“Thirsty for Justice”: Peninsula/Palo Alto’s Solidarity Earth Day Event

By Judy Adams
Peninsula/Palo Alto Branch

Our branch celebrated World Water Day on March 22 with signs and our WILPF Peace & Planet Before Profit banner at our weekly vigil/demonstration on a busy intersection in Palo Alto. Our plan was to feature water issues again with an Earth Day event in April at a local library. The library is one of the sites where, during WILPF’s Centennial, we installed an exhibit about WILPF, our branch’s history, and the Raging Grannies.

For Earth Day/Week we showed the 40-minute documentary "Thirsty for Justice: The Struggle for the Human Right to Water" (2014), recommended to us by WILPFer Nancy Price. The full video can now be streamed from vimeo here or you can request a DVD from our branch (for mailing costs): wilpf.peninsula.paloalto@gmail.com.

The film tells the story of several communities in the California Central Valley, where poor, mostly Latino residents, homeless individuals, and members of the Winnemem Wintu tribe formed alliances to organize what became a grassroots campaign working with environmental groups to expose the unsafe, contaminated city and well water polluted by agricultural and industrial waste. Public and school water fountains were closed when these cities and residents had no safe, affordable, and sustainable water from the tap, and were forced to pay a disproportionate percentage of their income for costly bottled water.

The people took their campaign all the way to the California state legislature, where AB 685 was hotly debated but eventually passed. It was landmark legislation, the first in the US that recognized the human right to safe, affordable, and sustainable water – and that protected indigenous people’s sacred water rights. It became state law in 2012 and the duty of the State Water Boards to implement. The US now has a bill before the House and Senate related to this bill, “The Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability (Water) Act of 2019,” introduced by Reps Kahanna and Lawrence in the House, and in the Senate by Sen. Sanders.

The film is an inspiring story. To “whet" attendees’ interest, and “thirst for (water) justice” we had a glass jar of dirty water at the door with the program flyer (not actually polluted, but brown with tea leaves and instant coffee sludge) – however, the label on the jar pointed out that the most dangerous toxic materials found in communities’ water are invisible. We had two tables displaying brochures/flyers and displays from 30 local environmental groups, including updated information about the agencies working on water issues as well as the Central Valley, CA organizations that championed the cause and collaborated on the film.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a very big attendance because of the busy conclusion of local Earth Day activities, but you couldn’t tell that by the enthusiasm of branch members, wearing their new WILPF sashes and setting up the table displays and posters.

Our WILPF table had information about peace and justice activities of WILPF, including the Poor People’s Campaign, membership materials, and, of course, the WILPF petition in support of the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons, information about NuclearBan.US, and a photo board with pictures of our Friday vigils/demonstrations.

But in the center of our table were flyers about World Water Day, a re-design of the WILPF document on the history of Earth Day and MLK’s “revolution of values. We also displayed flyers about Pat Elder’s “Million Parts per Trillion Tour” of military bases, a flyer about WILPF’s Climate Justice+Women+Peace Project, and the colorful WILPF infographic cards. We included one of our favorites, the colorful UN Sustainable Development Goals graphic (with most of the goals displayed) featuring among its 15 goals Clean Water and Sanitation, Climate Action, and Life Below Water. Last, we reformatted information from a wonderful two-sided handout from the local San Jose Peace and Justice Center, “Water is Life,” with links to data and news sites, educational and advocacy resources, videos, and follow-up actions.

As a gift to our guests, we had a door prize for them: a tree planted in each person’s name in a national forest by the Arbor Day Foundation.