An anniversary marks the day an event took place - the birth of our nation on July 4, for instance. March 11 marks the day when two natural disasters struck Japan.
On that day in 2011, an earthquake followed by a tsunami devastated the coast, displacing 154,000 people and killing 18,000. That was the first disaster.
On March 11, we also commemorate the beginning of a man-made permanent crisis for the entire planet: the meltdown of multiple nuclear reactors in Japan.
Last year, the Safe and Green Campaign organized the first Voices of Fukushima. People in seven towns around Vermont Yankee adopted seven respective towns in Japan. In Brattleboro, we studied what life is like for the 21,000 residents evacuated from the town of Namie, five miles from the nuclear reactors.
In November, Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie, films about Vermont made by Vermonters, came to Brattleboro. Vermont's unique contribution to direct democracy, our Annual Town Meetings, was one of the themes. The segment on energy, “People's Power,” included scenes with citizens in Town Meetings debating shutting down Vermont...
If big news is delivered late in the afternoon just before a holiday, you know someone has something to hide. The 2013 Christmas gift from Entergy and the state of Vermont was their “settlement agreement.” Only the most diehard followers of nuclear news would be reading legal documents over...