Category Archives: ENVIRONMENT

SUPERSTORM SANDY – 10 YEARS AGO

The following was written by Mitchel Cohen in 2012 and printed in his book, What Is Direct Action? Lessons from (and to) Occupy Wall Street (intro by Prof. Richard Wolff) Gravesend Bay, Brooklyn, looking northwest towards the Verrazano Bridge and Staten Island. October 29, 2012. Todd Maisel, New York Daily News November, 2012   Ten Years […]

LETTER FROM JAILED ATTORNEY STEVEN DONZIGER, IMPRISONED FOR FIGHTING AGAINST CHEVRON’S POISONING OF THE ECUADORAN AMAZON

Mitchel Cohen interviews Steven Donziger, then under house arrest, in July 2021 at rally on his behalf outside his Manhattan apartment. Dear friends and comrades, This new message from Steven Donziger contains much information.  Also go to freedonziger.com for additional information.  If we’re going to overcome the climate catastrophe, we have to be able to […]

A TALK IN HAVANA

Giant mural at University of Havana in support of Occupy Wall Street. Details list hundreds of corporations and their profits for the year. A talk by Mitchel Cohen at the “Seminar on Socialist Renewal and the Capitalist Crisis – A Cuban-North American Exchange”, Havana, Cuba: June 16-30, 2013 in association with the Center for Global […]

THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF BERTA CÁCERES

“We know with complete certainty that the motivation for her vile assassination was her struggle against the exploitation of nature’s common wealth and the defense of the Lenca people. Her murder is an attempt to put an end to the struggle of the Lenca people against all forms of exploitation and expulsion. It is an […]

THE STRUGGLE FOR ECOLOGICAL AGRICULTURE IN CUBA

by RICHARD LEVINS with an into by Mitchel Cohen With the indiscriminate spraying of toxic insecticides on the people of NY and the natural environment, this article — originally written in 1991 and updated in 1995 — becomes even more useful. In it, Richard Levins discusses, among other things, the use of ants and natural […]

STOP NYC’S PESTICIDES SPRAYING, NOW!

Posted originally to http://www.NoSpray.org August 11, 2015 — The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYC DOH) renews its annual pesticide-spraying assault on the people of New York City tonight in Staten Island and Queens. Areas of New Jersey are also being widely sprayed. All mass spraying of pyrethroid and organophosphate pesticides are dangerous […]

ROUNDUP READY? DRINK UP, IT’S GOOD FOR YOU … NOT!

by CATHRYN SWAN reprinted from WashingtonSquareParkBlog.com Environmental advocacy groups, Beyond Pesticides and the No Spray Coalition are calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to “stop the use of the country’s most popular herbicide, glyphosate, in the wake of an international ruling that it causes cancer in […]

DO NOT CONSENT TO GASSING THE NYC SUBWAYS AND BUSES (Updated)

Photo by Cathryn Swan Attorney Joel Kupferman, of the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project, speaking at press conference at NY City Hall against Brookhaven National Laboratory’s gas experiments on NYC subways, July 23, 2013. Joel announces filing of Freedom of Information request, and calls for oversight by the NY City Council and for […]

RED ALERT! CALL TO DEMAND SHUT DOWN OF INDIAN POINT NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, NOW!

They’ve shut the subways. They’ve shut the schools. They’ve shut the parks, tunnels and shortly the bridges. But the nuclear power generators at Indian Point, just 26 miles north of New York City? Those they’re keeping open. This is insane! Should the waters of the Hudson flood into the plant, that will be an utter […]

TROPICAL STORM SANDY — Report by KPFA News (Berkeley) includes interview at end with Mitchel Cohen

Click here to listen to Sunday night’s news report from WBAI’s sister station, KPFA, on the West Coast.

LISTEN GORE: SOME INCONVENIENT TRUTHS ABOUT THE POLITICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

BY MITCHEL COHEN Barack Obama, like Al Gore and other Democrats supposedly concerned with saving the environment, propose false solutions for what they call the “energy crisis” we’re facing. They want to: 1) Build new nuclear power plants and centralized (so that they could meter it) “sustainable energy” projects; 2) Utilize coal gassification, liquification technologies […]

WHERE THE CRISES INTERSECT: LAWRENCE SUMMERS, AL GORE, AND U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL & ECONOMIC POLICY

Introduction OBAMA’S WINTER OF NEO-LIBERAL DISCONTENT by MITCHEL COHEN President Obama’s chief economics adviser, Lawrence Summers, left the cabinet a year ago as rebellions against the neoliberal, austerity and anti-democratic programs he authored washed over Tunisia, Egypt, and Europe. But hopes for a shift in government policy were dashed, as President Obama continued to pursue […]

NEW YORK CITY MUST STOP SPRAYING TOXIC PESTICIDES IMMEDIATELY!

The City has announced it will spray dangerous pesticides in crowded residential areas in Brooklyn and Queens on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011. The No Spray Coalition is appalled by Mayor Bloomberg’s and the City’s Department of Health decision to renew the mass-spraying — no legitimate reasons given — and demands that the City stop this […]

FUKUSHIMA – SIX YEARS AGO, MARCH 11th, 2011

A Hard Rain’s A-Fallin’ Is It Too Late to Save This Planet? O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! – William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1 “In the generation of nuclear energy, manmade hazards seem unavoidable, but bankruptcy strikes us as a needless […]

JAPAN NUKE UPDATE

As of 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, March 29, 2011 — the 32nd anniversary of the nuclear power plant disaster at Three Mile Island …. Plutonium found in Japan’s soil. Radioactive water leaking into the ocean. “Partial” meltdown under way. Those who believe that nukes are the answer to global climate change Seek a technological fix To […]

UPDATES ON RADIATION REACHING THE U.S.

Alan in Sebastopol CA, who has been doing Geiger counts since the disaster in Japan began, has been posting his daily results at: Radiation Monitor Similar grassroots efforts are HERE and HERE. Here’s also the EPA’s map. For more information about the specific radioisotopes that have reached the Bay Area, check out the rainwater monitoring […]

END NUCLEAR POWER BEFORE IT ENDS US

by HARVEY WASSERMAN The Japanese people are now paying a horrific price for the impossible dream of the “Peaceful Atom.” For a half-century they have been told that what’s happening now at Fukushima would never occur. Our hearts and souls must first and foremost go out to them. As fellow humans, we must do everything […]

NUCLEAR RADIATION & THE DESTRUCTION OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

“In the generation of nuclear energy, manmade hazards seem unavoidable, but bankruptcy strikes us as a needless risk.” – Barron’s Weekly (the business magazine), summing up the experience of the near meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, March 21, 1981 “The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic […]

THOUGHTS ON “THE CAPITALIST INFESTO”

Marxists and the Ecological Dimension: Is Marx’s Critique of Science and Technology Radical Enough? By Mitchel Cohen FOR YEARS, AS I’VE BEEN ACTIVE IN SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVE­MENTS I’VE WORKED WITH PEOPLE WHO CALL THEMSELVES MARXISTS. I taught an underground course at Stony Brook for 16 years called “Marxism for Beginners”. And the group that I […]

THE CAPITALIST INFESTO (Part Two: What Is To Be Undone?)

What Is To Be UnDone? With all of this in mind, I offer the following six proposals for greening Marxism, which is essential if we are going to both save the planet and transform society in a socially and economically meaningful way. I call this framework “Deep Marxism”: (1) Oppose genetic engineering not only as […]