PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST

The last few days have been turbulent ones for us here in the central valley.
Tea parties and walks for water have been the central focus for a lot of hard working people.
Our team took the opportunity to go to both events and report on what we saw.

The Tea Party in Fresno, Ca:

What do you get when you have a radio personality, an ex-mayor, a large group of people that are sick and tired of taxes and a dash of historical nostalgia? You get a guy on a horse, uncle Sam on stilts, someone in an Obama mask and an orderly, calm, mellow party (um protest) that is vaguely reminiscent of the original Boston Tea Party. This protest proved that you can send a message to our nations capital without resorting to the senseless name calling and destruction of private and public property that some other groups have done in the past such as various environmentalist and anti-abortion groups. (I would name names but most of these people can't handle criticism even though they say they stand for free speech.) I do have to say that I was a little disappointed though, I wanted to see drunken, angry, people tossing tea bags into the San Luis Reservoir, oops I mean the Save Mart Center. Instead I got a lot of lectures and comedy routines. Both the lectures and routines were good with the general message being too much taxation and spending would kill our economy. To this, I on behalf of my team would like to add, "duh!!!, only someone working for CNN or the White House wouldn't understand that."

The Walk for Water march:

Yep, you guess it, my team and I decided it wasn't enough to attend a function about taxes that the Dept of Homeland Security could deem radical, we just had to go join up with Paul Rodriguez and the United Farm Workers Union in their protest over water rights. The only problem is the United Farm Workers Union wasn't there nor did they seem to support the cause. The farm workers were there, some with their children and so where the farmers, you know the people the U.F.W. likes to protect the farm worker from. They were there together trying to save their livelihood from the prospect of job and business loss. I for one find it appalling that the organization founded on the idea of farm labor rights would not stand to defend the most important right of all, the right to work. The overall protest was peaceful from what my team and I had witness, save the rouge news van that almost ran over a few people when leaving. The driver did not look back when reversing and only stop once people started shouting and knocking on the van doors to stop. (I won't name names here either, but I wish we would've caught that action on video.) As my team headed back home, I heard that the protest did hit a small snag with authorities when crossing the aqueduct, but we where not there thus, I can not report on what had happened at that time.

The reason for this whole protest is the protection of a little tiny fish called the Delta Smelt. Now, I understand it is our responsibility as human beings to take care of our environment and all of its inhabitants, the problem is this idea of ecological preservation. Many in the environmental lobby feel that the best way to preserve and save a species, is to preserve it's current and immediate habitat. The problem with that line of thought is that habitats are not isolated self contained pieces of land and/or water, they are part of a bigger system that has already been altered and will continue to be altered with or without human intervention. This means the fate of the Delta Smelt may well be out of our human hands, especially if there is an extended period of drought or low rain fall such as that caused by global warming. It may actually be more beneficial for a large portion of endanger species in question to be relocated to a comparable habitat which would save both the fish and the jobs. I know this is a gross simplification of the issue and that there are many factors that need to be taken into account, but hey it's an idea.

In closing, I would like to say that I am proud of all of you who attended these events. You have shown all of us that change does not start by mere rhetoric but by action and the guts to stand up to adversity.

You can see pictures from these events at adlphotogroup.ning.com