Dear Friends,
One of the more inspiring presentation I attended was on Wednesday by Naomi Klien's group This Changes Everything? It was about the Leap Manifesto that was launched just before the recent Canadian election but intended for a wider audience. A beginning document not necessarily cast in concrete whose creation involved many people and translated into many languages. It has been gaining traction and fundamentally a call for transformation.
There is a web site where one can get more information (theleapmanifesto.org). Instead of inserting Canada in the subtitle it could also read A Call for an America Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another. Its time may also be right for our country with some modification. And as the brochure I have says, Canada (America ) is not this place today - but it could be.
Yesterday afternoon on my way home, I passed by the Ba ta clan Cafe on Rue Voltaire where 80 some persons were killed by terrorists. A multitude of flowers and candles and messages of all kinds now adorn the sidewalks by the cafe and across the street. A spontaneous heartfelt street memorial to loved ones lost to senseless violence. More surround the nearby monument of Marianne in the Place de la Republique.
I started to unfurl my Love is the Way banner on the barricade around the cafe and was told I couldn't do it by a policeman. I said it was only temporary. He wanted to see so I unfurled it. Is it about the climate he asked no, an expression of Love I indicated. So he said I had one minute but it took longer and I did get several photos of it I will post on my blog.
I don't think many yet understand Love as being the energy of unity, that which seeks the highest good of another, and connects all things. Fully understood and embraced at a higher level of consciousness it knows that what we give to one another individually and collectively is giving to oneself or ourselves.
Without a shift of consciousness it is as Einstein said, we cannot solve the problems that confront us
Some interesting things to check out - a book by Tim Gore from Oxfam titled Extreme Carbon Inequality. I saw a brief interview with him about it last night on Democracy Now. Also a moving reading of a poem by a young person from the Marshall Islands pleading with the rest of us to help her save her island home being affected by rising sea levels
This afternoon I will try to the International Rights of Nature Tribunal; on the weekend is the Peoples Climate Summit, also screenings of This Changes Everything, and an Indigenous Peoples press conference on Sunday afternoon I will try to make. They will call for world leaders to keep fossil fuels in the ground and a need for a treaty to protect Mother Earth. There will be a flotilla with the "Canoe of Life" brought 6000 miles from Ecuador.
Lots of interesting things going on apart from the COP 21 sessions. One must pick and choose.
I'm feeling perkier and back on my bicycle making tracks around town.
Love to all,
Peace Rider
Don - Peace Rider
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