Carmen Stanescu
Writer
Braila-Romania, Romania

My dear grandson

“I cannot leave you as inheritance the mountains ravaged by corporations seeking strands of gold, as in Rosia Montana, leaving only lakes of poison, without the authorities of the country doing anything...”

I do not want to leave you as legacy a land barren and poisoned by Chevron which when it first came to our country bribed the authorities to beat us and humiliate us, to determine us to cede our lands for the exploration of the Shale gas, mocking us, through the corporate representatives with phrases that demean our human dignity: "Are you willing to die of hunger or of cancer?" Now Chevron is at the Black Sea to turn it into a death hell.

I cannot leave you as inheritance the mountains ravaged by corporations seeking strands of gold, as in Rosia Montana, leaving only lakes of poison, without the authorities of the country doing anything, on the contrary, helping them. Nor the arable land of the country, sold to foreign citizens at a rate of 40-50%, of which the most of the new owners removed the upper part of the soil, the chernozem, and took it to their home countries, leaving our plains arid, barren, deserted. Nor the forests lacking of the towering trees, which are now only dried stumps. Nor the unbreathable air, full of toxic substances emitted by factories, or the nuclear plants with their radioactive byproducts, into the water, earth and air. Not to mention mining and the petroleum products during transport with trains or heavy trucks causing countless real ecological disasters.

If we will not be able to cut off these injustices against life, kid, anything I can leave is the unfinished fighting against all these injustices, that you have to carry on, until the soil will be cleaned, the water and the air will purify using regenerative energy sources and the earth buds will bloom again the abundance of life.

Do not abandon this fight, kid!