Report: Tea Party “GPT Bulk Handling Terminal”—“Coal Train Debate”

Town hall style meetings can be a lot of fun! When grass roots people speak their minds, there is a clarity and freshness often missing in “canned” newspaper reports and mono cultured college lectures. Last night’s Tea Party “debate” on Cherry Point issues was no exception.

A high point was the impromptu stand in of Bill Hinely, retired professor and strong supporter of climate change theories. After a half hour of town hall style questioning of Craig Cole, Mr. Hinely put up his hand and offered to present some alternate views. He was given the floor for ten minutes to say anything he wanted to.

What followed was a free ranging view from the street of what he felt was the issue—worldview! Bill concisely said the issue was much bigger than coal at Cherry Point. Claiming the support of overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth has been and continues to be damaged severely, to the point of being uninhabitable in fifty to one hundred years if we continue on the same track, Bill then pointed to a solution. People need to give up all dearly held assumptions and practices, and using neighborhood consensus, regroup, rethink, and let the chips fall where they may.

Real issues. Real people.  And real questions followed.

Delaine Clizbe: (paraphrased) “I worked in commercial fishing, an environmentally touchy subject. Would you tell me that I should not have had a job?”

Bill Hinely: (paraphrased) “You have to get below the question. Groups of people need look at things together. We need to let go of individualism and get better solutions from group thinking. We need to question all traditional wisdom and practices, and make group decisions that leave no one out.

Elliott Fine: (paraphrased) “Have you ever heard of Saul Alinsky? If you really want a group think society, you should move to Russia”.

Maybe the absence of Terry Wechsler was not such a loss. Better theatre. More clarity. And, a great deal of civility in the process. (And who says the Marxist / Hegelian dialectic is dead at Western or other universities?)

Another sardonic question by Jeff McKay, after discussing the unprecedented EIS scoping goals / intervention of the Washington State DOE:  (paraphrased)  “If the Washington State Department of Ecology is going to examine the world wide impact of burning coal, will they examine the worldwide impact of wheat shipping , of American wheat gluten on leaky gut syndrome in various world nations?

You get the picture. Maybe the bureaucrats and professors of somewhere need to look in the mirror of the street and see if the “emperor’s new clothes” really fit all that well.

Report submitted by John Kirk.