Urban nature kids go to rallies even when it rains.

One of the things that brings me hope is to be in community working for the common good. Often in our society often companies and organizations only look out for themselves. However, in remembrance of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, workers and supporters in Seattle joined together with union members to remember King and to work on one of his last wishes: to defend the dignity and rights of the workers.

Only one of the twins accompanied me, however he was able to help with holding an umbrella so that someone could hold up a banner. He was able to ring a bell. He was able to look into the diverse faces of many people in our community and see that they were working for a better world.

It was especially comforting to see that even the local chapter of Sierra Club was there supporting the rights of workers. In years past there has been a division between environmental organizations and workers- it gives me hope when groups want to work together.

As Wendell Berry wrote in The Unsettling of America in his essay "The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character"

" The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment"- that is, what surrounds us. Once we see our place our part of the world as surrounding us, we have already made a profound division between it and ourselves. We have given up the understanding- dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought- that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human, plant and animal, are part of one another and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other and so neither can be better than the other."