Commentary
Preserving Wildlife and a Way of Life
For decades, hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River have been killing off salmon that must traverse them to spawn, Southern Resident orcas that feed on salmon, and the cultures of tribal nations who consider the salmon their first food. Through an intersection of bipartisan interest that’s unusual these days and once-in-a-generation federal funding, we may finally have a chance to end the spiral toward extinction for all three.

By Ben Jealous
For decades, hydroelectric dams on the lower Snake River have been killing off salmon that must traverse them to spawn, Southern Resident orcas that feed on salmon, and the cultures of tribal nations who consider the salmon their first food. Through an intersection of bipartisan interest that’s unusual these days and once-in-a-generation federal funding, we may finally have a chance to end the spiral toward extinction for all three.
Where millions of Chinook salmon would make the upstream journey from the Pacific to the Idaho habitat where they laid eggs before the dams were erected, in recent years that count has been in the thousands. The numbers are much worse for Coho and Sockeye salmon. Getting over the dams to the spawning grounds and back to the ocean has proven too much for fish who are able to travel a thousand miles to spawn. The orcas have less to eat as a result and there were only 73 left last year.
Not surprisingly, the dire situation exists in part because the dams were built ignoring the needs and the treaty rights of Indigenous people who consider the salmon sacred symbols of resilience and renewal. They have been fighting for the salmon with science and with litigation for years. Their treaties with the United States maintain their rights to fish in rivers of the Columbia Basin — a meaningless benefit if there are no fish to harvest.
These species are endangered; we’ve spent more than $18 billion unsuccessfully over the years to bring back salmon populations alone with the dams in place. As a tribal leader told me last month, “the government agencies are managing our extinction.” It’s a story that’s too familiar in so many communities that bear the brunt of choices that destroy the climate and pollute the planet from the cancer alley in Louisiana to hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico.
Those fighting for the salmon, the orcas, and the people who rely on the fish spiritually and economically got a new champion two years ago when Mike Simpson, the Republican Congressman who represents the eastern half of Idaho, unveiled a plan that includes breaching the four dams by removing the earthen berms that flank them to let the river run freely. He got a more favorable response from the Democratic governors in Washington and Oregon than from other Republicans in the Pacific Northwest.
Last year, Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray (both Democrats from Washington) added their voices with their own joint report and recommendations around breaching. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also concluded that circumventing the dams must be “the centerpiece action” to restore salmon populations.
The new star in this political constellation is the Biden Administration, who agreed to pause the long running litigation to look specifically at recovering salmon in the Columbia Basin, removing the lower Snake River dams, and meeting the treaty rights responsibilities. This new look at options comes along with the historic infrastructure and inflation reduction packages that President Biden and Congress have approved since 2021. Simpson points to them as the way to pay for his $33 billion plan. Replacing the electricity generated by the dams can be done with renewable generation. So is replacing jobs and revitalizing state economies through greener industries and tourism tied to the outdoors.
There’s a lot more work to be done, starting with the Biden Administration joining Murray, Inslee and Simpson, making decisions that work for salmon, orca and Tribal Nations. Their proposals aren’t perfect, but they are a usable framework to get work moving to deal with the dams.
Years ago, Colin Powell told me it’s more important in a democracy to find the thing you can agree on with people who otherwise may be political opponents than the many things you disagree about. “Figure that out and you can get a lot done,” he told me. I see that playing out on the Snake River, and that can’t come a moment too soon for wildlife and native cultures at the verge of disappearing forever.
Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

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Arts and Culture
What Asian American Oscar Victories Mean for All of Us
After the Oscars, when Asian Americans were everywhere on the winners list, from actors, writers, directors, but also makeup artists, and not just in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but also in movies like “The Whale,” I turn to the Oakland playwright Ishmael Reed who must be wondering will Asian Americans now go for the Whiteness Prize?

By Emil Guillermo
After the Oscars, when Asian Americans were everywhere on the winners list, from actors, writers, directors, but also makeup artists, and not just in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but also in movies like “The Whale,” I turn to the Oakland playwright Ishmael Reed who must be wondering will Asian Americans now go for the Whiteness Prize?
(I consider Asian American to be a generic term, indicating people of Asian descent either living or working not necessarily indicative of their citizenship status.)
I’m in New York as an actor in “The Conductor,” the latest Reed production now off-Broadway (get your in-person or live-streamed tickets here: https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor-2023/).
I play a brown-skinned Tucker Carlson-type on a faux Fox, and very conservative news network.
That’s how good an actor I am!
As an Asian American sometime-actor, I’m gratified to see Asian American creatives take their historic star turn at the Oscars. Asians have won the Academy Award for best supporting actor before, but never has there been a best actor/actress winner until the Malaysia-born, Hollywood-based Michelle Yeoh last weekend.
There’s something about being a “first.” A “never before.”
But what’s next?
And that’s where Reed’s play got me thinking.
In Reed’s “The Conductor,” Blacks start a new underground railroad to help Indian Americans — not American Indians, but those from the continent of India — escape a wave of xenophobia that is forcing them to flee to Canada.
The main character, columnist Warren Chipp is Reed’s alter ego. When a conservative Indian seeks refuge and asks Chipp why the liberal Chipp is being so nice to him, Chipp reveals his grasp of irony.
“Minorities make alliances with us (Blacks) until their admission to the white club is accepted. This happened to the Jews, the Japanese, the Irish, the Italians and now you guys (Asian Indians).”
It’s just one of the provocative asides in the play, but the historical examples are there.
Says Chipp/Reed: “These groups come running to us when the white man decides to sic mobs on them because of some geopolitical conflict or culture war. Begging us to hide them and save them. And then, when they get an ‘all-clear’ sign, they return to auditioning for whiteness again. Lining up and trampling over each other, asking white people to ‘choose me!’ Some of them even change their names to go Anglo.”
Reed says it’s the root of “Afro-Pessimism.”
What’s that?
It’s a term by Frank Wilderson, as Reed explains, that means Blacks can’t depend upon Blacks’ “junior allies.” Wilderson calls B.S. on intersectionality and says that Blacks “must go it alone.”
After rehearsals and the first four performances, the passages from the play haunt me.
Especially last Sunday. When the Asian Americans were preparing for their Oscar turn, I was off-Broadway living Reed’s play.
Is the Model Minority now back to auditioning for whiteness again?
I hope not. I get what Reed’s saying in his play. But I see the Oscar victory as a win for not just Asian Americans but all BIPOC communities in all their unique narratives.
AAPI stories have a kind of heat now. An independent film about a family with a laundromat dealing with the IRS and the multiverse where people have hotdogs as fingers puts us in a whole new ballgame.
We aren’t so weird after all. We’re of immigrant descent, sure. We’re different, yes. But we’re of the modern world and our stories deal in universal truths.
People flocked to “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which gave it some cache as an indie project that was making money. Not like “Top Gun” money, but enough to satisfy Hollywood accountants. Once it caught the attention of the Academy looking for diversity, the film was simply recognized for its off-beat ingenuity and its creative weirdness.
I was having lunch in New York’s Chinatown with a lawyer friend of mine, a Chinese American immigrant and also a triple Harvard (College, Law School, and MBA) graduate. My friend surprised me when he said he couldn’t understand the hype about “Everything, Everywhere…”
He called it unwatchable. He liked the movie “Tar.”
I told him maybe it was generational. Just goes to show you that not everyone, not even Asian Americans are on board with “Everything, Everywhere…”
But the huge victory on Sunday makes the film like a Golden Spike in Hollywood. The track is finally connected and open for AAPI creatives bound for glory.
“Everything, Everywhere…” has put everyone in the equation on notice. We have stories to tell that sell, and that people want to see.
Stories that win Oscars.
I see the phenomenon as a rising Asian American film lifts all boats. And with AAPI at just over 6% of the population, I don’t buy the “Afro-Pessimism” idea in his play.
We can’t go it alone. We don’t have the numbers. We need each other.
Like anything worthwhile, it’s going to have to be done together.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See his vlog on www.amok.com And see “The Conductor” in person or live-streamed tickets here: https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor-2023/
Ben Jealous
COMMENTARY: A Historic Vote and the Tools It Gave Us
Vice President Kamala Harris is sure to be remembered every March in Women’s History Month as the first woman and the first person of color to serve our nation in that position. As notable as those two facts are, she may grow to be known just as much for a single vote in the Senate that helped save the planet.

By Ben Jealous
Vice President Kamala Harris is sure to be remembered every March in Women’s History Month as the first woman and the first person of color to serve our nation in that position. As notable as those two facts are, she may grow to be known just as much for a single vote in the Senate that helped save the planet.
Last August, she broke the 50-50 deadlock between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. That historic package, along with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that Harris had crisscrossed the country in 2021 to build support for, give us a once-in-a-generation chance to protect the climate and build a cleaner, fairer economy.
Both laws bear Harris’ mark. For example, the two packages provide billions to replace diesel school buses with electric ones and an additional tax credit for purchases that counties and cities make on their own. As a senator, Harris repeatedly sponsored bills to electrify the nation’s school buses. Similarly, she championed proposals to help recovery in low-income communities that bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and climate; the IRA includes $60 billion directed to help those places.
Harris’ role inside and outside Washington on environmental issues isn’t surprising. When she was elected San Francisco’s district attorney 20 years ago, she started one of the first environmental justice units in a prosecutor’s office. When she moved on to be California’s attorney general, she fought to protect the state from fossil fuel interests, winning tens of millions in civil settlements and a criminal indictment against the pipeline company responsible for an oil spill off Santa Barbara, as well as suing the federal government to block fracking off the coast. It’s a path others have been able to follow in the years since (Columbia University keeps a database of attorneys general’s environmental actions now).
It’s a concern that runs deep. Like I did, Harris grew up in environmentally conscious northern California in a household deeply involved in the civil rights movement. She learned early that conservation was a good thing, so much so that she has joked she couldn’t understand as a youngster why people she knew said conservatives were bad.
The Biden-Harris administration has provided leadership. With Congress, they’ve given us the tools to clean up pollution, to boost communities’ resilience to climate related natural disasters like wildfires, and to create good jobs in clean manufacturing across the country in unprecedented ways. Through the infrastructure and inflation reduction packages, the United States can spend more than double protecting Earth than we spent putting astronauts on the moon.
“I think we all understand we have to be solutions driven. And the solutions are at hand,” Harris said at a climate summit earlier this month. “We need to make up for some lost time, no doubt. This is going to have an exponential impact on where we need to go.”
It’s time for the rest of us to pick up those tools and build. There are powerful interests that would be more than happy to let the inertia that allows people and places to be treated as disposable continue indefinitely. Our planet can’t afford that, and we have to marshal a movement to prevent it.
Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.
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