WILPF-Earth Democracy California Tour Spring 2013

Women's International League of Peace and Freedom-Earth Democracy Tour 

Inspired after attending the Women’s Congress for Future Generations in Moab, Utah last September, Randa Solick, Mathilde Rand, Jean Hays, and Nancy Price, all from California, have launched the Earth Democracy California Tour to bring the concept of Guardianship for Future Generations and Rights and Responsibilities of Present Generations to the California WILPF Branches. Guardianship for Future Generations is the framing principle we are using to bring the work of Earth Democracy’s four sub-committees together.

At present, there are confirmed dates for Fresno: March 22-23, where we start of with World Water Day, then to San Jose April 12–13 and Santa Cruz April 19–20 for the Earth Day weekend.

The East Bay, Sacramento, along with Chico north of Sacramento and East Bay Branches are finalizing their dates. We also hope to include the Southern California Branches sometime in the late Spring or, more likely, next Fall.

Take a look at the model flyer for Branch use. We invite WILPF members in California to contact us at catour@wilpus.org if you are not in a Branch, but would like to discuss having some kind of presentation or event.

Here is the workshop agenda. We will be glad to meet the needs of your Branch or member group, so don’t think that you must do a Friday–Saturday program. Just let us know what would most suit your group, community and is within your capacity.  Even a few hours of reading and discussion is worthwhile. 

All the materials for the workshop, including the Guardianship for Future Generations and the Precautionary Principle will be posted to the Earth Democracy section of the website and we welcome any comments and discussion that you wish to send to us at catour@wilpfus.org or care to post to the Discussion Boards. We hope these will be useful for others, where ever you are, to use in planning local community education and action. If you would like to consult with us, please email at catour@wilpfus.org we welcome your emails.

We are all grateful for a MiniGrant that has enabled us to fund this tour and to have some of the essential materials translated into Spanish.  We will post these very soon. 

The area where the Fresno, Santa Cruz and San Jose Branches are holding workshops is the area of the oil Monterey Shale, where fracking in the state is going to be focused and accelerated in the coming months and years—if we can’t stop it. The Monterey Shale is a huge, rich formation that many hope will bail out California’s economy; others fear a huge environmental disaster and a huge waste of precious fresh water sources and there is huge pressure on the state legislature. There are at least six bills introduced to “regulate” the industry. But as we know, “regulation” just permits a level of harm by the corporation, so environmentalists and others are hoping that someone in the Assembly or Senate will step forward and author a bill to ban fracking in California.

So the focus of our tour on Guardianship and the Precautionary Principle is fundamental to helping communities take action to prevent harm to people and nature.

Please sign the petition to ban fracking in California from Food and Water Watch. Here is the Fracking Brochure that the Santa Cruz Branch created for their local use, but you can edit the “What You Can Do” section and add your own information.

Thank you for all you do for people and nature in your community.

Randa, Mathilde, Jean, and Nancy representing the CA Tour and the Earth Democracy Issue Group.

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