Hood River stand-in January 21, 2017
Many people in the world, the United States and the Pacific Northwest participated in the Women’s March January 21, 2017. Despite recent highway closures and inclement weather, some Gorge residents joined the Portland, Oregon Women’s March including women in a bus coordinated by the Columbia Gorge Women’s Action Network. Others joined in smaller marches and “stand-ins” that were closer to their home in Hood River, The Dalles, Parkdale, Trout Lake and other Gorge communities.
Women, men, and children gathered with signs speaking to a wide variety of issues. While most focused on women’s rights, a great number of people carried signs about environmental issues–the focus of EnviroGorge.
People at various marches carried signs reading: Climate Justice is a Women’s Issue, The Climate Still Changes Even if you Delete the Page, There can be no Business Done on a Dead Planet, Keep Public Lands in Public Hands, Science is Real, and those pictured in this article from the Hood River stand-in. Several signs promoted freedom of the press and free speech.
In Hood River, signs were accompanied by chants in call-and-response style, “protect the environment,” “protect free speech,” and “save our mother earth.”
The Unity Principles listed by the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington included environmental justice as one of eight principles of the march:
“We believe that every person and every community in our nation has the right to clean water, clean air, and access to and enjoyment of public lands. We believe that our environment and our climate must be protected, and that our land and natural resources cannot be exploited for corporate gain or greed – especially at the risk of public safety and health.“
We have forgot what must be remembered and the Power that “We the People “ have.
* We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…. That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men…. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. … Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Declaration of Independence (1776).
Vicki, this sent me to the National Archives to check the wording. It is powerful to reread the entire document.
Susan