getting on our bikes tomorrow. Time to walk the talk.â
âYou mean bike the gripe,â Silas jokes.
I look at the backseat. Silas is rosy-cheeked from the night air. Leland is dozing off. And Slick just looks squashed, his knees practically pressed into his eye sockets.
Mom squeezes my knee and smiles. âHomeward, co-pilot?â she asks.
âHomeward,â I reply.
The cuffs of my jeans are wet with sea water. Theyâre rough and cold against my ankles. But I donât mind. I donât mind at all.
Epilogue
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Comrade Liza!
Attached are photos of the Seattle GRRR! flotilla. A beautiful night.
I got a letter from the farmers of the Riviera Selequa. Oil spills have polluted lands along a pipeline that crosses thousands of hectares of indigenous land. The government and oil companies say it isnât their fault. Theyâre threatening to jail environmentalists, journalists and local leaders who try to speak out.
They want me to let you know.
Rise up!
Jamaica
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Liza!
Ran into Niall, and he gushed about your amazing speech.
While you were on the beach, I got my parents to watch An Inconvenient Truth, that movie about climate change. It was like watching two people turn into rocks. They went dead silent. Then we had a family meeting. Weâve turned down the heat in the house three degreesâI need slippersâand weâre not buying anything new except food for a year! You just might see me at the next Critical Mass ride!
Love, Olive Pit
From: aLynne@gitgaâat.com
To: [email protected]
Dear Liza,
I read about your flotilla launch in the newspaper. Wonderful!
I live on the Douglas Channel.
Sometimes people block roads so logging trucks canât get through and wreck the wilderness.
You canât block water as easily. So I dream of crocheting a chain of wool and stretching it across the Channel. The little string wouldnât stop the tankers, but it would symbolize the fragility of our existence and show the magnitude of our fight.
Would GRRR! be interested in doing a little crocheting?
Sincerely,
Lynne Hill
Authorâs Note
While most of Slick is fictional, much is true. The Maya peopleâs land and human rights are continually violated by the oil industry, especially the Maya Queqchi people, who live in a central strip of Guatemala.
Oil spills have polluted vast amounts of indigenous lands along a pipeline from a refinery in La Libertad, Peten, to Puerto Barrios, Izabal. Government officials as well as oil companies deny responsibility, and, yes, people are threatened with jail or physically hurt when they speak out.
Often indigenous peoples donât know their rights have been violated, mostly because they have long been treated as âsub-citizensâ in their countries, as if they have no rights. Rich, poor, black, whiteâ all people have equal human rights.
In British Columbia, since 2006, condensate tankers have traveled the Douglas Channel and other sensitive areas, and oil supertanker traffic is a real threat. For more information, see notankers.ca.
Lynne Hill does indeed live in Hartley Bay. The crochet chain across Douglas Channel she dreams of would be four kilometers long!
Special thanks to Don and Pam. And to Mike for being a good sport. Also, to Arlette, Nicole, Mikel, Diana, Amaya, Ezra, Alden and my amazing siblings.
âYou mean bike the gripe,â Silas jokes.
I look at the backseat. Silas is rosy-cheeked from the night air. Leland is dozing off. And Slick just looks squashed, his knees practically pressed into his eye sockets.
Mom squeezes my knee and smiles. âHomeward, co-pilot?â she asks.
âHomeward,â I reply.
The cuffs of my jeans are wet with sea water. Theyâre rough and cold against my ankles. But I donât mind. I donât mind at all.
Epilogue
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Comrade Liza!
Attached are photos of the Seattle GRRR! flotilla. A beautiful night.
I got a letter from the farmers of the Riviera Selequa. Oil spills have polluted lands along a pipeline that crosses thousands of hectares of indigenous land. The government and oil companies say it isnât their fault. Theyâre threatening to jail environmentalists, journalists and local leaders who try to speak out.
They want me to let you know.
Rise up!
Jamaica
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Liza!
Ran into Niall, and he gushed about your amazing speech.
While you were on the beach, I got my parents to watch An Inconvenient Truth, that movie about climate change. It was like watching two people turn into rocks. They went dead silent. Then we had a family meeting. Weâve turned down the heat in the house three degreesâI need slippersâand weâre not buying anything new except food for a year! You just might see me at the next Critical Mass ride!
Love, Olive Pit
From: aLynne@gitgaâat.com
To: [email protected]
Dear Liza,
I read about your flotilla launch in the newspaper. Wonderful!
I live on the Douglas Channel.
Sometimes people block roads so logging trucks canât get through and wreck the wilderness.
You canât block water as easily. So I dream of crocheting a chain of wool and stretching it across the Channel. The little string wouldnât stop the tankers, but it would symbolize the fragility of our existence and show the magnitude of our fight.
Would GRRR! be interested in doing a little crocheting?
Sincerely,
Lynne Hill
Authorâs Note
While most of Slick is fictional, much is true. The Maya peopleâs land and human rights are continually violated by the oil industry, especially the Maya Queqchi people, who live in a central strip of Guatemala.
Oil spills have polluted vast amounts of indigenous lands along a pipeline from a refinery in La Libertad, Peten, to Puerto Barrios, Izabal. Government officials as well as oil companies deny responsibility, and, yes, people are threatened with jail or physically hurt when they speak out.
Often indigenous peoples donât know their rights have been violated, mostly because they have long been treated as âsub-citizensâ in their countries, as if they have no rights. Rich, poor, black, whiteâ all people have equal human rights.
In British Columbia, since 2006, condensate tankers have traveled the Douglas Channel and other sensitive areas, and oil supertanker traffic is a real threat. For more information, see notankers.ca.
Lynne Hill does indeed live in Hartley Bay. The crochet chain across Douglas Channel she dreams of would be four kilometers long!
Special thanks to Don and Pam. And to Mike for being a good sport. Also, to Arlette, Nicole, Mikel, Diana, Amaya, Ezra, Alden and my amazing siblings.
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