Lyrics by Darryl R Taylor. Vocals, Editing & Animations by Little Woo.
Based on Original Song “16 Tons” by Merle Travis.
Footage from the internet! Many thanks to all photographers whose work was featured in this public service announcement.
Darryl R Taylor is an activist/thinker/philosopher who has done countless hours of research about the Site C Dam.
Each verse in his lyrics is a portal for learning about Site C Dam.
We invite you to:
1) Share this song with your network!
2) Learn more about the Site C Dam by checking out the links below!
3) Make a piece of art to spread the info and make it easier for people to care and be aware!
You’re also welcome to remix the song/video and share with your circles OR record yourself singing the song using the lyrics and background music track.
Download the Song!
Right click on this link + choose “save link as” to download to your device!
Download Karaoke Music Track
Right click on this link + choose “save link as” to download
Read or Download Lyrics
Left click to read or right click and choose “save link as” to download
RESEARCH LINKS
One of the primary organizations advocating for the preservation of the Great Peace River against the boondoggle called Site C:
http://peacevalley.ca/
The site C dam is opposed by both First Nations and local landowners unified for the common weal:
http://www.stakeinthepeace.com
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative has a short list of involved organizations on this page:
https://y2y.net/work/what-hot-projects/site_c_dam
A MUST SEE video featuring vital perspectives byWENDY HOLM, P.Ag., B.Sc., M.Sc., M.M.C.C.U.:
The Joint Review Panel report commissioned and then ignored by the Province of British Columbia:
https://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents/p63919/99173E.pdf
Species threatened by the site C dam (before the recent discoveries of even more species)
http://www.mediacoop.ca/fr/newsrelease/36060
Facebook Groups
Keep the Peace travelling Site C roadshow/information nights
https://www.facebook.com/events/1817819258465155/
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
1. Sign the petition at http://www.savebcfromsitec.ca/
2. Get on the mailing list for event and action updates which is here http://savebcfromsitec.us12.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=2f09d9cdec841fd9c9a949e99&id=9a8e5e4c43
3. Like the Peace Valley Environment Association page: https://www.facebook.com/PeaceValleyEnvironmentAssociation/?fref=ts
4. Join this group if you’re in the lower mainland for meeting news & group action updates: https://www.facebook.com/fightsitec/?fref=ts
5. Share Site C related posts to inform people!
6. Send a digital letter from here: http://realsitechearings.org/
7. Take info from these sites and write/send an original hardcopy letter to your MP!! Each hard copy letter is counted as 1000 people’s voices.
8. Leave comments on news stories about Site C – offering facts to counter-arguments in a straight-forward, non-emotional way.
LETTER FROM DARRYL R. TAYLOR:
When I first moved to British Columbia in the early years of the millennium, I spent 3 years off and on working for what claimed to be an “independent survey company” but that was actually part of the early BC Liberal propaganda program.
During that time I learned a lot by listening to people that I randomly was calling all over the province that I rapidly was learning to love, quite a few unhappy stories (some that will be with me the rest of this life), and a general picture of a political party succeeding on an economic platform and losing a bit too much humanity and selling a bit too much of the environment.
And all the while I was helping to make it almost impossible for people to even think about certain things in any way other than the options that were being programmed for them.
Really.
(I’m talking one level past “push polling”, there is a cliche about how “everyone knows the word ‘propaganda’, and everyone THINKS that they are magically immune to it”)
Fast forward through many more stories, the sum total of which indicated that life is awesome in both the good and the scary ways, and add in two words from a chance acquaintance:
Please help.
Throw in a few months of research, learning about many stories that not enough people know about,and the decision that out of many fights going on that most people don’t know about, the site C dam project was the most critical, impacting two provinces, one territory, the finances of a generation to come, and the life systems of the northwest of an entire continent forever.
And almost no one knew about it???
Throw in several more months of making signs and learning photoshop, making stickers out of mailing labels, and what amounted to more than a full time job on top of my paying work of constant research, discussion, and learning the art of online troll slaying, and eventually asking a talented friend to please if she would, sing a version of a little song I wrote.
Little Woo blew me away with what she passed back.
I want to hear more versions of it (and must confess that I hope Christy Clark does too, I’m curious about what she will think of this little ditty?).
I’m waiting on some more friends to finish recordings, but that still won’t be enough.
If you are musical, play or sing it, if you aren’t musical, play or sing it, the idea is to not give a dam, right?
It doesn’t matter if after learning what they can if people agree, as long as they know as much as they can about what it is that they are disagreeing about or agreeing to, especially if it affects millions of people and the future of the western half of a continent.
In the scale of something that enormous, what people forget is that no matter how large something is it is still made up of tiny bits, and sometimes even one of the smallest can shift everything.
(Step on a piece of lego barefooted while carrying a cup of coffee and a laptop if you don’t believe me)
Write a song, do some art, talk to a stranger, print out some posters or stickers, read some law or history or political theory, write your MLA, MP, the Queen or your favourite celebrity, learn about energy or soil, contemplate water, push Taco Bell burrito farts through a kazoo, whatever moves you or that you choose to move.
Draw the world in and breath it out again shaped just a little bit differently in the way that only you can do. You do it all the time, just be engaged in the process.
For Site C (or any of the other struggles happening right now, they all are part of the same picture just like tree roots intertwined under a forest floor like a Janga game for the truly obsessive) join the groups, be involved as you feel called to, offer what you can without expectation because a moment later something completely different might be what is needed and you almost forgot that you had it in your back pocket, a rubber band or a horseshoe nail.
For the time being, if you have something that you’d like to offer but don’t know how, or you just would like to find out what you probably already have to offer, there are groups like Fight C in the lower mainland, the Peace Valley Environmental Association up north, and I’m willing to facilitate personally to the best of my ability people finding “the best fit” for offering what they can and wish to.
There is a lot going on right now, there always has been but the world that we live in seems to be hitting some pretty new territory, and even if we have warp drives next week and start spreading out it would be pretty nice if we left a healthy world behind us, right?
If we don’t take that higher path and we don’t get off this planet, well, we’re making our own future…
It’s all a bit overwhelming at times, so I’d like to share one little thing with you.
Frederick Neichze had a quote about how if you stare into the Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you.
You can totally throw the Abyss off of their game if you are wearing mirror shades.
It turns out that the Abyss is probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum, or more properly is from that neighbourhood, so with that point in common we’ve managed to engage in some non-violent conflict resolution and break down some walls.
It turns out that the Abyss likes long walks on the Stanley Park seawall, racquetball, squash, and black currant jelly on scones at sunset. (The Abyss is also lonely and made me promise to talk it up a bit, it thinks that it would like to meet a nice gorge and settle down, but at this point I think that it would settle for a crevasse or even a pot hole if it had a decent personality and a gentle sense of humour, and that really counts for everything, doesn’t it?)
Darryl R Taylor
email: dreadnex.inc@gmail.com
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
