Maude Barlow presentation lacks punch

I hate shooting the messenger. As a journalist who’s cut his teeth at a daily paper along the U.S.-Mexico border, I understand what I share might get people polarized. When I wrote about the deaths of Salvadorans in the Arizona desert in 1980, and humanized those victims, newspapers that carried my work received letters attacking me for supporting illegal immigration. Hell, I was called a bleeding heart pinko. So, I hate going after the grand dame of water issues, someone who has won award after award, including the Right Livelihood Award — the real Nobel Prize given to revolutionary social and environmental justice thinkers and activists. The April 13 Get Lit!-Spokane Community College event featuring Maude Barlow was 90 percent full. Every age and economic strata was represented — from homeless to low or middle-middle class. The only well-heeled ones were a few overpaid, over-coifed, and underperforming administrators looking like fish out of water. I talked with a single mother, a recovering meth addict, a Goth, an Emo, a Running Start student, a student with pronounced Asperger’s syndrome, two out-of-work truck drivers chipping away on pre-nursing degrees, two veterans of Bush-Obama wars totally lost in the classroom. Also in attendance were student parents with toddlers in tow — a nice cross section of what it means to be a community college. The echoes of our dumb-downing Legislature swirled around the auditorium. Cuts to technical and community colleges had just advanced to the House earlier that day. My students wanting to be K-12 teachers already see their futures dissipating – the conservative Democrats and reckless Republicans just advanced a bill that all teachers fought against: a system that fires teachers based on student performance. Lunacy prevails in all 50 state legislatures. Even Spokane’s Sen. Lisa Brown decried that vote as the minority voice, admonishing fellow politicians for working hard on ways to fire, not retain teachers. The message is clear – education is not holding primacy in our country. Barlow should have shown how cutting education is the absolute wrong approach to sustainability. Fewer educated and critical thinkers mean more people around the world dying of waterborne diseases. SCC has a technical program for water quality testing. That should have been mentioned. She never mentioned students in this program, some of whom were in the audience, or David Stasney, who helps direct it. Barlow, Get Lit’s offering for an environmental literary voice, was too quiet, too slow, too out of her league, technically speaking. Her books are great. “Global Showdown: How the New Activists Are Fighting Global Corporate Rule,” “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water,” and “Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water,” belie gumption and passion. She’s called “the Ralph Nader of Canada.” But her performance here was anemic. Ralph Nader, 77, has more fire and brimstone and passion in his little finger than what Barlow displayed in her hour. Her 64 years on earth should be an inspiration and a condemnation. She’s spent decades traveling, witnessing water crises — cholera-ridden cesspools where African women walk eight miles to bring muck back to families, or water thefts where poor and indigenous groups are literally dying of thirst because companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle seek blue gold for profit. We are at a crossroads in education, in climate change and sustainability activism. Youth and alternative students like community college attendees need impassioned models. Barlow’s talk was “granny at the lectern in dimly lit hall passing on veiled abstract of her two water books.” This is a problem I’ve seen after 40 years (I did my first public speaking gig in high school for students at Canyon del Oro High School-Tucson on the Seri Indians along the Sea of Cortez) of being a participant, speaker and audience member. I am in a band of folk who have their hearts in the right place but who also generally can’t get on board with the needs of an ever-changing populace. What a lost opportunity – many great images from around the world celebrating the beauty and community around water, yet not one photo, slide or Powerpoint was included in Barlow’s talk. Images of struggle, death and criminality tied to the water crisis should have been emblazoned on the screen behind her. None was. I say shame on Barlow and whomever handles her speaking “tour.” Students need more than ‘sage on the stage,’ and she is deep enough to know that education has shifted away from this backward pedagogy. Clips from water documentaries? “Poisoned Waters”, “Running Dry,” “Flow,”” Blue Gold: World Water Wars” (based on Barlow’s book!), “Water Voices,” and “For Love of Water” are just a few possibilities. Students who I have been campaigning for and teaching since 1983 need fundamental truths and as many wrenches in their toolboxes to advance in a time of corporate takeover of media, evisceration of safety nets and worker rights, and new fear in education. These events sometimes can be patty-cake talks, and the reality is that Barlow should have taken off the gloves and looked at the biggest game changer of all things threatening global water security and global water rights – nuclear contamination. Not one word on Fukushima’s contamination of vast stretches of the planet. Tokyo residents are faced with nuclear isotopes in their water supply. Dr. Michio Kaku, who has his own radio show – “Explorations in Science” — and books, has called for a moratorium on nuclear energy, and he’s chided Barack Obama for insisting nuclear energy is this country’s future renewable, clean energy pie. See Kaku’s recent TV appearances here: here and here. We’re at a time where people like Barlow have a responsibility to push corporate elite out of the picture, including her handlers: administrators at the feeding trough as they cut programs and workers’ rights, and implode education and communities’ welfare. Or editors who may demand a ‘nicer’ version of Barlow on speaking tours. No mention of nuclear fallout as the biggest instant water killer of our time. (Chernobyl contaminated Kiev’s water supply for 30 years, and is 100 miles away from it.) While the global water crisis is dramatic, Barlow mentioned Detroit, and, again, what a lost opportunity to not include photos by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, and their work, “Detroit’s Beautiful, Horrible Decline,” partially captured in Time and at here. Students listened as Barlow spoke of how up to 90,000 Detroit residents — all poor, some single mothers and many African-American — have had their water supply cut off because they can’t pay water bills. Child Protective Services is removing children since neglect is defined by Michigan as failure to provide sanitary conditions, i.e. clean water. What missed opportunities to not couple her words with powerful images or admonish society for treating our own like criminals when they can’t afford the pay water bills. Unfortunately, many of the hard-working students were dozing off during Barlow’s “talk.” One highlight was Pam Hofer’s Down to Earth Northwest Earth Day Writing Contest reading. As the overall winner of our essay contest, Hofer, a psychologist at Eastern State Hospital, read “Mountains and Memories,” about the power of place. Hofer was personable, composed and expressive. Her words had more imagery in 10 minutes than Barlow’s hour-long lecture captured. Even Barlow tipped her head in recognition of Hofer’s powerful writing. Be sure to look for her piece and the other winners’ contributions here next week. Overall, we must be more decisive and interesting in this sustainability movement. We need to engage audiences already beaten down by the economy, by corporate greed gutting their lives, and by the deeper and wider divide between the 5 percent elite controlling 80 percent of the wealth and maybe more political power. While Barlow’s message and spirit are timeless, her delivery and role needs massive triage and reformation. These events have to be happenings. They need groups tabling outside. They need deeper, community-based regard for themes of what a person like Barlow has to offer.