Category: Local

Colorado – The road to carbon neutrality

Well written article in the Colorado Sun on the state of Colorado’s energy infrastructure and the quest for renewable energy.

Wind turbines near Matheson, Colorado, are part of Xcel Energy’s new 600 megawatt Rush Creek Wind Project. Rush Creek, which became operational in October 2018, uses 300 turbines to generate enough electricity to power 325,000 homes. Xcel estimates the project will cut 1 million tons of carbon emissions each year from its system. (John Leyba, Special to The Colorado Sun)

https://coloradosun.com/2018/11/26/colorado-100-percent-renewable-energy/

Rabbit in Skyline Park

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‘El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.’

Watership Down, Richard Adams

Buena Vista, Colorado – Pronunciation

Buena Vista, Colorado. Unlike other places bearing this name in the United States (typical pronunciations include /ˌbwɛnə ˈvɪstə, ˌbweɪ-, -ˈviːs-/ BWE-nə VIS-tə, BWAY-, -VEES-) the town in Colorado is called /ˌbjuːnə ˈvɪstə/ BEW-nə VIS-tə by locals.

/* byoonah */

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shibboleths#In_the_United_States

Marriott strike SF

Nearly 2,500 workers walked off their jobs Thursday morning from seven Marriott hotels in downtown San Francisco to demand higher wages, workplace safety and job security.
Picket lines formed outside the Courtyard by Marriott Downtown, the Marriott Marquis, the Marriott Union Square, the Palace Hotel, the St. Regis, the W and the Westin St. Francis, according to Unite Here Local 2, a union that represents 89 percent of the workers.

via sfchronicle

Labor Day podcast episode on where the labor movement is now

http://radioopensource .org/a-new-labor-movement/

It’s Labor Day week 2018, and “The American Worker” doesn’t fit any single poster shot. Is it the Uber driver – working flex time in the ‘gig’ economy, for a magic dispatcher of taxis around the world? Is it the brainiac Google engineers insisting to their CEO that “we need to know what we’re building?” In a gilded, globalized, unequal economy of work today, the old industrial unions are almost gone. But suddenly non-union professionals feeling dealt out of pay and power are shouting, we’re workers, too, and forming unions: graduate students at great universities, magazine writers at the ritzy New Yorker. Prisoners, too, and sex workers, coming out of the shadows to claim rights, and respect, as workers, with skills, thank you. Plus hospital nurses and public school teachers coast to coast.

The midterm measure of the American mood in Trump-time may well turn out to be not – or not just – the off-year House and Senate election scorecard, but the work-place turbulence all over the map this year. Workers who never organized before – in grad schools, in media, in sex work, in prisons – are talking solidarity. And notice the word “strike” is back in circulation, inspired maybe by the furious telemarketers in the seriously funny fantasy film, Sorry to Bother You. In the movie they shout “Phones down!” In real Boston, this week, housekeepers in three Marriott-owned hotels downtown could soon be shouting “Mops down!” in their fight for a new contract.

We’re in the work-place, not the political arena, this hour, though of course they’re connected as soon as workers say it’s all about the power of the corporate class, a fight about places at the table and restoring an idea of people-power democracy.