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File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

File:  ltr to Congress, 76 scientists 2012.pdfResource Type: Letters

As we welcome fall across the Great Plains, I find myself reflecting on the many ways conservation takes shape. Some moments are big and worthy of celebration, while others may seem small at first...

The Siege on Kanehsata:ke (the Oka Crisis) was a 78-day standoff in 1990, sparked by plans to expand a golf course onto sacred Mohawk land in Kanehsatà:ke. The crisis exposed Canada’s deep-rooted colonialism and became a defining moment in the Indigenous land rights movement.

Café del Decrecimiento n.º 15 "Tejiendo alternativas radicales: construyendo solidaridad global entre movimientos" Fecha y lugar * Fecha: viernes 16 de octubre de 2026 * Hora: 4:30 p. m. (hora local de Copenhague) * Lugar: Folkets Hus, primer piso, Stengade 50, 2200 Copenhague, Dinamarca

[ Tejedores] TGA es una “red de redes”. Cada una de esas redes actúa en diferentes partes del planeta identificando y conectando Alternativas. Son los Tejedores. [ Apoyos] Diversas organizaciones progresitas, post-desarrollo y/o anti-capitalistas apoyan esta iniciativa. Tambien lo hacen académicos, activistas y referentes.

Eventos Próximos eventos Café del Decrecimiento n.º 15 "Tejiendo alternativas radicales: construyendo solidaridad global entre movimientos" - 16 de octubre Global of () es un proceso que conecta alternativas radicales al actual sistema destructivo de todo el mundo, en particular del Sur Global. En este taller presencial y co-creativo, primero ofreceremos una introducción al trabajo de GTAGTAGTAGTAGTATapestryAlternativesTapestryAlternativesTapestryAlternativesGTAGTAGTAGTATapestryAlternativ…

Global of [Weavers] GTA is a “network of networks”. Each of those networks acts in different parts of the planet by identifying and connecting Alternatives. They are the Weavers. [Endorsements] Many progressive, post-developent and anticapitalist organizations around the world endorse this initiative. Also many academics, activists and referents do so.GTAGTAWeaversGTAGTAalternativesAlternatives

In 2026, the Toronto Queer Film Festival is celebrating ten years of bringing 2SLGBTQIA+ filmmaking to Toronto, with radical roots and a focus on amplifying...

The post The Festival that’s been bringing radical queer film-making to Toronto for 10 years first appeared on Spring.

Degrowth Cafe #15 "Weaving Radical Alternatives: Building global solidarity between movements" Date and venue * Date: Friday, October 16th, 2026 * Time: 4:30 pm (Copenhagen local time) * Venue: Folkets Hus, first floor, Stengade 50, 2200 Copenhagen, DenmarkGTAalternativesGTAGTA

National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members, is proud to endorse Representative Delia Ramirez’s Reimagining Safety Act to abolish ICE, reinvest in care.

Famed for its rolls and fried chicken, the Bread and Chicken House operated as a women-owned cooperative in Big Stone Gap, Virginia from 1971 to 1988. Through determination, shared ownership, and the support of partners like the Mountain Association, the cooperative evolved into a popular bakery and restaurant that created lasting economic opportunity for its owners. 

The cooperative was originally organized by Mother Mary Catherine Rumschlag, a former Mother General of the Glenmary Sisters, a Catholic religious order known for working alongside underserved rural communities. After moving to Big Stone Gap in 1970, she established the restaurant as a long-term community project to provide local employment. 

Recognizing both the economic challenges facing local women and the potential for community-owned business development, Rumschlag’s vision centered on empowering local women to become business owners rather than simply employees. Every member would have a stake in the business and a voice in its future. 

Through a partnership with Demoisey’s Coach House who had baking equipment, the women tested the local market for their goods. Their baking proved to be a success and they opened up next door, adding chicken to their slate of offerings.  

Like many growing businesses, however, success brought new challenges. As the cooperative gained customers and expanded its reputation, it quickly outgrew the facility. At the same time, the management systems that had worked during the organization’s early years were becoming strained. Competition was also increasing as national fast-food franchises began entering the community, creating pressure for the cooperative to adapt and strengthen its operations. 

Bread and Chicken House partnered with the Mountain Association, shortly after we formed in 1976. Our early staff provided business support, technical assistance, and financing guidance to entrepreneurs and community enterprises throughout Appalachia, with a particular focus on cooperatives.  

The Mountain Association’s assistance proved transformational. Staff helped the cooperative secure a larger facility that could accommodate its expanding operations and growing customer base. They also assisted with recruiting and training new management, helping the organization develop leadership capable of guiding the business through its next phase of growth. 

Notes sent to Mountain Association staff as we assisted with financials and cash flow.

Equally important was the work done to strengthen the cooperative’s internal structure. As any member-owned organization grows, balancing democratic participation with effective business management can become challenging. The Mountain Association worked with Bread and Chicken House to implement a stronger cooperative governance model, ensuring that each of the seven members could continue sharing ownership and decision-making responsibilities while maintaining an efficient operation. The organization also helped the cooperative secure the financing necessary to support expansion and modernization efforts.  

As profitability improved, the cooperative began making distributions to members’ share accounts, allowing the owners to directly benefit from the success they had worked together to create. However, over the years, members faced family emergencies, coinciding with local economic issues and increased competition. As a result, the members decided to sell the business. With no buyer found, they made the decision to close in 1988. 

“From wedding and birthday cakes to peanut butter roll and fudge, from rolls the angles could sing about to cornbread and soup beans that lured the most stalwart dieters to break over, it’s all still there for the balance of the week, then the Bread and Chicken House in Big Stone Gap will be a thing of the past,” wrote the local paper on June 8. 

Though many of the people originally involved have since passed away, several families of the women involved highlighted their accomplishments at the restaurant in their obituaries and in their celebrations of life.  

The story of Bread and Chicken House illustrates what is possible when community leadership, cooperative ownership, and targeted technical assistance come together. The Glenmary Sisters helped plant the seeds by supporting a vision for women-owned economic opportunity. The women brought dedication, hard work, and entrepreneurial spirit. And the Mountain Association provided the expertise, financing support, and organizational guidance needed to help the cooperative grow beyond its initial challenges. 

For 50 years, the Mountain Association has invested in people and places throughout Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. To learn more stories of our history, visit mtassociation.org/history.  

The post Bread and Chicken House: How Women Built a Cooperative in Southwest Virginia in the 70s and 80s appeared first on Mountain Association.

Events Upcoming events Degrowth Cafe #15 "Weaving Radical Alternatives: Building global solidarity between movements" - October 16th Global of () is a process connecting radical alternatives to the current destructive system from around the world, in particular from the Global South. In this in-person co-creative workshop, we will first offer an introduction to GTAs work and then create an opportunity for knowledge exchange around movement building in Denmark and beyond. Whether you're an…

Dear friends, 

Restore the Delta’s Delta Science Program officially wrapped up its summer water quality monitoring at the end of September. Since 2022, our water quality monitoring program includes:

• Recording water temperatures and weather conditions
• Testing for harmful algal blooms (HABs)
• Assessing salinity levels

New this year, in collaboration with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Region 5 of the State Water Board), we added E. coli collection and sampling to our regular monitoring routine. With the introduction of golden mussels into the Delta via Rough and Ready Island and the added E. coli sampling, we have a few new topics to cover, and we want to help break them down.

1. First off, let’s talk about HABs and what our monitoring teams observed in the field.

A bit of positive news for the community: We didn’t see much bloom activity at all this summer; otherwise, you would’ve heard from us earlier this summer through social media to exercise caution while recreating. While there were small traces of blooms, which looked like small flakes in the water at Buckley Cove in Stockton, the blooms posed no threat to recreation due to the low quantities and lack of toxin concern. The lack of HABs may have come as a surprise to many, given that we experienced very hot periods this summer, and HABs thrive in warm water. However, California did experience a wet water year, which kept consistent flows in the San Joaquin River during the hottest periods, according to the few flow monitors near Stockton on the California Data Exchange Center (CDEC). We hope to see this trend continue, but there are concerns with the introduction of golden mussels and a potential interaction with HABs proliferation.

2. Golden mussels were first detected in the Delta in October of 2024 at Rough and Ready Island, near Stockton; learn more about them from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife here.

Within the 2 years that golden mussels were introduced into the Delta, they have spread across California’s water system, with potential to impact drinking water systems across the state. In the field this year, our team observed that the waterways are very clear, so much so that our team was able to see the bottom of the water bodies clearly, which we haven’t been able to do before. What might this have to do with golden mussels? Well, golden mussels are filter feeders, and they have been spotted in large clusters around a majority of the sites that RTD’s monitoring team has been sampling. Although filtering can seem like a great thing because clear water must mean the water is clean, that’s not necessarily the case. One problem is that as golden mussels filter, they release nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, which HABs thrive on (Zhang et al. 2024). There’s also the concern of how this clearer water may affect wildlife species within the different water columns – a certain level of turbidity is important for species survival.  Golden mussels are a problem that we don’t fully understand yet, which is why we are glad that Assembly Member Rhodesia Ransom was able to secure 6 million dollars for management and response from State Water agencies.

3. Sampling E. coli levels throughout the Delta this summer.

Overall, much of Stockton fell below the recreational E. coli threshold, but throughout different times of the season, two sites became areas of concern. For one week in June, the Mormon Slough had levels that tripled the recreational-concern threshold of 320 MPN (MPN, the most probable number, is a measure for E. coli). The main concern we saw was at the end of Yosemite Lake on the Smith Canal, at American Legion Park, where many people fish.  The E. coli levels were at their worst, recorded at 8 times the 320 MPN threshold at one point. These levels eventually declined to 2-4 times the threshold in May through July. The levels continued to fluctuate, dropping below recreational levels before spiking to 8 times the threshold again in mid-September. These numbers were a cause for concern, especially for those fishing at American Legion Park and pets that roam the surrounding neighborhood.

Our team would like to acknowledge that this work does not get done without the support we receive. The collaboration with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board on both the HABs and E. coli testing supplies was pivotal in helping us to maintain our testing.  

We also couldn’t have gotten this work done without the help of our Climate Water Advocates, who quickly adapted to the new monitoring procedures. Although Summer has come to an end, we hope to continue addressing water quality issues with our monitoring programs and to keep our Delta communities informed.

• View this testing season’s recorded E. coli data here.
• Stay up to date with statewide HABs reporting, including the data we have collected, available here.

References: 

Zhang, J., Xu, M., & Yang, Y. (2024). Assessing the effects of environmental factors on filtration rate of golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei). Ecological Indicators, 158, 111544. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2024.111544

Latin American governments cracked down on forest clearing in 2025, leading global deforestation to fall by the most this decade, but political shifts and the likely impact of a strong El Niño threaten to undo those “fragile” gains, a new report has found.

Seven million hectares of forests – roughly the size of Ireland – were lost last year, a 15% drop from 2024. This marks the first meaningful slowdown in deforestation since 145 countries committed to ending deforestation by 2030 at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, according to an annual assessment of the pledge. 

But the researchers cautioned that the world remains 70% off track from fulfilling that promise and, despite progress in Latin America, deforestation in tropical Africa, home to the Congo Basin, kept rising. For the first time, it nearly matched losses in Latin America – a trend the report’s publishers called “particularly ominous”.

Erin Matson, a lead consultant at Climate Focus and one of the report’s authors, said the slowdown in the rate of deforestation “is welcome news”, but last year’s figures “look good in part because previous years look so bad”. 

She added that, at the moment, last year’s progress should be seen as an “exception and not a new trajectory because the underlying problem has not gone away”.

President of Brazil’s National Indigenous Peoples’ Foundation (FUNAI) Joenia Wapichana, President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara pose during an event to commemorate the International Amazon Rain forest Day at Salão Nobre of Planalto Government Palace on September 5, 2023 in Brasilia, Brazil. (Photo by Andressa Anholete/Getty Images) President of Brazil’s National Indigenous Peoples’ Foundation (FUNAI) Joenia Wapichana, President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Indigenous Peoples Minister Sonia Guajajara pose during an event to commemorate the International Amazon Rain forest Day at Salão Nobre of Planalto Government Palace on September 5, 2023 in Brasilia, Brazil. (Photo by Andressa Anholete/Getty Images) Lula’s policies drive progress

The decline in deforestation was primarily driven by reduced expansion of agriculture and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, thanks to a new deforestation action plan introduced by the Lula government and stronger enforcement measures, the report found.

“Brazil provides a concrete example of how national policies can be successful,” said Ana Flávia Corleto, legal analyst at Climate Policy Initiative in Brazil. “The combination of near real-time monitoring and targeted enforcement has contributed to a historical reduction in deforestation alerts in the Amazon, with a 36% decline between August 2025 and July 2026”. 

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President Lula bolstered efforts to protect the vital Amazon ecosystem when he returned to office in 2023 after enforcement had deteriorated and deforestation skyrocketed under his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. 

Neighbouring Colombia also contributed to the slowdown in forest loss in Latin America last year, posting a fourth consecutive year of falling deforestation, driven in part by reduced cattle-linked clearing. 

Brazilian election puts gains at risk

But the researchers warn that this progress rests heavily on the choices of a small number of governments and it is “highly vulnerable” to political shifts in recent and upcoming elections across the Amazon basin. 

On October 25, Brazilian voters will choose between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro, the former president’s son, in a run-off election. Bolsonaro narrowly led the first round with 47% of the vote to Lula’s 45% and polls show the pair neck and neck.

In an interview with TV Globo in August, Bolsonaro said he did not believe in climate change, only in “cyclical” extreme weather events. As a senator, he voted in 2025 for a bill loosening environmental licensing rules.

Although he has pledged to end illegal deforestation by 2029, Brazilian environmental groups fear he could follow his father’s example of weakening forest protections. “Instead of restoring forests, we would face the dismantling of environmental safeguards, land grabbing, illegal mining, and deforestation,” Observatório do Clima, a network of climate NGOs, said on Tuesday. “At the worst possible moment in the global climate crisis, electing another Bolsonaro would be a gift to environmental crime and those who profit from the destruction of the planet”. 

Climate Policy Initiative’s Corleto said changing political priorities in the Brazilian federal government can have significant consequences, especially for federal institutions and budgets. But she added that much of the country’s environmental policy is implemented at local or state level and some continuity can be expected there. 

Deforestation growth in Congo Basin

Threats to forest conservation are already growing elsewhere in the Amazon region. In Colombia, recently elected far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella has repealed mining restrictions and promised to support oil and gas exploration, which the report’s authors said pose threats to forests. 

Latin America has historically been the world’s deforestation hotspot but the second-largest tropical forest, Africa’s Congo basin, has been catching up, the assessment found. Deforestation in tropical Africa rose to 2.4 million hectares in 2025, almost level with the 2.5 million hectares lost across tropical Latin America and the Caribbean.

Forest loss there is driven primarily by smallholder agricultural expansion, logging,  infrastructure development, and regulatory systems that lack either the capacity or the political mandate to counter those pressures, the authors found. 

“We need to see states with very clear policies, strong legislation and very rigorous enforcement capacity,” said Samuel Nguiffo, a lawyer and founder of Cameroon’s Centre for Environment and Development. “Unfortunately, this is what we seem to be missing. There is a deficit in government capacity”. 

El Niño threat

The report also warns that last year’s progress in keeping trees standing could also be eroded by a possible spike in forest fires fuelled by the so-called super El Niño weather pattern which could peak this December. 

In Indonesia, which is severely affected by drought in El Niño years, wildfires are currently burning vast swathes of forest. Fire emissions in Indonesia are on track to match 2015, the country’s worst fire season this century, experts told Carbon Brief.

Matson said the world saw a “huge spike” in tree cover loss during the last “super” El Niño event in 2015 and expects to see a similar increase this year. “We can’t fully project the future, but it’s unlikely that in 2026, we’ll see the same kind of reductions that we saw last year”.

The post Global deforestation slowed in 2025 but Brazil’s election could undo “fragile” gains appeared first on Climate Home News.

We bring you the recently posted Daily Show clip about the border wall fight. The Daily Show is known for using off-beat absurdity to reveal the absurd, and they do not disappoint! All jokes aside, they do a pretty good job of portraying the ridiculousness of such a wasteful, destructive, and unnecessary border wall along the U.S and Mexico border.

The post Daily Show: The Border Wall Fight appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

In the latest, Scott and Bob talk about the history of the Democratic centrists waging war on the left flank in the party for corporate interests, how it led us…

However, “rising gas turbine costs and supply shortages are already making new gas plants more expensive and slower to build,” David Villagrana, EDF’s lead counsel for clean energy tax solutions, told Utility Dive.

Registered nurses at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and St. Joseph hospitals in Wichita, Kansas, voted overwhelmingly in favor of ratifying a new three-year contract today, winning protections to improve patient safety and nurse retention.