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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 5, 2015)
News Page 10 Street Roots • June 5-11,2015 BONNIE McKINLAY Fighting for the planet BY ALICE HARDESTY ■ C O N TR IBU TIN G W R fTÈR onnie McKinlay arrives at my house a little out of breath, greets my dog, and apologizes for being late. She’s wearing a Norwegian wool sweater and a huge backpack full of materials. Although she almost always rides her bike, this time she has driven because she’s taking people with her to testify at a hearing in makes me , Longview, Wash. I’m a little surprised to learn that she actually has a car. than discovering Despite her another human being to admire. 64 years, she has few gray -------------- ALICE W ALKER ------------— hairs and a great deal of youthful energy. Although soft spoken, it’s clear that she can be vigorously persuasive. We settle in at my dining room table with a simple lunch of salad, cornbread and tea. Before we’ve taken more than a few bites, the conversation gets right down to P HO TO COURTESY BO NNIE M c K IN L A Y basic essentials and I reach for my notepad. B onnie M cKinlay holds a sign in fro n t o f the White H ouse in Washington, D.C., durin g a July 2011 rally against the “We are in crisis,” she declares. “When Keystone X L Pipeline ju s t after she was released from jail. She a nd other protesters were arrested fo r standing too long will people wake up to that?” Bonnie in an area near the White House. assumes that everyone knows about the consequences of climate change, that those who deny them are either bought and sold raffles and games to raise money. Right she was too young. Instead, she sold hand after the Haitian earthquake they raised or just ill informed by the media, that the made potholders in the neighborhood and $8,000 for Doctors Without Borders. Later, secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific donated the money to the Southern with the organization 350.org, they raised Partnership and its implications for climate Christian Leadership Conference. $3,000 for relief efforts in the Philippines are malevolent, and that the consequences At 18 she moved to Portland, where her after Typhoon Yolanda. She and friends for future generations are catastrophic - brother had gone to Reed College. Here she went on to use this method fundraising for unless we do something to change the earned her teaching credential at Portland several other causes. course right now. State University, got a master’s degree in Then in the summer of 2011 there was a “Our planet’s climate is allergic to carbon. media studies, and went to work as an call-out from Bill McKibben, the well-known We know that. If your child were allergic to elementary school teacher and librarian. author and co-founder of 350.org, to come carrots, for example, you wouldn’t keep She enjoyed working with children, helping feeding her carrots, would you? Why are we them understand subjects experientially, not to Washington, D.C. It was just after the famous statement by former NASA scientist doing this? What is more important than just from books. She remained drawn to James Hansen that the Keystone XL the civilization that would be lost?” She’s issues of political and social justice. pipeline would be “game over” for the referring to the loss of multiple species of “I have always been an activist,” she planet because of global warming. “Jim and animals and plants, people’s homes and explains. “There is a human tendency to I looked at each other and said, let’s go!” families through mass migration, cultures, shove things under the rug, and I find They took the train because they had literature, music, lives, all the consequence myself fighting against that.” During the sworn off flying, and when they got to of unmitigated climate disruption. Vietnam War, as Bonnie protested, her Bonnie grew up on Long Island until age Washington they took the civil disobedience brother refused the draft and somehow 12, when her family moved to Southern training from 350.org. They stood in an area managed to carry it off, and her husband, California. Her parents always encouraged near the White House where people are Jim, was a conscientious objector. her and her brother to speak out, to raise Bonnie is a natural organizer. Over a allowed to stay for only 20 minutes, and their voices whenever they felt that people period of several years, she and her friends they stayed rooted there. The police warned were being treated unfairly or when moral and family put on meal fundraisers. They them three times that if they didn’t leave issues arose. During the civil rights would empty their house of furniture, bring they would be arrested. And so, of course, movement Bonnie longed to go to in lots of tables and chairs, invite the Washington, D.C. and join the marches, but community, and serve a big meal. They held See MCKINLAY, page 11 B NOTHING HOPEFUL The NOTHING MORE H O PE FU L series originates from a workshop taught by M artha Gies. “Last fall, as I tired o f hearing the IS IL Hour, interrupted only occasionally by a warning about E bola’s im m inent arrival in Europe or the U.S., it occurred to me that the media was dea f to good news,” Gies says. “I remembered my frien d Sr. Rosarii Metzgar once telling me she believed all the terrible news with which we are daily battered m ust surely be offset by sm all a n d unseen acts o f good. ” Gies resolved to enlist some writers who would h u n t down a nd write th o s e stories.
