Trust me, This is worth disrupting life for a minute.

I don't care if you are tired of posts on politics. I don't care if you have reached your capacity of sorrow and dread. Because the only reason your capacity to deal with these facts of life isn't boundless is because they don't personally effect your immediate life. Not that I would ever ask anyone to put selfcare on back burner however, I would like for you to contemplate on your definitions of selfcare, self-indulgence, and simply reasoning yourself out of 'caring too much'. Because what I have to say today matters. There is nothing like my silence that tells one I have a lot to say. I've been silent since the beginning of this year. And what has brought me over the brink is a hearing held by DOGGR and CPUC in regards to a Gas leak in Porter Ranch. If you aren't aware of it go visit Saveporterranch.com for the details.

Now the fact is there are still about 2 leaks a day at the Aliso Canyon storage facility and that SoCal Gas has lied for years without any regard to not just public health and safety but actual lives that have been on the line and still are. It's been going on for an unreasonably long time and I've been fighting along side the community since the blowout happened. But then what makes me speak about it now and not before? What makes me write about it on Khwabgah - a place created to inspire and foster dreams.

The answer to that is simple. When a twelve year old boy has to get on a podium in a public hearing, in front of a dozen DOGGR and CPUC bureaucrats and reason with them by presenting the case of how his, his friends and little brothers' lives have been affected by this gas leak; how the carelessness and blatant disregard of SoCal took away their father from them, the system is more than broken. When that child is only one of the hundreds of children and these bureaucrats don't even so much as flinch in their comfy chairs, something is seriously wrong with the world we're part of.

How is a child to dream, to imagine, to inspire and be inspired when simply breathing is hazardous. Who is going to return these kids their childhood? How can anyone make up for the lost time? You can't. No one can. No one can return them their natural joy and carefreeness when it's been destroyed so violently. No one can return them their lost relations or the lifelong love and warmth that would've accompanied.  

At which point, after 4 hours of having listened to everything that could've been said I utilize my allotted 2 minutes of public comments to ask a simple question of these men. Instead of making a case by using scientific facts they already knew or lives whose destruction has already been demonstrated in front of them, I ask them if they are even human? When a regulatory branch of civil service whose motto literally has public health in it, fails to take any proper action to put an end to it all - yes, I ask if they are humanbeings? Because if I was sitting in their comfy chairs, even if I was literally tied down by iron chains, I would have made it a point to actually stand up and state that I'd do whatever it took, in my power or not, to make sure it was all shut down. But then I guess that's why I'm an activist and they're bureaucrats.

Now I am hoping y'all have souls and are humans, so do visit the site and help them stop this atrocity. And if you live in or around LA, show up to at least some of the events and actions. Sometimes all it takes is just another person who care enough to do something about it.