(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Wrong Story -- Strike for the Planet week 135 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-11-18 You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference! This is the letter for week 135 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile… STRIKE FOR THE PLANET “This is ridiculous, what am I doing here? I’m in the wrong story.”1 This week’s topic: The Wrong Story Stories matter Why is a 1621 Pilgrim and “Indian” turkey get-together celebrated in November?2 After all, there was a 1565 Saint Augustine, Florida settler/Native thanksgiving mass and feast with tropical fruits; an April 1585 El Paso celebratory fish feast with settlers and Natives; and a 1631 Cape Cod post-battle thanksgiving feast by the Separatists (aka Pilgrims) after they surrounded an unsuspecting Pequot village and killed 400 Native men, women, and children.3 The 1621 story became the Thanksgiving story because it was crafted and edited to support those in power staying in power. In one simple tale, it green lights Manifest Destiny, colonization, land theft, genocide, and White supremacy. It sugarcoats and hides complicated, important truths.4 That is the power of a wrong story. What is San Francisco’s climate change story? SF is engaged in some serious greenwashing. We say we’re a green city acting vigorously to combat climate change while in fact committing to very little, spending even less, and accomplishing just enough to look good while not making enough difference to count.5 SF is telling and believing the wrong environmental story. What story does SF need to be telling? We have to tell a story of our city, of all the beings that live in it, and what we have to do in order to continue being able to live in it. Our story is a story of self-sufficiency in the city and bay region. It is a story of local renewable clean energy production and a local energy grid. It is a story about locally produced water for the needs of our ecosystem, which means it’s a story of a huge shift in how we think about, get, use, store, and recycle water. It is a story about local food production, a true native urban forest, uncovering the soil, freeing the streams, and working now for the sea level rise that will utterly change huge areas of SF. This is a story that only requires enough imagination to see a future where SF survives in order for us to tell it. Change the narrative and get to work! Why are you letting San Francisco’s story be told by Donors Capital Fund, the ExxonMobil Foundation, the Koch Affiliated Foundations, and the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program?6 Dear Editor, SF needs to actually act on climate change if we want our city to survive. We can go entirely car-free, eliminate all gas and wood burning in SF, plant a true native urban forest, build a web of bio pathways connecting all our microclimates, start the necessary coastal planting to combat sea level rise, switch to blackwater recycling, and ensure green local electrical production. We can invest in transit and dedicated bike lanes, turn roads into housing, and use the arts to communicate better. We can do all this; it only requires enough imagination to see a future where there is still a San Francisco. Tell us that story and we will work to make it happen. Right now, SF is telling a story of big capital, as if corporations are the city. Can we tell a story instead where we and our city survive? FOOTNOTES 1. Stephen Sondheim. “Any Moment”. Into The Woods. 1986. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmtV34K2AOI . 2. “History of Thanksgiving”. The Holiday Spot. Accessed 23 November 2021. https://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/history.htm . 3. Larissa Fasthorse. The Thanksgiving Play. Samuel French. 2018. https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/11825/files/1621659 . 4. David Silverman. “The Vicious Reality Behind the Thanksgiving Myth”. The New York Times. 27 November 2019. https://bt24news.com/analysis-comment/opinion-the-vicious-reality-behind-the-thanksgiving-myth/ . 5. See Strike letters for weeks 132, 133, and 134 for specific figures. 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