Pro-Refuge Demonstration

I hope to get back to posting on the issues surrounding oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge as soon as I get some uninterrupted time to work on it. Right now, we're still on spring holidays, and I've got a bit of a bug to boot.

Meanwhile, here's a photo from the demonstration held in front of the Yukon legislature over the lunch hour today. The occasion for the demonstration was the visit of several Alaskan polititions to the legislature. If I had to guess how many demonstrators there were, I'd say 100 or so.

Some of the slogans on the signs are "120,000 caribou can't be wrong" and "No refuge? No railway!" This last slogan is suggesting, I suppose, that the Canadian government ought to use the Alaskan desire for a railway through Canada down to the lower 48 as a bargaining chip to prevent drilling in ANWR.

The person standing in the truck bed is Larry Bagnell, Yukon's member of parliament, who is addressing the crowd. The speaker I would have liked to hear was Don Russell, Porcupine caribou biologist, who I know in real life as minor soccer coach and father of my son's friend, but I had other places I needed to be, so I couldn't wait around for his turn on the truck bed.

I can tell you this: I'm not overly fond of people with placards, whether I support their cause or not. In general, I think signs with slogans work against reasoned dialogue.