From the Lincoln Journal Star:
Volunteers of the Lincoln chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby will host a showing of the acclaimed National Geographic series “Years of Living Dangerously” from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11 at the Barnyard, 151 N. Eighth St. The public watch party will include light refreshments.
The episode will be preceded by a message from special guests, including members of the “Years of Living Dangerously” cast. A question-and-answer session follows the film.
From InsideClimate News:
President-elect Donald Trump has signaled his plan to move quickly to re-start the Keystone XL pipeline as part of his goal to revive a fossil-fueled future. But his administration would be heading quickly into the same legal and political thicket where the Canada-to-Texas tar sands oil pipeline project was stuck for seven years.
If anything, Keystone’s path forward may be more difficult, because economic pressure for Canadian producers to get the pipeline built has eased. While TransCanada’s Keystone was stuck in limbo, producers found other routes to get oil to the U.S. Gulf coast and Midwest, and on Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved two pipelines to export tar sands oil to global markets.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the resolve of about 100 Nebraska landowners who have refused to agree to TransCanada’s right-of-way across their properties. “For us and for a good number of the resisters, this is a fourth- and fifth- generation land holding,” said Jeanne Crumly, whose family owns a ranch and farm in Page, 40 miles south of the South Dakota border. “It’s not a possession. It’s an inheritance. And it comes with responsibilities.”
From Nebraskans for Peace:
In the wake of the international publicity the Nebraska Peace Foundation — the 501(c)(3) arm of Nebraskans for Peace — generated with its shareholder resolution at the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting on April 30th, the foundation has submitted a follow-up resolution for consideration at the forthcoming May 6, 2017 meeting in Omaha.
Earlier this year, in both the 2015 Annual Shareholder Letter and his remarks at the 2016 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting of Shareholders itself, Warren Buffett did the world and the financial community a great service by acknowledging both the reality and the threat of climate change. In fact, he did so not just once, or in passing — he made this message an explicit focus.
In follow-up, a shareholder proposal has been formally submitted for a vote at the 2017 Annual Shareholders Meeting. In it, the Nebraska Peace Foundation asks Mr. Buffett to extend his public and corporate leadership by committing to divest Berkshire Hathaway of its fossil fuel holdings over a 12-year period.
Such a commitment would not endanger Berkshire Hathaway’s near-term profitability; instead, it would send a timely and urgently needed message to the international community that — to avoid the worst effects of climate disruption — the world must earnestly undertake a shift toward renewable energy sources.
Read more from Nebraskans for Peace, including the full proposal.
From Jill2016.com:
The Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign is launching an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections. We are raising money to demand recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — three states where there is a significant need to verify machine-counted vote totals. Please donate to this initiative today.
To give you a sense of the problem, the voting machines used in Wisconsin were banned in California after they were shown to be highly vulnerable to hacking and malicious programming due to lacking security features.
“After a divisive and painful presidential race, reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many American to wonder if our election results are reliable,” said Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presidential candidate. “These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust.”
This is about more than the results of this one election. This is about protecting our democracy and ensuring that “We the People” can have confidence in reported results.
The deadlines and costs for vote recounts are:
From the Green Party US:
“The Green Party and Green candidates and activists represented political revolution throughout the 2016 election year. We’ll continue to do so during the next four years and beyond,” said Jill Stein, the Green Party’s 2016 nominee for president.
“For Greens, political revolution means supporting front lines of struggle from Black Lives Matter, to pipeline blockades, ending immigrant deportations and bailing out students. It also means fighting Sen. Charles Schumer’s corporate tax break proposal as well as the Trump-Pence agenda. It means offering a Green alternative to neoliberalism, white supremacy, and the two-party political establishment that made the election of someone like Donald Trump possible,” said Dr. Stein.
Read the full list of talking points and action plans from Greens around the country.
From the Lincoln Journal Star:
Nebraskans who don’t want this state’s troopers responding to anti-pipeline protests in North Dakota slid a wad of petition signatures through the Governor’s Mansion gates Monday.
The two petitions contained names of more than 29,000 people calling for Gov. Pete Ricketts to bring the troopers home, said organizer Joseph Hams, a 21-year-old University of Nebraska-Lincoln student.
“At the very least, I hope he recycles them,” Hams said of the petitions, joking. He added, “I hope that he’s moved by how many people were offended by his actions.”
Thousands of Nebraskans along with people from other states and countries signed the online petitions, one started by Hams and the other by Bold Nebraska.
From the Green Party US:
Check out Election Central from the national Green Party all day on election day and into the evening. You can:
From Mother Jones:
On May 20, 2015, the Nebraska state Legislature voted to repeal the state’s death penalty. When the Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, vetoed the legislation six days later, the Legislature overrode his veto. It was an extraordinary move, making Nebraska the first solidly conservative state in more than 40 years to end the death penalty.
But the victory for death penalty opponents was short-lived. Having failed in his role as governor to protect the death penalty, Ricketts worked to reinstate it in a different capacity: As a man of deep pockets. Ricketts and his billionaire father, Republican megadonor Joe Ricketts, spent $300,000 on an effort to collect enough signatures to put the death penalty question to voters, in the form of a referendum on November 8. The governor donated another $100,000 this fall to fund a campaign to sway voters to reinstate the death penalty.
From the Lincoln Journal Star:
Flashing signs that read “We Stand with Standing Rock, #NoDAPL” and “Can’t Drink Oil,” about 200 Nebraskans rallied Saturday afternoon at the state Capitol to oppose a controversial pipeline being constructed more than 400 miles away.
Should it be completed, the Dakota Access oil pipeline will run underground in close proximity to the Missouri River, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s main water source. It also would require tearing apart land the tribe considers sacred burial grounds.
Protests escalated last weekend when demonstrators set up camp on private land along the pipeline’s path, and more than 140 people were arrested Thursday.
Quieter protests continued Friday and Saturday.
Lincoln’s rally and march were organized by a 17-year-old high school student.
Yard signs for Stein/Baraka are available: