In the last week, we all watched the “ultra-right-wing“ of 20 out of 435 Congresspeople, those 20 flung into office by a tiny minority of voters, paralyze the one branch of the US government intended to represent the People’s Will. It called me to remember when vigorous climate action should have started — but fell afoul of the Fossil Fuel Pharaohs. I was personally involved in that misadventure, but I’ve never written the story till now. Read on!

We at The Shalom Center, we good friends of Dr. Susannah Heschel of Dartmouth University, and we throughout the world are about to celebrate a moment of joyful learning that is half a century old and rooted in a grievous loss: the 50th yohrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. A loss that calls us to turn the hearts of elders and youth to each other, their minds and legs to work together.

We are sponsoring three webinars that will bring his teachings to the eyes and ears, the hearts and minds, the legs and souls, of Americans facing arrogant neo-fascists and modern pharaohs who are burning Earth for the sake of cash. The webinars will be Wednesday evenings January 18, Jan. 25, and February 1. Details below!

This report is by Jacqui Patterson, long-time lead thinker/activist on environmental and climate justice for the NAACP and now the founder and director of The {Shirley} Chisholm Legacy Project. She led the Chisholm Project’s delegation to COP27 in Egypt.

In the Q&A format here, the questions come from staff of the Chisholm Legacy Project to its director, Ms. Patterson. The Shalom Center begins 2023 with this report on how racism and uncontrolled capitalism unite to poison and kill in modern crematoria without chimneys.

Brazil went through the agony of an elected fascist President who did his worst to subjugate the poor and destroy the Amazon Forest, the lungs of all life in/on Planet Earth. But an alert and informed nation voted him out and voted in again a President who had tried to end poverty and protect the Amazon Forest.

When an election is at hand, VOTE.