Militarization Of Fragile Pacific Leaves Destruction And Death

"MUTUAL AID FOR RESIDENTS OF KAPILINA, whose drinking water was contaminated by the US military's jet fuel into the Oahu aquifer!!" Source: Ann Wright

Today I am reposting a great op-ed which ran on July 4 in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser (emphasis and photos added by me). 

I met the author when we collaborated on a webinar during the COP26 Peoples Summit exposing the role of the U.S. military in driving climate crisis.

Militarization Of Fragile Pacific Leaves Destruction And Death

by Koohan Paik-Mander, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power In Space board member

While recently visiting Honolulu, I attended two events: the congressional town hall meeting about Red Hill, and sign-holding at Pearl Harbor (my sign read, “CLEAN UP RED HILL NOW!”).

I have to admit, the experience of being on Oahu was chilling.

Because, it is here that toxic decisions are made that impact our beautiful Pacific for generations. You see it all around you. Just pause, look behind the edifices, adjust your eyes to the shadows, read between the lines. This is how to glean clues on the classified plans now underway for war with China. They are affecting us all.

They say the Red Hill tanks can’t begin draining until the end of 2023 at the earliest. Congressman Kai Kahele pointed out a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that says that drainage depends upon the military’s ability to provide fuel for war by alternative means.

In other words, the purity of our drinking water is not as important as the Pentagon’s assessment of warfighting capabilities.

Right now, two alternative fuel storage facilities are being built. One of them is on pristine Larrakia land in northern Australia. The other is on Tinian, one of the lovely northern Mariana Islands.

We never hear about opposition overseas to construct these fuel tanks, nor the grievous cultural and environmental impacts, nor the fact that during any conflict, it is the fuel storage facility that is targeted by the enemy first, filling the skies with billows of black smoke for days.

Holding my sign at the Pearl Harbor base gate, I notice a Korean flag in the distance. My first thought was that it must be a Korean restaurant. Then, I saw shimmering water beyond. Apparently, I was on the harbor banks and the flag was actually attached to a docked warship. Its steel radar equipment peeked up from behind buildings.

South Korean government photo of the Marado

It was the Marado, the gigantic amphibious assault ship — as large as an aircraft carrier — but even more treacherous, because when a vessel that gargantuan plows into a reef, crushing everything on its path before lumbering onto shore to release battalions of troops, robots and vehicles, it is simply stomach-turning.

It is here for RIMPAC to enact the next world war, along with militaries from 26 other countries.

 They will sink ships, blast torpedoes, drop bombs, launch missiles, and activate whale-killing sonar. They will wreak havoc on the well-being of our ocean, hobbling its capacity as the single most important mitigating force to climate catastrophe.

I thought of the Marado berthed, just last month, at the new navy base on Jeju Island, Korea. The base is built atop a wetland, once bubbling with pure, freshwater springs — home to 86 species of seaweeds and over 500 species of shellfish, many endangered. Now paved over with concrete.

I thought of the Marado conducting “amphibious exercises by forcible entry” at Kaneohe Bay, on Oahu.

screenshot from video Valiant Shield 16 shared by Pentagon on Facebook in 2016

I thought of it ravaging Chulu Bay on Tinian, where, in 2016, environmentalists forced the cancellation of a Valiant Shield war maneuver because it coincided with the nesting of endangered turtles. When I visited Chulu Bay, it reminded me very much of Anini Beach on Kauai, except that, unlike Anini, it was wild and biodiverse and without multimilliondollar beachfront homes.

No one would allow such a thing on Anini where celebrities live. But because Chulu is invisible — which is also why it has continued until now to be so kaleidoscopically wild — it and so much of the Pacific have become fair game for unbridled military ecocide.

A weaponized Pacific is a dead Pacific.

And a dead Pacific is a dead planet.

Water For Life, Not For Profit Theme Unauthorized At Maine's Bicentennial Parade

Lead organizer Luke Sekera-Flanders and educator Jake Kulaw carry a water defense banner in Lewiston Aug 21, 2021 created for Community Water Justice by the Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT!). Photo credit: Nickie Sekera

A breathtakingly hot bicentennial celebration parade saw 100+ vehicles belching CO2 into the atmosphere as it wound its way from Auburn to twin city Lewiston yesterday in Maine.

Bringing up the rear was Community Water Justice walking entry "Bicentennial B-roll: The Villagers vs. The Pillagers!" (There were good banners in need of carrying, so I decided to leave my pitchfork in the car.)

It was a parade dominated by the corporate entities who treat Maine as a resource extraction colony: among them Poland Springs, the odious Central Maine Power, and Casella waste "management" i.e. trucking in construction debris from away and incinerating it as Maine-sourced waste.

We were an unauthorized entry to the parade and police twice ordered us out of the street, which we ignored. (Yes, white people can get away with that.)

Many people clapped and cheered our message, and twice at different points on the parade route someone shouted, "They saved the best for last!" As police tried to shoo us away the audience shouted, "Let them march!"

Besides our banners we wore or carried Stolen Spring logos, Maine Natural Guard, and "God bless the corporations for giving us candidates."

photo credit: Nickie Sekera

Getting press coverage was the usual struggle (one sentence in the Lewiston Sun Journal, crickets elsewhere) but Luke was well-prepared with a press release. An excerpt:

The parade...is sponsored by many of Maine’s worst environmental offenders, including Poland Spring (who is the headline sponsor), Casella, and Central Maine Power. Nestle recently sold Poland Spring to a pair of private equity firms now operating as BlueTriton Brands, playing Wall Street games with our water sources. These companies’ sponsorship of the bicentennial celebrations showcases the State of Maine’s relationship with these polluting corporations, and presents a great opportunity to show solidarity in our collective struggle for a healthier future. While many residents are aware of individual issues such as the CMP Corridor, industrial fish farms, Casella, Metallic Mining or Poland Spring bottled water, they are not aware of the larger context - that Maine’s environment is the target of exploitative international private interests.

Beyond being detrimental to Maine’s long-term economic, environmental and social stability, 

these corporations' presence in Maine is contradictory to any reasonable path to mitigating the effects of harmful changes in our climate. 

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, revealing that the key window for action to prevent the worst effects of climate change is within the next decade. Its findings confirm what Indigenous and environmental activists have been saying for decades - unless we dramatically reduce carbon emissions and pollution, we will face the consequences. 

The purpose of this action is to engage the public with the reality and urgency of Maine’s position as an object of corporate hyperfocus, and elevate the struggles for Indigenous sovereignty, water security, and environmental health into the public eye.

Indigenous sovereignty might save us if we listen in time. How much indigenous wisdom was evident at this celebration of Maine's statehood? None that I saw besides our messaging. I know that Penobscot elders were holding a water ceremony that day, and also that former chief Barry Dana regards the bicentennial as a celebration of the long colonial genocide on Native people of the region.

photo credit: Nickie Sekera

When I was a small child in Maine it seldom got hot enough for swimming, according to my California girl mother. Yesterday in Lewiston-Auburn it was a 89 degrees and very humid. 

But why worry about all the carbon-belching parade vehicles and the lead sponsorship by Poland Spring, formerly owned by the multinational water extractor Nestle. 

The banner Luke carried had been modified to reflect that private equity water investors doing business as Blue Triton now own Poland Springs water extraction sites in Maine. What could go wrong? 

Maine To Set Fox In Charge Of Henhouse? Nestlé Exec Proposed For Board of Enviro Protection

Appointment or Disappointment?
Guest post by Nickie Sekera, Community Water Justice

Maine Governor Paul LePage is in the process of appointing a full-time employee of Nestlé (Poland Spring) and is the world’s largest food and beverage corporation, to Maine's Board of Environmental Protection. The appointment of someone which such a flagrant conflict of interest in unethical and constitutes a dangerous and short-sighted precedent.

The Environmental and Natural Resources Committee will be holding a hearing this Wednesday and will be open to the public.

Committee Chairman Senator Thomas Saviello has acknowledged his longstanding personal relationship with Nestlé executive Mark Dubois, the governor’s pick for the sensitive post, and has endorsed his appointment. Sen. Saviello represents Maine's 17th district, in which Nestle is expanding its Poland Spring bottling plant and which contains several extraction and test well sites feeding into it, adds a further conflict of interest to the confirmation process.

For the past twelve years, Dubois has served as Natural Resource Manager for Nestlé, a position in which he oversees the selection of new spring sites for water mining in environmentally-sensitive areas to export out of state. In his position, he is obliged to increase profits for the shareholders to his company and therefore cannot be trusted give priority to defend the best interests of Mainers by serving on the board which would oversee an important component of Nestlé’s operations.

There is already a disturbing level of interplay between Nestlé and a number of state agencies, regulatory boards and municipalities. For example, Tom Brennan, another natural resource manager for Nestlé, sits on Maine’s Drinking Water Commission. The Maine Public Utilities Commission, which oversees water rates for consumers, is also rife with conflicts of interest with Nestlé.

Too much time and resources are already being spent by citizens having to serve as watchdogs to keep these public entities from compromising the public good for private interests, a process made all the more difficult when so much of Nestlé’s decisions that impact the state are proprietary and not available to the public.

The people of Maine need assurance that our best interests are being represented. The imbalance of power with a corporation which boasts a market capitalization of $247 billion—more than 30 times the entire annual state budget—is not something to take lightly. United Nations consultants have referred to Nestle and their subsidiaries as “global water predators” due to their troublesome environmental record. Maine has water and Nestle employees like Dubois are tasked to secure it.

It's no wonder the Center for Public Integrity gave Maine an "F" rating in a recent 2015 report, due to the state’s lax laws upholding ethics and accountability. Conflicts of interest such as the Dubois appointment are a huge obstacle to maintaining the integrity of our government in serving the people of Maine. In theory, state civil servants must recuse themselves from actions in which they may have a conflict of interest, yet we often have little legal recourse in challenging such betrayals of public trust.

We must ask our state senators and representatives: Which side are you on? Protecting the public good or serving private corporate interests?

This is not an appointment but a disappointment.

If our elected state officials are unwilling to do the right thing on their own volition, the people of Maine need to take action to challenge such conflicts of interests and restore faith in our state government.

Please encourage your state senators and representatives to oppose the Dubois nomination and consider attending the public hearing of the ENR committee that will be taking place at the state capitol in Augusta at 10:00am on Wednesday, January 24, in Room 216 of the Cross building.

Write to the members of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee that this appointment is unacceptable:

Thomas.Saviello@legislature.maine.gov
amy.volk@legislature.maine.gov
geoffrey.gratwick@legislature.maine.gov
Ralph.Tucker@legislature.maine.gov
Bob.Duchesne@legislature.maine.gov
John.Martin@legislature.maine.gov
Jessica.Fay@legislature.maine.gov
StanleyPaige.Zeigler@legislature.maine.gov
Jonathan.Kinney@legislature.maine.gov
Richard.Campbell@legislature.maine.gov
Jeff.Pierce@legislature.maine.gov
Scott.Strom@legislature.maine.gov
Denise.Harlow@legislature.maine.gov
dylan.sinclair@legislature.maine.gov

Also, reach out / copy the email to your State Senator and Representative. We need to let all our leaders know that this is unacceptable. You can find them by town at this link: http://legislature.maine.gov/house/townlist.htm

Thank you.

#WaterIsLife #WaterProtectors #DefendMainesGroundwater#ConflictOfInterest #PublicTrust #RestoreFaith #StolenSpring

More Concerned With The Tone Of Someone’s Message Than You Are With The Message Itself? #MillsVsPenobscots

Chloe Cekada and Iris SanGiovanni of Greater Portland SURJ disrupt Maine Attorney Janet Mills

calling for her to respect Native rights to protect the Penobscot River and its many life forms.

Guest post from Sass Linneken, program coordinator for Resources for Organizing and Social Change, who had just returned from a Maine People's Alliance event on June 29, 2017 (MPA is a "progressive" Democratic Party lobbying organization).

Musings on Maine’s Democratic Party, white feminism, and how white men take up space:

I went to the Resistance Rising summit hosted by MPA tonight and came away with some thoughts I need to roll out before going to sleep.

#1) I get anxious when I’m going into crowds, and anxiety is for the birds.

#2) The Democratic party is in no way leading anything resembling resistance at this point.

#3) The Democrats are having a difficult time realizing that taking a paternalistic/tone-policing attitude toward people they view as disruptive is not helping them to galvanize their base, it’s doing the opposite.

Villainizing disrupters is supremacist, and it completely negates the truths that exist within the disruption, for instance, the very fact that political disruption is a small thing compared to whatever issue is at the root of the disrupters’ cause.

***Case in point: Disrupting Janet Mills might feel egregious to people who support Mills, but that disruption is not going to kill her, or take her self-determination from her. On the flip-side of that coin, her refusal to support the Penobscots instead of lead the charge to steal their water rights and redraw the boundaries of their reservation when they hold less than 1% of the land they once did *will* impact their livelihoods and impact their ability to self-determine their own futures.

Letter found by Community Water Justice organizer Nickie Sekera in her son Luke's
pocket. Luke just graduated from middle school and is already a seasoned water protector.

Refusing to revisit the standards for justification in state-sanctioned police violence when there has been a drastic increase in police shooting fatalities *will* result in avoidable deaths, particularly of those who don’t look or live like Janet Mills. Rudeness in messaging should really be the least of worries in this context.***

Luke Sekera speaking at a previous event where Mills was confronted about her attack on
the rights of the Penobscot people to protect their water against industrial polluters the state of Maine protects.
Luke is being protected by Elizabeth Ann Mitchell, a Penobscot water protector.

#4) A candidate should not get a free pass if she’s a woman because she has it harder than her male counter-parts on the campaign trail or in office, and to suggest that the only reason she’s being held accountable is because she’s a woman is as sexist as the perceived sexism in the allegation to begin with.

#5) Saying that a candidate deserves our respect because she’s a champion for women’s rights when she is simultaneously engaging in an agenda that hurts women of color is the epitome of white feminism.

It’s not only hella problematic in its analysis of women’s rights, it’s detrimental to any perceived effort of resistance. To the contrary, it’s the very upholding of the systems and structures liberals/progressives claim to want to smash.

#6) If you’re a cisgender, able-bodied white guy, you’ve had the floor long enough. Shut the hell up.

The fact is, if your platform is not centering and considering the needs of PoC, you’re doing it wrong.

Trump was no accident, and if you think his agenda is egregious, it’s time to look in the mirror and ask yourself how you are complicit in his getting to where he’s at. And I don’t say that sitting on any kind of a pedestal, I’m a white person on a life-long learning curve.

All I’m saying is if you’re more concerned with the tone of someone’s message than you are the message itself, you are more a part of the problem than the solution, and that should matter to you if you want things to change.

Sass

Will You Fight To Protect Your Water? Because You Are Going To Have To Fight Long And Hard

Cynthia Howard at yesterday's "Water Is Life" rally in Bangor (wabi.tv coverage here and MPBN coverage here)

By now we all know about targeted internet advertising. Like most artifical intelligence, it often misses the mark by a mile and sometimes in funny ways.

For example, I often see ads for military clothing or military facebook groups because I read articles about the metastisizing U.S. military and its deadly misadventures around the globe. 

Also, I keep seeing ads for the exact dress I just bought to wear to a family wedding. What is the point of that?

This morning I clicked on a shared article from Essence magazine titled "Why Supporting 'Wonder Woman' Is Dangerous For My Black Feminism And Liberation." The weekend is when I get time to do a lot of reading around the internet, finding authors I've not read before and exploring areas I don't know enough about. I'm vaguely aware of the controvery around the Israeli army veteran who plays Wonder Woman, and more aware of a general trend in the U.S. mass media culture to portray woman as violent, aggressive and allegedly desirable on those grounds. 

Imagine my surprise when a pop up ad blocked the Essence article to brag about how the Nestlé corporation has captured the watershed just miles from my home.

Of course the word Nestlé is never used because that multinational water thief hides behind the local Maine label of a company they purchased years ago. The hubristic brag of the tagline "greatness springs from here" is a hint at the men behind the curtain.

Why am I seeing this ad? Because yesterday I attended and posted photos from a Penobscot rally to protect the water upon which all life depends? I didn't even post a photo or report the words of Nickie Sekera who spoke for Community Water Justice and urged all of us to return home and seek local water sovereignty ordinances in our towns in advance of Nestlé coming for our aquifers.

I did post a picture of the amazing Elizabeth Ann Mitchell at the rally. (You can read her guest post here about how she disrupted Democratic Attorney General Janet Mills on behalf of the Penobscot watershed.) 

And just a few minutes ago I shared a link to a WERU community radio "Radioactive" podcast about the Maine so-called Department of Environmental Protection granting permission to expand the Juniper Ridge Landfill.

This toxic waste dump receives truckloads of debris from outside our state, and it leaches into the Penobscot watershed. Perhaps Casella, which operates the landfill at a proft, and Nestlé, which trucks out our water in plastic bottles at a profit, will go head to head over water quality someday soon?

That would be a battle I'd be far more likely to watch than a comic superheroine battling fake forces of evil.

My biggest takeaway from yesterday was a telling of the Penobscot story about Glooskap and the Black Snake. Dawn Eve York prefaced her sharing of it by saying that her amazing young daugher tells it better. Someday I hope to hear Woli tell it; maybe I will be so lucky at the upcoming ceremony for Healing the Wounds of Turtle Island on the Penboscot reservation (you can donate to support travel expenses for the indigenous elders who are coming here).

These stories are meant to be told, not written down so I'll just summarize here: Wabanaki hero Glooskap returns home from a long trip to find a bad smell emanating from the water. As he travels upstream he realizes it is coming from a black snake and he begins to fight the snake. He is helped by a woodpecker who indicates the weakest point to strike, and when the snake is killed the river is stained red with its blood. Glooskap touches the head of his friend the woodpecker with some of the blood; a red spot remains, and the water transforms back to its pristine and lovely original condition.

The black snake of oil pipelines is foretold in the prophecies of various native groups in the Americas, and there were many veterans of the stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline present at yesterday's rally.

Sherri Mitchell also reminded us yesterday that it is the Penobscot Nation that fought to restore their river to a condition that did not raise sores on the skin of their children after swimming.

Industrial pollution still continues to threaten: besides the landfill, there is a massive mercury deposit in the riverbed upstream of Indian Island from a defunct paper mill.

We of the industrialized and colonized USA have much to learn about stewardship of our relatives the plants, the soil, air and water -- in other words, the sustenance of life.

Governments both at the state and federal level have abandoned protection, instead viewing water and land as commodities to be consumed in the pursuit of private profits. I learned yesterday that Nestlé is one of the fastest growing corporations on the planet, and that bottled water is one of its fasting growing sectors.

Capitalism loves growth of profits and will die without them. It willingly pollutes waterways and drains aquifers, even during periods of drought, as a path to more "growth" for its executives and shareholders.

We should love clean water because we will die without it. That is what mni wiconi means in the Lakota language.

Will you fight to protect your water? 

Guest Post: Elizabeth Ann Mitchell, Penobscot, On Why She Disrupted Janet Mills With Some Truth

Elizabeth Ann Mitchell at center.  Photo credit: Carl D. Walsh, Portland Press Herald

This Saturday, June 10, water protectors led by the Penobscot Nation will gather at the river in Bangor to show their determination to protect their water from the state of Maine. Attorney General Janet Mills has absurdly claimed that the Penobscot's ancestral fishing rights do not include control of the waterways that their canoes were designed for, and the conflict came to a head in Portland at last weekend's Democratic Party "truth" rally.

Today's guest post by Elizabeth Ann Mitchell explains why she confronted Mills and what happened after that. Her account was first published on facebook.

(Written June 3, 2017)

We never really talk about what it means to be an activist. Some days you show up to a rally and you just end up holding a sign, or following a chant that someone starts. I think that we see activism how it is portrayed in the movies.

Sometimes, we forget that being an activist is maybe one of the most dangerous things that you'll partake in, in your lifetime.

I'm not saying this to be dramatic because life is dramatic enough as it is. I think we forget that people die for less. Die for just having different colored skin.

 Janet Mills continued speaking as her supporters roughed up protesters
at Portland, Maine "March for Truth" rally 

Today I got a reminder of how dangerous activism is. I was reminded of how the world looks at me. Today, I got called a bitch. I got called useless, worthless, a disgrace, disgusting, disrespectful, rude. I had more people than I could count on two hands and two feet approach me and violate my personal boundaries and use physical force against me. Men using their strength to silence me. Women would grab my arm and when I snatched it back, cried out for the help of a man to come save them from me.

Today I was given a literal shove back into reality.

Activism is nothing like you see on TV. You can't just stand up in front of a crowd and expect everyone to sing Kumbaya at the end of your speech. Most of the time, people demonize you and decide that it's their job to take you down because you're too loud, or you're too angry, or your “disrespectful”, or “rude”. Or you just don't “have the right” to do it. Today I remembered that activism is scary. Today I remember that being an activist means putting your hands in the air and smiling at the waiting mob, ready tear you to pieces once the first punch is thrown.

Mentally preparing yourself and your body for what may come, while speaking the truth, which is their trigger to hurt you.

Photo shared by Marena Blanchard, who posted it with
some useful links to readings on environmental racism.

I didn't know what to expect going to the rally. All I knew is that I was going to say the things that nobody else wants to. To say the things that everyone needs to hear but doesn't want to hear. I knew that I had a message for Janet Mills but I didn't know how I was going to deliver it. I decided to walk up to the podium today because I realized that my message needed to be heard not only by her, but by everybody. The rally was for truth apparently so I figured they had the right to know the truth too.

The truth is, Attorney General Janet Mills is trying to steal the rights to the Penobscot river, from my people. The State of Maine took Penobscot land, Penobscot children, and now they want to take the Penobscot river.

We are people of the river; our lives are interwoven with its fate. Just like it's every Mainer's responsibility to hold their leadership accountable, it is my responsibility to stand for the water, for Nebi.

Elizabeth Ann Mitchell at center and Maine Attorney General Janet Mills at far right.
Photo credit: Carl D. Walsh, Portland Press Herald. 

I took the platform today because I had the opportunity to. It was the perfect opportunity. A crowd of over 100 people with news photographers, and reporters with cameras. My message could be spread who knows how far with these tools at my disposal for the first time. We forget that indigenous peoples do not have platforms like Janet Mills. We almost never get recognition for our truth because we are continuously silenced. These platforms don't exist for us for a reason.

Youth water protector Luke Sekera with mic being supported to speak by Elizabeth Ann Mitchell.
Banner by ARRT! Photo credit: Dorcas Ngaliema

Today I got to see the kind of a person our Maine attorney general is. She's the kind of person who would allow a mob of angry men to assault young women of color without batting an eye. The kind of woman who allows her dedicated followers to use violence against the people who expose her. The kind of woman who has the power to stop a mob but allows it to escalate anyway.

photo credit: Dorcas Ngaliema

The article that was written in the Portland Press Herald forgot a whole part of my message. They forgot that at the end of the rally I spoke again. At the end of the rally I reminded everybody that I was there out of love. That I wasn't there to be “disrespectful” or “rude”.

I was there for Nebi. I was there because I stand for the water. I was there to remind people that water is life.

I was there to remind people that we are destroying our Mother Earth. I was there to remind folks that my people are still fighting for what is rightfully ours. That we cannot live without water. I was reminding people of how sacred water is, and how we need to protect it from people like Janet Mills.

Sometimes love comes in the form of radical truth.

"It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."
-Assata Shakur

Check out my friend Marena's post on the action:
https://www.facebook.com/marenafaith/posts/10101707882407024

TAKE ACTION:

1. Show up for the Indigenous leadership protecting water in Maine: https://www.facebook.com/events/101752987077517/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D

2. Follow Dawnland Environmental Defense and donate to the ongoing legal battle.

3. Watch a video to educate yourself about this issue: http://www.sunlightmediacollective.org/index.…/the-penobscot

4. Follow Sunlight Media Collective on Facebook.

5. Follow the efforts of No Juniper Ridge Megadump Expansion, another issue also affecting the water and our Indigenous family in Maine.

6. Also follow Community Water Justice and get involved in the struggle against corporate water mining in Maine.

Dawnland Environmental Defense
Community Water Justice
Sunlight Media Collective
No Juniper Ridge Megadump Expansion

#speaktruthtopower
#waterislife