Singing “We’ve got the whole world in our hands…” and rolling a giant Earth Ball, members of the Forum for Marxist Humanist Thought distributed flyers urging students’ awareness on current ecological issues.

Tom Rainey, an NIU alumnus and other members of the forum rolled the Earth Ball from the Holmes Student Center to DuSable Hall and back to the student center hoping to gain attention from students.

“We want to create a spectacle,” Rainey said.

Two members chanted “We’re gonna roll the Earth right on…if capitalism gets in the way, we’re gonna roll right over it….,” adding they are against forms of government that destroy the environment, and capitalism destroys the environment.

The forum is interested in preventing future pollution problems, not just those that already exist, said Megan Dushin, one of the speakers in tonight’s “Ecological Crisis” discussion at the Holmes Student Center.

Topics of the discussion will include nuclear power, industrial pollution and factory workers and philosophy as a challenge to the environmental movement.

“Unlike the Students for Life, Anti-Choice program, we support and encourage open debate and criticism. We want students to make statements,” Rainey said.

Rainey said he wants students to understand the depth of the crisis (environmental crisis). “We are poisoning ourselves with the air, water, ground, with ourselves, with pollution. Industrial and nuclear pollution,” he said.

He said students should be aware of the factory worker’s roll in ending the problem.

“If factory workers controlled production, they would choose not to poison themselves. They get more pollution from nuclear power and plastic,” Rainey said.

“The group is searching for environmental solutions, an end to toxic waste, an end to the over production and over consumption of plastics,” group member Marna Coldwater said.

Rainey said they plan to roll the ball to DeKalb High School in hopes of getting those students involved and making them aware of the environmental crisis. Rainey also said they might roll the Earth Ball around campus tomorrow.

Dylan Aliata, the former regional coordinator for Great Lakes Greenpeace and anti-nuclear activist and computer scientist Franklin Dimitriev also will attend tonight’s discussion at 8:30 p.m. in the Heritage Room at the HSC. Both men write for News and Letters.