Dear Readers:Meet Alejandrina. She was 11 when Los Angeles Times journalists first began reporting her story. Alejandrina, a little girl who likes lip gloss and longs to go to back to school, works 14 hours a day picking chile peppers for a farm that supplies a U.S. distributor.

Mexican law requires workers to be at least 15, but Alejandrina is among an estimated 100,000 children younger than that who work the fields. As she told The Times: “I work because we don’t have any money and we need money to eat things.”

Times reporter Richard Marosi and photographer Don Bartletti tracked Alejandrina’s nomadic existence for a year. Read her story, which is also the story of so many others: Children harvest crops and sacrifice dreams in Mexico’s fields

This marks the fourth and final piece in our Product of Mexico series, an investigation into conditions on Mexican farms that supply Americans with much of our tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and other produce.

We’ve told readers about unbearable conditions at labor camps and taken them into Bioparques, a supplier to Wal-Mart and one of Mexico’s biggest tomato exporters, where Mexican officials found workers held captive. We’ve examined company stores, where a lack of price tags and big mark-ups leave many farmworkers trapped in a cycle of debt.

I want to thank all of you for reading this important series and sharing it with others. Here’s a sneak peek at a video coming Monday that features Marosi and Bartletti talking about the reporting behind this eye-opening series.

Davan Maharaj, Editor

P.S. We’ve created some extra content available only to our subscribers. Bartletti, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist whose interest in photography dates back to his service in Vietnam, has covered Mexico for decades. He shares some of his best photos and memories of what it took to capture the images.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Lindsey Allen, Rainforest Action Network

12/18/2014 Nativegrl77

Take a moment to reflect on 2014, a year of action.

Another year has flown by and it’s absolutely incredible how much we have accomplished in just one year.

All of us at Rainforest Action Network could not be more grateful to our network of hundreds of thousands of supporters, like you, who made it all possible.

Together, we defended the rainforests and its inhabitants, demanded an end to dirty energy, challenged corporate power and fought climate change. 2014 has demonstrated people are energized and ready to take action to ensure people and planet are placed above corporate greed.

We kicked off 2014 right, by organizing over 280 vigils in less than 72 hours with more than ten thousand activists to urge President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline following the release of the State Department’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.

And as we come to a close to 2014, after seven long years of campaigning against Cargill — the biggest privately held corporation in the US — we have seen a groundbreaking commitment along with a seismic shift in the palm oil sector to protect disappearing rainforests and to keep massive amounts of carbon in the ground and out of the atmosphere.

And we couldn’t have done any of it with you!

Take a moment now and watch how together, we made the impossible, possible.

Thank you for all you do,

Lindsey Allen
Executive Director

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FOR SALE: 1 Bazooka (slightly used)

12/18/2014 Nativegrl77

“If you want to own a bazooka, you can own a bazooka” — Gavin Seim, “I Will Not Comply” organizer

Seriously. This is what the folks trying repeal 594 really think — that it’s A-OK to have your own bazooka.

Gavin Seim said this gem during a rally on S‌atur‌d‌ay, Decem‌ber 1‌3, the day before the second anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. And what’s worse, another speaker at the rally, Rep. Elizabeth Scott from Monroe, is getting ready to introduce bills to weaken and repeal background checks when the legislative session starts in January.

You helped make history by passing 594 at the ballot box this fall. Contribute $3 t‌od‌ay to help us keep background checks the law in Washington!

It’s as simple as that.

If Rep. Scott is successful this session, all of our hard work will be for nothing — and it won’t matter that background checks passed with nearly 60% support.

We’ll be right back where we started, unless you help us stop them with a contribution today.

Step up right now, and contribute $3 to keep background checks protecting our families.

We’ve won at the ballot box, and now we need to win in Olympia.

Thank you for keeping up the fight.

Zach Silk
Campaign Manager
Yes on 594

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

27-Year Old Missing In Yachats

12/18/2014 Nativegrl77

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Union of Concerned Scientists … Playground politics

12/17/2014 Nativegrl77

A small group of lawmakers are dead set on stopping the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.Don’t let them get away with it.Fight for strong limits on global warming pollution with your tax-deductible gift.

Donate Now

Or read on to find out how we’re fighting on the state level this year.

Here’s what a Texas lawmaker recently said:

“What if we just said no [to the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules on power plant pollution]? There is a precedent in Texas to say we’re not going to be under the federal government’s boot.”¹

He might as well have said, No! We don’t have to follow the rules! That sort of thing is barely acceptable on the playground—as a way of setting national policy, it’s downright dangerous.

Yet it’s happening now: Twelve states are suing the EPA to block new rules on global warming pollution.² And even if they lose, there are a string of bills in state houses around the country to gut progress on clean energy and protect fossil fuel interests—in effect, to roll back years of work and victories you and I have made possible.

That’s why UCS is launching an ambitious new campaign next month to make sure states make real progress on clean air and renewal energy.

States have to devise plans to comply with new EPA rules that cut global warming pollutants from power plants. If we don’t have the right resources now, our opponents will beat us to the punch, and we’ll miss out on this opportunity to move states forward. Please don’t let that happen.

Our analysts and outreach staff need resources to take our hard hitting, science-based campaigns to even more states—to beat back attacks on the EPA and pass proactive legislation to ramp up wind and solar development and energy efficiency. What you give now determines just how hard we can fight in the weeks and months ahead—for science, clean air, and our families’ health.

Here’s how UCS will use your support to make a difference. Here’s how we’ll win:

We’ll mobilize the 20,000 scientists and technical experts in our Science Network to collaborate on new research and share their findings with lawmakers and regulators.
We’ll organize more than 450,000 individuals who’ve signed on as activists across all 50 states to make sure elected officials know they’re being watched, and ask them to follow the science on global warming, clean energy, and more.
We’ll work in key states to help them adopt strong clean energy and climate policies to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s new standards for power plant global warming emissions, and using the momentum to create a tipping point for national climate action.
We’ll expose misinformation from corporate and political interests in the media, in Congress, and in state houses—so decision makers know the difference between science fact and corporate fiction.

Those are the same ways UCS members helped secure landmark fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, impose limits on global warming emissions from coal-fired power plants, and cut sulfur pollution from gasoline—all in the last two years.

It’s also how we helped kill nearly every single legislative attempt to roll back support for wind and solar development in the states. We even beat the Koch brothers in their home state of Kansas.³

And it’s how we’ll convince key states to strengthen their reliance on clean and renewable energy. On January 1, we’re immediately ramping up our work in three states where legislators are poised to adopt stronger renewable energy policies—Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota. That’s just the beginning of our state-based work in 2015. The number of states we can reach depends on your support right now.

Legislative sessions open up in early January. We either get ahead of the fossil fuel industry or we don’t.

The only disadvantage we face when compared to the people who protect corporate interests and deny climate science is resources. It’s just that simple. We’ve got the science, the experts, the everyday people fighting for their futures and their families’ health. We’re making a difference, but with your extra generous support right now, we can—we will—do so much more.

A lot of groups have a role to play in fighting global warming. Ours is unique. We are the leading national organization built by and for scientists and people like you who look to science first when faced with threats like sea level rise, persistent drought, and toxic pollution. We are the trusted experts on climate science and clean and renewable energy. And you are the power behind each of our campaigns.

The new year is just around the corner,

Sincerely,

Ken Kimmell
President
Union of Concerned Scientists

P.S. As a UCS member, you should know you’re well respected by leaders in the climate movement. Just recently, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said he “always follows UCS because they’re always right.” We appreciate that, and I can tell you—with your support—we always strive for accuracy and integrity in the defense of science. I’m proud of that, and hope you are too.

1. http://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/20140929-litigation-looms-over-state-co2-hearings.ece
2. http://www.ok.gov/oag/documents/Section%20111d%20Settlement%20Filing.pdf
3. http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article1138361.html