The following press release was issued by the O'odham Solidarity Project:
CALL TO ACTION BY THE TOHONO O'ODHAM INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
AGAINST THE US-MEXICO BORDER WALL
The Traditional Tohono O'odham Indigenous People Demand a Halt to the
Construction of
the US-Mexico Border Wall and the Destruction of Indigenous Nations.
The Tohono O'odham Nation has the second largest reservation recognized by
the United States,
with territory and members on both sides of the US-Mexico political boundary
in the states of
Arizona, US and Sonora, Mexico. As original people of the territory, the
Tohono O'odham have
lived on and cared for that land long before such a boundary even existed;
before there was a US
or a Mexico. Now, however, the construction of the border wall along the
entire US - Mexican
border is splitting border communities and Indigenous nations alike,
including the Tohono
O'odham.
The construction of this wall will destroy the Tohono O'odham way of life
(their traditions and
religious practices), not to mention the many rights sworn to the O'odham
people that are being
violated. Tohono O'odham elders and traditionalists maintain their legacy
through oral history,
conducting natural ceremonies that include offerings to the land and sea.
They also use many
plants and environmental resources of the region as a source of food and
medicine. But, many of
these sacred ceremonies take place in Mexico.
"This Wall and the construction of this Wall has destroyed our communities,
our burial sites, and
ancient O'odham routes throughout our lands. The entire International border
has divided and
displaced our people," says Ofelia Rivas, a representative of the
traditional Tohono O'odham in
Washington D.C. "The Wall is also severely affecting the animals. We now see
mountain lions
going into areas where people live because of the Wall."
The right of the O'odham to travel freely and safely via these traditional
routes in their territory
has previously been guaranteed under United States, Mexican, and
International Law. The US
government's American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 acknowledges
rights for the
O'odham people that the construction of the US-Mexico Border Wall directly
violates. By
restricting the mobility of the O'odham people, the Wall prevents the free
practice of their
religion and their cultural traditions. Further, rights granted by the
United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration of Human Rights for Indigenous
Peoples, and the
American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man are also being ignored
due to a waiver
issued by the US Department of Homeland Security. Under this document, the
President claims
the power to waive any and all environmental and Federal Indian laws in
order to build the Wall
in the name of national security.
The US-Mexican border policies and the Wall have also increased the military
presence within
the O'odham lands, further affecting their lives and communities.
"This Wall has militarized our entire lands," states Ofelia Rivas, "We, as
original people, are
now required to answer to United States armed forces as to our nationality
on our own lands."
Ofelia Rivas, herself, was once asked, at gunpoint, to produce
identification to establish her right
to be on lands that she was born on and her ancestors lived on since before
Columbus.
Ironically, the increase in militarization of the US-Mexican Border has
coincided with the rise of
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that went into effect in
1994. Supporters
at the time said NAFTA would decrease immigration and bring good paying jobs
to Mexico but
the exact opposite has happened.
"Many of the people crossing from Mexico into the United States are
indigenous people and
families," says Ofelia Rivas. "They tell me that under these free trade
agreements they can no
longer farm and make a living."
Under NAFTA it has become easier for commercial goods to cross the border
than people,
especially the Tohono O'odham. This is illustrated by a striking example
told by Mrs. Rivas:
"An O'odham elder and her daughter were interrogated and watched by United
States Border
Patrol guards as they collected traditional O'odham food in the desert."
Ofelia Rivas is in Washington, D.C. today with members of many different
Indigenous nations
and allies who have walked from San Francisco, California across the
continent to Washington,
D.C. This group calls their march "The People's Walk" not only for the
sovereignty of
Indigenous nations but also for the protection of sacred sites, plants, and
animals.
Thus, ordinary O'odham people and elders and their allies are issuing a call
to action against the
construction of the US-Mexico Border Wall. "As original peoples of these
lands," says Ofelia
Rivas, "we protest the violation of the thirty seven federal laws by the
April 1, 2008 Waiver by
Secretary Chertoff."
For More Information Contact:
O'odham VOICE Against the Wall and O'odham Rights Cultural and Environmental
Justice Coalition: Ofelia Rivas (520) 471-3398, uyarivas@hotmail.com,
http://www.tiamatpublications.com/odham_solidarity_project.html
The People's Walk: peoplejune13@yahoo.com
Earthpeoples: Rebecca Sommer: (718) 302-1949, www.earthpeoples.org
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7/10/08
Deaths en La Frontera reach 128
Six children, 35 women and 86 men, human beings who died in the Arizona Sonora desert
For Immediate Release
July 4, 2008
Contact: Kat Rodriguez, Derechos Humanos: 520.770.1373
Count for Recovered Bodies on the Arizona- Sonora Border Reaches 128
Arizona- The current number for bodies recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border for the fiscal year that began on October 1, 2006 through June 30, 2008 is 128, reports Coalición de Derechos Humanos. The data, which is compiled from medical examiner reports from Pima, Yuma, and Cochise counties, is an attempt to give a more accurate reflection of the human cost of brutal U.S. border and immigration policies.
These numbers include 86 men, 35 women, 6 children, including a miscarried fetus. While Border Patrol has proudly proclaimed that the slight decrease in recovered bodies is a result of militarization and deterrence strategies imposed on border communities, the more likely reason for the minimal decrease is the weather-cooler weather was seen all the way up through May. At the end of June 2007, there were 150 bodies recovered, while the current year is at 128. However, the number of recovered bodies for the month of June outpaced those of last year. "Despite the slight overall decline of bodies being recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border, the reality is that while there were 35 bodies recovered in June of 2007, 40 were recovered in the month of June this year" says Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos. "Historically, July has been the most brutal month, and we are dreading the count that the harsh temperatures will bring." Increasingly alarming are the high number of unidentified human remains recovered. Of the 35 female remains recovered, 21 are still unidentified, and 51 of the 86 males have yet to be identified. All in all, 72 of the 128 remains recovered are unidentified, and not enough of the remains of six of these individuals were recovered to even determine gender; this speaks to the anguish that family members suffer as they wait to hear of their loved ones, and the reality that some might never know what became of them. While the Border Patrol continues to applaud their efforts to control the border, men, women and children are pushed into more harsh, isolated areas, where humanitarian aid and detection is less likely. This is, in fact, an intentional strategy that has proven deadly as more than 5,000 men, women and children have died on the U.S.-México border. And through this, there is no evidence that these militarization efforts have done anything to affect the numbers of people crossing the border. "It is a natural, global phenomenon and human right to migrate" said Rodriguez. "Continuing with these deadly strategies that cost the lives of hardworking women and men while lining the pockets of corporations and military industrialists is leaving a shameful legacy." The complete list of recovered bodies is available on the Coalición de Derechos Humanos website: http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net. This information is available to anyone who requests it from us and is used by our organization to further raise awareness of the human rights crisis we are facing on our borders.
Coalición de Derechos Humanos
P.O. Box 1286 Tucson, AZ 85702
Tel: 520.770.1373 Fax: 520.770.7455 www.derechoshumanosaz.net
For Immediate Release
July 4, 2008
Contact: Kat Rodriguez, Derechos Humanos: 520.770.1373
Count for Recovered Bodies on the Arizona- Sonora Border Reaches 128
Arizona- The current number for bodies recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border for the fiscal year that began on October 1, 2006 through June 30, 2008 is 128, reports Coalición de Derechos Humanos. The data, which is compiled from medical examiner reports from Pima, Yuma, and Cochise counties, is an attempt to give a more accurate reflection of the human cost of brutal U.S. border and immigration policies.
These numbers include 86 men, 35 women, 6 children, including a miscarried fetus. While Border Patrol has proudly proclaimed that the slight decrease in recovered bodies is a result of militarization and deterrence strategies imposed on border communities, the more likely reason for the minimal decrease is the weather-cooler weather was seen all the way up through May. At the end of June 2007, there were 150 bodies recovered, while the current year is at 128. However, the number of recovered bodies for the month of June outpaced those of last year. "Despite the slight overall decline of bodies being recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border, the reality is that while there were 35 bodies recovered in June of 2007, 40 were recovered in the month of June this year" says Kat Rodriguez of Derechos Humanos. "Historically, July has been the most brutal month, and we are dreading the count that the harsh temperatures will bring." Increasingly alarming are the high number of unidentified human remains recovered. Of the 35 female remains recovered, 21 are still unidentified, and 51 of the 86 males have yet to be identified. All in all, 72 of the 128 remains recovered are unidentified, and not enough of the remains of six of these individuals were recovered to even determine gender; this speaks to the anguish that family members suffer as they wait to hear of their loved ones, and the reality that some might never know what became of them. While the Border Patrol continues to applaud their efforts to control the border, men, women and children are pushed into more harsh, isolated areas, where humanitarian aid and detection is less likely. This is, in fact, an intentional strategy that has proven deadly as more than 5,000 men, women and children have died on the U.S.-México border. And through this, there is no evidence that these militarization efforts have done anything to affect the numbers of people crossing the border. "It is a natural, global phenomenon and human right to migrate" said Rodriguez. "Continuing with these deadly strategies that cost the lives of hardworking women and men while lining the pockets of corporations and military industrialists is leaving a shameful legacy." The complete list of recovered bodies is available on the Coalición de Derechos Humanos website: http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net. This information is available to anyone who requests it from us and is used by our organization to further raise awareness of the human rights crisis we are facing on our borders.
Coalición de Derechos Humanos
P.O. Box 1286 Tucson, AZ 85702
Tel: 520.770.1373 Fax: 520.770.7455 www.derechoshumanosaz.net
End To Torture Worldwide
COLUMN OF THE AMERICAS
JUNE 24, 2008
BY ROBERTO DR. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
TORTURE AND HOODED JUSTICE
In any language, torture is a four-letter word. While the repugnant
practice is primarily associated with the Inquisition and the darkest
chapters of human history, as a result of the release of hundreds of
pages of declassified memos, torture will forever in history also now
be associated with American President Bush.
Contrary to his July 26, 2003 insistence – that the United States does
not torture – as a result of those memos, we have learned that torture
and the abuse of prisoners have had the U.S. presidential seal of
approval since 2001. Contrary to all the documented evidence, this is
also a president who claims he did not lead the nation into war under
false pretenses.
On both the topic of torture and illegal wars, this has set the worst
possible example. As Amnesty International recently reported: "The
so-called "war on terror" has led to an erosion of a whole host of
human rights. States are resorting to practices which have long been
prohibited by international law, and have sought to justify them in
the name of national security." These fear-driven practices include
abductions, illegal detentions, extraordinary renditions, illegal
deportations and secret prisons, specifically designed to be outside
of the reach of international law. Physicians for Human Rights also
recently concluded that despite the administration's denials, the U.S.
Government has tortured prisoners in its "war on terror."
It is for this reason that the world human rights community nowadays
calls for the end of torture every year on June 26.
That an American president, with professed Christian values, would
embrace state-sponsored torture, should shock the human conscience.
And yet beyond the "war on terror," after five years of waging a
criminal war in Iraq, why should anyone be shocked that that embrace
violates a series of International treaties and the 1996 Federal War
Crimes Act, plus the clear wishes of Congress?
Because of those memos – through the prodding of the ACLU – we now
know that the dehumanization of prisoners was policy and not the
doings of a few bad apples, as was claimed after the release of the
Abu Ghraib photos. History will judge President Bush as a torture
enabler who continually sought exemptions and loopholes via a
redefinition of torture. But no need to wait for history; in its 2008
annual report regarding torture, Amnesty International also noted that
the Bush Administration has distinguished itself in "defiance of
international law."
The memos reveal that the Bush administration since Sept. 11, 2001
engaged in extensive discussions about how to get around U.S. and
international laws (including the Geneva Conventions) against torture.
This included assertions that torture was only illegal if carried out
on U.S. soil (thus Guantanamo) and it was only illegal if carried out
by members of the U.S. Armed Forces – which left an opening for the
CIA, mercenaries and the secret services of allied rogue nations.
Other assertions included the argument that torture was not illegal if
carried out against members of irregular forces.
Such assertions have been a boon to despots everywhere. Additional
assertions have included the "right" to secretly arrest and detain
suspects indefinitely and incommunicado, without legal representation,
without charges and without trials. All this is predicated on the
notion that this president has special powers during times of [legal]
war, thus the need for permanent war.
While seemingly "old news," revelations regarding torture continue to
make the news. The nation recently learned that FBI agents in 2002
created a "war crimes file" against U.S. military personnel at
Guantanamo, though the agents were directed to disband it in 2003
because creating such a file was not their mission (NY Times, May 21,
2008).
However, torture is not old news; it remains U.S. policy. This
administration continues to assert the "right" to utilize torture by
playing gymnastics with its legal definitions. All of this while
insisting that other nations exempt the United States from the
International War Crimes Tribunal. (It also asserts the right to war
against Iran).
Fortunately, the European Court of Human Rights – which earlier this
year reaffirmed its ban on torture – is not vacillating in the same
manner as the Bush administration… or even Sen. John McCain, who
supports the CIA torture exemption. Even the nation's top law
enforcement official, U.S. Attorney General, Michael Mukasey,
purportedly opposes torture, yet declines to define the
Inquisition-era water-boarding as such.
These assertions have begun to erode the moral fabric of our society.
That fabric is increasingly orange and the faces are hooded. The hoods
dehumanize not simply the prisoners, but all those that permit these
barbarities in the name of America.
* For information regarding the July 26 event, go to the Torture
Abolition Support & Solidarity Coalition International website at:
http://www.tassc.org/
* For information regarding the July 26 event, go to the Torture
Abolition Support & Solidarity Coalition International website at:
http://www.tassc.org/
Rodriguez, a research associate at Mexican American Studies at the
University of Arizona can be reached at: 520 743-0376 or Xcolumn@gmail.com
or Column of the Americas - PO BOX 85476 - Tucson, AZ 85754. The column is
archived at: http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
JUNE 24, 2008
BY ROBERTO DR. CINTLI RODRIGUEZ
TORTURE AND HOODED JUSTICE
In any language, torture is a four-letter word. While the repugnant
practice is primarily associated with the Inquisition and the darkest
chapters of human history, as a result of the release of hundreds of
pages of declassified memos, torture will forever in history also now
be associated with American President Bush.
Contrary to his July 26, 2003 insistence – that the United States does
not torture – as a result of those memos, we have learned that torture
and the abuse of prisoners have had the U.S. presidential seal of
approval since 2001. Contrary to all the documented evidence, this is
also a president who claims he did not lead the nation into war under
false pretenses.
On both the topic of torture and illegal wars, this has set the worst
possible example. As Amnesty International recently reported: "The
so-called "war on terror" has led to an erosion of a whole host of
human rights. States are resorting to practices which have long been
prohibited by international law, and have sought to justify them in
the name of national security." These fear-driven practices include
abductions, illegal detentions, extraordinary renditions, illegal
deportations and secret prisons, specifically designed to be outside
of the reach of international law. Physicians for Human Rights also
recently concluded that despite the administration's denials, the U.S.
Government has tortured prisoners in its "war on terror."
It is for this reason that the world human rights community nowadays
calls for the end of torture every year on June 26.
That an American president, with professed Christian values, would
embrace state-sponsored torture, should shock the human conscience.
And yet beyond the "war on terror," after five years of waging a
criminal war in Iraq, why should anyone be shocked that that embrace
violates a series of International treaties and the 1996 Federal War
Crimes Act, plus the clear wishes of Congress?
Because of those memos – through the prodding of the ACLU – we now
know that the dehumanization of prisoners was policy and not the
doings of a few bad apples, as was claimed after the release of the
Abu Ghraib photos. History will judge President Bush as a torture
enabler who continually sought exemptions and loopholes via a
redefinition of torture. But no need to wait for history; in its 2008
annual report regarding torture, Amnesty International also noted that
the Bush Administration has distinguished itself in "defiance of
international law."
The memos reveal that the Bush administration since Sept. 11, 2001
engaged in extensive discussions about how to get around U.S. and
international laws (including the Geneva Conventions) against torture.
This included assertions that torture was only illegal if carried out
on U.S. soil (thus Guantanamo) and it was only illegal if carried out
by members of the U.S. Armed Forces – which left an opening for the
CIA, mercenaries and the secret services of allied rogue nations.
Other assertions included the argument that torture was not illegal if
carried out against members of irregular forces.
Such assertions have been a boon to despots everywhere. Additional
assertions have included the "right" to secretly arrest and detain
suspects indefinitely and incommunicado, without legal representation,
without charges and without trials. All this is predicated on the
notion that this president has special powers during times of [legal]
war, thus the need for permanent war.
While seemingly "old news," revelations regarding torture continue to
make the news. The nation recently learned that FBI agents in 2002
created a "war crimes file" against U.S. military personnel at
Guantanamo, though the agents were directed to disband it in 2003
because creating such a file was not their mission (NY Times, May 21,
2008).
However, torture is not old news; it remains U.S. policy. This
administration continues to assert the "right" to utilize torture by
playing gymnastics with its legal definitions. All of this while
insisting that other nations exempt the United States from the
International War Crimes Tribunal. (It also asserts the right to war
against Iran).
Fortunately, the European Court of Human Rights – which earlier this
year reaffirmed its ban on torture – is not vacillating in the same
manner as the Bush administration… or even Sen. John McCain, who
supports the CIA torture exemption. Even the nation's top law
enforcement official, U.S. Attorney General, Michael Mukasey,
purportedly opposes torture, yet declines to define the
Inquisition-era water-boarding as such.
These assertions have begun to erode the moral fabric of our society.
That fabric is increasingly orange and the faces are hooded. The hoods
dehumanize not simply the prisoners, but all those that permit these
barbarities in the name of America.
* For information regarding the July 26 event, go to the Torture
Abolition Support & Solidarity Coalition International website at:
http://www.tassc.org/
* For information regarding the July 26 event, go to the Torture
Abolition Support & Solidarity Coalition International website at:
http://www.tassc.org/
Rodriguez, a research associate at Mexican American Studies at the
University of Arizona can be reached at: 520 743-0376 or Xcolumn@gmail.com
or Column of the Americas - PO BOX 85476 - Tucson, AZ 85754. The column is
archived at: http://web.mac.com/columnoftheamericas/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html
Frontier Gardening - bringing green spaces to the urban jungle
Frontier Gardening - bringing green spaces to the urban jungle
Greg Rodgers
http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0095013
Throughout the city of San Francisco residents are returning nature to the public fabric. Unlike the vast, open greenery of Golden Gate or other city parks, these spaces are cultivated directly by members of the community, on a scale which makes sense to the particular needs of people living there.
These spots blossoming around the city are not locked away for private use; they are part of public and community life. They are part of the neighborhood. They are not the projects of 'New Urbanism' and don't come from any planning department, nor are they official beautification projects, though they do make the city more beautiful. They are not administered through the city and do not have professional groundskeepers. There are no budgets, boards, permits, or lawyers.
They are evidence of an emerging viewpoint in which nature belongs as a part of the city, where urban residents have a direct connection to natural processes and reclaim some of the space that has been devoted to other enterprises such as commerce, industry, transportation, etc.
These micro spaces vary in scale from a cultivated windowsill facing a public street to a fully-developed community garden. Private and community gardens are, of course, an established part of the urban environment. Emerging now are the often contested spaces, where "guerrilla gardening" and creative use of parking spaces are gaining interest. Some folks are even making a "claim" on parts of larger parks. The claim they make, however, is not for private gain. They do have an agenda, but it includes notions of biodiversity, community involvement, native plantings, food security, soil sanctity, etc.
Urban residents are encouraging do-it-yourself green spaces to enter the public environment.
The Life and Death of an Urban Garden
At the corner of Fulton and Stanyan streets, there is a lot where corn stalks grow among discarded Starbucks containers. A graffiti on the pavement reads :
Where did the garden go?
I saw it go
I saw it taken away
Fucking Bastards!
If you watch the site carefully at night, you might even see someone harvesting potatoes or gathering ingredients for a salad. What is going on here?
There once was a lot here which, as some of the residents say, was merely "Collecting trash". The residents complained for some time about the blight of the trash-strewn lot to a largely unresponsive landlord. The lot in question had been sitting for 20 years. The bounty of the lot included "weeds, trash, dog shit, and heroin needles." So some folks neighboring the lot decided to use it in a different way.
A small group got together and cleaned out the space, removing weeds, cleaning up the trash and other refuse, and creating a space they would be able to plant in. An abandoned lot was fast becoming a fledgling community garden.
Within twenty minutes of the first planting, one of the gardeners remarked, people from the neighborhood became curious. And some folks became involved -- after all, it was their community.
When it was clear that the garden was to be a reality, the gardeners made contact with a property-management firm that handled the lot for the landlord, who lived out-of-town (way out -- Hawaii, actually). The property manager intimated that he couldn't see any harm in what was happening, and didn't deem that "official permission" from the land owner would be necessary.
So it looked to the gardeners as if they had been sanctioned to keep up their activity.
Meanwhile the garden flourished. Plantings included artichokes, garlic, fava beans, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, and quinoa. The gardeners had street parties, music, and barbecues in the new community space, but unexpectedly, the land owner became aware of the situation and demanded that the garden be destroyed. The landlord wanted everything ripped out.
The site underwent a complete transformation, but the owner wanted everything put back the way it was.
When the site was set for 'removal', the gardeners occupied the garden for five days. Members of the community also came out to support the garden. A neighborhood watch was formed to look after it. Three and a half weeks went by before the property management company paid a crew to remove the garden.
As one of the former gardeners remarks, "Gophers were our second-biggest pest in the garden. They did almost as much damage as the capitalists." The gardeners have become galvanized to look for other spots in which to plant, but the community does not have its garden anymore.
But plants have a tenacity that no removal crew can easily overcome. Many of them are coming back even as the lot fills again with the wandering garbage that blows through the city.
Space Reclaimed
Streets used to be a lot like the living rooms of the city, available to all the public for a variety of uses. Now most streets are treated solely as traffic conduits for private automobiles. What's worse is that even more space is required for the cars that aren't being used, the ones that must "park". The going rate for a few feet of downtown space in which to leave your car can be up to three dollars per hour. What a deal! Parking is the dominant land use in many areas.
But what would happen if you put in your quarter and instead of rolling a car into the space, you rolled out some sod?
Last September, the group Rebar (www.rebargroup.org) took several car parking spots throughout the city and made them into temporary green spaces. They transported their materials by bicycle and set up miniature parks in San Francisco's downtown, in the South-of-Market area (SOMA), in front of city hall (in the Mayor's parking spot, which was empty as the mayor wasn't around) and several other locations.
The parks each had a different design and theme. Some were a basic public park with benches and trees, while others were elaborate garden paths or tea gardens.
The groups navigated their bicycles through San Francisco traffic, hauling everything they needed in trailers. Some items included fully-grown trees in large pots and full-scale benches. It is an inspiring sight indeed to see a tall tree squeezing its way through an urban traffic snarl without any hang ups.
The parks had an immediate positive effect. Once they were set up, they transformed the urban space dramatically. Passersby used the parks as places to relax, to have lunch, to meet and talk with others, to take the sun, and of course to think about how we treat urban space. When the meter ran down, they would just pop another quarter in and go back to reading, people watching, or laying on the grass.
Of course there is a two-hour time-limit for all downtown parking spots, so Rebar would take the trees and benches down, roll the sod back up, and move to another site once their two hours were up.
Rebar converted more than a dozen parking spots into parks in San Francisco, while other people did the same thing all over the world. It happened again this September as well. But arts groups aren't the only ones reclaiming urban space for a green city.
Within the confines of the enormous Golden Gate Park, a gardener started a tiny native plant garden in a somewhat obscure corner of the park. This garden was accomplished by fiat, without going through the typical channels that community gardens often go through (after all, it's already a green space -- a park. Why make a garden there? Or so the thinking might go).
Green grass is great to play frisbee on, and big trees are very pretty and great for shade, but in terms of biodiversity, there isn't much going on in the lawn. Ecologists have a pet-term for lawns: green deserts.
Over time, the gardener peeled back more of the grass as his garden grew. There is now a diverse mix of native plants in this little corner of Golden Gate park. And the amount of space in the park is so vast that the native plant garden in no way diminishes the experience of the park, only adds to it. Plus, it is an in-tact seed bank for native varieties of plant life. A library of species, if you will.
The Garden in the City
Clearly people are thinking about urban space in new ways. There are even single-block neighborhood organizations dedicated to planting charming sidewalk gardens like the one on Fillmore street in the Lower Haight neighborhood. Residents are becoming emboldened to actively manage their own environment, whether publicly or privately "held". There are even people planting seeds in soaked clay balls and throwing them over fences, planting gardens that way. Witness the "illegal" fruit-tree plantings or the vegetable-growing tradition of People's Park in Berkeley.
Guerrilla gardeners are taking to the city with trowels and soaked beans, sowing new life into the urban environment with methods like those of graffiti artists.
All cities are built on top of what were once natural, intact ecosystems. But most cities, especially since industrialism, have kept an extremely tenuous relationship with nature -- typically it's a patch of green grass in a sea of development. Things got even worse after the automobile, when the streets themselves became largely devoid of life because life was too slow, too organic for the mechanized mobility that became an international obsession.
But as we all know, if we don't constantly re-pave, things grow up through the cracks. Grasses grow inside of potholes; tree roots tear up pavement. Nature is still here demanding a reckoning. Perhaps the push toward "Garden Cities" should have been a push toward city gardens.
Many cities are now building their own soils, growing their own food, and rediscovering nature. Some have even argued that this is where the ever-elusive "frontier" is sprouting up once again.
www.rebargroup.org
Greg Rodgers
http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0095013
Throughout the city of San Francisco residents are returning nature to the public fabric. Unlike the vast, open greenery of Golden Gate or other city parks, these spaces are cultivated directly by members of the community, on a scale which makes sense to the particular needs of people living there.
These spots blossoming around the city are not locked away for private use; they are part of public and community life. They are part of the neighborhood. They are not the projects of 'New Urbanism' and don't come from any planning department, nor are they official beautification projects, though they do make the city more beautiful. They are not administered through the city and do not have professional groundskeepers. There are no budgets, boards, permits, or lawyers.
They are evidence of an emerging viewpoint in which nature belongs as a part of the city, where urban residents have a direct connection to natural processes and reclaim some of the space that has been devoted to other enterprises such as commerce, industry, transportation, etc.
These micro spaces vary in scale from a cultivated windowsill facing a public street to a fully-developed community garden. Private and community gardens are, of course, an established part of the urban environment. Emerging now are the often contested spaces, where "guerrilla gardening" and creative use of parking spaces are gaining interest. Some folks are even making a "claim" on parts of larger parks. The claim they make, however, is not for private gain. They do have an agenda, but it includes notions of biodiversity, community involvement, native plantings, food security, soil sanctity, etc.
Urban residents are encouraging do-it-yourself green spaces to enter the public environment.
The Life and Death of an Urban Garden
At the corner of Fulton and Stanyan streets, there is a lot where corn stalks grow among discarded Starbucks containers. A graffiti on the pavement reads :
Where did the garden go?
I saw it go
I saw it taken away
Fucking Bastards!
If you watch the site carefully at night, you might even see someone harvesting potatoes or gathering ingredients for a salad. What is going on here?
There once was a lot here which, as some of the residents say, was merely "Collecting trash". The residents complained for some time about the blight of the trash-strewn lot to a largely unresponsive landlord. The lot in question had been sitting for 20 years. The bounty of the lot included "weeds, trash, dog shit, and heroin needles." So some folks neighboring the lot decided to use it in a different way.
A small group got together and cleaned out the space, removing weeds, cleaning up the trash and other refuse, and creating a space they would be able to plant in. An abandoned lot was fast becoming a fledgling community garden.
Within twenty minutes of the first planting, one of the gardeners remarked, people from the neighborhood became curious. And some folks became involved -- after all, it was their community.
When it was clear that the garden was to be a reality, the gardeners made contact with a property-management firm that handled the lot for the landlord, who lived out-of-town (way out -- Hawaii, actually). The property manager intimated that he couldn't see any harm in what was happening, and didn't deem that "official permission" from the land owner would be necessary.
So it looked to the gardeners as if they had been sanctioned to keep up their activity.
Meanwhile the garden flourished. Plantings included artichokes, garlic, fava beans, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, and quinoa. The gardeners had street parties, music, and barbecues in the new community space, but unexpectedly, the land owner became aware of the situation and demanded that the garden be destroyed. The landlord wanted everything ripped out.
The site underwent a complete transformation, but the owner wanted everything put back the way it was.
When the site was set for 'removal', the gardeners occupied the garden for five days. Members of the community also came out to support the garden. A neighborhood watch was formed to look after it. Three and a half weeks went by before the property management company paid a crew to remove the garden.
As one of the former gardeners remarks, "Gophers were our second-biggest pest in the garden. They did almost as much damage as the capitalists." The gardeners have become galvanized to look for other spots in which to plant, but the community does not have its garden anymore.
But plants have a tenacity that no removal crew can easily overcome. Many of them are coming back even as the lot fills again with the wandering garbage that blows through the city.
Space Reclaimed
Streets used to be a lot like the living rooms of the city, available to all the public for a variety of uses. Now most streets are treated solely as traffic conduits for private automobiles. What's worse is that even more space is required for the cars that aren't being used, the ones that must "park". The going rate for a few feet of downtown space in which to leave your car can be up to three dollars per hour. What a deal! Parking is the dominant land use in many areas.
But what would happen if you put in your quarter and instead of rolling a car into the space, you rolled out some sod?
Last September, the group Rebar (www.rebargroup.org) took several car parking spots throughout the city and made them into temporary green spaces. They transported their materials by bicycle and set up miniature parks in San Francisco's downtown, in the South-of-Market area (SOMA), in front of city hall (in the Mayor's parking spot, which was empty as the mayor wasn't around) and several other locations.
The parks each had a different design and theme. Some were a basic public park with benches and trees, while others were elaborate garden paths or tea gardens.
The groups navigated their bicycles through San Francisco traffic, hauling everything they needed in trailers. Some items included fully-grown trees in large pots and full-scale benches. It is an inspiring sight indeed to see a tall tree squeezing its way through an urban traffic snarl without any hang ups.
The parks had an immediate positive effect. Once they were set up, they transformed the urban space dramatically. Passersby used the parks as places to relax, to have lunch, to meet and talk with others, to take the sun, and of course to think about how we treat urban space. When the meter ran down, they would just pop another quarter in and go back to reading, people watching, or laying on the grass.
Of course there is a two-hour time-limit for all downtown parking spots, so Rebar would take the trees and benches down, roll the sod back up, and move to another site once their two hours were up.
Rebar converted more than a dozen parking spots into parks in San Francisco, while other people did the same thing all over the world. It happened again this September as well. But arts groups aren't the only ones reclaiming urban space for a green city.
Within the confines of the enormous Golden Gate Park, a gardener started a tiny native plant garden in a somewhat obscure corner of the park. This garden was accomplished by fiat, without going through the typical channels that community gardens often go through (after all, it's already a green space -- a park. Why make a garden there? Or so the thinking might go).
Green grass is great to play frisbee on, and big trees are very pretty and great for shade, but in terms of biodiversity, there isn't much going on in the lawn. Ecologists have a pet-term for lawns: green deserts.
Over time, the gardener peeled back more of the grass as his garden grew. There is now a diverse mix of native plants in this little corner of Golden Gate park. And the amount of space in the park is so vast that the native plant garden in no way diminishes the experience of the park, only adds to it. Plus, it is an in-tact seed bank for native varieties of plant life. A library of species, if you will.
The Garden in the City
Clearly people are thinking about urban space in new ways. There are even single-block neighborhood organizations dedicated to planting charming sidewalk gardens like the one on Fillmore street in the Lower Haight neighborhood. Residents are becoming emboldened to actively manage their own environment, whether publicly or privately "held". There are even people planting seeds in soaked clay balls and throwing them over fences, planting gardens that way. Witness the "illegal" fruit-tree plantings or the vegetable-growing tradition of People's Park in Berkeley.
Guerrilla gardeners are taking to the city with trowels and soaked beans, sowing new life into the urban environment with methods like those of graffiti artists.
All cities are built on top of what were once natural, intact ecosystems. But most cities, especially since industrialism, have kept an extremely tenuous relationship with nature -- typically it's a patch of green grass in a sea of development. Things got even worse after the automobile, when the streets themselves became largely devoid of life because life was too slow, too organic for the mechanized mobility that became an international obsession.
But as we all know, if we don't constantly re-pave, things grow up through the cracks. Grasses grow inside of potholes; tree roots tear up pavement. Nature is still here demanding a reckoning. Perhaps the push toward "Garden Cities" should have been a push toward city gardens.
Many cities are now building their own soils, growing their own food, and rediscovering nature. Some have even argued that this is where the ever-elusive "frontier" is sprouting up once again.
www.rebargroup.org
Longest Walk Update!
Almost there
© Indian Country Today June 30, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: June 30, 2008
by: Lisa Garrigues / Today correspondent
Longest Walkers head toward nation's capital
ASHEVILLE, N.C. - ''Wake up! Circle up!'' The shouts rang out in the pre-dawn Alabama darkness as nearly 100 people began to stir inside their tents. By 5 a.m., they would be standing in morning circle, ready to embark on another day of cross-country walking that started on Alcatraz Island in California Feb. 11 and will end July 11 in Washington, D.C.
The Longest Walkers are almost there.
Snow, rain, searing heat, blisters, illness, and internal and external struggles have not dissuaded the 200 walkers on the northern and southern routes of the Longest Walk II from reaching their destination, where they will deliver a manifesto to Congress on Native and environmental issues.
The walk, organized by American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks and other Native leaders to draw attention to environmental destruction and Native issues, is made up of Native and non-Native people, including several supporters from Japan, some of them members of the Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji order. Commemorating a 1978 walk that was organized to protest the abrogation of Indian treaties by the U.S. government, it contains some of the walkers who took part in the original walk.
On June 11, walkers on the northern route entered Pennsylvania, after being stuck for several days in Ohio with no food or gas money. A skirmish with police in Columbus, Ohio, ended up with one member being led away in handcuffs.
Walkers on the southern route arrived in Asheville June 16, after a group of 18 people broke away from the group to form their own walk. Walkers report that the breakaway group got upset after a young girl hurt her foot in an accident and not enough attention was paid to her, an incident that spiraled into arguments and conflicts before the breakaway group finally left.
Banks was not present during the incident, but has since returned to the southern route. He could not be reached for comment on this recent incident by press time.
Earlier, he had asked 24 people to leave the walk because they were using marijuana and/or alcohol.
When interviewed in May in New Orleans, Banks said the walk ''was going good'' and thanked the Rumsey Rancheria, the Havasupai, the Apache, the Navajo, the pueblos, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho for being particularly helpful with donations.
Walkers on the southern route are averaging about 17 miles a day, waking at 4 a.m. to get on the road an hour later, and walking three to seven miles before breakfast. Short breaks are taken every three and a half miles, and the entire distance usually takes about seven hours to cover. Runners average 30 - 50 miles a day, so that every mile across the country is covered. Walkers take turns participating in the trash crew, which cleans up garbage and trash along the way, and the kitchen crew, which prepares the meals.
While northern walkers have had to use snowshoes on their journey, temperatures on the southern route have soared into the high 90s. Sweat-drenched walkers have used garden hoses, swimming holes and - when they are lucky - showers to cool down. Support vehicles accompanying the walkers, carrying food, luggage and water, have frequently needed repair.
Southern walkers report a large number of them got sick in Bakersfield from what they believe was contamination from nearby oil wells.
At night, the walkers unroll their sleeping bags and pitch their tents on the grounds of community centers, city parks, reservations and national forests.
In late June, walkers on the southern route were awakened when a car full of hecklers drove into an Alabama city park where the walkers were camped and yelled insults at the campers. The invaders were driven out by the walkers and local police.
''I can't believe I've already covered 4,000 miles,'' said Ray, a Native walker and runner on the southern route, as he carried the flag of the Mohawk Nation down a hot road in Alabama.
He was philosophical about the interpersonal difficulties and challenges that had arisen from within the group.
''They are human beings.''
Native and non-Native communities, businesses and individuals along the way have shown their appreciation and support of the walkers with gifts of money, food and water.
Native communities have spoken to the walkers about the issues they face, including environmental degradation, health problems and political struggles. These issues will be included in the manifesto delivered to Congress.
On May 27, walkers on the southern route carried the flags of several Indian nations into the 9th Ward of New Orleans, where, three years after Hurricane Katrina, residents are still struggling to rebuild their houses and community, with little support from city government.
Robert Green, who lost his mother and grandchild to the hurricane, spoke to walkers in front of the trailer he now lives in, as the walkers looked out on the flattened overgrown empty lots that once contained the homes of middle-class families.
''A lot of people don't realize one person can make a difference. One march can make a difference.'' he said. ''You're making us whole again, and that's important to us.''
For more information on the Longest Walk II, visit www.longestwalk.org.
© Indian Country Today June 30, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: June 30, 2008
by: Lisa Garrigues / Today correspondent
Longest Walkers head toward nation's capital
ASHEVILLE, N.C. - ''Wake up! Circle up!'' The shouts rang out in the pre-dawn Alabama darkness as nearly 100 people began to stir inside their tents. By 5 a.m., they would be standing in morning circle, ready to embark on another day of cross-country walking that started on Alcatraz Island in California Feb. 11 and will end July 11 in Washington, D.C.
The Longest Walkers are almost there.
Snow, rain, searing heat, blisters, illness, and internal and external struggles have not dissuaded the 200 walkers on the northern and southern routes of the Longest Walk II from reaching their destination, where they will deliver a manifesto to Congress on Native and environmental issues.
The walk, organized by American Indian Movement activist Dennis Banks and other Native leaders to draw attention to environmental destruction and Native issues, is made up of Native and non-Native people, including several supporters from Japan, some of them members of the Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji order. Commemorating a 1978 walk that was organized to protest the abrogation of Indian treaties by the U.S. government, it contains some of the walkers who took part in the original walk.
On June 11, walkers on the northern route entered Pennsylvania, after being stuck for several days in Ohio with no food or gas money. A skirmish with police in Columbus, Ohio, ended up with one member being led away in handcuffs.
Walkers on the southern route arrived in Asheville June 16, after a group of 18 people broke away from the group to form their own walk. Walkers report that the breakaway group got upset after a young girl hurt her foot in an accident and not enough attention was paid to her, an incident that spiraled into arguments and conflicts before the breakaway group finally left.
Banks was not present during the incident, but has since returned to the southern route. He could not be reached for comment on this recent incident by press time.
Earlier, he had asked 24 people to leave the walk because they were using marijuana and/or alcohol.
When interviewed in May in New Orleans, Banks said the walk ''was going good'' and thanked the Rumsey Rancheria, the Havasupai, the Apache, the Navajo, the pueblos, the Cheyenne and the Arapaho for being particularly helpful with donations.
Walkers on the southern route are averaging about 17 miles a day, waking at 4 a.m. to get on the road an hour later, and walking three to seven miles before breakfast. Short breaks are taken every three and a half miles, and the entire distance usually takes about seven hours to cover. Runners average 30 - 50 miles a day, so that every mile across the country is covered. Walkers take turns participating in the trash crew, which cleans up garbage and trash along the way, and the kitchen crew, which prepares the meals.
While northern walkers have had to use snowshoes on their journey, temperatures on the southern route have soared into the high 90s. Sweat-drenched walkers have used garden hoses, swimming holes and - when they are lucky - showers to cool down. Support vehicles accompanying the walkers, carrying food, luggage and water, have frequently needed repair.
Southern walkers report a large number of them got sick in Bakersfield from what they believe was contamination from nearby oil wells.
At night, the walkers unroll their sleeping bags and pitch their tents on the grounds of community centers, city parks, reservations and national forests.
In late June, walkers on the southern route were awakened when a car full of hecklers drove into an Alabama city park where the walkers were camped and yelled insults at the campers. The invaders were driven out by the walkers and local police.
''I can't believe I've already covered 4,000 miles,'' said Ray, a Native walker and runner on the southern route, as he carried the flag of the Mohawk Nation down a hot road in Alabama.
He was philosophical about the interpersonal difficulties and challenges that had arisen from within the group.
''They are human beings.''
Native and non-Native communities, businesses and individuals along the way have shown their appreciation and support of the walkers with gifts of money, food and water.
Native communities have spoken to the walkers about the issues they face, including environmental degradation, health problems and political struggles. These issues will be included in the manifesto delivered to Congress.
On May 27, walkers on the southern route carried the flags of several Indian nations into the 9th Ward of New Orleans, where, three years after Hurricane Katrina, residents are still struggling to rebuild their houses and community, with little support from city government.
Robert Green, who lost his mother and grandchild to the hurricane, spoke to walkers in front of the trailer he now lives in, as the walkers looked out on the flattened overgrown empty lots that once contained the homes of middle-class families.
''A lot of people don't realize one person can make a difference. One march can make a difference.'' he said. ''You're making us whole again, and that's important to us.''
For more information on the Longest Walk II, visit www.longestwalk.org.
Students Not Soldiers
Students Not Soldiers:
The Work of Inner City Struggle
in Los Angeles
http://www.war-times.org/articles/WT_studentsnotsoldiers.htm
Inner City Struggle is a community organization working on educational and economic justice issues in the Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and East Los Angeles communities (see www.innercitystruggle.org). Nancy Meza is a youth organizer for ICS at the Roosevelt High School campus, and works in ICS’s youth group United Students. She has been working with the organization for about four years and is currently a community college student.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras talked with Nancy about the economic pressures facing youth in working-class, immigrant communities in L.A. and how those pressures related to military recruitment.
Nancy Meza: ICS works in poverty-level communities. Most of the households make less than $22,000 a year in combined income. These communities also have the “worst” schools: schools that don’t have adequate funding and are overcrowded, schools where a high percentage of students don’t make it through their senior year to graduation.
Boyle Heights and East LA are 90% Mexican or Latino, El Sereno is a little more diverse. El Sereno has more of the 4 th generation, 5 th generation Latinos, and Boyle Heights has more of the 1st generation, 2 nd generation Latino immigrants.
WT: What do the youth you work with say about the war?
Many of the youth we work with are against the war. They feel it’s an unjust war. They’re against it because of the way it affects them. They see how funding for education has gone down, they see more military recruitment in their schools. Instead of being recruited to go to college to have a future, most of the students are being led into the military.
United Students has a college and educational justice week every year. One of the workshops we had this year was Students Not Soldiers, and we asked students about the war. Most of the students said, “Oh that’s just Bush’s little war.” These are just regular students who were consciously against the war.
WT: Do you have any friends or relatives that enlisted or who have seriously considered enlisting?
One of my friends signed up after 9/11. He was a really good student; he played varsity sports, and took AP classes. His thing was, “my grades are okay but they’re not that great. So even if I get into college, I’m not going to be able to pay for it.”
My other friends who are thinking about enlisting didn’t graduate from high school. So they think, “I can’t get a good job, the best I can do is work at McDonald’s making minimum wage. Why not go into the military and get good job training.” They’re being tracked into it because they can’t get a good job, because they were in a public school system that didn’t prepare them for a 21 st century job or for attending college. [Editors' note: The Army recently increased by 25% the number of high-school drop-outs it was willing to accept as enlistees.] E ven if they do graduate from high school they can’t pass the tests to get jobs with a livable wage.
My friend who enlisted went to Garfield High. It has close to 5,000 students, and they only have one college counselor. Maybe there were resources out there to pay for college. But since there’s only one counselor, most students don’t know those resources are out there. The only people that are actually giving out information in these schools are military recruiters. You don’t see college recruiters or counselors out there during lunch time or doing classroom presentations on how to get into college, how to get financial aid. But you see at least two military recruiters out there during lunchtime every week. So he just didn’t have information about what was out there to pay for college.
WT: What is the drop-out rate in the schools ICS works in?
Those schools have a 68% drop-out rate, so less than 40% are actually graduating.
Roosevelt High School , for example, is the most overcrowded high school in the nation. It has about 5,200 students on a campus built for 2,500. It has a lot to do with funding. Schools are doing the track system because they are so overcrowded. So students go in for two months, they have vacation for two months; go back in for two months. There are not even enough desks in the classroom or even enough books in the classroom for every student. The student-teacher ratio is 32 or 34 to one if you’re lucky, and most classes have up to 40 students. Students can’t find a learning environment in this.
Students who do graduate from these high schools don’t graduate with the college pre-requisites. So most go into fast food or construction with their parents, any kind of job that they can get without taking a test. One of my friends, she’s really smart, she was an A and B student, but she didn’t have any honors classes. She took all regular classes. After graduation, she applied to be a tutor at the middle school she went to, and she couldn’t do it because she wasn’t able to pass the test, because the test includes Algebra II, and she wasn’t given Algebra II because it’s not a high school requirement, it’s only a college requirement.
These problems been going on for decades. Recently it’s actually gotten a little better. Now you see students that did graduate from the public high school system coming back to the communities, as teachers, as counselors, as tutors. They’re the ones really helping students, giving them encouragement. But a 68% drop-out rate is still outrageous.
WT: In a lot of communities of color, there’s a tradition of military service. I’m thinking of second or third generation Latino communities, the African-American community, the Filipino community or Samoan community. Do you find folks talking about the military as less racist than the rest of society?
I don’t think they find it less racist, but they do find it as a way to fit into society. We saw this during the sixties, when African Americans were being recruited into the military, while outside they were segregated and they had no rights. I think they saw the military as a gateway into society. I think it’s happening also with these communities, because they don’t fit into demographics of the current society, just because of their culture or their economic situation. So here comes the military and it’s like, “Be American, join the military. If you join you’ll be fighting for your country.” People join the military because it’s a way to be accepted into society.
At school, teachers don’t teach you about your culture. And most people are below poverty level, struggling. To them, it seems like being poor is something to be ashamed of. Most of these people work two to three jobs just to make ends meet and they’re still below poverty line. I think many join the military as a way just to be viewed as a good member of society, a productive member. Also, for the immigrant community it’s so hard to get your legal status now, it’s so expensive. Many view the military as a way to get citizenship or an easier way to get legal status.
WT: I went to a conference in October on counter-recruitment and learned that even if you join the military you’re not guaranteed citizenship. They just speed up the process, by letting you apply immediately instead of waiting five years first.
It’s the same with money for schooling. Only 50% of veterans get those benefits. Students are being propagandized by the military, they’re being called every two years, there are commercials on TV, and at school there’s a big military presence. Students go in with these ideas that the military is going to offer them all these things. One of the things we’ve done is have students critically analyze the military. You know, so much money is being spent on the military that it detracts from education, housing, and health care. Out of one dollar [of government spending], fifty cents are spent on the military, only four or five cents on education, two on health care. We’re spending so much on the military that our social programs are not being funded, so you go into the military because they promise you all the programs you’re not getting as a normal citizen.
WT: And we see this at work with the JROTC programs. What’s JROTC like?
I’ve actually seen it at the middle school, but it was called Cadets. [Editors' note: The Naval Sea Cadets program is for youth aged 11-17. It is an affiliate of the U.S. Navy League, a citizen group that supports maritime military services.] Even students in the sixth grade are being trained to join the military, to be little soldiers. In high school you see it more; JROTC has its own buildings and its own facilities in our school district. At Roosevelt High School it has an underground shooting range.
At the beginning of every year, since our schools are so over-crowded, there’s not enough room to have everyone enroll in P.E. So the JROTC recruiters go into the P.E. classrooms and they outreach to everyone, saying, “Instead of doing P.E. you could join JROTC and it’ll be honorable, it’ll be considered as an extra activity, and it looks good on college applications.” They do this massive recruitment. Students don’t see other clubs going around, saying, “join this club to prepare for college.” All they see is JROTC.
And since there’s so much overcrowding, there’s no room in other classes, students are just put into JROTC to fill vacant spots in their schedule.
In JROTC you learn how to use guns, how to march. Most of the students who are in JROTC are from low-income communities. They are students who are in ESL, students who pushed out of the college track. These students are trained to go into the military right out of high school. Most students in JROTC go into the military after high school. [Editors' note: As counter-recruitment organizers have argued, JROTC actually constitutes a drain on a school’s resources and teaches a biased version of American history.]
WT: Jorge Mariscal of Project YANO was telling me that more and more Latinas are enlisting.
The military is recruiting Latinas; they’ve changed their message to target Latinas. They make it appear like if you’re a Latina , joining the military is a feminist act. You’ll be fighting alongside your brothers; you’ll be getting the power that a man is given now.
WT: The ability to be economically independent gives a sense of empowerment. Is that avenue getting closed off for women of color and is that pushing them to see the military as a feminist option?
That’s how the military’s putting it out there. But you know they say the same things about males not being able to get a job or pay for college. I think it’s more how the military is putting the message out there, and women are picking it up as “okay, I guess this must be true.”
WT: Does ICS work with other LA-based groups that focus on counter-recruitment work, like Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools (CAMS)?
Yes. Every time we found out military recruiters were going to be on campus, we did counter-recruitment the day before. We passed out brochures about the reality of war, the reality of the military, and what you should think about before joining the military. It was really cool because before the recruiters came onto campus students were already conscious about what the myths and realities were about joining the military. So recruiters would come in the next day and try to persuade students they would get money for college and students would say, “Well according to this paper we received yesterday only 50% of veterans do get that.”
That’s the same thing we did with Students Not Soldiers. This is a workshop that was given to over 45 classrooms in every high school. We let students know how much money was being spent on the military, and why students were joining the military. We gave them the facts and the realities, just so they could have more information before making a choice. Most of the students that were in the workshop changed their mind from, “Oh we want to join the military” to “I’ll go to college and try to get a good job.”
Interview by Lynn Koh.
The Work of Inner City Struggle
in Los Angeles
http://www.war-times.org/articles/WT_studentsnotsoldiers.htm
Inner City Struggle is a community organization working on educational and economic justice issues in the Boyle Heights, El Sereno, and East Los Angeles communities (see www.innercitystruggle.org). Nancy Meza is a youth organizer for ICS at the Roosevelt High School campus, and works in ICS’s youth group United Students. She has been working with the organization for about four years and is currently a community college student.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras talked with Nancy about the economic pressures facing youth in working-class, immigrant communities in L.A. and how those pressures related to military recruitment.
Nancy Meza: ICS works in poverty-level communities. Most of the households make less than $22,000 a year in combined income. These communities also have the “worst” schools: schools that don’t have adequate funding and are overcrowded, schools where a high percentage of students don’t make it through their senior year to graduation.
Boyle Heights and East LA are 90% Mexican or Latino, El Sereno is a little more diverse. El Sereno has more of the 4 th generation, 5 th generation Latinos, and Boyle Heights has more of the 1st generation, 2 nd generation Latino immigrants.
WT: What do the youth you work with say about the war?
Many of the youth we work with are against the war. They feel it’s an unjust war. They’re against it because of the way it affects them. They see how funding for education has gone down, they see more military recruitment in their schools. Instead of being recruited to go to college to have a future, most of the students are being led into the military.
United Students has a college and educational justice week every year. One of the workshops we had this year was Students Not Soldiers, and we asked students about the war. Most of the students said, “Oh that’s just Bush’s little war.” These are just regular students who were consciously against the war.
WT: Do you have any friends or relatives that enlisted or who have seriously considered enlisting?
One of my friends signed up after 9/11. He was a really good student; he played varsity sports, and took AP classes. His thing was, “my grades are okay but they’re not that great. So even if I get into college, I’m not going to be able to pay for it.”
My other friends who are thinking about enlisting didn’t graduate from high school. So they think, “I can’t get a good job, the best I can do is work at McDonald’s making minimum wage. Why not go into the military and get good job training.” They’re being tracked into it because they can’t get a good job, because they were in a public school system that didn’t prepare them for a 21 st century job or for attending college. [Editors' note: The Army recently increased by 25% the number of high-school drop-outs it was willing to accept as enlistees.] E ven if they do graduate from high school they can’t pass the tests to get jobs with a livable wage.
My friend who enlisted went to Garfield High. It has close to 5,000 students, and they only have one college counselor. Maybe there were resources out there to pay for college. But since there’s only one counselor, most students don’t know those resources are out there. The only people that are actually giving out information in these schools are military recruiters. You don’t see college recruiters or counselors out there during lunch time or doing classroom presentations on how to get into college, how to get financial aid. But you see at least two military recruiters out there during lunchtime every week. So he just didn’t have information about what was out there to pay for college.
WT: What is the drop-out rate in the schools ICS works in?
Those schools have a 68% drop-out rate, so less than 40% are actually graduating.
Roosevelt High School , for example, is the most overcrowded high school in the nation. It has about 5,200 students on a campus built for 2,500. It has a lot to do with funding. Schools are doing the track system because they are so overcrowded. So students go in for two months, they have vacation for two months; go back in for two months. There are not even enough desks in the classroom or even enough books in the classroom for every student. The student-teacher ratio is 32 or 34 to one if you’re lucky, and most classes have up to 40 students. Students can’t find a learning environment in this.
Students who do graduate from these high schools don’t graduate with the college pre-requisites. So most go into fast food or construction with their parents, any kind of job that they can get without taking a test. One of my friends, she’s really smart, she was an A and B student, but she didn’t have any honors classes. She took all regular classes. After graduation, she applied to be a tutor at the middle school she went to, and she couldn’t do it because she wasn’t able to pass the test, because the test includes Algebra II, and she wasn’t given Algebra II because it’s not a high school requirement, it’s only a college requirement.
These problems been going on for decades. Recently it’s actually gotten a little better. Now you see students that did graduate from the public high school system coming back to the communities, as teachers, as counselors, as tutors. They’re the ones really helping students, giving them encouragement. But a 68% drop-out rate is still outrageous.
WT: In a lot of communities of color, there’s a tradition of military service. I’m thinking of second or third generation Latino communities, the African-American community, the Filipino community or Samoan community. Do you find folks talking about the military as less racist than the rest of society?
I don’t think they find it less racist, but they do find it as a way to fit into society. We saw this during the sixties, when African Americans were being recruited into the military, while outside they were segregated and they had no rights. I think they saw the military as a gateway into society. I think it’s happening also with these communities, because they don’t fit into demographics of the current society, just because of their culture or their economic situation. So here comes the military and it’s like, “Be American, join the military. If you join you’ll be fighting for your country.” People join the military because it’s a way to be accepted into society.
At school, teachers don’t teach you about your culture. And most people are below poverty level, struggling. To them, it seems like being poor is something to be ashamed of. Most of these people work two to three jobs just to make ends meet and they’re still below poverty line. I think many join the military as a way just to be viewed as a good member of society, a productive member. Also, for the immigrant community it’s so hard to get your legal status now, it’s so expensive. Many view the military as a way to get citizenship or an easier way to get legal status.
WT: I went to a conference in October on counter-recruitment and learned that even if you join the military you’re not guaranteed citizenship. They just speed up the process, by letting you apply immediately instead of waiting five years first.
It’s the same with money for schooling. Only 50% of veterans get those benefits. Students are being propagandized by the military, they’re being called every two years, there are commercials on TV, and at school there’s a big military presence. Students go in with these ideas that the military is going to offer them all these things. One of the things we’ve done is have students critically analyze the military. You know, so much money is being spent on the military that it detracts from education, housing, and health care. Out of one dollar [of government spending], fifty cents are spent on the military, only four or five cents on education, two on health care. We’re spending so much on the military that our social programs are not being funded, so you go into the military because they promise you all the programs you’re not getting as a normal citizen.
WT: And we see this at work with the JROTC programs. What’s JROTC like?
I’ve actually seen it at the middle school, but it was called Cadets. [Editors' note: The Naval Sea Cadets program is for youth aged 11-17. It is an affiliate of the U.S. Navy League, a citizen group that supports maritime military services.] Even students in the sixth grade are being trained to join the military, to be little soldiers. In high school you see it more; JROTC has its own buildings and its own facilities in our school district. At Roosevelt High School it has an underground shooting range.
At the beginning of every year, since our schools are so over-crowded, there’s not enough room to have everyone enroll in P.E. So the JROTC recruiters go into the P.E. classrooms and they outreach to everyone, saying, “Instead of doing P.E. you could join JROTC and it’ll be honorable, it’ll be considered as an extra activity, and it looks good on college applications.” They do this massive recruitment. Students don’t see other clubs going around, saying, “join this club to prepare for college.” All they see is JROTC.
And since there’s so much overcrowding, there’s no room in other classes, students are just put into JROTC to fill vacant spots in their schedule.
In JROTC you learn how to use guns, how to march. Most of the students who are in JROTC are from low-income communities. They are students who are in ESL, students who pushed out of the college track. These students are trained to go into the military right out of high school. Most students in JROTC go into the military after high school. [Editors' note: As counter-recruitment organizers have argued, JROTC actually constitutes a drain on a school’s resources and teaches a biased version of American history.]
WT: Jorge Mariscal of Project YANO was telling me that more and more Latinas are enlisting.
The military is recruiting Latinas; they’ve changed their message to target Latinas. They make it appear like if you’re a Latina , joining the military is a feminist act. You’ll be fighting alongside your brothers; you’ll be getting the power that a man is given now.
WT: The ability to be economically independent gives a sense of empowerment. Is that avenue getting closed off for women of color and is that pushing them to see the military as a feminist option?
That’s how the military’s putting it out there. But you know they say the same things about males not being able to get a job or pay for college. I think it’s more how the military is putting the message out there, and women are picking it up as “okay, I guess this must be true.”
WT: Does ICS work with other LA-based groups that focus on counter-recruitment work, like Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools (CAMS)?
Yes. Every time we found out military recruiters were going to be on campus, we did counter-recruitment the day before. We passed out brochures about the reality of war, the reality of the military, and what you should think about before joining the military. It was really cool because before the recruiters came onto campus students were already conscious about what the myths and realities were about joining the military. So recruiters would come in the next day and try to persuade students they would get money for college and students would say, “Well according to this paper we received yesterday only 50% of veterans do get that.”
That’s the same thing we did with Students Not Soldiers. This is a workshop that was given to over 45 classrooms in every high school. We let students know how much money was being spent on the military, and why students were joining the military. We gave them the facts and the realities, just so they could have more information before making a choice. Most of the students that were in the workshop changed their mind from, “Oh we want to join the military” to “I’ll go to college and try to get a good job.”
Interview by Lynn Koh.
Nancy Meza habla del trabajo de Lucha Urbana en Los Ángeles
Estudiantes, no soldados:
Nancy Meza habla del trabajo de Lucha Urbana en Los Ángeles
http://www.war-times.org/articles/WT_studentsnotsoldiersESP.htm
Inner City Struggle (ICS, Lucha Urbana) es una organización comunitaria que trabaja en asuntos de justicia educativa y económica en las comunidades de Boyle Heights, El Sereno, y el Este de Los Angeles. (visite: http://innercitystruggle.org). Nancy Meza es organizadora de jóvenes con ICS en la Escuela Secundaria Roosevelt, y trabaja en el grupo de jóvenes de ICS, Estudiantes Unidos (United Students). Lleva cuatro años trabajando con la organización y actualmente es estudiante en una universidad comunitaria.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras conversó con Nancy sobre las presiones económicas que enfrentan los jóvenes de la clase trabajadora, en comunidades inmigrantes de Los Angeles, y cómo esas presiones están vinculadas al reclutamiento militar.
Nancy Meza: ICS trabaja en comunidades pobres. En la mayoría de los hogares, el ingreso total es menos de $22,000 al año. Estas comunidades también tienen las “peores” escuelas: escuelas que carecen de fondos adecuados y están hacinados, en las cuales un gran porcentaje de alumnos no terminan su último año, ni se gradúan.
En Boyle Heights y el Este de LA el 90% de la población es mexicana o latina, El Sereno es un poco más diverso. El Sereno tiene más latinos que son de cuarta o quinta generación y Boyle Heights tiene más inmigrantes latinos de primera o segunda generación.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras: ¿Que dicen sobre la guerra los jóvenes con los que trabajas?
Muchos de los jóvenes con los cuales trabajamos están en contra de la guerra. Sienten que es una guerra injusta. Están en contra por la forma que los afecta a ellos. Ven como los fondos para la educación han bajado, que hay más esfuerzos de reclutamiento militar en los colegios. En vez de ser reclutados para ir a la universidad para tener un futuro, la mayoría de los estudiantes están siendo encaminados hacia las fuerzas armadas.
United Students realiza cada año una semana de acción sobre universidades y justicia educativa. Uno de los talleres este año se llamó “Estudiantes, no Soldados”, y les preguntamos a los jóvenes sobre la guerra. La mayoría de ellos dijeron, “Oh, es simplemente la guerrita de Bush”. Estos fueron estudiantes normales que conscientemente están en contra de la guerra.
¿Usted tiene amigos o parientes que han pensado seriamente en inscribirse?
Uno de mis amigos se inscribió inmediatamente después del 11 de septiembre. Era muy buen estudiante, competía en deportes, tomaba clases avanzadas. Entonces él decía, “mis notas son buenas pero no son excelentes. Entonces, aunque entre a la universidad, no voy a poder pagarla”.
Mis otros amigos que han pensado en inscribirse no se graduaron de la secundaria. Entonces, ellos dicen, “no puedo conseguir in buen trabajo, lo único que puedo hacer es trabajar en McDonalds ganando el salario mínimo. Entonces, por qué no me meto mejor a las fuerzas armadas y recibo capacitación laboral”. Se les está encaminando en esa dirección porque no pueden conseguir un buen trabajo, porque estudiaron en escuelas públicas que no los preparaban para empleos en el Siglo 21, ni para asistir a la universidad. [Nota del editor: recientemente el Ejército aumentó en un 25% el número de personas que no terminan la secundaria que están dispuestos a aceptar como reclutas]. Aunque se gradúen de la secundaria, no pueden pasar los exámenes para recibir trabajos con un sueldo del cual se puede vivir.
Mi amigo que se inscribió en el servicio asistió a Garfield High, que tiene alrededor de 5 mil estudiantes, y sólo un consejero universitario. Quizás sí hubiera recursos para ayudarle a pagar la universidad, pero ya que hay un solo consejero, la mayoría de los estudiantes no están enterados sobre los recursos que existen. Las únicas personas que están entregando información en estas escuelas son los reclutadores de las fuerzas armadas. A la hora del almuerzo o en las clases uno no puede encontrar reclutadores de universidades o consejeros explicando cómo entrar a las universidades o cómo conseguir apoyo financiero. Pero uno sí puede ver a por lo menos dos reclutadores durante la hora del almuerzo, todas las semanas. Así que mi amigo simplemente no contaba con la información sobre las posibilidades de ayudar a pagar la universidad.
¿Cuantos estudiantes abandonan los estudios en los colegios donde trabaja ICS?
Estas escuelas tienen una taza da abandono del 68%, de manera que menos del 40% se gradúan.
Por ejemplo, Roosevelt High School es la escuela más hacinada en el país. Hay unos 5,200 estudiantes en un local construido para 2,500. Tiene mucho que ver con el financiamiento. Las escuelas tienen el sistema de rotación porque están tan repletas. Los estudiantes estudian dos meses luego tienen vacaciones por dos meses, y regresan otros dos meses. No hay suficientes escritorios en las aulas, ni libros para la cantidad de estudiantes que hay. Con suerte hay 32 o 34 estudiantes por cada maestro, pero la mayoría de las clases tienen 40 alumnos. No es un ambiente positivo para el aprendizaje.
Los estudiantes que se gradúan de estas escuelas secundarias no se reciben con los requisitos necesarios para ir a la universidad. Así que la mayoría se pone a trabajar en restaurantes de comida rápida o en la construcción con sus padres, cualquier trabajo que pueden conseguir sin tener que tomar exámenes. Una amiga, que es muy inteligente, recibía notas de A y B, pero no tomó cursos avanzados o de honores. Tomaba clases normales. Después de graduarse, solicitó un trabajo como tutora en la escuela media donde ella estudiaba antes. No pudo conseguir el trabajo porque no pudo aprobar el examen, que incluía Algebra II. Ella no estudió Alegbra II porque no era un requisito para la secundaria, sólo para las universidades.
Estos problemas ya tienen décadas. La verdad es que ha mejorado un poco últimamente. Ahora uno puede encontrar estudiantes que se graduaron del sistema público de secundarias que regresan a las comunidades como maestros, consejeros y tutores. Ellos son los que realmente están ayudando a los estudiantes y alentándolos. Pero, una taza de abandono del 68% sigue siendo atroz.
En muchas comunidades de color, existe la tradición del servicio militar. Estoy hablando de las comunidades latinas de segunda y tercera generación, la comunidad afro-americana, filipina y de Samoa. En su experiencia, ¿creen éstos que las fuerzas armadas son menos racistas que el resto de la sociedad?
No creo que las consideren menos racista, pero sí es una forma de calzar en la sociedad. Esto lo vimos en los años sesenta, cuando los afro-americanos eran reclutados para las fuerzas armadas, aunque en la vida civil eran segregados y no tenían derechos. Creo que ellos veían a las fuerzas armadas como una puerta de entrada a la sociedad. Creo que lo mismo está ocurriendo con estas comunidades, porque no calzan en la demografía de la sociedad actual, simplemente por su cultura y su situación económica. Entonces, vienen los militares y es como decir, “Sea americano, únase a las fuerzas armadas. Si usted se inscribe, estará luchando por su país”. La gente se inscribe en las fuerzas armadas porque es una forma de sentirse aceptado por la sociedad.
En la escuela, los maestros no te enseñan sobre tu cultura. Y la mayoría de la gente que vive en pobreza, les cuesta mucho. Para ellos, ser pobre es algo vergonzante. La mayoría de estas personas trabajan dos y tres trabajos sólo para sobrevivir, y siguen siendo pobres. Creo que muchos se unen a las fuerzas armadas como una forma de ser considerados integrantes productivos de la sociedad. También, para las comunidades inmigrantes es muy difícil ahora conseguir papeles, y es muy caro. Muchos consideran a las fuerzas armadas como una forma de conseguir la ciudadanía o una forma más fácil de legalizarse en el país.
Asistí a una conferencia en octubre sobre el contra-reclutamiento y me di cuenta que aunque uno se inscribe en las fuerzas armadas, no le garantizan la ciudadanía. Solamente aceleran el proceso al permitirlo a uno hacer la solicitud de inmediato en vez de esperar cinco años.
Es igual con el dinero para estudiar. Sólo el 50% de los veteranos reciben esos beneficios. Los militares hacen mucha propaganda con los estudiantes, los llaman cada dos años, hay comerciales por televisión, y hay mucha presencia militares en las escuelas. Los estudiantes tienen la idea que los militares le van a ofrecer muchas cosas. Una cosa que hemos hecho es pedir a los estudiantes que analicen de manera crítica a las fuerzas armadas. Sabe, se gasta tanto dinero en las fuerzas armadas que se debilita la educación, la vivienda, y la salud. De un dólar [de gastos del gobierno], cincuenta centavos se gastan en las fuerzas armadas, sólo cuatro o cinco centavos son gastados en la educación, dos en la salud. Gastamos tanto en las fuerzas armadas que no hay dinero para programas sociales, entonces uno se mete a las fuerzas armadas porque ellos prometen todos los programas que uno no recibe como ciudadano normal.
Y vemos esto en los programas de JROTC. ¿Cómo es JROTC?
Yo lo he visto en las escuelas medias, pero se llamaba Cadets. [Nota del Editor: El programa Naval Sea Cadets (Cadetes Marinos) es para jóvenes entre 11 y 17 años. Es afiliado a la Liga Naval de EEUU (U.S. Navy League), un grupo ciudadano que apoya a los servicios militares marítimos]. Hasta los alumnos en sexto grado se les entrena para inscribirse en las fuerzas armadas, para ser soldaditos. En la secundaria, uno lo ve más; JROTC tiene sus propios edificios e instalaciones en nuestro distrito escolar. En Roosevelt High School tiene un recinto subterráneo para la práctica de tiros.
A principios de cada año, ya que nuestras escuelas están tan hacinadas, no hay cupo para que todos tomen clases de educación física. Entonces, llegan los reclutadores de JROTC a las aulas de educación física y les dicen a los alumnos, “en vez de ir a educación física, ustedes se pueden unir a JROTC y será honorable, se considera como una actividad extra-curricular, y se ve bien en sus solicitudes para universidades”. Hacen un reclutamiento masivo. No hay otros clubes que llegan a los estudiantes para decir, “únase a nosotros y se prepara para la universidad”. Sólo lo hace JROTC.
Y, porque las escuelas están tan topadas de gente, no hay espacio en las otras clases, y a los alumnos se les mete a JROTC sólo para llenar espacios en su programación de clases.
En JROTC uno aprende a usar armas y a marchar. La mayoría de los estudiantes en JROTC vienen de comunidades pobres. Son estudiantes cuyo primer idioma no es inglés, estudiantes que no están encaminados a la universidad. A estos estudiantes se les entrena a inscribirse en las fuerzas armadas al salir de la secundaria. La mayoría de los estudiantes de JROTC se inscriben en las fuerzas armadas al salir de la secundaria. [Nota del Editor: Los contra-reclutadores argumentan que JROTC realmente constituye un desgaste para los recursos de las escuelas, y enseña una versión sesgada de la historia de Estados Unidos].
Me dice Jorge Mariscal de Project YANO que cada vez hay más latinas que se inscriben.
Las fuerzas armadas están reclutando a las latinas, han cambiado su mensaje para tener como blanco a las latinas. El mensaje es, que si uno es latina, unirse a las fuerzas armadas es un acto feminista. Uno va a pelear al lado de sus hermanos; a uno se le da el poder que ahora tiene el hombre.
La posibilidad de independencia económica entrega un sentido de poder a la gente. ¿Se está cerrando ese camino para las mujeres de color, y las está encaminando a ver a las fuerzas armadas como una opción feminista?
Esa es la impresión que quiere dar las fuerzas armadas. Pero dicen lo mismo sobre los hombres que no pueden conseguir un trabajo ni pagar la universidad. Creo que es más el mensaje de las fuerzas armadas, y las mujeres lo están percibiendo y piensan, “Bueno, debe ser la verdad”.
ICS trabaja con otros grupos en Los Angeles que se enfocan en el trabajo de contra-reclutamiento, como la Coalición contra el Militarismo en Nuestras Escuelas (CAMS, Coalition against Militarism in Our Schools)?
Sí. Cada vez que nos enteramos de que los reclutadores militares iban a llegar al colegio nosotros realizábamos contra-reclutamiento un día antes. Entregamos folletos sobre la realidad de la guerra, la realidad de las fuerzas armadas, y lo que uno debe pensar antes de unirse a las fuerzas armadas. Era genial, porque antes de que llegaran los reclutadores a la escuela, los alumnos ya estaban conscientes sobre los mitos y las realidades de inscribirse en las fuerzas armadas. Entonces, al día siguiente llegaban los reclutadores para tratar de persuadir a los estudiantes que van a recibir dinero par la universidad, y los estudiantes decían, “Según este papel que recibimos ayer, sólo el 50% de los veteranos reciben ese beneficio”.
Es lo mismo que hicimos con Estudiantes, no Soldados. Es un taller que se realizó en 45 aulas en cada escuela secundaria. Le explicamos a los estudiantes cuanto dinero se gasta en las fuerzas armadas, y porque los estudiantes se están inscribiendo. Le explicamos los hechos y las realidades, para que ellos tuviesen más información antes de tomar su decisión. Muchos estudiantes en esos talleres se cambiaron de opinión. Antes decían, “Oh, queremos inscribirnos en las fuerzas armadas,” y luego decían, “Voy a la universidad para tratar de conseguir un buen trabajo”.
- Lynn Koh
Nancy Meza habla del trabajo de Lucha Urbana en Los Ángeles
http://www.war-times.org/articles/WT_studentsnotsoldiersESP.htm
Inner City Struggle (ICS, Lucha Urbana) es una organización comunitaria que trabaja en asuntos de justicia educativa y económica en las comunidades de Boyle Heights, El Sereno, y el Este de Los Angeles. (visite: http://innercitystruggle.org). Nancy Meza es organizadora de jóvenes con ICS en la Escuela Secundaria Roosevelt, y trabaja en el grupo de jóvenes de ICS, Estudiantes Unidos (United Students). Lleva cuatro años trabajando con la organización y actualmente es estudiante en una universidad comunitaria.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras conversó con Nancy sobre las presiones económicas que enfrentan los jóvenes de la clase trabajadora, en comunidades inmigrantes de Los Angeles, y cómo esas presiones están vinculadas al reclutamiento militar.
Nancy Meza: ICS trabaja en comunidades pobres. En la mayoría de los hogares, el ingreso total es menos de $22,000 al año. Estas comunidades también tienen las “peores” escuelas: escuelas que carecen de fondos adecuados y están hacinados, en las cuales un gran porcentaje de alumnos no terminan su último año, ni se gradúan.
En Boyle Heights y el Este de LA el 90% de la población es mexicana o latina, El Sereno es un poco más diverso. El Sereno tiene más latinos que son de cuarta o quinta generación y Boyle Heights tiene más inmigrantes latinos de primera o segunda generación.
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras: ¿Que dicen sobre la guerra los jóvenes con los que trabajas?
Muchos de los jóvenes con los cuales trabajamos están en contra de la guerra. Sienten que es una guerra injusta. Están en contra por la forma que los afecta a ellos. Ven como los fondos para la educación han bajado, que hay más esfuerzos de reclutamiento militar en los colegios. En vez de ser reclutados para ir a la universidad para tener un futuro, la mayoría de los estudiantes están siendo encaminados hacia las fuerzas armadas.
United Students realiza cada año una semana de acción sobre universidades y justicia educativa. Uno de los talleres este año se llamó “Estudiantes, no Soldados”, y les preguntamos a los jóvenes sobre la guerra. La mayoría de ellos dijeron, “Oh, es simplemente la guerrita de Bush”. Estos fueron estudiantes normales que conscientemente están en contra de la guerra.
¿Usted tiene amigos o parientes que han pensado seriamente en inscribirse?
Uno de mis amigos se inscribió inmediatamente después del 11 de septiembre. Era muy buen estudiante, competía en deportes, tomaba clases avanzadas. Entonces él decía, “mis notas son buenas pero no son excelentes. Entonces, aunque entre a la universidad, no voy a poder pagarla”.
Mis otros amigos que han pensado en inscribirse no se graduaron de la secundaria. Entonces, ellos dicen, “no puedo conseguir in buen trabajo, lo único que puedo hacer es trabajar en McDonalds ganando el salario mínimo. Entonces, por qué no me meto mejor a las fuerzas armadas y recibo capacitación laboral”. Se les está encaminando en esa dirección porque no pueden conseguir un buen trabajo, porque estudiaron en escuelas públicas que no los preparaban para empleos en el Siglo 21, ni para asistir a la universidad. [Nota del editor: recientemente el Ejército aumentó en un 25% el número de personas que no terminan la secundaria que están dispuestos a aceptar como reclutas]. Aunque se gradúen de la secundaria, no pueden pasar los exámenes para recibir trabajos con un sueldo del cual se puede vivir.
Mi amigo que se inscribió en el servicio asistió a Garfield High, que tiene alrededor de 5 mil estudiantes, y sólo un consejero universitario. Quizás sí hubiera recursos para ayudarle a pagar la universidad, pero ya que hay un solo consejero, la mayoría de los estudiantes no están enterados sobre los recursos que existen. Las únicas personas que están entregando información en estas escuelas son los reclutadores de las fuerzas armadas. A la hora del almuerzo o en las clases uno no puede encontrar reclutadores de universidades o consejeros explicando cómo entrar a las universidades o cómo conseguir apoyo financiero. Pero uno sí puede ver a por lo menos dos reclutadores durante la hora del almuerzo, todas las semanas. Así que mi amigo simplemente no contaba con la información sobre las posibilidades de ayudar a pagar la universidad.
¿Cuantos estudiantes abandonan los estudios en los colegios donde trabaja ICS?
Estas escuelas tienen una taza da abandono del 68%, de manera que menos del 40% se gradúan.
Por ejemplo, Roosevelt High School es la escuela más hacinada en el país. Hay unos 5,200 estudiantes en un local construido para 2,500. Tiene mucho que ver con el financiamiento. Las escuelas tienen el sistema de rotación porque están tan repletas. Los estudiantes estudian dos meses luego tienen vacaciones por dos meses, y regresan otros dos meses. No hay suficientes escritorios en las aulas, ni libros para la cantidad de estudiantes que hay. Con suerte hay 32 o 34 estudiantes por cada maestro, pero la mayoría de las clases tienen 40 alumnos. No es un ambiente positivo para el aprendizaje.
Los estudiantes que se gradúan de estas escuelas secundarias no se reciben con los requisitos necesarios para ir a la universidad. Así que la mayoría se pone a trabajar en restaurantes de comida rápida o en la construcción con sus padres, cualquier trabajo que pueden conseguir sin tener que tomar exámenes. Una amiga, que es muy inteligente, recibía notas de A y B, pero no tomó cursos avanzados o de honores. Tomaba clases normales. Después de graduarse, solicitó un trabajo como tutora en la escuela media donde ella estudiaba antes. No pudo conseguir el trabajo porque no pudo aprobar el examen, que incluía Algebra II. Ella no estudió Alegbra II porque no era un requisito para la secundaria, sólo para las universidades.
Estos problemas ya tienen décadas. La verdad es que ha mejorado un poco últimamente. Ahora uno puede encontrar estudiantes que se graduaron del sistema público de secundarias que regresan a las comunidades como maestros, consejeros y tutores. Ellos son los que realmente están ayudando a los estudiantes y alentándolos. Pero, una taza de abandono del 68% sigue siendo atroz.
En muchas comunidades de color, existe la tradición del servicio militar. Estoy hablando de las comunidades latinas de segunda y tercera generación, la comunidad afro-americana, filipina y de Samoa. En su experiencia, ¿creen éstos que las fuerzas armadas son menos racistas que el resto de la sociedad?
No creo que las consideren menos racista, pero sí es una forma de calzar en la sociedad. Esto lo vimos en los años sesenta, cuando los afro-americanos eran reclutados para las fuerzas armadas, aunque en la vida civil eran segregados y no tenían derechos. Creo que ellos veían a las fuerzas armadas como una puerta de entrada a la sociedad. Creo que lo mismo está ocurriendo con estas comunidades, porque no calzan en la demografía de la sociedad actual, simplemente por su cultura y su situación económica. Entonces, vienen los militares y es como decir, “Sea americano, únase a las fuerzas armadas. Si usted se inscribe, estará luchando por su país”. La gente se inscribe en las fuerzas armadas porque es una forma de sentirse aceptado por la sociedad.
En la escuela, los maestros no te enseñan sobre tu cultura. Y la mayoría de la gente que vive en pobreza, les cuesta mucho. Para ellos, ser pobre es algo vergonzante. La mayoría de estas personas trabajan dos y tres trabajos sólo para sobrevivir, y siguen siendo pobres. Creo que muchos se unen a las fuerzas armadas como una forma de ser considerados integrantes productivos de la sociedad. También, para las comunidades inmigrantes es muy difícil ahora conseguir papeles, y es muy caro. Muchos consideran a las fuerzas armadas como una forma de conseguir la ciudadanía o una forma más fácil de legalizarse en el país.
Asistí a una conferencia en octubre sobre el contra-reclutamiento y me di cuenta que aunque uno se inscribe en las fuerzas armadas, no le garantizan la ciudadanía. Solamente aceleran el proceso al permitirlo a uno hacer la solicitud de inmediato en vez de esperar cinco años.
Es igual con el dinero para estudiar. Sólo el 50% de los veteranos reciben esos beneficios. Los militares hacen mucha propaganda con los estudiantes, los llaman cada dos años, hay comerciales por televisión, y hay mucha presencia militares en las escuelas. Los estudiantes tienen la idea que los militares le van a ofrecer muchas cosas. Una cosa que hemos hecho es pedir a los estudiantes que analicen de manera crítica a las fuerzas armadas. Sabe, se gasta tanto dinero en las fuerzas armadas que se debilita la educación, la vivienda, y la salud. De un dólar [de gastos del gobierno], cincuenta centavos se gastan en las fuerzas armadas, sólo cuatro o cinco centavos son gastados en la educación, dos en la salud. Gastamos tanto en las fuerzas armadas que no hay dinero para programas sociales, entonces uno se mete a las fuerzas armadas porque ellos prometen todos los programas que uno no recibe como ciudadano normal.
Y vemos esto en los programas de JROTC. ¿Cómo es JROTC?
Yo lo he visto en las escuelas medias, pero se llamaba Cadets. [Nota del Editor: El programa Naval Sea Cadets (Cadetes Marinos) es para jóvenes entre 11 y 17 años. Es afiliado a la Liga Naval de EEUU (U.S. Navy League), un grupo ciudadano que apoya a los servicios militares marítimos]. Hasta los alumnos en sexto grado se les entrena para inscribirse en las fuerzas armadas, para ser soldaditos. En la secundaria, uno lo ve más; JROTC tiene sus propios edificios e instalaciones en nuestro distrito escolar. En Roosevelt High School tiene un recinto subterráneo para la práctica de tiros.
A principios de cada año, ya que nuestras escuelas están tan hacinadas, no hay cupo para que todos tomen clases de educación física. Entonces, llegan los reclutadores de JROTC a las aulas de educación física y les dicen a los alumnos, “en vez de ir a educación física, ustedes se pueden unir a JROTC y será honorable, se considera como una actividad extra-curricular, y se ve bien en sus solicitudes para universidades”. Hacen un reclutamiento masivo. No hay otros clubes que llegan a los estudiantes para decir, “únase a nosotros y se prepara para la universidad”. Sólo lo hace JROTC.
Y, porque las escuelas están tan topadas de gente, no hay espacio en las otras clases, y a los alumnos se les mete a JROTC sólo para llenar espacios en su programación de clases.
En JROTC uno aprende a usar armas y a marchar. La mayoría de los estudiantes en JROTC vienen de comunidades pobres. Son estudiantes cuyo primer idioma no es inglés, estudiantes que no están encaminados a la universidad. A estos estudiantes se les entrena a inscribirse en las fuerzas armadas al salir de la secundaria. La mayoría de los estudiantes de JROTC se inscriben en las fuerzas armadas al salir de la secundaria. [Nota del Editor: Los contra-reclutadores argumentan que JROTC realmente constituye un desgaste para los recursos de las escuelas, y enseña una versión sesgada de la historia de Estados Unidos].
Me dice Jorge Mariscal de Project YANO que cada vez hay más latinas que se inscriben.
Las fuerzas armadas están reclutando a las latinas, han cambiado su mensaje para tener como blanco a las latinas. El mensaje es, que si uno es latina, unirse a las fuerzas armadas es un acto feminista. Uno va a pelear al lado de sus hermanos; a uno se le da el poder que ahora tiene el hombre.
La posibilidad de independencia económica entrega un sentido de poder a la gente. ¿Se está cerrando ese camino para las mujeres de color, y las está encaminando a ver a las fuerzas armadas como una opción feminista?
Esa es la impresión que quiere dar las fuerzas armadas. Pero dicen lo mismo sobre los hombres que no pueden conseguir un trabajo ni pagar la universidad. Creo que es más el mensaje de las fuerzas armadas, y las mujeres lo están percibiendo y piensan, “Bueno, debe ser la verdad”.
ICS trabaja con otros grupos en Los Angeles que se enfocan en el trabajo de contra-reclutamiento, como la Coalición contra el Militarismo en Nuestras Escuelas (CAMS, Coalition against Militarism in Our Schools)?
Sí. Cada vez que nos enteramos de que los reclutadores militares iban a llegar al colegio nosotros realizábamos contra-reclutamiento un día antes. Entregamos folletos sobre la realidad de la guerra, la realidad de las fuerzas armadas, y lo que uno debe pensar antes de unirse a las fuerzas armadas. Era genial, porque antes de que llegaran los reclutadores a la escuela, los alumnos ya estaban conscientes sobre los mitos y las realidades de inscribirse en las fuerzas armadas. Entonces, al día siguiente llegaban los reclutadores para tratar de persuadir a los estudiantes que van a recibir dinero par la universidad, y los estudiantes decían, “Según este papel que recibimos ayer, sólo el 50% de los veteranos reciben ese beneficio”.
Es lo mismo que hicimos con Estudiantes, no Soldados. Es un taller que se realizó en 45 aulas en cada escuela secundaria. Le explicamos a los estudiantes cuanto dinero se gasta en las fuerzas armadas, y porque los estudiantes se están inscribiendo. Le explicamos los hechos y las realidades, para que ellos tuviesen más información antes de tomar su decisión. Muchos estudiantes en esos talleres se cambiaron de opinión. Antes decían, “Oh, queremos inscribirnos en las fuerzas armadas,” y luego decían, “Voy a la universidad para tratar de conseguir un buen trabajo”.
- Lynn Koh
Close to Slavery
Close to Slavery
Guestworker Programs in the United States
In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a "legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis." Doing so, the president said, would mean "they won't have to try to sneak in." Such a program has been central to Bush's past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new "guest" workers to the United States.
What Bush did not say was that the United States already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should carefully examine how it operates.
Under the current system, called the H-2 program, employers brought about 121,000 guestworkers into the United States in 2005 — approximately 32,000 for agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.
These workers, though, are not treated like "guests." Rather, they are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who "import" them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.
Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won't take up their cause.
Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:
* routinely cheated out of wages;
* forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
* held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
* forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
* denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: "This guestworker program's the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery."
Congressman Rangel's conclusion is not mere hyperbole — and not the first time such a comparison has been made. Former Department of Labor official Lee G. Williams described the old "bracero" program — the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to work in the United States during and after World War II — as a system of "legalized slavery." In practice, there is little difference between the bracero program and the current H-2 guestworker program.
The H-2 guestworker system also can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. But unlike European indentured servants of old, today's guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens. When their work visas expire, they must leave the United States. They are, in effect, the disposable workers of the U.S. economy.
This report is based on interviews with thousands of guestworkers, a review of the research on guestworker programs, scores of legal cases and the experiences of legal experts from around the country. The abuses described here are too common to blame on a few "bad apple" employers. They are the foreseeable outcomes of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities to be imported as needed without affording them adequate legal safeguards or the protections of the free market.
The H-2 guestworker program is inherently abusive and should not be expanded in the name of immigration reform. If the current program is allowed to continue at all, it should be completely overhauled. Recommendations for doing so appear at the end of this report.
Guestworker Programs in the United States
In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a "legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis." Doing so, the president said, would mean "they won't have to try to sneak in." Such a program has been central to Bush's past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new "guest" workers to the United States.
What Bush did not say was that the United States already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should carefully examine how it operates.
Under the current system, called the H-2 program, employers brought about 121,000 guestworkers into the United States in 2005 — approximately 32,000 for agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.
These workers, though, are not treated like "guests." Rather, they are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who "import" them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.
Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won't take up their cause.
Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:
* routinely cheated out of wages;
* forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
* held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
* forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
* denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: "This guestworker program's the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery."
Congressman Rangel's conclusion is not mere hyperbole — and not the first time such a comparison has been made. Former Department of Labor official Lee G. Williams described the old "bracero" program — the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to work in the United States during and after World War II — as a system of "legalized slavery." In practice, there is little difference between the bracero program and the current H-2 guestworker program.
The H-2 guestworker system also can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. But unlike European indentured servants of old, today's guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens. When their work visas expire, they must leave the United States. They are, in effect, the disposable workers of the U.S. economy.
This report is based on interviews with thousands of guestworkers, a review of the research on guestworker programs, scores of legal cases and the experiences of legal experts from around the country. The abuses described here are too common to blame on a few "bad apple" employers. They are the foreseeable outcomes of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities to be imported as needed without affording them adequate legal safeguards or the protections of the free market.
The H-2 guestworker program is inherently abusive and should not be expanded in the name of immigration reform. If the current program is allowed to continue at all, it should be completely overhauled. Recommendations for doing so appear at the end of this report.
Wabanaki Confederacy Goes to UN
Wabanaki Confederacy goes global
© Indian Country Today July 04, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 04, 2008
by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today
INDIAN ISLAND, Maine - At the end of a weeklong Wabanaki Confederacy conference, the Wabanaki Council of Chiefs passed a historic resolution calling on United Nations nongovernmental organizations, the Human Rights Council and the Organization of American States to intercede on the tribes' behalf against incursions on tribal sovereignty by states and courts.
The chiefs and tribal members from the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Abenaki tribes from both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, representatives from the Assembly of First Nations, the Narragansett Indian Tribe, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and other nations attended the conference on Indian Island June 21 - 29.
The resolution was adopted unanimously. It states that the Council of Chiefs ''accept[s] the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as their governmental foundation in the relationship with Canada and the United States,'' and notes that those governments' refusals to adopt the declaration casts doubts on their future ability to engage in government-to-government relations with the tribes.
The Penobscot Indian Nation hosted the conference just two months after severing its relationship with the state of Maine, following a legislative session that crushed all initiatives to improved tribal life. But even before the session, state and court decisions had virtually erased the tribes' sovereignty.
Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis sat down with Indian Country Today just after the resolution passed for a conversation about the conference and recent events.
Kirk Francis: The conference was good. We were expecting more people, but in the end we got a lot of representatives and I think people are starting to realize there's a lot of commonality among the tribes.
Indian Country Today: Was the main theme solidarity and the tribes beginning to work collectively?
Francis: Yes. What we heard during the week and at some of our talking circles and ceremonies is the tribes realize that without getting together as tribal people, the mountain we're trying to climb for economic development, education, social services and all the issues that face us presents the same obstacles to all of us, so how do we pool our resources so each tribe doesn't have to break trail trying to get the same results?
We talked mostly about sovereignty, self-governance, and how to get our voice heard so people understand that these things are happening, they are important, and the tribes are kind of fed up with it. We thought this U.N. NGO resolution was a way to take a collective and global approach into an arena that has a powerful voice and would speak and advocate on behalf of the tribes. More than 70 chiefs weighed in on the U.N. resolution.
ICT: It was remarkable to hear [the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer] say that the state passed ''guidelines'' regarding the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, as if they have any authority to do so.
Francis: That's what we're facing. Whether it's how we distribute our services, our education, land use, the environment or repatriation, the state has its hands in every aspect of tribal life and we're just tired of it, so we decided to move away from that and we've made some great strides in doing that.
ICT: But the state has no authority to decide that ''cultural affiliation'' applies to remains going back only 1,000 years.
Francis: Our ancestors have the right to be buried with the same beliefs they grew up with. We have a responsibility as tribal leaders to bring them home and give them proper burial, and for the state to put definitions like how many years we can claim our ancestors and talk about them like they're just objects of history is really disturbing.
ICT: I wonder how they would respond if a tribal nation wanted to keep their ancestors; but that's the core of the problem, isn't it? The people who came here left their ancestors. They don't have the same kind of respect or sense of responsibility.
Francis: And that's what creates a lot of the friction, I think. Sometimes I get the impression that some people in the state government - mostly the executive branch - think you're just using this Indian thing as some kind of excuse to get what you want. I honestly believe there's a mindset out there that thinks we're not really Indians. That we don't really practice these things or have these beliefs. They think, ''Oh, they just talk about their ancestors, and their future and their elders, to try to get slot machines or gain some kind of control they shouldn't have.''
ICT: Did you do anything formal to sever the state relationship?
Francis: A few weeks ago, we had a visit here for the first time ever from the state Department of Environmental Protection. They wanted to inspect our underground tanks. We immediately drafted a letter to the governor asking him to tell all departments that they're not to be on tribal territory without following protocols. I got a call from the governor's attorney who said they have legal responsibility and enforcement rights whether they have permission or not.
ICT: What about severing financial relations?
Francis: We've got almost all our programs out of state funding.
ICT: How much money does the state provide?
Francis: A little over $2,000 a year in general assistance, close to $40,000 for the child care program, and a $60,000 grant for health services. Then there's the school, which combines tribal funds from the BIA, but it puts us in a spot where we can't really pull away from that because of the other tribes involved unless they choose to do the same thing.
Back in 1978 - '79, the council voted to move the decision-making authority for the school to the school board, so we don't really see that as a governmental function in terms of this separation right now. That's around $1.5 million in a year. The state accounts for about 17 percent of education money, so that's an area we'll have to figure out a way to move forward on, hopefully, with some of our economic development things.
ICT: So apart from the school, the state contributes a little more than $100,000 to the tribe.
Francis: Right. Our budget is in the upper teens [millions], so the state contribution is a very small part of what we do here.
ICT: But the state takes $50,000 from your bingo business. [The tribe has operated a non-mechanical high-stakes bingo game for almost three decades. A bill to add 100 slot machines to the operation was shot down by the governor during the last session.] Why do you have to pay the state $50,000 for Class II gaming? That sounds like a shakedown.
Francis: It is. We tried to get it waived. We operate eight weekends a year. Some quarters have only one bingo weekend and we have to pay the state $12,000. We put $1.8 million a year into the local economy, but all that just gets overlooked. Not only do we not get any gaming improvements by being able to use the same tools that are used 11 miles from us [at a non-Indian casino in Bangor called Hollywood Slots that has just expanded to 1,500 slots], but we continue to have to pay this fee to the state while that business hammers us.
ICT: How are your Class II plans moving? [The tribe has plans to introduce Class II gaming machines.]
Francis: We've set up a gaming commission. We have bylaws. We have a licensing procedure to put in place. We have comprehensive land-use regulations that meet or exceed state standards in every area. We're also starting to work on our own license plates and registration and we're working with the Department of Trust Responsibilities to come up with a tribal passport. So we're working in a lot of different directions and our members and council are so supportive.
We've already been threatened with physical enforcement. We went to them and told them what we're going to do. They said, ''Well, you know, people will be going to jail. There'll be state police there.'' What we said at our general meeting is we're not going to worry about that. We're just going to worry about what we do in here, and do it responsibility, and we'll be fine.
© Indian Country Today July 04, 2008. All Rights Reserved
Posted: July 04, 2008
by: Gale Courey Toensing / Indian Country Today
INDIAN ISLAND, Maine - At the end of a weeklong Wabanaki Confederacy conference, the Wabanaki Council of Chiefs passed a historic resolution calling on United Nations nongovernmental organizations, the Human Rights Council and the Organization of American States to intercede on the tribes' behalf against incursions on tribal sovereignty by states and courts.
The chiefs and tribal members from the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Micmac and Abenaki tribes from both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, representatives from the Assembly of First Nations, the Narragansett Indian Tribe, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and other nations attended the conference on Indian Island June 21 - 29.
The resolution was adopted unanimously. It states that the Council of Chiefs ''accept[s] the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as their governmental foundation in the relationship with Canada and the United States,'' and notes that those governments' refusals to adopt the declaration casts doubts on their future ability to engage in government-to-government relations with the tribes.
The Penobscot Indian Nation hosted the conference just two months after severing its relationship with the state of Maine, following a legislative session that crushed all initiatives to improved tribal life. But even before the session, state and court decisions had virtually erased the tribes' sovereignty.
Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis sat down with Indian Country Today just after the resolution passed for a conversation about the conference and recent events.
Kirk Francis: The conference was good. We were expecting more people, but in the end we got a lot of representatives and I think people are starting to realize there's a lot of commonality among the tribes.
Indian Country Today: Was the main theme solidarity and the tribes beginning to work collectively?
Francis: Yes. What we heard during the week and at some of our talking circles and ceremonies is the tribes realize that without getting together as tribal people, the mountain we're trying to climb for economic development, education, social services and all the issues that face us presents the same obstacles to all of us, so how do we pool our resources so each tribe doesn't have to break trail trying to get the same results?
We talked mostly about sovereignty, self-governance, and how to get our voice heard so people understand that these things are happening, they are important, and the tribes are kind of fed up with it. We thought this U.N. NGO resolution was a way to take a collective and global approach into an arena that has a powerful voice and would speak and advocate on behalf of the tribes. More than 70 chiefs weighed in on the U.N. resolution.
ICT: It was remarkable to hear [the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer] say that the state passed ''guidelines'' regarding the implementation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, as if they have any authority to do so.
Francis: That's what we're facing. Whether it's how we distribute our services, our education, land use, the environment or repatriation, the state has its hands in every aspect of tribal life and we're just tired of it, so we decided to move away from that and we've made some great strides in doing that.
ICT: But the state has no authority to decide that ''cultural affiliation'' applies to remains going back only 1,000 years.
Francis: Our ancestors have the right to be buried with the same beliefs they grew up with. We have a responsibility as tribal leaders to bring them home and give them proper burial, and for the state to put definitions like how many years we can claim our ancestors and talk about them like they're just objects of history is really disturbing.
ICT: I wonder how they would respond if a tribal nation wanted to keep their ancestors; but that's the core of the problem, isn't it? The people who came here left their ancestors. They don't have the same kind of respect or sense of responsibility.
Francis: And that's what creates a lot of the friction, I think. Sometimes I get the impression that some people in the state government - mostly the executive branch - think you're just using this Indian thing as some kind of excuse to get what you want. I honestly believe there's a mindset out there that thinks we're not really Indians. That we don't really practice these things or have these beliefs. They think, ''Oh, they just talk about their ancestors, and their future and their elders, to try to get slot machines or gain some kind of control they shouldn't have.''
ICT: Did you do anything formal to sever the state relationship?
Francis: A few weeks ago, we had a visit here for the first time ever from the state Department of Environmental Protection. They wanted to inspect our underground tanks. We immediately drafted a letter to the governor asking him to tell all departments that they're not to be on tribal territory without following protocols. I got a call from the governor's attorney who said they have legal responsibility and enforcement rights whether they have permission or not.
ICT: What about severing financial relations?
Francis: We've got almost all our programs out of state funding.
ICT: How much money does the state provide?
Francis: A little over $2,000 a year in general assistance, close to $40,000 for the child care program, and a $60,000 grant for health services. Then there's the school, which combines tribal funds from the BIA, but it puts us in a spot where we can't really pull away from that because of the other tribes involved unless they choose to do the same thing.
Back in 1978 - '79, the council voted to move the decision-making authority for the school to the school board, so we don't really see that as a governmental function in terms of this separation right now. That's around $1.5 million in a year. The state accounts for about 17 percent of education money, so that's an area we'll have to figure out a way to move forward on, hopefully, with some of our economic development things.
ICT: So apart from the school, the state contributes a little more than $100,000 to the tribe.
Francis: Right. Our budget is in the upper teens [millions], so the state contribution is a very small part of what we do here.
ICT: But the state takes $50,000 from your bingo business. [The tribe has operated a non-mechanical high-stakes bingo game for almost three decades. A bill to add 100 slot machines to the operation was shot down by the governor during the last session.] Why do you have to pay the state $50,000 for Class II gaming? That sounds like a shakedown.
Francis: It is. We tried to get it waived. We operate eight weekends a year. Some quarters have only one bingo weekend and we have to pay the state $12,000. We put $1.8 million a year into the local economy, but all that just gets overlooked. Not only do we not get any gaming improvements by being able to use the same tools that are used 11 miles from us [at a non-Indian casino in Bangor called Hollywood Slots that has just expanded to 1,500 slots], but we continue to have to pay this fee to the state while that business hammers us.
ICT: How are your Class II plans moving? [The tribe has plans to introduce Class II gaming machines.]
Francis: We've set up a gaming commission. We have bylaws. We have a licensing procedure to put in place. We have comprehensive land-use regulations that meet or exceed state standards in every area. We're also starting to work on our own license plates and registration and we're working with the Department of Trust Responsibilities to come up with a tribal passport. So we're working in a lot of different directions and our members and council are so supportive.
We've already been threatened with physical enforcement. We went to them and told them what we're going to do. They said, ''Well, you know, people will be going to jail. There'll be state police there.'' What we said at our general meeting is we're not going to worry about that. We're just going to worry about what we do in here, and do it responsibility, and we'll be fine.
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions
You Can't Fight Gang Warfare with Gang Warfare!
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions
By LUIS RODRIGUEZ
As expected, and despite opposition from a number of community leaders, a gang injunction against the San Fer gang has been imposed by the courts on a nine-and-a-half square mile area of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, encompassing most of Sylmar, a northwest portion of Pacoima and all of San Fernando City (most of the rest of Pacoima has already been under a gang injunction for years against the Pacoima Flats, Projects Boys, and other Pacoima gangs).
This is reportedly the largest gang injunction area in Los Angeles
Already, young Latino men I know -- not in gangs -- have been stopped, arrested, and in one case almost photographed (to be part of a statewide gang data base). This last case was stopped when the young man's parents became involved and demanded their son not be photographed or placed on this data base. Finding that this young man had no gang ties, he was eventually released.
As I predicted, many youth not in San Fer, but also alleged San Fer members not involved in crimes, will be harassed and even arrested. Our juvenile facilities, jails and prisons are teeming with youth who shouldn't be there -- a gang injunction makes illegal what is otherwise legal activity: association, using a cell phone, or having tattoos. Now alleged gang members will find themselves going to jail for things that are not criminal.
If you make more laws, you make more lawless.
My work, and the work of many gang intervention workers, is to keep these young people out of the criminal justice system. Our work now has become twice as hard as these injunctions -- and other laws down the pike like the Runner Initiative slated for vote in November -- end up placing poor and often neglected youth behind bars faster and longer.
It's easy now to end up in jail -- it's harder to find treatment, help, jobs, schooling, viable alternatives to street life.
The sad thing was that at the Sylmar Neighborhood Council's Town Hall Meeting where I was on a panel opposing the proposed gang injunction, the majority of the people in attendance seemed to be older white residents. This community is mostly Latino with many recent immigrants. Sylmar High School is 95 percent Latino. Yet this community was hardly represented although it's their kids that will be most affected. There didn't seem to be any Spanish-language meetings or even translations considered to include them. Most of the whites in the audience appeared to be for the gang injunction (not all since I talked to some who opposed the injunction, and, of course, there were a number of Latinos for the injunction).
Still the racist nature of these laws is a thick as the smog in LA.
We need to keep our kids out of the juvenile lockups, jails and prisons. The way to do this is to provide jobs, training, meaningful education, creative/artistic opportunities, spiritual connections, and real caring community. Instead gang injunctions under the guise of "safety" fill our communities, even one like where I live, the so-called Huntington Estates, a nice, quiet, tree-lined section of San Fernando that is now under the San Fer gang injunction.
Once gang injunctions were allowed, they spread and even well-off mostly non-gang communities are included.
The city has promised prevention and intervention programs for youth. These are few and minimal (and the biggest chuck, about $30 million, must be decided by voters in November) while the police get billions of dollars. We've become a closed and scared society.
I know we can turn these youth around. I know we can get most of them out of the line of fire. I know we can find more meaningful and healthy alternatives to gangs. But these ideas, programs, and strategies are discarded for the ones that should be of last resort, like a gang injunction.
Just like we go to war and spend close to $10 billion a day in Iraq and Afghanistan to "stop terror" (creating more terror and better-organized "terrorists" in the process), we are going to war with our youth--usually the poorest, most pushed out, and in this case, mostly immigrant Latino youth.
I will be working with other community groups to track the effects of this injunction, which has no end date nor any exit plan for those caught under its net. Hopefully we can find a way to defeat this injunction, but also for other cities to learn not go to this way. In other communities where gang injunctions have been approved, gangs don't die or stop. They actually get squeezed out at so that we see them in other parts of the county, state, country, and even other countries (LA-based gangs have now become a big problem throughout the US, in Mexico, Central America, and even far-flung places like Cambodia and Armenia). Also these so-called gang members get better organized -- in juvenile lockup and prisons they go through "GANG 101" training. They return back to their communities, or even other communities, better organized, armed, and deadly.
You can't stop gang warfare with gang warfare.
We keep making the same mistakes and falling for the same traps. Even a local newspaper in San Fernando declared that a judge "puts halt to violent gang activity with injunction." This is simply a lie. Gang injunctions don't stop violent gang activity--they just spread it around.
I'll keep my readers posted from time to time on the outcomes from this gang injunction. One telling sign tonight--a police helicopter shining their lights a couple of streets from my house. Oh, yes, LA pioneered the "Ghetto Bird." But this part of San Fernando has had little or no crime for decades. Now, as part of the gang injunction "safety" zone, we're being treated like any other poor ghetto or barrio community (which shouldn't happen there neither).
Like I said, once you let this monster in, it keeps growing.
Luis Rodriguez is a co-founder of Rock A Mole Productions and a contributing editor at Rock & Rap Confidential . He is the author of several books, including Always Running: Mi Vida Loca--Gang Days in LA, The Republic of East LA and the novel Music of the Mill published by Rayo/Harper Collins. For more information about his cultural center in LA, visit tiachucha.com. For more on his writing and activism, visit his blog: http://luisjrodriguez.com/blog/
The Deadly Fallout from Gang Injunctions
By LUIS RODRIGUEZ
As expected, and despite opposition from a number of community leaders, a gang injunction against the San Fer gang has been imposed by the courts on a nine-and-a-half square mile area of the Northeast San Fernando Valley, encompassing most of Sylmar, a northwest portion of Pacoima and all of San Fernando City (most of the rest of Pacoima has already been under a gang injunction for years against the Pacoima Flats, Projects Boys, and other Pacoima gangs).
This is reportedly the largest gang injunction area in Los Angeles
Already, young Latino men I know -- not in gangs -- have been stopped, arrested, and in one case almost photographed (to be part of a statewide gang data base). This last case was stopped when the young man's parents became involved and demanded their son not be photographed or placed on this data base. Finding that this young man had no gang ties, he was eventually released.
As I predicted, many youth not in San Fer, but also alleged San Fer members not involved in crimes, will be harassed and even arrested. Our juvenile facilities, jails and prisons are teeming with youth who shouldn't be there -- a gang injunction makes illegal what is otherwise legal activity: association, using a cell phone, or having tattoos. Now alleged gang members will find themselves going to jail for things that are not criminal.
If you make more laws, you make more lawless.
My work, and the work of many gang intervention workers, is to keep these young people out of the criminal justice system. Our work now has become twice as hard as these injunctions -- and other laws down the pike like the Runner Initiative slated for vote in November -- end up placing poor and often neglected youth behind bars faster and longer.
It's easy now to end up in jail -- it's harder to find treatment, help, jobs, schooling, viable alternatives to street life.
The sad thing was that at the Sylmar Neighborhood Council's Town Hall Meeting where I was on a panel opposing the proposed gang injunction, the majority of the people in attendance seemed to be older white residents. This community is mostly Latino with many recent immigrants. Sylmar High School is 95 percent Latino. Yet this community was hardly represented although it's their kids that will be most affected. There didn't seem to be any Spanish-language meetings or even translations considered to include them. Most of the whites in the audience appeared to be for the gang injunction (not all since I talked to some who opposed the injunction, and, of course, there were a number of Latinos for the injunction).
Still the racist nature of these laws is a thick as the smog in LA.
We need to keep our kids out of the juvenile lockups, jails and prisons. The way to do this is to provide jobs, training, meaningful education, creative/artistic opportunities, spiritual connections, and real caring community. Instead gang injunctions under the guise of "safety" fill our communities, even one like where I live, the so-called Huntington Estates, a nice, quiet, tree-lined section of San Fernando that is now under the San Fer gang injunction.
Once gang injunctions were allowed, they spread and even well-off mostly non-gang communities are included.
The city has promised prevention and intervention programs for youth. These are few and minimal (and the biggest chuck, about $30 million, must be decided by voters in November) while the police get billions of dollars. We've become a closed and scared society.
I know we can turn these youth around. I know we can get most of them out of the line of fire. I know we can find more meaningful and healthy alternatives to gangs. But these ideas, programs, and strategies are discarded for the ones that should be of last resort, like a gang injunction.
Just like we go to war and spend close to $10 billion a day in Iraq and Afghanistan to "stop terror" (creating more terror and better-organized "terrorists" in the process), we are going to war with our youth--usually the poorest, most pushed out, and in this case, mostly immigrant Latino youth.
I will be working with other community groups to track the effects of this injunction, which has no end date nor any exit plan for those caught under its net. Hopefully we can find a way to defeat this injunction, but also for other cities to learn not go to this way. In other communities where gang injunctions have been approved, gangs don't die or stop. They actually get squeezed out at so that we see them in other parts of the county, state, country, and even other countries (LA-based gangs have now become a big problem throughout the US, in Mexico, Central America, and even far-flung places like Cambodia and Armenia). Also these so-called gang members get better organized -- in juvenile lockup and prisons they go through "GANG 101" training. They return back to their communities, or even other communities, better organized, armed, and deadly.
You can't stop gang warfare with gang warfare.
We keep making the same mistakes and falling for the same traps. Even a local newspaper in San Fernando declared that a judge "puts halt to violent gang activity with injunction." This is simply a lie. Gang injunctions don't stop violent gang activity--they just spread it around.
I'll keep my readers posted from time to time on the outcomes from this gang injunction. One telling sign tonight--a police helicopter shining their lights a couple of streets from my house. Oh, yes, LA pioneered the "Ghetto Bird." But this part of San Fernando has had little or no crime for decades. Now, as part of the gang injunction "safety" zone, we're being treated like any other poor ghetto or barrio community (which shouldn't happen there neither).
Like I said, once you let this monster in, it keeps growing.
Luis Rodriguez is a co-founder of Rock A Mole Productions and a contributing editor at Rock & Rap Confidential . He is the author of several books, including Always Running: Mi Vida Loca--Gang Days in LA, The Republic of East LA and the novel Music of the Mill published by Rayo/Harper Collins. For more information about his cultural center in LA, visit tiachucha.com. For more on his writing and activism, visit his blog: http://luisjrodriguez.com/blog/
Bush's Secret Army of Snoops and Snitches
Bush's Secret Army of Snoops and Snitches
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
Posted on July 9, 2008, Printed on July 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/90829/
The full scale of Bush's assault on our civil liberties may not be known until years after he's left office.
At the moment, all we can do is get glimpses here or there of what's going on.
And the latest one to come to my attention is the dispatching of police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and utility workers as so-called "terrorism liaison officers," according to a report by Bruce Finley in the Denver Post.
They are entrusted with hunting for "suspicious activity," and then they report their findings, which end up in secret government databases.
What constitutes "suspicious activity," of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But a draft Justice Department memo on the subject says that such things as "taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value" or "making notes" could constitute suspicious activity, Finley wrote.
The states where this is going on include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.
Dozens more are planning to do so, Finley reports.
Colorado alone has 181 Terrorism Liaison Officers, and some of them are from the private sector, such as Xcel Energy.
Mark Silverstein of the Colorado ACLU told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that this reminds him of the old TIPS program, which "caused so much controversy that Congress eventually shut it down. But it is reemerging in other forms." Silverstein warns that there will be thousands and thousands of "completely innocent people going about completely innocent and legal activities" who are going to end up in a government database.
On the web, I found a description for a Terrorism Liaison Officer Position in the East Bay.
Reporting to the Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and the city of Oakland, these officers "would in effect function as ad hoc members" of the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group, which consists of local police officers and firefighters.
The "suggested duties" of these Terrorism Liaison Officers include: "source person for internal or external inquiry," and "collecting, reporting retrieving and sharing of materials related to terrorism. Such materials might include ... books journals, periodicals, and videotapes."
Terrorism Liaison Officers would be situated not only in agencies dealing with the harbor, the airports, and the railroads, but also "University/Campus."
And the private sector would be involved, too. "The program would eventually be expanded to include Health Care personnel and representatives from private, critical infrastructure entities, with communication systems specifically tailored to their needs."
In this regard, Terrorism Liaison Officers resemble InfraGard members. (See "The FBI Deputizes Business".) This FBI-private sector liaison group now consists of more than 26,000 members, who have their own secure channels of communication and are shielded, as much as possible, from scrutiny.
Terrorism Liaison Officers connect up with so-called "Fusion Centers": intelligence sharing among public safety agencies as well as the private sector. The Department of Justice has come up with "Fusion Center Guidelines" that discuss the role of private sector participants.
"The private sector can offer fusion centers a variety of resources," it says, including "suspicious incidents and activity information."
It also recommends shielding the private sector. "To aid in sharing this sensitive information, a Non-Disclosure Agreement may be used. The NDA provides private sector entities an additional layer of security, ensuring the security of private sector proprietary information and trade secrets," the document states.
As if that's not enough, the Justice Department document recommends that "fusion centers and their leadership encourage appropriate policymakers to legislate the protection of private sector data provided to fusion centers."
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.
© 2008 The Progressive All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/90829/
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
Posted on July 9, 2008, Printed on July 10, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/90829/
The full scale of Bush's assault on our civil liberties may not be known until years after he's left office.
At the moment, all we can do is get glimpses here or there of what's going on.
And the latest one to come to my attention is the dispatching of police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and utility workers as so-called "terrorism liaison officers," according to a report by Bruce Finley in the Denver Post.
They are entrusted with hunting for "suspicious activity," and then they report their findings, which end up in secret government databases.
What constitutes "suspicious activity," of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But a draft Justice Department memo on the subject says that such things as "taking photos of no apparent aesthetic value" or "making notes" could constitute suspicious activity, Finley wrote.
The states where this is going on include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C.
Dozens more are planning to do so, Finley reports.
Colorado alone has 181 Terrorism Liaison Officers, and some of them are from the private sector, such as Xcel Energy.
Mark Silverstein of the Colorado ACLU told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that this reminds him of the old TIPS program, which "caused so much controversy that Congress eventually shut it down. But it is reemerging in other forms." Silverstein warns that there will be thousands and thousands of "completely innocent people going about completely innocent and legal activities" who are going to end up in a government database.
On the web, I found a description for a Terrorism Liaison Officer Position in the East Bay.
Reporting to the Alameda and Contra Costa Counties and the city of Oakland, these officers "would in effect function as ad hoc members" of the East Bay Terrorism Early Warning Group, which consists of local police officers and firefighters.
The "suggested duties" of these Terrorism Liaison Officers include: "source person for internal or external inquiry," and "collecting, reporting retrieving and sharing of materials related to terrorism. Such materials might include ... books journals, periodicals, and videotapes."
Terrorism Liaison Officers would be situated not only in agencies dealing with the harbor, the airports, and the railroads, but also "University/Campus."
And the private sector would be involved, too. "The program would eventually be expanded to include Health Care personnel and representatives from private, critical infrastructure entities, with communication systems specifically tailored to their needs."
In this regard, Terrorism Liaison Officers resemble InfraGard members. (See "The FBI Deputizes Business".) This FBI-private sector liaison group now consists of more than 26,000 members, who have their own secure channels of communication and are shielded, as much as possible, from scrutiny.
Terrorism Liaison Officers connect up with so-called "Fusion Centers": intelligence sharing among public safety agencies as well as the private sector. The Department of Justice has come up with "Fusion Center Guidelines" that discuss the role of private sector participants.
"The private sector can offer fusion centers a variety of resources," it says, including "suspicious incidents and activity information."
It also recommends shielding the private sector. "To aid in sharing this sensitive information, a Non-Disclosure Agreement may be used. The NDA provides private sector entities an additional layer of security, ensuring the security of private sector proprietary information and trade secrets," the document states.
As if that's not enough, the Justice Department document recommends that "fusion centers and their leadership encourage appropriate policymakers to legislate the protection of private sector data provided to fusion centers."
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.
© 2008 The Progressive All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/90829/
7/7/08
La JBG El Camino del Futuro denuncia la incursión militar de 200 soldados
La JBG El Camino del Futuro denuncia la incursión militar de 200 soldados, así como policías y judiciales, en los pueblos zapatistas de Hermenegildo Galeana y San Alejandro, del Caracol de La Garrucha.
CARACOL DE RESISTECIA
HACIA UN NUEVO AMANECER
JUNTA DE BUEN GOBIERNO
EL CAMINO DEL FUTURO
CHIAPAS, MÉXICO
4 DE JUNIO DEL 2008
DENUNCIA.
ACTO DE PROVOCACIÓN
El que suscribe, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro.
Al pueblo de México y al mundo, a los compañeros y compañeras de la otra campaña de México y del mundo, a los medios de comunicación nacional e internacional, a los defensores de los derechos humanos, a los organismos no gubernametal honestos:
Por medio de la presente, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro, Chiapas, México, denuncia:
1. Columna de convoy militar y seguridad pública y policía municipal y PGR, a las 9 de la mañana, hora sur oriental, 2 carros grandes de soldado y 3 carros chicos de soldado y 2 carros de seguridad pública, 2 carros de policía municipal y una tanqueta y un carro de PGR.
2. Un total de alrededor de 200 provocadores.
3. Antes de entrar en el pueblo de Garrucha, sede del Caracol, a 30 metros de la orilla del pueblo, se paran 3 convoy y bajan del carro 4 soldados, como queriendo flanquear al pueblo de Garrucha, aprovechando de nuestro camino del trabajadero colectivo de milpa, reacciona el pueblo para rechazarlo y empiezan a organizarse, al instante los soldados suben de su carro y siguen su camino, mientras los otros que están adelante está intimidando a la población tomando películas y fotografiando, y así mientras están esperando los que están provocando.
4. Llegando en la otra posición de los soldados de Patiwitz, se incorpora otro convoy militar con rumbo a donde fueron a provocar nuevamente.
5. Llegan a la ranchería de Rancho Alegre, conocido como Chapuyil.
6. Se bajan todos en sus carros y agarran rumbo al pueblo de Hermenegildo Galeana, donde todos y todas son bases de apoyo zapatistas, acusando que en ese pueblo tienen sembradillos de mariguanas.
7. Toda la zona zapatista de Garrucha y sus autoridades autónomos somos testigos que no existe plantíos, sólo hay zapatistas y hay trabajadero de milpa y platanar, y están dispuestas y dispuestos a luchar por libertad, justicia y democracia. Rechazar cualquier provocación.
8. Como 100 soldado y 10 seguridad pública y 4 judicial se disponen a ir a enfrentar al pueblo de Galeana, todos los represores se pintan la cara para confundirse y no sean reconocidos dentro del monte, caminan unos tramos del camino y se meten al monte y así van avanzando rumbo al pueblo.
9. Es guiado por una persona llamado Feliciano Román Ruiz y es conocido que es policía municipal de Ocosingo el quien lleva a la columna de federales.
10. El pueblo de Galeana, hombres, mujeres, niñas y niños, se organizan para rechazarlos dispuestos y dispuestas a lo que salga.
11. En el medio del camino se encuentran y comienza el alboroto, llenos de coraje, las zapatistas mujeres y hombres, niños, niñas, diciéndoles a los soldados que regresen, y diciéndoles que no los necesitan aquí, queremos libertad, justicia y democracia, no soldados.
12. Los soldados responden: venimos aquí porque sabemos que hay marihuana y vamos a pasar a huevos, y es ahí donde el pueblo sacan sus machetes, palos, piedras, resorteras, hondas y todo lo que haya en el alcance de la mano y empieza el rechazo.
13. Los soldados dicen: esta vez no vamos a pasar, pero regresamos en 15 días y eso sí a huevos vamos a pasar.
14. Toman otro rumbo para bajar en otro poblado llamado San Alejandro, pueblo zapatista bases de apoyo, ahí estaban esperando 9 carros con 50 soldados y 10 policías municipales.
15. Donde bajaron los soldados, dejaron pisoteado el sembradillo de maíz, que es único alimento del pueblo para vivir.
16. Mientras, en el poblado zapatista de San Alejandro 60 represores provocadores se posicionaron como para estar dispuesto al enfrentamiento.
17. Reacciona el pueblo y toman lo que encuentran a la mano y rechazan a la fuerza federal.
18. En esta provocación participaron soldados de Toniná y soldados de Patiwitz y soldados de San Quintín.
19. Pueblo de México y al mundo queremos decirles que no será tan tarde habrá enfrentamiento y eso si es provocado por Calderón y Juan Sabines y Carlos Leonel Solórzano, presidente municipal de Ocosingo. Mandando a sus perros de represores de cualquier corporación.
No somos narcotraficantes, somos lo que ya saben hermanos y hermanas de México y del mundo.
Está claro que vienen por nosotros los y las zapatistas, y vienen los 3 niveles de malos gobiernos encima de nosotros, y nosotros estamos dispuestos de resistir y si es necesario cumplir nuestro lema, que es: vivir por la patria o morir por la libertad.
20. Pueblo de México y el mundo, ustedes saben que nuestra lucha está dirigida en la lucha política y pacífica, como dice nuestra Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, lucha política y pacífica, conocido como OTRA CAMPAÑA y vean por dónde viene la provocación de la violencia.
21. Compañeras y compañeros de la otra campaña de México y de otros países, pedimos que estén atentos, porque los soldados dijeron que en 15 días vendrán nuevamente, no queremos guerra, queremos paz y con justicia y dignidad. No nos queda de otra, defender, rechazar y resistir porque nos vienen a buscar para enfrentarnos, por eso nos está buscando a nosotros, los pueblos zapatistas bases de apoyo.
22. Sólo nos queda decirles que vean por dónde viene esta provocación. Ahí los estamos informando si es que nos da tiempo.
Es todo nuestras palabras
A T E N T A M E NT E
La Junta de Buen Gobierno
Elena Gordillo Clara Claribel Pérez López
Freddy Rodríguez López Rolando Ruiz Hernández
CARACOL DE RESISTECIA
HACIA UN NUEVO AMANECER
JUNTA DE BUEN GOBIERNO
EL CAMINO DEL FUTURO
CHIAPAS, MÉXICO
4 DE JUNIO DEL 2008
DENUNCIA.
ACTO DE PROVOCACIÓN
El que suscribe, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro.
Al pueblo de México y al mundo, a los compañeros y compañeras de la otra campaña de México y del mundo, a los medios de comunicación nacional e internacional, a los defensores de los derechos humanos, a los organismos no gubernametal honestos:
Por medio de la presente, la Junta de Buen Gobierno El Camino del Futuro, Chiapas, México, denuncia:
1. Columna de convoy militar y seguridad pública y policía municipal y PGR, a las 9 de la mañana, hora sur oriental, 2 carros grandes de soldado y 3 carros chicos de soldado y 2 carros de seguridad pública, 2 carros de policía municipal y una tanqueta y un carro de PGR.
2. Un total de alrededor de 200 provocadores.
3. Antes de entrar en el pueblo de Garrucha, sede del Caracol, a 30 metros de la orilla del pueblo, se paran 3 convoy y bajan del carro 4 soldados, como queriendo flanquear al pueblo de Garrucha, aprovechando de nuestro camino del trabajadero colectivo de milpa, reacciona el pueblo para rechazarlo y empiezan a organizarse, al instante los soldados suben de su carro y siguen su camino, mientras los otros que están adelante está intimidando a la población tomando películas y fotografiando, y así mientras están esperando los que están provocando.
4. Llegando en la otra posición de los soldados de Patiwitz, se incorpora otro convoy militar con rumbo a donde fueron a provocar nuevamente.
5. Llegan a la ranchería de Rancho Alegre, conocido como Chapuyil.
6. Se bajan todos en sus carros y agarran rumbo al pueblo de Hermenegildo Galeana, donde todos y todas son bases de apoyo zapatistas, acusando que en ese pueblo tienen sembradillos de mariguanas.
7. Toda la zona zapatista de Garrucha y sus autoridades autónomos somos testigos que no existe plantíos, sólo hay zapatistas y hay trabajadero de milpa y platanar, y están dispuestas y dispuestos a luchar por libertad, justicia y democracia. Rechazar cualquier provocación.
8. Como 100 soldado y 10 seguridad pública y 4 judicial se disponen a ir a enfrentar al pueblo de Galeana, todos los represores se pintan la cara para confundirse y no sean reconocidos dentro del monte, caminan unos tramos del camino y se meten al monte y así van avanzando rumbo al pueblo.
9. Es guiado por una persona llamado Feliciano Román Ruiz y es conocido que es policía municipal de Ocosingo el quien lleva a la columna de federales.
10. El pueblo de Galeana, hombres, mujeres, niñas y niños, se organizan para rechazarlos dispuestos y dispuestas a lo que salga.
11. En el medio del camino se encuentran y comienza el alboroto, llenos de coraje, las zapatistas mujeres y hombres, niños, niñas, diciéndoles a los soldados que regresen, y diciéndoles que no los necesitan aquí, queremos libertad, justicia y democracia, no soldados.
12. Los soldados responden: venimos aquí porque sabemos que hay marihuana y vamos a pasar a huevos, y es ahí donde el pueblo sacan sus machetes, palos, piedras, resorteras, hondas y todo lo que haya en el alcance de la mano y empieza el rechazo.
13. Los soldados dicen: esta vez no vamos a pasar, pero regresamos en 15 días y eso sí a huevos vamos a pasar.
14. Toman otro rumbo para bajar en otro poblado llamado San Alejandro, pueblo zapatista bases de apoyo, ahí estaban esperando 9 carros con 50 soldados y 10 policías municipales.
15. Donde bajaron los soldados, dejaron pisoteado el sembradillo de maíz, que es único alimento del pueblo para vivir.
16. Mientras, en el poblado zapatista de San Alejandro 60 represores provocadores se posicionaron como para estar dispuesto al enfrentamiento.
17. Reacciona el pueblo y toman lo que encuentran a la mano y rechazan a la fuerza federal.
18. En esta provocación participaron soldados de Toniná y soldados de Patiwitz y soldados de San Quintín.
19. Pueblo de México y al mundo queremos decirles que no será tan tarde habrá enfrentamiento y eso si es provocado por Calderón y Juan Sabines y Carlos Leonel Solórzano, presidente municipal de Ocosingo. Mandando a sus perros de represores de cualquier corporación.
No somos narcotraficantes, somos lo que ya saben hermanos y hermanas de México y del mundo.
Está claro que vienen por nosotros los y las zapatistas, y vienen los 3 niveles de malos gobiernos encima de nosotros, y nosotros estamos dispuestos de resistir y si es necesario cumplir nuestro lema, que es: vivir por la patria o morir por la libertad.
20. Pueblo de México y el mundo, ustedes saben que nuestra lucha está dirigida en la lucha política y pacífica, como dice nuestra Sexta Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, lucha política y pacífica, conocido como OTRA CAMPAÑA y vean por dónde viene la provocación de la violencia.
21. Compañeras y compañeros de la otra campaña de México y de otros países, pedimos que estén atentos, porque los soldados dijeron que en 15 días vendrán nuevamente, no queremos guerra, queremos paz y con justicia y dignidad. No nos queda de otra, defender, rechazar y resistir porque nos vienen a buscar para enfrentarnos, por eso nos está buscando a nosotros, los pueblos zapatistas bases de apoyo.
22. Sólo nos queda decirles que vean por dónde viene esta provocación. Ahí los estamos informando si es que nos da tiempo.
Es todo nuestras palabras
A T E N T A M E NT E
La Junta de Buen Gobierno
Elena Gordillo Clara Claribel Pérez López
Freddy Rodríguez López Rolando Ruiz Hernández
The Global Seed Police
Monsanto and GM Food
The Global Seed Police
By BINOY KAMPMARK
The latest documentary by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto, a production of the national Film Board of Canada, can be viewed as a grand recapitulation of familiar, venal themes in corporate indifference.
Monsanto is the bugbear of indigenous markets, rural communities and the developing world. It promotes itself as having the salvaging force of the Second Coming, when its behaviour is closer to that the carcinogenic herbicide producer ‘U-North’ in Michael Clayton.
But how is this second coming initiated? Firstly, through a scientific frame of reference that is panoptic: numerous food groups, for instance, are tested with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) genes, including mustard, rice, okra, and eggplant. These are then patented. Take Nap Hal, a wheat strain used in making chapatti, which suffered that fate in 2004. Then comes the re-education programme.
Farmers are cudgelled into accepting Monsanto’s world. They must roll over and accept this revolution, or so goes the line from seed warriors and proselytisers of genetically modified (GM) food. Take one of its defenders, the prominent Australian scientist Sir Gustav Nossal, who recently chaired a review by the Victorian state government on a moratorium on GM canola: ‘Monsanto believes that GM technology offers the hope of doubled crop yields per hectare of arable land. A hungry world needs such research’ (23 June). Nossal does, as do most of the defenders of Monsanto, see the issue in narrow, scientific terms: GM food is good, can be easily made to feed the hungry, and should be encouraged.
Whatever scientific merit (if any) may be attached to GM food, the behaviour of Monsanto the corporate bully, is quite another thing. Their operatives, when they are not distributing the ubiquitous pesticide Roundup, function like apostolic disseminators of a creed. That creed, to use an Indian term of reference, is the second Green Revolution. (The first Green Revolution was launched in India 40 years ago.) Some of them go far in US public life – take one of its past employees in the pesticide and agriculture division, current justice of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas.
This rhetoric of salvation, argues Indian eco-activist and physicist Vandana Shiva, has little to do with ‘food security’ and everything to do with ‘returns to Monsanto’s profits’. The real aim here is patenting, and the corporate giant is in the business of biopiracy, targeting local markets and industries to gain an unassailable market share.
Their methods vary, though they are consistent. Rural areas prove a favourite target. Key areas are peppered with surveillance teams, photographers and informants, gathering data for the less than genteel giant. According to a report in the Nation (11 May 2000), they were happy to convince Alabama farmer Jeremiah Smith, a resident of Anniston, to part with his hogs for $10 a piece accompanied with a bottle of Log Cabin whiskey. Smith sold. That was in 1970. In the meantime, a local creek was being systematically poisoned by polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) waste.
Then came Gary Rinehart of Eagleville, Missouri, a shop owner in a farm community north of Kansas City. Rinehart in 2002 was accused by a nameless, threatening character with legal proceedings: the owner of the country store Square Deal had apparently planted G.M. soybeans in violation of the company’s patent (Vanity Fair, May 2008). The seed police were bristling.
Occasionally, Monsanto’s tactics can startle. Churches may be on its list of purchases – that is, it will pay money for holy land if it has to conceal the presence of PCB. A memo from a Monsanto committee studying PCBs in 1969 acknowledged that it had a problem with the substance, one that needed to be extinguished to prevent adverse publicity. Such is the way of Monsanto, first a feted saviour, then a grand cover-up artist.
And it runs roughshod over local traditions. This is acutely so in developing countries, where its rural patterns of intimidation and deception in America act as a blueprint for global delinquency. ‘Let the Harvest Begin’ ran an advertisement in various developing countries. We will feed your starving poor, and we will give incentives under contract, as long as you undertake, for instance, not to save seed for re-plantings.
If you don’t accept the offer, we will go ahead and do it anyway, as happened to Indian farmer Bassanna Hunsole of Karnataka, who became the unwitting accomplice to the growing of illegal crops on his land in 1998. Those crops were the ‘bollgard’ cotton variety, an inferior, weevil-invested alternative that was given freely to Hunsole to grow.
In November 1998, the leader of the Karnataka State Farmers Association (KRRS), arrived at a Monsanto test site in Sindhanoor and ran amok. That site belonged to Hunsole. The protesters turned to agricultural pyromania, the site of the first Monsanto ‘cremation’. Genetically modified cotton plants were torn up and burned. Operation Cremate Monsanto had begun.
The company, however, battles on with a burgeoning wallet and a growing cadre of fans and supporters in complicit governments. The US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Teaching, Research, Service, and Commercial Linkages (July 2005) between President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh was met with delight by the global seed police. After all, this agreement was designed to bolster the first Green revolution launched in the 1950s.
Local communities, led by such eco warriors as Shiva and the pyromaniacal exploits of the KRRS, form a vanguard of growing protest. A rural revolution may be stirring. But the seed police will not rest, and will continue to employ bribery (whiskey anyone?), threats (legal proceedings) and biopiracy (patents) to preserve their agribusiness fiefdom. They will, of course, do so with, as Robin’s sarcastic film suggests, ‘your best interests at heart’.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com.
The Global Seed Police
By BINOY KAMPMARK
The latest documentary by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto, a production of the national Film Board of Canada, can be viewed as a grand recapitulation of familiar, venal themes in corporate indifference.
Monsanto is the bugbear of indigenous markets, rural communities and the developing world. It promotes itself as having the salvaging force of the Second Coming, when its behaviour is closer to that the carcinogenic herbicide producer ‘U-North’ in Michael Clayton.
But how is this second coming initiated? Firstly, through a scientific frame of reference that is panoptic: numerous food groups, for instance, are tested with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) genes, including mustard, rice, okra, and eggplant. These are then patented. Take Nap Hal, a wheat strain used in making chapatti, which suffered that fate in 2004. Then comes the re-education programme.
Farmers are cudgelled into accepting Monsanto’s world. They must roll over and accept this revolution, or so goes the line from seed warriors and proselytisers of genetically modified (GM) food. Take one of its defenders, the prominent Australian scientist Sir Gustav Nossal, who recently chaired a review by the Victorian state government on a moratorium on GM canola: ‘Monsanto believes that GM technology offers the hope of doubled crop yields per hectare of arable land. A hungry world needs such research’ (23 June). Nossal does, as do most of the defenders of Monsanto, see the issue in narrow, scientific terms: GM food is good, can be easily made to feed the hungry, and should be encouraged.
Whatever scientific merit (if any) may be attached to GM food, the behaviour of Monsanto the corporate bully, is quite another thing. Their operatives, when they are not distributing the ubiquitous pesticide Roundup, function like apostolic disseminators of a creed. That creed, to use an Indian term of reference, is the second Green Revolution. (The first Green Revolution was launched in India 40 years ago.) Some of them go far in US public life – take one of its past employees in the pesticide and agriculture division, current justice of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas.
This rhetoric of salvation, argues Indian eco-activist and physicist Vandana Shiva, has little to do with ‘food security’ and everything to do with ‘returns to Monsanto’s profits’. The real aim here is patenting, and the corporate giant is in the business of biopiracy, targeting local markets and industries to gain an unassailable market share.
Their methods vary, though they are consistent. Rural areas prove a favourite target. Key areas are peppered with surveillance teams, photographers and informants, gathering data for the less than genteel giant. According to a report in the Nation (11 May 2000), they were happy to convince Alabama farmer Jeremiah Smith, a resident of Anniston, to part with his hogs for $10 a piece accompanied with a bottle of Log Cabin whiskey. Smith sold. That was in 1970. In the meantime, a local creek was being systematically poisoned by polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) waste.
Then came Gary Rinehart of Eagleville, Missouri, a shop owner in a farm community north of Kansas City. Rinehart in 2002 was accused by a nameless, threatening character with legal proceedings: the owner of the country store Square Deal had apparently planted G.M. soybeans in violation of the company’s patent (Vanity Fair, May 2008). The seed police were bristling.
Occasionally, Monsanto’s tactics can startle. Churches may be on its list of purchases – that is, it will pay money for holy land if it has to conceal the presence of PCB. A memo from a Monsanto committee studying PCBs in 1969 acknowledged that it had a problem with the substance, one that needed to be extinguished to prevent adverse publicity. Such is the way of Monsanto, first a feted saviour, then a grand cover-up artist.
And it runs roughshod over local traditions. This is acutely so in developing countries, where its rural patterns of intimidation and deception in America act as a blueprint for global delinquency. ‘Let the Harvest Begin’ ran an advertisement in various developing countries. We will feed your starving poor, and we will give incentives under contract, as long as you undertake, for instance, not to save seed for re-plantings.
If you don’t accept the offer, we will go ahead and do it anyway, as happened to Indian farmer Bassanna Hunsole of Karnataka, who became the unwitting accomplice to the growing of illegal crops on his land in 1998. Those crops were the ‘bollgard’ cotton variety, an inferior, weevil-invested alternative that was given freely to Hunsole to grow.
In November 1998, the leader of the Karnataka State Farmers Association (KRRS), arrived at a Monsanto test site in Sindhanoor and ran amok. That site belonged to Hunsole. The protesters turned to agricultural pyromania, the site of the first Monsanto ‘cremation’. Genetically modified cotton plants were torn up and burned. Operation Cremate Monsanto had begun.
The company, however, battles on with a burgeoning wallet and a growing cadre of fans and supporters in complicit governments. The US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Teaching, Research, Service, and Commercial Linkages (July 2005) between President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh was met with delight by the global seed police. After all, this agreement was designed to bolster the first Green revolution launched in the 1950s.
Local communities, led by such eco warriors as Shiva and the pyromaniacal exploits of the KRRS, form a vanguard of growing protest. A rural revolution may be stirring. But the seed police will not rest, and will continue to employ bribery (whiskey anyone?), threats (legal proceedings) and biopiracy (patents) to preserve their agribusiness fiefdom. They will, of course, do so with, as Robin’s sarcastic film suggests, ‘your best interests at heart’.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com.
Finaliza la IV Asamblea de los Pueblos del Caribe
Finaliza la IV Asamblea de los Pueblos del Caribe
"Nuestra lucha es por la vida, la solidaridad y la integración caribeña"
Idania Trujillo
Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales
Con la aprobación de la Declaración Final y un llamado por la soberanía, la resistencia y la integración de las naciones del Caribe, concluyeron las sesiones de trabajo de la IV Asamblea de los Pueblos del Caribe (APC), evento que reunió en Caimito, localidad cercana a la capital habanera a unos 167 delegados y delegadas de organizaciones y movimientos sociales, políticos, campesinos, sindicales, de trabajadores, de mujeres, de estudiantes y jóvenes, artistas e intelectuales, y organizaciones ambientalistas, comunitarias de base, de solidaridad y no gubernamentales de 20 países del Caribe y representantes de importantes redes y campañas continentales.
Durante los cinco días de intensas y fructíferas reflexiones se reafirmó que la Asamblea es un valioso espacio de diálogo, intercambio y construcción colectiva de iniciativas y acciones para el desarrollo y la convergencia de las luchas caribeñas en defensa de la vida, la soberanía e independencia nacional, la paz, el desarrollo sustentable, la justicia social, la equidad y la identidad cultural de nuestros pueblos.
Los participantes a esta cuarta edición de la APC rechazaron las prácticas neoliberales imperialistas y sus políticas económicas, configuradas en los Tratados de Libre Comercio, EPAs, en la presencia creciente de las empresas transnacionales, las privatizaciones, la dependencia de muchas de las economías caribeñas a los destinos económicos de sus actuales o antiguas metrópolis, la creciente deuda financiera, social, ecológica y de género. Todas ellas constituyen un freno para el desarrollo de las pequeñas y estructuralmente subdesarrolladas economías caribeñas, de ahí que la resistencia y lucha de estos pueblos, así como la construcción de renovados y verdaderos modelos de integración tales como el ALBA y el Banco del Sur, se conviertan en una necesidad impostergable y requieren del más decidido apoyo.
Las delegadas y delegados denunciaron el actual modelo neoliberal y lo calificaron como el mayor depredador del medio ambiente, que atenta contra la soberanía alimentaria de los pueblos del Caribe, y convierte el uso de la energía no renovable en lucro de las grandes transnacionales, dada su alta demanda y desmedido consumo, peligrando su disponibilidad a corto y mediano plazo.
Por otra parte, destacaron cómo el calentamiento global pone riesgo la existencia misma de la vida humana y del planeta, lo que convierte en una prioridad la exigencia a los países industrializados y a las transnacionales que se desarrollen modelos energéticos alternativos y sostenibles.
La APC hizo un enérgico llamado a la defensa de las producciones agrícolas tradicionales destinadas a la alimentación humana como agrocombustibles. “De ahí la imperiosa necesidad de desarrollar —dice el texto de la Declaración Final— nuestra lucha en defensa de la soberanía alimentaria y energética, construyendo modelos alternativos de consumo. No podemos vivir para consumir de una manera absurda e irracional. Debemos vivir para aportar y ser parte continuadora de la vida y del planeta, en armonía con la naturaleza”.
Otro punto de la agenda de discusión de la IV APC fue el relacionado con los derechos sociales: al trabajo, la vivienda, la educación, la salud, la seguridad social y la tierra. Estos son incompatibles con el modelo neoliberal impuesto por el capitalismo globalizado, cuyo modelo de dominación, patriarcal, racista y excluyente, tiene en las políticas económicas la fuente generadora de pobreza generalizada en los pueblos caribeños y latinoamericanos. “Nuestra lucha —afirmaron los delegados— ha de estar enfocada a la construcción de un mundo de plena igualdad y la justicia social”.
Somos conscientes —enfatizaron los participantes— de que los flujos migratorios de personas procedentes de nuestra subregión se motiva en causas socioeconómicas, asociadas a la coyunturas de la economía global y las políticas seguidas por las potencias industrializadas europeas y por los Estados Unidos. Estas constituyen un verdadero saqueo de cerebros, incitan al tráfico ilegal de personas, especialmente de mujeres para la prostitución, frente a lo que reclamamos un flujo racional y equilibrado de personas entre nuestros países, bajo el principio de que ningún caribeño es ilegal en el Caribe, y rechazamos las medidas migratorias discriminatorias de las grandes potencias. Mención aparte merece nuestro repudio a la criminal Ley de Ajuste Cubano, aplicada selectivamente por los Estados Unidos como un instrumento de desestabilización contra la Revolución Cubana”.
En otra parte de la Declaración Final de la IV APC se afirma que “los pueblos del Caribe hemos luchado por siglos contra la dominación y el sistema cultural impuesto por los colonizadores y recolonizadores de todas las épocas. Hemos creado y construido nuestro sistema de valores, que se sustenta en la necesidad de una identidad propia, en el rechazo a la transculturación que nos han querido imponer, y a la defensa del derecho a desarrollar modelos educativos autóctonos y ajustados a nuestras necesidades de desarrollo”.
Un punto clave de las reflexiones del evento, que sesionó del 30 al 4 de julio, estuvo relacionado con las luchas que, en los distintos ámbitos de la vida política, social, económica y cultural, son protagonistas los pueblos del Caribe. Según refirieron los y las participantes, estas luchas requieren de una mayor articulación, en la cual es cada vez más necesaria la participación amplia de los más diversos actores sociales. De igual modo se hace indispensable remontar las supuestas fronteras de la diversidad lingüística y los orígenes socioculturales impuestos por las metrópolis y por las actuales políticas hegemónicas y depredadoras de las grandes potencias imperialistas.
“Configurar un escenario propio de actuación para la convergencia de nuestras luchas y, a la vez, para trabajar por una mayor integración en el contexto hemisférico fue reclamado por los asistentes a esta IV APC”.
Finalmente, en un apretado abrazo, las y los participantes, reafirmaron que “en la región latinoamericana se vienen desarrollando, con mayor o menor profundidad y efectividad, notorios procesos transformadores orientados en beneficio de nuestros pueblos y de la justicia social. La cooperación y la solidaridad genuinas son los ejes sobre los que se sustentan esos nuevos mecanismos de integración, los cuales abren nuevos horizontes para la inclusión social, el bienestar humano y el desarrollo. Válido resulta para el Caribe, en ese esperanzador contexto, fortalecer sus mecanismos propios y volcarse a una participación más activa y comprometida con la nueva dimensión integradora continental”.
“Las ideas y debates, los acuerdos e iniciativas que hemos adoptado en estos días de conocimiento, encuentro e intercambio —expresa la Declaración Final— nos conducen a reafirmar nuestro compromiso con la lucha y la defensa de la Diversidad, la Resistencia, la Solidaridad y la Integración Alternativa de los Pueblos del Caribe y el socialismo”.
Más información en: http://movimientos.org/apcaribe/
"Nuestra lucha es por la vida, la solidaridad y la integración caribeña"
Idania Trujillo
Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales
Con la aprobación de la Declaración Final y un llamado por la soberanía, la resistencia y la integración de las naciones del Caribe, concluyeron las sesiones de trabajo de la IV Asamblea de los Pueblos del Caribe (APC), evento que reunió en Caimito, localidad cercana a la capital habanera a unos 167 delegados y delegadas de organizaciones y movimientos sociales, políticos, campesinos, sindicales, de trabajadores, de mujeres, de estudiantes y jóvenes, artistas e intelectuales, y organizaciones ambientalistas, comunitarias de base, de solidaridad y no gubernamentales de 20 países del Caribe y representantes de importantes redes y campañas continentales.
Durante los cinco días de intensas y fructíferas reflexiones se reafirmó que la Asamblea es un valioso espacio de diálogo, intercambio y construcción colectiva de iniciativas y acciones para el desarrollo y la convergencia de las luchas caribeñas en defensa de la vida, la soberanía e independencia nacional, la paz, el desarrollo sustentable, la justicia social, la equidad y la identidad cultural de nuestros pueblos.
Los participantes a esta cuarta edición de la APC rechazaron las prácticas neoliberales imperialistas y sus políticas económicas, configuradas en los Tratados de Libre Comercio, EPAs, en la presencia creciente de las empresas transnacionales, las privatizaciones, la dependencia de muchas de las economías caribeñas a los destinos económicos de sus actuales o antiguas metrópolis, la creciente deuda financiera, social, ecológica y de género. Todas ellas constituyen un freno para el desarrollo de las pequeñas y estructuralmente subdesarrolladas economías caribeñas, de ahí que la resistencia y lucha de estos pueblos, así como la construcción de renovados y verdaderos modelos de integración tales como el ALBA y el Banco del Sur, se conviertan en una necesidad impostergable y requieren del más decidido apoyo.
Las delegadas y delegados denunciaron el actual modelo neoliberal y lo calificaron como el mayor depredador del medio ambiente, que atenta contra la soberanía alimentaria de los pueblos del Caribe, y convierte el uso de la energía no renovable en lucro de las grandes transnacionales, dada su alta demanda y desmedido consumo, peligrando su disponibilidad a corto y mediano plazo.
Por otra parte, destacaron cómo el calentamiento global pone riesgo la existencia misma de la vida humana y del planeta, lo que convierte en una prioridad la exigencia a los países industrializados y a las transnacionales que se desarrollen modelos energéticos alternativos y sostenibles.
La APC hizo un enérgico llamado a la defensa de las producciones agrícolas tradicionales destinadas a la alimentación humana como agrocombustibles. “De ahí la imperiosa necesidad de desarrollar —dice el texto de la Declaración Final— nuestra lucha en defensa de la soberanía alimentaria y energética, construyendo modelos alternativos de consumo. No podemos vivir para consumir de una manera absurda e irracional. Debemos vivir para aportar y ser parte continuadora de la vida y del planeta, en armonía con la naturaleza”.
Otro punto de la agenda de discusión de la IV APC fue el relacionado con los derechos sociales: al trabajo, la vivienda, la educación, la salud, la seguridad social y la tierra. Estos son incompatibles con el modelo neoliberal impuesto por el capitalismo globalizado, cuyo modelo de dominación, patriarcal, racista y excluyente, tiene en las políticas económicas la fuente generadora de pobreza generalizada en los pueblos caribeños y latinoamericanos. “Nuestra lucha —afirmaron los delegados— ha de estar enfocada a la construcción de un mundo de plena igualdad y la justicia social”.
Somos conscientes —enfatizaron los participantes— de que los flujos migratorios de personas procedentes de nuestra subregión se motiva en causas socioeconómicas, asociadas a la coyunturas de la economía global y las políticas seguidas por las potencias industrializadas europeas y por los Estados Unidos. Estas constituyen un verdadero saqueo de cerebros, incitan al tráfico ilegal de personas, especialmente de mujeres para la prostitución, frente a lo que reclamamos un flujo racional y equilibrado de personas entre nuestros países, bajo el principio de que ningún caribeño es ilegal en el Caribe, y rechazamos las medidas migratorias discriminatorias de las grandes potencias. Mención aparte merece nuestro repudio a la criminal Ley de Ajuste Cubano, aplicada selectivamente por los Estados Unidos como un instrumento de desestabilización contra la Revolución Cubana”.
En otra parte de la Declaración Final de la IV APC se afirma que “los pueblos del Caribe hemos luchado por siglos contra la dominación y el sistema cultural impuesto por los colonizadores y recolonizadores de todas las épocas. Hemos creado y construido nuestro sistema de valores, que se sustenta en la necesidad de una identidad propia, en el rechazo a la transculturación que nos han querido imponer, y a la defensa del derecho a desarrollar modelos educativos autóctonos y ajustados a nuestras necesidades de desarrollo”.
Un punto clave de las reflexiones del evento, que sesionó del 30 al 4 de julio, estuvo relacionado con las luchas que, en los distintos ámbitos de la vida política, social, económica y cultural, son protagonistas los pueblos del Caribe. Según refirieron los y las participantes, estas luchas requieren de una mayor articulación, en la cual es cada vez más necesaria la participación amplia de los más diversos actores sociales. De igual modo se hace indispensable remontar las supuestas fronteras de la diversidad lingüística y los orígenes socioculturales impuestos por las metrópolis y por las actuales políticas hegemónicas y depredadoras de las grandes potencias imperialistas.
“Configurar un escenario propio de actuación para la convergencia de nuestras luchas y, a la vez, para trabajar por una mayor integración en el contexto hemisférico fue reclamado por los asistentes a esta IV APC”.
Finalmente, en un apretado abrazo, las y los participantes, reafirmaron que “en la región latinoamericana se vienen desarrollando, con mayor o menor profundidad y efectividad, notorios procesos transformadores orientados en beneficio de nuestros pueblos y de la justicia social. La cooperación y la solidaridad genuinas son los ejes sobre los que se sustentan esos nuevos mecanismos de integración, los cuales abren nuevos horizontes para la inclusión social, el bienestar humano y el desarrollo. Válido resulta para el Caribe, en ese esperanzador contexto, fortalecer sus mecanismos propios y volcarse a una participación más activa y comprometida con la nueva dimensión integradora continental”.
“Las ideas y debates, los acuerdos e iniciativas que hemos adoptado en estos días de conocimiento, encuentro e intercambio —expresa la Declaración Final— nos conducen a reafirmar nuestro compromiso con la lucha y la defensa de la Diversidad, la Resistencia, la Solidaridad y la Integración Alternativa de los Pueblos del Caribe y el socialismo”.
Más información en: http://movimientos.org/apcaribe/
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