STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
Working For Peace, Justice, and A Sustainable Environment
July 2003
Living Lightly
Tuolumne
River Coalition continues work
By
ALLISON BOUCHER
The Tuolumne River
Coalition continues its work for the Tuolumne River.
Last year we spent two days
meeting with legislative aides in the Capitol. The result was $2.625 million
from Propositions 13 and 40. Waterford will receive $625,000 to purchase
property for a park on the river at the Hickman Bridge. Stanislaus County will
receive $140,000 for Riverdale Park. The Tuolumne River Regional Park will
receive $1,140,000 and Ceres will receive $720,000 to restore 38 acres on the
floodplain at the new River Bluff Regional Park.
We spent two days lobbying
again this Spring and hope to receive funding from Proposition 50. There are
several good projects proposed by Coalition members that need funding.
The Coalition is also
researching options for its future organizational status. Being a watershed
group (our current status) has limitations in decision making and funding
opportunities. We are considering different organizational structures that would
better enable us to attract funds and facilitate future river projects.
The Steering Committee
includes these voting members: Friends of the Tuolumne, Yokuts Group of the
Sierra Club, City of Modesto, City of Waterford, City of Ceres, Tuolumne River
Trust, Stanislaus County, East Stanislaus Resource Conservation District, San
Francisco Public Utilities, and Turlock and Modesto Irrigation Districts.
Cooperating members include U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California Fish and
Game, U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service. The Coalition works to
represent all interests on the Tuolumne River.
ACTION:
For a poster with photos representing the various interests and projects on the
river and a pamphlet explaining our work, call Allison Boucher, Friends of the
Tuolumne, 537-5722. Call if your organization would like a slide program about
the Coalition's projects.
“Nonviolent
Towards All Life”
By
VASU MURTY
In his 1975 book, Animal
Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes that the “tyranny
of human over nonhuman animals” is “causing an amount of pain and suffering
that can only be compared with that which resulted from the centuries of tyranny
by white humans over black humans.”
Singer favorably compares
animal liberation with women’s liberation, black liberation, gay liberation,
and other movements. He optimistically observes: “the environmental
movement...has led people to think about our relations with other animals in a
way that seemed impossible only a decade ago.
“To date,
environmentalists have been more concerned with wildlife and endangered species
than with animals in general, but it is not too big a jump from the thought that
it is wrong to treat whales as giant vessels filled with oil and blubber to the
thought that it is wrong to treat (animals) as machines for converting grains to
flesh.”
Although prophetic,
historical voices have been raised in defense of animals and the environment,
organized religion is just beginning to understand that the “sanctity of
life” includes other species. According to Benedictine monk, Brother David
Steindl-Rast, all life on earth is interconnected:
“...the survival of our
planet depends on our sense of belonging to all other humans, to dolphins caught
in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration
camps, to redwoods and rain forests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the
ozone layer.”
English metaphysician John
Locke attacked cruelty to animals in his “Thoughts on Education,” which
dealt with the raising children to be virtuous and humane. “This tendency to
cruelty should be watched in them,” wrote Locke, “and, if they incline to
any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of
tormenting and killing of beasts will, by degrees, harden their hearts even
towards men. And, they who delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior
creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their
own kind. Children should from the beginning be brought up in an abhorrence of
killing or tormenting any living creature.”
Count Leo Tolstoy became a
vegetarian pacifist in 1885. Giving up “sport” hunting, and was opposed to
killing all living creatures, including ants. He believed there was a natural
progression of violence, a slippery slope that led inevitably to war among human
beings.
In his essay “The First
Step,” Tolstoy wrote that flesh-eating is “simply immoral, as it involves
the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling; killing.” By
killing, Tolstoy argued, “man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the
highest spiritual capacity, that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures
like himself and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply
seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!”
Leading Protestant
theologian, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, taught: “We need a boundless ethics which
will include the animals also.” Schweitzer opposed the use of animals in
entertainment. “I never go to a menagerie,” he once wrote, “because I
cannot endure the sight of the misery of the captive animals. The exhibiting of
trained animals I abhor. What an amount of suffering and cruel punishment the
poor creatures have to endure to give a few minutes of pleasure to men devoid of
all thought and feeling for them.”
Reverend Marc Wessels of
the International Network for Religion and Animals (INRA) admits: “...many
animal rights activists and ecologists are highly critical of Christians because
of our relative failure thus far adequately to defend animals and to preserve
the natural environment. Yet there are positive signs of a growing movement of
Christian activists and theologians who are committed to the process of
ecological stewardship and animal liberation.”
According to Reverend
Wessels: “The most important teaching which Jesus shared was the need for
people to love God with their whole self and to love their neighbor as they
loved themselves. Jesus expanded the concept of neighbor to include those who
were normally excluded, and it is therefore not too farfetched for us to
consider the animals as our neighbors.
“To think about animals
as our brothers and sisters is not a new or radical idea. By extending the idea
of neighbor, the love of neighbor includes love of, compassion for, and advocacy
of animals.”
Rachel Carson wrote:
“Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is whether its
victim is human or animal we cannot expect things to be much better in this
world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living
creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in
killing we set back the progress of humanity.”
In a 1990 letter,
vegetarian labor leader Cesar Chavez similarly observed: “Kindness and
compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society.
Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against
animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of
people. Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting and cockfighting, bullfighting
and rodeos are cut from the same fabric: violence. Only when we have become
nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves.”
Peter Singer concludes,
that “by ceasing to rear and kill animals for food, we can make extra food
available for humans that, properly distributed, would eliminate starvation and
malnutrition from this planet. Animal Liberation is Human Liberation, too.”
The animal rights movement should be supported by all caring Americans.
A positive parenting approach
By LAURIE DAILY-JOHNSTON
Today
there is group of people, always said to be so important to us, who are, as a
whole, treated like second class citizens. If you look at some of the
advertising that bombards us every day, children are portrayed like little
adults, with adult clothing and presumed adult experience, the climate is really
anti-child. From beauty pageants, to sports; and to the unrealistic, ‘butt of
jokes’ portrayal seen on sitcoms, the image of ‘child ’ has been greatly
distorted, and many times fabricated. Even well-meaning, educated parents ( such
as I considered myself to be) often unwittingly undermine our children, yet we
expect them to know things without being taught and to know all ‘the rules’
without clarification.
Then
I heard a mesmerizing speaker, Dawn Fry, who,
for the first time, allowed me to look at my parenting method through new eyes,
and the reality, though shocking and a bit uncomfortable, was a real wake-up
call.
Dawn
Fry has been in Child Care for over 20 years, with over 60,000 hours of working
directly with children, and in various other capacities with families. Her
methods have been tried and refined, and applied in a wide variety of family
types through the years. As these families began to witness the positive results
Dawn had achieved with their own
children, they began to mimic her method. This was the beginning of Dawn TalkR
Dawn TalkR is
basically an active language method that results in lasting positive, behavioral
adjustments in children, because it always respects the child, and never
undermines or insults. As she spelled out the concepts in the seminar I attended
I found myself many times thinking, “Of course, that makes perfect sense! Why
didn’t I see that before?!” Here are examples of the Dawn Fry’s method:
•
Never preface instructions with the word “No”. Dawn
explained that nearly all children shut down before the last syllable is out
(and that sentence is just one syllable!), and more importantly it doesn’t
teach anything. This method works
with root, descriptive phrases, such
as: “...not a Help-Yourself…” or “...not for climbing...” or “not
friendly…”. By simply substituting not for no
a parent might feel more inclined to offer more information to the
child, and in turn the child becomes more responsive because the perspective is
positive.
• Do not use the phrase
“Be Careful…”.
As Dawn
explains, telling a child simply ‘be careful’ what we are implying
unintentionally is that currently they are not being careful, or they are inept
in some way. As a child I remember feeling resentment when my parents said that
to me, yet until I went to this seminar I was never aware of this . Rather than
let another learning opportunity pass by, this
method uses non-possessive root phrases such as: “ fire can burn us” or
“doors can pinch us” or “cars can bump us.” By including yourself using
“us”
it shows the child that even adults can
make these errors, and it doesn’t reflect on the child’s worth.
One
of the most difficult behavioral problems a parent or guardian can experience is
the power struggle with the defiant child. Dawn Fry has developed effective ways
to address this that actually empower the child by simply addressing the
circumstance, and what will/will not occur depending on the child’s decision.
For instance, “When the toys are
picked up, then I will read a
story” “When you put your shoes
on, then we can go outside” and so
on. When explained logically, and in a non-threatening or non-coercive manner,
the child’s ability to use begging or tantrums for achieving, desired results
is removed
This
seminar changed my whole look at parent/child relationships. Many parts of the
method were so logical and simple that I felt a bit embarrassed by overlooking
the obvious for so many years.
Dawn’s
basic theory is bringing mutual respect into parenting, and providing guidelines
for achieving the best possible results. Children will learn many things they
will need for their whole life, and the parent(s) can feel they did the best job
in preparing them. Dawn’s program teaches
self control, self reliance, and self confidence naturally, by removing the
long-standing practice of authoritative and punitive parenting that was the norm
for so long.
ACTION: For information, reach Dawn at: 4200 Park Blvd., Suite #226,
Oakland, CA 94602; 925-209-0809, or tobradawn@aol.com.
Visit her website at: www.dawntalk.com
The
author lives in Modesto. Reach her at 531-1341.
