If you’re like me, your heart has been captured by the actions of Orca mother Tahlequah (J35) and her pod. Beyond an act of grief, it seems a courageous, intelligent effort to communicate urgency to their human co-inhabitants of the Salish Sea region. The choice is stark: survival or extinction.
At Tuesday’s Orca Task Force meeting, I was shocked that this urgency seems to escape some of our policy makers when they argue that the Lower Snake River dams are “irreplaceable.” It is offensive and obviously wrong to assert that, when we know that the Bonneville Power Administration has many options for generating clean, renewable electricity.
What is truly irreplaceable are the Orca and the Chinook salmon and the life support systems that are on the precipice of collapse.
We must honor Mother Orca Tahlequah’s courage, intelligence, and endurance by taking actions to make her sacrifice deliver real change for her pod, for the Chinook salmon and the beings of the Salish Sea. She is successfully making the invisible visible more effectively than any activist organization ever could, and we can build upon her action.
JOIN OUR ORGANIZING (video or phone) CALL TOMORROW, FRIDAY AUGUST 10th @ NOON!
RSVP HERE to participate and collaborate with others to plan actions and art builds:
We will open the call with brief reflections and introductions, followed by the briefest of overviews of the aspects of this complex issue. Most of the call will be spent going through a menu of ways Backbone Campaign and our Solutionary Rail project tools can be utilized and then creating teams to do so, offering specific next steps for all participants.
- Ongoing Art Builds at Backbone Warehouse to create banners for use around the region over freeways and on the waterways
- Overpass bannering coordination and brief overview
- Train and be part of Kayaktivism events in Puget Sound and the biggest ever Free the Snake” Flotilla on the Snake River, Sept 7-8
- Deploy large inflatable Orca and Salmon in Olympia, in your communities and at the Orca Task Force meetings
- Coordinated light projection with for Snake River dam removal
- Organize a Human Mural in the shape of an Orca (shown at right – see moreHERE)
- Informational calls to identify potential solutions to the problems we face together.
- Kayaktivist trainings at the end of August
We’ll be preparing for the Free the Snake Flotilla as well as other potential on water actions to push for bold actions to save the Orca. Contact Roni@backbonecampaign.org for more information.