Sunday, December 4, 2011

Navajo and O'odham demand end to corporate profiteers


Shut Down ALEC! Navajo and O'odham demand end to corporate profiteers

Posted by Brenda Norrell - December 4, 2011 at 11:53 am
Photos this week: Navajo and O'odham led protests to halt corporate control of the legislature and racist profiteers in Arizona
Photos by Shut Down ALEChttp://azresistsalec.wordpress.com/
Article by Brenda Norrell
 
PHOENIX -- (Dec. 2, 2011) Shut Down ALEC! this week in the Phoenix Valley exposed the corporate greed and control of the Arizona legislature by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which met in Scottsdale this week.
Navajo and O'odham took the lead to expose the behind-doors machinations of corporations cutting deals with the Arizona government, including energy companies and private prisons, that exploit the resources and people in Indian country.
The corporate profiteers included Boeing. After its billion dollar boondoggle of spy towers on the Arizona border, Boeing is now asking Tohono O'odham districts to approve new spy towers on their lands. Homeland Security says it will begin the bidding process in Jan. 2012 for the Integrated Fixed Towers surveillance system. However, Boeing announced it was hiring for a technician for the project in Ajo, Ariz., last week. The first phase is set to cost another $1.5 billion.
The corporate profiteers working in collusion with Arizona legislators include Corrections Corporations of America, CCA, targeting migrants and all people of color to fill their prisons for profit in Arizona. Wackenhut G4S also profiteers with a contract to transport detained migrants from the Arizona border.
During a protest of the Salt River Project in Tempe, Ariz., on Friday, Louise Benally of Big Mountain on Black Mesa, Navajo resisting relocation, demanded SRP halt the coal fired power plant near Page, the Navajo Generating Station, on the Navajo Nation and begin the conversion to renewal energy sources. SRP electricity flows to Southwest cities, while many Navajos live without running water and electricity, and suffer from the extensive pollution and environmental destruction. Speaking at the protest, Benally said SRP and Peabody Coal mine are depleting the aquifer and already springs and streams have dried up.
 “We have no water in our community," Benally said at the SRP protest. "The wells are drying up, the water wells, the water table is dropping, a lot of pollution is being released into the ground water. There are lands that are cracking open, which has never happened before. Vegetation is being totally poisoned by sulfur dioxide from the blasting." 
Before the protest began, Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, welcomed the people to O'odham land and offered a prayer for the land, people and all living things. Rivas said SRP diverted water from O'odham lands in southern Arizona, which was used for irrigating their crops by way of their canals. The result was devastating for the O'odham way of life.
“As Indigenous People we understand that the balance of the land is the balance of our people and any disturbance of that is very devastating, not only to our spiritual health, but to our deep connection to the land and all living things. As Indigenous People we are not separated from our environment. We’re deeply connected to everything in the universe: the land, the mountains, water, air, and all plant and animal life," Rivas said. 
During the protest, five people locked down, then were cut away by police and arrested. On Wednesday, O'odham were among those pepper sprayed by police outside the ALEC conference in Scottsdale. O'odham Veteran David Ortega, peacemaker, was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic with a mild heart attack after being pepper sprayed.
Eight people were arrested at the action at the resort where the ALEC summit took place on November 30. Sixteen were arrested at the action at SRP December 2nd, including 5 who locked down in the building. One more was arrested at the First Friday march also December 2. All have been released as of 2 p.m. on December 3.
Photos: 1: Protest at Salt River Project 2: Louise Benally, Navajo, delivers letter to Salt River Project, as five supporters lock themselves in the lobby. 3. Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, asks police to respect the prayer instead of yelling for crowd to disperse 4. O'odham and others are pepper sprayed outside ALEC in Scottsdale. O'odham Veteran David Ortega is pepper sprayed. 6. Protesters face off with police at ALEC conference in Scottsdale on Wednesday.
Read more at Arizona Resist ALEC:http://azresistsalec.wordpress.com/
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US inaction on climate

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U.S. Inaction on Climate is "Criminal", Activists Say
By Kanya D'Almeida

WASHINGTON, Dec 3, 2011 (IPS) - The United States' delegation at the 17th annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCC) in Durban, South Africa has come under heavy fire from civil society leaders and activists around the globe for standing in the way of real solutions to climate change.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 farmers, unionists, teachers, peasants, students, garbage pickers, transport workers and other indignant citizens gathered outside the U.N. consultation chambers in Durban on Saturday calling for "system change, not climate change".

Many of these protestors marched to the U.S. embassy, demanding that the "world's biggest polluter" start supporting climate solutions that benefit the 99 percent.

In solidarity with their African counterparts, citizens in 20 cities across the U.S. rallied against the eco-destructive actions of the "one percent" as part of the Dec. 3 global day of action to save the planet and "occupy the climate".

Spearheaded by the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJA), a national network of grassroots organisations, along with the North American chapter of the 200 million member international farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, Saturday's events were an attempt to draw together disparate climate-related struggles under one banner.

"We are mobilising to denounce quick fix solutions being promoted by governments and corporations – like carbon markets, REDD++, and geo- engineering – all of which are just creative ways for corporations to continue profiting at the expense of the people and Mother Earth," said Dena Hoff, a Montana-based member of the National Family Farm Coalition.

"As stewards of the land, feeding the world's people, we can't stand by as our ecosystems are destroyed for corporate greed," she added.

"U.S. government and corporations are the one percent responsible for the majority of pollution affecting the 99 percent of the world," Francisca Porchas of the LA-based Labor Community Strategy Center, said Saturday. "We demand that the U.S. immediately reduce carbon emissions to 50 percent of current levels by 2017, and stop obstructing progress towards paying climate debt and forging an internationally binding deal."

Actions in the U.S. kicked off Friday, when a delegation representing leaders from hundreds of Native American tribes presented President Barack Obama with the Mother Earth Accord, a document stating their opposition to the development of the bitterly contested TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline through Indian country.

"Recognizing that the pipeline would stretch 1,980 miles, from Alberta, Canada to Nederland, Texas, carrying up to 900,000 barrels per day of filthy tar sands crude oil," the Accord roundly condemned the project as "suicidal" for scores of Native communities and sacred sites as well as for the Ogallala Aquifer, which currently sustains millions of people and irrigates huge swathes of farmland throughout the heartland of the United States.

The U.S. government's indecision on the project, despite reported evidence of numerous spills and irrefutable data on the pipeline's impact, is indicative of its overall indifference to social movements and civil society's demands, activists say.

The U.S. delegation in Durban, led by special envoy Todd Stern and his deputy Jonathan Pershing, have remained immune to civil society pressure by continuing to push its agenda of promoting new "climate financing" systems to mitigate the impacts of carbon emissions and global warming.

This, despite the fact that a 2011 World Bank report, prepared for this year's G20 meeting in France and leaked to the British Guardian in September, confessed that global carbon markets are in deep trouble.

"The value of transactions in the primary CDM market declined sharply in 2009 and further in 2010 … amid chronic uncertainties about future mitigation targets and market mechanisms after 2012," the report said.

The failure of financial markets to regulate themselves, much less the climate, notwithstanding, Stern and Pershing have blocked even the most watered down proposals on the negotiating table in Durban, such as the establishment of a Green Climate Fund, endorsed by most developing nations as well as the Eurozone.

"The U.S. is putting the cart before the horse in terms of the climate fund by refusing to sign onto something before the details have been worked out," Jen Soriano, communications coordinator for the Durban delegation of the GGJA, told IPS. "In fact, nothing can be concretised until countries like the U.S. commit to the fund in the first place, so this is the perfect stall tactic."

"It reflects the administration's total inability to take the lead, even over a proposal that would essentially be managed by (controversial) for-profit actors like the World Bank," she added.

"The U.S. delegation also told a gathering of NGOs in Durban yesterday that they would absolutely not re-ratify an updated version of the Kyoto protocol until 2020… proving that there is no scientific basis to the U.S.'s agenda," Soriano said.

In fact, every noteworthy document on climate change, from the landmark Cochabamba People's Agreement signed last year in Bolivia to the U.N.'s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC) 2011 report, predict catastrophic results if industrial countries don'tlimit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius and follow the basic conditions laid out in the Kyoto protocol.

The signatories to the Cochabamba Agreement stressed, "Between 20 percent and 30 percent of species would be in danger of disappearing, large extensions of forest would be affected, droughts and floods would affect different regions of the planet, deserts would expand, and the melting of the polar ice caps and the glaciers in the Andes and Himalayas would worsen.

"Many island states would disappear, and Africa would suffer an increase in temperature of more than three degrees Celsius. Likewise, the production of food would diminish and the number of people in the world suffering from hunger would increase dramatically, a figure that already exceeds 1.02 billion people."

Meanwhile the 220 scientists who comprise the U.N.'s IPCC noted last month that "extreme weather events" would likely suck billions out of national economies and destroy millions of lives, particularly in Africa.

"We have to think not only in terms of loss of life but also climate displacement, the loss of homes, separation from families and poverty," Jill Johnston, programs coordinator of the Southwest Workers Union, told IPS.

In fact, the World Bank said back in February that an additional 44 million people were pushed into poverty this year as a result of rising food prices and millions more could be hungry by the end of 2012 if current trends continue.

"Viewed against this backdrop, the U.S. has been incredibly irresponsible at these talks. Its negligence in finding real solutions to the climate crisis often borders on criminal," Johnston added.

(END) 
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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Occupy movement: Farmers

The revolution continues worldwide!

Farmers Join Occupy Wall Street, Calling for Food Justice

Posted 18 hours ago on Dec. 2, 2011, 6:21 p.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
WalmartAs Wall Street’s corrupt influence on the economy has grown, the corporate ownership of our food system has hurt the health and livelihood’s of some of our most vulnerable communities. This Sunday, December 4th food justice activists and occupiers will be traveling from as far as Colorado, Iowa, Maine and Upstate New York to join together for the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH.Through a day of dialogue, musical performances, and a march, farmers and their urban allies working for food justice in their communities will form alliances to fight and expose corporate control of the food supply.
Events throughout the day will call and inspire participants to fight against the corporate manipulation of the agriculture system. An industry that is responsible for using chemical toxins tied to soaring obesity rates, heart disease and diabetes and limiting access to affordable, wholesome food to the country’s poorest citizens.
The event will kick off at 2pm at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardenwith a musical performance followed by remarks from food justice activists and occupiers. They will share their stories and listen to their peers as they highlight the role of urban-rural solidarity in building a sustainable food system as well as challenges of family-scale farmers in a culture of corporate dominance.
At 4pm, musicians will be among those leading the Farmers’ March in a colorful parade from La Plaza to Zuccotti Park/Liberty Plaza, the site of a Solidarity Circle at 5pm. Stories of struggle, triumph and ruminations about the role OWS might assume in the food justice movement will help form the circle. The circle will close with a Seed Exchange.
Participants are encouraged to express their dissent creatively, donning fruits hats, wearing burlap sacks, carrying brightly colored signs and moving in time to the beat of the drums.
Please join us, farmers, ranchers, farm workers, urban gardeners, foodies and supporters of all kinds in the Occupy Wall Street FARMERS’ MARCH.
Speakers will include:
George Na ylor - Iowa farmer and president of the National Family Farm Coalition. Karen Washington - Founder of City Farms Market and board member at NYC based organization Just Food. Jim Gerritsen - Maine based farmer who was named one of 20 world visionaries by Utne Reader in 2011 and is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against Monsanto.
Severine von Tscharner - Food advocate and producer of the film “Green Horns”, profiling young farmer entrepreneurs. Jim Goodman - Wisconson Farmer, organizer of the tractorcade to Madison to speak out against Governer Walker’s union legislation. Jalal Sabur - Founding member of the Freedom Food Alliance and advocate working on the alliance of black urban communities with black rural farmers. Mike Callicrate - Colorado cattle rancher, entrepreneur and rural advocate . Andrew Faust - World renowned permaculture expert and educator.

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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Occupy movement

Camps Are Cleared, but ‘99 Percent’ Still Occupies the Lexicon

Ted Soqui for The New York Times
A protester in Los Angeles, where the police cleared a park near City Hall early Wednesday.
By 
Published: November 30, 2011
Most of the biggest Occupy Wall Street camps are gone. But their slogan still stands.

Send Us Your ‘99 Percent’ Photos

The slogan “99 percent” has become a part of the cultural lexicon. Have you seen examples? Send us pictures of signs, slogans, advertisements, billboards and other instances that mention the 99 percent (or the 1 percent).

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Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
The slogan was projected on a New York building in November.
Whatever the long-term effects of the Occupy movement, protesters have succeeded in implanting “We are the 99 percent,” referring to the vast majority of Americans (and its implied opposite, “You are the one percent” referring to the tiny proportion of Americans with a vastly disproportionate share of wealth), into the cultural and political lexicon.
First chanted and blogged about in mid-September in New York, the slogan become a national shorthand for the income disparity. Easily grasped in its simplicity and Twitter-friendly in its brevity, the slogan has practically dared listeners to pick a side.
“We are getting nothing,” read the Tumblr blog “We Are the 99 Percent” that helped popularize the percentages, “while the other one percent is getting everything.”
Within weeks of the first encampment in Zuccotti Park in New York, politicians seized on the phrase. Democrats in Congress began to invoke the “99 percent” to press for passage of President Obama’s jobs act — but also to pursue action on mine safety, Internet access rules and voter identification laws, among others. Republicans pushed back, accusing protesters and their supporters of class warfare; Newt Gingrich this week called the “concept of the 99 and the one” both divisive and “un-American.”
Perhaps most important for the movement, there was a sevenfold increase inGoogle searches for the term “99 percent” between September and October and a spike in news stories about income inequality throughout the fall, heaping attention on the issues raised by activists.
“The ‘99 percent,’ and the ‘one percent,’ too, are part of our vocabulary now,” said Judith Stein, a professor of history at the City University of New York.
Soon there were income calculators (“What Percent Are You?” asked The Wall Street Journal), music playlists (an album of Woody Guthrie covers, promoted as a “soundtrack for the 99 percent”) and cheap lawn signs. And, inevitably, there were ads: a storefront near Union Square peddles “Gifts for the 99 percent.” A trailer for a Showtime television series about management consultants, “House of Lies,” describes the lead characters as “the one percent sticking it to the one percent.” A Craigslist ad for a three-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn has the come-on “Live Like the One Percent!” (in this case, in Boerum Hill).
These days, the language of the Occupy movement is being reappropriated in new ways seemingly every day. CBS ran a radio spot last that invited viewers to “occupy your couch.” On Thanksgiving, people joked online about occupying the dinner table. Now, on Facebook, holiday revelers are inviting friends to “one percent parties.”
Slogans have emerged from American protest movements, successful and otherwise, throughout history. The American Revolution furnished the world with “Give me liberty or give me death” and the still-popular “No taxation without representation.” The equal rights movement in the 1960s used the phrase “59 cents” to point out the income disparities between women and men. The civil rights movement embraced the song “We Shall Overcome” as a slogan. During the Vietnam War, protesters called on politicians to “Bring ’em Home” and “Stop the Draft.” More recently, supporters of Mr. Obama shouted “Yes, we can.”
The idea behind the 99 percent catchphrase has its roots in a decade’s worth of reporting about the income gap between the richest Americans and the rest, and more directly in May in a Vanity Fair column by the liberal economist Joseph E. Stiglitz titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” The slogan that resulted in September identified both a target, the “one percent,” and a theoretical constituency, everyone else.
Rhetorically, “it was really clever,” said David S. Meyer, a University of California, Irvine, professor who studies social movements. “Deciding whom to blame is a key task of all politics,” he wrote in his blog about the phrase.
“It’s something that kind of puts your opponents on the defensive,” he said in an interview.
In some cases even politicians who have been put on the defensive by the movement have resorted to the same rhetoric. When Philadelphia’s mayor, Michael A. Nutter, announced last week that the protesters there had to make way for a construction project, he emphasized that the project would be “built by the 99 percent, for the 99 percent.”
Xeni Jardin, the editor of the influential blog Boing Boing, which has featured the protests every day since they began, praised the slogan for capturing “a mounting sense of unfairness in America” and distilling it “into something very brief.”
But she also called it “fundamentally unfair” because within the so-called 99 percent that have slept at occupations across the country, there are many well-to-do college students but just as many, if not more, homeless individuals. “There are many shades of gray,” she said.
But attempts to mock or subvert the slogan seem not to have stuck; as Ms. Jardin put it, “How do you make fun of numbers?” A Tumblr blog that was set up to compete with “We Are the 99 Percent,” called “We Are the 53%,” (referring to the estimated percentage of Americans who pay federal income taxes) has not been updated for two weeks.
Ms. Stein at CUNY believes that the 99 percent rallying cry will have limited effect in the future. “I don’t think a good slogan is enough to revivify a movement or our politics,” she said.
But Mr. Meyer said the catchphrase is a useful one in that it gives continuity and coherence to a movement that is losing some of its camps in major cities across the country. “Occupy takes its name from the occupation,” he said. “If Occupy continues without occupations, what provides continuity with those people in Zuccotti Park? The slogan.”
The slogan was chanted again early on Wednesday morning in Los Angeles and Philadelphia as police there cleared out the Occupy campsites in each city. As they lost physical ground for their local movements, protesters told each other online, “You can’t evict an idea.”

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