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EcoUnionist News #119 - #NoDAPL Update

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 08/29/2016 - 18:31

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 31, 2016

Statement from Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman, Dave Archambault II, August 15, 2016:

The United States via the Army Corps of Engineers is in the mist of moving ahead with an oil pipeline that officials are claiming is not potentially harmful to the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. I am here to advise anyone that will listen, that the Dakota Access Pipeline Project is harmful. It will not be just harmful to my people but its intent and construction will harm the water in the Missouri River, which is one of the cleanest and safest river tributary left in the United States.

We have been told by the officials that there will be breaches in the pipe line, but they claim that the situations are generally never very bad. This is unacceptable.

Our Mother Earth is sacred. All things evolve and work together. To poison the water, is to poison the substance of life. Everything that moves must have water. How can we talk about and knowingly poison water?

I’ve been told and taught that it is our responsibility to stand for our relatives, the ones that crawl, the ones that fly, the ones that burrow, the ones that swim, the ones that flower. Relatives that cannot speak for themselves. Who will speak for them? We have to speak for those who are not here – our ancestors, for those children who are not yet born. Our ancestors left sacred sites for us. We have to speak for them. Children not yet born will not live without water. We have to speak for them.

Several of our Lakota and Dakota relatives have had visions and dreams. They have been visited in a spiritual sense and have been told that there is a black poisonous snake trying to come among us. Our relatives have said this.

Our instructions say snakes are good – they serve a great purpose in the web of life. Our elders and the elders before them have given us wonderful teachings and a beautiful way to live and co-exist with all that is, however, the black poisonous snake we are being warned about does not come from the Creator. It is man-made and the creature is made of nothing but Greed. There is nothing good that has ever come from Greed. Greed is pure poison. It blinds and twists thinking. It is what my people have endured and continue to endure.

Right now the Rosebud reservation, the Cheyenne River reservation, the Pine Ridge reservation and my Standing Rock reservation represent five of the 10 poorest places or counties in the United States, according to the 2010 Census. Our state of being is not our fault. We did not cause this. United States lawmakers and their policies caused this. Why?? Greed – and now again, even what little we have left is under attack.

Is it too much to respectfully and peaceably request that we not live in fear of being bitten by this creature of eminent harm? Isn’t living in fear and terror unacceptable in the United States?

The United States should use all its will and power to be a real great world leader. It should swear off oil production because we all know it is harmful to it is to our planet. The United States should use all its wisdom and technology to develop alternative sources of power. It should be a great wise leader to preserve and enhance this earth, not knowingly destroy the webs of life.

What I ask is that my fellow American citizens stand with my people to stand with us. I ask you to please call or write your Senators and Representative to stop this blindness and this greed.

And, if nothing else, please, offer a prayer for my people and all the people who are standing with us in prayer. Just offer some thoughts of protection for us. We ask that you offer a prayer for sensibility and common sense on behalf of all the two-legged that walk as this is not just a Lakota/Dakota issue, this is a human issue.

This land that is being disturbed was once ours. Our people, our Indian Nations lived and governed our peoples all over this territory. This land across the Cannonball River that is now threatened was forcibly taken from us and there was nothing that we could do about it then and now.

Nonetheless, we still believe that we are the keepers of this beautiful land. Although it was taken from us, we know, we must stand and speak on this land’s behalf. We want everyone and the federal government to respect this land and take care of it. That is why our people are standing up and standing with the land and water. We have to be here. It is instructions that the Creator has given us. We have to be here. We have to stand to protect ourselves and those cannot speak for themselves.

When the President of the United States came to Cannonball, I did not ask him for anything. I tried to let his wife, Michelle and him, see for themselves a little of our reality. They saw our people in our happiest times, singing and dancing, but they also heard the tough reality of life for so many of our youth.

I believe both were impacted but knowing what I know now, I wish I would have asked President Obama to help us in this struggle.

I will pass away someday, which is all part of the Creator’s plan, but I have a son and daughter. I have no doubt that they will give me grandchildren. What will we leave for our grandchildren? Poisoned water? The substance of Life! In my language, we describe water as the source of Life. We say Mni Wiconi!

My Tribe asks how can we live with ourselves if we don’t respect the rights and needs of our future generations?

Today I realize that everything happens for a reason. Although I didn’t ask the President for a dime, I see our people are peacefully speaking out in a good way now. This is hugely important to my Tribe and all of our Tribal Nations. This peaceful demonstration is a cry to stop the desecration of land and water.

I pray that the powers that be, hear our prayer because all this behavior we are exhibiting is a prayer on our part.

Thank you for listening and enjoy your families, your children and grandchildren.

To Join in the Struggle

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
NoDAPL
pipelines
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
indigenous
Cowboy Indian Alliance
direct action
North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU)
trade unions

EcoUnionist News #118 - #NoDAPL Resistance

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 08/23/2016 - 16:25

Compiled by x344543 and x378016 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 24, 2016

From Democracy Now: "In North Dakota, more than a thousand indigenous activists from different tribes have converged at the Sacred Stone Spirit Camp, where protesters are blocking construction of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline. Protesters say the pipeline would threaten to contaminate the Missouri River, which provides water not only for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but for millions of people downstream.

Native Activist Winona LaDuke: Pipeline Company Enbridge Has No Right to Destroy Our Future – Winona LaDuke interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, August 23, 2016

Excerpt from the interview:

AMY GOODMAN: Last month, Winona, the Laborers’ International Union of North America endorsed the Dakota Access pipeline. Terry O’Sullivan, general president of LIUNA, said in a statement, quote, "The men and women of LIUNA applaud the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for its fair and thorough review of the Dakota Access Pipeline. ... For the highly skilled and trained men and women of LIUNA, projects like the Dakota Access are more than just pipelines. They are crucial lifelines to family-supporting jobs," they said. Laborers Local 563 business agent Cory Bryson said, quote, "We’ve been inundated with calls from all over the country from people wanting to work on this pipeline project. Mainline pipeline projects like Dakota Access provide excellent working opportunities for our members and tremendous wages." Your response, Winona LaDuke?

WINONA LADUKE: My response is that the United States has a D in infrastructure. That’s why bridges collapse. That’s why Flint, Michigan, has a problem. That’s why everything is eroding in this country. And what we need is those skilled laborers to be put to work, pipelines for people. I’m saying take those pipes that are sitting there in northern Minnesota, and send them to Flint, Michigan. They need billions of dollars’ worth of pipe infrastructure out there. We don’t need any pipes in northern Minnesota. I say that most of our Indian reservations don’t have adequate infrastructure. We’d like a little help with our water and sewer systems there. I am all for organized labor, but what I want is I want pipelines, I want infrastructure, for people, not for fossil fuels, not for oil companies. So I am all for that. There are plenty of people that could be put to work. And it’s five times as many jobs doing infrastructure for communities, doing for people, than one shot throw a pipe down and hope it works out for you. So I’m asking American labor to stand with us and to say we want pipelines, we want infrastructure, that goes for people, that goes for communities, and not for oil companies that are going to destroy our environment and cause more climate change destruction to our planet.

LaDuke is correct, as the folks at Labor Network for Sustainability pointed three years ago in reference to the Keystone XL Pipeline (see The Keystone Pipeline Debate: An Alternative Job Creation Strategy - by Kristen Sheeran, et. al., Labor Network for Sustainability, 2013). There's absolutely no reason for the Building Trades to needlessly hitch their wagons to this extractivist capitalist boondoggle.

Iww member and camper and organizer against the pipeline had this to say:

"we need the support of people now more than ever and there are numerous ways you can support. The health of the land is a human rights issue and a labor issue. The labor movement must stand firmly against the attempts of the capitalist class to pull the people into false solutions that only mean unsustainable jobs and practices that will do nothing to alleviate the hardships of working people during this current economic downturn. We should be pushing alternatives for ways to improve our communities and heal the land, not destroy the very land base we depend on for survival. There are no jobs on a dead planet."

To Join in the Struggle

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
NoDAPL
pipelines
Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)
indigenous
Cowboy Indian Alliance
direct action
North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU)
Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)

No Badjacketing: The State Wants to Kill Us; Let’s Not Cooperate

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 08/19/2016 - 16:39

By the members - The Twin Cities GDC, Local 14, August 16, 2016

We prepared this short piece after several comrades were badjacketed in public and with pictures on social media at the 4th Precinct Shutdown. We believe those individual cases have been dealt with, and don’t wish to cause unnecessary division by complaining, or publicly calling any group or individual out. Instead, this is intended to provoke reflection, and conversation, amongst all of us, as to how to deal with the suspicions we may have of people we don’t know in our growing movements, without creating the sorts of divisions among ourselves that does the work of the State and the police for them. We intend to act in solidarity with those who know how to act in solidarity.

We ask that all organizations and groups working for a better world in which we have killed White Supremacy, Capitalism, and all other forms of oppression, consider that (1) none of us represent the mandate of all the people, (2) that we may have instead genuine and important strategic and tactical differences between ourselves about the best ways to accomplish that world, (3) that we will not win by pretending these differences do not exist, or dictating against difference, but instead by engaging on these differences in the most democratic and least hierarchical ways possible.

Therefore, we ask that groups and individuals read this document against the practice ofbadjacketing, discuss it, and consider publicly endorsing here that we will refrain from the practices of badjacketing. This is not a call to be lax about security; indeed, many of us have been very involved in the provision of security at the Fourth Precinct. Instead, it is a call to be democratic and accountable about our security practices.

Tags: 
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Black Lives Matter
IWW General Defense Committee (GDC)
GDC Local 14
Twin Cities IWW
movement politics
direct action

Plane Stupid stands in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter's #ShutDown

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 08/09/2016 - 16:08

By Paula - Plane Stupid, August 6, 2016

[On the morning of Friday, August 5, 2016] #UKBlackLivesMatter carried out a series of actions across the UK following a call for a #ShutDown.

Their actions were highlighting that for Black and Brown people, every day is a crisis in a system based on White Supremacy. That racism can be felt in many different ways, from the extreme brutality inflicted by police and state violence, which has resulted in 1,562 people losing their lives in police custody in the last 20 years; to the abhorrent detention of people fleeing war-zones; to the subtle and insidious forms of racism such as Black people being up to 37 times more likely to be stopped and searched. #BlackLivesMatter call for a #ShutDown of racism, and only by taking disruptive direct action are their voices beginning to be heard. Business as usual is a crisis. Therefore, we must #ShutDown.

By no small coincidence, some of these actions affected two major UK airports: Heathrow and Birmingham. For us the links between our struggles are clear. Expanding aviation, which is driving climate chaos, is part of the same way of thinking that is driving racism in the UK. Politicians and businessmen want to expand aviation to make more money for them and their friends. Also, the majority of flights in the UK – over 70% -  are taken by a rich minority of the population – just 15%. Globally, just 5% of people have ever taken a flight. The rich minority benefit, whilst other people pay the cost. This can be through losing their homes and or suffering pollution which affects their health locally and globally. The rich want to profit at the cost of other peoples' lives and communities.

Climate change is already killing 300,000 people a year and this will only get worse. The effects of climate change aren't colour blind, as it is primarily Black, Brown and indigenous people in the Global South who feel the effects first and hardest. The UN estimates there will be 75 million climate refugees by 2030. We're already able to see the effects, for instance, in Syria. It is only because those in power don't consider these lives to matter that they can make such life destroying decisions. The rich in the Global North benefit whilst the Global South pays the price. This is Climate Colonialism. This is Environmental Racism.

Our movements have a lot to learn from one another and have so much in common. Fundamentally, systemic change is needed to bring an end to both racism and climate change. People of colour's struggles have much to teach us, historically and in the present day, about what it means to be affected by these issues and how to fight back. #BlackLivesMatter are bringing these issues to the fore, and showing the rest of us that direct action is necessary to bring about change. It's time to #ShutDown.

Tags: 
Plane Stupid
Black Lives Matter
intersectionality
green unionism
green syndicalism
direct action
United Kingdom (UK)
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

EcoUnionist News #105

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 05/24/2016 - 20:33

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 25, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
agricultural workers and peasants
agribusiness
agroecology
health and safety
Breaking Free
whistleblowers
climate justice
direct action
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #104 - Special #BreakingFree 2016 Edition

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 05/16/2016 - 20:12

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 17, 2016

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Whistleblowers:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Thin Green Line
just transition
agricultural workers and peasants
agribusiness
agroecology
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
health and safety
Breaking Free
direct action
climate justice
labor and environment
whistleblowers

Did $200,000 Bail Keep Pipeline Activist Out of Sunoco’s Way?

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 04/05/2016 - 17:16

By Anne Meador - DC Media Group, April 4, 2016

The Sheriff, District Attorney and a judge in Huntingdon County, PA may have stretched the law and infringed on individual civil rights in assisting a gas transmission company to get a wildlife sanctuary cleared for pipeline construction.

Sunoco Logistics Partners is in the midst of eminent domain proceedings in Central Pennsylvania to construct the Mariner East 2 pipeline. A court order favorable to the company, punitive bail set for activists resisting the clear-cut for the pipeline, plus allegations of endangerment and arbitrary arrests–one allegedly ordered by the District Attorney–point to local courts and law enforcement looking out for Sunoco’s interests.

A judge issued an emergency injunction on March 28 to allow Sunoco to proceed with clear-cutting three acres of the Gerhart family’s land, even though they are still pursuing litigation. Their supporters took to the trees on March 29-31 in an attempt to stop or delay the chainsaw crew. Three tree-sitters were backed up by a support team in a civil disobedience action “of last resort.”

Sheriff’s deputies arrested one of the property owners and two of the liaisons between the tree-sitters and law enforcement officers. For the activists, the judge set bail out of proportion to the misdemeanor charges. In one case, bail was set at $200,000.

The pipeline resisters say that the safety of the three tree-sitters was threatened, and law enforcement officers refused to stop crews from cutting down trees near them. With high wind speeds, there was danger of creating a wind tunnel by clearing a long path for the pipeline. “They told us the people should get down if they didn’t want to be cut down,” said Megan Holleran.

Liz Glunt was arrested when she crossed into the right-of-way to warn tree-cutters that they were getting too close. She met the $100,000 bond and was released the next day.

Property owner Ellen Gerhart says she wasn’t near the right-of-way when she was arrested, although she was alarmed that a tree had been felled so close to the one her daughter perched on that it brushed it on the way down. The deputies said she had been arrested because she was “in the danger zone.”

Alex Lotorto said he had been asked to come to the Gerharts’ and take on the role of police liaison. He assists landowners around the state who are facing pipeline easements with things such as getting attorneys to negotiate for them. He called a civil disobedience action like this one a last resort for landowners to consider only when nothing else has worked. “It’s a piece of leverage they have in these one-sided negotiations,” he said.

At the Gerharts’, he said he spent 3 1/2 hours discussing everyone’s intentions with police officers and rules and regulations pertaining to the right-of-way and wetland boundaries. His aim, he said, was to make sure that everyone remained safe. The state police, however, ran a background check on him and discovered that he had participated in protests like this one before.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested him and said they did so on the orders of the Huntingdon County District Attorney, according to Lotorto. (The District Attorney had not returned calls by press time.) Lotorto maintains that he never stood in the right-of-way, raised his voice or refused to answer a question.The official grounds for the arrest were that he was carrying a two-way radio. Lotorto says he used it only to communicate with others on the ground, and he was not involved in the tree-sit.

Tags: 
Sunoco
Alex Lotorto
direct action
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Pennsylvania
fracking

Protestors Takes To Trees As Pipeline’s Chainsaws Approach

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 03/31/2016 - 18:46

By Reid Frazier - The Allegheny Front, March 30, 2016

Web Editor's Note: This campaign involves members of the IWW.

As the chain saws revved nearby, Elise Gerhart was literally up a tree Tuesday protesting a pipeline slated to course through her family’s wooded property.

Gerhart, 29, of Huntingdon, and about 20 protesters coalesced around the Gerhart property as a work crew—chaperoned by local sheriff’s officers—took down trees along the property. Two protesters were arrested as the work crews cleared land for Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 pipeline, which will carry natural gas liquids from Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia area.

The company was granted a right-of-way on the Gerhart’s land by a judge through eminent domain in January. Though they are appealing that decision, the Gerharts were ordered by Huntingdon County Common Pleas Court Judge George Zanik Monday to stay clear of the chain saw crews.

Elise Gerhart said she didn’t know what else to do, so she climbed a tree early Tuesday to keep the crews away from at least one tree. 

“We’ve been forced to do this because the government isn’t protecting us,” Gerhart said, wearing a helmet and sitting on a platform wedged between branches of the tree, 40 feet in the air. “These agencies aren’t doing their job to protect the people and the environment.”

Two protesters were arrested for violating the judge’s orders. Huntingdon County District Attorney Dave Smith says the protesters were Elizabeth Glunt of Altoona and Alexander Lotorto of Milford. Bail for each was set at $100,000.

The chainsaw crew was attempting to finish the cutting by March 31, the end of tree-clearing season established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect migratory birds and the Indiana bat.

Elise Gerhart said she would stay in the tree until the end of the week, when the tree-clearing season ends.

The Gerharts bought the property in 1982 and have participated in a state program to preserve forestland on their property.

As she watched a chainsaw crew cut down a tall tree, Ellen Gerhart, Elise’s mother, teared up.

“It’s our little part we thought we could do some good in by at least protecting three acres of Pennsylvania.” 

The Gerharts are among dozens of property owners in Pennsylvania fighting with Sunoco over Mariner East 2. The $2.5 billion pipeline travels through 2,700 properties in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Company spokesman Jeff Shields said in an e-mail that the pipeline will carry “mostly propane and butane, with some ethane.” These liquids can be used for home heating but also as the raw materials for plastics. Shields says the ethane would be exported from the Marcus Hook industrial complex in Philadelphia overseas but eventually could be “part of other petrochemical processing units” at the complex. 

“(T)oday Sunoco Pipeline proceeded under the law and continued with our tree-felling activity in Huntingdon County,” Shields said. “We will continue to work with landowners to address their individual needs and concerns, but as the court noted, protesters do not have the right to prevent Sunoco Pipeline from conducting lawful activity.”

Tags: 
Alex Lotorto
Pennsylvania
direct action
Sunoco

Cultural shifts in the climate justice movement

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 03/24/2016 - 14:22

Kevin Buckland - ROARMag, March 22, 2016

hundred days on, as the climate justice movement looks back to the COP21 Climate Summit to see what may be learned, we reflect on the context of the violent attacks of November 13, 2015 that foreshadowed the unstable and volatile world we will all inhabit for the rest of our lives.

The ensuing crackdown on climate protesters sent shock waves through the Climate Coalition’s (CC21) plans for a series of mass climate mobilizations around the COP21 UN climate summit. This opened fissures at every weak point, revealing the political values dormant beneath and bringing to the front cultures of resistance that had the structural integrity and coherence to be able to thrive under the Parisian “State of Emergency”.

Several underlying trends that characterized successful activism during COP21 indicate an emerging cultural shift in climate activism, especially in places where the call for “system change” was not just being demanded, but enacted by the movements themselves. Three trends in particular can be identified:

  1. The spread and increased role of creativity in activism;
  2. The deepened commitment to indigenous leadership; and
  3. The evolving tensions between rhetoric and form among different organizational models.

What these trends may portend for the future of this growing movement as it begins to inhabit its politics, is that it is tilting from a protest movement towards being a truly revolutionary force.

Tags: 
COP21
climate justice
Big Green
direct action
movement politics
NGO-industrial complex
NGOs

Paul Krugman’s Sorry Salvation

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 03/11/2016 - 14:13

By Dan Fischer - CounterPunch, March 8, 2016

Paul Krugman has been writing about “salvation”. When it comes to global warming, the normally hard-headed economist puts aside his skepticism and awaits the fall of solar panels from heaven. Or rather, from Democratic politicians and polluting industries that dominate their climate policies. In a 2014 piece “Salvation Gets Cheap,” Krugman contended that thanks to price drops in renewable energy, small policy changes could put salvation “within fairly easy reach.” In last month’s “Planet on the Ballot,” Krugman argued that electing Hillary Clinton president would mean “salvation is clearly within our grasp”.

“So is the climate threat solved? Well, it should be.” The progressive pundit offers countless feel-good predictions along these lines. A deeper look at Krugman’s words, however, reveals a disturbing indifference to the loss of millions of lives, livelihoods, and homes. Currently, an estimated 400,000 people die each year from climate change, 98 percent of them in the Global South, according to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by twenty governments. Krugman looks away, instead seeing salvation in pathways that increase global warming far above today’s already genocidal amount.

While he mocks conservative climate change deniers, Krugman himself is in denial about the necessary solutions. A fast-paced transition, while technologically possible, is not compatible with economic growth. This presents a problem for Krugman, who has spent his career defending a capitalist economic system requiring infinite growth. “All that stands in the way of saving the planet,”the Nobel prize winner declares in “Salvation Gets Cheap,” “is a combination of ignorance, prejudice and vested interests.” Unfortunately, his own columns offer a vivid illustration. Krugman’s liberal climate denialism has five basic steps.

Tags: 
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
green syndicalism
IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus
Dan Fischer
green capitalism
reformism
direct action
Dragonfly Collective (Capitalism versus the Climate)

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