Equalogy

Posts Tagged ‘Equality’

Greta Browne, a Unitarian minister from PA, is making her way across the states to alert people to the dangers of climate change.  Greta draws attention to herself by wearing her trademark shit that says “Walking for the Climate” but besides that shirt, all her other clothing, down to her sneakers, is second hand.  Although she does use a gas-guzzling van to help her on on the trek, she says she has reduced her carbon footprint to half that of an average American.

So far, Greta has walked 1,100 miles, starting from outside New Orleans and will end this week in upstate NY, near the Canadian border.

Along the way people have offered her support in the form of money and water bottles, but some have joined her to argue that humans are not the cause for the growing temperature of the planet.

“Mostly people think [climate change] is a problem,” she said, “but mostly they think it will not impact them anytime soon.”

A longtime member of the Green Party and the founder of a vegetarian cooperative restaurant, she has been concerned for years about global warming. But after she retired last year, she joined an environmental group and read “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet” by Mark Lynas. The book, which argues that most of humanity could be wiped out by the end of the century if Earth’s temperatures continue to warm, galvanized her.

Leslie Kaufman, who wrote the article published on Common Dreams says this kind of action is a growing trend among environmentalists

In choosing to promote her cause this way – as opposed to, say, pressing for legislative change – Ms. Browne joins a growing list of environmental activists who are hoping to draw public attention to the issue through stunts: Colin Beavan, for example, the writer who lived without toilet paper and electricity, or David de Rothschild, a self-described “eco-adventurer” in San Francisco who has built a boat made of reused plastic water bottles and plans to sail to Sydney, Australia.

These women are amazing.  The Gulabi Gang (literal translation: pink gang) dress in pink saris and fight injustice in unconventional ways.  Sampat Pal, 47, founded the gang three years ago in Uttar Pradesh.

“Since its inception three years ago in a lawless area of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, women from some 600 villages have joined the group, wielding heavy clubs and and traditional bamboo batons, called lathis, used by police for crowd control to “convince” wife beaters, rapists and corrupt bureaucrats to change their ways. — via San Fransisco Chronicle

Pal has been charged with 11 criminal offense, but it doesn’t change her goal of showing women that they can stand up for themselves.

The great bloggers over at feministing have written a great deal about how marketing pink products like laptops, ipods and gameboys to women is a sexist practice so when I see pink used to represent power its extremely refreshing.  Taking such a strong symbol of femininity like the color pink and using it to demand power is an amazing example of what feminism has the potential to be.

This pink gang also is part of a growing trend of women who are banding together to fight for their rights.

Stay tuned as we blog on the future of our planet in relation to equality for all people!