Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Protests Erupt in the US and Bolivia Targeting 'Progressive' Presidents Who Are Failing to Protect the Environment | Environment | AlterNet

Protests Erupt in the US and Bolivia Targeting 'Progressive' Presidents Who Are Failing to Protect the Environment | Environment | AlterNet
www.alternet.org
Together these two actions highlight important, universal lessons about what it takes to press for protection of the planet, in countries both wealthy and impoverished.

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'It's Getting Hot in Here' Editor, Christine Irvine at Tar Sands Action. Source: Shadia Wood
"In many ways the two protests could not be more different. In Washington two weeks of daily protests by the well dressed and well educated, more than a hundred strong each day, stand before the White House. The participants sit together cross-legged for photos as they display their carefully printed banners. A hemisphere away in Bolivia, more than 1,500 indigenous peasants - men, women, and children - march along a dusty dirt road in the countryside, wearing cheap rubber sandals, faded skirts and tattered pants. They are headed on a weeks-long march to their nation's capital, La Paz.

And yet, on separate sides of the equator the protests share a profound commonality. Both take aim at Presidents labeled as progressive and historic, leaders who have used soaring rhetoric about the urgency of protecting the planet. Both protests involve an important part of the Presidents' respective political bases taking to the streets to hold them to that rhetoric. Together these two actions highlight important, universal lessons about what it takes to press for protection of the planet, in countries both wealthy and impoverished."

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