Power to the people
In her long article Protest and Persist (7 April), Rebecca Solnit makes an excellent point that we cannot know the long-term difference that our actions can make. This is the ripple effect of role-modelling.
However, she does not draw any distinction between demonstrations and civil disobedience. This distinction was clearly articulated by the American psychologist Rollo May in his book Love and Will. Action changes things; reaction doesn’t.
The government acts and the people react by demonstrating. In civil disobedience the people act and the government reacts. People in prison, holding the high moral ground, exert a powerful influence, as Gandhi well understood. The courageous acts of American activist Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden inspire generations.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• Thank for the Rebecca Solnit article Protest and Persist. It was so encouraging to read that individuals should persist in doing what they believe is right, even if feels like a drop in the ocean and when everyone else is excusing themselves for not doing so. She demonstrates that it is no excuse at all to say “what can I do when there is only one of me?” It is the dogged following of a thoughtful ethical path by individuals that counteracts the well-proven problem of evil triumphing when good people do nothing.
It would be great to have more articles from her in the Weekly.
Caroline Sandes
London, UK
US motives under scrutiny
You reported (14 April) that, following the US airstrikes against Syria, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson vowed that his country would come to the defence of innocent civilians “anywhere in the world”. As this statement was being made, the US government was displaying contempt for the plight of innocent civilians by blocking an agreement on climate change at the G7 summit.
The World Health Organization estimates that the tripling in weather-related natural disasters due to climate change is causing over 60,000 deaths per year. It predicts that, within 15 years, climate change will cause around 250,000 deaths per year.
While the world’s governments agree that action must be taken to reduce the destructive impacts of climate change, it is, once again, a Republican administration that is trying to block progress. Like George W Bush before him, President Donald Trump has filled his cabinet with climate-change deniers and fossil-fuel hangers-on. In order to boost their short-term profits, this tiny cabal of self-serving oil and coal barons is willing to wreck the stable global climatic system that has, since the last ice age, enabled agriculture and civilisations to flourish.
It is now more important than ever for other governments to reassert their commitment to tackling climate change and, in so doing, to reap the benefits of the rapidly growing low-carbon economy while Trump’s blinkered clique languish in the polluting past.
Gordon James
Whitland, UK
• To pretend the idea that “the world must be made safe for democracy” has provided the “philosophical underpinning for [US] interventionism” (Trump puts America second, 21 April) is surely not meant seriously.
What about the overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and Salvador Allende in Chile? Both were democratically elected. Not to mention the many dictatorships the US has supported.
Let’s be serious: the US, the world’s policeman, or mafia, acts in the interests of its ruling class.
Stephen Langford
Sydney, Australia
Briefly
• The headline Further life or pie in the sky? (21 April) says it all – that “jazzed” scientists are hopeful that “microbial life” will be discovered on Saturn’s moon, marvellously called Enceladus, and that because Nasa won’t be touring Saturn again for at least another 10 years, this “realisation” is “bittersweet”.
But even more bittersweet is the realisation that microbial life on Earth goes back at least 3.6bn years, and that it will probably take nearly as long before we can spot any major changes on Enceladus, or on Jupiter’s moon Europa, another best bet.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• Suspected allergies are not the only reason for increasing numbers of young people avoiding cow’s milk (14 April). There is greater awareness now of the cruelties involved in repeatedly making cows pregnant, then taking away their calves so that the milk can be extracted for humans. Add the health and environmental impacts of animal products, and avoiding dairy products is a rational and humane decision.
A solution of pus and antibiotics taken from a grieving mother? No thanks.
Philip Sleigh
Exeter, UK
• I agree with the writer of the piece Music gives us a good cry? Tell me about it (21 April) that Pete Seeger’s This Land Is Your Land, which was sung with Bruce Springsteen at the Obama inauguration, as well as We Shall Overcome, are sad. But to me the really sad song is Brian Finn singing When the Robins Come Home.
Gabrielle Monaghan
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
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