intersectionality

By various - The Red Nation, 2019

The proposed Green New Deal (GND) legislation is a step in the right direction to combat climate change and to hold corporate polluters responsible. A mass mobilization, one like we’ve never seen before in history, is required to save this planet. Indigenous movements have always been at the forefront of environmental justice struggles.

Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the main proponent of the GND, is herself a Water Protector who began her successful congressional run while she was at Standing Rock protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Thus, the GND and the climate justice movement in North America trace their origins to Indigenous frontline struggles.

With this background in mind, TRN is proposing a Red Deal. It’s not the “Red New Deal” because it’s the same “Old Deal”—the fulfillment of treaty rights, land restoration, sovereignty, self-determination, decolonization, and liberation. Ours is the oldest class struggle in the Americas; centuries-long resistance for a world in which many worlds fit. Indigenous peoples are best suited to lead this important movement. But it must come from the ground-up.

The Red Deal

The Red Deal is not a counter program of the GND. It’s a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It’s a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land—an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives. 

The Red Deal is not a “deal” or “bargain” with the elite and powerful. It’s a deal with the humble people of the earth; a pact that we shall strive for peace and justice and that movements for justice must come from below and to the left. We do not speak truth to the powerful. Our shared truth makes us powerful. And this people’s truth includes those excluded from the realms of power and policy-making. 

In the spirit of being good relatives, the Red Deal is a platform that calls for demilitarization; police and prison abolition; abolishing ICE; tearing down all border walls; Indigenous liberation, decolonization, and land restoration; treaty rights; free healthcare; free education; free housing; full citizenship and equal protection to undocumented relatives; a complete moratorium on oil, gas, coal, and carbon extraction and emissions; a transition to an economy that benefits everyone and that ends the exploitation of the Global South and Indigenous nations for resources; safe and free public transportation; restoration of Indigenous agriculture; food sovereignty; restoration of watersheds and waterways; denuclearization; Black self-determination and autonomy; gender and sexual equality; Two-Spirit, trans*, and queer liberation; and the restoration of sacred sites.

Thus the Red Deal is “Red” because it prioritizes Indigenous liberation, on one hand, and a revolutionary left position, on the other. It is simultaneously particular and universal, because Indigenous liberation is for everybody.

Where will we get the resources to achieve these monumental tasks? We call for a divestment away from the police, prisons, and military (two of the largest drains on “public spending”) and fossil fuels and a reinvestment in common humanity for everyone (health, wellbeing, and dignity) and the restoration of Indigenous lands, waters, airs, and nations.

Download the Red Deal

• Part 1 - End the Occupation (PDF)
• Part 2 - Heal Our Bodies (PDF)
• Part 3 - Heal Our Planet (PDF)

By Coral Sproule, Katie Ward, and Toby Malloy - La Via Campesina, December 5, 2017

The National Farmers Union (NFU) is participating in 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. The campaign started on November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and continues until International Human Rights Day on December 10.

“We stand in solidarity with our global counterparts and add our voices to those of peasant farmers in our sister organizations in La Via Campesina,” said Coral Sproule, NFU President. “In Canada on December 6th, we recognize the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women and remember the 13 engineering students and one worker who were murdered by an act of gender-based violence at l’École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989. We would also like to stand in solidarity at the many vigils that will take place this night in communities across Canada. We wish to acknowledge the disproportionate number of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and also of incidents involving members of the LGBTQ2 community.”

“Recently we have been hearing many stories of sexual assault and sexual harassment, as people are now more willing to come forward and speak about an issue that has far too long been silenced,” said Katie Ward, NFU Women’s President. “We add our voices to those who denounce any and all forms of gender based violence. We have seen a surge of stories that many of us know are all too common — of workplace, household, and everyday incidents of discrimination, harassment and violence against someone based on their gender (biological gender and gender identity or expression).”

“In particular, the rural communities where many of our members reside lack resources to support persons affected by gender based violence,” added Toby Malloy, NFU Women’s Advisory representative in Alberta. “We hope to work with our communities to increase both the awareness and resources needed to bring about positive change for everyone affected by any sort of violence or discrimination in rural Canada.”

“The National Farmers Union has taken concrete steps within the organization by adopting a comprehensive Harassment Policy along with a Code of Conduct and a Safe Spaces policy for our meetings. These mechanisms are now available to address issues related to gender based violence and discrimination,” noted Sproule.  “We have also called for the reinstatement of the STC bus service (Saskatchewan’s rural public transportation system). Safe rural public transportation for people in rural communities in every province is needed to prevent violence against vulnerable travellers and to provide access to support services for isolated rural residents who need them.”

“This year we are sharing the theme of #MyActionsMatter and asking everyone to step up, call out, and speak up on issues involving gender based violence and sexism,” added Ward.

The National Farmers Union endorses, and encourages our members, Locals, and Regions to embrace the following actions as set out on the Status of Women Canada website:

• Listen – be open to learning from the experiences of others.
• Believe – support survivors and those affected by violence.
• Speak out – add your voice to call out violence.
• Intervene – find a safe way to help when you see acts of gender based violence.
• Act – give your time to organizations working to end violence, and be the change you want to see.

“Please share this information and do your part to put an end to gender based violence and empower the voices of victims who may have lived in silence far too long,” urged Sproule.

Translated by staff - La Via Campesina, October 3, 2016

The global peasant movement La Via Campesina is slowly beginning to open up to the subject of gender diversity. By Paula Gioia, member of the coordinating committee of ECVC

Food Sovereignty is also connected to gender relations – and to respecting different ways of life and the rights of LGBTTQI*. The movement of landless peasants in Brazil is showing this and providing important inspirations for debates in Europe.

Since its founding in 1993, La Via Campesina has promoted Food Sovereignty and a change of the capitalist and patriarchal power relations that are dominating our world today. La Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, land workers and landless people, fisher folk, pastoralists and migrant workers. It has about 200 million members, organized in more than 160 organizations in 73 countries. In Via Campesina, feminist approaches to Food Sovereignty have played an important role in our peasant movement from the start, to counteract discrimination and all forms of violence against women in rural areas. The participation of women in leading positions has been central to all Via Campesina organizing and campaigning, with all committees made up of 50% men and 50% women. But only after more than 20 years a debate on sexual and gender diversity is slowly beginning.

The visibility and recognition of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, trans*sexual, intersexual and queer identifying persons (LGBTTQI*) within Via Campesina

have found little consideration in our debates so far. As a movement that is the global leader in the political project of Food Sovereignty and fighting against social exclusion based on the principles of collective living and mutual respect, we must commit to widening this framework to include the rights of LGBTTQI* peasants and food producers.

Within the international context of LVC, incorporating the rights of peasants and food producers that identify at LGBTTQI* is still being sensitively explored and developed. However on localized and regional levels there are grassroots movements who are members of LVC that are already engaging with and incorporating the rights of LGBTTQI* peasants and food producers into their organizations. One example is the Brazilian movement of landless workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST), whose experiences can serve as important reference points to the debates arising currently in the European context of Via Campesina.

Interview by Agnès Rousseaux and Sophie Chapelle - Basta!, April 24, 2015

Given the massive inequalities generated by capitalism and the ecological urgency of climate change, "everything can change", Naomi Klein claims in a new book. Provided we do not "give in to despair", because "too many lives are at stake", and "fight for a more just economic system". The Canadian anti-globalization activist and essayist is famous for her inspired criticism of capitalism: No Logo denounced the tyranny of global brands, and The Shock Doctrine the brutality of neoliberal reforms. She now takes aim at the total impunity of major oil and gas corporations which have declared war on our planet. Interview and video.

21.000 signes

Basta! : We seem to be heading straight toward climate disaster. We know what will happen if we do nothing about climate change, yet nothing really changes. Why is it so?

Naomi Klein : It’s not that we’re doing nothing – we’re actually actively doing exactly the wrong things. We have an economic system that defines success and progress as infinite economic expansion. Any kind of expansion is deemed good. Our emissions are going up much faster than they were in the 1990s. In the past decade, we had very high oil prices, which has created huge economic incentives for fossil fuel companies to push into new, more expensive, higher-emitting forms of extraction, such as tar sands and fracking. We also have a system that allows multinationals to seek out the cheapest means of producing their products, with cheap labour and cheap energy – which has lead to the deregulated burning of coal. All this is making the problem much worse.

You say that transnational corporations such as ExxonMobil, BP and Shell have declared war on the planet...

The business model of these companies is to find new fossil fuel reserves, which is the exact opposite of what we need to do in order to fight climate change. A research from the Carbon Tracker, three years ago, showed that the global fossil fuel industry has five times more carbon in their proven reserves than is compatible with keeping temperatures below two degrees warming… That’s the target our governments agreed to in Copenhagen, and that’s a target that is already a very dangerous one for many communities. But it provides us with a global carbon budget. We know how much carbon can be burned while still giving ourselves a fifty-fifty chance or better of meeting that target, and these companies have five times more carbon in their reserves than that amount. That explains why fossil fuel companies so actively fight the very dissemination of honest, climate science, why they fund politicians and organisations that deny the science of climate change, and why they fight every serious attempt to respond to climate change, whether it is a carbon tax or whether it is support for renewable energy.

Why such impunity?

Fossil fuel companies, particularly oil companies, are the most powerful companies in the world. Wars have been waged by our governments to protect their interests. It’s in the nature of fossil fuels that they’re concentrated in specific geographical locations, very expensive to get out of the ground, to transport, and to process. And so it lends itself to concentration of wealth and power, with a fairly small number of huge players , both state-run and privately owned, and that kind of concentration of power also lends itself to political corruption, both of the legal kind and the illegal kind. Hence the impunity.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 14, 2017

Introduction: These are times to try our souls

Donald Trump and a powerful collection of anti-social forces have taken control of the U.S. government. They seek permanent domination in service of their individual and class wealth and power. Trump’s presidency threatens immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, workers, women, children, the elderly, the disabled, LGBTQ people, and many others. Indeed, it threatens all that holds us together as a society. We the people – society — need to defend ourselves against this threat and bring it to an end. We need what resisters to repressive regimes elsewhere have called “Social Self-Defense.”

The term “Social Self-Defense” is borrowed from the struggle against the authoritarian regime in Poland forty years ago.  In the midst of harsh repression, Polish activists formed a loose network to provide financial, legal, medical, and other help to people who had been persecuted by the police or unjustly dismissed from their work. Calling themselves the Committee for Social Self-Defense (KOR), they aimed to “fight political, religious and ideological persecution”; to “oppose breaches of the law”; to “provide help for the persecuted”; to “safeguard civil liberties”; and to defend “human and civil rights.” KOR organized free trade unions to defend the rights of workers and citizens. Its members, who insisted on operating openly in public, were soon blacklisted, beaten, and imprisoned. They nonetheless persisted, and nurtured many of the networks, strategies, and ideas that came to fruition in Solidarity – and ultimately in the dissolution of repressive regimes in Poland and many other countries.[1]

From the day Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, thousands of people began to resist his agenda. Demonstrations against Trump broke out in American cities; police chiefs, mayors, and governors declared they would not implement his attack on immigrants; thousands of people signed up to accompany threatened immigrants, religious minorities, and women; technical workers pledged they would not build data bases to facilitate discrimination and deportation. Discussion of how to resist the Trump regime broke out at dining room tables, emails among friends, social media, and community gatherings.

It is impossible to know whether the Trump regime will rapidly self-destruct; successfully impose a reign of terror that dominates the U.S. for years or decades to come; or deadlock indefinitely with anti-Trump forces. We do know that the future of the planet and its people depends on resisting and overcoming Trump’s agenda. The struggle against Trump and Trumpism is nothing less than the defense of society – Social Self-Defense.