I stumbled onto the desmog blog a couple of years ago and I’ve been forwarding articles out to my friends & family since. It’s great to read about potential new tacts for inspiring action. The banks and the willfully ignorant bankers won’t stop funding these deadly projects until we make it unbearable for them to continue. Having bankers meet face-to-face with indigenous people whose communities are being ravaged by oil & gas projects is another way to make it morally unbearable, to create some cognitive dissonance for the bankers, which can be the first step in the “stages of change” behavioral concept, which I support all the way. That said, I truly believe, having spent hours in board meetings of large investment funds like Calpers who are funding horrific LNG projects in the unceded (let’s get real; ALL native land is unceded, a treaty signed under duress is invalid) Wet’suewet’en territory and life-giving headwaters, that the banker/board member ignorance is a complete & total put-on. I’ve made many an impassioned plea, even wept, They just don’t care as long as their power & privilege rolls on. In my opinion, their wealth & privilege have made them into cultivated sociopaths, incapable of feeling anything as long as their gold keeps piling up. And like sociopaths they are holding all of us hostage so we must fight, fight, fight to the end to force them to stop. I salute the effort for bankers to meet with indigenous communities as long as it galvanizes the indigenous activists but I don’t expect it to change the direction of the mentally ill abusers of the banking sector. I propose spending money on this instead and I’ll help organize it: bring Mexican, Canadian and US indigenous people together so we can be heard and seen by each other and organize transnationally and stop the sociopaths. None of us have enough money to do that & it would go waaaay farther towards healing than trying to convince the bank abusers to stop one-on-one. We won’t get anywhere with “confronting” the abusers with a “heart-to-heart” no matter how “healing” that sounds.
Thank for you bringing your experience here with such clarity, conviction and depth. I feel the anger and clear intention in your words, and I celebrate your advocacy of transnational organising. I would like to write more about all the above; and I very much hope you can make it to our event on May 22.
Btw, I curate a Telegram chat for people engaged in climate advocacy, activism, journalism, campaigning -- with a particular focus on finance. You'd be very welcome to join, let me know and I will email you directly.
Matt I always love your writings, whether the reflective thread or the activist thread. Just a note today that the link to the Pocket Project event (and registration) didn't work? Just sayin.'
I stumbled onto the desmog blog a couple of years ago and I’ve been forwarding articles out to my friends & family since. It’s great to read about potential new tacts for inspiring action. The banks and the willfully ignorant bankers won’t stop funding these deadly projects until we make it unbearable for them to continue. Having bankers meet face-to-face with indigenous people whose communities are being ravaged by oil & gas projects is another way to make it morally unbearable, to create some cognitive dissonance for the bankers, which can be the first step in the “stages of change” behavioral concept, which I support all the way. That said, I truly believe, having spent hours in board meetings of large investment funds like Calpers who are funding horrific LNG projects in the unceded (let’s get real; ALL native land is unceded, a treaty signed under duress is invalid) Wet’suewet’en territory and life-giving headwaters, that the banker/board member ignorance is a complete & total put-on. I’ve made many an impassioned plea, even wept, They just don’t care as long as their power & privilege rolls on. In my opinion, their wealth & privilege have made them into cultivated sociopaths, incapable of feeling anything as long as their gold keeps piling up. And like sociopaths they are holding all of us hostage so we must fight, fight, fight to the end to force them to stop. I salute the effort for bankers to meet with indigenous communities as long as it galvanizes the indigenous activists but I don’t expect it to change the direction of the mentally ill abusers of the banking sector. I propose spending money on this instead and I’ll help organize it: bring Mexican, Canadian and US indigenous people together so we can be heard and seen by each other and organize transnationally and stop the sociopaths. None of us have enough money to do that & it would go waaaay farther towards healing than trying to convince the bank abusers to stop one-on-one. We won’t get anywhere with “confronting” the abusers with a “heart-to-heart” no matter how “healing” that sounds.
Thank for you bringing your experience here with such clarity, conviction and depth. I feel the anger and clear intention in your words, and I celebrate your advocacy of transnational organising. I would like to write more about all the above; and I very much hope you can make it to our event on May 22.
Thank you for seeing me Matt. I will attend.
Btw, I curate a Telegram chat for people engaged in climate advocacy, activism, journalism, campaigning -- with a particular focus on finance. You'd be very welcome to join, let me know and I will email you directly.
Yes. Please include me.
sorry I can't see your email, are you able to email me at matthew.green.global@gmail.com?
Matt I always love your writings, whether the reflective thread or the activist thread. Just a note today that the link to the Pocket Project event (and registration) didn't work? Just sayin.'
Seems to be an issue with the Pocket Project website, from what I can see. It was working earlier, but when I tried just now I got an error message.
Yes, i just realized i had tried to register for a different event (not via substack) and had no luck there either...
oh thanks for pointing that out! I will see what I can do to fix.