Spirit in Action

Michelle Balas - Northern Thunder

Michelle Balas has served for about 10 years with an organization here, in the Chippewa Valley, called Northern Thunder, an environmental and social activist organization, serving on their board for the last 6 years, in addition to years spent as co-producer of TV Notion for the local public access cable channel, and years working on the issue of urban sprawl.

Duration:: 59m
Broadcast on:: 16 Jul 2006
Audio Format:: mp3

I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep I have no arms but yours with which to hold The ones grown weary from the struggle and weak from growing old I have no hands but yours with which to see To let my children know that I am up and up is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give and make, give the ragged and the morn So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you I will be done The fingers have I none to help, I'm done The tangled knocks and twisted chains that strangle fearful minds Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all I'll seek out light, love, and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life I have no way to open people's eyes Because I'm that you will show them how to trust the inner mind Today on Spirit in Action, I have with me Michelle Bailas. Michelle has served for about 10 years with an organization here in Chippewa Valley called Northern Thunder It is an environmental and social justice activist organization. She served on board for about the past six years. She was one of the primary producers of TV Notion She is New Jersey born, raised Catholic, and identifies herself more clearly with Earth-based spirituality at this point. Good morning Michelle Good morning Mark. Glad you could join me. You're taking a little bit of a break from TV Notion. Would you tell folks what TV Notion was and why you're not doing it right now? This was a program that we produced on community television for about eight years starting in 1997. It was an hour-long program produced once a month on community television. We were focusing on progressive issues that we felt were underreported or under-explored. In particular progressive points of you in our region we tried to focus on things impacting us here in the Chippewa Valley or in western Wisconsin But we certainly didn't hesitate to deal with global issues or national issues. What we tried to do with TV Notion was to have a place for all progressives in the community to have their say, to explain what issues they were talking about, maybe just talk about their organizations. Very often we found that there would be press conferences A particular organization very often Northern Thunder would find something out in the community. I remember Planned Parenthood and the Chippewa Valley Citizens for Choice They were very concerned about legislations. It was coming down really hurting reproductive rights and they had press conferences and no local press came. We had lots of press conferences. I'm sure that you've seen a lot of stuff that was talking about the Bush administration and the war in Iraq and our various actions all over the world. Many of these demonstrations and points of view issues that were raised. Well, that's a lot of work to put these press conferences together. Lots of information. Lots of talkers. Press wouldn't come. Or it would get two minutes on the evening news. And that's it. We went with our cameras and we covered the whole thing so that the whole story was at least available to people in the Eau Claire area. And this work still needs to be done. Certainly there are times that some of the guys at community TV will go down to an event and cover it. But mostly commercial news is just that. They have to deal with the bottom line, whether or not it's profitable for that particular station. So if we're out there complaining, for instance, the Cranded Mine issue that went on for eons, you know, the Cranded Mine was to make a lot of profit. And the people that were sponsoring the Cranded Mine paid for advertising. So the local television stations don't really want to talk about people who oppose the idea of a Cranded Mine. So we were able to, of course, talk about the issues. The power line that they're trying to run from Duluth down to Milwaukee is another issue that's just not gotten much coverage at all. The opposition to that, the tremendous opposition, the folly of that. All of the issues and the facts are not covered in the local news because the powers that be profit from everyone thinking that everything's fine. So these are issues that we've covered over the years. We also had lots of sit down, talk with people, discuss issues, ask maybe dumb questions or seemingly dumb questions so that the average person can kind of get their mind around some of the other issues. Pesticides in school. Urban sprawl, which is something that is really influencing lifestyles here in the Eau Claire area. So TV Notion originated back in 1997. This program is hosted at home here on WHYS, which is a child of Northern Thunder. So it's also a way to reach out to the public and get the progressive message out without having to buy with the people who have the money. Were the two ideas born at the same time, the TV Notion and WHYS radio? Oh, we've always wanted to have radio station, I think. Of course, radio station and community television are very different. Community television, you need to have cable access. So it's not something that is quote unquote broadcast. It's not something that anybody with an antenna can pick up. Community television is something that the cable company has to provide for a community. In some ways to help pay for the cable company's ability to extract millions of dollars. Charter cable makes millions of dollars out of the rate payers here in Eau Claire. So one of the ways they pay Eau Claire back, and that happens in every community, is that they provide some channels and some funding and things like that. So community television, it's the local community's ability to have access to at least cable programming. That's still a very important independent station for independent of commercial interests. They do a lot of good work. Anyone from the community in theory can go in and produce programs. They also have a government channel, which again is independent of commercial influence, and they just put on what's happening in our government. But the only way you can access that is to pay for cable TV, but at least since the majority of people in the community that have television, have cable, it's still a good news. What's great about radio, of course, is that it is broadcast. Anyone with an antenna can pick up a signal, and so it is even more generally available. There have been a few independent radio stations throughout the state, but really most of them are owned by a few individuals that really edit what people can listen to. No local music, certainly, in your average commercial station. Certainly the news is well controlled in commercial radio. There are no playlists, and McCutcheon has a neat song that came out right after September 11 about the no playlist that was put out. I think it's a clear channel. You're just talking about all the songs that you can't play. A clear channel of communication sent a memo to their stations asking DJs to take care with songs they play upon the air. It might upset might divide that just might stem the growing tide to send this country in a war. I guess that's what the media is for. Protect the listeners of this nation. Clear channel of communication. Pay the list and send it out. Songs we should think twice about. 160 songs were sold to knock here on your radio. The talica, the clash, and queen. AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Kansas, Jackson Brown, Dave Matthews, Pink Floyd, three doors down, a huge, most impressive list. But as I read, I said, "What's this?" Louis Armstrong's on there too. Neil Diamond, him I always knew. Elvis Peter Paul and Mary, James Taylor, he was always scary. Imagine, he's trained, get together, he ain't heavy. He's my brother and as I read this lit me, one awful thought came clear to me. I didn't make this list, though I've worked my whole life long. 25 recordings, they can't find one lousy song. It's a slap on the face, it's an awful disgrace. What do I have to do? To make the great and not get played, like Sonatra and you too. Imagine there's no airplane. It's easy if you defy. How many songs must their folks sing a write? Before their forever ban? I've always disagreed with folks who said this world is saved by songs. One thing I've learned from all of this is I guess I must be wrong. Some people think it's dangerous, these things we sing and write. The pen is mightier than the sword I'm wielding mine tonight. Though I didn't make the list, though I'm really not surprised against bad means I can resist. When they just silenced all these other guys, I'm taking it well, I'm still giving them hell. It's the only sane solution. So here's a song from Singalong joined the revolution. Come on, people now. Smile on your brother, everybody get together. Try to love one another right now. Come on, people now. Smile on your brother, everybody get together. Try to love one another right now. Right now. Right now. It's really amazing how commercial radio really manipulates us and we don't realize it by what they don't allow you to listen to or encourage you to listen to by how they program their news. So the radio station for Northern Thunder was a wonderful outlet for us to have no editing and we can give the true story and we really, really want a full range experience for local artists, for local news, local drama, programs like this, where you can say the word spirit, where you can talk about what's important in your heart and in your soul instead of following the movie queens, you know, and kings out there and, you know, whatever is being put out there. So one of our members who has been paying attention to these things and was interested in amateur radio years ago gave Northern Thunder the heads up about the FCC was going to permit low power FM radio permits out there. And we went through a whole, whole, whole bunch of paperwork and waiting and hoping about whether or not we could be allowed to have our own station, but our programming can be without commercial influence. It's a breath of fresh air, I think, in the community. So we've got two things that are being done by Northern Thunder, at least, we're talking about TV Notion, which was a brainchild of few of you from Northern Thunder, and we've got the WHYS low power FM radio that this program is first hosted by. But that wasn't how you got involved, I think, in Northern Thunder. First of all, could you say what Northern Thunder is? I imagine there's a lot of people out listening to this via the internet who have no idea what Northern Thunder is. I probably came on the scene with Northern Thunder about 10 years ago. Northern Thunder has been around since the first birthday. They were born out of an Eau Claire area ecology action group. Right now I think we are an association of activists, environmental, social justice, peace, activists, and all these things are connected. A lot of us feel the connection to the earth, realize that you just gotta take care of the resources that are around you, your earth, your air, you know, your water, all those important things. I think that most of us feel this connection with the earth and therefore want to protect it. And once you start trying to protect it, you get involved in other issues. For instance, this whole crazy war machine that's going on out there, most of us are actively trying to oppose the actions in Iraq and the actions of the Bush administration where they're building up the military, because of course this is not helping the earth, you know, it pollutes, it transforms our economy. All the mess that that's created, so it's hard to define Northern Thunder as just a bunch of environmentalists, because once you're an environmentalist, you see all the connections, urban sprawl. How is that an environmentalist issue? Well, we're talking about land use, we're talking about how you're losing countryside, how you're wasting your resources, the community resources, and lifestyle and quality of life in a community is brought down because of urban sprawl. All those kinds of issues. And that feeds back to taking care of the environment you live in. So we're an association of environmentalists. Will Fantle is somebody that's probably the best known, he's been with Northern Thunder for its entire length. He's a local writer, he's done some major investigative reporting, and he's currently on the county board, you know, and then a lot of people are associated with the university, people that they're out there. That are getting some of the first hand information about what's going on and what's real, the numbers, talking to people, looking at the effects of our environment and reporting back. So that's what we all try to do, and a lot of times we're reacting to what's going on out there. So that's kind of what Northern Thunder is and it does. We've done river cleanups and things like that. Certainly lots and lots of information we've put out to the community, we've published newsletters, we've had lots and lots of press conferences, we've been very active in the mining issue. When you say you're active in the mining issue, what do you mean that you're really doing? What does being active in this context mean? What I mean by being active, generally researching out information, a lot of people will find that the information we get from quote unquote an official source, either government agency or from the mining industry in this particular issue, will have some questionable facts. People in Northern Thunder, essentially I think we're an association of critical thinkers, people who are willing to question the facts that are put before us. I've got a degree in natural resource management. I think Will Fandal has a degree in economics, but a lot of us can just say, "Hey, you know, it doesn't sound right." And with the internet, it's a lot easier to check facts than it was back when Northern Thunder was formed. For instance, the Lady Smith mine that was put in, what minerals were they really taking out? What were they claiming they were going to do to protect the environment? One of the controversies with the Lady Smith mine was that there was this huge pit right next to the river. The claim of the people that put the mine in there was that they were not going to influence the river, that they weren't going to put sulfides, which are very acidic, and that would change the environment. They were claiming that they would not have an impact on that. And so people at Northern Thunder have connections, can go check what would the influence of this be? They would check the models of these things. The other one was the huge proposed mine by Crandon. This was a huge pit, fantastic water resource up by Rhymelander. And the kinds of proposals that went out there, they would have to submit something to the DNR. Well, people through Northern Thunder and their associates would read the reports and check the math. And of course they would find that a lot of the numbers just don't end up. So those are the kinds of things that people do, and then they would release this information to the public, talk to policy makers, interact with the DNR. Essentially, a lot of it's behind the scene, not very glamorous, on the phone or on the computer, talking to people. Do you know that this is going on? And then when your public officials don't respond. That's when you see more active things like us having demonstrations or press conferences or making some more visible to the public interaction. So when I talk about being an activist, a lot of it is doing your homework, running the numbers, questioning, critical thinking. Then there's the education, you've got to try to somehow share information with people and talk to your legislators and inform your legislators a lot of times. They are responsive to public opinion to the information that we can bring. And that's what we do. Was Northern Thunder active in opposing Lady Smith Mine? Yes, they were. The Lady Smith Mine was what the mining industry in Wisconsin wanted to use as their photo baby, their perfect mine, the mine that doesn't pollute anywhere. Therefore, we can prove that we can do clean mining. And of course, there were many, lots of misinformation about Lady Smith Mine. Yes, Lady Smith Mine does pollute to the Flambeau River right next door. There was another issue where the company that pushed through the Lady Smith Mine had some questionable dealings with local politicians. They bought the town of Firetruck and a library, and there were some questions about the elections that went on around the acceptance of the local government for having the mine. And they kept calling it a copper mine. And yet, most of the money made out of Lady Smith Mine was gold. And copper, you think, "Oh, useful. Copper pipes, things like that." When you think of gold, what's gold used for mostly? It's money, kachink, jewelry, and it's very valuable. But it's also, do you want to permanently damage the environment in an area so people can have more gold? Well, that's the Lady Smith Mine. The Crandon Mine followed that. And I take it in the case of the Crandon Mine, you were actually successful. Can you tell me about how that unfolded? Of course, Lady Smith Mine was not just opposed by Northern Thunder. I would never even begin to apply that Northern Thunder did all this by themselves. There's a fantastic network of progressive liberal activists that are out there. The Crandon Mine was another fantastic association, and of course, working with the native peoples that lived in the area who were going to be severely impacted by any mine in that area. A lot of work was done, and a lot of constant pressure was placed. What happened with the Crandon Mine is there was a law passed that said, but they needed to have an example of clean mines in order to demonstrate that this technology would work, and they haven't been able to find one yet. But really what I think what happened with the Crandon Mine is that we have found throughout the world, areas of resource degradation and minimal extraction, are generally done in areas where people are poor and disenfranchised and not engaged in the local political process. So a lot of mining is done on Native American reservations in third world countries where people are poor and aren't able to stand up for themselves. And of course, that's why those people end up getting polluted and killed and moving to the city and adding to that whole social issue. [MUSIC] The mother of a soul, the place of our birth, how can we stand aside? To reap of the world, this thou beginning of end. This thou most heinous of crimes. The dead the rest of sins. The greatest vacillations all time. Mother of a soul, the place of our birth, we all are witness to the reap of the world. [MUSIC] You've seen her stripped mind, you've heard of bombs exploded underground. You know the sun shines, harder than ever before. Mother of a soul, the place of our birth, we all are witness to the reap of the world. [MUSIC] Some claim to have crowned her, a queen, cities of concrete and steel. There is no worry, no honor in what results from the reap of the world. Mother of a soul, the place of our birth, we all are witness to the reap of the world. [MUSIC] She has been clear, she has been dumped on, she has been poisoned and beaten up. We have been witness to the reap of the world. Mother of a soul, the place of our birth, how can we stand aside? What's the reap of the world? [MUSIC] If you look, you see with your own eyes, if you listen, you will hit a cross. If you care, you will stand and testify. Stop the reap of the world, stop the reap of the world. Mother of a soul, mother of a soul, mother of a soul, mother of a soul, mother of a soul, mother of a soul, mother of a soul, mother of a soul. The Crandon Mine was probably originally thought of as a possibility because the only people that lived in that area were Native Americans. But fortunately, the progressive activist community got together and fought it consistently and required that they follow the law and demonstrate how their mind was not going to damage the profoundly more valuable resource, the headwaters of major rivers, wolf river in particular, but the number of rivers and the Native Americans that depended upon a water resource in the area. This fantastically pristine area up there by Rhineland or Crandon. How long did the fight to defeat the mine go on? Well, it's been going on as long as I had been involved with Northern Thunder and it was just a couple years ago that it was originally owned by Exxon and then it was Rio Tinto Zinc. And then, you know, these multinational corporations trade hands and sell things. But it was sold by one of the multinationals and they pulled out of the area. We are sure that it is because of consistent activist resistance to the area just a couple years ago and then the property was sold to the Native American tribe in the region. The struggle has been going on from what I understand for maybe 30 years. Mining laws in Wisconsin used to be much more strict and under Tommy Thompson there were a number of people through various organizations that advocated for relaxing of mining laws. So the property was purchased a long time ago, but the mining laws were strict enough that they had to work through the legislation such that they could begin to propose a mine up there. Once the mining laws got relaxed, then they did more active proposals and went through the DNR processes and the paperwork and stuff. And that's when the public can get engaged because that's the opportunity. We're happy that the process worked, but it did take diligence, it did take paying attention. It did take critical thinking because, of course, the mining company says everything's hunky-dory. If you go to the flambo mine, which is they went in, they mined for a couple of years, then they were done, they reintroduced prairie. It looks beautiful. You don't realize the amount of sulfur that's leaking into the environment there. And, of course, you don't know what's going to happen in 50 years. They didn't do what was proposed in Crandon. There was an awful lot of gold and silver up there also that they were going to need to bring in cyanide, and they were going to actually extract the metal up there. In Lady Smith, they didn't do any extraction. They just shipped everything out. So it looked a lot cleaner. You didn't have piles of ore sitting around decaying in the rain, et cetera. And then you didn't have trucks worth of cyanide, you know, terribly, terribly toxic material truckloads of it running through the communities. And this is what was proposed for up at Crandon. Anyway, these are just some of the issues. And, of course, I was not one of the headpersons. I was mostly involved in Northern Thunder trying to disseminate some of this information through TV Notion. I'm on the same page in terms of environmentalism. I was involved with the very first Earth Day back in 1970, the very first Quaker meeting for business I went to. The decision-making was about an environmental activist thing that's back in the early 70s. And I'm giving you that preface to let you know I'm not oppositional. I know that there are people out there who are thinking, so it's just another case of not in my backyard that we oppose it here in Lady Smith or in Crandon or wherever, because it's the people we know and care about. Have you ever actually seen a proposal for a mine that you approve? And if there isn't that kind of approval in our activist organizations, what do we do? What is the solution when we have material needs? I like the expression, not in anybody's backyard. There is not a healthy mine site out there. People have done the math. Resource extraction is dirty. The challenge is the profit motive. And hey, I love this country and I have my own small business. I think that entrepreneurial ship is wonderful. The challenge is when you are willing to dump the waste on the guy's downstream, whoever they are, instead of clean up your mess. Clean it up after yourself. It doesn't happen in this industry. Now, it hasn't in the past. It is possible. But it's expensive. And we have to acknowledge on this planet. We have finite resources. Conservation is the answer. A lot of people say recycling is not cost effective. It is if you don't have cheap extraction. If you pay the real cost of extracting, if, for instance, the waste from a mine were thoroughly cleaned. That's a very expensive thing to do, is to try to decontaminate this awful acid drainage that comes out and to not spill this into the environment. We're talking about massive, massive amounts. That's why conservation is so important. Conservation is wise use. That's the answer. Yes, I am sure that we will still need to do resource extraction on into the future. However, we do not need to do it at the rate we're doing it. We have got to rethink how we do things. We're just at that point. Michelle, you were mentioning the ethics that were necessary for this. I want to explore that thread in your life because obviously you've put a lot of time and effort into this activism. Let's start out with your religious spiritual background. Where did you come from? Came from New Jersey, born into a Catholic family, a nice, big Catholic family, enjoyed belonging to the church. That was always part of our family routine. Good community. We moved around a bunch when I was a kid, but always had a Catholic church around, always went to church and were involved in that community. And that's very nourishing and nurturing to feel like you're okay. If you find a place in the world, you know, I think community is just so important. Growing up, you know, I went through the 60s and the 70s and come the 70s and I was a teenager and belonged to youth groups. And one of the priests who ran the youth group in the town I was in, and this is back in New Jersey, was an activist introduced us to the United Farm Workers issues and problems that they have. And the lettuce boycott back in the 70s talking about taking care of the people that provide us food, the pick food for us. So I got involved in the lettuce boycott, got a taste of what social justice and some environmental issues back then. But then the priests moved on and there was no more influence for that in my life. Then as I moved through college and ultimately got a degree in Natural Resource Management and learned some earthy, crunchy ways and joined the local co-op. I met my sweet husband Andrew and he was involved in the freeze movement. Back then, trying to get a nuclear freeze disarmament. And again, that was another taste of activism. When you're involved in a natural foods co-op, that's already a step outside the common commercial world. You're choosing your food. You're not just going to the grocery store and picking stuff off the shelf. You're choosing a certain kind of food. So that's already kind of very quiet activism. You're using your dollars and you're voting with your dollars. But being involved in the freeze movement again is looking at the issues, the bigger issues. And Andrew and I have always we fed each other that way. That we're critical thinkers. We question what's going on and try to come up with our own conclusions about what's right. In a framework of humane, of respect for one another, of what's good and loving and nurturing and compassionate, I have moved away from the Catholic Church. Once Andrew and I married, I left New Jersey, came here to Wisconsin back in 1984. I joined the local Catholic Church. One of the most formative times in my life was the youth group in Catholic Church in New Jersey. So that's the first thing I thought I would do. I thought, you know, a young person. I could work with young people. I went to an organizational meeting for a youth group. I was talking about my ideas and my experiences and what I thought I could bring to a youth group in Eau Claire and was told by several people that were sitting there in the room with me that this is not a social organization. We want to encourage these people to be prayerful and spiritual, but this is not a social organization. I don't really know what I said or did, but churches are communities. They are by their nature, social. How do you nurture spirit except through community and support? You know, who knows? Maybe somebody was having a bad day, but it was certainly a day that I had had questions before that. My Catholic upbringing, essentially, the catechism I had learned was that one reached God, one reached out through God, two God through the church and through the priest. You don't have direct interaction with God. You go through the church and all my life, many, many, many instances. I'm sure many listeners here know what this is like. Walk out in nature and you know God. I mean, that's the easiest way for me. God speaks to me on the breezes. It is just, you know, profound, beautiful days like I'm looking out the window now. I know God. So through those experiences, I needed to move beyond the Catholic church and that wonderful community that I grew up with. And it's very difficult for me because as much as I have a profound respect for Jesus and I have no question of Jesus' divinity, I see everyone is divine. I sense that Jesus wanted us all to be brothers and sisters. Jesus said, "Pray like this, our Father." The word "our" says we're all God's children. So from there, I moved on to something that I think is much more earth-based, new age. There's lots of wonderful spirituality out there, lots of avenues for exploring that. Earth-based religions speak to me the best because that's how I knew God first. How do you live out? How do you incorporate in your life an earth-based spirituality? What does that mean that you do differently in your life? In some ways, you have to be careful when you say, "How do you do things differently?" Because essentially, I don't compare what I do with another. I just do what makes sense to me. Definitely, I raise my children differently than I was raised. I have less children. I think I've been blessed with a fairly decent intelligence and with that intelligence, I gather information and make decisions. I know that the world is overpopulated. No question about that, and it's inappropriate for me to have as many children as my parents did. So how I operate is, you know, I mean everybody's human. We all have good days and bad days, but I try to operate with respect and be active in my life rather than passive. Because I respect that, like the drop in a pond, you can see the ripple effects of all of your actions. Paying attention to all the ripples that I have, you know, and knowing that what goes around comes around, I mean, part of it can be very selfish. You know, you pollute the environment you live in, it comes back to you. When I was asking you how you're different because of your earth-based spirituality, I'm asking about how you are different from what you would have been if you hadn't taken on that spirituality. By going down this path, what's different in your life? What's different? Number one, I allow myself, profound joy. I allow myself to see God everywhere. I don't have to go to a building to be with God. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. Every part of this earth be to my people holy. This is something I got back in my good old Catholic youth group upbringing. I profoundly sense that I am the hands of God. I do the work of God. I'm not attached to dogma. Not to say that the Christian Bible, there's anything wrong with it. It is a very, very profound work and has a lot to teach us. But that is not the basis of my actions. That is not an instruction manual to me, which is one of the things that I have a challenge with. But being part of this new age earth based religion revolution, that's what I see going on in the world, allows you a different frame. You just look at things differently. I guess one of the things about a lot of the earth based religions is the idea of the duality and the male and the female aspects of Creator, Creatrix, Mother Earth and Father Son. And the balancing issue. And that's certainly something that reverberates very importantly in my heart and soul, is to respect and honor the feminine as well as the masculine. And that's something that is unfortunately very profound in what I see in Christian practices. Always God is male and male heads of households. And there are movements out there to talk about making sure men are running things. And so how do I, one of the challenges of being involved in earth based religions is it's difficult to find a church. I grew up in Catholic household, always moved to a community where there was a church. And I don't find that. There aren't many. They're harder to find. Yes, there's a wonderful circle sanctuary down here in Madison. And I've gone down to that place and they have a wonderful high priestess, a great leader down there. And they have rituals down there that are just beautiful rituals. And it's a wonderful community, but it's a long way for me to go. And there are communities in the twin cities that I know of. One of the other challenges is that there's still a stigma for paganism, earth based religions. And so you have to be careful. In any community, you know, people want to know what church you go to. Most people don't think twice. They say what church they go to. But I have to hesitate. I certainly have a lot of respect and have interactions with Unitarian Church here at Eau Claire. It's really supportive of the earth based religions. So I think that my spirituality imposes on me a kind of responsibility for my life that I have seen other people in my culture being willing to give up. My spirituality, my path has told me that I need to make an active choice rather than a passive choice in how I act. Thanks for sharing so much of that journey. I'm wondering last couple things about Northern Thunder before we wrap up here. You said, Michelle, that you were active in the Urban Sprawl campaign. What was that? What was it about? And what did you do? That was, I guess, was one of those things that we would go around at our Northern Thunder meetings and talk about various development issues and recognize that concerns that we were having about the environment right around our neighborhood fell under the issue of land use development and urban sprawl and that what we were seeing, you know, the eating up of the farm side and also some disenfranchisement, lack of attention for the quality of living in the city itself. You know, the city has fantastic resources and those people that were living closer to the resources and we're not getting as much respect. For instance, the city would put in sewers that were sized in anticipation of urban sprawl. So the people who are living in the city are paying for oversized sewers and oversized infrastructure that encouraged people living on the outskirts of the city to ultimately tap into. Of course, it's more expensive to pump and to run everything further out and the people that are living in are being responsible. You know, they're living close together as a healthier way of using your infrastructure. Anyway, these kinds of issues that kept coming up, we said, okay, this looks like this is really a big issue. When we began to do some research, we began to look at some of the issues with the growth patterns in the Eau Claire area. We also started to contact other organizations that have worked in urban sprawl, like the Sierra Club, which has done a tremendous amount of research. And we realized that we need to educate population. Of course, the population of the community will ultimately, hopefully, have an impact on the decision makers. So what we were trying to encourage is comprehensive planning and not just for the city of Eau Claire, but for all the surrounding communities. So that's what we started to do. We started to educate ourselves, number one, number two. We invited the public for a couple of workshops. You know, I think for a couple of years, we had workshops down in the library where we invited speakers and we talked about what is urban sprawl, who is impacted. And people would say, well, you have to grow. And I said, well, but you can choose how you grow or you can grow any old which way. Uncontrolled growth is what urban sprawl is. And of course, it's not wise. It is not looking at your resources, not looking at your infrastructure, not choosing how you want to grow. We did that for several years, and then we did a program called the Tour de Sprawl, where we actually rented a bus and drove around the city of Eau Claire at various sites and looked at what areas of the city had healthy growth, healthy neighborhoods, what it looked like, what was the goal, sidewalks, trees and sidewalks, houses with this community space, interaction, local schools, infrastructure is right there, public transit, the whole issue of whether or not you're designing your community where you have to get in the car to do anything and everything. Whether or not you've got shopping interspersed with where people live or whether you have to put it all the way out at a mall, which means everybody has to drive. There's smart growth, and there's not smart growth. The state of Wisconsin passed a law that required communities to have comprehensive plans. And at that point, we essentially kind of laid our case in the city of Eau Claire and with the legislation, and I think this was 1999 or 2000, that they passed the smart growth legislation. Now, Eau Claire, the city of Eau Claire, had a comprehensive plan, but in the comprehensive plan, there were some very troubling aspects to it. And we wanted to highlight those questions and those concerns. And of course, the city of Eau Claire has since, especially last year, passed another comprehensive plan with a lot of good stuff in it, some questionable issues in it. What was great was not only people from the city of Eau Claire, but people from the surrounding communities like people from the town board of the town of Washington and Pleasant Valley and Union would come. Because those are the people who are sitting at the board meetings when a developer comes and says, "I want to put in, you know, 30 houses on this old farm." They're the ones that have to say yes or no. They're the ones who ultimately have to come up with a comprehensive plan for those communities. So that was a great effort, and I think we helped raise a lot of attention to the issue. There's still a lot more work to be done, because, you know, I'm sure a lot of people have seen it. There's been a lot of growth, and some of it's still very sprawl-like in the city of Eau Claire. So Michelle, you were involved in TV Notion, you were involved in the urban sprawl campaign. What are the current things that you're involved in with the urban funder? Well, one of the issues that has come up in recent year, there's interest for a coal-fired plant out of Tyrone. There's a lot of concern about that. Oil-fired power plants are dirty. There are dinosaurs. Already we have so much mercury in all the bodies of water in the state of Wisconsin that the DNR has issued a warning, "Do not eat the fish." If you're a small child, don't eat more than one fish a month. Pregnant women should not eat the fish in the state of Wisconsin. We're having issues because there's so much mercury, and this mercury comes from coal-fired plants. It is a dirty technology we don't need to go there. There's a lot of energy out there just if you conserve, but there's other technologies out there. And to be turning to coal to digging that back up is just a travesty. We're stuck with what we've got, but we really don't need any more. Tyrone is close enough that it will certainly have an impact on the air quality in our area. And the other one is, again, it's kind of a land-use issue. It's a seven-mile landfill, just the northern part of Eau Claire. Since the County of Eau Claire sold that landfill to independence, it has begun to accept garbage from outside the state, from all over the state and outside the state. Of course, it was built very responsibly, so responsibly, that it can handle toxics that are not acceptable in other landfills. So we are a magnet for garbage in the area, and they have expanded it, and they want to expand it again, and they want to make a mountain over there. It really impacts on the standard of living of the people out there, but it's also a huge question. Why are we a garbage magnet? And part of it is because the tipping fees are lowest in Wisconsin. We're getting garbage from Chicago, from Illinois, from the Twin Cities, and from Michigan. We're getting garbage from all over because the other states have more expensive tipping fees. Part of the reason why they do is because garbage is, you know, we're going to run out of landfill space. And of course, it was built to handle our community's garbage, and of course, we're not going to have landfill space. They're putting stuff over there, toxics that I don't think we want in our community, and it's right next to our waterway. There are issues over there that are not being dealt with, and the state is not dealing with landfill issues. And that's why we're such a magnet for garbage. And this is something right in our community that is not going to go away, and we're going to have to live with for eons yet. So those are a couple of issues that are kind of on our plate. So if someone wanted to get involved in Northern Thunder, maybe they want to join you on the board, or maybe they want to unseat you from the board. Who knows? So if someone wanted to get involved with Northern Thunder, how would they go about finding out about you and get involved? Well, we've got a lot of information. It's pretty easy. All you have to do is come down to our Farwell Street office, 405 South Farwell. I believe it's the campus building. We're upstairs on the third Monday of every month we have our monthly meetings. And that's where we're discussing a lot of these issues and deciding whether there's actions for us to do, or research to do, or what. We also have a website, www.NorthernThunder.org, and it's n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n-t-h-u-n-d-e-r. So that's NorthernThunder.org is a place for you to check out this kind of information. We don't have massive amounts of information on our website, but that's the way you can contact us or double check on what our meeting dates are. But come on down to the meetings. We're all volunteers. We don't have any paid staff. We operate completely on donations from our members. We try to be a voice for the environment and the progressive community. So the best thing to do when you've got an issue, you want to see some action, is come on down and let's talk about it and see if there's not some major movement that can go on, or how you can connect with things. Because we also know people from all these other organizations around. You've given us a lot to do. It's a big homework assignment, and a drive for one because it involves connecting with nature. Thanks for your tenure service with Northern Thunder, including the six years you've served on the board, and TV Notion was a great gift you gave to the community. Thanks a lot, Mark. You've been listening to an interview with Michelle Bayless of Northern Thunder, an environmental activist organization in the Chippewa Valley. You can hear this program again and other programs via my website, northernspiritradio.org, and you can find lots of useful links on those pages as well. Music featured in this program has included The List by John McCutchen, Rape of the World by Tracy Chapman, and Every Part of This Earth by Peaceful Women. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher call for you than this to love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. Music. (gentle music) (gentle music)