#leonard malton

[dubreggae]

One of history’s best music lists -- better than Pitchfork’s, Rolling Stone’s, or Elvis Costello’s -- was made by a teenager named Snoopy in the summer of 1977. In the London music newspaper Black Echoes, he published his 125 favorite albums from the golden age of dub reggae. Forty-four years later, thanks to a lucky break, I found him. 

Snoopy, born Paul Nagle, is a hero three times over. First, he vividly chronicled under-documented and mysterious music, producing the closest thing I know to a kind of Leonard Maltin Guide to the history of dub. Second, when I reached out, he was willing to respond to a stranger: "Hi,” he said. “My friend told me you were interested in getting in contact with me.” The third reason is that he answered my series of questions about his life, the list, and its beautiful music with the same kind of warmth and expertise that makes his writing so valuable.

His memories of late-70s reggae record shops, radio stations, zines and newspapers, and the adventures, fights, and relationships that came along with them, make for one of the best accounts I’ve ever heard of the dub reggae scene, especially the version that migrated from Jamaica to England at the height of King Tubby, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Dub Specialist, the Revolutionaries, the Aggrovators, Augustus Pablo, Yabby You, Joe Gibbs, Keith Hudson, Sonia Pottinger, 4th Street Orchestra, Lloyd Coxsone, Rupie Edwards, Derrick Harriott, Skin, Flesh & Bones, Tommy McCook, and Duke Reid. Inspired by Snoopy’s list, I made a compilation of about 81 hours of dub, which you can listen to right here. Here’s what he told me: Who’s Snoopy? Paul Nagle is the name I was born with. I was born in Islington, London, in April 1959, and moved with my family to the new town of Basildon, in Essex, in 1964. In 1969, when I was ten, a friend of mine’s sister recommended and lent me a book of American cartoon strips called For the Love of Peanuts. I immediately fell in love with the Peanuts gang, in particular Charlie Brown’s dog. A few years later, I became penpals with a girl from my old school called Marianne. She was in her sister’s band, had a stage name, and used to sign off her letters to me using it. I was quite jealous, so I adopted Snoopy as my pseudonym. When I was sixteen, I wrote a letter to a weekly rock paper called New Musical Express congratulating them on their recent coverage of reggae, which i was fanatical about at the time. I didn’t want to use my own name, so i signed the letter Snoopy. 

It was printed as their letter of the week on their Gasbag page. There was a note at the end of my letter which asked that I contact the features editor, whose name was Neil Spencer. I did so and he invited me to start writing about reggae for them on a freelance basis. Snoopy became my nom de plume, and the nickname has stuck with me for the rest of my life. Most people, apart from my family, know me as Snoopy. Of course, people often get the name wrong: I have been called Spooky, Snotty, Snooty, Snooky, Sleepy, Noddy and countless other derivatives.  

How did you learn about dub reggae? My generous dad gave me his copy of Rockers Meet King Tubby in a Firehouse. I was nuts about records and music from a very early age. My parents had a great record collection and I could place 45s and 78s in their generic company sleeves before I could even read. By the time I was four years old I was obsessed with playing singles. In fact, the oldest living example of my handwriting, actually a scribble, is on a Tony Bennett single my dad bought in 1963 – it was also my first experience of entering a shop that sold records. My mum came from a large family and my parents and aunts and uncles were always throwing parties. My cousins had amazing records, too, and had quite eclectic tastes. So apart from the usual pop stuff, I was also hearing jazz and soul and folk and funk and reggae and country. My first musical obsession, apart from the Beatles, of course, was the Tamla Motown record label. I adored The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Miracles. All of them! 

I was introduced to reggae by my cousin Steve around 1968. His influence on my musical directions was massive. He was an avid soul collector, too. In 1973, we moved back to London, and during the following year I got the reggae bug. I was still at school. I was spending all of my pocket money on records. I used to frequent chapel market, just around the corner from where I was born, and listen to the reggae records, because, of course, it wasn’t getting any airplay on the radio. That changed, in 1975, with the introduction of a Saturday night show called TV on Reggae, which was on a relatively new London-based station called capital. The DJ was Tommy Vance, who wasn’t a reggae buff but a good DJ. He’d have various reggae sidekicks who knew their stuff visit the show. I used to always record the show on cassette tape – and one week there was a whole hour dedicated towards dub. This one show completely blew my mind. I had heard and owned b-side dubs and versions, but it was the first time I’d heard tracks taken from dub albums. I didn’t have a clue what most of the records were, because it was an uninterrupted session. No information was given about the chosen tracks, but it made things all the more exciting trying to find out what they all were over the next few years.

What was Black Echoes, and how did you end up publishing the list? In January 1976, a new weekly Black music newspaper was published in the UK, which featured soul, reggae, jazz and blues. I was 16 and had recently started my first job, an office junior for the institute of accounting in Bedford Square in London’s West End. A ten minute walk led to a reggae record shop in Hanway Street, the first ever in that part of London. It was called Daddy Kool. This became my lunchtime hangout, and even after work and on Saturdays. I would spend nearly all my wages on records. A few doors away was a soul record shop called Contempo that I also frequented. Dave Hendley worked in there, who went on to write the reggae column for Blues & Soul magazine and take some of the greatest photographs ever of reggae artists. Steve Barrow was my go-to at Daddy Kool for tracking me down tunes. He wrote the reggae singles reviews for Black Echoes.

When I did a couple of record reviews for New Musical Express, I was introduced to Penny Reel, whose writing on reggae I had come across in the reggae fanzine Pressure Drop. He introduced me to Black Echoes’ editor, Peter Harvey, who asked if I wanted to write for the paper. I was sixteen at the time and so I was up for it, even though I had no journalistic experience. I started to do album reviews and eventually did news stories and articles, live gig reviews, interviews and took over reviewing the reggae singles when Steve Barrow left. I quickly became a fixture at Black Echoes and was the baby of the family. My ambition was to write a few articles on one of my favourite genres of music, and it the first time there had been any kind of substantial listing released worldwide of dub albums. Did you have help? The content of the list was mainly researched and compiled by myself, but Penny Reel and others also helped with information about albums. Of course, in those days, there were no computers. It was a lot of legwork, traipsing around London to specialist record shops and record stalls in markets and trying to find those elusive dub albums. At that time, not many were being released in the UK, so it was mainly expensive Jamaican imports that I tried to track down, to listen to -- even if not to buy. A lot of the research was really about rummaging about in specialist record shops, junk shops, mail-order lists, record company advertisements, record reviews and my own record collection and those of other fans. Gradually the list of albums grew bigger and it seemed to come together, though it was often difficult to verify things. Of course, it didn’t help that I was on a deadline for publication. There were a few errors made as a consequence, but not that many.

Can you describe what makes dub so magical? For me, it's the mix of the improvisation of jazz, folk music's local tradition, and gospel's holiness. But it's hard to describe, isn't it? I think what initially fascinated me the most about dub was its fluidity and immediacy. Dub mixes are one-off attempts at recreating something new out of something previously recorded. 

There is definitely something akin to jazz about dub, I suppose because mixing has that improvised feel to it, things can go either very right or very wrong. The unexpected twists and turns a dub track can take is very much like the unimaginable flights of fancy taken by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Jimmy Smith or even Jon Hendricks. I think the other-worldliness of dub is what makes it really magical. So many of the sounds are unlike any you’ve ever heard, at least in those early days of dub. there is also an affinity with disco which I was also heavily into during the late 70s, when producers and engineers like Shep Pettibone, Walter Gibbons, Larry Levan and the incredible Tom Moulton were laying down the foundations of dance music and experimenting with mixing in a new and vibrant way. 

The heavyweight combustion between the sound of the crashing drums and the booming bass was also something that particularly appealed, and the use of echoed-vocals has always been something that has really made me sit up and listen. 

I loved that Bunny Lee flying-cymbal sound. The crisp channel one rockers sound was something that as a young person I found really exciting. Lee Perry’s more technically experimental sound was perfect for dub and Augustus Pablo’s mellow, more mystical sound was so brilliant. There was some magical dub in the years after 1977. Do you have favorites? A few spring to mind. I loved Gussie’s Black Foundation Dub, Dennis Brown’s Umoja Dub, Gregory Isaacs’ Slum in Dub, Linval Thompson’s Negrea Love Dub. Nuh Skin Up Dub had some good tracks. Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires -- great title, great LP! I also should mention Captain Ganja & the Space Patrol. I came up with the concept and titles for Venture Records. My old school friend Marianne and her husband Steve designed the cover. They also did High Risk Dub and Lovers Dub. There have been some really great compilations as well: Termination Dub, Dub Gone Crazy, Dub Like Dirt, in fact all of those Blood and Fire dub comps are wicked. My old friend Steve Barrow on the case. Do you have any regrets about the list? Things that should have been on or off? I was only 18 at the time. What I got together, considering I’d never researched anything before, was pretty good for the time. I purposefully included albums which weren’t strictly dub albums, for example, instrumental albums and albums with both vocal and dub tracks. I think I did that because those radio dub specials also featured vocal tracks, it’s not something I would do now. However, if you excluded vocal tracks, then that would wipe super ape, which has killer dubs and vocals. 

It would have been nice to include release dates on the list, but at that time there was pretty much no way of knowing what first appeared when. This is mainly because Jamaican record companies rarely put the year of release on a record. Even now, a site like Discogs is filled with errors on its inclusion of Jamaican dub albums, where contributors are just having a stab in the dark. 

I would definitely have African Dub Chapter Three in the Top 10. It was listed 115 in the list! At the time, hardly anybody had heard it, and shops in the UK certainly couldn’t get hold of it. It didn’t enter the black echoes UK reggae LPs chart as an import until October 1977, nearly three months after I’d compiled the list, when sufficient copies started entering the country. Within four weeks, it was the no. 1 album, and remained on the charts as a Jamaican import for an amazing 35 weeks. The opening track chapter three was a sound-system steppers tune favourite that has lit reggae dance floors pretty much ever since. 

With regards to my original top 20, I think it’s pretty good. I still love most of those albums. their order I would maybe juggle around, I think either King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown or King Tubby Meets the Aggrovators at Dub Station, or even Pick a Dub would deserve to be at the top spot. Later I realized dub station was a UK issue of the Jamaican release Creation of Dub with different titles, the latter appearing at 41 on the list. That turned out to be a bit of an issue. It was impossible to know whether a UK release was a new one or a Jamaican one under a different title, for example Ja-gan was also known as Morris on Dub.

Who are the producers you return to over and over? For me, it's Scratch, King Tubby, the Dub Specialist series -- and, post-1977, the wonderful Scientist. I am still a huge fan of Bunny Lee’s productions. He was ridiculously prolific, of course, but I rather liked that. In 1975, he must have issued around 40 singles by Johnny Clarke alone. I loved that 1974-76 period of his music. 

I can always return quite happily to listen to Lee Perry productions as well. He was always so inventive and creative and groundbreaking, really. He most definitely was a true artist in the artistic sense of the word, pushing music beyond its boundaries to create sounds that were truly unusual and magnificent. An innovator. I first heard Blackboard Jungle round Steve Barrow’s place in 1976, and it blew me away. Revolution Dub is still a classic for me. I love that it features snippets from a popular British TV comedy of the time, Doctor on the Go. The dub of Jimmy Riley’s version of Bobby Womack’s Woman’s Gotta Have It is exceptional, too. 

I think Niney the Observer is an often overlooked producer. Dubbing with the Observer and Sledge Hammer Dub remain real favourites of mine. What has the response to your list been like over the years? After 1977, the list was pretty much forgotten, and things remained that way for decades. I was proud of it at the time, but never considered it to be anything more than an opportunity for me to compile and rate the dub music I loved. I certainly never thought of it, or looked at it. It never occurred to me that anyone would read it ever again. 

The advent of the world wide web changed all that. I think it was during the early 2000s when I first became aware that scans of the list were starting to appear. Frankly, I was astonished. The websites that featured it were mainly music forums and reggae sites. Obviously the list came in for some criticism regarding the positioning of some of the records. African Dub Chapter Three was a particular bone of contention, with detractors saying I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, as I had it so far down the list. And no one agreed with my choice of King Tubby Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub as the no. 1 album. But it was the first dub album I bought when I was 16, and so it meant something special to me. Hindsight is a tremendous but dangerous thing. 

But the positivity about the list far outweighed the negativity. Lots of people have expressed their pleasure in reading it, so I am well chuffed about that. Sly Dunbar put the list on his Facebook page fairly recently. He played on a lot of those albums! it has also been a joy to discover and read other people’s dub lists, and I thoroughly enjoyed Martin ‘Sky Juice’ Blomqvist’s recent book 100 Days of Dub. He’s so knowledgeable and his enthusiasm is infectious. I've been able to find almost all of the records, but there are some entries that confuse me: King Tubby's Vengeance, Prophets Bootleg Dub, ABC Dub, Sir Collins in Session, Ja Man in Dub, and Aquarius Dub 2. You’re right, Aquarius Dub 2 doesn’t seem to exist. it could be that it was planned and shelved, as a few on the list might have been forthcoming releases that were never issued in the end. And there were quite a few Vivian Jackson albums about at the time with similar titles, which could be confusing. What have you been doing these last few decades? I’m always dabbling one way or another. Whilst working for reggae record companies back in the 70s I got involved with singing and made a few recordings. I became lifelong friends with British lovers rock group Natural Mystic, so have sung and arranged backing vocals on quite a few of their records down the decades. For the past 25 years or so I have been working with young people on films, concerts, recordings, dance projects, self-development and community productions. My writing necessarily diverged into creating scripts and composing lyrics. And for many years I have been researching and compiling a book I’m calling Celebrate Good Times: 20th Century Soul, Reggae and Dance Music, which analyses 24 years of charts. It is a real labour of love: there are over 5000! I’ve also been writing a novel these past couple of years, which I’m finding challenging but quite rewarding. 

Could you pick one single song, the greatest dub of all time? It is a fight between two records: King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown by Augustus Pablo and the flipside of I Admire You by Larry Marshall, King Tubby’s immense Watergate Rock. Either would be contenders for the greatest dub of all time. I love them equally. On my millionth read of the list I noticed this: “Snoopy has decided to extend his survey of dub into a six part series.” The whole series was entitled The Story of Dub. the people at Black Echoes were pretty amazing. They really encouraged and indulged me. The first part was published in July 1977, and was written in collaboration with my mentor, Penny Reel. He was pivotal in developing my writing and expanding my general viewing of life itself. We wrote The Roots of Dub together, and it was his influence and incredible writing that made that opening salvo so special. The list came next: Rubbin’ the Dub. The third part, More Rubbin’ the Dub, focussed on dub versions on 45. Dub Fix 50 included imports, basically just favourites of mine from my own record collection. I also invited other writers such as Chris Lane, a true pioneer in writing about reggae, Hendley, who also provided me with great photos, and Penny posing as Scotty Bennett, to submit a list of their top three dub 45s and single favourite dub album. In part four, The Routes of Dub, I wrote about 12-inch singles and provided readers with an opportunity to commission their own mixes for dub plates from Silver Camel, who remixed records; Step Forward Youth was all about young sound systems. And in mid-August was Dub Conclusion/Confusion, the end to the series. The whole thing was fun to write. But the list was my favourite part, as I love a list.

-Max Abelson

[wasalwaysagreatpickle]

Wednesday 2 April 1834

8 20/..

12 10/..

One goodish one last night and then fell asleep 

Rain in the night and recently this morning but fair though rather hazy and Fahrenheit 54˚ at 8 20/.. a.m. Miss Walker up early – ready for Washington at 8 1/4 a.m. told her to give him orders to let Mallinson have the toll-house at £63 for his the mason’s work the whole to be arched cellared at £5 extra = £68 for his whole job – breakfast at 9 20/.. – wrote out yesterday – and wrote and sent by Thomas little note to ‘Mrs Williamson Register office for servants Colliergate’ to tell her to tell Francis Cotham I should not inquire his character (of Mr Robert Heap of Bradford) as I had given up all thought of hiring him – had a flippant young man at [aetat] 20 from Mrs Blades’s to speak to me – he asked £20 per annum – so on that glad of the excuse to send him off without more ado –

Miss Walker and I off at 11 1/4 to Duncombe Park by Easingwold – at Easingwold at 12 57/.. off from there at 1 5/.. – at 1 35/.. alighted at Creyke or Crake castle – very fine extensive view from the hill on which castle stands – an oblong building (now cow-house- barn and hay loft) remaining and a few traces of older building – glad we went – neat good church near the castle and below that the very neat nice village – 

From Creyke by a hilly road through the Park to Duncombe Park at 4 20/.. – an hour seeing the house – the Dog of Alcibiades (price 1000 guineas) and the Discobolus (price much more) in the handsome hall – both very fine pieces of statuary – except the Diane à la biche, the discobolus the finest statue I have yet seen – that is a beautiful little antique Antinous – as the late Dr Burgh of York used to say, the pictures are a selection not a collection – the head of Saint Paul chef d’oeuvre of Leonard da Vinci, and 2 fine landscapes by Claude Lorraine seemed to please us best – the house is one of Sir John Vanbrugh’s – 2 stories on a basement story – squary, and chimneys in heavy masses – peristyle of 4 (corinthian?) columns – 35 minutes walking along the home terrace and round back to the house – beautiful view from the end of this terrace over the pretty little winding river Rye and Helmsley and its ruined castle of which there are considerable remains of the old square keep tower and of the great gateway to the outer ballium or court – besides a large remain of what must have been the building inhabited by Villars duke of Buckingham with large Elisabethan kind of windows – a temple at each end of the terrace – 20 acres of mowing began to mow the 1st may and go on every day (so that the whole is mown every nine days) till 1 November. 

12 little cork oaks (quercus suber) planted 2 or 3 years ago on the terrace but do not seem to do well – very fine bushes of box (planted about 40 years ago) and yew and common laurel – and in another part a cut yew hedge that was suffered to grow wild by the present possessor, and now grown into fine trees – the flower garden on the salon side the house seemed a too crowded assemblage of of queen-cake beds on the flat grass-plot between the house and terrace – the flower garden on another (the dining room?) side the house not quite so crowded and looked better – the kitchen garden close to Helmsley the boll about 20 inches in circumference at about 18 inches from the bottom – I should think the branches were some of them 10 yards long trained horizontally along the house – 

Off from Duncombe Park at 5 55/.. and at the little river running down the middle of it towards or rather from above and down from the good large very neat church – could clearly trace the double moat around the castle – dinner at 7 3/4 – good roast loin of mutton and pancake, and for something to drink, tea immediately afterwards – found we should have seen Byland abbey (passed it within a few yards) this morning about 5 miles from here – had up the master of the house – agree to go back tomorrow to see Coxwold church (8 miles) Byland abbey Ampelforth Roman Catholic college and there by Malton to Langton 29 miles with 4 horses, wheelers at 1/3 and leaders, as agreed, at 1/. per mile – to talk to Rivaulx the 1st thing after breakfast – 

Miss Walker sat while I wrote the whole of today till 10 25/.. – the morning cleared up, and we have had a very fine day and beautiful red-skied evening – the master of the house told us he had his farm easy enough – had been lowered to £40 a year – 80 acres and the house at £110 per annum but there was not posting enough to pay – for he was obliged to keep 6 horses on account of the company to and from the house Lord F receives at the castle here (Mr Jonathan Grey of York receives it – and Mr (Thomas?) Phillips, who lives not far from here, is the land steward) £44,000 and at Kirkby Moorside £7000 per annum he has a million in money – hold of 2 or 3 large estates – income altogether £151,000 per annum – very near (parsimonious) and hot in his temper, but he is so to his own family as well as to the tenants – not a cottage of 20/. a year let without his knowledge – 

Went to my room at 11 1/4 – Fahrenheit 54˚ at 11 50/.. p.m. –

[greenpeacemagazine]

White Supremacy is Destroying the Environment, but that’s not why we fight it

© Farrah Khan / Greenpeace. A mural of Audre Lorde, renowned American author, feminist and civil rights activist, adorns a wall along the West Toronto Railpath.

By Farrah Khan, Deputy Director

It’s been a heavy few months.

As we mourn the countless Black lives lost at the hands of police and channel that grief and anger to rise up against police brutality and systemic racism, I feel compelled to speak up about white supremacy and police violence against Black and Indigenous communities here in Canada.

Greenpeace has said before that connections between the struggles for environmental and racial justice partly explain why we speak out for the latter. But this is not true. Regardless of the links between these movements, we stand up against racial injustice and police brutality against Black and Indigenous communities and other communities of colour because it is inherently wrong and inhumane and enough is enough. We fight white supremacy because silence is complicity. My hope is that within and outside of the environmental movement in Canada, we will all step up our anti-racist activism. 

Checking our “nice” Canadian assumptions 

South of the border, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis which sparked widespread resistance in cities across the continent and the world. We also remember Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other lives gone too soon. Racism and systemic violence from police against Black communities and individuals in the United States is dominating the news. We are quick to point fingers, but Canada’s history and its present day systems are steeped in white supremacy, too. 

Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old Afro-Indigenous woman fell from her Toronto balcony after an interaction with police in May. Jason Collins, a 36-year- old Indigenous man, was shot and killed by Winnipeg police in April. Ejaz Choudry, a 62-year old man, was shot and killed by police during a wellness check in my hometown of Malton, Ontario in June. And along with these unconscionable stories of Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour whose lives have been violently taken by police, there are still so many more from across Canada.

In Toronto, a Black person is twenty times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a white person. In Vancouver, 10 years of data reveals that Black and Indigenous people are disproportionately overrepresented in police street checks. In Halifax, a Black person is six times more likely to be stopped by police compared to white counterparts. Right now in Nunavut, five RCMP officers are being investigated for violent interactions with Inuit. 

These are very clear patterns of consistent systemic oppression against Indigenous and Black communities based on a history of the same violence: enslavement, stolen land, mass incarceration, environmental racism, residential schools, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, the Sixties Scoop, and more. Add to that the countless impacts other communities of colour face in this country, whether it’s an escalation of anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, Islamophobic attacks including the murder of six Muslims in Quebec in 2017: the list gets longer every single day. 

The fact that systemic racial injustices are ingrained in Canadian society is undeniable. 

Root causes of injustice

The values that inform the struggles for Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty are shared in the fight for environmental justice. These connections are not needed to justify solidarity, because it’s critical for us to be anti-racist regardless, but each of these injustices stem from and seek to dismantle the same root causes. Annie Leonard, Executive Director at Greenpeace USA said it well in a 2016 blog: 

“We can’t have a green and peaceful future without racial justice, equity, civil rights, and empowered communities. We believe the systems of power and privilege that destroy the environment also strip vulnerable communities of their humanity – and too often, their lives.”

In Canada, corporate and government powers have or too long put profits before people and the planet. Moreover, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People Of Colour) and lower income communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental degradation and are experiencing the most severe impacts of climate change, here in Canada as well as globally. 

Dismantling colonial oppression, capitalist greed, and white supremacy will allow us to build a more equitable and community-centred future, one that  protects all life on the planet, one that decentralizes power from benefiting the few to the many. So a solution to one of these injustices will work to dismantle them all.

We need systemic change all around. Divesting funding from policing to reinvest in communities. Ambitious climate policy and food security solutions. Standing up for Indigenous Sovereignty and free, prior, and informed consent. Ensuring protection for biodiversity. If we truly want a green and peaceful future for all, we must consider this fuller picture and demand it all.

Using our privilege for good 

Greenpeace’s mandate is to work towards a green and peaceful future and to confront systems that threaten the environment, including systems that inhibit equity and justice.

We have a reputation for being a disruptive, bold, risk-taking organization that speaks truth to power. We at Greenpeace Canada also carry a great deal of privilege as a mostly white, settler organization that has been successful in building international influence. I would be remiss not to mention here that many of our global offices and departments are staffed and led by BIPOC folks who contribute in significant ways to our global work. We can and should do more to lend our privilege and skills to bring more people into the fold of fighting white supremacy and to stand in solidarity with those on the frontlines of the fight for Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty.

Greenpeace has not always prioritized anti-racism work. Far from it. We need to acknowledge and own that. But we prioritize it now, and our staff and leadership today commit to embodying anti-racism in all of our work to ensure the “peace” in Greenpeace is not lost.

How you can be an anti-racist environmentalist 

If you are an environmentalist who has not yet engaged in the fight for racial justice, I ask you to start. If you have shown solidarity, I ask you to do more. If you are not Black or Indigenous (and I include my fellow POCs in this category, particularly those who benefit from white supremacy) I ask you to examine your privilege, listen to Black environmental leaders and Indigenous environmental leaders, increase your awareness about the racism in our movement, learn about the experiences of BIPOC folks that work for environmental groups, and question whether you’re doing enough. 

Black and Indigenous people have the right to live without a fear of violence. If we are unable to prevent another death, we are not doing enough. Losing Regis Korchinski-Paquet and George Floyd in these last few months, and countless others before them, means we are already too late. Let’s rally to end all forms of injustice and get to that green and peaceful future for all.

This article was adapted from a blog written and posted by Farrah on the Greenpeace Canada website on June 4, 2020. To read the original article, which includes resources, reading materials, places to donate or volunteer, petitions to sign and actions to amplify, visit greenpeace.ca/racialjustice.

[meaningless-castle]

if you DON’T remember The Jungle Book (1967) as the delightful romantic musical comedy starring old-flames Bagheera (a controlling marxist-leninist panther) and Baloo (a lackadaisical anarchist bear) who—in their knee-slapping attempts to ditch some gumpy brat so they can go their separate ways for good—actually end up finding each other deep in the jungle and reigniting the spark they once had, you need to watch it again.

leonard Malton says “it will turn the whole family gay.” while roger’s ebert hailed “i can’t find my house, i have to diarrhea shit. help me.” four stars way up your ass just the way you like.

plus it’s the movie that killed walt disney. what more could you ask for?

jungle book