Her name is Victoria Priester. Her message is GreenPeace. But what is GreenPeace you ask? Let’s break it down.
Green is a color. Trees are green. Money is green. Kermit is green.
Peace is safety, a quality, a way of life.
The first time I heard the word “peace” was probably in a John Lennon song. I remember sitting on my living room floor, helping my father clean underneath the TV stand as we listened to something that, to me, probably didn’t satisfy his working needs. He reached for one of his albums (to this day, I still don’t know what album it was). What he played was a song that I hadn’t heard but I recognized the voice of the singer. My father is a Beatles fan; therefore I knew a Beatle voice when I heard it.
I started to hear the lines “Every bodies talking about Bagism, Shagism.”
Honestly, I don’t know what most of the words in the song mean but I do understand the chorus. “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
It’s sort of hard to misinterpret that.
The first time I remembering seeing peace, however, was in the Disney film “Pocahontas”. We all remember Pocahontas. An Indian and a soldier bring peace to a war between two different cultures.
Or at least as the Disney story goes.
The peace that Pocahontas showed was immeasurable. All she did was for her home and from her heart. Pocahontas is friends with a raccoon and a giant tree named ‘Grandmother Willow”. She risks her life to protect not just these two but her whole land, the land that she loves.
I’m not at all saying Victoria is Pocahontas or John Lennon. However, her successful efforts of bringing a club that support such action resemble these peaceful leaders.
“Ultimately our goal is to educate and organize. We hope to educate our peers about current environmental atrocities and organize people into a coherent movement who can make the changes needed to help the planet” Priester said about the club. “We were hoping to establish a proactive club that was more centered on a grassroots effort to change the current political climate.”
GreenPeace isn’t just here at Flagler College.
“Today, we have grown from a small group of dedicated activists to an international organization with offices in more than 30 countries” said a spokesperson on the GreenPeace website. “But our spirit and our mission remain the same. Our fight to save the planet has grown more serious – the threat of global warming, destruction of ancient forests, deterioration of our oceans, and the threat of a nuclear disaster loom large.”
As I talked to Priester about GreenPeace, I saw the passion in her eyes. Through the long hours planning meetings and activities; passed the massive amount of patience she put up with during the long struggle to get the GreenPeace club SGA approved, Priester has shown her deep love for not just the club, but for the planet. She has proved that GreenPeace isn’t just a club, it is a job and something that she is willing to fight for.
Priesters actions in the fight to start GreenPeace have not gone unnoticed. The club currently holds meetings weekly, attended by students with similar beliefs to Priester.
“One discontent person may be small and quiet, but when people assemble and come together as one voice, it is hard to ignore” said Priester.
After such success in setting up a meaningful and important club, I don’t think Victoria or GreenPeace will be ignored again.
Work Cited.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/about
Victoria Priester interview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas_(1995_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Peace_a_Chance
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