NEWSBYJESS LEBER

Below is a guest post from Ryan Carroll, from Bealeton, Virginia, about why she created a petition to ask Aetna to pay for her surgery. You can see her petition here.

As a young teenager, I was a gymnast and a competitive cheerleader. My nickname was “The Toe-Touch Queen” because I could bust out roughly 15 perfectly executed toe-touch jumps. If only I had a crystal ball to look into the future…

Around the age of 17, I began to develop mild hip pain. Specialists told me I had mild arthritis and gave me prescriptions for medication and physical therapy.

Although these treatments helped, they didn’t help for long. As the years passed, I learned to deal with the hip pain. Hot baths, ice, Motrin… these became part of my daily routine. I accepted it as part of my life, and moved on.

In 2001, I married my best friend. He was (and still is) an officer in the U.S. Army. He has been deployed twice since we were married, and he is proud to protect and serve. We had always wanted a big family, so we started right away. Through international adoption and natural conception, we’ve been blessed with four beautiful children. My kids are my life. I live and breathe for them, and ultimately wish I could be the active and healthy mother that they deserve.

In 2010, with my husband on a 12-month deployment in the Middle East, I had my hands full with my four energetic kids. Although my hip pain had always been there, nagging at me, it really began to intensify. 



Rick Spilsbury is a Western Shoshone, native to Nevada. He lives in Ely and writes a blog called No Shoot Foot that you can check out here: http://noshootfoot.blogspot.com/

By: Rick Spilsbury

Being in Nature is like going back to your soul. You know what I'm talking about; that feeling that you are more complete when you feel you're a part of a natural place.

And you should. No man is an island. We are just a part of life on Earth – and we should relish that. As humans, we crave the feeling of a complete soul. And we are more likely to feel that feeling when we are in Nature. In fact, fresh air actually feels like the breath of life – because it is. This perception makes sense if we think of the life all around us as the rest of our soul. And the life around us is that consciousness which lives on after our body dies.

And if this all makes sense, then destroying nature for money is destroying a part of your soul.

Hundreds of people around the U.S. have joined Stiv Wilson's petition on Change.org asking the National Park Service to re-instate its plastic bottle ban in the Grand Canyon. But he's not the only person angered enough to launch a petition. Independently of Stiv, others have come to Change.org to launch their own campaigns and are now coordinating their voices. Here are what the petition creators say: 

Deborah Patterson, Artist and Art Teacher, Baltimore, Maryland (Deborah's petition)

Over the years, I have signed many, many petitions to protect and support the environment, but this is the first one I have ever started. When I read that Coca-Cola had actually threatened to reduce or eliminate their support for the National Park system if the Grand Canyon banned the sale of disposable water bottles, I knew I had to do something.  Our national parks are owned by the citizens of the United States, whose taxes help maintain them.  The corporate world has no right to exercise this kind of coercion, which in schools is called "bullying."  At whatever level and in whatever form it needs to stop, and the only way to stop it is to stand up to it.

Devin Saez, Architect, Los Angeles, California (Devin's petition)

Hundreds of people around the U.S. have joined Stiv Wilson's petition on Change.org asking the National Park Service to re-instate its plastic bottle ban in the Grand Canyon. Signers are worried about the effects of plastic litter and pollution, and want the National Park Service to protect the beauty and wildlife of the Grand Canyon, one of America's greatest natural treasures. They are also angered that corporate interests, namely Coca-Cola's desire to keep making profits on bottled water, could take precedent over the public's interest in doing what's best for the park. Below is a statement from one petition signer we'd like to highlight. You can see many others by looking at the petition.

Wayne L. Hamilton, PhD. served America's national parks for more than two decades, as a research scientist at Yellowstone National Park and as a ranger at Zion National Park, among other positions. Since retiring from the Park Service in 1996, Wayne has worked as a research scientist in Baja California. His father, Warren F. Hamilton, was a Grand Canyon National Park Ranger between 1933 and 1940, and served as Superintendent of Everglades National Park and Zion National Park, and as the National Park Service's Assistant Regional Director of the Western Regional Office.

Post by Wayne L. Hamilton:

Hundreds of people around the U.S. have joined Stiv Wilson's petition on Change.org asking the National Park Service to re-instate its plastic bottle ban in the Grand Canyon. Signers are worried about the effects of plastic litter and pollution, and want the National Park Service to protect the beauty and wildlife of the Grand Canyon, one of America's greatest natural treasures. They are also angered that corporate interests, namely Coca-Cola's desire to keep making profits on bottled water, could take precedent over the public's interest in doing what's best for the park. Below is a statement from one petition signer we'd like to highlight. You can find many others by looking at the petition.

Erica Donnelly, Marine Biologist:

"I am a marine scientist in Santa Cruz, California who researches plastic ingestion in birds including Northern Fulmars, Albatrosses, and Shearwaters. We find plastic fragments from a variety of sources (both local and non-local) inside of bird stomachs.  Almost every bird we examine contains internal plastic that can effect the animal directly (internal blockages, abrasions, etc.) or indirectly (chemical toxicity from pollutants that adhere to plastics).

Seabirds are just one example of how are extensive use of disposable plastics is impacting wildlife. Micro-plastic infiltrate our ground water, water ways, and soil creating a national health issue, not just a localized problem on the coast.  We must get to the source of the issue and curtail our dependency on single use, disposable plastics.  Please help make a step in the right direction by banning plastic bottles."

You can join Erica and hundreds of others by signing Stiv Wilson's petition today.

Iraq war veteran Mark Grapin's fight to keep a simple treehouse he built for his two sons in Fairfax County, Virginia has made national news, catching the attention of people across the country disturbed by local officials' orders that he remove the structure due to an obscure zoning technicality.

It certainly caught the attention of fellow Army officer Cameron Dunbar-Yamaguchi,  who saw the news from his hometown in Portland, Oregon.

Cameron came to Change.org to start a petition to the Fairfax County Zoning Board. When I asked him what motivated him to take this action, he said he was especially moved because the treehouse was a promise Grapin made before deploying to Iraq:

----------

This is an October 3rd, 2011 press release distributed regarding the artist Saber's End Mural Moratorium campaign on Change.org. You can support the campaign by signing the petition or buying a t-shirt to help Saber raise funds for this creative protest. The petition will be delivered at a planning commission meeting this fall.

More than 5,000 people, including 2,000 area residents, have signed a petition on Change.org protesting a Los Angeles policy that effectively bans public artwork.

The surge of support follows a daring skywriting protest in September by Saber, a prominent L.A. artist featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s national public art exhibition this year. His associate and friend Piper Severance launched the campaign on Change.org in conjunction with the attention-getting stunt.

“I’m in this campaign for the long haul,” said Saber, who is also selling t-shirts with Seventh Letter to fund this creative protest. “Los Angeles public art is under attack. I love this city, so my goal is to help Los Angeles reclaim its title as the world’s mural capital."

More than 3,000 people have joined a campaign on Change.org calling on the University of Michigan to commit to using solar energy in its football stadium.

The campaign, created by the Ann Arbor-based Ecology Center, follows a growing NFL trend of renewable energy-powered national sports stadiums, including the homes of the Philadelphia Eagles, Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots, and Washington Redskins. Activists hope the petition on Change.org will lead the University of Michigan, home to the Big 10 Wolverines and the largest-capacity stadium in North America, to become the first big-name college football school to join in.

“The UM stadium has the potential to be the largest athletic venue in North America with solar panels, which is fitting with the University’s claim to be ‘the leaders and the best’,” said Monica Patel, policy specialist at the Ecology Center. “Even though the electricity generated won’t solve the climate crisis, it will go a long way in terms of solar energy education — just think of the awareness raised among the 100,000+ fans there on Game Day, and millions of others who tune in. The move would also give real support to Michigan's growing solar energy industry."

"This'll only cost you $9 billion," reads a billboard put up over the weekend on the side of I-70 near Grand Junction, Colorado.

Pictured is the desolate scene—the parched dry bed of the Colorado River's largest tributary— that would become reality if a proposed water project called the Flaming Gorge Pipeline ever gets built.

The pipeline would spell disaster on a number of levels, according to experts, editorial boards and activists in the region. With the astronomical cost of piping water from Southwest Wyoming's Green River to Colorado, 560 miles up and over the continental divide, the piped water would be the most expensive in the state's history, delivered to fuel even more unsustainable population growth along Colorado's booming Front Range.

The Flaming Gorge Pipeline would would also devastate the Green River ecosystem and Dinosaur National Monument. This can't be a good sign for thousands of recreational river users and the significant local tourism businesses they support. Lastly, given that the Flaming Gorge would withdraw 81 billion gallons a year from the Colorado's largest tributary, this pipeline is only going to exacerbate existing intractable conflicts among the seven Basin states that share this increasingly scare resource.

So what's a concerned citizen to do?

The shock and grief over a young person's tragic death can be paralyzing. Not for Kimiko Nishitsuji.

Her friend's sudden death last month after being hit by a car at an intersection long known to be dangerous for pedestrians instead spurred her to action and mobilized a community. Kimiko created a petition on Change.org in the weeks after her friend Bo Feng, 17, died on July 16th. Bo had just graduated from Gabrelino High School in California.

In recent weeks, Kimiko has joined Bo's family in advocating for improved safety measures at the intersection of New Avenue and Shorb Street where Feng died. More than 1,200 people in the community have signed her petition to both the cities of Alhambra and San Gabriel (the intersection and existing crosswalk span the city line, a serious bureaucratic complication), and more than 100 attended a vigil and silent demonstration held at the streets. They are also started a facebook page for supporters and are holding a fundraiser for pedestrian safety.