While many in the US will be recovering from Cinco de Drinko hangovers tomorrow, thousands of Russian citizens will gather to commemorate the May 6 2012 protest in a march to Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square. A year later, they will gather to protest Putin’s “reelection” for a third term, despite the threat of arrest and fines for even helping spread the word. Many activists are still under house arrest or in jail as a result of last year’s demonstrations for clean elections.
I hope American citizens will take note: we have the freedom to speak out (at least, those of us not in the military). We have the ability to force the government to make changes for the better, but we don’t work together like we should. We don’t push hard enough to demand the kind of accountability and transparency that a “free” nation should expect of its government. We don’t fight when our government tramples the rights of foreign citizens until we see the negative impact it has on us, and even then, the outcry has been weak at best.
A case in point is the most recent announcement that has citizens in Huntsville, Alabama, concerned and pointing fingers at the current president. Redstone Arsenal is a large US military base adjacent to the town which was declared a EPA Superfund site in the 1980s (under the Reagan administration). The fact that the use, testing, and improper disposal of chemical weapons contaminated the soil has been a known fact to the government for decades. Apparently it was not covered by the local media there until today, and even then, by a journalist who only referred to the weapons buried there in the World War II era. Now citizens are starting to ask questions, only after the announcement has been “officially” made that it will take 25 years to clean the waste. Even after the waste is cleaned, what will be done regarding the connected environmental impacts? What will be done for the residents made sick by poisons they did not fully understand? And what will be done for those “unseen” souls who were killed and injured overseas by these American weapons? Will the fact that the local community benefitted from these weapons economically, through military contract jobs and off-base spending by soldiers and their families, diminish the backlash? Or will the story gain traction? (Share the hell out of it!)
We have political freedom. We have no excuse. There are thousands of ways we can make our country itself a better global citizen. Just pick one.
Good luck to our friends in Russia. Stay strong, and stay safe tomorrow!!
— Suzanne Skaar
[For more information on chemical weapons in general, please visit Suzanne’s other website, www.banteargasnow.com .]
Barefoot and Political 