From the Chico Enterprise-Record:
Wildflower students linked to graffiti in Bidwell Park
Recent graffiti in Bidwell Park was at the hands of students from a Chico charter school as part of a lesson on civic engagement and activism.
Seventh- and eighth-graders at Wildflower Open Classroom on Cohasset Road have been involved with an anti-fracking campaign and are among those planning to take part in a rally in Oakland on Saturday. On Monday, students and some staff members vandalized parts of lower park with anti-fracking messages and advertisements for the weekend rally.
School site director Tom Hicks said Thursday that the vandalism was an unfortunate error in judgment related to the middle school students’ studies in civic engagement and activism. Earlier in the year, they selected fracking as a topic and became engaged with the issue.
After research into ways to put their ideas in motion, students decided to use sidewalk chalk and stencils to get their message out, including making their own biodegradable chalk. The activity in the park took place after school Monday with students and staff.
“Unfortunately there was some miscommunication and then error in judgment on our behalf by doing this in the park,” Hicks said. “At this point we are working with the parks department to rectify the situation and making every effort to turn this into a learning experience for everybody involved.”
…
On the students’ Facebook page, they explain they have decided to take a stand against fracking. They are helping Frack-Free Butte County organize a bus to the March for Real Climate Leadership and raise awareness through a community art project and outreach.
The March for Real Climate Leadership is expected to attract thousands of people to Oakland, where participants will call on Gov. Jerry Brown to ban fracking and push for 100 percent renewable energy. A bus of local people is leaving from Butte College at 7 a.m.
The whole story is here: http://www.chicoer.com/general-news/20150205/wildflower-students-linked-to-graffiti-in-bidwell-park
I don’t buy the explanation, because what is missing is an apology. They knew what they were doing, they knew they’d get press; it’s just another dishonest tactic by people that have no scruples, who are brainwashing the minds of children to push their own political agenda. Shame on Wildflower School.
Given the sort of hateful aberrations we’ve seen in the UK on fracking, as reported by Bishop Hill, I suppose this isn’t surprising behavior. It suggests to me though, that the people that do these things are a slice short of having cheese on their cracker.
I wonder though, if Chico had email addresses for each tree in Bidwell Park, such as what was recently revealed for the City Park trees in Melbourne, Australia, what would the tree write back?
Here is what I think the tree might say in an email in the flavor of one recently sent in Melbourne:
To: Wildflower School, Chico
Subject: Vandalism at the hands of your students
“Dear School Administrators,
I’m writing to tell you that I’m shocked that a school that emphasizes Stewardship in it’s guiding principles…
Stewardship means…
Being the example you wish to see. Caring for people, environment (school and Earth), and our community with the joint goal of prosperity and success. As stewards we provide service to others and the environment by using resources productively and with good intentions. We teach and practice eco-awareness and connectivity to our planet.
…would purposely and with no regard for me and the people that enjoy my peaceful beauty would abandon such principles for a cheap political trick to get attention.
People that walk through the park want the beauty and tranquility of nature, not graffitti from people with apparently no regard for the trees that provide that experience.
Shame, shame, shame, on you.
Enjoy your day. Yours sincerely, Tree 1441724.”
UPDATE: Predictably, a few foolhardy apologists cry foul in comments saying that because they used “biodegradable chalk” on the trees “they did nothing wrong”.
If it were a PRO fracking message, done with “biodegradeable chalk”, those same people would have a COW over it.
Further, they used petroleum based solvent with a freon based propellant spray chalk paint elsewhere to paint political messages like this one:
![EP-150209876[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/ep-1502098761.jpg?quality=83)
Vandalism of a public park is simply wrong, no matter what was used to do it, and anyone who says otherwise is doubly wrong to try to defend it.
For those who want to defend this inane action and complain about this article, feel free to be as upset as you wish.
inre: Fairness Doctrine Forcing broadcasters to present both sides of any statement actually had a chilling effect on the type of shows on the radio. Broadcasters did not want to run afoul of the Fairness Doctrine so they stuck to entertainment. When this was rightly done away with, radio experienced a renaissance.
I have not owned a TV all my life but have listened to thousands of hours of radio. My son likes the old radio shows like “Suspense” and “The Wistler.”
I hesitate to point out that the owner of the cheif broadcaster of talk radio shows, Clear Channel, is Bain Capital. Salem Broadcasting had some degree of independence and that may explain why at least some talk show hosts did not support Romney in his two bids for election as a Republican, based on his success in passing Romneycare in MA. So I really don’t care what gets done to Clear Channel actually. Sorry so crabby.
Horrifying that students so young are being brain washed to this extent. And yet they would be first to moan if the fuel for the bus that is needed to take them above mentioned rally in Oakland cost beyond their financial means!
Cheers
Roger
http;//www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
I personally could care less about the fracking issue in California. The only reason I don’t want to see fracking stopped in California is because that would put a lot of skilled workers out of jobs and the California government would slide further into debt. The economy might go into total collapse and even more “California dreamers” might escape to my state. Then the rest of us will have to be robbed to pay for the stupidity that goes on there. God help us if that happens.
Ernest,
Your comment smells of latter day Ludditeism.
Wealth does not come from refusing to embrace progress in technology and innovation, quite the opposite.
By your analogy we should still be using horses because embracing motor transport will put the horse industry out of work, or we should retain sailing ships because the modern ship has put seamen out of work.
In a epoch of unprecedented wealth for all, we can see that the replacement of these old technologies with cheaper and economical new technologies is the major cause of our wealth.
Therefore if fracking makes the supply of energy less expensive, although some may well need to retrain or find other jobs, the wealth for everyone will increase as everyone will benefit from the less expensive energy, leaving to a household surplus which will benefit everyone.
The reason why California is in economic turmoil is that their government is spending their citizen’s money on technologies that require taxpayer (their) money in order to promote expensive alternative energies.
To move a vital key industry from a current cost to something far more expensive, no matter how it is paid for, is a sure way to cause economic problems.
You should be suggesting that they quit subsidizing windmills and solar panels etc.
Why don’t you take a read of Milton Friedman, the most incisive economist in history, an American and he says it all.
Just think if no one had the vision of Henry Ford in that the motor car could be available to every one at the right price. How many people did Henry Ford employ in his heyday and how many are even employed nowadays?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Roger, there is more. Fracking was invented in its primitive state in 1865 by a Civil War vet who took out a patent on the procedure. It used gun powder charges to fracture aquifers to improve water flow. It was adopted immediately by oil well drillers when the industry was in its early stage but they used nitroglycerine. There were a few fatalities, of course, but the oil and gas industry continued to use a safer version they called “torpedoing” a well. This was done right up until the 1960s when fracking using high pressure water got to be more effective. The first well “fracked” in this style was in 1947 in the Hugoton, Kansas gas field. It has been used around the world for decades. It just wasn’t widely known. Indeed, fracking only got to be a target of activists like the teacher clones in California of this thread when they were out greenpeacing about renewable energy. They thought oil and gas was essentially a dying goose and they put all their effort into stopping coal. When they discovered that oil and gas (cheap energy) were making an unexpected comeback big time, that’s when they started attacking fracking. Most of these loons think it is a new technology, but it’s older than the oil and gas industry.
When you know some of these things, it puts this activist stuff in its place as the doing of ignorant useful idiots to the dark forces that I see as a permanent tax on productivity. Like the Nile crocodile, even if you are saving his sorry ass, he’s wired to try to bite your legs off.
You misunderstand. I’m all in for modern fracking. Perhaps I needed a sarc/ tag in there somewhere. California is a mess financially and physically because it’s been run for decades by progressives. That’s why I don’t care about what happens to the state if they don’t allow fracking. They deserve what they will get if they don’t. I’d just as soon all those fools stayed inside their border, however, rather than fanning out across flyover country in search of work like some fast spreading poison. They bring their anti-Americanism with them. So I hope petroleum wins out.
I took twelve hours of economics in college. Milton Friedman was certainly part of the curriculum. Unfortunately, so was Keynes, whose theories have brought on so much modern disaster at the hands of the government and Federal Reserve.
I’m well aware that the American economic engine continues to grind along despite the best efforts of Obama and the Democrats to kill it. Fracking is alive and well and growing despite the Progressive agenda that includes taking cheap and abundant energy off the table for the rest of us non-elites.
School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days
Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmatic
Taught to the tune of a hick-ry stick!
What is all this about golden rules, three Rs, and hickory sticks? (:
Look at this book I found.
Fools’ Names and Fools’ Faces are Always Seen in Public Places: A Study of Graffiti.
Could be instructive for some people’s children.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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In general, environmentalists are disgusting.
I remember a cartoon strip entitled “the wizard of id” with the knight Rodney and the king always having entertaining dialogue. One was “Sire, Sire! The peasants are revolting. The king said “did you just discover this now?”
From Mel Brooks “History of The World…”:
French Squire: Sire, The peasants, they’re revolting.
French King: I’ll say, they stink on ice.
“On the students’ Facebook page, they explain they have decided to take a stand against fracking. They are helping Frack-Free Butte County organize a bus to the March for Real Climate Leadership and raise awareness through a community art project and outreach.”
“The March for Real Climate Leadership is expected to attract thousands of people to Oakland, where participants will call on Gov. Jerry Brown to ban fracking and push for 100 percent renewable energy.”
Start with their school. Remove it from the grid, the teachers and students can build renewable energy collectors to power the school. It would be educational for all involved, to find out how “reliable” and expensive renewable energy is.
You’re mean, LarryD ;o)
That charter school would be flat busted in a heartbeat if they went to 100% renewable energy. The kids would use up all the solar power just on texting, tweeting, and praising their new overlords.
(OTOH, there’s something to be said for veggies roasted over an open fire. Kumbayah, LarryD, Kumbayah.)
Gunga Din,
I didn’t know what you were referring to in regards to Dr. Spock’s children, so I did websearch him. You apparently are thinking of the incorrect rumor that one of his son’s had committed suicide. He had two sons, Michael and John. Michael was the director of the Boston’s Children Museum and is now retired. John owned a construction company. It was Michael’s son, Peter, suffering from schizophrenia, a devastating mental disease that has nothing to do with one’s upbringing, that leaped to his death at the age of 22 from the Museum’s roof. If you have any facts contradictory to these I’d be interested in hearing them and their source, or as I suspect, were you just engaged in nasty ideological trolling?
Thanks.
I’d forgotten that it was his grandson and not his son that had committed suicide. His son did raise his grandson.
I’d read that he then recanted his views before he died. I’ve also read that he didn’t.
Either way, to cater to the “feelings” of a child born foolish is, well, foolish.
A child needs firm, simple and clear guidance without the input of what a cigar might mean. Otherwise they will remain careless in their thoughts and actions.
The “real world” won’t care about how he “feels” about things.
Spock took the idea of feeling “personal worth” to the extreme.
Beverly Hills High School seems to have come to terms with its oil derrick. One in a series of wonderful photos of urban oil wells. http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/08/the-urban-oil-fields-of-los-angeles/100799/#img17
I love Christopher Paino’s position! I’m brewing up some “biodegradable” chalk right now to go paint some protest messages on Half Dome, the Grand Canyon, and Mount Rushmore! Let’s all go do it, just make sure all your marks come off cleaner than a Frixion pen!
/sarc
What’s the formula? 😉
Chistopher Palno forgot to mention that it only works for statist messages. The German word is “Gesinnungsjustiz”; attitude-dependent justice.
As an antidote, my son is a member of the British Youth Council and is a firm and well known CC skeptic. He was, yesterday, offered the chance to become a “climate ambassador” by the youth council. He was pretty amazed and asked why they were picking him. They said that he was the last resort as everyone else was not interested. He declined anyway as his term of office runs out next month.
Nice they can’t find any activists over here.
I do admit to envisioning my childrens’ artwork on two-story brick walls around town.
…..is there anything to frack in Butte County? Didn’t it get its name from that rather imposing sub-volcanic structure called the Sutter Buttes? Just wondering. Perhaps these young brainwashed protesters should do a bit of geological research before wasting their time and everyone else’s on making the area “frack-free”…in a tectonic region fraught with them.
I did something similar, but worse, at a local creek when I was 12. ‘They’ (the state, I guess?) were going to expand the parking lot (to fit a whole 6 cars instead of the current 2), install a picnic table and fire pit, and build a small walking bridge over the creek. My neighbor and I spent a lot of time playing in this area and we would be damned if these people were going to come along and destroy our little patch of woods. Filled with self-righteous rage we snuck out one night fully intending to destroy the evil heavy equipment left in the area before it could rip the heart out of Mother Earth. Keys were in the equipment, but we couldn’t figure out how to start them, nor could we figure out how to damage them significantly, and eventually had to settle for leaving them covered in spray-paint and mud inside and out.
Of course that didn’t even slow them down and within a few weeks the project was completed. We grudgingly loved it. Hardly anyone ever stopped there so we had the picnic area all to ourselves, and the bridge made the most fantastic fishing spot (and spared us a lot of cold creek crossings!). I still feel a little bad for the damage we did, not to mention our malicious intentions to do much worse. If anyone reading this worked on the little park in Peter’s Creek, AK in the mid 80s, I’m truly sorry!
Almost illegible stencils with uninspired slogans plus neglected Stewardship: what a crap school!
Kids have gotten punished for much minor offences, here they get away scot free, even without admonition? It’s the teachers who deserve corporal punishment, I think. And, btw, please tell the kids that fracking isn’t bad per se!
in all this pro or contra…. i wonder what pro’s would say if it were just gang tag graffiti and that they would say “i’s chalk based it will wash off at the next rainshower”
in short: if it is not requested then it is vandalism period (you can always request an action which can be approved)
if it was approved then it’s a storm in a glass of water, but then i wonder: why the need to defigure nature to make your point? IMVHO being carefull for nature is trying to leave the least of traces and respect the integrity of the natural environment, or even enhance it
if you want to teach children or students about the dangers of fracking, then tell this correctly set up a non destructive zero trace campaign as otherwise even chalk “alters your environment”
very bluntly said now these students were taught that “spraying a message on a tree is OK if the message is ok”… not the best way to bring up the point against fracking….
I thought there were laws prohibiting adults from inducing children to commit crimes. Of course, “environmentalists” doing so is a good thing.
Reblogged this on Daily Browse and commented:
Wildflower School’s faculty and students deface a tree to protect the environment!
Well, at least this anti-fracking “protest” had somebody show up. (Of course, “they” only showed up after bein driven to the school in oil-powered cars and SUV’s, being heated by oil and coal and nat gas power, and being bused to the protest site in oil-powered bus coordinated over oil and nat gas-powered phone and power lines over highways paved with oil-derived asphalt …..)
In Colorado, they posted, they advertised, they printed, and …. nobody came.
Full story after the link.
http://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/anti-fracking-rally-cancelled-following-low-turnout/
Anti-Fracking Rally Cancelled Following Low Turnout
5:05pm EST February 3, 2015
by Aileen Yeung
aileen@energyindepth.org, Denver, CO
A national activist group – which used Tom Steyer’s Colorado political firm to lobby the state’s oil and gas task force – cancelled an anti-fracking rally today after just one person RSVPed. The decision to abandon the rally followed very low turnout at a protest yesterday outside the Colorado Convention Center, where the task force has been meeting the past two days.
At yesterday’s demonstration, there were more protest signs than there were protestors to hold them. Clean Water Action Colorado’s Facebook page for the rally mentions how the group “has turned out impacted and frustrated Coloradans for rallies at every task force meeting” and tells folks to “Come and See the impact we’ve made.”
EID took them up on their offer and found that only a smattering few – no more than thirteen, including Clean Water Action Colorado employees – actually attended Monday’s rally outside the Colorado Convention Center.
http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Signs.png
Signs: Because only a handful of protestors showed up, protest signs remained propped up against lamp posts. Photo: Energy In Depth
Clean Water Action Colorado cancelled the second rally it had planned for today’s task force meeting after only one person – the group’s State Director – RSVPed yes for the event.
http://energyindepth.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/20150202_103928.jpg
Poor attendance at yesterday’s rally and Clean Water Action Colorado’s decision to cancel today’s protest reflect, once again, that anti-energy activists are part of a fringe campaign that has failed to gain traction in Colorado.
Great comment.
Keep them coming.
If those trees had their own e-mail address with a public employee operating it on the taxpayer’s wage (I wanted to say dime but that’s so 19th century), he would say “It’s all okay, because being anti-fracking is the official position of the administration. Also, expect much more of these graffities to appear everywhere around you because we community organizers think that your entire living environment should be full of our propaganda, and we’ll pay for it with your money, thank you very much.”
DirkH, you had me until the end.
Then you blew it with the “thank you very much.”
I know they never say thank you, ever.
Anthony, sounds like you have schools that are similar to those provided by tax payer funded education in Australia. What kids really need to be taught first is how to identify cranks. Then they wouldn’t be influenced by the teacher-activists.
I’ve taught my kids to recognize David Suzuki. And I am not joking.
Just out of curiosity has anyone ever seen non-biodegradable chalk? I would think that since chalk has to crumble to dust to be effective as chalk it would be biodegradable. Maybe I missed non-biodegradable chalk being a looming environmental problem.
Well maybe next time they can make gluten free chalk and vandalize wheat farms.
Chalk is generally CaCO3. Read shells of ancient marine animals. If it were “biodegradable”, why are the “White Cliffs of Dover” still there?
http://www.answers.com/topic/chalk
Hicks said. “At this point we are working with the parks department to rectify the situation and making every effort to turn this into a learning experience for everybody involved.”
===============
And just what learning experience might come out of it ?
Something like:
1) Defacing natural surroundings in order to save it, makes for bad press.
2) Refer to # 1.
3) There has to be a way to make these meanies feel guilty without resorting to # 1.
4) There must be some kind of government grant to solve this dilemma.
5) Create one.
I guarantee you that if I did the same to their school saying CAGW is a hoax they would not consider it stewardship.
Dead trees should be cut up for firewood. They make it impossible to hike and promote forest fires.
Are the students going to take their “Renewable Energy” bus to the demonstration?