Hear from one member of the EZLN’s “Little Schools”, who attended the first school in August and has been working to spread the “heart of Zapatismo” in the US. Come learn as we discuss how to create the culture of resistance necessary to put meaning behind the call for international solidarity and fight with those who struggle against oppression around the world.
Our planet is under serious threat from industrial civilization. Yet environmentalists have not considered strategies that might actually prevent the looming biotic collapse the Earth is facing. Until, Earth at Risk.
EARTH AT RISK was a conference convened by acclaimed author Derrick Jensen, featuring seven thinkers and activists who are willing to ask the hardest questions about the seriousness of our situation. Each of the speakers presents an impassioned critique of the dominant culture. Together they build an unassailable case that we need to deprive the rich of their ability to steal from the poor, and the powerful of their ability to destroy the planet. They offer their ideas on what can be done to build a real resistance movement – one that can actually match the scale of the problem.
This film series will present the interviews of each of the seven thinkers, including Derrick Jensen, Stephanie McMillan, Lierre Keith, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Linzey, Aric McBay, and Waziyatawin, followed by an in-depth group discussion of each of the ideas presented.
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In our first installment, we welcome you to watch the interview with Thomas Linzey, executive director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
CELDF has worked with hundreds of communities across the United States and the world facing unwanted corporate development projects such as chemical trespass, factory farms, gas drilling and fracking, mining, and sewage sludge. CELDF has now become the principal advisor to activists, community groups, and municipal governments struggling to transition from merely regulating corporate harms to stopping those harms by asserting local, democratic control directly over corporations.
In November 2010, CELDF worked with the City of Pittsburgh to become the first community in the nation to ban hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
In this interview, Thomas Linzey presents the CELDF model and discusses how communities can dismantle corporate “rights” by recognizing and asserting the rights of their community and the rights of nature.
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This event is free and open to the public. For space accommodation please be sure to RSVP. If you have any questions, need directions, or need any further information, please contact us at dgrnewyork@riseup.net
Monday, September 30th, 2013
7pm – 9 pm
Bellevue Hospital: Room A-342
462 1st Avenue
(between East 26th/28th)
Words by A. Person; Music, edits and talking by Jordan B.
The way you felt about Game of Thrones, when that whole family was slaughtered – oh, no! – that’s how I feel most days. That’s how anyone feels when they turn away from the screen with such regularity (and long enough) to witness the most intricate, mass-scale human drama in the history of the Earth.
We stand at the end of an epoch, at the end of a civilization, at the end of an empire – at the start of something else. Nobody knows what will happen in the next season but people have got some inklings.
We’re moving into a new geological era – the sixth mass extinction spasm. Every civilization – man, beast, plant, rock, mineral, oil – is under silent siege. Everywhere you look, billions and billions of stories and we’re missing all of them while we stare at something that is not happening – that’s essentially a lie. It’s all in your minds.
What is happening is the planet is awash with slaves, and all of them are heroes just waiting to happen, if only we’d give it some of our attention. People told me that I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Indeed, that’s why I beg a hand in carrying it – spread the load around. But it’s not – people aren’t watching. They’re staring into bright lights like rabbits before impact and it freaks me out.
Because I am not watching Game of Thrones, I’m watching history rot itself and it’s the most thrilling, exhilarating, troubling, terrifying, evocative meta-story that’s ever been written. And it’s happening right here, right now, in real time.
The stories, the characters, the lives.
You think what happens on TV is bad, you should see what my granddad had to do with knives. You should see how your iPhone comes together – now there’s some stories. We’re wearing stories – slave stories. Every day new episodes. And if you did see it, you’d feel it every day. You might feel like I do.
We’re not so different, we’re just tuned into different stations.
I feel a bit alone when everyone’s tuned into Game of Thrones. I feel like everyone’s missing out, not only on watching the greatest drama on Earth unfold, but to participate in it, to script it ourselves.
While we watch the screen, the directors prime the scene – and it’s a very interesting scene. And we think the plot is so complex, not really up to us to figure out. But actually, it’s just all the background noise getting in the way of some very simple things. Slaves, profits. Cunning as foxes in a henhouse. Sweet deal.
There’s a ruse going on – it’s part of what makes the plot so exciting, fascinating, creepy. And the ruse is not so elaborate – it’s simple. Flash a light in their faces while you round them up for labor. Keep them distracted while you steal the land right out from underneath them. Justify the acquisition in a foreign dialect. Take by stealth and not by siege. Capture the people intact and have them do your work. Sabotage those who resist – kill them if you have to.
It’s in the killing where things get really interesting. A whole lot of killing going on. Lots of stories. The feelings.
If I’m the only one I know tuning into this show, is it really happening? I tell you where its up to and you look at me as if I’m crazy, like, “Where do I get all of this stuff from? These ideas, these opinions, these projections?”
What really freaks me out – and a lot of you do this – is when you look me in the eye and say, “It’s not happening.” The conspiracies, the theft, the propaganda wars, the homicides, the homicides, the homicides, the homicides. The lies. A colossal inter-species genocide – a holocaust. “Not happening.”
Tin-foil hat conspiratard, feminazi, luddite, greeny, hippie, feral, extremist, terrorist. Sheesh, man, I’m just watching the show. Game of Thrones is not actually happening.
Poppies, poppies will make them sleepy. Stare into the lights, my pretties.
See also Jordan B’s video adaptation of Derrick Jensen’s “Forget Shorter Showers”
uneditedmedia.com
A story about perspective on childhood:
A friend I’ve known for over a decade, whose indigenous to the lands I now call home, saw this high school kid fall off his bicycle. The kid fell backwards, and his helmet slipped towards his nose. My friend, whose recent birthday inched him towards forty, said he watched the EMT’s lift this teenager into an ambulance and hoped he was ok. Later we learned the kid died, and this big brown man’s voice quivered, “Oh no,” He tipped against the wall and started sobbing. He wept at this complete strangers death. I watched unsure of how to react and just told him I was there for him. A few hours later he walked up and hugged me, said, “I’m sorry. Where I’m from, so many young people die.”
I recently visited the Pine Ridge Reservation to witness and stand on the side of the Lakota people who’d invited us. They invited us as allies and take part in an ongoing struggle against Whiteclay, NE. Before getting into the flesh of that struggle, there are things I need to share, things think we must be look at, and try to understand before reaching the actions. See, there are facts, little factoids you learn about place when you’re there. Sometimes about death and addiction. Statistics, and they mean nothing. It’s hard to grasp a % of a thing, when you’re not in the thing. You’re not the one living it.
Pine Ridge Reservation statistics:
We heard these numbers as we crossed onto the Pine Ridge reservation. These death and alcohol statistics became more comprehendible as we listened to uncountable stories of known and recently dead: Cousins and siblings– relative upon relative, from car accidents, and acts of drunk random violence. Liver cirrhosis. Died from alcohol. I listened while on Pine Ridge, and everyone had stories, and lists of their known dead. The pizza hut worker who hated Whiteclay, whose brother died of cirrhosis, of alcoholism. A 35 year old women, who lived the streets of Whiteclay, who’d slur at me that she knew it was bad. That Whiteclay had to go, that her father died there. But we ran into her after she’d made the 2 mile trek to Whiteclay, NE from the Pine Ridge Reservation. My trip to the reservation wasn’t only to learn about the history of Whiteclay, NE, but also to listen to stories from the people who struggle against Whiteclay, and called the Pine Ridge reservation home.
We arrived to the Lakota’s homelands by crossing an imaginary border out of Nebraska, into what I’d learn wasn’t the Pine Ridge Reservation to the Lakota who invited us, but was really POW camp 344.
This name referencing the tribal identification number assigned them by the federal government. We were told that each reservation, and thus tribe was assigned a numeric sequence to attach them to the lands their people were now isolated too. While the story of POW camp 344 is far too large for this small article, let it be known that I heard stories of warriors that once fought the United States government, and won victories. The Lakota warriors even decimated one of United States armies in the field. Warriors vs Soldiers.
In this interview, Thomas Linzey presents the CELDF model and discusses how communities can dismantle corporate “rights” by recognizing and asserting the rights of their community and the rights of nature.
By Kristin Bricker / CIP Americas Program
The first night of my homestay during the Zapatista Little School, my guardian and her husband asked if their students had any questions. My classmate and I both had experience working with the Zapatistas, so we politely limited ourselves to the safe questions that are generally acceptable when visiting rebel territory: questions about livestock, crops, local swimming holes, and anything else that doesn’t touch on sensitive information about the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).
My guardian’s husband patiently answered our mundane questions. Then he said, “Look, we entered into clandestinity in 1983, when the organization was just being formed. We walked hours at night to organize other towns, always at night so that the plantation owners wouldn’t get suspicious, and we went into the brush to train. My wife risked her life walking at night to bring bags of tostadas to the camps so that the insurgents would have food to eat during training. Now, do you have any other questions?”
My classmate and I looked at each other, our eyes seeming to say the same thing: “Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be at the Zapatista Little School.” Then our questions began in earnest, and our guardians and their neighbors enthusiastically answered every single one.
Setting the Record Straight
The Zapatistas made the decision to open up their homes to their long-time supporters and teach them about their past, present, errors, victories, and advances for several reasons. During the Little School, Zapatistas repeatedly said that they hoped their supporters could learn from their experiences.
“Self-governance… is possible. If we achieved it with just a few compañeros and compañeras, why not with thousands or millions?” asked a Zapatista woman from Oventik. “We hope you’ll tell us if our practice, our experience with self-governance is in some way useful for you.”
“Many people think that what we’re doing, our form of governance, is a utopia, a dream,” said another Zapatista in Oventik. “For us Zapatistas, it is a reality because we’ve been doing it… through daily practice over the past 19 years. And that is why we think that if we join together with millions of Mexicans, we can form our own governments.”
Years ago, a Zapatista told me that they often learn more from their mistakes than from their victories. In that spirit, the Little School curriculum includes brutally honest discussions about errors the Zapatistas have committed over the years. For example, the textbooks include a frank discussion about the demise of the Mut Vitz coffee cooperative in 2007. Even though the cooperative’s sudden, unexplained closure was felt throughout the United States and Europe when roasters suddenly found themselves without a source of Zapatista coffee, the Zapatistas had not explained the reasons for Mut Vitz’s downfall until now.
In the Little School textbooks, Roque, a former member of the cooperative and current member of the San Juan de la Libertad Autonomous Municipal Council in Oventik, reveals that mismanagement and corruption ultimately lead to Mut Vitz’s demise. The cooperative had hired an outside accountant who, for reasons unknown to the cooperative members, did not accurately declare Mut Vitz’s assets to Mexico’s tax agency, which allowed the government to freeze their bank account. As Mut Vitz underwent an internal audit to determine what money the cooperative had left outside of the frozen account to pay producers who had supplied coffee on credit pending its sale, the Oventik Good Government Council discovered that members of the Mut Vitz board of directors were stealing money from the cooperative. The Council issued an order to arrest the guilty parties and seized some of their assets to replace the money they had stolen.
The Zapatistas also hoped to use the Little School to set the record straight about the state of their movement. They read the news, and they told students that they know the corporate media reports that Zapatismo is a dying movement, that the Zapatistas have turned their guns over to the government, that Subcomandante Marcos died of lung cancer or was fired, that the Comandancia (the Zapatista military leadership) meets secretly with the “bad government” and accepts millions of pesos from it, and that the Zapatistas are closet communists, amongst other baseless claims.
Furthermore, the Zapatistas admit that there have been traitors, compañeros who left the organization and collaborated with the government. As one European activist said at the end of the Little School, “I think they realized that it had gotten to the point where Mexico’s security agencies knew more about how the Zapatistas’ government works than their own civil society supporters did, so they decided to let us in on what they’ve been up to.”
The Zapatistas’ civilian government is, after all, not clandestine, and non-Zapatista indigenous people routinely use its clinics, justice system, public transportation permits, and other services that they can’t seem to obtain through the Mexican government. Moreover, any non-Zapatista—be it the bad government or another indigenous organization—that wants to develop an infrastructure project that passes through Zapatista territory (roads or electricity, for example) must negotiate with the Zapatistas’ “good government” and therefore understands how it is structured. With the Little School, the Zapatistas have officially and for the record explained exactly how their government works.
Perhaps one of the Little School’s most important benefits for the Zapatistas occurred during its preparation. The Little School’s four textbooks, Autonomous Government part I and II, Women’s Participation in the Autonomous Government, and Autonomous Resistance, as well as the two DVDs that accompany the books, were all created by Zapatistas themselves. The textbooks are the result of Zapatistas from all five caracoles (Zapatista government centers) traveling to regions other than their own to collect testimonies and interview fellow Zapatistas about how they self-govern.
The Zapatistas’ bottom-up approach to government means that while all of the caracoles operate under the same basic principles and towards the same goals, their day-to-day operations sometimes differ drastically. For example, every caracol has a Good Government Board, the maximum governing body in the region. However, each caracol’s Board is structured differently. Many of the Zapatistas’ questions to their compañeros from other caracoles in the interview portion of the textbooks revolved around their experiences and what has worked and what has not.
For example, a Board member from Oventik asked former Board members from Morelia, “Are the twelve members of the [Morelia] Board able to do all of their work? Because in Caracol II [Oventik] there’s 28 of us, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed.” The Morelia Zapatistas’ response was that they, too, are overwhelmed, and they feel the need to restructure the Board, but they have been unable to come up with a better proposal thus far.
Governing from Below
When the Zapatistas rose up in arms in Chiapas on January 1, 1994, they knew they wanted freedom and autonomy. “But we didn’t have a guide or a plan to tell us how to do it,” a Zapatista education promoter explained to me. “For us, it’s practice first, then theory.”
While part of the EZLN drove rich landowners off of their plantations in the Chiapan countryside in the pre-dawn hours of New Year’s day, other contingents took seven major cities around the state. “All that we’ve accomplished was thanks to our weapons that opened up the path that we are walking down today,” explains a Zapatista from Oventik on a Little School DVD. “[Since then] everything that we have achieved, we have achieved without firing a single shot.”
Immediately following the uprising, the Zapatistas implemented autonomous government at the town level. Each town named its local authorities and formed an assembly. “But since we were at war, we kept losing local authorities,” explains Lorena, a health promoter from San Pedro de Michoacán in La Realidad. “There was disorder in the communities.” As a stopgap measure, the EZLN’s military leadership had to step up and fulfill roles that civilian authorities were unable to carry out during the chaos of the war.
The military leadership held consultations with civilian authorities, and together they decided to create autonomous municipalities in order to bring order and civilian governance to the rebel territory. In December 1994, the Zapatistas inaugurated 38 autonomous municipalities comprised of an undisclosed number of towns. Each autonomous municipality had its own municipal council named by the towns, allowing for increased coordination between towns and more formal organization of civilian affairs.
As solidarity activists began to arrive in Zapatista territory to donate money and labor, the EZLN’s command realized that some municipalities were receiving more support than other, more isolated ones. “At [the command’s] urging, the municipal councils met and began to hold assemblies to start to see how each municipality was doing, what support each was receiving, what projects were being carried out,” explains Doroteo, a former member of La Realidad’s Good Government Board.
In 1997, the Zapatistas formalized the assemblies of municipal councils by creating the Association of Autonomous Municipalities, comprised of representatives from each autonomous municipality. “With the association of municipalities, tasks and work in health, education, and commerce were overseen,” recalls Doroteo. “During that time a dry goods warehouse was created… with the idea of [economically] supporting the full-time workers in the [Zapatista] hospital in San José del Río.”
During the creation of the Association of Autonomous Municipalities, the Zapatistas formally redistributed the land they had taken over in the 1994 uprising. Landless Zapatistas left the communities in which they were born to settle on recuperated land they could finally call their own, fulfilling revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata’s creed, “The land belongs to those who work it.”
In 2003, the Zapatistas inaugurated the third level of their autonomous government, the five Good Government Boards, located in La Realidad, Oventik, La Garrucha, Morelia, and Roberto Barrios. However, the organization of higher levels of government does not mean that the Zapatistas are moving further away from direct democracy through local assemblies. On the contrary, all proposals must be approved by town assemblies.
Proposals can originate in town assemblies and work their way up the different levels of autonomous government if they affect more than just the town in which they originated. The proposals pass through the municipal councils, which then brings approved proposals to the Good Government Council, which then runs them by the command, which then sends the proposals back down through the five Good Government Boards, which send them to the municipal councils, which in turn send the proposals to the people at the town level for consultation and implementation.
The command can also create its own proposals and send them down through the three levels of civilian government to the town assemblies for consultation and approval. Therefore, even though the Good Government Boards are the highest level of the autonomous government, they have no authority to create laws. The Boards are limited to two main roles: to coordinate and promote work in their regions and to enforce and carry out Zapatista laws and mandates that have already been approved by the people.
Because the Zapatistas constructed their government from the bottom up, with people organizing themselves into community assemblies, which in turn organized municipal councils, which in turn organized the five Good Government Boards, every Caracol is different. All work to implement the Zapatistas’ demands: land, housing, health, education, work, food, justice, democracy, culture, independence, freedom, and peace. However, the Zapatistas’ progress in implementing those demands varies from Caracol to Caracol. Some Caracols, such as La Garrucha, have collective economic projects such as stores or cattle to fund political activities at each of the three levels of government; other Caracols like Oventik only have collective economic projects in some towns.
Likewise, methods and success in implementing the Zapatistas’ Revolutionary Women’s Law varies. Morelia, for example, struggles to find ways to promote women’s participation in the higher levels of autonomous government. However, Morelia is unique amongst the Caracols because its Honor and Justice Commission (the judicial system) has a special plan for dealing with rape that aims to reduce re-victimization and encourage women to report crimes.
Constant Progress
Many have referred to recent Zapatista mobilizations such as their December 21, 2012, silent march and the creation of the Little School as a Zapatista “resurgence.” The Little School left one thing very clear: this is not a resurgence, because the Zapatistas never went away. During the school, students learned about the seemingly endless new cooperatives, the Zapatistas’ experiments in collective governance that are always being fine-tuned, and how donations from supporters were invested in livestock and warehouses so that they would pay dividends that would provide a steady long-term budget for hospitals and clinics.
The Little School’s lesson is clear: if the Zapatistas aren’t talking to the press, don’t commit the error of thinking that they are losing steam or have faded away. They are simply working extremely hard to advance their autonomy, and are too busy to get bogged down in countering the naysayers.
After all, their success is measured in their achievements and not their rhetoric. As one Zapatista man said at the end of a Little School class in Oventik, “We are demonstrating to the bad government that we don’t want it and we don’t need it, and it’s not necessary, for us to provide for ourselves.”
Kristin Bricker is a reporter in Mexico. She is a contributor to the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org.
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Originally posted by CIP Americas here.
Resistance is fertile and one of the best ways to continue to grow our movement is to maintain effective communication between our members and allies.
In a city such as New York City, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, the everyday grind of maintaining our professional, familial, and comradely relationships. It’s also far too easy to be drowned out amongst the mass media infiltrations exposed to us at our every step, not to mention the (sometimes) endless email chains that even the most organized of us find hard to filter through and stay up-to-date.
In our attempt to help make sure our members and allies never miss crucial news, meetings, events or actions we are introducing the DGR NYC celly group – a quick and efficient way to maintain in-group communication via text messages and mobile devices. Rather than a constant feed of notifications (we already have an email chain for that!), we will use this method for succinct reminders of upcoming events.
It’s quick and easy to sign-up and join the conversation. Anyone can send a message to the entire group and it gets relayed instantaneously. To join, we simply ask that you be a resident of the greater NYC area with a desire to be more active in the movement – this service will not be of much use for members or allies that cannot regularly attend our meetings and/or events.
Simply text @dgrnyc to 23559 to join.
You may be asked to create a username and/or verify membership through an email address. Once completed, you should receive a welcome message from the group via text. If you have any issues or comments, please feel free to contact us – we will be more than happy to assist you.
We will also have a brief introduction to the service at our next member meeting (10/14/13) to make sure that everyone is connected and comfortably acquainted with the process.
A longtime DGR Colorado member, Jennifer, lives in Lyons, CO. This also happens to be the site of one of the hardest hit communities in this weeks flooding events along the Front Range. Jennifer, her family and animals are physically safe and okay, but the homestead that she and 3 generations of women in her family have lived on for years has been badly damaged and flooded.
This house has been a site of intense healing for me and many others. Her mother runs her permaculture therapy farm for children off of this land. They have opened their homestead up to many women who need safe spaces and activists in need in the past. When I have needed shelter, this group of women was there to provide with no questions asked. When I have needed food, they were there to provide with no questions asked. She regularly sends me care packages of raw wildflower honey from the mountains and notes of love and kind thoughts. I know she does the same for other DGR members as well.
Jennifer has contributed, humbly and tirelessly, to many important DGR projects. For example, coordinating sending out the DGR shirts, heading up to support folks in White Clay multiple times a year, working on the DGR book of poetry, anti-fracking efforts, hosting prisoner support letter writing nights, radio shows, community rights ordinances in Boulder County and much much more.
The national guard is in control of the small town of Lyons right now. They are describing it like an island. No food, no running water.
We want to send her support. Messages of love. Chocolate. Financial support. Anything that will help in a flood/disaster situation.
If you would like to help out with this, you can make a donation. [Fundraiser now ended.]
If you would like to send materials directly, or have questions, contact us and we will be sure to point you in the right direction. Any and all help is much appreciated! Please share this information with your networks if at all possible.
350.org / Draw the Line
“Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible–it’s to dismantle those systems.” – Lierre Keith
With this in mind, we radicals of NYC call all old-time activists, new-time activists, and never-thought-they-would-be activists to join together and draw the line against ineffective, piecemeal strategies. We must stand against reformist mentalities as much as we must stop the horrific destruction of our natural world by the Keystone XL and other extractive industries.
A true movement will connect the environmental struggles with the real-world social justice struggles happening around the world and learn from their history. We are facing a massive enemy and in order to succeed, we must create a unified and strategic culture of resistance in the NYC area. Help us bring to the table the radical solutions that are necessary to create a more just world.
We will be holding a discussion session about radical tactics and resistance building immediately after the larger protest march ending at the South Street Seaport. Join us and fight for the world!
We will be holding the “WE WILL DISMANTLE THE PIPELINE” sign at the South Street Seaport.
Discussion session begins at 3pm! You can RSVP for this discussion here, although this is not necessary. All are welcome.
Join us next Monday, September 9th, for an open meeting and discussion on alternatives to fossil fuels and renewable energies!
As the mainstream environmental movement continues to build in opposition to the fossil fuel industry, many are seeking alternatives that can successfully detract from the ruling elites egregious assaults on our lands and peoples. Large campaigns are being waged against oil & natural gas pipelines (such as the Keystone XL and the Spectra/Rockaway pipelines here in NYC) as well as against all plans to turn New York State into a haven for hydraulic fracturing.
So, what’s the alternative? A rapid and large-scale overhaul towards clean energy infrastructure and a green economy built on the use of solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric power sources.
Or is it? Do we have the technological capabilities and/or the economic incentives to successfully implement this rapid shift? Can we make a shift towards green energy in a time-frame that not only works for us, but also works for the migratory songbirds, the bats, and the rest of our kin? And equally important, how “clean” or “green” are these energy sources? What do their production processes look like? Are these energy sources truly desirable? If not, why not? What might we seek as an alternative instead?
These questions and more will be asked and addressed in a short presentation at the beginning of the meeting, with an extensive discussion to follow after. Please feel free to join us – the meeting is free and open to the public.
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Monday, September 9th
8pm – 9pm
Bellevue Hospital: Room A-342
462 1st Avenue
(between East 26th/28th)
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To find the room, enter the hospital through the 1st Avenue lobby, walk all the way down to the ER Waiting Room, make a left turn, and use the first set of elevators on the right.
If you need any further directions or have any questions, please contact us.