Finale event of the Bring Our War $$ Home 30 day Care-a-Van around Maine, held Oct 9, 2011 at UMaine Augusta and in honor of Indigenous People's Day. The #Occupy movement was on everyone's mind and often spoken of as HOPEFUL!
Program: Overview of 30 Day Care-a-van Events -- Bruce Gagnon; Honoring Wise Earth Stewardship vs. For-Profit Use of Natural Resources -- Lisa Savage; Report Back from October2011 in Wash DC, and Indigenous People's Land Use Support by VFP -- Dud Hendrick; Maine in Environmental Crisis and Our Advocacy -- Hillary Lister; Poetry Readings -- Lee Sharkey, Henry Braun; Songs -- Judd Esty-Kendall, Dan Ellis; audience participation and announcements.
Lisa Savage, CODEPINK Maine Local Coordinator remarks on 10-9-11:
Thank
you to everyone for being here today. Thank you for bringing food and
ideas for all of us to share. I am grateful for the opportunity to
share a meal and to speak with you.
Thank
you to the Earth, the water and the sky for upholding us and
sustaining us.
Thank
you to the ancestors, who taught us how to live respectfully on our
planet.
This
is an auspicious time for people to come together and affirm the
vision of a world they would want the grandchildren and great
grandchildren to inherit.
The
original human beings had a wisdom that modern people often forget to
remember.
They
forget when they spend even one cent on killing other humans. They
forget when they allow for-profit corporations to hijack the food
supply for human beings. They forget when they allow health care to
be privatized and turned into a for-profit service. They forget when
they allow post secondary education to become a means of enslaving
entire generations to a lifetime of debt. They forget when they allow
for-profit corporations to pollute the ponds, lakes, rivers, seas and
oceans. They forget when they allow killer robots to enrich the few
while burning up children, women and men who are just going about
their lives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Gaza, and Iraq.
They forget when they allow war profiteers to drain the national
treasury.
The
original human beings were guided by the wisdom of grandmothers. In
many tribes, women collectively pooled their wisdom and chose the
elder women to guide the process of choosing leaders. These
grandmothers had the power to appoint a chief, and the power to
remove a chief.
In
the Wampanog language the word for woman means: she who has the final
say.
Where
did modern humans step off the path of life and onto a path of
pursuing death for profits?
Arguably,
at least on this continent, this misstep occurred in 1492 when a
corporatized effort to seek wealth in foreign lands bumped into the
island of Hispaniola and thought India had been reached.
In
the event, it did not matter much that it was the wrong continent.
When pillage and theft are the motivators, any wealth will do.
Tomorrow
the modern warfare state has a holiday to commemorate the ghastly
events that followed on European “discovery” of the American
continents.
We
come together today by choice to re-purpose this holiday, and to
honor the original inhabitants of North America and their deep wisdom
about stewardship of the earth's natural resources. Today we
celebrate Indigenous People's Day on our final event of the 30 Day
Care-a-Van to Bring Our War $$ Home and put them to work.
Today
we stand in solidarity with the people, mostly young adults, who have
poured into public spaces to demand an end to rule by for-profit
corporate government. #OccupyMaine is going strong – some of us
visited them yesterday in Monument Sqaure, Portland. #OccupyAugusta
is gaining strength – on Oct 15 people will gather in Capitol Park
near the State House with the same demand. #OccupyWallSt and #Occupy
Washington DC have received international press coverage, and that
coverage has spread our demand – the demand to Bring Our War $$
Home – literally around the world. A giant pink banner with the
BOW$H slogan was the backdrop for Russia TV's coverage, and a
contingent holding a BOW$H banner marched proudly past Al Jazeera's
reporter in Washington DC on Oct 6.
Thank
you activists for spreading this message of hope so far beyond the
borders of our beloved state of Maine!
This
is an auspicious time for people to come together and affirm the
vision of a world they would want the grandchildren and great
grandchildren to inherit.
Let
me reflect on another development of the Maine campaign to bring our
war dollars home: connecting with college students around the state.
The Care-a-Van kicked off with a grassroots media event organized by
WERU Community Radio and held at Unity College. Many students walked
away from that event wearing a t-shirt with one of five fantastic
bow$h images created at various campaign Draw-a-thons over the last
two years. The Care-a-van visited Umaine Farmington for leafleting on
student debt as compared with military spending. It visited Bowdoin
College for a teach in on Afghanistan. There a young man said, I am
a freshman here at Bowdoin. My parents lost our home because my
sister has leukemia and the medical bills were huge. I stood in
front of the bank that repossessed our home in Mass. And a policeman
told me I couldn't stand there without paying $50 for a permit from
the town. The young man said to those in attendance at Bowdoin, we
freshmen sit around and talk all the time, about how something is
terribly wrong in this country. We don't know what to do.
I
told him, talking to other people about what's wrong is the first
step. And you are doing that right now. I was terribly sad for his
family, but I felt overjoyed that the Care-a-Van had created an
opportunity, a space, for him to bring his story into the public
conversation.
The
Care-a-Van went to Umaine Orono last week. A peace action group on
campus met up with Care-a-Van organizers and helped leaflet before a
talk by Prof. Doug Allen. Yesterday two of those student organizers
turned up in Monument Square to connect with the General Assembly of
#OccupyMaine. It was exciting when Jessi Clement turned to me
yesterday and said, So I have a statement I brought that I wanted to
make. Let's use the people's microphone I said. I had already seen
her practice using the mike. She was still a little shy. I said, I
will stand right beside you. Then Bethany Louisos of the Free Change
collective in Portland stood right beside Jessi on the other side.
And Jessi called out
Mike
Check.
(audience
response)
We
are not lacking
in
the dynamic forces
needed
to create
the
future.
We
live immersed
in
a sea of energy
beyond
all comprehension
But
this energy
in
an ultimate sense
is
not ours by domination
but
by invocation
we
must believe
that
we are care for-profit
and
guided by
these
same powers
that
brought us into being”
Thomas
Berry
Jess
then taught us a mudra, a hand gesture from the Hindu tradition, a
particular mudra that gives strength to though and matter, and is
used to put more force behind plans for the future. I would be happy
to share it with anyone who is interested today after our program
concludes.
This
is an auspicious time for people to come together and affirm the
vision of a world they would want the grandchildren and great
grandchildren to inherit.
The
Care-a-Van to bow$h was modeled on a caravan conducted by my Pink
sisters and allies in Northern California. They began at an
occupation of a sacred site, a shell mound on the northern edge of
the San Francisco bay. Native people and their allies have been
holding that space to prevent developers from covering it with
for-profit real estate parcels. That caravan ended at their state
capital in Sacramento by joining an occupation conducted by Calif
teachers.
Today
we conclude our Care-a-Van here at yet another college in Maine, at a
center dedicated to upholding human rights for everyone, with an
event honoring the wisdom of indigenous people's stewardship of the
environment. All over the globe native people are resisting the theft
of their land and their coasts – on Jeju Island, in the rain
forests of India, on Okinawa, at Da Molina, Italy, in the great
western desert of the United States of America, sacred to many
tribes, a space which the Pentagon proposes to turn into a
militarized airspace.
To
the Pentagon and its many corporate leeches we will continue to
present our demand in every way we can imagine:
Bring
our war $$ home!
Next planning meeting for the Maine Bring Our War $$ Home campaign: Sat Oct 29, Augusta.
