[Peace-discuss] FW: Southern Illinois Greens Meeting; Oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, and More!

Sat Aug 29 07:38:12 EDT 2015

    NationBuilder

Dear  ..........

 Southern
Illinois Greens Meet Saturday!   

This is just a quick reminder that Southern Illinois Greens will be
gathering tomorrow, Saturday, August 29th, from 12 noon - 3 p.m. at
the Little Nashville restaurant, on Highway 127, just south of
Interstate Highway 64 (exit 50), 1700 State Route 127, Nashville,
IL.

The main purpose of the
meeting will be to either recognize or endorse a candidate for U.S.
House of Representatives in the district. We will also discuss
running for precinct committeeperson, other seats up for election in
2016, what is involved in securing ballot access, and give Greens and
persons interested in the Green Party an opportunity to network and
get plugged in to Green Party activities in Southern Illinois.

The meeting will start with lunch and an opportunity to socialize,
from noon to 1. The meeting itself will start at 1. There is no
requirement to be at the lunch but that is encouraged. We will be
ordering off the menu, so please try to arrive by noon to place your
order.

Please join us!

Also on Saturday:
All About Oil   

On August 29, Greens in Chicago will host a panel of speakers,
including Dr. Lora Chamberlain of Frack Free Illinois, Mike Lee on
transportation, Li-Ping Yuan, Geologist,  and Charles Paidock on the
threat of dangerous “bomb” trains hauling highly flammable crude oil
in unsafe tank cars throughout our state. The event will be held at
the College of Complexes, as part of its Weekly Free Speech Forum on
Social Issues and Current Events, held every Saturday, at 6:00 PM, at
the Hilltop Restaurant, Foster + California. $3 tuition, dinner
optional.

Illinois Green
Party Supports the Independent Map Amendment

The Independent Map Amendment is a proposal to address the
longstanding problem in Illinois of the two corporate parties drawing
convoluted, often bizarre, political district boundaries in order to
protect their respective incumbents – in other words, the problem of
representatives choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their
representatives. This also frequently contributes to the problem of
ethnic minorities being underrepresented in government. The Amendment
would create an 11-member commission representing the demographic and
geographic diversity of the state. Although the Democratic and
Republican party leaders in the General Assembly would get to select
four members on the commission, at least three of the other seven
members would have to be unaffiliated with either party.

The commission meetings and records would be open to the public,
and the commission would be required to hold public hearings
throughout the state. The commission drawn maps would be required to
protect the voting rights of racial and ethnic minorities, and the
maps would be drawn without regard to incumbency or partisanship.

It will take hundreds of thousands of petition signatures to place
the Independent Map Amendment on the November 2016 general election
ballot. The Illinois Green Party supports the Amendment and we urge
you to join the effort to get it on the ballot. The amendment text and
more detailed explanation of the reform are available at www.MapAmendment.org.

Stop the Dakota
Access Pipeline! 

The movement against human-caused climate change has focused a lot
of attention against the Keystone XL Pipeline. But did you know that
Big Oil is seeking permission to build another pipeline to transport
over 660,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands and Bakken shale oil per
day, through Illinois?

The proposed Dakota Access pipeline will extend from the Bakken
Shale fracking fields in North Dakota, across South Dakota and Iowa,
across the Mississippi River at Hamilton, IL, to the ETCO pipeline
near Patoka, Illinois (east of Lake Carlyle). The ETCO pipeline
project will build a pump station and new line from Patoka to a
compressor station by Johnsonville, in Wayne County. ETCO will use
their recently purchased, repurposed Trunkline Gas Co. LLC pipeline
that goes through Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge and the
Shawnee National Forest, under Lake of Egypt in Johnson County,
through the Cache River Wetland, across the Ohio River near the Joppa
compressor station, and south to Gulf oil refineries in Nederland,
Texas. The southern portion of the route is an older pipeline that the
companies have been granted permission to reverse flow. The Mayflower
Arkansas Pipeline disaster in 2013 shows the consequences of allowing
a reversal of flow in older pipelines.

The Dakota Access and ETCO projects are a joint venture between
Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66. If approved by the Illinois
Commerce Commission (ICC), Dakota Access and ETCO will begin
operations in late 2015, and be in service a year later.

The pipeline companies want the ICC to permit taking of private
land by eminent domain, claiming their “common carrier” pipelines are
“needed” to transport the oil to create the fuels, lubricants,
asphalts, and other refined products that will benefit Illinoisans.
However, the oil will largely be shipped overseas, making huge profits
for the oil companies, while leaving environmental costs to our local
communities and landowners.

Phillips 66 recently had an oil pipeline spill into the Cahokia
Canal and Mississippi River from its Wood River Refinery in Illinois.
Energy Transfer Partner ventures also had spills, including in
Philadelphia in January 2014, and a gas pipeline explosion in Cuero,
Texas this June. Unrefined Bakken crude oil and Canadian tar sands are
corrosive, toxic, and highly explosive. A recent Wall Street
Journal review found that there were 1,400 pipeline spills and
accidents in the US in 2010-2013, with four out of every five pipeline
accidents discovered by local residents, not the companies that own
the pipelines.

The taking of private property by eminent domain should be limited
to circumstances where needed to serve the public good, not used to
enrich wealthy corporations largely responsible for the current
climate crisis and other attacks on the quality of our air, water and
land.

We are already experiencing the impacts of an oncoming climate
catastrophe, as sea levels rise, new temperature records are set, and
droughts, fires and destructive extreme weather events become more
frequent. The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change
report affirms that the world must quickly and drastically reduce its
dependence on fossil fuels to avoid further climate chaos. This
pipeline flies in the face of that dire warning, by facilitating even
greater amounts of Bakken crude and Canadian Petroleum products to
market. The public interest demands building job-creating alternatives
to fossil fuel consumption, not accelerating the flow of fossil fuels,
lowering the price and encouraging more consumption.

Please take a stand against the pipeline! The ICC needs to hear
from you! Write online public comments to the ICC regarding the Dakota
Access and ETCO pipeline projects, by visiting http://www.icc.illinois.gov/docket/comment/ and
clicking the following links: 14-0754 Dakota Access Public Comment,
14-0755 ETCO Public Comment.

Call your friends and write letters to the editor about why we need
to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure and start creating
renewable infrastructure. There has been almost no news on this
project. If the ICC administrative judge doesn't hear from the public,
that we don't want this, that this pipeline is NOT a NECESSITY and it
is NOT IN THE PUBLIC's INTEREST, then it will be business as usual,
and eminent domain will be granted.

Also sign and share this petition with your family and friends:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/deny-pipelines-eminent?mailing_id=30628&source=s.icn.em.cr&r_by=5723472

Support the
Equality Act! 

The Illinois Green Party supports the Equality Act of 2015, now
before Congress. This is an omnibus proposal to amend the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and other federal laws to include protections that ban
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity,
and sex in the areas of employment, housing, public accommodations,
public education, federal funding, credit, and the jury system. The
bill is H.R. 3185 in the House and S. 1858. Contact your Congressional
representatives and let them know you support full legal and social
equality, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity!

Oppose the DARK
Act in the Senate

Legislation dubbed the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK
Act (H.R. 1599), passed the House of Representatives last month. The
bill preempts state and local authority to label and regulate
genetically engineered (GE) foods. A Senate version of this bill has
not yet been introduced but that is likely to occur after Congress
concludes its August recess. Greens are encouraged to contact our
Senate delegation and let them know that we oppose any such measure.
The bill codifies a voluntary labeling system approach, blocks the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration from ever implementing mandatory GE
food labeling and allows food companies to continue to make misleading
“natural” claims for foods that contain GE ingredients.

Polls show that over 90% of Americans want GMO labels on foods -
about 70% of food products contain at least one GMO ingredient. On
August 20th, a Perspective article published in the New
England Journal of Medicine calls for the labeling of genetically
modified foods.

"We believe the time has come to revisit the United States'
reluctance to label GM foods," writes Dr. Philip J. Landrigan,
co-author with Charles Benbrook, of the article entitled "GMOs,
Herbicides, and Public Health."

The two write that such labeling "is essential for tracking
emergence of novel food allergies and assessing effects of chemical
herbicides applied to GM crops."

"It would respect the wishes of a growing number of consumers who
insist they have a right to know what foods they are buying and how
they were produced," the two write.

"And the argument that there is nothing new about genetic
rearrangement misses the point that GM crops are now the agricultural
products most heavily treated with herbicides and that two of these
herbicides may pose risks of cancer." The full article can be read here.

Support Our Work:
Become A Sustainer

We’ve got a lot of challenges ahead of us in our efforts to get
more Greens elected to office. Please support our work by becoming a
monthly sustainer! It’s easy. Just visit our donor page here.

Illinois Green Party
http://www.ilgp.org/

Illinois Green Party · 213 S Wheaton Ave · Wheaton
IL 60187

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