Jason Call is running for Congress in northwest Washington, a seat help by a garden variety corrupt New Dem, corporate shill Rick Larsen. Blue America was moved to work with songwriter and singer Jim Lough to create a song and video about Larsen's larceny (above). Jason, on the other hand, was moved to put together a strong grassroots campaign to take back his district from the corporate end of the Democratic Party on behalf of working families. On the occasion of Earth Day #52, he addressed issues are that important to families in Washington's largely coastal second district. He wrote that "52 years ago, environmental scientists were waking people up to the fact that industrial pollution and mass consumption were harming the planet. The movement was spurred on by a 1969 oil spill off the coast of California. Since then we have seen continued massive oil spills-- most notably the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters. The ten biggest oil spills in history have seen over 1000 million gallons of oil released into our oceans, with devastating consequences for marine life and the ecosystems we rely on."
Jason, like all the candidates endorsed by Blue America-- but unlike Republicans and unlike Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (like Larsen)-- are adamant that, in his words, "we must elected representatives who aren't funded by fossil fuel interests." Melanie D'Arrigo is running for Congress on the North Shore of Long Island, an open blue seat, where she is up against the 3 stooges-- corporate whores Jon Kaiman, Josh Lafazan and Rob Zimmerman. This morning he warned that "Time is running out to save our planet and protect our children’s future. 60% of Americans support a Green New Deal, including 81% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and even one-third of Republicans. Like almost every other progressive policy, it’s enormously popular-- so what’s standing in our way of ending the climate crisis? The fossil fuel lobbyists and the politicians they bribe. When I get to Congress, you can count on me to fight like hell to take back our planet from the lobbyists and polluters destroying it for profit, and pass a Green New Deal.
Please consider contributing today-- Earth Day-- to Jason and Melanie and to the other Blue America-endorsed congressional candidates who are all Climate champions and are all listed on this ActBlue page. Need more convincing? Let's go back to Jason Call for a moment and let him speak for himself about what people in his district are facing:
I’m concerned about energy. I’m concerned about how we produce it, how much we use, and how much it costs-- particularly for the working class as we become more entrenched in a feedback loop of extreme climate conditions. I live in Western Washington, which has had a mild climate since I moved here in 1983. In the last dozen years, our summers have become increasingly hot and dry. Last June, Bellingham hit 99 degrees for the first time ever. And for the first time ever, I bought an air conditioner for my house, a purchase I would never have considered a decade ago.
Disappointingly, rather than take the terrible war in Ukraine as an opportunity to divest from fossil fuels and throw everything we can behind sustainable and renewable energy sources, the Biden administration chose to double down on oil drilling. The most recent IPCC reports tell us that the +1.5C temperature rise is inevitable now, even if we do all the right things in terms of cutting emissions. But we’re not doing all the right things. Not even close. David Sirota’s movie Don’t Look Up described in satirical detail how the political system and mainstream media are more interested in handling climate breakdown from a PR perspective rather than a solutions perspective. Don’t Look Up, incidentally, is the most watched Netflix movie of 2022. So it’s not like people aren’t paying attention. But the real problem is there’s not enough leadership in Congress committed to addressing climate issues. That’s where I come in. Tackling climate breakdown was a top priority for me in 2020, and it’s even more urgent now. That’s why the Green New Deal Champions movement reached out to me and asked me to join them, which I proudly did.
We need voices in Congress that are speaking for the future of humanity. A future so precarious at this point that climate scientists are now organizing activism (Scientists Rebellion) and getting themselves arrested in order to bring attention to how dire the situation is.
I’m running against a 22-year incumbent who takes hundreds of thousands from the fossil fuel industry, and a host of industries that rely on fossil fuel production. Rick Larsen has proven he cannot be counted on, and he’s stated many times he does NOT support the Green New Deal.
Today, historian Steven Beschloss is hosting an inaugural events for the Climate Narratives Prize at Arizona State University. It's worth reading his introductory remarks and then clicking on the thermometer below:
Were there not a climate crisis. Were there not urgency to respond. Were there not a question about the existential fate of the human species in the decades ahead…we would not be gathered here today. But here we are, challenged to contemplate the health of our shared planet and what it will take to respond to the consequences of rising CO2 levels, the decisions put in place centuries ago to seek dominion over nature, and the fact of rising temperatures, rising sea levels, increasingly frequent and increasingly extreme weather events, and growing conflict and fear among people and between nations.
In my view, this is the issue of our time, a time that has been called the “decisive decade” that will determine the trajectory of life for everyone in this room and everyone around the world. As a storyteller and a hopeful person by nature, I believe in the power of narratives and the potential of storytelling in multiple modes to capture the attention of our fellow humans. To tell stories that resonate, that create empathy, that can build global consciousness about a challenge that is global in nature-- and not just in the moment of reading, watching or listening, but over time, to influence thinking, to change behavior-- and ultimately, to create impact that gives us the chance for better futures.
