Break Free!

It's time to break free from fossil fuels.  Massive and widespread actions are apparently being planned... or have occurred?

I haven't heard a peep on the local news, and I live in Seattle, where we do a lot of kayactivism.  I haven't heard a peep on the other news shows I watch - Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, either.

Apparently there have been actions and marches in the UK, the Philippines, and Australia.  If I hadn't read the story at the link above, I would not have known.  Not only have I not felt a tremor in the Force, I haven't seen a headline, seen a crawl at the bottom of a screen, or seen any tweets about all of these "mass actions" that are theoretically taking place.

There's a round-up off all the actions here on The Hill, of all places.  I read it with interest - and a bit of amazement.  I'd had no idea such a lot of action was going on!

So I hit up Google for the news that I had clearly been missing - news of all the myriad protests, marches and actions going on all around me.

And I turned up hits... from Deutsche Welle, The Nation, Morocco Wold News, National Catholic Reporter, the Northwest Herald, EcoWatch, Islands' Weekly, Waging Nonviolence... see a pattern?  Those are the top news hits for my search on "break free actions."

Except for The Nation, there's not one instance of the "MSM" reporting on people-powered actions to bring attention to this most urgent existential crisis of our time!

I did turn up reports from local news - KOMO News and KING5 - both on page 2 of the search results.

My plan is to tune in tonight and see what KOMO and KING5 have to say - and, of course, to watch Rachel Maddow and see if she has an item related to the break free protests.  Given what else is going on right now, I rather doubt it. Today's news is nothing if not juicy. Release of the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Bridgegate case has been delayed. The attorney in the DC Madam case may be dumping his list of contact information for her clients - a list he said may have bearing on the Republican primary process. And there's that silly game Rachel plays every Friday, the Friday Night News Dump quiz show - a waste of a segment if ever there was one.

So in short - the reaction of the major news outlets to "Break Free!" appears to be...