Journalists who challenge power structures and
investigate deeply into the causes of social ills scarcely get funded in the contemporary media marketplace. Please support me in bringing these stories of optimism and determination in the face of destruction to broader audiences.
No other place of equivalent size in the world has altered its watersheds as dramatically as California. The Golden State is home to a
staggering infrastructure of dams, reservoirs, power plants, pumping plants, canals, aqueducts, gates, tunnels, and other
installations that are all about controlling where water goes and who receives it.
The year 2013 was California's driest on record. The first six months of 2014 have been the hottest
half-year on record. Reservoirs are drying up. Groundwater basins are diminishing at an alarming pace. Yet, the water demands of the state's gargantuan agribusiness empire, its sprawling metropolises, and its extractive industries (such as, increasingly, fracking) are only growing.
Politicians and business leaders are
seizing on this crisis by pushing for the largest dam- and
canal-building binge since the State Water Project of the 1960s and
’70s. The best known of these, the Delta Twin Tunnels, is just the
tip of the spear for all manner of new schemes that would further constipate California's waterways and destroy much of what remains of its aquatic life. I described this phenomenon in a recent piece in Counterpunch & the Anderson Valley Advertiser.
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Above: A fish kill on the Klamath River claimed the lives of more than 68,000 adult salmon in 2003. Currently, the federal government releases
five times more water from the Lewiston Dam to the Sacramento Basin for Central
Valley irrigators than into the Klamath.Meanwhile, people all over the state
are struggling to protect
their watersheds, land bases, cultures, and livelihoods against these dominant political and economic currents. Among them are Indigenous people, who have already survived
heinous violence and oppression to adapt and preserve their cultures, which are
inseparably tied to their landbases. They also include people who have
been weaving and reweaving connections to watersheds in various ways: Indigenous
people, political radicals, small farmers, back-to-the-landers, and
more.
These individuals' stories of determination and optimism, and their struggles against the West Coast's greatest financial and political powers, demand a wider
telling.
There's a saying in California that water flows uphill toward money. If that dynamic is to change, it is essential that stories such as these become prominent parts of public consciousness, and that they arouse people to take greater action to change the dominant culture's destructive course.
In the last four years, I've
written extensively for a Mendocino County newspaper, the legendary Anderson
Valley Advertiser ("America's Last Newspaper"), and for the internationally-celebrated online journal and print magazine Counterpunch, My work has also appeared in Z Magazine, the Earth First Journal!, and Reclamations, and on web sites such as Alternet and Z Net.
What I Need & What You Get
Being that the contemporary media marketplace is dominated by corporations, it's fitting that I write nearly full-time for "America's Last Newspaper," but don't actually make enough money to meet basic living expenses by doing so. The AVA does incredibly well, and is quite generous to its writers, especially for a newspaper based in a town with a population of 1,035 (about half the AVA's readers live outside Mendocino County).
This project will fund much of the hard work and time it takes to produce these stories, as well as travel costs (driving all around California) and clerical costs (such as filing California Public Records Act and Freedom of Information Act requests).
Not only will I serialize these pieces with weekly pieces in the AVA, but I will freelance my writings to various regional and national publications that have a thirst for unique, penetrating stories on California's drought. Within a month, I'll also develop a web site and blog to highlight my work, which will include original pictures and art, and occasional videos.
By supporting this project, you are helping the issues, people, and ideas I am presenting come more to the forefront of public consciousness. You are also providing a young investigative reporter with a springboard to become more self-sustaining as a journalist, during an extremely tough financial era.
The Stories
These are only five of many stories I'll be telling -- and weaving together -- as part of this series. Many stories I will only discover once I'm on the ground, in the communities that are being hardest hit by the drought, and by its corresponding political response from California's political and business leaders.
- Some of the most powerful opponents of Gov. Brown's Delta Twin Tunnels project are the members of a small, federally unrecognized First
Nations tribe who continue to carry out their cultural responsibilities
on
the McCloud River and in the Shasta Cascades: the Winnemem Wintu
people. The Winnemem are working against the odds to prevent the flooding of what remains of their traditional cultural areas by the raising of the Shasta Dam, which is a major element of the Brown administration's water plan.
-
The marijuana industry is
California's most profitable agricultural sector. What are the
political and economic forces driving the pot industry's reckless and increasing destruction of watersheds (which smaller cannabis farmers also don't like)? What role does systemic racism play in the state's selective repression of the pot industry, and how does that response contribute to the industry's environmental toll?
-
Fracking in California: where is it happening, who's profiting from it, where's it headed, and what is the impact on water? I've already written one story on this topic that broke new ground.
- In what is likely one of the greatest stories of personal cultural resilience ever to play out in California, the Mountain Maidu
of the Upper Feather River watershed recently became the first non-federally
recognized group of Indigenous people in California to receive state
approval to steward their
traditional landbase. One of their aims is to create a successful
model for other First Nations people throughout the state..
-
The University of California plays
an enormous, often contradictory, role in shaping not only
California's water policy and infrastructure, but that of much of
the world. Expanding on in-depth power structure research and reporting I conducted a few years ago, I'll expose the UC's historic and contemporary role in developing California's unquenchable thirst for water.
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The Impact
The work I've done
up until now has made some good contributions to social justice and environmental
sanity in the California North Coast region. Of particular relevance for this IndieGoGo project, my track record includes extensively documenting issues and campaigns concerning protection of the Russian River, Eel River, Gualala River, and Clear Lake basin watersheds, their human inhabitants, and their critters.
While the type of journalism I do is virtually non-existent in the corporate media, people do have
a big appetite -- even a longing -- for fearless, well-researched, and historically-informed journalism that takes on the big issues of the day from a radical perspective.
Happily, I know from my own experiences that this kind of journalism continues to have the capacity to afflict the powerful and comfort the afflicted.
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Above: Walking in front of a California Department of Transportation truck, carrying copies of a damning document I'd just obtained via the California Public Records Act (Willits, CA, Feb. 2013).
“Will Parrish is a journalist in the
best tradition of our muckrakers, a writer 'with his boots on the
ground.' This is a good expression, I think; I’m taking it from my
mentor, the late Edward Thompson, in his own time a relentless
opponent of the war machine, of nuclear weapons in particular, writer
and activist... Will Parrish is our Lincoln Steffens
(The Shame of the Cities,
1904). And 'they' don't like him.” – Cal Winslow, social
historian at UC Berkeley, editor of Rebel Rank and File:
Labor Militancy and Revolt From Below during the Long Seventies and
West of Eden: Communes and Utopia in Northern California.
“Will Parrish is a young
investigative reporter, one of a kind. He’s not afraid of pursuing
questions to their ultimate consequence... he understands
environmental problems deeply and has the unique capacity to make
these clear in his writings. “ – Ignacio Chapela, microbial
ecologist and mycologist at UC Berkeley, known for exposure of the
flow of transgenes into wild maize.
“Will Parrish investigates and writes
bravely on subjects and issues that would get little notice
otherwise. Any 12-year-old can write 'just the facts, Ma'am,' but
Will provides an educated context, crucial analysis, and a passionate
perspective that makes each of his stories an insightful must-read.”
- Dave Smith, cofounder of Smith & Hawken, author of To Be Of
Use, The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work., and curator of Ukiah
Community Blog
"I have
followed Will’s in-depth investigative
journalism and activism since 2010, and my respect for his research
skills and
rigorous fact-checking has only grown in the past four years. He fearlessly takes on powerful institutions such
as the nuclear industry, the war machine, water privatizers,
destructive state agencies, and the University of California system -
among others. For the last
two years, I have had the pleasure of working on the same local
issues and found his insights
on ecology, forest and wetland preservation of great value to
the communities on-the-ground, and
deeply perceptive in the larger context of global ecological destruction."- Maria Gilardin, radio
producer with Pacifica Radio and,
since 1992, as an independent with TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) Radio
Samples of My Writings
“The Politics of The World's Most Hydrologically Altered Landmass,” Counterpunch/AVA, June 9,
2014
“Fracking And The North Coast,”
AVA, March 12, 2014
“Willits & The Erin Brockovich Bypass,” AVA, Sept. 11, 2013
“Full Court Press, or War On Immigrants?” AVA, Feb. 8, 2012
“Is Premier Pacific Vineyards Dead?,”
AVA, Dec. 21, 2011
“The Struggle For Rattlesnake Island,” Counterpunch/AVA, August 26, 2011
"How Wine Rules," with Darwin Bond-Graham, AVA, July 27, 2011
“Drinking Our Rivers Dry: The Wine Industry's Assault on Water Resources,”
Alternet, Feb. 7, 2011