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Mr. Radich
Trump not sweet on Park Service tweets
By
01.29.17
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Park Service employees have begun a Twitter campaign against President Donald Trump. They are sending out tweets that object to his positions on important issues.
Some of the tweets have been about climate change, which Trump has called a hoax. Others include reminders that Japanese-Americans were cruelly forced to leave their homes and live in prison camps during World War II, when the U.S. was at war with Japan. Many are interpreting these tweets as a warning against discriminating based on a person's ethnic or religious background.
Last Tuesday, three climate-related tweets were sent out by Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The tweets were deleted on the same day. The next day, other park accounts began sending out tweets that also appeared to defy Trump's position on climate change.
Redwoods Park Stands Tall In Fighting Climate Change
One tweet came from Redwoods National Park in California. It notes that redwood groves are nature's No. 1 carbon sink. This means the trees capture greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
"More redwoods would mean less '#climatechange,'" the park tweeted.
Another tweet came from Golden Gate National Park in California. It tweeted that 2016 was the hottest year on record for the third year in a row. The tweet directed readers to a report by the government agencies National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Not all of the tweets were about climate change, however.
Plight of Japanese-Americans Cited
Death Valley National Park in California tweeted photos of Japanese-Americans who were forced to live in internment camps in the park during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ordered that more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans be kept in these prison camps while the U.S. and Japan were at war. Decades later, the U.S. government apologized for taking this extreme action. The government paid reparations to camp survivors.
Some saw the tweets about the Japanese-American internment as an objection to Trump's pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country. The tweets were also read as a message against Trump's proposal to stop refugees from coming to the United States.
The tweets posted by Badlands National Park accurately quoted climate science data. They included the current record-setting high amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The tweets were shared thousands of times. The Democratic National Committee even sent out the tweets in an email. The subject line of the email was "Resist."
Banner Message From Greenpeace
The word "resist" also appeared on a huge banner atop a 270-foot construction crane near the White House. The environmental group Greenpeace said protesters climbed the crane and placed the banner up there. The group did it to protest Trump's support of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order saying construction could continue on the pipelines. Executive orders are official documents that the president uses to manage the federal government. These pipeline projects had been blocked by President Barack Obama.
The tweets by Park Service accounts came after their accounts had been briefly suspended last week. The Interior Department, which runs the National Park System, turned off the Park Service accounts after some of the parks tweeted photos during Trump's inauguration. The photos compared the crowd size at Trump's inauguration to crowds at other inauguration ceremonies. President Trump has claimed his crowd was larger than the media reported it to be. There is no evidence to prove it, though.
The parks' Twitter accounts were turned back on the next day.
A "Hateful" Moment
Steven Goldstein is the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a human rights group. He criticized Trump's recent order to build a wall on the Mexican border. This was one of Trump's biggest campaign promises. Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. would start planning to build it. Goldstein said it marked "one of the most hateful days in our nation's history."
Goldstein added that the Statue of Liberty, another national park, is weeping over what Trump plans to do.
