Activism Across America

Unlike traditional presidential campaigns, which just focus on how great the candidate is, the Barack Obama campaign has organized ways to bring out the greatness of the people who support Obama for President. It’s a form of community service campaigning called ObamaWorks.

Through ObamaWorks, people gather to work on projects to improve their neighborhoods. Last weekend in Missoula, Montana, for example, Barack Obama supporters got together to clean up a stretch of the Clark Fork River.

Now, does making the Clark Fork River clean help elect Barack Obama as President? Not directly, but it does show that Barack Obama’s supporters care about a lot more than just electing Obama President. There’s a great deal of idealism among Obama supporters, and yes, that does reflect well upon Barack Obama himself.

Politics aside, good for the ObamaWorks crew in Missoula for helping to keep Montana’s rivers clean.

I went to Yazoo in the 1990s, and found it a charming small town. As nice as the town was, however, the Yazoo River had much more of an impact on me. I saw it in a time of high water, mind you, but the vision of its thick, muddy water surging through that small town will never leave me. The Yazoo is quite a river.

It’s easy for those of us who are not from Mississippi to make fun of the name of Yazoo. It’s an odd name - no denying it. Let’s get past the name, now. Yazoo is in trouble.

The Army Corps of Engineers has come up with a scheme to build the world’s largest water pumping station on the Yazoo River, even larger than the mammoth pumps used in Holland to keep the ocean at bay. Why do they want to put such a huge pump there, right in the middle of Mississippi?

They want to drain over 200,000 acres of prime wetlands, including federally protected wetlands in the Delta National Forest, that draw in a huge range of migratory birds. The presence of those birds adds significantly to the local economy. Drain those wetlands, and the birds are gone.

There’s good news and bad news on this matter. The staff of the Environmental Protection Agency has reviewed the matter and recommended that the Yazoo Backwater Pumping Plant project be vetoed. That’s good news.

The bad news is that, in the past, the staff of the EPA has not always had final say. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, a political appointee of the Republican Bush Administration, has sometimes chosen to ignore the advice his own staff of scientists give him.

Take action: Send a letter to Stephen Johnson urging him to veto the Yazoo Pumps.