This Memorial Day weekend our thoughts turn to peace and particularly to the courageous women who are working to create peace. These are the people we would like to celebrate as we build a culture of peace and justice to counter our deep heritage of war culture.
Women for peace
As we write, thirty women from around the world are meeting with North and South Korean women about ending the Korean War and re-unifying the country. During the trip, they hope to walk across the DMZ. Colonel Ann Wright, who retired from the State Department in opposition to the Iraq War, is with them.
Col. Wright wrote Dissent: Voices of Opposition with Susan Dixon to honor women and men like them who resigned and faced retaliation rather than “stand by silently while our leaders were implementing policies destructive to our country and the world.”
We celebrate the women who met recently in Sarajevo, Bosnia to tell the truth about the violence against women that occurred during the conflicts between 1991 and 2001.
We remember the 17 women imprisoned in El Salvador because they had miscarriages and those in the US who took action on their behalf and are now facing jail time too.
We watch anxiously as the third Freedom Flotilla heads to the Gaza Strip to bring humanitarian supplies to Palestinians. The movement to end apartheid there is growing in the US on college campuses much as the South African anti-apartheid movement did in the 1908s. Across the US, campus groups called Students for Justice in Palestine are using creative tactics to re-create the Palestinian experience of apartheid. Now that Palestinians have official recognition as a state, they are seeking justice through the International Criminal Court where their case against Israel will be heard in June.
Women for justice
We also celebrate the courageous women (and men) who are working for justice in all of its forms.
We celebrate the women who are the driving force behind the Black Lives Matter movement, even though the focus has been primarily on the deaths of black men. This week, demonstrations around the country remembered the women who were victims of police violence.
This week a delegation of Indigenous women protested Arctic oil drilling at Shell’s meetings in Norway and the UK. Two women participated in the flotilla in Seattle last weekend and then traveled to London to join them.
In Rhode Island, a woman started a tree sit to block Spectra from expanding a gas pipeline. Police removed her quickly, but that won’t hamper what will be an escalating campaign to stop Spectra. You can join the solidarity week of action. Click here for more information.
Actions to stop dangerous oil and gas infrastructure projects are getting the attention of the industry. At their recent meeting, they spoke of the need to increase their public propaganda. In Pennsylvania, the legality of pipeline company Kinder Morgan’s contract with local police to deter protests is being challenged.
Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) returned to Washington, DC this week to expose and protest the little-known Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) which rubberstamps oil and gas projects without regard to the harm they do to communities. The FERC’s behavior spawned a new word, ‘communicide’. Frontline members held a die-in at FERC’s door on Thursday. Actions continue through May 29, and then BXE will head to Southern Maryland to march against Dominion’s gas refinery and export plant there.
People before profits
Oil and gas companies are certainly not the only corporations that act without regard for human lives. Today, millions marched around the world to protest Monsanto which is responsible for many GMOs and the pesticides that go with them. One class of pesticides, neonicotinoids, in particular causes the collapse of bee colonies which are already threatened and are critical to our food security. Pesticides also have harmful impacts on human health, as was highlighted in this recent protest at Syngenta’s headquarters. Protests against GMOs and pesticides are working as corporations are being pressured to drop products that use them.
It’s time to add Nestle to our list of corporations to boycott and target. Nestle is refusing to stop bottling and selling water in California despite the severe drought. And McDonalds is another corporation that felt the heat this week as 5,000 workers descended on their shareholder meeting in Illinois for several days of actions calling for fair wages not food stamps.
And misbehavior of the big banks was exposed this week in an investigation of five big banks by the Department of Justice which resulted in them admitting they were guilty of felonies. They were guilty, paid big fines but once again, no one went to jail. The investigation found that the banks intentionally committed fraud as part of their standard business practices, much as they have done in their fraudulent foreclosures. In California, foreclosure victims went to extraordinary lengths to reach the State’s Attorney General as they continue to seek accountability.
The ultimate corporate power grab
If international trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership(TTIP) become law, the corporate impunity will only worsen. President Obama, Republican leadership and Big Industries are working overtime to urge Congress to pass fast track so these agreements can become law.
The Senate passed a version of fast track on Friday with great difficulty despite the general thinking that the Senate would be a breeze. Sen. McConnell originally promised open debate and amendments, but then shut that down with a vote on Thursday after 150 amendments were filed. However, an amendment did slip through that would ban countries that are involved in human trafficking.
In an ironic twist, our country’s first black president objected strongly to the ban on human trafficking (slavery), with his administration considering it a ‘poison pill’. Obama seems to be determined to push Congress to pass fast track even though it undermines his credibility. Time and again, he makes claims about the TPP that are blatantly false and then attacks those who question him.
In case you need another reason to be concerned, it was leaked this week that the companion bill to fast track, called trade adjustment authority, would use cuts to Medicare to fund support for those whose jobs are outsourced.
Now we are entering the final phase of this battle to stop fast track. Members of the House are on break until June 3. If they think they have the votes, they will vote on fast track when they return. We must prevent them from having enough votes to pass fast track. We urge you to contact your member of Congress while they are home and tell them to vote “no” on fast track.
Another thing you can ask your representative to do is to read the TPP and report on it. Despite threats of prosecution by the US Trade Representative, Sen. Sessions read the TPP and wrote a letter outlining his concerns. Michael Wessel, who has also read the TPP, says that we are right to be concerned. We hope others will do the same.
You can bird dog them at public events too. And join the national call-in day on June 3. Take the time between now and then to contact others and urge them to call in. There is an easy tool to use for contacting your member of Congress at www.StopFastTrack.com.
We are in a strong position to win this battle given that there is a broad coalition against it, but we know that leadership and corporate lobbyists will do all that we can to defeat us. Please get involved. You can take the action pledge here.
On another positive note, the Senate was unable to stop the Patriot Act from expiring. On Thursday, there were nationwide ‘sunset the Patriot Act’ protests.
Final thoughts
We posted a number of articles this week about the relationship between movements and electoral politics. Some believe that we best change the system by building alternative systems in our communities such as the Zapatistas have done; some believe that we must focus on directly targeting corporations rather than politicians while others believe that we must focus on demanding electoral reform.
In this interview with Dr. Cornel West, Eddie Conway and Reverend Sekou, the general wisdom is that movement building and community-focused work are necessary before an electoral strategy can be successful. Rev. Sekou points out that African Americans have invested greatly in elections and while blacks have been elected to office, what has it gotten them? David Suzuki writes about the way movement actions have grown in Canada impacting elections so the views of the movements are represented in multiple provinces in Canada.
We are interested in your thoughts on the relationship between movements and electoral politics and we invite you to share them using the comment section of the above articles so that there can be a discussion. As we enter the upcoming election season, this is a fundamental question about where activist resources are best spent.