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Social Movements

Examined: Indigenous Resistance To Major Oil Pipelines

August 14, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , ,
Two years ago, major media outlets started to pay attention to a group of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members demonstrating along the Cannonball River located in North Dakota. They were demonstrating against the Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) construction of the 1,880 km Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on their territory. The tribe said they were never consulted on the pipeline's re-route from Bismarck into their sovereign and sacred lands. The Standing Rock feared the line would leak crude into their main aquifer, Lake Oahe, part of the Missouri River. From March 2016 the Sioux, who would be joined by over 300 other Indigenous 'water protectors' and international allies, set up camp on the North Dakota prairie to resist the pipeline despite government food blockades, massive arrests, police dog and water cannon attacks well into the frigid Midwest winter of that year.

The U.S. And Canada Are Preparing For A New Standing Rock Over The Trans Mountain Tar Sands Pipeline

August 11, 2018 Alleen Brown and Will Parrish, Theintercept.com , ,
IN BRITISH COLUMBIA’S southern interior, on unceded land of the Secwepemc Nation, Kanahus Manuel stands alongside a 7-by-12-foot “tiny house” mounted on a trailer. Her uncle screws a two-by-four into a floor panel while her brother-in-law paints a mural on the exterior walls depicting a moose, birds, forests, and rivers — images of the terrain through which the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion will pass, if it can get through the Tiny House Warriors’ roving blockade. The project would place a new pipeline alongside the existing Trans Mountain line, tripling the system’s capacity to 890,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen flowing daily from Alberta through British Columbia to an endpoint outside Vancouver.

March For History

August 9, 2018 Bryan Register, De-Confederate Austin , ,
An event to call attention to the need for accurate historical education in Texas public schools! August 10, 1862, is the date of the Nueces Massacre, in which Confederate soldiers killed dozens of central Texas German settlers fleeing Confederate conscription; survivors eventually joined the United States army to fight for liberty and union. Comfort, TX is the site of a monument to their bravery, the Treue Der Union monument. There is an annual ceremony at the monument on August 10. On August 11, we will begin at the monument at 8AM by hearing a brief historical talk by a member of the Comfort Heritage Society. We will then march to a roadside picnic area 12 miles north along state highway 87, where we will rest through the heat of the day and hear presentations on Civil War and Texas history from organizers, activists, and historians.

From Moment To Movement? Activists Debate Next Steps

August 6, 2018 Steve Dubb, Nonprofitquarterly.org ,
Last month, several hundred activists tied to a membership organization known as the New Economy Coalition gathered in St. Louis at the organization’s biennial CommonBound conference—the first to take place since the 2016 national election. The conference, held on June 22–24, 2018, and attended by well over 400 people, involved a wide range of half-day and day-long networking sessions, over four dozen different workshops, and two plenary sessions that occurred on the main stage. Video recordings of the two plenary sessions and four conference workshops are available here. The topics were wide-ranging, including everything from the state of social movements in Puerto Rico; to efforts in a range of countries, including Canada, Cuba, Great Britain, Mexico, and Spain; to local struggles for clean energy and against displacement stemming from gentrification.

Where Power Holders Get Power And How Movements Take It Away

July 15, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance , ,
This week, we present the second class in the Popular Resistance School course, "How Social Transformation Occurs." The second class takes a more in-depth look at the power holders - what they need to exist and how social movements can weaken their power. We also discuss the characteristics of successful social movements, Grand Strategy, when to negotiate (or not) and violence versus nonviolence. Power holders do not operate in a vacuum, they rely on various factors and pillars to maintain their power.

The Rise Of A New, Global, Indigenous Left

July 14, 2018 Staff, Summitzine.com , ,
At the third stop, DLNR officers finally begin to make arrests. Among the bevy of Hawaiians whose wrists are zip-tied as they sit still on the dirt and gravel road, refusing to move of their own volition, are University of Hawai‘i Maui Community College professor and activist Kaleikoa Ka‘eo and then-26-year-old community organizer Kaho‘okahi Kanuha, who was among the first of the wave of millennial protectors that had used social media to rally the cause and who formed the backbone of the effort to shut down the telescope project. Some DLNR officers are Hawaiian themselves, and a few weep as they haul their extended family members off the path. All the while, floating through the intermittent mist, is the constant refrain of Kumu Hina Wong-Kalu’s song, “Kū Ha‘aheo.”

Argentina: Over 60 Social Movements Protest US ‘Military Base’

July 13, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net , , ,
In Argentina, political parties, social organizations, human rights groups, workers’ unions and Mapuches held a caravan to protest the installation of a United States “humanitarian” base in western city of Neuquen. Under the banner “no to the yankee base in Neuquen” representatives of over 60 organizations travelled Tuesday to the site where the base will be built. They demand that the national and provincial government stop the construction of what they call a “military base” and uphold territorial sovereignty. The base, under the name “Emergency Operating Committee” was announced by government officials as a new office for “Civil Defense.” Construction is financed by the U.S. Southern Command and it will function near the city, “next to all the oil resources,” councilman Francisco Baggio said.

Why I Got Arrested This Summer (And You Should, Too)

July 12, 2018 By Saurav Sarkar, Otherwords.org ,
In his famous essay “On Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau explained why he went to jail in 1846. He said he refused to pay taxes to a government that was pursuing the extension of slavery. To support such a government, Thoreau argued, was to be complicit in its worst deeds. With this essay, Thoreau helped inspire the modern tradition of civil disobedience, his footsteps followed by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others. This summer, I joined that tradition by getting arrested for demonstrating without a permit at the United States Capitol — along with about 100 others from the Poor People’s Campaign, including Reverend William J. Barber II. The arrests were part of a larger wave of nonviolent civil disobedience over six weeks that resulted in about 2,500 arrests of clergy, activists, and poor people across 40 states and Washington, DC.

How To Build A Movement For Transformational Change

July 8, 2018 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance , , ,
In recent years, people have asked us what they should be doing to build an effective movement that can create transformational change. In response to these questions, Popular Resistance created an online school. The first course, which consists of eight classes, provides information about how social movements grow and succeed, what roles different people and organizations play in movements, how to overcome obstacles and how to develop strategic campaigns. In addition to discussing analyses of social movements by leading thinkers on social movement theory, we bring our experiences to the classes.

No Bayou Bridge

June 27, 2018 Staff, Nobayoubridge.global ,
From July 16th-31st frontline resistance campaigns across the continent will be taking action simultaneously to stop pipelines and extreme energy projects. During these weeks of action, we are calling on people to join us in solidarity by organizing actions targeting the banks funding these pipeline projects, or by joining the frontlines and taking action directly with us. Across Turtle Island, Indigenous people and frontline communities are leading the fight to stop oil and fracked-gas pipelines. These pipelines and all fossil fuel extraction endangers the communities they pass through, contaminate the air and water, contribute to global climate change and continue the colonization of native lands. When resisting these projects, we take every legal route available -- and we also utilize direct action: placing our bodies and lives on the line.

Calling For An End To RIMPAC War Games

June 21, 2018 By  Kelsey Amos, Hawaiiindependent.net , , ,
A coalition of demilitarization and decolonization activist groups has written an open letter to the U.S. and Hawaiʻi state governments calling for an end to the annual Pacific military exercises known as RIMPAC which, the group argues, perpetuates violence and domination across multiple levels of global society. Women’s Voices Women Speak, Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice, World Can’t Wait-Hawaiʻi, Veterans for Peace-Hawai`i, Hawai`i Okinawa Alliance and community allies call on the Hawaiʻi State Government to end the Rim of the Pacific exercises, known as RIMPAC, occurring this July to August 2018. Instead of the practice of war and more militarism, we call for practicing peace and intergenerational healing in Hawaiʻi, Moana Nui (Oceania) and across the Earth.

In Possible Roadblock For Keystone XL, Pipeline Opponents Gift Land To Ponca

June 19, 2018 Paul Hammel, Omaha.com , , ,
LINCOLN — For five years, opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline and members of the Ponca Indian Tribe have sown native tribal corn in the path of the controversial project as a form of resistance. Now they’ve planted another potential roadblock. Last weekend, Art and Helen Tanderup, who farm north of Neligh, Nebraska, deeded the 1.6-acre plot of native corn to the native inhabitants of the land, the Ponca. Selling the land to the Ponca means that TransCanada will have to negotiate with a new landowner, one that has special legal status as a tribe — a tribe that is opposed to the pipeline. The plot becomes the only tribally owned plot of land on the XL pipeline route in the U.S. “We want to protect this land. We don’t want to see a pipeline go through,” said Larry Wright Jr., the chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. “If this adds another layer (of opposition) to that issue, we’re happy to be part of that.”

Mexicans Organize To Defend The Will Of The People And Impose Democracy

June 11, 2018 Staff, Socialistorganizer.com , ,
 This massive support for AMLO reflects the people’s anger and despair after more than 30 years of policies that have handed over the nation’s wealth and resources to a handful of billionaires and transnational corporations. These have been decades of wage cuts, unemployment, and loss of labor and social rights. They have been decades during which the country has been dislocated and torn apart by the so-called “war on drugs,” which has only fueled more violence and militarization, and more killings of women and disappearances.

People’s Movements Protest Neoliberal Policies In Haiti

June 7, 2018 Lautaro Rivara, Thedawn-news.org , , , ,
On the morning of May 25th, a large group of people’s organizations of Haiti mobilized in the capital, Puerto Principe, demanding the fulfillment of an extension agenda of demands from the State and the president Jovenel Moïse. The mobilization was called by an platform known as “January 22nd Movement”, that unites various sectors such as unions, peasants, students and urban fringes. The organizations also participate in the continental and global platforms: ALBA Movimientos and Vía Campesina. The gathering took place in Chal Sounè, the central point of the city, where the ministries of Finance, Justice and Social Issues, and the Car Insurance Office against Third Parties (OAVCT) are situated. The protesters exhibited posters of rejection to International Monetary Fund (IMF) and protested against the government’s attempt to increase fuel prices.

Hundreds Arrested Nationwide As Poor People’s Campaign Demands ‘End To The War Economy’

May 30, 2018 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org , , , ,
"We have a long history of wars against other people, mostly people of color, around the world. It's time we stopped calling it the Defense Department and started calling it what it is: the Department of War." Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s warning that "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom," the Poor People's Campaign launched its third week of action in cities nationwide on Tuesday with the aim of confronting the American war economy, which pours resources that could be used to provide healthcare and food to the poor at home into the killing of innocents aboad.
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