*POETRY *WE GOT IT ALL IN
**CLASS CLOSED**
PERFORMANCE AND POLITICS TO PROTECT CALIFORNIA
COMMUNITY COLLEGE EDUCATION
WHERE: GLENDALE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, MAIN QUAD
WHEN: THURSDAY, MAY 6TH, 11:45 TO 1:15 PM
WHO: Bernie Pearl, Bluesman extraordinaire, The Get Lit Players - Teenage
Wizards of Poetry, Yvette Freeman, Actress, Manny Bracamonte, Rapper,
S. Pearl Sharp, Director, Professor Gordon Alexandre, M.C.
*The skit CLASS CLOSED was written by Joan Holden, former head writer of the
Tony award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, and William Shields,
playwright and labor activist, chair of Labor and Community Studies at SF
City College".
NO CUTS PRODUCED BY Ed Pearl and Ash Grove Music
SPONSORED BY Glendale College Faculty Guild in collaboration with the
Calif. Federation of Teachers and the Glendale College Assoc. Students.
On May 6th, 2010 the Glendale College Faculty Guild presemts NO CUTS a
community-wide performance and politics event focused on protecting the
California Community Colleges. The event is on the campus green, free,
and open to the Public.
NO CUTS is an hour-long program OF THEATER, music, poetry AND conversation
AIMED DIRECTLY AT EDUCATING STUDENTS ON CAMPUS ABOUT the California Budget
process, touring colleges in the Fall semester. Here, It debuts a public
theater skit by Joan Holden, longtime playwright for the Tony Award-winning,
nation's longest-running political theater company SFMT, and William
Shields, playwright and labor activist, chair of Labor and Community Studies
at SF City College".
No Cuts was organized by Ed Pearl, founder of legendary music club,
The Ash Grove, and current Exex. Dir. of www.ashgrovemusic.com
THE PROGRAM CREATIVELY ADDRESSES THESE QUESTIONS:
How can we keep the focus on protecting education in California? How does
eroding public education in California influence (HARM?) students, faculty,
the community and the economy? How do we communicate to Sacramento the
importance of public education as an investment in California's human
resources?
Speakers and performers will connect the NEW AND DIFFICULT everyday choices
made by students and faculty - trying to get into classes, adjusting to
changes in fees and financial aid, feeling frozen out of transfers, having
to turn students away from classes, wondering about the future - to the
broader realities of the California Budget process. Is there really no
money for education, or do we need to rethink California's priorities and
fiscal processes?
The Ash Grove is a community-based cultural arts organization that produces
and promotes traditional, contemporary, and ground-breaking music and other
arts from diverse cultures to spark social understanding and activism.
This event is also generously supported and funded by the Glendale College
Associated Students, the Glendale College Foundation, CSEA, and the Glendale
College Administration.
***
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/28-2
Murphy's Law and the Stupidity of Obama's
Drill-Drill-Drill Offshore Oil Policy
by Dave Lindorff
Common Dreams: April 28, 2010
British Petroleum had a fail-safe system for it's Deepwater Horizon floating
deep-water drilling rig.
You know, the one that blew up and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving a
tangled spaghetti pile of 22-inch steel pipe one mile long all balled up on
the sea floor a mile below the surface, and that is leaking oil at 42,000
gallons per day...so far.
The thing is, the fail-safe system, about the size of a McMansion sitting at
the wellhead on the ocean floor, um, failed. It didn't collapse and shut off
the flow of oil as intended, and it could take months now to shut the well
down--during which time the leak rate is likely to increase to up to 300,000
gallons per day, or over two million gallons a week.
President Obama claimed last month that off-shore drilling technology had
become so advanced that oil spills and blowouts were a thing of the past. Of
course, as he said this, Australia and Indonesia were still assessing the
damage from a similar offshore oil platform, the Montana, in the Timor Sea,
which blew out and poured millions of gallons of oil into the ocean off
Western Australia for over three months before it could be sealed off.
Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Given that this is true, particular of complex technological enterprises,
the question that needs to be asked is not, what is the probability of a
catastrophic failure of an offshore well, but what is the potential damage
in the event of even one such catastrophe for the local environment?
In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, the potential damage if this well
really blows is staggering. Just 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, it
poses a near fatal risk to the region's wetlands and bayous, with their
shrimp and oyster fisheries, not to mention the breeding grounds they
provide for endangered birds, fish and other animals.
But the real lesson of the Deepwater Horizon is what it means for expanded
drilling in the Arctic waters north of Alaska.
Oil companies, including BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and others, like
Goldman traders looking at a tranch of subprime mortgages, are casting
covetous eyes on the Arctic Ocean and the oil and gas that studies suggest
lie under the virgin sea floor. Their plan is to drill for these
hydrocarbons once the summer sea ice vanishes as a result of rising global
temperatures (more about this in a future article).
Obama, as part of his opening of more coastal areas to drilling, is
including areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, which are already ice free
during summer.
But let's think about this for a moment. Suppose there were a blowout like
the one in the Gulf of Mexico at a rig drilling in the Arctic? Suppose it
happened towards the end of the short summer, when the ice was about to
return to cover the ocean surface? If it was a blowout that couldn't be
plugged, like the Montana blowout in the Timor Sea, or if the fail-safe
system at the wellhead failed, as with the Deepwater Horizon, and if the
only solution was, as with the Montana well, to drill new wells to ease the
pressure on the blown well, how would this be done, once the ice moved in?
Answer? It couldn't be done. Murphy's Law again. And so millions of gallons
of crude oil would rise up out of the burst wellhead to spread out
underneath the ice, whence it would eventually move on to destroy hundreds
of miles of fragile coastline, probably killing untold numbers of species
that live in the affected waters. The damage from such a completely
predictable disaster wouldn't just be staggering, like the Montana or the
Deepwater Horizon blowouts, but incomprehensible!
So why are we even talking about this?
The argument, made ad nauseum by Republicans and Democrats alike, is that
the US needs more energy, and that we don't want to be dependent for our oil
on "countries that hate us."
And yet, there is a much simpler answer than hanging a hydrocarbon Sword of
Damocles over our nation's critical coastal areas. Just copy Europe and
impose a 100% tax on gas and oil, to make people turn away from 15 or 20 or
25-mile-per-gallon vehicles and start driving fuel-efficient cars,
car-pooling or forgoing cars altogether.
Even better, tax the crap out of cars that don't get at least 35 or even 40
mpg.
Oh, I know. People will say, "but poor people in rural areas or in the
suburbs can't pay those rates for gas to get to work, and they have to buy
used cars that don't get such high mileage rates."
I understand the problem, but it is solvable, by establishing refundable tax
credits for low-income people who can document long commuting distances, for
example.
The main point is that the country doesn't need to drill in risky settings.
It needs only to cut oil consumption.
What's clear is that drilling in the open ocean is simply disaster after
disaster waiting to happen.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. He is author
of Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553075527?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0553075527>(BantamBooks,
1992), and his latest book "The Case for Impeachment
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/031237254X?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=031237254X&adid=1325Y0QA314TRVSSQQX8&>"
(St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net
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