This is worth writing an unofficial blog post.
Remember that square of orange felt I wore Tuesday? That symbol of the divestment movement is the color orange, rather than green, to reframe the movement’s scope as much larger than an environmental issue. Divestment from fossil fuels is not a single-issue movement. This is a space where environmental justice, climate justice, and economic justice have come into contact. It means those who wear it understand they will not win the fight against the fossil fuel industry without confronting racism, classism, homophobia, and other systems of oppression.
At the convergence we began conversations about intersectionality and historical responsibility on an international scale.
Is Anything (even divesting VT’s 600 million dollars from fossil fuels) possible when you believe in it? When you take action because you believe in your and the collective ability to create it? These Virginia Tech students definitely do. Watch this student-created You Tube Video:
Divest Virginia Tech
Do you think a student movement can sway University officials to change their relationship with their endowment? Can we still make a reasonable return without investing in Exxon or Peabody Coal?
I am proud of the Hokies who have and are inheriting the spirit of being a Virginia Tech student. That is, we believe it is our responsibility to invent the (right) future.
From a 72-year-old prof in the great white north, a message of solidarity:
Your issues ARE all related, as we humans all are. You VT students
from all over the Commonwealth of Lovers [where i hav a daughter & her 2 sons],
from every State in the Evil Empire [from which, like ES, i have exiled myself for now],
indeed, from all around the world.. will bring your learning home with you;
not just learning, but UNDERSTANDING, and even WISDOM!
Together we CAN win against GREED and other thoughtless evils,
throwing water on Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West, on Ayn Rand, on selfish bullies.
Like BM, we must stand up to tyranny, as did Antigone in pre-democratic Athens,
vilified by patriotic mind-slaves of the Archon, their dictatorial monarch.
Anarchists like Tolstoy and Kropotkin opposed the Tsar with the pen, not the sword.
So must we OCCUPY our WORLD, opposed to TYRANNY, to -ARCHY, not to all government,
above all not to consensual GOOD government wherever we can make it in town meeting!
So let’s wake up and stay alert and free, like Patrick Henry and Tom Paine.
Now past 1984, Orwell’s Oceania looks less and less like Huxley’s Brave New World,
and more like Murdoch’s Fox News Utopia. We CAN break out of our slavery,
we can CONSUME LESS from McDonald’s, BP, Smith & Wesson, Wells Fargo.
What would Jesus do? throw the money-changers out of the temple!
Read UNC’s Bart Erman, and the gnostic words of the Radical Rabbi-Teacher.
I reject the corruption of his message by Paul and Babylon.
Written too much, Yoda has. Love long and prosper. Sic. Out.