Our Children’s Trust is a non-profit law firm, the only non-profit law firm in the nation, that is using the court system to force the state and federal government to establish the right of our children to a clean and healthful environment. The law firm started in 2015 and is based in Eugene, Oregon. Their first lawsuit was against the Federal Government. The executive branch, i.e. the Department of Justice, has attempted to stop the lawsuit so they don’t have to act to stop the emissions of fossil fuels. The law firm has also filed lawsuits in four states. Montana is one of those states and on August 14, 2023, a court in Montana ruled in favor of the children…

By Bruce Radtke and Cindy Cole    The US Government’s COVID-19 public health emergency order expired on May 11, 2023 – this included the Trump Title 42 order that expelled over 2.5 million migrants from the US-Mexico border.  The Biden Administration is now rolling out plans that will continue to restrict many migrants’ access to asylum, including a “transit ban”. Under the new rule, migrants who pass through countries on their way to the U.S. and do not first claim asylum there or take advantage of other lawful pathways will be deemed ineligible to claim asylum at the southern border. A recent policy requires migrants to use a cell phone app (CBP One App) and apply for an immigration appointment…

by John M Repp There are many reasons for the new cold war with Russia and China. After promising not to move NATO east of what had been the Soviet Union, the new governments that formed in the east European countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union, were invited into NATO. We now know our national security people knew they crossed a red line when they did that. On February 24, 2022, Russia has invaded Ukraine. The U.S. is supplying a massive number of weapons to Ukraine, so we are in a proxy war with Russia, some say a real war. And now China has made the most amazing change in their economy in the last 70 years.  To…

by John M Repp One of the most disturbing news reports we hear nowadays is a report of a mass shooting at a school. Usually, the report tells us how many people are killed, the location, and ends with a statement “no motive has been established”. The listener or viewer’s heart sinks.  A few years back, two professors of criminology and criminal justice respectively, Jillian Peterson and James Densley, put together a database of mass shootings in the United States since 1966, when the first one happened. In 2021, they published a book The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Politico published a review of the book in 2022. Quotes below are from the review. Many mass…

Extinction Rebellion and Citizens Assemblies by John M Repp  “only nonviolent rebellion can now stop climate breakdown and social collapse” is the subtitle of the book: Common Sense for the 21st Century by Roger Hallam (London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019) Roger Hallam writes that real change happens when ordinary people break the law i.e., do nonviolent direct action. He gives his book a title that reminds us of Tom Paine’s Common Sense (January 1776) which sparked the American revolution. The book reads like a short 95-page instruction manual for a nonviolent revolution. Hallam uses “reverse engineering”, imagining what a successful nonviolent revolution would look like and then works back to the steps and preparations needed to achieve it. He means…

Planes, (fancy) trains and automobiles won’t help us meet our climate goals. by Mary Paterson | July 5, 2023 (reprinted from Real Change, the Seattle homeless paper by permission of the author) Real Change began an important discussion this spring about how our state legislators and governor are ignoring the need for East-West passenger trains between Seattle, Auburn, Ellensburg, Yakima, and Spokane (‘It’s Just Negligence…,’ March 15, 2023). Modernizing our existing rail routes — think Amtrak for the 21st century — can help us reduce “vehicle miles traveled” and slash our emissions by 2030, which we must do according to warnings from scientists about climate change.  Trains on our existing rail network are a climate solution hiding in plain sight. They’d also help…

Labor Struggles – Where’s Our Contract? by Cindy Cole Over the past few years labor unions organizing successes have been in the news.  But some big companies have used fierce union busting tactics, like firing workers who organize, requiring captive audience anti-union meetings, threats to shut down a worksite and more to fight this trend. Despite that, the independent Amazon Labor Union has been able to organize several Amazon warehouses.  Also, Starbucks workers have organized 21 cafés in the last few years.  However, over a year after the success of these organizing drives neither union has been able to secure a first contract. We need to look at the right to collective bargaining as a two-step process: 1) organizing a…