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Category Archives: Grist
Casa Made of Dammed
May 29, 2008
Next to a busy train station in Buenos Aires, not far from the chic restaurants and condos getting all the attention these days, lies another world. Behind a gate is a long metal shed, once used to store trains. This is La Casa del Afectado Social y Ambiental — literally, “the house of the enviro-socially affected.” Here, amidst the bustle of traffic and commuters, hundreds of people on the flip side of the nation’s renewed glitter are taking a stand. (more…)
Doing a Heckuva Job
An interview with Australian politician and rabble-rouser Bob Brown
04 Jan 2007
Bob Brown looks a caricature of an Australian senator: a bit disheveled in a rumpled gray suit, unfashionable glasses, and a goofy grin. But a little rumple goes a long way. In a career that has spanned three decades, Brown has brought new awareness of environmental and human rights into the Australian political process. (more…)
Mother Knows Best
Nov 6, 2006
Mary Brune looked worried. “I don’t know what the problem is,” she said, peering at the generator in the grass. Attached to it was a blower that was, in turn, attached to a puddle of yellow nylon. The next morning, that puddle was supposed to inflate to become a giant rubber ducky, the centerpiece of a protest Brune was leading at a Target store near her home in the San Francisco Bay area.
For Brune, the golden ducky represented much more than a call to remove PVC from Target’s shelves. It was her coming out as an environmental activist.
Eighteen months earlier, Brune was home nursing her newborn daughter and watching the news when a story came on about perchlorate, describing how this toxic component of rocket fuel had been found in human breast milk. “I didn’t have any idea what perchlorate was,” Brune says, “but I was really scared. Then I was outraged.” By the time her husband got home from work, she had made up her mind: “We’ve got to do something about this,” she told him.