Not Clean, Not Green: Proposed CMP Corridor/NECEC An Environmental Disaster From Beginning To End

White privilege means living in a bubble that prevents us from knowing how our actions and our lifestyle harm people who don't look like us. Class privilege means living in a bubble that prevents us from knowing how our wealth was built on trampling the prosperity of others we either can't see or don't care about.

Rita & Tommy Monias and Amy Norman on their speaking tour. Photo source: Resist Megadams Facebook page

When the North American Megadam Resistance Alliance third annual Megadams = Megadamage Speaking Tour came to UMaine at Farmington November 25, I went because I wanted to learn more about the origins of the proposed CMP project New England "Clean" Energy Corridor (NECEC). Origins in the sense of, where does this electricity start out, and what is the cost to the environment of generating electric power in this fashion?

I learned that and much more, certainly more than I had anticipated.

The environmental devastation described by indigenous speakers from Labrador to Quebec to Manitoba was incredible, almost beyond belief.

Grandes Chutes today, after Hydro-Quebec’s Romaine River project that includes four megadams. 
Source: Megadams Resistance website

“Hydropower development has altered 50,000 square miles of land that my people used for millennia to hunt, fish and trap and gather.  We can longer practice our traditional ways like our ancestors before us,” Carlton Richards of Pimicikamak territory, an Indigenous youth activist said. 

“This is cultural genocide.” 

Because I live in Maine where hydro power dams dot the Kennebec River, I thought I understood the effects of flooding, erosion, and management (sometimes catastrophically bad) of the water flow. But any dam I've experienced is puny in comparison to the megadams that cover northern Canada. 

Imagine a dam that flooded a reservoir the size of Ireland.

Now imagine 80 of them.

Photo credit: Tommy Monias

Imagine watersheds drained to divert water through turbines that make wealthy people wealthier.

"2019. Flooding boreal forests for Muskrat Falls on the Churchill River"
Photo credit: North American Megadam Resistance Alliance - NAMRA

Imagine a flooded area with water bubbling with methane from the thousands of acres of trees drowned. How would it smell? Imagine it filled with methyl mercury released by the submerged forests. How would a food chain filled with concentrated mercury sustain life?


Imagine trying to practice traditional food harvesting of wildlife in a landscape that is literally no longer recognizable to the elders who received tens of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom about sustainable living in that place.

Photo credit: Tommy Monias

Imagine a frozen river that fluctuates up and down, creating air pockets between ice layers, and ridges of ice as tall as a person, invisible beneath the snow. Now imagine driving a snowmobile across it, hoping you guess correctly where the dangerous spots are.

Imagine driving a fishing boat through a river full of submerged islands and dead heads i.e. submerged trees trunks, hoping you don't hit one and die.

Photo credit: Tommy Monias

Noretta Miswaggon of Pimicikamak territory doesn't have to imagine any of the above, because it is reality for her family. They are at the receiving end of bad water management policies intended to generate huge profits, funded through bonds issued by Goldman Sachs and other profiteers. The "crown corporations" of Canada function like the odious private-public projects that neoliberals in the U.S. are so fond of: the cost and risks are borne by the public, while the profits flow to private investors. 

Rita and Tommy Monias, also of Pimicikamak territory, are elders who experienced traditional life along the waterways before the megadams ruined them. They spoke of their people paying for the electric power generated in every way possible, including exorbitant rates that subsidize cheap rates for U.S. customers. 

When Rita's granddaughter gets sores from swimming in murky, polluted water that has replaced a once pristine river she will never swim in or fish from, what compensation can there be? 




Amy Norman (speaking above) is a Labrador Land Protector who has been arrested many times for resisting megadams. She spoke of the food insecurity created by ruining traditional sustenance fishing and hunting grounds in remote areas where purchasing food is not within the reach of ordinary working people. She explained how methyl mercury moves from up the food chain to concentrate in the body fat of  fish and then seals -- and the Inuit who survive by hunting them. She observes of megadam generated hydropower,

"It's not clean, and it's not green."

Roberta Benefiel, Grand Riverkeeper of Labrador, explained that it's not cheap either. She's calculated that the cost out of a turbine at the Muskrat Falls project is 62 cents per kilowat hour while the selling price to U.S. customers is 5 cents. She wants us to know the truth about the allegations that hydro power is cheap or clean.

"We came down here because the purchasers of the power have the power to stop it."

Now that we, the purchasers, know the truth of why CMP wants to cut through the Maine woods to deliver Hydro-Quebec megadam power to customers in Massachusetts, we can help stop this environmental racism.

Here are resources to take action:

• Support opposition in Maine to the proposed CMP project NECEC
• Contact Maine legislators and Gov. Janet Mills to let them know you do not want the project built
• Attend the public hearing December 5 in Lewiston at 4pm at the Ramada Inn to testify to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy about why you oppose construction of NECEC. (Submit written testimony by January 2020 if you are unable to attend.)
• Sign a petition to put NECEC before the voters in a referendum

Indigenous Children Gassed At The Border, Mocked At Football Games

I woke this morning intending to update readers on progress in pressuring Skowhegan Area High School to retire its racist team name/mascot, which some call Pretendians.

Yesterday I was contacted by three women: a news director at Maine Public Radio, an attorney from the Maine ACLU, and a leader of Suit Up Maine (formed to "promote equity and equality in civil rights, social justice, health care, the environment, education, the economy, and other areas that affect the lives of all people"). All three expressed interest in the school board meeting coming up on December 6. The facebook event to organize support for Native people in Maine calling for change has 161 people interested and 31 saying they plan to attend as of this morning.

Mockery of indigenous culture and history is commonplace in the U.S. right down to the present moment. Dehumanizing people is foundational to genocide as students of the Holocaust or ethnic cleansing in Rwanda know. Jewish people were compared with rats and referred to as vermin; Tutsi people were referred to as cockroaches. Then, they were slaughtered.

All hate crimes are preceded by hate language is what I told the school board at their November meeting. 

Which brings us to the gassing of asylum seekers -- many of whom are indigenous children -- at the U.S. border with Mexico.

A migrant family, part of a caravan of thousands traveling from Central America en route to the United States, runs away from tear gas in front of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico.

(📷: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters) pic.twitter.com/pz7hkxsN9g

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 25, 2018

The demagogue with bad hair in the White House tweeted yesterday that many of those being gassed are "stone cold criminals." To say that he offered no evidence to support his claim would just be describing government by tweet as we have come to know it.

When the point is to demonize the Other who allegedly threatens our collective safety, empty threats are far more effective than facts.

The white supremacist culture of the U.S. has built an entire industry characterizing itself as the anti-Nazis. Most of that culture is war porn where beaches are stormed, buddies are glorified, and concentration camps are liberated by the "good guys" (that would be us). A zillion books and movies enshrine the national myth of violent "Christian" saviors. My friend Bruce Gagnon examined this myth yesterday in a blog post: "Was there an ideological contamination from the Nazis?"

Who now has the courage to speak up and say:

The U.S. imprisons thousands of children in concentration camps in Texas right now. 

The militarized U.S. Border Patrol is attacking children and their families fleeing violence in Central America that the U.S. creates and funds.

Brown citizens are being stripped of their passports even if they earned citizenship via enlistment in the U.S. military.

White militias are massing on the border with Mexico threatening refugees with further violence if they dare to apply for asylum in the U.S.

White supremacy is a disease. Mocking Native people and harming their children are symptoms of moral sickness. Claiming you do so in the name of Christ is ludicrous.

Silence is complicity in these crimes from here on out. 

There's a lot of historical precedent for that, too.

(Special thanks to Hope Savage for all the good meme shares.)

Seeding Sovereignty: The Notion That There Is A Rise In Gun Violence In This Country Is Actually A Misunderstanding Of History

From the indigenous feminist youth leaders of Seeding Sovereignty comes this concise pamphlet lending clarity to the raging debate about the alleged "sacred" right to guns enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment.

I share it here because it supports my deeply held conviction that heeding indigenous wisdom about how to live is imperative if human beings are to continue as a form of life on this planet.


Created by Christine Nobiss with art by Jackie Fawn, the pamphlet is based on a new book from scholar Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. Published by City Lights Books in San Francisco, the new book is available here. Dunbar-Ortiz' award-winning An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States, published in 2015, is one of the most horrifying books I have ever read -- a careful documentation of attempted genocide.

The Second Amendment 

A Sacred Covenant of Ethnic Cleansing and Slavery Between the Nation State and Settler Militias 

There is a myth that has infiltrated the core of the American imagination. It is the belief that the Second Amendment is a result of the Revolutionary War, thus, a right to self-defense and to protect the country from any enemies that might arise. It is also believed that if the government fails to protect its citizens, the citizens have the right to revolt. However, the historical context that led to the creation of the Second Amendment is actually based on the process of land annexation and the mitigation of local populations through assimilation, genocide or slavery‐‐much of which took place at the point of a gun. The colonists that built this country ousted the British for many reasons, but fundamentally, “what colonists considered oppressive was any restriction that British authorities put on them in regard to obtaining land.” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 24) 

The Second Amendment is actually a sacred religiopolitical covenant between the Nation State and the settlers of this continent that recognizes the fundamental ideology of land expansion through ethnic cleansing and slavery. It is nothing more than recognition that this country was founded on the actions of generations of Europeans with a maniacal lust for Indian killing and the control of Black people. Men were expected to bear arms (at one point it was the law) in order to protect themselves, their families, the State and the process of westward expansion. In essence, extreme violence was a god given right and an obligation of the average “citizen” that took on the singular role of a vigilante and that formed into small groups that cleared the way for the rise of the American government. The average citizen was a raider, a ranger, a frontiersmen, a marauder, a pirate and the average colony was a settler militia, an armed household, and a slave patrol. 

The Nation State did not create the Second Amendment to protect its citizens from invasion but to allow its citizens to invade. It is written permission to continue on with the doctrine of discovery, manifest destiny, westward expansion, i.e., the work of the white supremacist. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “The astronomical number of firearms owned by US civilians, with the Second Amendment considered a sacred mandate, is also intricately related to militaristic culture and white nationalism. The militias referred to in the second amendment were intended as a means for white people to eliminate Indigenous communities in order to take their land, and for slave patrols to control Black people.” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 57) 

This violent approach to Indigenous and Black populations is still practiced in current day American society. For instance, Native Americans have the highest police murder rate per ethnic group in the country and the vast majority of these deaths are through the use of a firearm. According to a CNN review of the Center for Diseases Control, “for every 1 million Native Americans, an average of 2.9 of them died annually from 1999 to 2015 as a result of a legal intervention”. For the Black population the number is 2.6, for the Latinx it is 1.7, for Whites it is 0.9 and for Asians it is 0.6. This is a startling statistic because Native Americans only make up 0.9% of the population. However, these deaths are probably under reported just like the other epidemics that Native Americans face, such as missing and murdered women, abuse, rape, stalking, runaway children and violence committed by non-tribal members. According to Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center, “The data available likely does not capture all Native American deaths in police encounters due to people of mixed race and a relatively large homeless population that is not on the grid." 

The notion that there is a rise in gun violence in this country is actually a misunderstanding of history. There was just a period in time in the late 19th and early 20th century where guns were not essential for the coercive control of brown people as the government had created reservation internment camps and implemented Jim Crow laws to segregate “problem populations”. However, the rise of the NRA, gun lobbying and the mass production of automatic weapons tied to a long held gun fetish in the American imagination has given white supremacists updated permission to dust off their ancestors weapon of choice and reenact the violence that this country was founded upon. America is a young country and lacks a distinct culture of its own, but one thing is certain--Americans covet their sacred right to free real estate, cheap labor and the gun, thus, the Second Amendment is but permission to steal, kill and dominate in order to fulfill this expectation. 

For more information on Native Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter and to challenge racial and economic injustice go to the Equal Justice Initiative at eji.org 

To demand that our lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our society, go to csgv.org, marchforourlives.com, sandyhookpromise.org or momsdemandaction.org

Much of the information in this publication was inspired by the words of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, in her recent book Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2018. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is the author of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States. Her body of work is held in high esteem by the women of Seeding Sovereignty for its integrity, honesty and academic activism.

When Other Nations Interfere in U.S. Government, Some Are More Equal Than Others

Illustration of a carnival float recently unveiled in Viareggio, Italy -- a nation where the U.S. has meddled in elections since 1948.

The most raging controversy of many on my social media posts lately has been the argument sparked by sharing an article from Dan Kovalik on The World Post, "Listen Liberals: Russia Is Not Our Enemy." I had not anticipated that the arguments presented for this point of view would draw so much ire; in general the older, whiter respondents are the angriest, while the younger and more diverse respondents see Kovalik's point. I suppose the polarizing of the public's outlook in the current era is best explained by media diet, with those consuming MSNBC most likely to be drinking the Koolaid of Russia as boogey man.

Sharing this meme did not seem to dampen the ardor of the hate Russia brigade:

To me this map suggests an authentic motive for demonizing Russia: look at all that thawing Arctic shoreline, ripe for Western imperialists to sink in their drilling gigs and piplelines. 

The responses ranged from demanding to know why Kovalik was "whitewashing Stalin" (not alive during the time period being analyzed) and why I was bashing liberals rather than opposing the current regime. People I used to think stood on the same side of the antiwar movement with me -- people who were notably absent during the Obomber years -- object to criticism of the narrative being sold by the corporate press, and I think it is probably because they don't get out of the echo chamber very often to seek information elsewhere.

I tried to broaden the texts we were considering by suggesting "The Neocons and the 'Deep State' Have Neutered the T$$$$ Presidency, It's Over Folks!" by The Saker in GlobalResearch and the documentary Ukraine on Fire by Oliver Stone. The latter describes how the U.S. supports neo-Nazis there.

What I should have shared is something the came across my screen the next day: "Israel interferes in our politics all the time, and it's never a scandal" by Philip Weiss in Mondoweiss.

As spring approaches, the prospect of the annual AIPAC gala in Washington DC for U.S. lawmakers is on my mind. Plus,"Bibi" Netanyahu and the demagogue have just taken a meeting upon the occasion of a state visit by the Israeli Prime Minister. Mondoweiss contributor Katie Miranda created a cartoon of their exchanges titled "The day the two greatest salesmen in the world met at the White House."

Actually I had been thinking about Bibi or, more specifically, his wife, as news rolled in about how much the lavish life style of the First Family is costing U.S. taxpayers (allegedly one month of guarding them costs approximately as much as one year of guarding the Obamas). Sarah'le as she is popularly known is sometimes the subject of columnist Uri Avnery's observations on government by kleptocracy.  Last summer his column on Gush Shalom's website "Petty Corruption" revealed

The generous Israeli taxpayers (including me) paid for the five days of Bibi's stay in New York last fall, to the tune of some 600,000 dollars. This sum – more than 100 thousand dollars per day – included the payment for his private hairdresser (1600 dollars) and his make-up woman (1750 dollars). The purpose of the trip was to address the UN General Assembly. I wonder how much each word cost. 

The information was disclosed by order of the court under the Freedom of Information Law.

There are more ominous parallels between Israel's government and the current regime in the U.S. Both aspire to an apartheid state where white makes right and profits are to be had building separation walls and supplying the technology for human rights violations based upon racism. 

Photo shared by Dawn Neptune Adams at Oceti Oyate camp, Standing Rock:
"HolyElk Lafferty standing in front of the militarized police response to a Grandmothers' Tipi Teaching" Feb. 19, 2017

Both the U.S. and Israel practice vicious suppression of indigenous people's demand to live in peace and without inteference on land and waterways their families have nurtured for many generations.

A Palestinian woman mourns the destruction of olive trees. | Photo: Flickr / Frank M. Rafik

Just this week the Senate considered appointing David Friedman the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, a man who maintains a home in Jerusalem courtesy of ethnic cleansing during al-Nakba. In his piece on Electronic Intifada Michael Brown wondered "Why won't Democrats call out Friedman's crimes?" 

The posting of a settlement advocate as US ambassador to Israel would certainly mark a new extreme. But it would not be illogical. 

For decades, the US political elite – Democrats and Republicans alike – have advanced Israel’s colonialist project by providing billions of dollars in military aid. This is simply another step toward the US government normalizing the illegal settlements it has watched grow over the last 50 years.

An old joke comes to mind. Q: Why doesn't Israel just become the 51st state already? A: Because then they would only have two senators.

Police cooperation is a less well-known aspect of the cozy relationship between the alleged "only democracy in the Middle East" and the alleged democracy I live under; militarized police response to nonviolent civil disobedience looks similar in the U.S. and Israel because law enforcement officials regularly go to Israel for training. Sometimes the training occurs here, on U.S. soil.

But, hey, let's keep demonizing Russia and deflecting attempts to see ourselves as others in the world see us: the most violent, warmongering, election-interfering nation in existence. No matter whether there's a D or an R in the Oval Office. 

Because: do as we say, not as we do.


https://youtu.be/Iy0dox4l09o

The Corporate Government War On Life Itself: Mni Woconi (Water Is Life)

Collage by James Fangboner

A new Facebook friend, Danica Niketic, shared this gem yesterday with the comment "Think about where you can apply this definition..."

Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes has observed that Genocide is a continuum that runs for years, decades or centuries. It begins with marginalization and dehumanization of an identifiable minority, the theft of their lands and property, their slaughter and decimation, and the gradual squeezing of remnant populations. The central organizing principle of the continuum is a narrative that turns "others into non-persons or monsters," that normalizes atrocities and rationalizes the "every day practice of violence."

Who could read this without thinking of Standing Rock? The extreme violence against Native water protectors and their supporters has normalized atrocities reminiscent of Nazi atrocities against Jews, especially spraying them with sustained blasts of water at freezing temperatures. The irony of turning water into a weapon against water protectors is apparent.

Of course Israel has long been guilty of using water as a weapon against its indigenous population, the Palestinian people it attempted to displace very much as European settlers attempted to displace North America's Native peoples. In an arid agricultural region withholding water from farmers is one way of driving people out, while spraying them with sewer water is a tactic for attacking those who aren't working the land. 


"Turning others into non-persons or monsters" is the weak link in the genocidal chain. 

In the case of Standing Rock, despite the corporate media's virtual news blackout, respect for Native leadership in protecting the watershed for millions is enormous.

"Police turn water cannons on Dakota Access Pipeline protesters." from Workers.org

Thousands of veterans are traveling to North Dakota to form a human shield between the Native water protector front lines and the heavily militarized police and National Guard troops attacking them. 
Millions have donated supplies, showed up ready to help, and shared the news of Standing Rock atrocities acting as citizen journalists. The whole world is watching to see what will happen on December 5 when state agents have announced the final eviction of the camp now surrounded by pipeline construction equipment. 

Veterans For Peace chapter 001 presenting a check to Chief Francis of the Penobscot Indian Nation
to support the DAPL resistance. Photo courtesy of Richard Clement, VFP.

The long international campaign to turn Muslims into monsters has been far more effective, thanks to the collusion of propaganda outlets and the regular, suspiciously convenient "terror" events alleged to have been orchestrated by Muslim extremists. The chief crime of Muslim people in the eyes of corporate government is that their faith predominates among the indigenous population in parts of Asia and Africa where fossil fuel reserves are found and/or transported. 

The war on Muslims has been underway since the Ottoman Empire began shedding colonies in the run up to WWI, as the history of Afghanistan's occupation by one super power after another demonstrates. (Not much oil there, but it is a key transport region due to geographical location.)

The attempted genocide against the Native people of the Americas has been going on even longer, essentially since 1492. Here in the 21st century, corporate greed for control of fossil fuels and control of water have crossed paths in the many pipeline projects being actively resisted in North America. Just yesterday the Prime Minister of Canada announced with a winsome smile that he had approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline over the objections of First Nations people. 

Corporate government has two faces which it alternates: the pretty ones like Trudeau and Obama who lull liberals to sleep while stealing the commons, and the baldly ugly ones like Trump who wake liberals up to demand narrowly defined civil rights for certain identity groups.

But it doesn't matter to the groups targeted for genocide whether the faces under the riot gear helmets are attractive or not. Black Lives Matter activists have repeatedly said that having a Black man in the White House has done nothing to stem the tide of state-sanctioned violence and prison enslavement of Black citizens. What it mostly appears to have done is piss off millions of racist voters whose economic prospects are dim and whose grasp of the reality behind the facade is even dimmer. 

The lumpen proletariat vote against their own interests because propaganda confuses them into thinking a billionaire kleptocracy will protect them and others with white privilege; it will do nothing of the kind. Instead it will continue using genocidal tactics to steal the commons upon which all life depends. For profit.

Our best defense is to refuse to marginalize or dehumanize any groups, and to always follow the money.

The handful of people still confused by why the U.S.-led coalition attacked and occupied (and continues to attack and occupy) Iraq may want to listen in to the ongoing Iraq War Tribunal as it examines the lies told about the monsters sitting on those oil fields. Of course today there is a new lie: ISIS makes them do it. Or in other words, the presence of ISIS "rationalizes the everyday practice of violence." But who made ISIS? Few in the U.S. care to pursue that question.

Just as few noticed that Obama spent his final few days in office this week adding Al Shabab in Somalia to the list of targets authorized for attack after 9/11, even though Al Shabab did not exist in 2001. And also authorized deployment of U.S. Special Forces anywhere on the planet to conduct secret assassinations outside of recognized war zones.

Under Trump even liberals are likely to wake up and realize what indigenous people have known for a long time: the whole planet is a war zone. 

Wall St. = War St. Amen To That, Brothers and Sisters.

Source: Black Agenda Report blog by Glen Ford.

Looking forward to some fun today, making a copycat video in the "Sh*t Folks Say" series which has lampooned, among other groups, Ron Paul supporters. A compilation of some of the funnier ones here in Mother Jones inspired me to look for the inevitable "Sh*t Obama Supporters Say" but oddly enough I could not find one. Since my husband comes home regularly steaming over shi*t people have said in his presence defending the Obomber, I knew we could generate plenty of absurdities.

Online to do a bit of research, of course I thought of Glen Ford and the Black Agenda Report, who have been telling it like it is all along about the first Black man in the White House.

I also remembered one of those Xtranormal animated shorts with the cute bunnies and teddy bears discussing economic policy (my all time fave is the one where they explain, in context, quantitative easing). So I mined the video below for some sh*t Mark can say while cross-country skiing, snow shoeing, or splitting wood outdoors on a gorgeous winter day like today.

Arguing with an Obama Supporter
by: mjk2527

I'm going with an LLBean catalog-type look because I think that's a neat cultural fit for privileged  liberal white people still clinging to their get-out-of-racism-free card by making apologies for the warmonger and civil liberties destroyer Obama. I know, I know, the video should be funny, not bitter. Working on that.

It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day off for many of us clinging to our middle class jobs. Dr. King was angry but he did something about it, and we're still reflecting on his words and deeds even while knowing that he was a cheating husband and a male supremacist.

In my opinion, you will know that the old order is crumbling when you stop seeing the patriarchy still in charge. We are a long way from that yet. But the cracks are in the foundation. And humans probably won't survive unless this great sea change back to being guided by the collective wisdom of the indigenous grandmothers happens pretty damn soon.

Source: International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers website

Mission statement from their website:

We represent a global alliance of prayer, education and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come.

We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. We believe the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future.

We look to further our vision through the realization of projects that protect our diverse cultures: lands, medicines, language and ceremonial ways of prayer and through projects that educate and nurture our children.

I'll just end by saying my belief that it makes very little difference who ends up in the White House. As long as we have the current system in charge of the commons of Mother Earth, humankind is doomed. I intend to keep raising my voice, though, and having some fun doing it -- while we ride into an uncertain future on this heavily armed missile that our planet has become.

Methane Plume under Arctic Ice / Source: bpoilspillcrisisinthegulf.webs.com

Sampling Occupy Demonstrates "The People Can Have Anything They Want"

“The people can have anything they want. The trouble is they do not want anything. At least they vote that way on Election Day.”

Eugene Debs, Socialist candidate for president several times in the early 20th century, as quoted in this analysis of the effect of the Occupy movement on elections by blogger Kevin Gosztola. I've been reading him with interest since he did such a great job covering Bradley Manning's pretrial hearing, and he nails it here:

Is it any wonder why the Occupy movement is so refreshing? It has forced progressives to confront their role in a liberal class that has betrayed Americans in the past decades.

It may be that the time has finally arrived when the people do want something. Here's the crowd that turned out for the New Hampshire primary to (joyfully) express their dissatisfaction with corporate controlled "representative" government. These people want music, and they want to raise their collective voice.


Occupy can and has changed the mainstream media narrative. Reporting on a survey conducted by Pew about the growth in perception of class conflict in the U.S., the NYT made this absurd statement:

...experts said, that the groups that traditionally benefit the most economically — women, whites and those in higher income groups — seem to be the most concerned about class conflict. 

Women traditionally benefit the most from capitalism under patriarchy -- what planet is the NYT on?

A snapshot of what the people want right now -- at the inception of the year of great change, 2012.

Women occupying want a full voice, and they mean to have it.

Young people carrying the burden of education debt want relief.

The 99% want to throw off their shame and tell their story to the world.

They want to express what's on their mind using creative media like Occupy the Wall (very fun to draw on, try it).

Occupiers want to have fun challenging the financial elite's death grip on our collective resources. photo credit: Bess Adler

The people want to protest the Citizens United ruling that corporations are supposedly people, and money is supposedly a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Occupy the Courts January 20.

People want homes. Occupy Foreclosures is seen by many as the best alternative to occupying parks and getting pepper sprayed while police throw your media equipment into garbage trucks. At least during winter in the northern latitudes. Occupy Spring!

Indigenous people want what they have always wanted: for the commons of earth, water and air to be shared not privatized. For human beings to live respectfully as guests of the Earth Mother.

A dear activist and organizer in Maine died last week at a ripe old age. Tom Sturtevant was a retired teacher who was an excellent mentor to many of us in the peace movement. He often sent news articles he thought would be of interest, and the last article he sent to me before his passing was, "In solidarity, Occupy group joins with Native Americans" from the Boston Globe's coverage of the National Day of Mourning aka Thanksgiving.

I imagine that Tom felt he could go, because big changes and connections were underway, and the 99% was finally waking up to want something.

Tom Sturtevant in front of the Brunswick Naval Air Station. He organized this protest of the fuel wasting air show last summer.

Why the Encampments ARE Important: Waiting for Spring

From my current favorite blog We are the 99% on tumblr:

I grew up in a single parent home in a basement apartment. The government has refused to give my family any type of financial help since ‘95. My playgrounds were surrounded by rapists. My schools were filled with drug dealers. My apartment building was taken over by gang-bangers. And many of my friends have been shot/murdered. I am an African-American female. I have been told that I am at ‘the bottom of the list’…as in the government’s list of concerns. My family has never been on vacation and we still can not afford a car. BUT THAT HAS NOT STOPPED US! My mother has been ill for almost 10 years, but that has not stopped her. My brother and I have made it to college because they can’t stop us. Even now, my mother is unemployed and can’t afford our education…but guess what? THAT WILL NOT STOP US! I am 19 and have been denied jobs because my name is Akuabba. I am the 99% looking for change. Until I am able to pay off my mother’s piling medical bills, take care of my tuition bills and take my mother on a two week vacation, I will not stop occupying Chicago.

Now is the winter of our discontent, and I  am often awake too late or too early watching the sometimes violent, sometimes sneaky, sometimes ridiculous attempts of the poorly paid minions of the 1% -- whose growing arsenal of sophisticated weaponry is worth far more than their pension -- to evict the 99% from their encampments.

There has been a lot of thoughtful talk about how the encampments aren't really a necessary part of the Occupy Everything movement, and the compelling case against them lines up like so:

1) Maintaining the encampments takes so much energy and time that the activism they were supposed to supports is harmed, not helped.

2) Many of the encampments are not safe for women.

3) Many of the encampments are not safe for anyone, because in some cases municipal police deliberately populate them with violent or drug addicted citizens. In other cases, people who were already living on the streets are drawn to a place with free food, shelter, warmth and companionship -- which is understandable, and mirrors the fundamental failure of capitalism to care for people that the 99% have been talking about -- until someone gets hit on the head with a hatchet for playing a snare drum at 7am and refusing to stop when asked. A not insignificant footnote to this point is that some of the encampments were and are located in a public space that homeless people were already using.

4) The encampments necessarily look messy, ruin the grass and, for a variety of similar reasons, create a bad impression on fence sitters among the 99%. It hardly needs mentioning that the mainstream media capitalizes on this at every turn. (Remember back in the day when mean cheerleaders grew up to be mad housewives instead of snarky t.v. "news" anchors?)

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Why Occupy Wall Street isn't about a list of demands CNNMoneyTech October 12, 2011

So a typical scenario, in a U.S. big city at least, goes something like this: an encampment springs up for political reasons, it attracts some apolitical people just looking to get their needs met, it becomes somewhat messy in the way of campsites everywhere, it is threatened by authorities on the basis of either crimes that occur there or perceived public health issues, it draws a large crowd of supporters in response to the threat, and it is raided under cover of darkness once the crowd has dwindled.

Repeat cycle, except maybe in the unseasonably warm but still growing chilly northern latitudes.

Sometimes an encampment wins in court, then loses, or vice versa. Sometimes, as in the case of Occupy Augusta, it loses in court and decides to decamp by choice and with dignity, rather than apply for a permit to exercise 1st amendment rights of speech, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances.

But here is why I don't agree with those who argue that encampments are not necessary to continue to grow the movement.

1) While monitoring the Twitter feed as Occupy Boston faced eviction after losing in court, I saw a tweet that said something like The last 20 calls on my phone are from people I didn't even know a month ago. #OccupyBoston.

2) For many teenagers, their closest Occupy site is like Woodstock: something inestimably attractive, shining like a beacon in the distance when one has turned 18 and one's parents can no longer forbid one to go to it.

3) Without continuous presence in public space, how much mainstream media coverage would the grievances of the 99% be getting? Compare with nearly non-existent MSM coverage of large marches, well-attended demonstrations, and small but colorful one-off events speaking truth to power.

I want to elaborate more on reason #1 because I think it is the most important. I am an organizer, and a communications specialist, so people in my area often contact me or read one of my email blasts to find out what's going on. Just yesterday one of the most dedicated long term activists in my state called to discuss something else, and was surprised -- and glad -- to learn of a large rally on Wed. 12/14 at 10am in the Hall of Flags in Augusta to protest the huge cuts to funding for health care and other services about to come down in Maine. I did not organize the rally, nor will I be able to attend, but I help by publicizing it. I do not fault my peaceful friend for not reading all the emails I send him. Who could? Even an information junkie like me often finds it challenging to know what's happening when and where, and to arrange my life so that I can show up and lend a hand. And I'm one of the lucky ones, because I have the resources and time and motivation to be involved, and the contacts to help me.

But as long as there was an encampment in Augusta, or in Bangor, or Portland, or SF, or NYC,  I didn't need any additional information. I didn't need to know anyone or coordinate with anyone if I wanted to support the effort. I just showed up. And so did students, and grandparents, and environmental advocates, and reporters, and infiltrators, and tourists, and....

This is why I think the encampments are important and will endure, sprouting again like mushrooms come spring.

One last bit of anecdotal evidence: In the summer of 2011 my sister and I visited an encampment of occupiers at Glen Cove on the northern edge of the vast waterway that is the San Francisco Bay. Indigenous people and supporters were encamped there for 97 days to block the proposed desecration of a sacred shell mound burial site -- one of the few remaining heritage sites that has not been disturbed for development. Cookie cutter McHouses in pale stucco marched down a hillside toward the bay, but stopped short of the water's edge, where a large field kitchen and many small tents dotted the undeveloped land.

We were greeted warmly at the Glen Cove encampment, and offered food; it was early in the morning, and we asked permission to sit by the side of the water to meditate, which was granted. Afterward we made an offering to the sacred fire that was kept continuously burning, after receiving some instruction about how to respect the space, and were again offered food. We talked with one of the long term campers for a while about their purpose for occupying, and when we departed we took some literature and bought a t-shirt for another family member.

Glen Cove activists. Source: Yes! Magazine

On the day after Thanksgiving (or as the Wampanoag tribe in New England prefers, the National Day of Mourning) we returned with two more people. The four of us were aghast to find bulldozers and chain link fencing, not an encampment. Of course I did some research when I got home. Turns out that the occupiers were successful in negotiating with those developing a park there not to disturb the shell mound portion of the site, or to pave it to put in a parking lot. Activists say they will continue to monitor the land use closely to see that the agreement is honored.

When Occupy Wall St. sprang up this fall I recognized where I had seen this organized, communal approach to outdoor living: at Glen Cove.

With indigenous wisdom on the proper use and care for Mother Earth, I believe the 99% can endure.

(Yes, of course there are a ton of useful, powerful actions to be taken while occupying/not occupying. More on that in my next post. A particularly lively example: the West Coast Port Shutdown plan for Monday 12/12/11. Onward!)