US Employers Exploit Economic Depression
Reports Around the country are exposing the dog-eat- dog society that capitalistic America exemplifies.  Though human society started out in order to give the individual strength in numbers in order to survive the destructive forces of nature, the colonial era has ushered in a new type of human system.  Today all over the colonial world our political leaders have given us the example of exploiting the weak and poor.

Today, while U.S. citizens find themselves in more and more desperate economic situations, U.S. employers are taking the chance to get more work out of their employees.  With employees desperate to keep their jobs, employers are demanding overtime and excessive work conditions without justified payment; instead, workers are given the chance to keep their jobs.  In our country’s most difficult times it seems our values have taught us to exploit our weak rather than joining our forces....

Earth Day Celebrations
Earth day has been observed in the month of April for almost forty years now. Earth Day’s history can actually be traced back to 1962 when Senator Gaylord Nelson encouraged President John F. Kennedy to take a five-day, eleven state conservation tour in September 1963.  Senator Nelson was hoping to put environmental concern into the nation’s political agenda.  Six years later Senator Nelson had an idea to organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment.  In 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, Nelson announced that there would be a nation-wide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment.  This year will begin a two-year initiative which will culminate with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day in 2010.

The goal this year is to have a day of action and civic participation with the primary focuses being:

• Working toward a carbon-free future based oProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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  renewable-energy that will end our common dependency on fossil fuels, including charcoal

• Getting individuals to commit to responsible, sustainable consumption

• The creation of a new green economy

Skokie lagoon cleanup - Hosted by the Chicago Kayak Club, Saturday, April 19th, from 9a.m. to noon. Come volunteer to assist in cleaning up the Skokie Lagoons.  Cleaning supplies will be provided and some boats will be available but volunteers are welcome to bring their own canoesProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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r kayaks.  Cleanup will also be done on dry land.
“Going Green” Festival - A day of vending on the Kennedy King College campus at 64th and Halsted.  The festival starts at 9:30a.m. and goes until 4p.m.
North lake Shore community earth day - A day of workshops and panels exploring caring for the environment on a global and local level.  Saturday, April 25th from 9a.m. - 4:30p.m.
Earth hour 2009 - An hour-long blackout from 8:30 - 9:30p.m. central time on the evening of April 28th.  Chicago businesses and households will shut off their lights, joining nearly 1000 cities around the world in hopes of raising awareness of environmental and energy concerns.

Earth day celebration at Betty Shabazz INTL  Charter School - The school will be initiating its living science curriculum, which is based on ecological and agricultural observation and practice. There will be a screening of the film, “Taking Root;” initiation of the recycling/vermiculture compost system, incubation of eggs,  and the cleaning up and planning for school garden.
The Sunnyside Magazine encourages all to remember to treat the Earth as a sacred, living entity every day of the year, it is our only home and the provider of all our survival needs.
Illinois Sewage

The construction of the world’s largest sewage system is underway in Chicago’s Bronzeville area.  City workers are cutting down forest, gouging into the Earth and will be setting off dynamite explosions to carve out a tunnel 200 feet into our planet.  This project ironically starts just before Earth Day 2009 which is approaching on April 22nd.  It also is on the same block as The Earth Center, a community organization that preserves humanity’s original culture which kept the clear goal of preserving the Earth and its inhabitants.  The city and it’s “progressive” plans smack The Earth Center and the Earth’s inhabitants in the face with such a project.  The Lakefront neighborhood residents of that area have been complaining of a natural gas leak not even a block away from the digging/explosion site for months now.  The city has has finally handled this but only after one of the students from nearby Donague elementary school (just one block north) found the site of the leak.  The entire neighborhood is now indebted to this 2nd grader considering city workers, who had given up looking for the leak after a few failed search attempts, are now bringing dynamite to blow holes in the Earth.  The destruction in the name of development will be carried out along 39th street for several miles.

Many readers, may not understand the severity of this situation.  Modern city-dwellers may understand only the need to maintain some form of the city’s cleanliness that sewage treatment seems to provide.  Many of us born in the city and modern lifestyle are unaware that many of our indigenous counterparts will not even dig more than a foot into the Earth out of respect for it as a sacred living organism.  It is not only a living organism but the very one on which all of the planet’s organisms depend.
This happens just one month after another interesting finding in the Illinois sewer system.  In Urbana, workers found human placentas in the sewer system.  The stir created centered mainly around the damage that the placentas could do if clogging sewer drains and pipes.  Others also cringed at what this means to tap water and the sewer-treated drinking water.  However, many miss a much more severe aspect.  Our ancestors valued the placenta very highly and civilized cultures all around the world made sure to carefully dispose of the placenta through ritual (usually through burial) because its well-being had a direct affect on the energy and well being of the human it sustained in the womb.  Today the idea that we are flushing ours down the toilet says much about our disconnection to our spiritual existence.  If every civilized culture went about post-birth a certain way and we  do the opposite, what does that make us in the “modern world”?