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Sign up to save a life

To the editor:

The Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) was founded in 1986 when residents of Bloomington, Ind., rallied around a toddler who needed a life-saving liver transplant. In less than eight weeks, the community raised $100,000 to place the boy on the organ waiting list. But the child died before an organ became available. Those community volunteers, along with his parents, turned tragedy into triumph by using the funds they raised to help other transplant families. That was the beginning of COTA. 

Since that time, COTA has assisted thousands of patients by helping to raise funds for transplant-related expenses. COTA has built extensive volunteer networks across the nation in an attempt to ensure that no child or young adult needing an organ or tissue transplant is excluded from a transplant waiting list due to a lack of funds. 

COTA needs your help to make sure that tragedies, like the one that was the catalyst in founding COTA, are not repeated. 

Every day, 21 people die waiting for an organ transplant here in the United States. April is National Donate Life Month. One organ donor can save eight lives. Please register today to become an organ donor by going to www.donatelife.net and registering to be an organ donor in your state. 

You can do more. Find out how you can help a COTA family living nearby who needs your help by visiting www.cota.org and clicking on the COTA Families link at the top of the page.

– Rick Lofgren, president, Children’s Organ Transplant Association

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Hug a tree, hug a vegan

To the editor,

Just in time for the 45th anniversary of Earth Day this Wednesday, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has made it official: consumption of animal products is not environmentally sustainable. The conclusion matches those of a massive 2010 United Nations report, which concluded that a global shift toward a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, poverty and climate change.

Carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is emitted by burning forests to create animal pastures and by combustion of fossil fuels to operate farm machinery, trucks, refrigeration equipment, factory farms and slaughterhouses. The much more damaging methane and nitrous oxide are released from digestive tracts of cattle and from animal-waste cesspools.

Moreover, animal agriculture contributes more pollutants to our waterways than other human activities combined. Principal sources are animal wastes, soil particles, minerals, crop debris, fertilizers, and pesticides from feed croplands. It is also the driving force in worldwide deforestation and wildlife habitat destruction.

In an environmentally sustainable world, just as fossil fuels are replaced by wind, solar and other sustainable energy sources, animal foods must be replaced by vegetables, fruits and grains. Our next trip to the supermarket is a great starting point.

– Diego Horvath, Durango

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NAFTA on steroids

To the editor,

I’m sure you’re as thrilled as I am now that the 2016 Presidential Election is starting up again. It’s already been amusing watching the awkward retractions regarding the Indiana Religious Freedom to Discriminate Law. The GOP clown car has left the building! But there’s something that’s been going on behind closed doors for years that has even more serious implications. That’s the well-kept secret of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Unless you’ve been listening to Democracy Now! or some of the other forward-leaning news organizations, you’ve probably never heard of it. That’s by design.

The short version of what the TPP is: NAFTA on steroids. If you liked the results of passing NAFTA (thanks Bill Clinton) you’re gonna love the TPP. The long version details some of the most troubling aspects.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a highly secretive and expansive free trade agreement between the United States and 12 Pacific Rim countries, including Canada, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia. Leaked text reveals that the TPP would empower corporations to directly sue governments in private and nontransparent trade tribunals over laws and policies that corporations allege reduce their profits.

The TPP would even elevate foreign firms to equal status with sovereign nations, empowering them to privately enforce new rights and privileges, provided by the pact, by dragging governments to foreign tribunals to challenge public interest policies that they claim frustrate their expectations. The tribunals would be authorized to order taxpayer compensation to the foreign corporations for the “expected future profits” they surmise would be inhibited by the challenged policies. What could go wrong?

Laws to address climate change, curb fossil fuel expansion and reduce air pollution could all be subject to attack by corporations as a result of TPP. Additionally, the deal could criminalize internet use, undermine workers’ and human rights, manipulate copyright laws, restrict government regulation of food labeling and adversely impact subsidized health care.

We only know about the TPP’s threats thanks to leaks – the public is not allowed to see the draft TPP text. Even members of Congress, after being denied the text for years, are now only provided limited access. Meanwhile, more than 500 official corporate “trade advisors” have special access. So much for transparency.

It doesn’t take a genius to assume the GOP candidates love this shit, but Obama is behind it too! Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are of course against this looming train wreck but what about Hillary? Is she just finishing what Bill started?

– Bill Vana, Durango

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Blustery Days

On blustery days

Where the dust threatens to fill the sky

The birds fly low, and then don’t fly at all

The old people remind us that there weren’t so many before.

Springtime wasn’t this way…

Maybe once every fifteen years or so. 

Even the thirty-somethings

Can remember more stillness in the air.

Hope hangs her clean clothes on the line

They dry quickly, save her energy

And slow the wind a smidge

As though in cahoots with the trees.

A clean drink of water really does say more

Than an hour’s production at a gas well

The increased deformities in Bloomfield newborns

And the haze in the sky, the majority of days combined.

Most precious are clean Water and Air – that much is clear.

Oh to be free of illusion, fear, scarcity and excuse.

What can be done for the children

To look into the air, to breathe, and to know it is clear?

– Ryan Osborne, Durango