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Resistance to Watershed Destruction in California

Support hard-hitting independent journalism that takes on California's destructive water politics.

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Resistance to Watershed Destruction in California

Resistance to Watershed Destruction in California

Resistance to Watershed Destruction in California

Resistance to Watershed Destruction in California

Resistance to Watershed Destruction in California

Support hard-hitting independent journalism that takes on California's destructive water politics.

Support hard-hitting independent journalism that takes on California's destructive water politics.

Support hard-hitting independent journalism that takes on California's destructive water politics.

Support hard-hitting independent journalism that takes on California's destructive water politics.

William Parrish
William Parrish
William Parrish
William Parrish
1 Campaign |
Ukiah, United States
$5,637 USD 83 backers
102% of $5,500 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal

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.

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.


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.

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).

Testimonials

“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

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Choose your Perk

Hug

$5 USD
A virtual hug.
4 claimed

Salmon Cut-Out

$10 USD
I'll send you a personalized note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out.
2 claimed

Elderberry syrup

$25 USD
- a free tincture bottle of high-vitamin C elderberry syrup - medicine from a wonderful riparian plant! - personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out
17 claimed

Gembrokers Album

$50 USD
- A copy of a great folk album inspired by land defense struggles around the world: The Gembrokers' "Bury The Sound" - http://gembrokers.bandcamp.com/ - A personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out
9 claimed

20-Issue AVA Sub

$100 USD
- Receive 20 issues of the AVA in the mail, which include all of the articles I am writing in this series - A personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out
14 claimed

AVA Subscription

$250 USD
- Year-long subscription to the AVA print edition - Copy of The Gembrokers' CD inspired by land defense struggles, “Bury The Sound” - Personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out
0 claimed

Dinner With Will

$500 USD
- Year-long subscription to the AVA print edition - “Fanning the Flames of Discontent” t-shirt - Copy of The Gembrokers' CD inspired by land defense struggles, “Bury The Sound” - personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out - Dinner with Will at a cheap buffet of your choice in Ukiah, Willits, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Eureka, or Sacramento
2 claimed

Magical Watershed Tour

$1,000 USD
- Personal tour with Will of magical watershed spots and history in the Ukiah Valley area - Year-long subscription to the AVA print edition - Copy of The Gembrokers' CD inspired by land defense struggles, “Bury The Sound” - personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out
0 claimed

Life-Time AVA Subscription

$2,200 USD
- Life-time subscription to the AVA print edition - Copy of The Gembrokers' album about land defense struggles, “Bury The Sound” - personalized thank-you note written on a cardboard salmon cut-out - Dinner with Will at a cheap buffet of your choice in any of the above-referenced cities.
0 claimed

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