Will people finally wake up when they finally feel the hurt? –

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

They say life is a journey, and you never know where you might end up.

For many people, life seems more like a slog, from one hard day of work for a bad boss and too little pay then a mind numbing commute in rush hour traffic to the next bad, fast food cheeseburger.

When I was just a teenager playing rock and roll in the 1970s, I knew I wanted life to be different. Call it God’s plan if you want, but I call it free will. None of it would have happened without the enthusiastic pursuit of higher education.

By the time I covered my first story about global warming in 1989, I knew my calling was to warn people of impending disaster. To raise red flags in news story ledes and try to help people understand what might be coming their way. I also figured most people would not listen until it hit them where it hurts.

Well it appears to be hurting now, especially in Florida, Georgia and even the mountains of North Carolina, where I could have ended up but kept going.

As I was reading Margaret Renkl’s column from Nashville in the New York Times Monday morning, safe and secure in a house near Jonesboro, Arkansas, I wondered, as she did, if people are ready to embrace the facts about climate change yet.

“There’s no such thing as a climate haven anymore. We all live in Florida now,” she wrote. “Even the few remaining Americans who still dismiss climate change outright must surely know this.”

But no, she wrote. “They simply choose to parrot the talking points of Republican politicians and right-wing media figures who are paid by Big Oil — or Big Construction — to lie to vulnerable Americans and leave them ever more vulnerable.”

“There’s no denying that we would be in much better shape today if utility companies and the fossil-fuel industry had not launched a huge disinformation campaign to cover up the truth of climate change decades ago, and if the Republican Party and right-wing media had not embraced it. Yet they continue to embrace it even now,” she wrote.

“Climate disinformation frequently runs rampant in the aftermath of climate-related disasters, but ridiculous rumors and conspiracy theories have reached new levels in the wake of (Hurricane) Helene. Among the most outrageous lies in circulation right now — embraced and promulgated by both Elon Musk and Donald Trump — is the false claim that F.E.M.A. has spent all its money helping undocumented migrants and therefore has no funds left to help hurricane victims. There is absolutely no truth to this story, as F.E.M.A. has explained, and even Republican elected officials like Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee, Mayor Glenn Jacobs of Knox County, Tenn., and Kevin Corbin, a North Carolina state senator, have called out the misinformation, but the rumors are still flying.

“Among the many ironies of these lies is that Project 2025, the Republican playbook for a second Trump presidency, calls for gutting F.E.M.A.”

All we can do is research, report, write, publish and share the factual stories. It is up to “the people” to share the news with their friends on social media, or hide from controversy and watch the world devolve into a hellscape where no one is safe.

My journey has taken me from the Gulf Coast to the nation’s capital to New York and back a few times, and has finally veared west, where I expected to end up. For the next few weeks through the 2024 election, we will be trying to help the people of Arkansas find better representation in Washington. From what I’ve seen so far here in the flat land of cotton along the Mississippi River, the poor people certainly need a mountain of help.

It might take celebrity involvement to help them.

On Saturday, I found out the actor Wendell Pierce was coming to West Memphis to a Rock the Delta voter registration rally in Crittenden County, not far from the west bank of the Mississippi River across from Memphis, Tennessee. Pierce braved the hot sun, said he was used to it since he is from New Orleans, and told people “this is a very important time in our country and there are those who do not have our best interest at heart.”

You may recognize Pierce for his roles playing the Rev. Hosea Williams in the move “Selma,” the trombone player Antoine Batiste in “Treme” and Detective Bunk Moreland in the acclaimed HBO drama series “The Wire.” He broke off from traveling the country campaigning for Democrats with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on Saturday to visit barbershops and parks in Arkansas to fire people up to register and vote on Nov. 5.

The most poignant moment came when he talked about standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma after the filming was done one day. Of course Williams tried to cross that bridge on March 7, 1965, standing alongside John Lewis, when they were tear gassed, beaten and turned back on Bloody Sunday.

“As we finished shooting, the cameras went away … and I stood there alone on that bridge looking into the Alabama River,” Pierce said. “And I realized that there were so many souls who gave the ultimate sacrifice for us to be here today. Men and women who died by the barrel of a gun held by their neighbors, saying Dear Lord I hope my life and my death will not be in vain.”

An Alabama state trooper swings his club at future U.S. Rep. John Lewis, pictured on the ground, during “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., in 1965: Photo by my good friend James “Spider” Martin

The importance of the right to vote really hit home for him that day, he said.

So many died not just in the sands of Iwo Jima and the beaches of Normandy, he said, “but in the mud of Mississippi, the rivers of Alabama and the red clay of Georgia. Black men and women, white men and women, young and old, who gave the ultimate sacrifice so that we can go and vote.”

“How dare you blaspheme their death by not even going out there and voting,” he challenged the people in Hightower Park. “That is blasphemous to me. You are doing a disservice to them, and a dishonor to them.”

Actor Wendell Pierce Urges the People of Arkansas to Register and Vote

Life’s A Journey

I don’t know where this journey will take me from here, but the plan is to venture further out west after the election, to Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and California.

Much will depend on how the election turns out, and even how long it takes to find out the results.

Five Weeks Until Election Day: What’s the State of the Race?

You can plan all you want, but events have a way of intervening.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all my friends, fans, family members and followers who still believe in the value of what I’m trying to do to support this journey and work. All the experts say we need more local journalism. I’m producing some for the time being. We will see if people will pick up on it enough for it to make a difference.

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