March for Justice 2012: Always in Memory of Wally Black Elk and Ron Hard Heart
Date: June 9th, 2012 at 12 pm
Location: Billy Mills Hall, Pine Ridge, SD
A Day of Action against White Clay, NE
White Clay, Nebraska is an unincorporated village with a population of 14 people in northwest Nebraska. The town sits on the border of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota (also known as the Oglala Sioux Tribe), only 200 feet from the official reservation border and less than 3 miles from the center of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the largest town on the reservation. On June 9th, the fight against White Clay continues.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Sale and possession of alcoholic beverages on the Pine Ridge is prohibited under tribal law. Except for a brief experiment with on-reservation liquor sales in the early 1970s, this prohibition has been in effect since the reservation lands were created. White Clay has four off-sale beer stores licensed by the State of Nebraska which sell the equivalent of 4.5 million 12-ounce cans of beer annually (12,500 cans per day), mostly to the Oglalas living on Pine Ridge. These retailers routinely violate Nebraska liquor law by selling beer to minors and intoxicated persons, knowingly selling to bootleggers who resell the beer on the reservation, permitting on-premise consumption of beer in violation of restrictions placed on off-sale-only licenses, and exchanging beer for sexual favors.
Many people have died in the streets due to exposure, as the state of Nebraska fails to address the breaches of state law and countless deaths as a result of dealers in White Clay. As long as the liquor stores in White Clay remain in business, the genocide of the Oglala Lakota people will continue.
Deep Green Resistance Great Plains and other Deep Green Resistances organizers across the country are coordinating support for the Oglala Lakota activists organizing the action against the liquor peddlers in White Clay. We stand with the people of Pine Ridge and the organizers of this action against the continuation of genocide. Stand with us as we send the message: “No more liquor in White Clay!”
Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.
Radio Against Global Ecocide
Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.
I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.
Off the top of the show was a little piece of Dr. Helen Caldicott talking to people in California about nuclear plants on fault lines asking them to have courage. We continue with reading from the book Deep Green Resistance read by DGR Cadres and volunteers. Today’s show is about choices and those choices that will ultimately show our true morality.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Up coming events:
In Solidarity with Pine Ridge – DGR Great Plains Announces Action at White Clay, NE
“ Radical groups have their own particular pitfalls. The first is in dealing with hierarchy, both conceptually and practically. The rejection of authority is another hallmark of adolescence, and this knee-jerk reactivity filters into many political groups. All hierarchy is a tool of the Man, the patriarchy, the Nazis. This approach leads to an insistence on consensus at any cost and often a constant meta-discussion of group power dynamics. It also unleashes “critiques” of anyone who achieves public acclaim or leadership status. These critiques are usually nothing more than jealousy camouflaged by political righteousness. “Bourgeois” is a perennial favorite, as well as whatever flavor of “sell-out” matches the group’s criteria. It’s often accompanied by a hyper-analysis of the victim’s language use or personal lifestyle choices. There is a reason that the phrase “politically correct” was invented on the left.
There’s a name for this trashing. As noted, Florynce Kennedy called it “horizontal hostility.” And if it feels like junior high school by another name, that’s because it is. It can reach a feeding frenzy of ugly gossip and character assassination. In more militant groups, it may take the form of paranoid accusations. In the worst instances of the groups that encourage macho posturing, it ends with men shooting each other. Ultimately, it’s caused by fighting horizontally rather than vertically. If the only thing we can change is ourselves or if the best tactics for social change are lifestyle choices, then, indeed, examining and critiquing the minutiae of people’s personal lives will be cast as righteous activity. And if you’re not going to fight the people in power, the only people left to fight are each other. Writes Denise Thompson:
“Horizontal hostility can involve bullying into submission someone who is no more privileged in the hierarchy of male supremacist social relations than the bully herself. It can involve attempts to destroy the good reputation of someone who has no more access to the upper levels of power than the one who is spreading the scandal. It can involve holding someone responsible for one’s own oppression, even though she too is oppressed. It can involve envious demands that another woman stop using her own abilities, because the success of someone no better placed than you yourself ‘makes’ you feel inadequate and worthless. Or it can involve attempts to silence criticism by attacking the one perceived to be doing the criticising. In general terms, it involves misperceptions of the source of domination, locating it with women who are not behaving oppressively.”
This behavior leaves friendships, activist circles, and movements in shreds. The people subject to attack are often traumatized until they permanently withdraw. The bystanders may find the culture so unpleasant and even abusive that they leave as well. And many of the worst aggressors burn out on their own adrenaline, to drop out of the movement and into mainstream lives. In military conflicts, more soldiers may be killed by “friendly fire” than the enemy, an apt parallel to how radical groups often self-destruct.
To be viable, a serious movement needs a supportive culture. It takes time to witness the same behaviors coalescing into the destructive patterns that repeat across radical movements, to name them, and learn to stop them. Successful cultures of resistance are able to develop healthy norms of behavior and corresponding processes to handle conflict. But a youth culture by definition doesn’t have that cache of experience, and it never will.”
Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.
Radio Against Global Ecocide
Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.
I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.
Today’s Show is a little different. DGR cadres are reading their favourite excerpts from the Deep Green Resistance written by Aric McBay, Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen mixed with resistance inspiring music. I will let the words and music do the talking this show enjoy.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Deep Green Resistance Presents A Culture of Resistance East Coast Roadshow
Building a culture of resistance from the grassroots up
Deep Green Resistance Presents A Culture of Resistance East Coast Roadshow
A Culture of Resistance Roadshow may be coming to a city near you! A traveling group of activists from the environmental and social justice organization Deep Green Resistance will be touring the Southeast this June. The speakers will be advocating a new strategy for resistance to the current political and social structures that are destroying the natural world.
DGR recognizes that the current structure of society–industrial civilization–is fundamentally unsustainable, and that no degree of small scale remedial actions will stop the systematic destruction of the natural world.
The Roadshow workshop will cover the inability of current efforts to truly address the fundamental contradictions of our modern struggles, and present concrete steps to an equitable, thriving future.
June 16- Miami, FL
June 18- Gainesville, FL
June 22- Asheville, NC
June 23- Chapel Hill, NC
June 25- Knoxville, TN
June 27- Richmond, VA
June 30- Washington DC
Stay Tuned for More Details!
This workshop is intended as a practical guide to effective activism, and will leave attendees feeling empowered to shift the course of history at this most critical juncture. There will be music, art, and informative presentations that will give activists the tools they need to make a difference in this struggle.
And a special hello to all those working to stop Ecocide!
Polly Higgins grew up near Loch Lomond on the west coast of Scotland and spent her childhood holidays in the Highlands. Her time with the Austrian artist and ecologist Hundertwasser in the late 1980’s taught her that nature is not an inert thing but a community of living beings; her years spent inside London courts representing individuals and corporations on discrimination cases brought her to the conclusion that the planet was also being treated unfairly, in particular by damaging corporate activity – but that nothing was being done to stop the abuse
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Remapping the world to understand what is ecocide and who the ecological debtors are demonstrates the enormous extent of the destruction already taking place. Here is a sample selection of 10 examples of ecocidal damage, destruction or loss taking place today. Please feel free to add your own suggestions below.
1. Alberta Tar Sands
Referred to as the most damaging project on the planet, it ranks top of the list. Known as ‘dirty oil’ due to it’s excessively damaging outcomes, if proposed expansion proceeds, tar sand extraction will result in the loss of vast tracts of boreal forest and muskeg peat bogs of a territory the size of England. Read more at Tar Sands Network.
2. The North Pacific Gyre
An island of garbage: A swirling island of 100m tonnes of plastic bits and bottle tops, spins clockwise from Hawaii to Japan. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, it is estimated to be the size of Texas.
3. The Niger Delta
An area the size of Ireland is scarred by polluted rivers, air and land due to oil extraction. Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest oil-producing nation, but with some of the worst records for ecosystem destruction and devastation. Between 1976 and 1998, over 2.5 million barrels of oil have been spilt into the Delta environment (Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was only a mere 257,000 barrels). Fifty years of oil extraction in the Niger delta has left its deep scars. Oil companies operated here for decades with very little environmental supervision and the delta, notoriously beset by conflict and poverty, has been steadily pushed towards ecological disaster. Villagers struggle to live off land and water poisoned by years of oil spills, and crops fail under the acid rain caused by gas flares.
4. The Dongria Kondh
The ’sacred’ Niyamgiri mountain (Niyamgiri means ‘The Mountains of Law’) in India is threatened with imminent ecocide if Vedanta Resources, a British company, proceeds with it’s plans to dig an open-pit bauxite mine. The mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. Vedanta denies allegations that the planned mine would violate the rights of thousands of people.
5. Lusi mud volcano, Indonesia
Lusi started to erupt in East Java, Indonesia, on May 29th 2006. It has displaced around 30,000 people from their homes and swamped 12 villages. At a recent conference, scientists voted that gas exploration well, Banjar-Panji-1, which was being drilled by oil and gas company called Lapindo Brantas, was the cause. Lusi is still spewing huge volumes of boiling mud over the surrounding area.
6. Bingham Canyon copper mine
This mine has been in production since 1906, so far stretching over an area 0.75 miles (1.2 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres (7.7 km²). It has the dubious distinction of being named the world’s largest man-made excavation.
7. Toxic dumping by Chevron Texaco in Ecuador
Thousands of residents near the company’s former oil fields, alleges Texaco Chevron, dumped roughly 18.5 billion gallons of oil-laden water into unlined pits, estuaries and rivers during its operations in Ecuador’s Oriente between 1971 and 1992. Now, with Ecuador’s recent Bill of Nature’s Right’s which has changed the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity, justice may just be seen to be done for people and planet. See: Chevrontoxico
8. Tianying, Anhui Province, China
Lead smelters and processing plants in the Tianying area and heavy metals from battery recycling factories pollute the atmosphere and environment on a daily basis. 140,000 people in the Tianying area are affected, though the spread of heavy metals is distributed throughout Anhui province. Voted one of the dirty 30 by the Blacksmith Institute. See: worstpolluted.org
9. The Amazon
The one everyone knows about: razing of the Amazonian Rainforest, a key stabiliser of the global climate system, by logging, mining, crop planting and beef production. Currently resulting in destruction, damage and loss of a territory the size of France. Almost 60% of the region’s forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030
10. Selling off British Forests
The government intends to sell off our publicly owned forests to private organisations and foreign companies and are proposing a tailor made bill that will allow them to do so.
Our forests are our nation’s most important natural treasure and we are fundamentally opposed to selling our forests to the highest bidder. Once they are sold, they are gone forever. Read more and join the campaign at Save our Forests.
And a special hello to all those building Communities of Resistance.
This is a special Fertile Ground show. Some of the Fertile Ground people talk about community what is means to them and some ways it may look.
Cameron, Dillon and Max share their thoughts about community and its importance.
“…these are ways of life. If activism and social change are not part of the general space you live in and the air you breathe I don’t think you are going to make much change.” - Cameron
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
a discussion with radical writer and environmentalist Derrick Jensen
interview by Andrea Hiott
Available languages: English
The United States of America was once “the Saudi Arabia of the world” when it came to oil production: in other words, the majority of the world once purchased its oil from the States. Now those vast resources have been depleted. Many other places around the world have also peaked. In Baku, Azerbaijan, miles of machine carcasses clutter the landscape – oil from here once powered the Allies (especially the Russians) towards defeating Germany in World War Two, and now the well is dry. Less than sixty years ago, the British found oil in the North Sea. According to Colin Campbell, an oil geologist and consultant to the world’s top oil companies, Britain will become a net importer of oil within the year, and its oil will be used up by 2020.Read the full article here
Global capitalism is the economic system that dominates the planet. It runs on the exploitation of human labor to turn the living world into dead commodities, for the profit of a few. The small, powerful minority who own the means of production enforce their dominance through their control over political and cultural institutions, and their monopoly on force. They create a situation of dependency – forcing us to work for them to obtain basic needs like food and shelter. They annihilate those who resist or refuse to assimilate.
This system values profit over life itself. It has been built on land theft and destruction, genocide, slavery, deforestation and imperialist wars. It commits numberless atrocities as a matter of routine daily functioning. It kills 2.4 million children worldwide under age 5 each year by withholding adequate nutrition. It kills 100,000 people annually in the US by denying decent health care. More than 54% of the US discretionary budget is spent on perpetrating imperialist aggression, and recent casualties include more than a million civilians in Iraq, and more than 46,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Aside from outright murder, the economic and psychological violence wrought upon the world’s inhabitants is so extensive and comprehensive that it’s effectively all-encompassing.
The system is killing the entire planet, the basis for all life. It’s converted 98% of old growth forests into lumber. 80% of rivers worldwide no longer support life. 94% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Phytoplankton, the tiny plants that produce half of the oxygen we breathe, have declined by 40% since 1950. 120 species per day become extinct.
Industries produce 400 million tons of hazardous waste every year. Recently, the water in 89% of US cities tested has been found to contain the carcinogen hexavalent chromium. To feed capitalism’s insatiable need for economic expansion, increasingly dangerous methods of energy extraction are being perpetrated: deep sea drilling, oil extraction from tar sands, fracking. No matter the consequences, no matter what the majority of people may want, those in power insist on (and enforce) their non-negotiable right to poison the land, water and air in pursuit of maximum profit. Read the full article here
I thought it fitting to take my interview with Mike Hudema, an outspoken opponent of the tar sands, and intertwine it with Resident Anti Hero’s Your a Fucking Terrorist, pointing out in the process that if one is open minded and willing to speak truth, then you are likely to be labeled a Terrorist, especially in Alberta.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
OMG! This is outrageous! I can’t believe this is taking place in a free country! This must be a mistake.
The FBI has always done this. Remember COINTELPRO? Spying on MLK? Nothing will ever change.
For those who have never heard about the Green Scare, it is tempting to view recent events as a News of the Weird story: an anomaly wholly separate and distinct from any broader political climate. Viewing government conduct in this way makes it easier to laugh at Keystone Kops antics (which is healthy) and believe government statements that these examples are isolated (which is not). Read the rest to the article here.
The Globalization of Aboriginal Opposition to the Alberta Tar Sands
In 2009, indigenous peoples throughout the world called for a global mobilisation ‘in defence of mother earth’ on October 12, reclaiming the day that used to be imposed as ‘Columbus Day’. Responding to this call, and the demand for a day of action for ‘system change, not climate change’ issued by the global movements gathered in Copenhagen last year, Climate Justice Action is proposing a day of direct action for climate justice on October 12, 2010.
CBFA – Canadian Betrayed Forest Action
Here are some cartoons you can send to the signatories to the CBFA with your thoughts about the betrayal of the boreal forest. You can use this note as a possible starting point for ideas or send it in full
And a special hello to all those working to and returning Indigenous lands back to the people.
Today we continue our conversation about colonianlism with Waziyatawin, Dakato activist, author and feminist.
She also works as the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair and Associate Professor in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria
Her books include -For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook; In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century; and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And a special hello to all those fighting the systemic racism of civilization everyday.
Today on the show Waziyatawin, Dakato activist, author and feminist.
She also works as the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair and Associate Professor in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria
Her books include -For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook; In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century; and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.
This is a great thought provoking discussion so we’ll get right to it.
I have divided our talk into two parts this being the first.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Well Fed White People – Kathleen Yearwood
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And special hello to all those who love their land base.
Today is the first of my interviews with non-humans. My first interview is with river near my place, kisiskāciwani-sīpiy
I used to believe I was fairly good at being in touch with nature. When I walk though the forest I would walk around spider webs, careful not to step on mushrooms. Even in town I would step over ants on the sidewalk, which is tricky because ants are not very linear. I talk with chickadees, crows, and magpies; any bird that will hang around for a chat. I stop walking so a squirrel will not see me and cross the road safely. I talk with plants and yes even hugged a few trees which is a very calming feeling.
I was not until did the interview with kisiskāciwani-sīpiy that I realized that really much of my relationship the real world was, well, less than real. My connection with the kisiskāciwani-sīpiy was one of the most emotional experiences of my life.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
It has been very hard for me to figure out how I going to present this at the same time I believe it is important that I do.
As I was sat down (I slipped and fell in a sitting position so I stayed where I was) to do my interview with the river and record the sound it was making it become obvious, as it would to anyone who sits by a river, that a river is much more then water running over rocks. It is everything the lives in and around it. It is the beings that come in contact with no matter how briefly. I will play Derrick Jensen’s piece Pretend you are a River at the end of this as it is one of the best pieces I have every read and heard on what it is to be a river. Here is the story the river told me. The story was told to me through imagery and emotion.
The kisiskāciwani-sīpiy was born with the raise of the mountains and was shaped through the ice age. Now it told me it is dying. The glaciers that give it life are fading away.
I was shown images of a time when the forest and prairie crowded against the river when it had friends to talk with, not the strange yellow or green aliens of today.
Then it all changed.
Imagine you are being poisoned. Imagine that the life blood is being drain from you so the poison becomes stronger. Imagine that you are forced to pass this poison on to all your friends and those who live with you. Imagine you are forced to give this poison to everyone you meet one your path. Imagine that with very fibre of your soul you do not want do to this. You scream out for help but those who listen are gone. And the poison keeps coming.
I saw the death of kisiskāciwani-sīpiy friends, death of those who listened. At times the there was more blood then water, then the oldest of friends fell and soon came the strange and crazy ones.
During this time I cried as the river was crying. It seemed to becoming from a depth I have not been to before. I choked and gasped as if I was trying to rid myself of the poisons within me. At times I just writhed in pain.
Afterwards I lay there stunned by the emotions I had just witnessed. I felt as if I had just an inkling of what it must be like to be tortured or subjected to the worst concentration camp conditions.
I thought also that we who live in the dominant culture really have no idea what its doing to the world, to the living earth for the sake of comfort and ease of life. And I was going to say “those who are supposedly fighting for kisiskāciwani-sīpiy and other rivers really understood the pain the river are in would be working that much harder to protect them” but I am not sure for I have seen very little willingness on the part environmentalist to give up their comfort for any of the living world.
I also start to understand what it is to be alive in the world to feel connected to the place I live. I wonder if I came anywhere close to the connection listener and the river had. I will make every effort to does so.
After my talk with kisiskāciwani-sīpiy I have come to realize that we are meant to drink living water. The water that come form pipes is not longer living and is full of its own unknown concoctions. The problem is that the living water is now poison and we cannot drink it. Tap water is zombie water, zombie water for zombies.
We need desperately to heal the rivers, heal ourselves. We need a resistance that will make it so.
And a special Hello goes out to all those who believe there is a living world more important then the “market”.
This week we start our series on Colonialism, which in a lot of ways is corporatism today, too bad the ENGO’s that signed the CBFA did not and do not understand that. It is has been around for a long time and as any person of so called “third world” will tell you, it is more and more blatant everyday. Even Europe is being recolonialized by GM Foods, designer crops and unfair financial practices. Remember, unfair financial practices was the major reason for the American Revolution. Least so they say.
I have included on the site an excellent piece on Colonialism by Waziyatawin Below and she will be our guest on part 2 of Colonialism is Alive and Well.
On today’s show to my great pleasure we have Melina Luboucan-Massimo. She is a Lubicon Cree woman, Indigenous rights activist and Tar Sands activist. She points that it has been Indigenous people that have borne the real weight of environmental protection in North and South America. For me it time that this is stopped. It is time that people who benefit from stolen indigenous land stand up and put themselves between the bulldozers, guns, corporate theft of traditional territories and Indigenous people. It is important to remember this quote as well;
“If you have come to help me you can go home. But if you see my struggle as part of your own survival, then perhaps we can work together.” Australian Aborigine Woman
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
If you would like to learn more about and support the Lubicon Cree here are some good websites
Colonialism on the Ground [pdf version] by Waziyatawin
At one time our ancestors would have had difficulty imagining living in a state of unfreedom. Now we have difficulty imagining living in a state of freedom. This is perhaps the most profound impact of colonialism in our lives. It reveals a limitation in thinking so severe that it prevents us from reclaiming our inherent rights as Indigenous Peoples of this land, even in our dreams.
Colonialism is the massive fog that has clouded our imaginations regarding who we could be, excised our memories of who we once were, and numbed our understanding of our current existence. Colonialism is the force that disallows us from recognizing its confines while at the same time limiting our vision of possibilities. Colonialism is the farce that compels us to feel gratitude for small concessions while our fundamental freedoms are denied. Colonialism has set the parameters of our imaginations to constrain our vision of what is possible.
To be sure, the brand of colonialism in the United States today differs from the brands of earlier times when imperial forces from Europe established colonies in the “New World” as a means of expanding the wealth and power of their nations while also battling with competing imperial nations over pieces of the global pie. Thus, in the United States American schools teach our children that the “colonial era” ended when the United States gained its freedom from Great Britain. However, this denial of itself is simply one of colonialism’s myths. This denial is so extreme that even today the United States government insists on the language of “possessions” rather than “colonies” to identify its holdings outside the contiguous land base it claims in North America, despite the fact that many of them fit classic definitions of colonies precisely because they have not been absorbed into the state. But, the interest in domination and control over territories was established even before the entity of the United States was born. As American colonies gained their independence from their Mother Country, they sought to further expand their wealth and influence through the continuing invasion and acquisition of other Peoples’ lands and resources and the subjugation of the Original Peoples. The shedding of the constraints of their Mother Country simply facilitated and hastened that project. The United States soundly expanded its empire and is now so deeply entrenched in its colonial acquisitions that to anyone but the most conscientious observer, those roots have been lost in obscurity.
Everything that’s wrong with this culture is in the story now pouring out of a broken oil rig 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. I don’t mean story as in fictitious. I mean it as a narrative, the account of successive events that builds into a history. That history is now washing up on the shore as oil-drenched corpses; nothing more than a quick, bracing glance is needed to know how those birds suffered. It’s also a history that’s waiting to turn cells toward the fierce hunger of cancer, settling into the lungs of children, erupting into blisters on the skin “so deep they’re leaving scars.”
We could find our beginning point, our once upon a time, in the first written story of this culture, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which chronicled the deforestation of Mesopotamia. The story hasn’t changed in four thousand years — it’s just quickened with the accelerant of fossil fuel. The pattern is basic to civilization, a feedback loop of overshoot, militarization, slavery, and biotic devastation, a loop that has tightened into a noose. That noose is planet-wide, encircling the earth in a siege beyond the wildest dreams of ambitious Caesars of the past. Nothing is safe, not the South Pole, not the strata 30,000 feet below the earth’s surface, not even the moon, which the power-mad had to “punch” last year. Ownership and entitlement have distilled into a sense of control so pure — and so rancid — that life itself is now being ransomed to the demands of the sociopaths at the top of a very steep, very brutal pyramid.
Where do we stand in that pyramid? Not where we were born — because anyone reading this is one of the globally wealthy — but where do we stand? That’s the question, baring the noblest values of which humans are capable: courage, moral agency, the loyalty that can slow-bloom into solidarity. Are we willing to face how corporations, on the steroids of fossil fuel, have gutted our democracy, our communities, our planet? That insight doesn’t require much intellectually, but it does require courage.
More great stuff from SubMedia TV and the END:CIV project
Some Responses to the Despair question
“I don’t let despair stop me. It’s there, like gravity, or chronic pain, but I refuse to let it overwhelm me. I can’t let it win, because then power wins. That is what people who fight for justice have always been up against. I use their existence as inspiration. I also find great joy in being alive, and I find plenty of moments of grace that keep me sane and calm, even joyful. Today, a fledgling sat on my porch railing, soliciting food from her parent, right below the birdfeeder. Knowing that I helped make that tiny life, those perfect wings and that pounding heart, possible made me profoundly happy. The world is being killed and the world is still a miracle. We can’t give up.” -L
___
“Here’s my theory: When Bush II was president, we were outraged at the wars, abuse of the environment, torture, indefinite detention, etc. Then when Obama continues all of this, people realize that either nothing is real or nothing matters.
Nothing is real, meaning for instance, that if all the best scientists say global warming is real and an incredible danger, yet nothing is done about it. Are these scientists making it all up, is it real?
The newspapers glorify war, billboards show crying women hugging returning, happy soldiers. Yet we know there are thousands of suicides, thousands of Iraqi and Afghanistan women who no longer can hug their returning soldiers, thousands of brain injured requiring years of assisted living, at the young age of 23 or 24, atrocious destruction of the environment in war. Are the newspapers making it all up? Is it really true that we are winning the war in Iraq, when hundreds of Iraqis are still being killed and wounded monthly?
So, obviously torture, assassinations, and other killing is ok, even from an unmanned drone. Life is worth nothing, nothing matters. From this nothingness comes our despair. And everyone is terrified.
Maybe, as I get more desperate, I get more honest. I no longer tell people I am fine, when they ask me, How are you? I sit with my feelings longer and feel the tears and fears. I try to listen to the ‘still, small song inside’ more. So, in these ways, despair has motivated me. And I started back w/ the 2 hour walks.
I think lots of times though, I deal w/ despair with catatonia. Withdraw from pain and feel lost. Then something seems to save me, my cat wants to play, I hear the little wren’s sweet voice outside, a friend calls, I read Robert’s article, I remember Marianne Williamson’s quote,”as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others”, I smoke a cigarette, I write a response to something I read on the internet. I remember that we all just want to be loved, and I play music. And I remember that today might be my last day. I start to care again.” -L
___
“Since the 1980s, my life’s main focus has been to work against imperialism
and exploitation. Much of that time was spent as a communist organizer;
the rest has been as a political cartoonist. When the US war on Iraq
started in 2003, I went through a period of deep despair for nine months.
I couldn’t believe or accept that the largest protests in the history of
the world had failed to stop the war. I lost hope that change was
possible. It seemed to me that we, the majority of people, were helpless,
completely at the mercy of ruthless exploiters and mass murderers.
I had already long known that the system was exploitative by nature, but
this war, for me, meant the falling away of any illusion or pretense that
those in power were going to be restrained in the slightest bit by
negative public opinion or pressure. They simply didn’t care any more what
anyone thought of them or wanted.
Once the war started, I gave up. I cried a lot. I stopped drawing
cartoons. I asked anyone who would listen how they could go on in the face
of this madness, what could possibly give their lives meaning now that we
had been utterly defeated?
One day I happened to be visiting a community garden with a friend, and I
asked the person who had organized it, “What keeps you going with this
garden when we all know the world is being killed?” He answered, “We’re
animals who evolved to have close relationships with plants. I’m just
doing what’s in my nature.”
I sat in the sun and thought about that, and felt my despair melt away.
His answer didn’t change the grim reality of our situation, but it did
make me think about human nature and how we respond to oppression. Our
nature as living beings is to resist being harmed and to fight for life. I
decided I was going to live in accordance with my nature as a human
animal, and to rejoin the fight to save our planet and destroy the
exploiters. I haven’t wavered since.” -S
___
“Despair has never acted as a source of motivation for me. If anything, personally, despair is an emotion I typically repress because of the overwhelming catastrophes behind it, supporting it. When I allow the entire scope of what is happening in the world into my immediate perception of the world, I feel that I vanish as an individual and am being washed away by some enormous tsunami-like force.
Although I don’t stand in despair at most moments, I can’t stress enough the importance of experiencing that grief at some point in your life. Despair — and the crises supporting it — must be integrated into the minds of peoples, shaping their perception of the world around them. Once you’ve established your own feelings on what you need to do, on what you know to be “right”, I believe you have the right (and in my case, the necessity) to push that despair out of your immediate experience. What motivates me instead is the simple, ethical response to the state of the world that I’ve come, through despair, to internalize.” -C
