www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/01/10/saving-salmon/

CBC interview with Alexandra Morton, who studies orca and salmon in BC -- and the soulless corporations that are undermining one of the most critical sets of intertwined life forces in the entire ocean. Why give this an earful to this on a listserv that is largely focused on issues of war and empire? Because Morton paints a way forward from ecological catastrophe, informed by people power and direct action, that impacts every single living thing on this planet. And she has an enormously sharp analysis of what precisely is wrong with corporate power, why it must be contained, and how on a very grassroots level people can organize to challenge, undermine, resist and ultimately thwart this most dominant of engines for global war, repression and social and economic destruction. Incredibly, this approach, informed by people power and direct action, is actually working in BC.

A personal note: I've paddled in the region that Alex talks about in the interview for many years. It is a land and seascape of breathtaking beauty and wildness. After decades of growing and increasingly dire ecological collapse of the salmon stock, last year the region saw record runs of virtually every species of this fish, in large part because local people -- fishers, homesteaders, First Nations peoples, environmentalists, ordinary Canadians across the country -- have joined together to push back against factory resource extraction techniques that were literally killing the biosphere. Why care? Two reasons. First, because the organizing principles that local people and their national supporters have been using to push back against this ecological calamity are working, and their tactics and strategies and the larger world systems insights they have gleaned can be employed by any movement for social and economic justice in any place on the planet. Second, because this particular battle is crucially important to us all. Research has come to show that these fish are like a massive bloodstream covering millions of miles of biosphere that literally feeds the forests and the air upon which we all depend.

The battle may be to stop fracking in Ohio, or derail the assault on union rights, or battle a corrupt local government, or end US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and beyond. We all deserve to know about this particular battle, for what it means for the health of the planet, and for what it shows us about a way forward in all of our struggles for economic and social justice.