Cancellation of Booth
Reply-To: Avi Chomsky
Hello, friends,
It turns out we can NOT be able to have our booth at the Marblehead Farmers Market as planned. Our opening event for bag sales will instead be through HealthLink on Tuesday morning. This will be at the HealthLink office at the Church of the Holy Name, corner of Monument and Thomas, in Swampscott. Call 781-598-1115 or email me or HealthLink (healthlink@healthlink.org) for more information, and read on!HOW CAN YOU HELP THE VICTIMS OF OUR ENERGY POLICIES?HealthLink
*Something New! This week stop in with kids, on Tuesday, 8/22 at 10 am for our Wind Wigglers Craft Workshop!! Children will make and decorate pinwheels and other wind wiggler projects. Also that morning, HealthLink will have available for purchase beautiful handbags and weavings made by women from the area in Colombia impacted by the mining of coal for our electricity. This is a small way to help the victims of our energy policies. The story of these handbags and the hidden cost of coal follows below.
Many people are surprised to learn that coal burned in the Salem power plant, and across the United States, is imported increasingly from Colombia. Low-sulphur coal is Colombia's third largest export.
Much of this coal is mined in Colombia's poorest province, La Guarjira. Five times the size of Manhattan, El Cerrejón is the world's largest open-pit coal mine. One by one, small indigenous and Afro- Colombian communities that have lived together, farmed, hunted, and fished for centuries, are being destroyed. Company agents illegally wiped the village of Tabaco off the map in 2001 to expand the mine and, on the expanding edge of the pit, the villagers of Tamaquito are being asphyxiated by the dust.
We learned first hand from local villagers and the mineowners about the terrible human impact of this mine when an international group of concerned citizens, including HeathLink member and Salem State Professor Avi Chomsky, went to Colombia in August, 2006.
HealthLink wants to give back something to the communities that have suffered so much in providing energy for our homes and businesses. The women of Guarjira have a long tradition of weaving. They have asked us to help their communities survive by bringing their products to Americans.
We have a number of unique and colorful Columbian handbags and weavings. The money you pay for these bags goes directly to the women of Tabaco and Tamaquito whose lives, families, and villages are under siege from the impact of the gigantic Cerrejón coal mine.
HealthLink
P.O. Box 301
Swampscott, MA 01907
781-598-1115
www.healthlink.org
Our mission: To protect and improve public health by eliminating pollutants and toxic substances from our environment through research, education, and community action.
email: healthlink@healthlink.orgphone: 781-598-1115
