January 08, 2018

Frida Berrigan, A Mother Confronts a World on Fire

In this Tomgram piece, activist Frida Berrigan relates the problems of the world with the strong tenderness of a caring mother. Her web links offer much additional information.

Frida Berrigan, A Mother Confronts a World on Fire

“Do Kids Die, Mom?” Facing the Future With Trepidation in the Age of Trump

Posted by Frida Berrigan, January 7, 2018.
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(About TomDispatch: Tom Engelhardt launched Tomdispatch in November 2001 as an e-mail publication offering commentary and collected articles from the world press. In December 2002, it gained its name, became a project of The Nation Institute, and went online as "a regular antidote to the mainstream media." more

In his introduction to Frida Berrigan's piece, TomEngelhardt includes a section with many valuable links related to the climate -- and related political -- crisis:

"I’m imagining a world at least four to five degrees Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial one (as the prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted back in 2014) or even hotter than that. I’m imagining rising sea levels that could someday make the coastal city my grandson and I regularly wander through a flood zone.  I’m thinking of mega-droughts, staggering heat waves, and fire seasons of unprecedented length and destructiveness.  I’m conjuring up refugee flows that leave the present ones in the dust.  I’m mulling over the fact that a near-majority of the American people elected a man dedicated not just to ignoring the reality of climate change, but to accelerating it via the loosing of the fossil fuel industry on the environment, aided and abetted by a rogue’s gallery of climate change deniers and oil company stooges..."

And from Frida:

“Do Kids Die, Mom?”
Facing the Future With Trepidation in the Age of Trump
By Frida Berrigan

As a mother and an activist, here’s what I’ve concluded as 2018 begins: it’s getting harder and harder to think about the future -- at least in that soaring Whitney Houston fashion. You know the song: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way...” These days, doesn’t it sound quaint and of another age?

The truth is I get breathless and sweaty thinking about what life will be like for my kids -- three-year-old Madeline, five-year-old Seamus, and 11-year-old Rosena.  I can’t stop thinking about it either.  I can’t stop thinking that they won’t be guaranteed clean air or clean water, that they won’t have a real healthcare system to support them in bad times, even if they pay through the nose in super high taxes. They may not have functional infrastructure, even if President Trump succeeds in building a yuge gilded wall on our southern border (and who knows where else). The social safety net -- Medicare, Medicaid, and state assistance of various sorts -- could be long gone and the sorts of nonprofit groups that try to fill all breaches a thing of the past. If they lose their jobs or get sick or are injured, what in the world will they have to fall back on, or will they even have jobs to begin with? ...
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