Above photo: Cherri Foytlin at the Convergence.
The Resurgence: 2019 Forest & Climate Movement Convergence took place over October 10-14, 2019. It brought together more than 300 people, including many front line community members and Indigenous Peoples, as well as organizers and grassroots activists from across the environmental and social justice spectrum.
The event was organized into Strategic Action Sessions under seven themes, each of which accomplished key objectives and concluded with concrete action plans to move their work forward.
Convergence: Cherri Foytlin – Strength in the Face of Repression from Global Justice Ecology Project on Vimeo.
As well, GJEP videotaped the entire event (excluding the strategy meetings) including around 20 interviews. Ten of these are already available to view on the convergence vimeo page. Now we plan to produce a documentary from the event, to showcase this event and its amazing participants to a broader activist and public audience.
The seven Strategic Action Sessions addressed these topics:
• Opposing False Solutions to Climate Change, (especially those most egregiously violating human rights and impacting forests);
• Lifting up Real Solutions to Climate Change (including just transition and Indigenous Peoples’ leadership);
• Opposing Fake Forest Health Schemes (creating strategies to counter the dysinformation campaign being implemented to accelerate logging in the name of forest health and climate mitigation);
• Indigenous Peoples’ lands and rights (working on an Indigenous Peoples’ declaration from the event);
• Direct Action Training and Support (to plug into and support other campaigns represented at the event);
• Fighting Dirty Energy Infrastructure Projects (from pipelines to mega-hydro dams);
• Youth Empowerment (many of the youth got involved in the other SAS’s after they completed their own work).
“This is not another conference. This is a call to action to radically transform the economic and political systems that drive climate change, forest destruction & the commodification of life.”
–From the Convergence Call to Action
While most of the Forest and Climate Convergence consisted of intensive strategy sessions, Saturday morning started with two inspiring panels featuring powerful speakers like youth climate activist Jayden Foytlin (left) and revolutionary liberation activist Mike Africa Jr. (right)
Convergence Media Coverage
In addition to the great work done at the Convergence, there was a great deal of media coverage prior to the convergence, aimed at reaching out to and mobilizing the local population to help defend the Shawnee National Forest from plans by the US Forest Service to log, burn and poison it.
Articles and interviews appeared in numerous outlets including the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Daily Egyptian, the Southern Illinoisan and community radio.
There was also national media attention on the convergence on KPFK and KPFA Pacifica stations–in fact, Margaret Prescod and Ramiro Fuñez of KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show attended the convergence and recorded many interviews for their program!
Act Out with Eleanor Goldfield also covered and attended the convergence, and GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann appeared on Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp on RT TV (click on the photo above to watch the interview).
The convergence was held in the Shawnee National Forest to bring attention to the abuses happening on public lands. In this photo, taken in the Shawnee National Forest, mud caked tires and the tracks that covered them on a forwarder used to haul out lumber at the industrial Lee Mine logging project.
Help GJEP accomplish our post-convergence plans: donate today!