new season of forums --supreme court, housing, EPA --country life making its way to your table --in it together

[Dave]

The Forum has begun another season.
It’s KC’s longest running ongoing conversation (since 1943!).
-39-40 weekly sessions,
-live on Sundays @10am,
-further and more intimate Q&A with the speaker @11a down the hall in the library,
-rerun Wednesdays @6pm on KKFI,
-archived @ http://www.kkfi.org/program/all-souls-forum/


Upcoming Forums:
Sep 16
“Update on the U.S. Supreme Court ”  Bob Eye
A prominent civil rights attorney in Kansas, Bob Eye, will update us of the changing balance on the United States Supreme Court and possible effects on our civil liberties.

Sep 23
“The Rent’s Too High... KC Housing Policy Options”  Jennifer Tidwell
Every day in K. C. about 42 poor tenants are evicted--they can't afford the rent. The lack of affordable housing is a national epidemic. City Housing Department Deputy Director Jennifer Tidwell will preview what might go into a City Hall plan, and ask you to be part of the conversation.

Sep 30
“Keeping the EPA Going Amidst Political Turmoil”  Kerry Herndon
Kerry Herndon worked for the U.S. EPA as an Environmental Scientist for 34 years and thrived on her efforts to protect the environment and public health. She will discuss current controversies surrounding the Agency, challenges faced by career staff, and potential results from roll backs on environmental policies. After retiring, Kerry was elected to the Kanza Sierra Club Excom serving as Chair for the past two years.



For the eco, permaculture, gardens and farm peeps (and for those who like their dinner), this past Sunday’s Forum may especially interest you
http://www.kkfi.org/program-episodes/country-life-isnt-used-terry-spence-craig-volland/

“Country Life Isn’t What It Used to Be” with Terry Spence & Craig Volland

Terry Spence and Craig Volland will explain how Big AG’s political power increasingly threatens rural landowners’ quality of life and property values. It’s the environmental injustice nobody talks about. Terry is with the Socially Responsible Agriculture project and farms in northwest Missouri. Craig is Chair of the Agriculture Committee of the Kansas Sierra Club.


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Good people are working hard to make our air, water, and food safer.
With all the challenges they’ve been facing, they can’t do as much if we don’t similarly invest ourselves (hours, dollars, votes, beyond the sound bites informing ourselves and friends AND those who you otherwise might disagree with).

As stated at the Forum, through increasing knowledge and awareness, there’s been a decline in hospital acquired MRSA. Unfortunately, unsafe practices have resulted in a rise in the new term “community acquired” MRSA (and rise in the collection of those new data points). You hear about produce, meats, and food recalls (and deaths) in the news several times per year. How much did you know that if you live near (or eat from) one of these operations that your chances for disease and death has statistically changed?

How do we similarly increase knowledge and awareness to have a decline in community acquired illness and unsafe foods? With hospitals, the lawsuits had direct impact in tightening policies (but shocking that it’s still happening with something that should otherwise be an obvious issue –go to hospitals to get well, not to find out that your loved one died of a hospital acquired illness, especially with healthcare profits going thru the roof).

Even worse, some of those operations are just rushing to produce more sales of foods to sell elsewhere or overseas (but you and downwind and downstream and down underground aquifer get the air, water, superbugs, waste consequences). Go local may never have been more important.

Who knew that the exhaust fans from these operations could not only carry stench, gases, but also disease? Bacteria and viruses love trips and to fly to other places. Property lines mean nothing to them, and they can catch a ride to other places (on veggies, on containers, to slaughter houses…).
Who knew that spraying with factory farm waste water could alter the lives of many (pollute ground water, rivers, wells, air, veggies)?
As obvious at answers may otherwise seem, it is happening in our backyard (and everywhere --moving is not an escape). Unfortunately, it’s not obvious to those passing the laws that impact your safety and quality of life.

Who knew that if locals banded together to keep Tyson out of Tonganoxie that Tyson (or any such operation) could just shake hands (and wave checks in the air) with legislators in Topeka and just make it harder for the next group of locals?


We’re in it together.
In spirit of Woodward’s book and message to wake up (and not just to be intellectually informed).
If don’t cooperate together now (peacefully), continually, and consistently (including setting aside the things that can so easily divide seemingly like-minded people and teammates), appointments, laws, zoning, policies… will be enacted on your behalf in your absence.

Anyone can ignore it or dismiss it as happening “over there” in DC or state capitols or in rural life (or just avoid in overwhelm), but these Forums articulate how whether you engage or not, your wallet, health, rights, future… are inescapably impacted. These matters find a way to your local communities, your dinner table, your bank account.

[Topic for another day or Forum, but those free flowing checks to politicians is possibly the single biggest and the most universal issue impacting every individual, group, project, non-profit, church, community, business, babies yet to be born and see what they’ve inherited…]

My goodness. How do we manage it all? How do we invite cooperation over tribal politics, distractions of daily life, voter apathy…?

Show up. Care. Be counted. Share.



For years of archives on many topics of note, with timeless insights to consider and reconsider for you community progress purposes:  http://www.kkfi.org/program/all-souls-forum/
Feel free for your group to play the podcasts (or just the first 20-30 minutes of the speaker), host a discussion, connect, add your voice to progress.
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Did you miss one of the forums or want to listen to one again? You can access previous Forum presentations ​ ​at this link: