Land

The Occupied Territory Of The United States Of America

February 19, 2018 Rivera Sun, Riverasun.com Educate! Land, Occupation, United States

It happened so subtly, we missed the corporate coup. Like shadows, corporations surrounded our country and slowly strangled it. They crept into Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, the FDA, the military, the Department of the Interior: everywhere you look, a corporation controls the decisions of this nation. We have become the occupied territory of brand names, corporate logos, monopolistic power, and corporate greed. It would be easier to understand what has happened if they wore red armbands and goose-stepped. But no, the minions of corporate power wear false smiles, carry empty promises, and fly in private jets. The less-powerful rank-and-file of the corporate state look like our neighbors, relatives, friends. They are not our enemy. It is the destructive behaviors of the corporate state, and its occupation of our government, culture, and society that we must rebel against.

Black Beekeepers Are Transforming Detroit’s Vacant Lots Into Bee Farms

February 12, 2018 Philip Lew, Huffingtonpost.com Create! Bees, Detroit, Land

A pair of Detroit natives have decided to combat neighborhood blight in a pretty sweet way — by transforming abandoned vacant lots in their city into honeybee farms. Detroit Hives, a nonprofit organization founded by Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsey in 2017, purchases vacant properties and remodels them into fully functioning bee farms. “These properties are left abandoned and serve as a dumping ground in most cases,” Paule told HuffPost. “The area can be a breeding ground for environmental hazards, which creates a stigma around the city.” Paule, a photographer, and Lindsey, a staff member for the health care provider Henry Ford OptimEyes, had been dating for some time before launching the nonprofit. Paule attributes their inspiration to a cold that he just couldn’t get rid of.

South Africa’s Shack Dwellers See Politics Very Differently Than Average Westerner

February 12, 2018 By Vijay Prashad, AlterNet.org Educate! Class Struggle, Housing, Land, South Africa

Walking into the settlement at Kennedy Road in Durban, what one is confronted with is the familiarity of the place. I’ve been here before. Not to this settlement, but to others like it. To bastis in India and favelas in Brazil, to Mexico’s Neza-Chalco-Izta to Bangkok’s Klong Toey. The United Nation’s agency that monitors housing - UN Habitat - has said that there are a billion people in informal settlements (slums). A demographer at the UN tells me that within a few decades, he assumes that the number might easily double. In fact, he says, given how bad the data is, two billion people might already live in these kinds of vulnerable settlements. ‘We just don’t have the numbers,’ he said. The residents of Kennedy Road do not use the word ‘slum.’ They find the term dismissive and pejorative. Words aside, the residents would agree that they live in informal settlements. Kennedy Road is only one of Durban’s such habitats. A million of Durban’s citizens live in such places.

What Happens When Wall Street Becomes Your Landlord?

January 27, 2018 By Negin Owliaei, Inequality.org Educate! Land, New Economy, Private Ownership, Wall Street

When José Rivera moved into his house, he thought he was on the path to home ownership. But after several years and more than $90,000 in rent, he can’t even get his landlord to fix the broken pipe that leaked raw sewage into his home. Rivera’s landlord is Colony Starwood Homes, a rental giant backed by Wall Street investment firms. When he first told the company about his leaky pipe, they cleaned the carpet, but left the sewage issue alone. When the pipe leaked again, Rivera filed another complaint — and five days later, he received a notice to vacate. Rivera is just one of the many renters highlighted in a just-released report looking at the new face of financialization in the housing market. The report is authored by three consumer advocacy and housing rights groups — the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Americans for Financial Reform, and Public Advocates.

From Georgia To NYC: Civil Rights Roots Of Community Land Trusts

January 19, 2018 Abigail Savitch-Lew, Citylimits.org Strategize! Civil Rights, Land, Land trusts, New Economy

When New Yorkers discuss the community land trust, they often describe it as a complicated land ownership structure, one that’s already proven its success in Bernie Sanders’ Burlington and in Boston. But the community land trust’s origin story reveals that it’s not simply a wonky policy tool dreamed up in the Ivy tower; rather, its roots lie in the life-and-death struggle by Blacks for civil rights in the deep South. In the model, a community-controlled nonprofit owns land and ensures the buildings or other assets on that land continue to serve the community, such as by requiring homeowners to abide by sales restrictions on their homes. The “Arc of Justice,” a documentary released last summer and screened at the New School on Wednesday, explores the founding of the United States’ first community land trust by civil rights leaders in southern Georgia during the 1960s.

Protesters Build Permanent Structure, Plan To Overwinter At Alton Gas Site

December 20, 2017 By Nina Corfu, CBC News Resist! Land, Natural Gas, Occupation, Protests

With second-floor sleeping bunks, shelves stocked with food and a crackling fire in the woodstove, Dale Andrew Poulette’s newly constructed straw bale home is the perfect place to spend the winter. Except for one thing — he’s trespassing. The new structure, at 625 Riverside Rd., just outside of Stewiacke, N.S., on the banks of the Shubenacadie River, sits on land owned by AltaGas, the company behind the Alton Natural Gas Storage project. The building, which was constructed over a one-month period this fall, “is on Alton property,” said company spokesperson Lori MacLean, “and it was built without the company’s permission.” That doesn’t discourage Poulette.

The Original Community Land Trust

November 29, 2017 Aaron Fernando, geo.coop Create! Indigenous Peoples, Land, Land trusts

By Aaron Fernando for Grassroots Economic Organizing - This form of land ownership also prices out locals from areas that they historically lived and worked in by increasing costs — catalyzing the process of gentrification. It also privatizes and encloses common spaces and areas that previously benefitted surrounding communities, ultimately leading to a more fragmented society, one required to focus on unsustainable short-term profits. All this holds true as long as land remains on the market. Yet what we see today is a resurgence and re-invention of ownership models that allow communities to take care of themselves and steward their own natural resources. The Community Land Trust (CLT) model is one that reduces the socially-destructive effects of market forces by separating the ownership of land with the ownership of any property and equity atop the land itself. Affordable housing-related CLTs are probably best-known, but this model can be applied for any community goal, including lowering costs for small businesses and ensuring local food production. Though the CLT model has been re-emerging since the late 1960s, it is actually somewhat of a return to indigenous practices around ownership of land and resources. Winona LaDuke, anti-pipeline activist, water protector, and member of the Ojibwe nation spoke about this during the 1993 Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures.

‘U.S. Aims To Dominate Land, Resources & Labor Of African People’

October 27, 2017 Abayomi Azikiwe, www.muslimpress.com Educate! Africa, Land, US Imperialism

By Abayomi Azikiwe for Muslim Press - “United States foreign policy towards Africa has not fundamentally changed since World War II. Washington's aim is to dominate the land, resources and labor of the African people,” Abayomi Azikiwe, the editor of the Pan-African News Wire, told Muslim Press in an interview. In what follows, the full transcript of the interview has been presented. Muslim Press: What has been the result of U.S. foreign policy in African countries? How has U.S. foreign policy in Africa changed since Donald Trump became president? Abayomi Azikiwe: United States foreign policy towards Africa has not fundamentally changed since World War II. Washington's aim is to dominate the land, resources and labor of the African people. Successive administrations backed the colonial policies of Britain, France, Portugal and the former settler-colonial regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa. In Feb. 1966, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson engineered a military and police coup against the First Republic of Ghana under President Kwame Nkrumah. Later in Oct. 1975, the administration of President Gerald Ford deployed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to support a military intervention into Angola by the former racist apartheid South African Defense Forces (SADF) to prevent the genuine independence of that former Portuguese colony.

NAFTA Renegotiation: What’s At Stake For Food, Farmers And The Land?

October 17, 2017 Staff, www.iatp.org Educate! Farming, Food and Agriculture, Land, NAFTA

By Staff of IATP - The re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Mexico and Canada begins on August 16, and there is much at stake for farmers and rural communities in all three countries. Despite promised gains for farmers, NAFTA’s benefits over the last 23 years have gone primarily to multinational agribusiness firms. NAFTA is about much more than trade. It set rules on investment, farm exports, food safety, access to seeds, and markets. NAFTA, combined with the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 1996 Farm Bill, led the charge to greater consolidation among agribusiness firms, the loss of many small and mid-sized farms and independent ranchers, the rapid growth of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and further corporate control of animal production through often unfair, restrictive contracts with producers. The Trump administration’s negotiating objectives reflect relatively small tweaks to NAFTA, while adopting deregulatory elements of the defeated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Family farm groups have called for the existing NAFTA to be scrapped and propose a fundamentally new agreement with a goal of improving the lives of family farmers and rural communities in all three countries.

Rajasthan Farmers Sit Neck-Deep to Protest Land Deal

October 7, 2017 Saif Khalid, Resist! Farmers, Food and Agriculture, India, Land

By Saif Khalid for Al Jazeera. Hundreds of farmers in the state of Rajasthan, India, have been protesting against the government's plan to acquire their land, with scores of them digging up holes and burying themselves as part of the protest. Farmers have been holding the sit-in at Nindar village, about 20km from Jaipur, the state capital, for the past two weeks but adopted this unique method of protest on Monday - the birth anniversary of India's independence leader Mahatma Gandhi. Nagender Shekhawat, the leader of the protest, told Al Jazeera that "nearly 5,000 families, including farmers, are going to be affected by the acquisition". He added that the protesters have been occupying the land for the past 18 days. "Farmers have been protesting since the land acquisition notice was issued in 2010. They do not want to give up their land as they use it for agriculture and animals," he said.

New Era Of State Violence In Argentina?

September 12, 2017 Roqayah Chamseddine, www.mintpressnews.com Resist! Activists, Argentina, Indigenous Peoples, Land, State Violence

By Roqayah Chamseddine for MInt Press News - The streets of Argentina are boiling over with demonstrations, as thousands of locals demand that the government produce an indigenous activist last seen one month ago when border police forced a group of the indigenous Mapuche off of indigenous land in Patagonia — land unjustly owned by the Italian clothing company Benetton. According to witnesses, 28-year-old Santiago Maldonado was forced into a van by government officials and disappeared, but so far the Argentinian government has denied any involvement. Argentinian demonstrators, including groups like Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo, are increasingly concerned for the wellbeing of Maldonado in light of the nation’s troubled history of state violence. The US-backed military dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla, which plagued Argentina from 1976 until 1983, killed, kidnapped, and disappeared at least 30,000. Backed by Ronald Reagan, Videla and his security apparatus went on to torture and murder thousands more in a right-wing military hellscape. The case of Santiago Maldonado has revived memories of the Argentinian military junta, and suspicion among activists is growing that he has become President Mauricio Macri’s first disappeared victim—nearly 40 years after the end of General Videla’s rule.

Baltimore’s Push To Solve Its Affordable Housing Crisis With Community Land Trusts

September 11, 2017 Kevon Paynter, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Affordable Housing, Baltimore, Land, Land trusts, New Economy

By Kevon Paynter for Yes! Magazine - Men and women huddle inside the St. John’s United Methodist Church in central Baltimore. The air conditioning in the church is inefficient on a day when the outside temperature is over 100 degrees. Cold water bottles get distributed, along with paper towels to wipe off sweat. Many of these people are homeless or formerly homeless. Others are longtime residents struggling to afford their rent, and they are here to advocate for an affordable housing solution that could bring relief as well as fix Baltimore’s blight.  They want Mayor Catherine Pugh to dedicate $40 million in the upcoming budget to fund community land trusts. Across the U.S., cities struggle with expanding income inequality and tight housing markets that drive up rent. These factors result in an extreme shortage of affordable housing. For every 100 low-income renters, there are 31 affordable units, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.  Over the years, solutions have emerged. In Burlington, Vermont, and Boston, for example, community ownership of land through nonprofit community land trusts has had decades of success turning vacant lots into affordable housing.

Dozens Of Land Owners Sue Over Eminent Domain For FERC Pipelines

September 8, 2017 Duncan Adams, www.roanoke.com Resist! FERC, Land, Lawsuit, Pipelines

By Duncan Adams for The Roanoke Times - Dozens of landowners potentially affected by the Mountain Valley Pipeline or the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and other foes of the controversial projects have filed a federal lawsuit that challenges eminent domain provisions of the Natural Gas Act. The suit contends that these provisions, as implemented by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, violate Fifth Amendment constitutional protections by allowing private, for-profit pipeline companies to wield eminent domain to acquire easements across private properties without evidence that the projects are needed or will serve the public good. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, contends that FERC’s approval of the pipelines “is virtually certain and imminent” and it asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to intervene. The plaintiffs and their attorney, Carolyn Elefant, a former FERC lawyer, implore the court to stop FERC from issuing the certificates of public convenience and necessity — which the pipeline companies need to begin construction or to exercise eminent domain — until the lawsuit can be litigated. Defendants include the two pipeline companies, each a limited liability company incorporated in Delaware, as well as FERC and its three commissioners.

Guatemala’s Indigenous Campesinos Occupy Capital To Protest Land Conflicts

August 30, 2017 Jeff Abbott, www.towardfreedom.com Resist! Guatemala, Indigenous Peoples, Land, Land conflict, Occupation

By Jeff Abbott for Towards Freedom - On August 8, one hundred Q’eqchi Maya families from the Department of Alta Verapaz arrived to the historic center of Guatemala City, the nation’s capital, to establish a permanent presence in an encampment near the Presidential Palace. They have announced that they will remain there until the administration fulfills the agreement between the campesino communities and the government established in April 2015 to end agrarian conflicts within the department. “We are here in front of the National Palace because of the failure of the state to comply with the accords that came after many dialogues with state officials on the land conflicts in Alta Verapaz,” said Carlos Choc, a member of a Q’eqchi community within the Municipality of Coban, Alta Verapaz, and a representative from the Comité Campesino de Altiplano(CCDA), the organization that coordinated the occupation. “To this date, we do not have a response that is the benefit of the Q’eqchi communities,” Choc told Toward Freedom. “Because of this, our Q’eqchi communities have risen up to demand that [President Jimmy Morales] comply and give us a favorable response. We do not want any more dialogues on the conflict over land.” Black plastic tarps hang from ropes tied to the Guatemalan National Palace, creating a series of makeshift tents that have become the home for these families.

This Land Is Whose Land?

August 30, 2017 Matt Hern, www.roarmag.org Strategize! Displacement, Gentrification, Land

By Matt Hern for ROAR Magazine - Understanding the forces deforming our cities today requires more than a class analysis of capitalist land speculation. We have to talk about race. There is really no way to think about cities today without talking about displacements, and over the past few generations, gentrification has emerged as a broadly familiar frame for understanding the explosive changes that are disfiguring cities across the planet.Gentrification has become so ubiquitous and commonplace that many of us are resigned to capital’s inevitable capture of the best parts of every city. We all see the gentrifications around us. We know what it smells like. We instinctually know which neighbourhoods are vulnerable. The neoliberal city is a vampiric city and we have all become inured to its feeding habits. But I am convinced that the dominant languages being invoked to theorize gentrification today fall short: they are necessary but not sufficient. Understanding urban displacements today requires a more nuanced engagement with racialized rationalities than is currently circulating in most gentrification literatures.

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