Opinion

Denise Gelberg: The Lucky Girl

By Marjorie Z. Olds

After I read a review of longtime Ithacan Denise Gelberg’s third published novel, “Lucky Girl,” Denise shared this thumbnail sketch:

“I’m a longtime resident of Ithaca, coming to Cornell from Brooklyn in the late sixties. After graduating, I worked as a teaching associate for Cornell Law School Professor Milton Konvitz’s course in constitutional law, and then enrolled at SUNY Cortland to get my teaching license. I went from analyzing Supreme Court case law to kindergarten in the span of a year.

“Later, I interrupted my teaching career to get my doctorate in labor relations in education at Cornell University. I was chief negotiator for three contracts between the Ithaca Teachers’ Association and the ICSD. I also wrote a book about education reform and articles that appeared in national periodicals. After leaving the classroom I worked in higher education accreditation — and I also began writing fiction.

“Truly, a checkered career!”

Growing up in a working-class family of first-generation Americans, Denise and her brother, both very good students, could earn well-respected diplomas from Brooklyn College, at no cost. Only by chance did one of Denise’s well-heeled relatives offer to let Denise tag along on a visit to Ithaca. While the young women Denise met at Cornell all seemed wealthier (middle-class) than Denise was accustomed to; undaunted, she applied to the university to study social sciences.

The theme of equal opportunity for all resonates in Denise’s life, no matter what Denise studied or taught — when she negotiated amongst the skilled and powerful, when she spoke of those she met along the way. Reflecting on her years of teaching, Denise spoke lovingly of young students, colleagues, parents. Denise however, recites the bittersweet memories of teaching children whose needs are not met, whom she watched fall through the gaping holes in society’s “safety net.” “I loved teaching at South Hill so much. We had students from every background! African Americans, Latinos, white kids, Asian children, able-bodied children and those with special challenges, rich kids, poor kids. Families, community members, staff all worked for the common good.

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Clean Energy and Real News

By Stephen Burke

Dr. Sandra Steingraber is a biologist and science writer who has taught at Cornell University and Ithaca College. She is a leading public health advocate and environmentalist.

Steingraber’s work focuses on environmental hazards of fossil fuels and petrochemicals and their links to disease.

WIth climate scientist Peter Kalmus, this month Steingraber published an open letter, signed by over 300 U.S. scientists, urging President Biden to use his executive authority to declare a climate emergency and suspend all future fossil fuel projects.

The letter was issued in conjunction with a People Vs. Fossil Fuels mobilization held in Washington, D.C. this month.

“We stand in solidarity with the People Vs. Fossil Fuels mobilization and its demands,” Steingraber said.

The group’s name suggests the need not just for present mobilization but for permanent policy changes.

The group said, in an organizing statement, “From October 11 to 15, thousands of people will take action at the White House, participate in civil disobedience, and demand that President Biden choose a side: People Vs. Fossil Fuels.”

Steingraber said, “Scientists are done speaking calmly in the face of inaction. Listening to science means acting on science, stopping new fossil fuel projects, opposing industry delay tactics, and declaring a national climate emergency.”

The scientists call on Biden to end new fracking and drilling in public lands and waters, reject fossil fuel infrastructure projects, stop fossil fuel exports and subsidies, and advance a program of renewable energy.

Kalmus said, “Carbon indulgences and hypothetical tech solutions are dangerous distractions. The climate emergency is caused by burning fossil fuels, and the only way out is to quickly ramp down and end the fossil fuel industry. Too much time has been wasted already.”

The letter noted that the harshest effects of environmental hazards are concentrated among Black, Brown, Indigenous and working-class communities, unprotected by wealth and influence.

Dr. Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University, a signatory of the letter, said these communities “are living every day with the toxic chemicals that are shutting down beaches in California right now” after an undersea pipeline this month leaked thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean a few miles from downtown Los Angeles. “We have President Biden making lots of promises, but Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are waiting for action and environmental justice.”

The Washington mobilization began on Indigenous Peoples Day, when Indigenous people led a White House protest.

Emphasis was placed on stopping Line 3, a proposed pipeline expansion to move nearly a million barrels of tar sands daily from Canada to the U.S., partly through Indigenous territories.

Enbridge, the Canadian company responsible for the project, was responsible for the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history when in 1991 nearly two million gallons of oil burst from its pipeline into a tributary of the Mississippi River and wetlands.

A petition of over a million signatures was prepared for the Washington demonstration, calling on the Army Corps of Engineers to shut down the Line 3 project until completing “a proper Environmental Impact Statement.”

Joye Braun, the National Pipelines Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, called demonstrators “representatives of communities who have carried the brunt of the harm from fossil fuels for generations,” now with “bodies on the line in the name of climate justice” as they “risk arrest to change the course of history.”

A mobilization website reported from Washington that “Indigenous leaders are occupying the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the first time since the 1970s.” Indigenous youth led a march of hundreds to the Capitol.

People Vs. Fossil Fuels reported, overall, 130 arrests on the first day of protests, 155 the second, 90 the third and 140 the fourth. (This column is written before the fifth.)

Perusal of the New York Times website shows no notice of the mobilization. Meanwhile, in telling contrast about mainstream news priorities, on October 15 the paper’s U.S. Politics section featured a story called “Behind the Scenes of a Conservative Rally,” detailing Republican activity in Virginia.

In more of “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” as construed by the paper of record: While ignoring the existence of the citizen mobilization on clean energy and its scientific importance, on October 13 the paper’s Science section found room to report that “William Shatner Finally Goes to Space,” detailing the Star Trek star’s space tourist trip as a guest of Jeff Bezos, scientifically newsworthy (apparently) as celebrities playing astronaut for 10 minutes, 65 miles above the Earth and its dull problems.

Dr. Robert Howarth is a professor of environmental biology and ecology at Cornell. Regarding the environmental mobilization and the call for action by scientists, he said, “The science is clear: To stand a chance of avoiding complete climate catastrophe, we must halt all new fossil fuel development now. Today, not tomorrow.”