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(tuesday, October 9, 1990/ University Daily Kansan
Environs attends conference
Environmental issues draw 7,600 students from across country
By Mike Brassfield Kansan staff writer
Fifteen members of Environs were among 7,600 students who attended CATALYST, the second national conference of the Student Environmental Action Coalition. The conference was last weekend at the University of Illinois in Champagne-urbana.
Jesse Jackson, Robert Redford, Ralph Nader and Carpe Chaze, president of the United Farm Worker organization, the conference's featured speakers.
Environs is a KU environmental awareness organization.
Jay Diffendorfer, Lawrence graduate student, said the conference was organized as a catalyst for social and environmental change in the United
it was revitalizing, energizing,
stimulating and inspiring." Diffenderer said. "It was so intense that it
caused me to forget how I got something different out of it."
Difenderdeer said one of the main themes of the conference was that environmental groups should take on the role of teachers by reaching out to minorities.
"They stressed the fact that today's environmental movement is a essentially a White, upper-class thing," he said. "To a Black person who lives across the street from a toxic waste dump, the word environment' obviously means something different than what it means to some White college student who walks around Clinton Lake on weekends.
He said Jesse Jackson spoke about the connection between environmental issues and issues of social justice.
Chris Kromm, Manhattan senior,
said the conference reinforced the
idea that social issues and environmental
issues go hand in hand.
"You can't just deal with environmental issues by themselves," he said. "I think people came out of the conference with a broader idea of what it means to be an environment alist."
Mary Jane McCool, St. Louis senior, said another theme of the conference was corporate accountability.
"There were a lot of different speakers from diverse backgrounds, and a lot of them talked about what corporations had been doing to the environment," she said. "Ralph Nader especially made me realize that we have to hold corporations accountable for what they do."
Diffenderer said the students formed a mite-long column and marched through the campus and the town.
McCool said the students chanted,
"Students united! We'll never be
deafened!" during the rally.
Differenderf said an important aspect of the conference was a regional meeting at which members of Environs met with members of campus environmental groups from Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa.
air," she said. "It was really inspiring. I think we'll see things happening on a much greater level than ever before, here and everywhere."
"There was so much energy in the
"It is so empowering to know that there are people so near us who are working toward the same things," he said. "This is happening on almost every single campus in this country."
Diffenderdor said he was interested in working to get KU to host the student coalition's regional meeting next spring. A regional meeting might attract about 1,000 people, he said.
Tina Hallay, Albuquerque, N.M., sophomore, said, "Environmental activists are sometimes seen as radicals who don't care about people, but we do care." We know that we do care, because in the long run we're working for the people.
"When Robert Redford spoke, he said he was so gladi that this was finally happening. He made us feel like we were really doing something. There was a lot of power in the room."
Soviet guards stop Greenpeace vessel in arctic after landing at nuclear site
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — The Soviet coast guard stopped a Greenpeace vessel in the arctic early yesterday after the vessel had sent environmentalists ashore to a nuclear test site, activists and Soviet officials said.
KGB border guards aboard an icebreaker fired several warning shots to deter the Dutch-registered ship, MV Greenpeace, in the Barents Sea off the Novaya Zemlia islands, the activists and officials said.
Greepaee activist Steve Shallhorn told The Associated Press that before communications with the ship were lost about 15 guards boarded
the 199-foot vessel after the protesters sent four members ashore in rubber ratts. He said the icebreaker threatened to open fire on the Greenwich Island.
Greeneappe said the activists reached the island in the dark while others in two decoy rats distracted the icebreaker crew.
The environmental group claims new nuclear tests are planned on Novaya Zemlia, and they intended to demonstrate there.
The two-island group, 370 miles from Norway, was a primary Soviet nuclear test site from 1958 to 1963 Environmentalists say it was last
used in 1988. Recent protests forced the Soviets to suspend tests at their main site in Soviet Central Asia, rekindling interest in New Zealand.
Shannon Fagan of Greenpeace in London said the group was told by the Soviet government later yesterday that a warship would be sent to low the vessel to a Navy port if it did not leave the area under its own power.
"We are not planning to leave,' she said.
Shallhorn said from Oslo, Norway, that the ship was about four miles from the island when the rubber rafts were dispatched.
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