Direct Action

Alternative Solutions to Calling the Police

- Adam Clare

Respect for the police continues to erode due to questionable, immoral, and illegal police behaviour. Just this week in Ontario, police breaking the law ruined an entire case taking down a mob gambling operation. It’s also impossible to ignore the abhorrent police actions highlighted by BLM and similar organizations. So if the validity of the police is under question, what should we do?

Over at Vox they’ve collected a few solutions to problems that people may traditionally want to call the police for. It’s quite strange to call the police to help people in mental health crisis when the police are better equipped to take on armed bank robbers. It’s also strange that the police handle traffic violations while we also call them to investigate murder. It doesn’t have to be this way, we can do better and we know how.

People often decide to call the police because someone in their area appears to be intoxicated or in some kind of mental health crisis. One 2017 study of Camden, New Jersey, for example, found that 7 percent of calls were related to some mental or behavioral health need, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP).

But police are not trained to address mental health or substance use issues, and calling them can lead to a person in crisis being arrested and jailed, rather than getting the medical treatment they may need, as Amos Irwin and Betsy Pearl write at CAP. Several police killings in recent years — like the fatal shootings of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York, last fall — happened when law enforcement officers encountered someone having a mental health crisis.

Instead of police, a growing number of cities have crisis response teams composed of social workers, counselors, and others trained to help people with mental health or substance problems. In Eugene, Oregon, for example, a program called Cahoots sends trained specialists to help people deal with crises involving mental health or substance use, and refers them to further services or treatment, as Roge Karma reported at Vox.

Read more.

A Toolkit for Addressing Misinformation

- Adam Clare

Democracy functions best when the people are well educated and the group Evidence for Democracy wants exactly that: a smart public. With COVID vaccinations well underway it’s important to understand what exactly is happening with the vaccines and other public health solutions. First, we need to understand that a lot of misinformation is accurate information misrepresented in a misleading fashion, which makes it more difficult to address. Thankfully Evidence for Democracy put together a toolkit for anybody to help identify misleading information in these crazy times.

You can watch the video above and/or check out the toolkit PDF linked below.

With research on this topic quickly evolving, we’ve updated our recommendations based on a review of the best available evidence and tailored our advice for the science community. In this webinar, we walk through best practices for addressing misinformation online. Tune in to learn how we can all do our part in the collective effort to address online misinformation!

Check out the toolkit!

Join the No-Mow May Campaign

- Adam Clare

pollinator

Pollinators love the spring and they love your lawn….until you cut it. Spring time is when pollinators need a quick get up and go meal, which usually comes from those peppy plants popping through your lawn early in the season. You can help pollinators survive the spring by just being lazy and letting your grass grow. Yes, you can save the world by doing less.

Remember the best strategy for not mowing lawns is not to have one in the first place. Check out these lawn alternatives.

Conservation groups have been promoting the “No-Mow May” approach around the world.

Cormier said spring is a crucial time to help pollinators.

“Flowering plants in the spring, for example, can bloom and provide an early source of nectar for pollinators such as bees, hummingbirds, butterflies and beetles,” she said.

Cormier says allowing wildflowers and grasses to grow during this time will also help prevent pollutants and debris from travelling directly into freshwater ecosystems, and help with soil stabilization.

“We’re not asking for a lot of time. We’re asking for 4 weeks so hopefully maybe just take a break from mowing for a couple weeks, for the entire month just try it out. It’s a small commitment but maybe people will like it and I hope they do,” she said.

Read more.
Thanks to Kathryn!

Stop Mowing Your Lawn to Save the Planet and Your Time

- Adam Clare

Lawns are unnatural and require a lot of maintenance, so why do we have them? As a non-lawn person I just don’t get the appeal of a lawn when there are so many better alternatives which require less work to maintain. It turns out I’m not the only one baffled by the obsession with barely keeping grass alive through. There’s a growing movement in the UK (and elsewhere) to replace labour intensive lawn care with easy to maintain landscaping. Instead of a lawn you can plant clover, switch to xeriscaping, or any of these alternatives.

The no-mow trend is gaining momentum across the gardening community. The wildflower conservation charity Plantlife runs an annual No Mow May challenge, which encourages people to share their experiences of letting the grass and wildflowers grow, or even learning how to plant a wildflower meadow in the process.
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Sarah makes an important point: not mowing your lawn this spring may help redefine your relationship with your garden, making it more about relaxation and quiet – and watching bee friendly plants grow. If you do like keeping active in the garden, you can always give yourself a challenge by growing a new plant, starting a vegetable patch, or building a bird box or a home for a hedgehog.

Read more.

Americans: Go Vote!

- Adam Clare

vote sign

vote

Americans: please go vote if you haven’t already.

Not an American? Here, go enjoy pure internet click bait.

I have nothing good to say about the last four years of the Republican rule in the USA. Sure, good things have come out of America over the years and we’ve covered that here. Efforts to undo damage to the environment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions have happened in the states, but that’s all happened at the state and city level.

It’s time that Americans remove politicians that block positive progress from office.

Let’s hope that we get good news from this election.

No matter the outcome, I’m sure that cities in the states will keep fighting climate change and trying to help their local populace.

If you’re in the states you can find out how to vote from the official government webpage.

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