Sandra Steingraber was released from the Chemung County Jail at 12:01 am Thursday morning. Later that day she told environmental activists, "Don't be afraid of jail." Before she was released, she wrote one last letter, which she says is a Message to Fellow Mothers:
My book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Children in an Age of
Environmental Crisis, was released in paperback this week. But, being in jail,
I was unable to grant interviews or otherwise to participate in its promotion.
That’s not a situation that book publicists appreciate, although mine is being
very good about it. But, being in here, I feel that I am walking my words.
The fundamental message of Raising Elijah is that the
environmental crisis is a crisis of family life, as it robs parents of our
ability to carry out our two most basic duties: to protect our children from
harm and to provide for their future. When inherently toxic chemicals –
including developmental toxicants linked to asthma, birth defects and learning
disabilities – are legally allowed to freely circulate in our children’s
environment, we can’t protect them. When heat trapping greenhouse gases create
extreme weather events that slash the world’s grain harvests (this is
happening) and acidify the oceans in ways that threaten the entire marine food
chain, starting with plankton (and this is happening too), then we can’t plan
for our kids’ futures – no matter how much we sock away in their college funds
or Tiger Mom them into athletic or musical mastery.
This crisis requires our urgent attention. And by attention,
I mean sustained political action, not intermittent, private worrying. Hence,
unless the kids can get there and back, under their own steam,then piano
lessons, karate, Little League, play practice, SAT prep, and Scout meetings are
cancelled until further notice. Ditto for yoga, date night, and book club (with
apologies to my long-suffering publicist).
Look, one in every four mammal species is headed for
extinction. The world’s available drinking water is becoming less and less
available. Insect pollinators, which provide us one-sixth to one-third of the
food we eat, are in trouble. The price index for 33 different basic commodities
is rising, and financial analysts are predicting shortages of the kind that
lead to social unrest. Meanwhile, the world’s leading and most powerful
industry is preparing to blow up the nation’s bedrock and frack out the last
wisps and drops of gas and oil – releasing inherently toxic chemicals into our
communities to do so.
In short, we don’t have time for out-of-town sporting
events. Consider this commentary in the preeminent science journal, Nature:
I have yet to meet a climate scientist who does not believe
that global warming is a worse problem that they thought a few years ago. The
seriousness of this change is not appreciated by politicians and the public. .
. Recognition of the facts is delayed by
the frankly brilliant propaganda and obfuscation delivered by energy interests
that virtually own the US Congress . . . This is not only the crisis of your
lives – it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be
brave. (Nature, 491, Nov. 15, 2012)
The author, Jeremy Grantham, was speaking to the world’s
scientists, but his message is equally applicable to mothers and fathers.
Consider that the World Health Organization has identified climate change as
the number one threat to public health for people born today. Otherwise known
as our kids.
Now, do you have time to participate in a civil rights–style
uprising? Protecting our kids, making sure they have a future: it seems to be a
basis part of our job description.
I am here in the Chemung County Jail on a charge of
trespassing as a result of blockading a compressor station site belonging to
the nation’s largest gas transportation and storage company. Inergy’s plan is
to compress, liquify, and store fracked gases from out of state in depleted
salt caverns under Seneca Lake, the largest and deepest of New York State’s
eleven Finger Lakes. This practice has led to catastrophic results in other
states – including explosions and collapses. Even now, Inergy itself is
chronically out of compliance with the maximum legal limits for its chemical
discharges into this lake, which is the source of drinking water for 100,000
people.
This compressor station, which is less than 20 miles upwind
from my house, is just one piece of fracking infrastructure among millions. I
chose to take a stand here both because Inergy’s plans represent a direct risk
to my children’s air quality and safety, and because my son was born nearby.
The west shore of Seneca Lake is his birthplace, and the sound of green frogs
twanging in the night was the theme song for my labor and delivery.
So, yes, my course of political action has taken me away
from my own children in an attempt to redress this problem on their behalf, and
during the first five days, when I was kept in 24-hour lock-up, I had no access
to them. But I am convinced the tears of my children now will be less than
their tears later – along with the tears of my grandchildren – if we mothers do
nothing and allow the oil, coal, and gas companies to hurdle us all off the
climate cliff.
I’m also aware that human rights movements throughout
history – from abolition to suffrage to civil rights – included many people who
were parents of young children. They were surely just as busy as you and me.
They, like I, probably also kept a list labeled, “Things to do before going to
jail.” Their list, like mine, probably included: making meal plans, paying
bills, cleaning the bathroom, and finding a costume for the school play.
To fight against Hitler, anti-fascist partisans sent their
children away to safe places in case they were betrayed. They were busy
parents, too. They loved their children just as much as we do. The difference
is: now there is no safe place for our children. We can’t hide them from the
ravages of climate change.
And here are two observations from the inside: the jails are
already full of mothers. Every single woman on my cell block has kids. One of
them is trying, from behind bars, to find her son a kidney because he desperately
needs one. That’s hard to do from a pay phone, but she’s doing it. And yet,
what do you suppose Marlene (not her real name) spoke about with me as we
walked around and around the walled-off, barbed-wire rec area at 6:35AM this
morning? The same thing that mothers throughout New York State are talking
about this morning – how our kids are handling the state testing. Last week was
ELA. This week is math.
The mothers in jail are fierce and proud. When the male
guards insult them, they insult back. Their voices echo down the corridor,
penetrate the iron doors, walls, carry messages through the heating vents and,
when they can, out the windows. When Stingray cussed out a guard for demanding
she remove a towel from her face while sleeping, she received six days in “the
box.” So she told me while we were all lined up against the wall to head out
for rec. An hour later, when the guard ordered us to line up and come in, she
did not walk meekly to the door. Instead she ran the other direction and then,
in a stunning gymnastic display, turned a whirling series of cartwheels,
round-offs and flips, landing – Olympic-champion style – at the guard’s feet.
Stingray has two kids and is six months pregnant with the third.
Imagine what we mothers could do if we brought that spirit
of loud, uncompromising, creative defiance to the necessary project of
dismantling the fossil fuel industry and emancipating renewable energy, which
is its hostage? Imagine hundreds and hundreds of mothers peacefully blockading
the infrastructure projects of the fossil fuel industry, day after day. Imagine
us, all unafraid, filling jails across the land. Imagine the press conferences
we would give upon our release. Imagine us living up to our children’s belief
in us as super heroes.
As Stingray shouted down the vent to another inmate
yesterday, “You know I’m loud. My words are my magic.”
Sandra Steingraber
April 24, 2013
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