New 'Freedom Riders' march to D.C. in last leg of voting rights journey

WASHINGTON — On a grassy plot of the National Mall, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, thousands of voting rights supporters arrived on buses, on foot and even on horseback.

© Provided by NBC News

The “we the people” at last week's rally on Washington, D.C., statehood and voting rights comprised a coalition of races, genders, generations and geography. From students to clergy to members of Congress, about 2,500 people descended upon the nation’s capital to defend what the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis described as “the precious, almost sacred” right to vote. Folded into that sentiment was the demand that the residents of Washington, D.C., must also be recognized as full citizens through statehood.

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser championed the call for statehood, while others decried voter suppression and a wave of legislation that followed the 2020 election. Lawmakers in 48 states have collectively introduced at least 389 bills that would curb or restrict voting. Days later, the Supreme Court would uphold Arizona's new restrictions on voter access. Democrats charge that the mostly Republican-led measures will disproportionately impact Black voters, young voters and communities of color.

“We, the engines of democracy, refuse to be silent,” said Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, a national racial justice group, to the crowd. “Together we will make our voices heard. We are not going back.”

Waving protest signs and clad in identical red T-shirts were 1,500 mostly Black and Latino workers with the hospitality union UNITE HERE. They traveled by bus from 21 states across the country for the rally. The group marched in chanting, “We are Freedom Riders!” and “No justice! No peace!”

© Alex Wong Image: Local voting rights activists join a Rally for D.C. Statehood, the last stop of Black Voters Matter Freedom Ride for Voting Rights bus tour, at the National Mall June 26, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

“Voting is fundamental to working people’s power,” said UNITE HERE International President D. Taylor. “People’s lives and futures are at stake. No one should ever underestimate the determination of the people.”

Even as protesters urged bold action around making Washington, D.C., the 51st state and stronger protections needed at the ballot box, parts of the event unfolded with the vibe of a summer festival. Some attendees sat sprawled under the shade of wide leafy trees, while others tried to stay cool under rows of white tents that billowed like sails. There was folk music and spoken word, and the district’s homegrown go-go music blared funky beats from speakers.

The demonstration under a scorching midday sun was organized by Black Voters Matter, an advocacy and policy organization, and some 50 local and national civil rights, voting empowerment and social justice groups.

The weekend action wrapped up BVM’s “Freedom Ride for Voting Rights,” which paid homage to the 60-year anniversary of the original Freedom Rides of 1961 while providing education and outreach around 21st century voting rights.

Kicking off on the new federal holiday Juneteenth, the nine-city tour aimed to increase support for federal voting rights legislation, build Black voting power and advocate for statehood for Washington, D.C., with a population of nearly 700,000 residents. Traveling aboard their signature fleet of coaches nicknamed the “Blackest buses in America,” the new Freedom Riders officially began in Mississippi, then motored through Southern states including Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas.

BVM co-founders LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright met with concerned residents, officials and partners to discuss issues impacting their communities. Their fight for voting justice and progress comes at an opportune time as policymakers, advocates, activists and fellow keepers of democracy converge around this critical issue.

June brought major events on this front. There was a Senate hearing on Washington, D.C., statehood and a failed Senate procedural vote on the For the People Act to expand voting rights that drew no Republican support. This month also marked eight years since the 2013 landmark Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“That decision ushered in a new era of Jim Crow as states rushed to exploit the ruling and attack Black voting rights,” Brown said. “And with dozens of statehouses considering even more restrictions on ballot access, our communities continue to feel the impact today.”

Video: 'Everyone deserves the right to vote': Freedom Riders travel from south to D.C for voting rights bill (MSNBC)

The Department of Justice announced earlier this month that it filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia, its secretary of state and the state’s election board over a new law critics say restricts access to voting; Gov. Brian Kemp signed the measure in March.

“The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference on Friday. “This lawsuit is the first step of many we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote, that all lawful votes are counted and that every voter has access to accurate information.”

Black Voters Matter national rally in support of DC statehood, in Washington 

(Elizabeth Frantz / Reuters)

The DOJ complaint contends that several provisions of Senate Bill 202 were adopted to purposefully curb voting rights based on race. The lawsuit “alleges that the cumulative and discriminatory effect of these laws—particularly on Black voters—was known to lawmakers and that lawmakers adopted the law despite this,” according to a statement by the DOJ.

The suit challenges several provisions, including one that bans government entities from distributing unsolicited absentee ballot applications and another regarding the imposition of fines on civic organizations, churches and advocacy groups that distribute follow-up absentee ballot applications.

It also challenges deadlines to request absentee ballots; requirements related to state identification; limits on drop boxes for absentee ballots; barring churches and civic groups from providing food or water to people waiting in long lines to vote and more. The lawsuit asks the court to prohibit Georgia from enforcing these requirements.

Kristen Clarke, the first Black woman to serve as assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, vowed in her remarks at DOJ headquarters that the department will use “all the tools it has available to ensure that each eligible citizen can register, cast a ballot and have that ballot counted free from racial discrimination.”

“Laws adopted with a racially motivated purpose, like Georgia Senate Bill 202, simply have no place in democracy today,” she said.

The BVM team agreed.

“More than three months after we joined partners to file our own lawsuit against the state of Georgia for its voter suppression bill, it's encouraging to see the Department of Justice and the Biden-Harris administration stand with the people,” Albright said. “With this historic announcement, the federal government is taking an important step toward defending the rights of Black voters. … This move will hopefully set a new precedent and send a strong message to state legislatures.”

Brown added, “We’ve always known that these voter restriction bills were unconstitutional at their core.” The DOJ lawsuit is, Brown said, “not only an affirmation of the work we do each and every day to protect voting rights; it’s a stern warning to other states. Any state or local governments pursuing voter suppression legislation must be prepared to defend Jim Crow in court, because we simply will not let this go.”

While Black men and, later, women were granted the right to vote through constitutional amendments, barriers such as literacy tests, intimidation and violence heavily restricted Black Americans from access to the polls for decades.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, outlawed discriminatory practices adopted by many Southern states. Today, as voting access is in jeopardy, BVM leaders said their "Freedom Ride for Voting Rights" tour was timely and impactful. Meeting former Freedom Riders who participated in the desegregation protests of the early 1960s, and a host of people representing different ages and races, also served as an act of unity and love.

Still, the organizers pledged additional activism until victory is won.

“We are urging the Biden-Harris administration and members of Congress to continue to stand up for voters and protect our voting power through the passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” Albright said.

“We need to dismantle all barriers that prevent free and fair access to the ballot box,” Brown added. “The fight continues.”

Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

A hotter future is already here — and Canada is not ready

Aaron Wherry

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck A motorist watches from a pullout on the Trans-Canada Highway as a wildfire burns on the side of a mountain in Lytton, B.C., Thursday, July 1, 2021.

Two weeks ago, the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices released a report on the public health impacts of climate change and the need for action to adapt to a new reality of extreme threats.

"Climate change," Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association, wrote in the report's introduction, "is an escalating public health emergency, and we need to start treating it that way."

The historic and deadly heat wave in British Columbia made those words frighteningly real — even before it triggered a forest fire that destroyed most of the village of Lytton, British Columbia.

"We are now committed to a certain degree of warming in the world because of the emissions of the past," Ryan Ness, the adaptation research director for the institute and co-author of the report, said in an interview on Friday.

"So while, in the longer term, it's absolutely critical to reduce greenhouse gases as much as possible, as fast as possible, to keep things from getting even worse, there is a certain amount of climate change that we can no longer avoid. And the only way to really deal with that is to prepare, to adapt and to become more resilient to this change in climate."

That means countering the increased risk of floods and forest fires. It also means accounting for how climate change will threaten Canadians' health.
A hotter, more dangerous world

Adaptation will require much greater action from governments — and learning some of the lessons of the other public health crisis we've spent the past year and a half fighting.

The institute's report estimates that increased economic, social and health care costs related to several of the effects of climate change — ground-level ozone (smog), soaring heat and the spread of Lyme disease — will amount to billions of dollars by mid-century, even in a "low-emission" scenario. Damages and costs will only increase if emissions are not reduced.

But because some costs are difficult to project, researchers didn't model all potential impacts — on mental health, for instance, or the effects of poor air quality due to wildfires, or weather-related threats to health care facilities.

This summer in Canada may be remembered for its record-breaking and deadly heat. But it follows a similarly fatal wave in Montreal in 2018. And the future promises only more heat.

The report notes that, between 1971 and 2000, Ontario and Manitoba saw approximately 50 days each year in which temperatures were high enough to cause heat-related deaths. By the 2050s, the Institute estimates, that annual total will be 1.5 times higher.

That additional heat will put more people in hospitals. Looking specifically at coronary heart disease, stroke, hypertensive disease and diabetes, the report estimates a 21 per cent increase in the rate of heat-related hospitalizations under a low-emissions scenario.

And more people will die: the report estimates that, by mid-century, heat will account for an additional 200 to 425 deaths in Canada per year.

The Institute did find that two measures to retrofit buildings would reduce the death toll. "If shading technologies were installed on 25 per cent of homes in Canada by the 2050s, there would be an average of 21 fewer deaths per year," the report says. "If 50 per cent of all residential, commercial, and institutional buildings had green roofs installed by the 2050s, an average of 46 deaths would be avoided annually."

But while green roofs and shading might reduce the impact of generally higher temperatures, such things won't necessarily be enough to protect people from extreme events.

"When it comes to these extreme heat emergencies, the response systems really need to be in place to be able to identify the people who are going to be most affected by this and to get them the care that they need, whether it's cooling centres, whether it's medical attention, whether it's a place to get off the streets," Ness said.

"And in the longer term, it's going to be important to address the underlying root causes of what makes some people more vulnerable than others. Because it's not really the average person who's likely to die from a heat wave event. It's somebody who is living on the street, somebody who has pre-existing health conditions because they aren't able to access the health care that they need, or seniors who don't have the supports they need to to help them out in these situations."
What the pandemic should have taught us

The province's coroner has said that many of the 300 people who died suddenly in the recent heat wave in B.C. were seniors living in homes with poor ventilation.

That's a disturbing echo of what happened in this country during the current pandemic. When COVID-19 arrived, it was seniors living in inadequate long-term care facilities who suffered most.

Throughout the pandemic, it was often low-income and racialized Canadians who saw higher rates of infection and were made to accept the greatest amount of risk as "essential workers." The Climate Choices report makes clear that climate change has the potential to exacerbate existing inequities.

Those vulnerabilities need to be accounted for in responding to climate change — but reducing or eliminating those disparities in general would also create a society that is better prepared to withstand the stress a changing climate will inflict.

"Addressing vulnerability and giving people the resources and the best chance possible to achieve good health before these things happen is incredibly important," Ness said.

And while the focus now may be on heat, Ness notes that worsening air quality could pose problems that "dwarf" the impact of higher temperatures.

The federal Liberal government has committed to developing a National Adaptation Strategy — though a recent report from the International Institute for Sustainable Development noted that Canada is behind some European countries in such planning.

The federal government also has committed billions of dollars in funding to disaster mitigation, improving infrastructure and public reporting (including the recently released "National Issues Report" on climate change's impacts on Canada). But the Institute for Climate Choices found that only three per cent of climate adaptation funding announced in recent budgets was specifically targeted to public health.

Though adaptation might be coming to the fore now — a new coalition of insurance companies and environmental organizations has come together to push for federal action — it has generally run second in the public discussion around climate change, perhaps with some justification. Mitigating future climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions is far preferable to merely learning to live with its effects.

But the world is long past the point when some amount of dangerous climate change could be avoided. And we no longer need to look to the future to imagine what that change could look and feel like. The climate crisis is here.

BULLSHIT

Namibia teenagers barred from Olympic 400 over testosterone

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Two 18-year-old runners from Namibia were barred Friday from running in the 400 meters at the Olympics because of high natural testosterone levels, becoming the latest female athletes to be affected by the same contentious regulations that have sidelined Caster Semenya.

Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, who burst into Olympic medal reckoning with some blisteringly fast times this year, were subjected to “medical assessments” by track governing body World Athletics at their training camp in Italy, the Namibia Olympic committee said.

They were withdrawn from the 400 meters by the Namibian team after the tests revealed high natural testosterone which meant they wouldn't be allowed to run in the 400 in Tokyo.

The pair can still run in the 200 meters, where they've also qualified, because track's testosterone rules only apply to distances between 400 meters and one mile.

In a separate statement, the Namibian track federation said the two teenagers would still go to the Olympics and “will focus their full attention on the 200m event." It said the runners were “disappointed" but “they remain in high spirits.”

Their exclusion from the 400 sparked angry reactions and criticism of the rules from numerous political parties in Namibia.

Before this year, both athletes were relative unknowns.

Mboma ran 48.54 seconds to win a 400 race in Poland on Wednesday, which was an under-20 world record and the seventh-fastest time ever recorded by a woman in the 400. It was also the fastest time in the world this year ahead of all the event's big names, and the fastest time in the world since 2019.

Masilingi's 49.53 seconds at a low-level meet in Zambia in April stands as the third fastest time of 2021 behind Mboma and Shaunae Miller-Uibo, the current Olympic champion.

Those eye-catching times spurred World Athletics to order the testosterone tests.

“It is important to understand that both our athletes were not aware of this condition,” the Namibia Olympic committee said.

The Namibian Olympic body said it was in close contact with World Athletics' medical officer Stephane Bermon, one of the architects of the testosterone rules, “with regards to the way forward in the interest of our two sprinters.”

The situation is reminiscent of the highly controversial sex verification tests conducted on a teenage Semenya when she broke onto the international scene at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

World Athletics' latest testosterone regulations have been fiercely debated since they were introduced in 2018.

They have resulted in Semenya, the two-time Olympic champion, being unable to run in her favorite event and defend her title in Tokyo. She has launched legal appeals in various courts, calling the rules unfair and discriminatory, but has lost two of those appeals and is waiting for a third to be heard.

The rules have also affected two other high-profile African athletes, Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and Margaret Wambui of Kenya, who won silver and bronze behind Semenya at the 2016 Olympics, where the testosterone issue became a dominant story.

Niyonsaba and Wambui have both also been barred from the 800, although Niyonsaba has qualified for the Olympics in the 5,000 meters and says she will run in Tokyo.

___

More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Gerald Imray, The Associated Press

HIPPY REUNION USA

New Mexico forest draws crowd for annual 'Rainbow Gathering'

CARSON NATIONAL FOREST, N.M. (AP) — Across a mile-long stretch of forest in a remote part of northern New Mexico, the party is in full swing.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Tents dotted mountain meadows flanked by dense stands of trees. Makeshift kitchens were erected to feed the hundreds of people gathering for what would be a weekend-long celebration attended by grandmothers, families with children and others in search of peace, camaraderie and perhaps to smoke a little weed.

This is the Rainbow Family.

The Carson National Forest, just beyond the tourist enclave of Taos, was chosen as the spot for this year's national gathering. But people also were congregating for the July 4 celebration in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

The so-called Rainbow Gathering — which draws an array of characters who range from office workers looking to get away from the daily grind to nature lovers and those who have mastered van life — was set to culminate Sunday in a silent hand-holding circle punctuated by a loud “ohm.”

Normally, the gathering, which was first held in 1972 in Colorado, draws around 10,000 people to a single forest. This year, the participants are less numerous and heading to regional meet-ups because of COVID-19 concerns. Last July 4, regulars joined each other online to “ohm from home.”

For Gina “Mama G” Prince, the gathering is about peace. For others, they are united by anti-authoritarianism rooted in the religious and congregational freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

With pandemic restrictions easing, Prince said she was happy to be at her first Rainbow Gathering since 2019, when the event was held in Wisconsin.

“I’ve been counting the moments to come out here,” said the 67-year-old Florida resident, who picked up a fellow Rainbow participant in Tennessee on the way. Wary of the virus and bogged down with underlying health concerns, her partner stayed in Florida.

In one camp, cooks prepared sweet strawberry pastries and served them to whoever was around the campfire. Money is frowned upon at the gathering, and participants bring food donations to share. Volunteers run every aspect of the camp, from piping water out of streams to digging latrines, to cleaning up the camp and packing up trash.

Drum circles are a nightly event. So are fireside discussions about everything from dinner plans to the nature of existence and metaphysics.

The annual gatherings also draw close scrutiny from the U.S. Forest Service.

Officials with the Carson National Forest held an online forum last month for residents to ask questions about enforcing drug laws, respecting sacred tribal lands in the forest, and the plan for taking out the trash.

Forest Service officials say gatherings in recent years left surprisingly little impact on water, erosion and other areas of concern to forest officials. With a fraction of the normal participants this year, the concerns are even fewer.

Still, rangers had seized an undisclosed number of guns and cited people for things as minor as a cracked windshield. Other charges involved marijuana and methamphetamine possession.

For decades, the Rainbows have complained that law enforcement assigned to patrol them have used any excuse to pull them over and search them.

Prince said she and another woman were searched on their way into the gathering, and her friend's marijuana stash was seized. New Mexico this week legalized the recreational use of marijuana, but it's still illegal on federal land.

“They pulled people over and took all their weed,” Prince said. “Pulled over a couple of grandmas.”

The gathering normally boasts a giant bakery, hauled up mountainsides by hand and constructed out of metal barrels. Volunteers crank out as many as 8,000 dinner rolls per night from their perch in the woods.

“It takes about 35 of us to make the magic happen,” said long-time Rainbow member Darrell Schauermann of Taos.

There are perils that can come with camping in a remote spot at high altitude.

On Friday, an elderly man with cancer fell gravely ill. It took an SUV, a Forest Service pickup truck and an ambulance to get him to a spot miles down the mountain where he could be loaded into a helicopter and taken to a hospital. Along the way, he was tended to by John Hartberg, a 33-year-old physician from New Orleans who was attending the event.

Shirtless and wearing a hat and a turquoise stethoscope, he declined to comment on the patient's condition, citing medical privacy rules.

Usla Gregory, 45, of Taos said the patient was his best friend. “We share the same astrological signs,” he said, before breaking into tears.

After the July 4th celebration, Rainbows who choose to participate in a selection committee will pick a spot for next year’s gathering. Insiders suggest that Colorado is the leading contender.

___

Cedar Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Cedar Attanasio, The Associated Press

NELSON HIPPIES RETURN
New developments see future in tiny homes, communal living

A Slocan Valley couple is hoping their new housing development will attract high-tech workers and others looking for a simpler life.

And their project is only one of several that are looking to launch a new generation of alternative community living in the region.

“The tiny homes will be spaced out along this ridge here,” says Steve Hardy, pointing across a field of white and yellow sub-alpine flowers. “We want to give each unit lots of space.”

Hardy and his partner Abby gave the Valley Voice a tour of their 37-acre property recently. They purchased the acreage between Slocan City and Winlaw two years ago, after getting disillusioned with life in Calgary.

“We were making regular trips to the Kootenays and Okanagan, seeing what each place had to offer, the culture of each area, and we kept coming back to the Slocan Valley,” says Steve Hardy. “We liked the charm, the locals we met, the beauty of the area. And then we found a piece of property that we thought would be a great pocket neighbourhood for people who could work remotely and would like to do so in a nice place.”

The pandemic just reinforced their determination to try to find a new way of life. And they figured others shared their vision.

There wasn’t much on the property: an old cabin that has to be torn down, a second that needs major overhaul, and some fencing. But there is an organic garden, spring water, spectacular views, and a cool breeze not felt on the valley bottom on a hot day. Out of a somewhat unremarkable piece of property on the east slope of the Slocan Valley, however, they hope to create something special.

They call it ‘Big Calm,’ a “permaculture-guided tiny homestead community for remote digital workers,” in the heart of the Kootenays.

“It’s a fairly modest community, within the natural landscape of the property,” says Hardy. “The majority would be long-term renters, and a couple would be guest stays.”

The Big Calm Tiny Homesteads website outlines the project’s scope.

“We envision an ecologically sustainable, self-reliant tiny home community guided by the ‘Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share’ ethics of permaculture; and strengthened by collaboration, mutual support and the diversity and skills of its members,” it says. “Hands-on work is a feature, not a bug.”

There’s no shortage of hands-on work to do. Before the first community member arrives, the concrete pads for 10 tiny homes have to be poured, and utilities like water and electricity hooked up. The septic system is going to be top-of-the-line when it’s installed, but the last part of that project’s been delayed by red tape and supply problems.

It’s a complicated bit of development for two admitted amateurs, who are managing the building project while trying to attract residents and investors in a timely manner. But Hardy says it’s going well.

“Most of the development will take shape next year, and we’re currently putting out an investment raise – dividend-producing shares so that we can accelerate the build actually. Our business plan was perhaps too conservative. The interest is certainly there to fill the spots as we can build them.”

The Hardys hope to welcome their first tenant in the fall. That person has already purchased a tiny home for placement on the property.

It won’t be cheap to be a resident of Big Calm. At $1,500 a month for pad fees – which includes utilities – the Hardys are working to attract upscale, higher-income knowledge workers like themselves. Steve ran a software company and now consults high-tech start-ups, while Abby was a communication specialist for biotech companies.

They plan to build Big Calm to allow residents to live the Slocan lifestyle, while still earning a good living.

“This has been one of the best parts of the process for us, the people who have been reaching out to us because they are interested,” he says. “It’s from all across the country and the US.

“We have geochemists, social innovators, arts fundraisers… all across the board. But they all have a similar appreciation of wanting to make a smaller footprint in a nice natural location and still be able to effectively do their jobs.”

The Hardys have been surprised by the potential for communities like this to help grow the local economy.

“There’s actually quite a pent-up demand for it. Our sense is it’s an enormous economic development opportunity for the valley… it’s people with a commitment to the local area, who bring a net income from outside because they already have their jobs from elsewhere.”

Alternative options growing

The pandemic has created a wave of people moving out of the cities to places like the Slocan Valley. But that’s driven up house and land prices significantly, and only the well-financed can afford to buy or build these days.

That’s what’s made places like Big Calm Tiny Homesteads attractive to some. Offering a small space for a tiny home or RV, sharing the cost of services and supporting each other in a community has become an appealing idea.

Similar projects are starting or being contemplated along the valley, aimed at a more local audience.

“Off-the-grid site rental available in exchange for work trade outside of Slocan City,” a post advertised on Facebook recently read. “…We are asking for 30 hours a month in exchange for the site.”

With 150 acres on Perry’s Ridge, the developer plans to create a 15- to 20-unit permaculture community on part of the property.

While the Hardys across the valley work with contractors and hope to attract higher-income residents, this developer is pulling his project up by its bootstraps, offering space for people with chainsaw and other skills to build the community themselves.

“Skills with building, energy systems and all trades are desirable at this phase,” the post says. “Long-term, the community will require skills with permaculture, agroforestry, livestock management, medicine making, fibre arts, practical crafts, communication, facilitation, etc.”

The post makes no bones about what’s involved.

“We are looking for hardy folks to help us pioneer this effort. Experience roughing it is required,” it notes.

The post says they hope to have six sites ready for occupancy with tiny homes or RVs by this winter. Eventually a community centre will be built on site, with a kitchen, bathing and laundry facilities. The dream is to run the community as a co-op.

The carrot is building a community with others who share the same values.

“We are a group of people passionate about ecovillages, healing nature, and the arts. Looking for other passionate and inspired folks who are open-hearted and open-minded,” the post says.

The developer declined to be interviewed by the Valley Voice at this time, saying after the original post he was inundated with inquiries.

Other projects are popping up along the Valley and elsewhere in the West Kootenay. In Winlaw, the Raven’s Perch offers a single vacation unit at this time, but has plans to “build more space on the property to live and work.”

The pitch the Winlaw property makes has a familiar ring: “We’re creating an environment that encourages those who visit to reconnect with nature – the forest, lakes, rivers and mountains,” their website says. “We encourage visitors to disconnect from the outer world reality so that they might reconnect with their own nature.”

History repeats

A century ago, cheap land and a desire to live communally brought thousands of Doukhobors to the region; counter-culture hippies and draft dodgers 50 years later established communes across the valley (there’s even an old one neighbouring the Hardys’ property).

The drivers may be different today – concerns about climate change, the cost of housing, and technology enabling remote work – but the attraction is the same: a desire to live in peace, in beauty, and in support of each other.

But just like past immigrants, the newcomers bring the promise of both change and growth.

“The type of people being attracted to the pitch we have would be great additions to the community; they share the values that are already here,” says Steve Hardy, who notes jurisdictions like Nova Scotia have whole campaigns devoted to attracting those kind of workers.

“I don’t’ think it’s fully set in how amazing this opportunity can be and how strong a contributor these folks would be, and how much they want to be kind of outside of the fray.”

Despite modern trappings, some things don’t change.

John Boivin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Valley Voice

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE I

Confidential national security docs left on human rights lawyer's Halifax porch

OTTAWA — A human rights lawyer says documents that the Canadian government argues contain confidential matters of national security were shoved into his door frame, with no signature or password needed.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Benjamin Perryman, who teaches constitutional law at the University of New Brunswick, represents a Roma Hungarian couple who claim border officials discriminated against them on the basis of ethnicity.


The government argues that no discrimination was involved when Canadian authorities cancelled the "electronic travel authorization" of the couple, Attila and Andrea Kiss, at the Budapest airport in 2019.

In April, the Federal Court of Appeals ordered the immigration minister to send sensitive documents containing screening criteria as an encrypted online file to parties in the case using the Microsoft SharePoint platform.

Instead, Perryman says the government FedExed a CD-ROM that was "stuffed" into the door frame of his house in Halifax and needed no encryption, password protection or signature upon receipt of the package. The Canadian Press has seen photos of the envelope lodged in the door.

The process is inconsistent with the government's claim that releasing screening indicators — used to weed out potential illegal immigrants before arrival in Canada, where they could hypothetically claim asylum — would harm the country's safety and security, he said.

"Canada makes the claim that if material got into wrong hands that there would be substantial injury," Perryman said. "And I arrived at home to find it stuffed into my door on the outside.

“Theft of packages is common in Canada, including in my neighbourhood. This is not a remote possibility," he said.

The Immigration Department says the government "takes privacy and security issues very seriously."

"Processes in relation to the transmission of court documents and for the protection of privacy and sensitive information are in place and will be reiterated to all employees in order to prevent any further reoccurrence," Immigration spokesman Jeffrey MacDonald said in an email.

The package included a cover letter stating the government had permission from court staff to send the package as a CD-ROM, Perryman added, but stressed that it was unencrypted.

The incident marks the second security hiccup related to the couple's case this year.

According to an affidavit from a Canada Border Services Agency manager, the government in February sent Perryman files with "sensitive information" on which CBSA officials had performed "redactions by applying black highlighting" that could be lifted with the click of a mouse.

A judge ordered that copies sent to Perryman, who had forwarded them on to Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group, be destroyed.

Now those files are back in play following an appeal, resulting in last month's snail-mail porch delivery, including to Lukacs, who found his own FedEx package sticking out of his mailbox.

He argues that federal officials are trying to use "national security as a smokescreen to cover up racial discrimination," an allegation the government rejects.

Lukacs also provided documents from an access-to-information request showing that he had received in unredacted form some of the same text that was blacked out by the CBSA. Other Western countries often publish their screening criteria, which are largely in the public domain, he said.

The Kisses say Roma travellers seeking to visit relatives in Canada face "systemic discrimination" by border officials.

"The humiliation we experienced at the Budapest Airport was exceptional even compared to the prejudice and discrimination that I have experienced all my life in Hungary. A flight to Canada was the last place where I would have expected to be treated this way," Attila Kiss said in an email.

His wife's sister, Edit, was granted refugee status in Canada several years ago. Andrea Kiss visited her for three months in 2017, and sought a second, two-month visit — still under her five-year electronic travel authorization (ETA) — in April 2019 to help care for her sibling following abdominal surgery at a Toronto hospital, according to court filings.

At the airport with round-trip tickets — Attila also now had an ETA — on April 2, 2019, the couple was referred by authorities to agents with BUD Security, a Hungary-based company that screens passengers on behalf of airlines. The firm receives training from the CBSA.

Shortly after, the Kisses learned a CBSA liaison officer in Vienna had cancelled their ETAs. Asked why, the BUD Security agent told them that "the biggest problem is that the person whom you are travelling to has no status" — as a Canadian citizen or permanent resident — according to an August 2020 court submission from the Kisses, who recorded their interaction with the agent.

The officer's notes also say the couple was "unable to explain how they can take three months off work” and "do not own a home."

Attila Kiss, who has worked at lighting company Tungsram — owned by GE Hungary — since 1994, got approval for a six-month leave of absence and owns a house, court documents show.

"These alleged indicators are based on ethnic stereotypes depicting the Roma as nomads who neither work nor have a home," the Kisses state in their filing.

Perryman said asserting national security to justify withholding information, including screening indicators, amounts to opaque governance, with implications for fundamental rights.

"The problem with this as an approach is that it deprives all Canadians of actually being able to see the work of the court and to evaluate Canada's policies, whether or not they discriminate against travellers and whether or not they are defensible on behalf of Canada," he said.

Asked why indicators should remain secret, the CBSA cited legislation that allows the immigration minister to appeal court decisions requiring information to be released "if, in the minister's opinion, the disclosure would be injurious to national security or endanger the safety of an individual," the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act states.

"No comments on its content will be provided," CBSA spokeswoman Rebecca Purdy said of the screening criteria.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Gruesome images of snared osprey show how deadly discarded fishing lines can be
Colin Butler 

© Ian Geleynse The body of an osprey lies on the bow of a kayak after it was cut down from the place it died: tangled in fishing line below the Adelaide Street bridge.

It was a gruesome sight: An osprey, a bird of prey rarely seen in urban southern Ontario, dangling from a fishing line beside a bridge as if from an invisible hangman's noose.

"My mind was racing as to why this bird could possibly be hanging like that," said Ian Gelynse, an avid kayaker who spotted the bird a distance away while paddling with his son Will along the Thames River in London, Ont. on Father's Day.
'Definitely outrage over this'

It was only when Gelynse got closer that his curiosity turned to despair.

"I knew it was an osprey immediately. It's one of my favourite birds," he said. "To see that, I was devastated. I could see all the fishing line bound around it so it was pretty obvious what happened.

"We were both horrified to see it. My son immediately said, 'We can't leave it like that.'"

Gelynse cut it down and took pictures before he put the bird's body in the forest so "nature could take its course," as he puts it, but the jarring sight stuck with him — a sanguine reminder of how our trash can be deadly for wildlife.

The area where the bird died, under the busy Adelaide Street bridge, is a popular spot for anglers in the city. The evidence is in the amount of fishing line that gets tangled across the hydro wires that run parallel to the bridge. The obstacle is invisible and acts like a ghostly spider's web, capable of ensnaring anything unlucky enough to fly into it.

"It doesn't take much before the bird gets tangled in the fishing line before it's going to go into a panic," Gelynse said.

He posted the images on social media, touching off a firestorm of debate that he said got so hot at one point, moderators on one of the websites ended up pulling them down because of the battle that started raging between bird lovers and people who like to fish.

"They don't like to deal in too much controversy," he said. "They pulled it down, but I've had 22 people sharing it."

Pigeons, ducks snagged on fishing gear

On another social media site for kayakers, Gelynse said, he had hundreds of reactions to his images of the dead bird.

"There's definitely outrage over this. I had a lot of praise for cutting that bird down, to try to give it some dignity.

"Through comments I'm learning a lot about the real problem fishing causes," he said.

"To consider that a fish that they don't catch and the line breaks, and the hook is in that fish's mouth, that's potential food for any of these birds."

Environmentalists who clean up trash along the Thames River told CBC News that discarded fishing lines, lures and Styrofoam bait containers are an all-too-common sight during their cleanups, and wildlife often pay a price for our carelessness.

"We have seen examples of wildlife getting caught up in that," said Tom Cull, one of the organizers of Antler River Rally, a volunteer group that organizes monthly cleanups of the Thames River.

He said recent examples include a pigeon snared in fishing line at the Wellington Street bridge and a duck with a hook snagged in its bill.

Through years of clearing debris from the riverbanks, he's found there are two kinds of anglers.

"There's an angler who's maybe more recreational. Saturday morning, go down, have a couple of beers, cast a couple of lines and then there's the serious anglers," said Cull.

"I find the serious anglers are really conservationists and stewards. It's the folks who buy that stuff and then leave it all down at the river — that's an unfortunate thing we see too often."
Fishing group says 'trash has no place in nature'

It's also the kind of littering the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) discourages. The organization has more than 100,000 members and is the province's largest charitable non-profit fish and wildlife conservation organization.

"The bad behaviour of a few individuals can not only lump responsible anglers into the same category, but can also threaten fish and wildlife, their habitats and the ecosystems that support them," OFAH fisheries biologist Adam Weir wrote in an email to CBC News on Friday.

"Discarded lures and fishing lines should always be safely and properly disposed of — trash has no place in nature."

Weir said that to protect the environment, anglers should remove hooks from lures and replace them in a screw-top bottle or can, and dispose of them in a bin. He said many areas now have fishing line recycling depots near boat launches and shorelines.

If that's not available, he said, place the line in a sealed bag or box, and dispose of it in the trash.

Tesla top-of-range car caught fire while owner was driving, lawyer says

BERKELEY, California (Reuters) - A Tesla Inc Model S Plaid electric vehicle burst into flames on Tuesday while the owner was driving, just three days after the $129,900, top-of-the-range car was delivered following its June launch, an attorney for the driver told Reuters.© Reuters/Geragos & Geragos Handout photo of Tesla Inc's new Model S Plaid electric car seen in flames in Pennsylvania

The driver, identified as an "executive entrepreneur", was initially not able to get out of the car because its electronic door system failed, prompting the driver to "use force to push it open," Mark Geragos, of Geragos & Geragos, said on Friday.

The car continued to move for about 35 feet to 40 feet (11 to 12 meters) before turning into a "fireball" in a residential area near the owner's Pennsylvania home.

"It was a harrowing and horrifying experience," Geragos said.

"This is a brand new model... We are doing an investigation. We are calling for the S Plaid to be grounded, not to be on the road until we get to the bottom of this," he said.

Tesla did not have an immediate comment when contacted by Reuters.

Video: New Tesla model caught fire while driving: lawyer (Reuters)

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk touted the performance version of its Model S sedan as being "faster than any Porsche, safer than any Volvo" at a launch event at the automaker's factory in Fremont, California, last month.

Earlier in April, he said the new Model S sedan and Model X sport utility vehicle had a new battery pack.

"It took quite a bit of development to ensure that the battery of the new S/X is safe," Musk said on a conference call, addressing production delays. "There were more challenges than expected in developing the new version."

Local fire authorities in a now-deleted Facebook post said "a Tesla was on fire" and that they cooled "the batteries down to ensure complete extinguishment".

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it is "in touch with relevant agencies and the manufacturer to gather information about the incident".

"If data or investigations show a defect or an inherent risk to safety exists, NHTSA will take action as appropriate to protect the public," the federal safety agency said.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and David Shepardson; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Tesla Reveals How Often Its Cars Burn From Fire

https://insideevs.com/news/501729/number-tesla-vehicle-fires-2020

2021-04-18 · Tesla's Vehicle Fire Data provided for the period 2012-2020 reveals that there has been ... which alone could increase the number of miles per fire instance. ... Tesla Owner Caught …

1. Plug-in electric vehicle fire incidents - Wikipedia

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicle_fire_incidents
   • Overview
   • Electric vehicle incidents
   • Background
   • See also
   • External links

   

   About 6 a.m. on 17 November 2010 a fire broke out on the vehicle deck of the MS Pearl of Scandinavia on its way from Oslo to Copenhagen. The ferry's fire sprinkler system put out the fire before any of the crew or the 490 sleeping passengers were injured and the ship could dock in Copenhagen under its own power. It was determined that the cause of the fire was a short circuit in the plug of an extension cord used to charge a rebuilt Nissan Qashqai, converted into a battery electric vehicle by the Sakskøbingbased compan…

EV BATTERIES ARE DANGEROUS
Batteries exploding in burning abandoned Illinois building

By DON BABWIN

June 30, 2021

1 of 4

Firefighters work the scene of an industrial fire Tuesday, June 29, 2021, in Morris, Ill. Lithium batteries have been noisily exploding inside a burning abandoned paper mill in northern Illinois and firefighters are letting the blaze burn out because they fear trying to extinguish it could trigger more explosions, officials said Wednesday. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune via AP)

CHICAGO (AP) — Lithium batteries exploded loudly overnight inside a burning former paper mill in northern Illinois that officials had believed was long abandoned, and fire officials have decided to let the blaze burn out because they fear trying to extinguish it could trigger more explosions.

The fire that started in Morris Tuesday prompted city officials to order the evacuation of 3,000-4,000 people in some 950 nearby homes, a school, church and small businesses.

On Wednesday, as thick, black smoke continued to billow from the building, Police Chief Alicia Steffes said the evacuation order would remain in place until at least 9 p.m. and “might be extended.”

Police are stationed throughout the area to prevent people from entering, although anyone who can prove they live there may return to retrieve essential medicine, she said.

Fire Chief Tracey Steffes said thus far air quality tests were “coming back favorable,” but he cautioned that changing weather conditions and other factors could cause the air quality to deteriorate.

Mayor Chris Brown urged anyone experiencing respiratory problems to contact their physicians.

The fire chief said he’s gathering information from fire departments and other experts on how to fight the fire in a building that — to the surprise of his department and other city agencies — was being used to store nearly 100 tons of lithium batteries ranging in size from cellphone batteries to large car batteries.

Steffes’ firefighters stopped using water on the blaze minutes after they arrived when they discovered the batteries because water and firefighting foam can cause batteries to explode. And he said while he has heard some ideas on how to battle the blaze — road salt has been suggested — he won’t send crews to battle the fire because of the unknowns about what’s inside.

“I don’t know 100% what was stored in that building, only what they’re telling us what was stored in that building,” he said.

Further, Steffes said that while his department and other agencies have fought fires at buildings that contain lithium batteries, he had thus far found nobody with fires that involve so many batteries. He said the battery explosions overnight could be heard across the city.

The mayor said the city didn’t know the building was being used to store batteries until it caught fire, and that he knows very little about the company that owns them.

“The name of the company is Superior Battery ... and we didn’t know they existed until yesterday afternoon,” said Brown. Apparently nobody else at City Hall did either, because there’s no record of a business license or any communication between the company and any city department, he said.

Barely concealing his anger at the very serious danger his firefighters were in, Steffe suggested that he couldn’t trust any information coming from the company as a result

“We had no way of knowing they were doing business ... there,” said Steffes, adding a company official told him they had occupied the building for about a year. Steffes said the paper mill had been vacant for decades.

No information was immediately available on Superior Battery. The fire chief said company representatives were not invited to Wednesday’s news conference.

The mayor said the police department will conduct an investigation about the storage of the batteries and that other agencies, including the state fire marshal and the Illinois Attorney General’s office, have already been contacted.

Morris is about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

The Morris fire came two weeks after an explosion and massive blaze at a chemical plant near Rockton, an Illinois town along the Wisconsin border, forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes for several days. Nobody at the plant or the surrounding community was injured by the June 13 fire that officials later determined was started accidentally during maintenance work.

AS IF THEY WERE NOT SCARY ENOUGH

Supermassive black holes could host giant, swirling gas 'tsunamis'

© Provided by Live Science This artist's visualization shows a supermassive black hole surrounded by dust and gas forming tsunamis on its outer edges.

Could gas escaping the gravitational grasp of supermassive black holes be forming "tsunamis" in space?

In a new, NASA-funded study, astrophysicists used computer simulations to model the environment around supermassive black holes in deep space. They found that there could be massive, tsunami-like structures forming near these black holes that are essentially massive, swirling walls of gas that have narrowly escaped the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. They even think that supermassive black holes could host the largest tsunami-like structures in the universe.

"What governs phenomena here on Earth are the laws of physics that can explain things in outer space and even very far outside the black hole," Daniel Proga, an astrophysicist at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada (UNLV), said in a NASA statement.

Gallery: Black Holes of the Universe

In this study, researchers took a close look at the strange environment around supermassive black holes and how gases and radiation interact there.

Supermassive black holes sometimes have large disks of gas and matter that swirl around them, feeding them over time in a combined system known as an active galactic nucleus. These systems, which often shoot out jets of material, emit bright, shining X-rays above the disk, just out of gravitational reach of the black hole. This X-ray radiation pushes winds that stream out of the center of the system. This is called an "outflow."

This X-ray radiation could also help to explain denser, gaseous regions in the environment around supermassive black holes called "clouds," the researchers think.

"These clouds are 10 times hotter than the surface of the sun and moving at the speed of the solar wind, so they are rather exotic objects that you would not want an airplane to fly through," lead author Tim Waters, a postdoctoral researcher at UNLV who is also a guest scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in the same statement.

The team showed with computer simulations how, far enough away from the black hole to be outside of its reach, the atmosphere of the disk spinning around the black hole can start to form waves of gas and matter. With the addition of the outflow winds that are pushed out by X-ray radiation, these waves can grow into massive tsunamis. These swirling waves of gas can stretch up to 10 light-years above the disk, the researchers found. Once these tsunami-like structures form, they are no longer under the influence of the black hole's gravity, according to the statement.

In these simulations, the researchers showed how bright X-ray radiation close to a black hole seeps into pockets of hot gas in the outer atmosphere of the disk. These bubbles of hot plasma expand into nearby, cooler gas at the edges of the disk, helping to spur the tsunami-like structures. The bubbles also block the outflow wind and spiral off into separate structures up to a light-year in size. These side structures are known as Kármán vortex streets, which are weather patterns that also occur on Earth (though on Earth, this pattern of swirling vortexes looks quite different.)

Kármán vortex streets are named for the Hungarian-American physicist Theodore von Kármán, whose name also marks the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

This research goes against previous theories that have suggested that clouds of hot gas near an active galactic nucleus form spontaneously because of fluid instability, according to the statement. This study also contradicts the previous notion that magnetic fields are necessary to move cooler gas from a disk around a supermassive black hole.

While no satellites currently operational can confirm their work, the team hopes to bolster their findings with future research and hopefully telescopic observations. Additionally, observations of plasma near active galactic nuclei from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space telescope are consistent with this team's findings, according to the statement from NASA.

This work was published June 15 in the Astrophysical Journal.

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.