or from her. They could always go with her.

Let me be clear. The current laws and their interpretations do not promote strong, stable, loving families—in many cases, the laws destroy them. A healthy nation, Minnesota, and our Minnesota communities depend on healthy, stable, strong families and our immigration laws must be reformed to that end.

A resolution introduced in the Minnesota House and Senate this week calls for Comprehensive Immigration Reform to promote family reunification and a path to legalization for hard-working immigrants in the United States, which only the U.S. Congress can pass. Illinois, Georgia and New York have passed similar resolutions.

The Minnesota legislature is considering a Commission on New Americans, which would study and recommend specific initiatives to keep Minnesota a strong and welcoming destination for immigrants, and to learn from success stories in Willmar, Pelican Rapids and Worthington, which have been strengthened by the arrival of new immigrants in their work forces and schools. (And it's a bi-partisan issue—while Democratic Senators Mee Moua and Sandy Pappas have taken the lead on immigration legislation over the years, Republican State Representative Rod Hamilton of Mountain Lake is co-sponsoring the Commission legislation.)

Minnesota Care is not enough

"I don't have insurance right now," my friend admitted. "So I'm being really careful to eat right and exercise, and so far I've been lucky." My friend is pushing 60, so her luck has to hold for a little more than five years. She can't afford thousands of dollars a month to purchase a private health insurance policy and, given her age and health history, would have a really hard time getting coverage. She is one of many Minnesotans who make too much money for Minnesota Care but have no available employment-based health insurance coverage.

Today 383,000 Minnesotans, including 68,000 children remain uninsured. That's no private health care insurance. No Medicare or Medicaid. No Minnesota Care. Nothing.

Minnesotans, though, fare better than the rest of the country. Across the United States, 47 million people live without health care insurance, including 9 million children.

Sunday I listened to State Senator Linda Berglin (DFL) and State Representative Paul Thissen (DFL) and Cal Ludeman, representing the Pawlenty administration, talk about health insurance at a public forum. Their earnest discussion was enough to make your eyes glaze over. Do we want 175% of poverty level or 200% of poverty level? Expanded section 125 pre-tax plans? Q-Care standards? Promotion of portability of health insurance coverage? It was enough to make your eyes glaze over. And nothing they said would help my friend.

"All over the place, people are refusing to take wages or cutting their hours so they can stay in Minnesota Care." Senator Linda Berglin said. Minnesota Care has lots of problems, starting with a 26-page enrollment form that has to be filled out twice a year. Even so, it provides one of the few opportunities for sort-of-affordable health care for thousands of Minnesotans. Her health care legislation would do a lot to improve and expand Minnesota Care, and it should pass. But that is not enough.

We need a national health-care program. We need it now. We need it so badly that even Wal-Mart, AT&T, Intel, Kelly Service and other businesses have formed a coalition with SEIU and the Communication Workers of America to call for national, universal health care coverage.

Insurance companies are the least effective way to finance health care. They are the reason that the United States has the highest per-person health care cost in the world, and still doesn't provide universal health care coverage.

Think about every dollar you spend on healthcare: one-third of it now goes to the insurance companies for their profits, their administration, their advertising, their lobbyists, so if we take that one-third that we’re now spending on spurious -- we don't need them, we don’t need the insurance companies --and that would cover literally everybody who is uncovered in the United States for a lot less money and provide for the kind of system that most countries in the world, most of the advanced countries in the world, enjoy. Marilyn Clement, National Coordinator of Healthcare-NOW!, speaking on Democracy Now, 2/9/07

Publicly-administered health care plans—like Medicare, which covers all people over the age of 65—deliver medical care at a lower cost than private health care insurance.

Publicly-funded, universal health care coverage is the right thing to do. People are suffering, people are dying because they cannot afford health care. The number of uninsured in the United states has risen by nine million since 2000.

Publicly-funded, universal health care coverage is good for business. It would cut employer costs far more than any tax break proposed by the Bush administration and it would help make U.S. business more competitive internationally. Think about it. Employers in countries with universal public health care do not pay any health insurance costs. That automatically lowers their labor costs.

This is not just a healthcare crisis, this is a business crisis. By next year, health benefit costs will exceed profits in the Fortune 500 companies, and if we look at companies like Starbucks, they're spending more on health benefits than coffee beans. It's no longer just a healthcare crisis, it's an economic crisis. Jeanne Lambrew, Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an associate professor at George Washington University, speaking on Democracy Now, 1/9/07.

Minnesota can and does do a lot of good work on health care, but it cannot do the whole job. What we need is UNIVERSAL, publicly-funded and administered health care coverage. That can only happen if it happens nationwide.

Family Farms Forever

More than a dozen legislators joined farmers, friends and supporters at a family farm breakfast this morning, feasting on locally-raised food and listening to speakers talk about the legislative support needed to sustain Minnesota's farms and food system for the future. The Land Stewardship Project, now in its 25th year, sponsored the breakfast to promote sustainable farming and advocate for family farmers and local control of food systems.

Family farmers, from beginners to veterans, brought their eggs and bacon, milk and oatmeal to the table, along with familiar messages of protecting clean water, soil conservation, minimizing or eliminating chemical inputs, and caring for the land.

Cheap food prices and overflowing store shelves are hiding the true environmental and social costs of our food and agriculture system—rapid erosion and degradation of soil, the chemical contamination and depletion of our water, the loss of genetic diversity, the poisoning of wildlife and destruction of habitat, the loss of family farmers and impoverishment of rural communities.

The good news is that we now have an alternative. A growing number of farmers are choosing to work with nature, and are adopting farming practices that build up the soil, reduce runoff, create habitat for wildlife, treat livestock humanely and best of all, produce safe, wholesome food. But the most environmentally sound farming practices in the world mean little if they don't provide a good income for the farmer.

[If you want to learn more about buying food from local, sustainable farmers, click here.]

Alternative energy sources were today's big news. "The next generations of ethanol plants are going to be cellulose-based," according to Land Stewardship. "This provides real opportunity for more perennial cropping systems that benefit the environment while producing income from the marketplace."

Increasing markets for ethanol helped push corn prices to four dollars a bushel during the past year, but corn is not the answer for sustainable energy, according to speakers at the breakfast. Switch grass is a better, more efficient energy source than corn, but mixed prairie grasses are even better. Besides, mixed prairie grasses are a perennial crop, less expensive to raise and easier on soil and water resources than corn.

Representative Al Juhnke talked about the "Minnesota model" of cooperative ownership of ethanol plants. Minnesota can continue to provide a national model for sustainable energy, if we support research and development of alternative ethanol sources (such as switch grass and mixed prairie grasses), wind power, and continuing cooperative ownership and local control.

The Limits of Activism

The stories break your heart. Maria, pregnant and due any day, taken away from the Swift plant in chains. The marks of the chains still visible on her pregnant stomach after her release. The terrified young woman, back at home, refuses to leave the house even for medical care for an infection, refuses to answer the telephone, to talk to people, to open her locked door. You can send money for food, or diapers for the new baby, but Maria will be gone soon. The choices for undocumented workers are bleak: flee into the shadows, hiding and working in the United States or return to a homeland and jobs that pay not nearly enough to feed and house a family. The Lopez family. Mother cries herself to sleep and wakes up, still crying. Her husband worked at Swift, supporting the family, and he is gone and no one can find him. No word, not even a phone call in five days. Was he deported? Will he call from Mexico? ICE will not say. The rent is due at the end of the month, and there is no money. And who will buy food for the children? You can protest against the inhumanity of a system that swept up workers and took them away without a word to their families, and ICE could surely have done better. They could answer their telephone information line. They could tell families where their loved ones have been taken. They could arrange to keep the detainees closer to home, at least over the holidays, instead of shipping them hundreds of miles away to jails in Atlanta or elsewhere. Ultimately, though, ICE 's harsh task is to get rid of the prisoners. The law says they have to go. Send them back to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. The immigration laws give them no legal way to enter this country and no legal way to stay. Rafael is diabetic and needs seven shots of insulin a day. This costs $300 a week. The entire family helped work to pay for Rafael's insulin, and now that one of the brothers was taken they are not sure how they will be able to continue to pay for this. The law says Rafael's brothers and sisters must leave, and never return. The law makes no exceptions for hard-working people, for people who just want to feed their families, for people who want a better life for themselves and their children. The law does not give them any legal way to enter the United States. The law says that we do not want them here, in our towns and our factories. Barbara got home the night of the raids to hear several voicemail messages from families she knows well, who work at Swift. She went house to house, finding them too terrified to even open the door to her. All lights were turned out, and parents tried to keep their children silent. Barbara took some of the families to her home. By the end of the night, she had 25-30 people in her home. She described the scene: "People are afraid to go outside, afraid to open their doors, afraid to go to the market. Afraid of everything. The terror and empty-stare in people’s eyes is indescribable. Is this the way we treat people in America? Is this what Christian-professing people do to each other, and just before Christmas?" We can protest outside the Senator's office, and write letters to the editors, and call our Congressional representatives. We can send money and food and diapers to the families left behind. But we know that, in the end, all our efforts are noenough to help Maria and Esperanza and Luis and Gerardo and their children. The law says they have to go. Anger at the cold, impersonal injustice of our laws drives us to work for change. We hope, we believe that some day we will change that law. But not today. Despite all we can do, the law takes its course. No matter what we do, we are still left with holes in our community and in our hearts, and with a loss, an emptiness that fills up with tears.