The 5 Worst Things Last Year & The 5 Most Hopeful Things For 2016

It's time for reflection on an especially eventful, tumultuous year. From the perspective of the unseasonably warm northeast corner of the U.S., here goes:

The 5 Worst Things About 2015

1) Rampant, unaccountable police violence against people of color
You might argue that this has been going on for centuries in the U.S., and that it only seems like more of a crisis because citizen journalists with cell phone cameras have documented more police attacks. And you might be right. 

But information is a game changer, and this form of racialized injustice dominated the alternative news in 2015. For example, the video above -- which was not made by a citizen but by the city of Cleveland -- shows 12 year old Tamir Rice being gunned down for playing alone with a pellet gun in a public park. This week a grand jury declined to charge officer Timothy Loehmann for hastily shooting Tamir, or for failing to administer first aid once the child had been shot (Rice died of his injuries the following day). You can sign a petition from Rice's family demanding appointment of a special prosecutor here.

This individual tragedy was played out in various permutations again, and again, and again in 2015. Police killed an unarmed person of color or a native person, and authorities failed to respond with justice. Communities responded with #BlackLivesMatter activism and outrage, while corporate news coverage broadcast selective responses involving property damage without linking them to the police violence that caused them. Try this: ask a teenager you know about "the riots in Baltimore." Then, ask them what they know about Freddie Gray who died of a spinal injury sustained when he was handcuffed in police custody and tossed around in the back of a Baltimore police van. According to retired Philadelphia police chief Ray Lewis, this is a commonly practiced "sport" among police.

I'll leave Kareem Abdul-Jabar the last word here:


2) Rampant destruction of the planet's life support systems by corporate profiteers was unaffected by United Nations climate summit
The response to the tepid agreement generated at the Paris COP21  summit was a litmus test for which environmental organizations actually defend the planet and which ones work to uphold the status quo i.e. corporations using natural resources for profits and with little accountability. The talks were conveniently held in a city that could justify shutting down march permits and the rights of activists to assemble in the wake of spectacular violence by alleged Islamist radicals. But those who care most about the health of life on Earth came anyway.

Image: IndigenousRising.org from "Official Response to COP21 Agreement"

Image: The Climate Ribbon Project

Meanwhile, Jeju Island's soft coral reef was finally entombed in concrete to make a deep water port for warships despite years of spirited resistance, and Samsung is suing the entire village of Gangjeong because they caused delays that cut into corporate profits. I could go on for days listing outrages against the environment in 2015 and alarming signs (70 degrees Farenheit in the Arctic this month anyone?) but Samsung's action provides a perfect segue to the next item on the list of bad for 2015.

3) The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) was readied for Fast Track passage by the U.S. Congress

Fast Track passage means no debate and no possibility of amendment, just a yes or no vote. The TPP would codify global corporate government and severely restrict the rights of anyone seen as interfering with a corporation's "right" to profit. It would also dramatically affect freedom of expression, especially online, and is being vigorously opposed by organizations like the Electronic Freedom Frontier on those grounds. 

Lame duck President Obama has been a big cheerleader for the TPP and can be expected to sign it into law, thus joining Bill Clinton's legacy of neoliberal gutting of U.S. jobs and environmental regulations via trade agreements NAFTA and CAFTA. More child slave labor, here we come.

4) Military spending domestically remained at the 50+% level while U.S. arms sales to other countries soared
It was no surprise that Congress and the President continued servicing their campaign donors by making taxpayers foot the bill for weapons ordered by the Pentagon. Also many of the weapons ordered by vicious U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. These gifts are presented as "military aid" and do not come out of the Pentagon budget.

Aside from tax-funded gifts of weapons, the U.S. also surged ahead in 2015 in the area of simply selling weapons to other countries. Because security is always enhanced when more weapons are in circulation, right?

5) Islamophobia became a mainstream belief, and hate crimes increased accordingly
The rise of U.S.-sponsored ISIS (or Daesh, the Arabic acronym for this theatrically dramatic terrorist organization) and the highly publicized events in Paris and San Bernadino -- along with less highly publicized terror attacks by purported Islamists in Lebanon and Libya -- fueled a rise in domestic outbreaks of Islamophobia. 

Presidential candidates vied to see who could produce the most inflammatory hate speech. Polls showed up to one-third of respondents hating on Muslims, even to the extent of approving of the idea of bombing a fictional city with an Arabic-sounding name. Mosques were vandalized and threatened, and hijab-wearing women and girls sustained many, perhaps most, of reported attacks on Muslim individuals.

Source: Haaretz "Why I Wear a Hijab" by Saadia Faruqi, photo by Michal Fattal

Thankful that 2015 has now drawn to a close, I offer this list:

The 5 most hopeful things for 2016

1) Youth leaders emerging all over the place
From nationwide campus uprisings to demand accountability for racial injustice to the vigorous activism of young defenders of our planet as a life support system to the lead role taken by young people of color at this year's annual meeting of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, youth leadership is a hopeful sign.

"Bowdoin students stage sit-in outside president's office" Beth Brogan, Bangor Daily News 4/1/15

2) The Pentagon's carbon spew will finally be counted on the U.S. balance sheet
A bad decision in Kyoto had resulted in exemption for military carbon pollution being counted, despite the fact that the planet labors under this load whether humans count it or not. Hooray for the Pentagon, which consumes the greatest amount of fossil fuel of any organization on the planet, finally becoming part of the reckoning! Stay tuned for more news of #PentagonClimateCrime in the coming year.

3) More people became aware of how dangerous the TPP is and began pushing back

Due in part to the dogged efforts of activist journalists like Margaret Flowers on the Popularresistance.org website, mainstream labor groups like the Teamsters began to sit up and take notice of the threats posed by the TPP. As James P. Hoffa of the Teamsters wrote in the Huffington Post in October:

Beyond that, however, is the pressure the TPP will place on U.S. wages. The deal will turbo charge a salary race-to-the-bottom. Many hardworking Americans will see their jobs shipped to low-pay countries like Vietnam. Those Americans lucky enough to keep their jobs will be paid less. Promises that the TPP will help to raise labor standards in other countries will fall short; similar provisions in prior trade agreements didn't deliver. The only winner will be corporate America, which will bask in the glory of its additional billions in profits.

Lobbying pressure on Congress by groups like the Teamsters will be crucial to securing rejection of what the Obama administration hopes will be its crowning achievement. 

4) Shaker Aamer was released from the torture prison at Guantánamo Bay

Mr. Aamer spent 14 years imprisoned by the U.S. in their offshore prison on Cuban soil, despite being cleared for release back in 2007. According to political prisoner advocacy organization Reprieve which represented him, Mr. Aamer, a citizen of the UK," was volunteering for a charity in Afghanistan in 2001 when he was abducted and sold for a bounty to U.S. forces."

Seeing an innocent man reunited with his children, including the youngest whom he had never met, was a high point for me in 2015. This is despite the fact that Guantánamo remains open, and Congress added a rider to the gargantuan "defense" funding bill this year blocking efforts to close it.

5) There was an outpouring of love and support for Muslims in general and Syrian refugees in particular

Poster at a rally in Portland, Maine welcoming Syrian refugees.

Banner in London Source for image: Leftunity.org

Scene at an airport in Germany as Syrian refugees began arriving.

Finally, here's a list of suggested actions to take in 2016 to truly make our world safer for everybody. From Manal Omar's article "As A Muslim, My Heart Freezes With Fear" on HuffPo:

Don't be a passive bystander to Islamophobia if you disagree with the fiery rhetoric. Take action. 

Sofia Al-Khan, an American Muslim born and raised outlined some tangible action steps friends of the Muslim community can take. Here are a few ones I embraced and invite you to consider. 

- If you see a Muslim or someone who might be identified as Muslim being harassed, stop, say something, intervene, and call for help. If you see people abusing authority, stand firm against profiling. 

- If you ride public transportation, sit next to the hijabi (head scarf) woman and greet them. The fear of being in public for women in particular is increasing every day. A small act of kindness can have a transformative impact. 

- Engage the Muslims in your life. Make sure you really feel comfortable standing for and with your Muslim friends, neighbors, coworkers. If you have a Muslim work colleague, check in. Tell them that the news is horrifying and you want them to know you're there for them. The concern and support I have received my colleagues is heart warming and reminds me of my place here in the US. 

- If you have neighbors who are Muslim, keep an eye out for them. If you're walking your kids home from the bus stop, invite their kids to walk with you. 

- Talk to your kids. They're picking up on the anti-Muslim message. Make sure they know how you feel and talk to them about what they can do when they see bullying or hear hate speech at school. 

- Help fill the public space with positive messaging over the hate. Write letters to the editors and be aware of your social media posts. 

- Call your state and local representatives, let them know that you are concerned about hate speech against your Muslim friends and neighbors in politics and the media. Ask your representatives to be aware of new laws on visas and other issues that would create second class citizens. 

- Out yourself as someone who rejects Islamophobia and discrimination of any kind. 

Fear is paralyzing. Terror is fear-inspiring. Let's stand up, stand tall, stand strong.

Best wishes for a love-filled year in 2016!

#PentagonClimateCrime Accountability Could Be The Best Thing To Emerge From #COP21

Image: Anthony Freda

Finally! The silver lining in an otherwise tepid and ineffective climate agreement out of Paris this month: military carbon emissions will no longer be exempt from official reckonings. 

The Pentagon's exemption was a terrible legacy from the Kyoto Protocol which extended the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change but did not stop temperature rise or climate chaos unfolding around the planet.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War in the streets in Paris on the last day of climate talks there:

DEREK MATTHEWS: Well, the U.S. military is the largest polluter in the world, and so I think it’s difficult to have an agreement, at the COP agreement, that excludes U.S. military’s pollution.

AMY GOODMAN: How is it excluding?

DEREK MATTHEWS: Well, they’re not tracking the amount of pollution that is emitted from the U.S. military as part of U.S. emissions. In addition, the U.S.—the military, militaries across the world help enforce extractive economies. And so, when people, local communities and frontline communities are trying to build movements to keep extractive corporations from taking the resources out of their lands, it is the military, the police and militarism, in general, that is stopping that from happening.

People suffer on the frontlines of opposing corporate profiteers greedy for even more fossil fuels to burn. And failure to address carbon pollution is a death sentence for many in poor communities where drought, flooding, and megastorms destroy livelihoods and housing. 

Image: IndigenousRising.org from "Official Response to COP21 Agreement"

Indigenous peoples came to Paris in large numbers because they understand that the matters under consideration are a matter of life or death for human beings.

Meanwhile, liberals in the U.S. congratulated themselves on a deal they characterized as "important progress" -- even though they conceded it won't get the job done. Most of them are kept busy bickering over which warmongering candidate they would support in next year's presidential elections, and vilifying the other corporate war party's candidates. It's easy to do as that party's candidates deny climate change is even occurring (or is caused by human choices) and are openly contemptuous of the rights and prospects of anyone except rich white people. 

But is it any safer to pretend that the Pentagon and its wars are worthy of at least half of every federal budget while decrying climate chaos -- which is driven by militarism? 

Where does the path of denial of the real causes of climate change lead?

My artist friend Kenny Cole created this print entitled "Iceberg/Last Run" in response to folks in Maine fiddling while Rome burns i.e. focusing on their upcoming ski holidays while wars they failed to oppose raged on. (You can see a better photo of it and buy a copy here.)

This year they will have a hard time finding any snow in Maine to ski on. It's December 15 and my lawn is still green.

Climate change is alarming scientists who study northern New England, but my elected "representatives" are most excited about jobs building weapons of mass destruction for the Navy. Maine's senators applaud the concessions made by the workers' union at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard in order to hold onto those Pentagon contracts.

Because our collective quality of life in the U.S. depends on our full participation in global militarization -- right?


The Indigenous peoples have the solution, and they will have the last word: "Any solutions that do not talk about cutting emissions at the source, or keeping fossil fuels in the ground, are false solutions." Dallas Goldtooth, Dakota/Dine

UN Climate Change Conference's Paris Venue Puts Brakes On Activists #COP21

Bruce Gagnon outside General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard where warships are built. Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farms organizes a series of vigils each Saturday during Lent, 11:30am - 12:30pm in Bath, Maine.
Photo credit: Roger Leisner, Maine Paparazzi

Would it surprise you to know that there had been plans for a large militarization and climate change bloc at the demonstrations around the upcoming UN conference COP21? Plans that are now uncertain following terrorist attacks in the long-announced venue of Paris. Because, in response to the attacks, the French government canceled all permits for marches and rallies around the climate conference.

Because gunning down concertgoers and sports fans is associated with environmental advocacy, right?

That climate change is driven by militarization and, increasingly, is on the radar of the Pentagon and other "defense" organizations of the West is part of the story. 

A book that will be released during the conference, The Secure & the Dispossessed: How the Military and Corporations are Shaping a Climate-Changed World, will include a chapter on "Greenwashing death: climate change and the arms trade" addressing the Pentagon's world leadership role in burning through fossil fuels. 

A blurb for the book by Canadian environmentalist and author Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything) noted:

With our politicians refusing to confront the climate crisis, some are looking with hope to the increasingly influential role being played by military planners and corporate titans. If you want to understand why we can't leave it to the Pentagon to shape our response to climate change, then you need to read this book.

Image credit: Anthony Freda

Would it surprise you to know that most in the U.S. are ignorant of the Pentagon's carbon bootprint? Their ignorance is a direct result of another historic climate conference in 1997 which produced the international agreement to reduce carbon emissions known as the Kyoto Protocol. Which the U.S. refused to sign unless the Pentagon was exempted from calculating our national carbon spew. And which the U.S. to this day has failed to sign even though they received the concession they demanded.

Perhaps U.S. corporate government thinks that climate chaos is a good thing for those with the most weapons and the most money to insulate themselves from the effects on the rest of us.

Here's what I think: Ignoring the Pentagon and the endless wars of the U.S. as major contributors to climate chaos is not going to make them go away. Climate change activists must find the courage to include this in their analysis and messaging. This may mean they will have to break from cozy relationships with the Democratic Party. 

More than half of U.S. discretionary tax dollars each year go to the Pentagon, the biggest polluter on the planet. For example, General Dynamics doing business as Bath Iron Works is Maine's biggest employer, dependent on federal contracts. Environmental activists will have to start addressing these budget priorities to truly move the needle on climate change.

Syrian farm workers in 2010. Photo credit: Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Gar Smith of Environmentalists Against War noted in his recent article "Global Warming's Unacknowledged Threat -- The Pentagon":

 a National Geographic study linked climate change to the conflict in Syria: "A severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, helping trigger a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people."

And, as we already knew, Syria was on the list of regimes to be changed in the petroleum rich lands that include neighboring Iraq. Has climate chaos helped or hindered the agenda of those seeking to control the flow of oil from that region?

Environmental activists have closed their eyes to these realities at their peril. It is encouraging to see more of them speaking up about the problem as COP21 approaches.