Dusting off the Declaration of Independence
by Curt Hubatch
Reflections on Community Rights from Rural America is a monthly column by CR activist and organizer Curt Hubatch.
Curt runs the CRUS newsfeed homepage and is an unschooling father of two young children and one young adult. Currently he works as a substitute rural letter carrier for the USPS. He lives in a cordwood house that he built with his family and friends in Northwestern Wisconsin.
As a father who wants his children to inherit a
livable planet full of potential and possibility
, this statement written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence has great significance:
"He [the king] has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good."
In today's terms, the king's priority wasn't supporting the public good.
I read a statement recently by Tom Goldtooth who does care about the public good. He is executive director of the
Indigenous Environmental Network
(IEN)
and has been
fighting for a better world
for Indian and non-Indian people most of his life. Paraphrasing him, he said that we are at war with the earth and need to keep the remaining oil in the ground. Tom is an active, traditional Native American elder. When a guy like this talks, you sit up, pay attention, and listen... at least I do.
Like
Tom Goldtooth (listen to him
HERE
) I think most of us know at some level that we are at war with what gives us life. We've known we are at war..... since we were children. However, over time we've had it conditioned out of us, and business interests and bottom-line thinking have won the day.
I believe that the reality of our current environmental predicament
– pick your poison: climate destabilization, human overpopulation, accelerated species extinction –
has brought us to a second revolution in our country's history.
As hard as it is to imagine it is as equal to the first American Revolution, it is one that future generations, if there are any, will learn and talk about as we did about the first American Independence movement and Revolution.
The world has blown open the window to revolution.
There is no reversing the irreversible. We as a species and nation can only adapt to an ever increasingly chaotic and collapsing world. We cannot go on thinking and acting like we have since the dawn of civilization and believing that it is the greatest and best way to live.
You might be wondering where my facts and stats are in this column. I'm not including any, because
I'm speaking to the part of me and you that knows the truth.
To the small part that doesn't take a chance to speak its truth as to how we feel. Tragically we feel justifiably powerless in our public and private thoughts much of the time.
But is it true that we are powerless?
