By Julia Bayly for Bangor Daily News – With a stroke of his pen, Gov. Paul LePage last week enacted landmark legislation putting Maine in the forefront of the food sovereignty movement. LePage signed LD 725, An Act to Recognize Local Control Regarding Food Systems, Friday legitimizing the authority of towns and communities to enact ordinances regulating local food distribution free from state regulatory control. According to food sovereignty advocates, the law is the first of its kind in the country. “This is a great day for rural economic development and the environmental and social wealth of rural communities,” said Rep. Craig Hickman, D-Winthrop. “The Governor has signed into law a first-in-the-nation piece of landmark legislation [and] the state of Maine will [now] recognize, at last, the right of municipalities to regulate local food systems as they see fit.” Sponsored by Sen. Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, LD 725 does not include food grown or processed for wholesale or retail distribution outside of the community from which it comes. Supporters of food sovereignty want local food producers to be exempt from state licensing and inspections governing the selling of food as long as the transactions are between the producers and the customers for home consumption or when the food is sold and consumed at community events such as church suppers.
By Mark Weisbrot for The Hill – National sovereignty is an undervalued asset in today’s world, especially by the international media, where the views of Washington and its allies largely prevail. This is true with regard to economic as well as political issues, and its consequences can be quite heavy in a region like Latin America, long regarded by U.S. officials as their backyard. The election in Ecuador is being watched, as well as contested by, forces that have opposing views on this question. On the left, there is the presidential bid of former vice president Lenín Moreno, and his party — which has already won a majority of the Congress — Alianza PAIS (AP).
By Tristan Ahtone for Yes! Magazine. As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to occupy the Oval Office, much of Indian Country is bracing for the worst. But the U.S. Congress has an opportunity to welcome tribal nations to the table in a unique way: It can seat an Indian delegate. For more than 200 years, the Cherokee Nation has held the right to send a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, much like Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia. That right stems from treaties signed by the United States and the Cherokee Nation—treaties that are currently in effect and backed by the U.S. Constitution. It’s a right that’s also enshrined in the Cherokee Constitution: “In accordance with Article 12 of the Treaty with the Cherokees, dated November 28, 1785 (Treaty of Hopewell), and Article 7 of the Treaty with the Cherokees dated December 29, 1835 (Treaty of New Echota), there shall be created the office of Delegate to the United States House of Representatives, appointed by the Principal Chief and confirmed by the Council.”
By Panagiotis Sotiris for Spectrezine – The refugee crisis has demonstrated the deep crisis of the European Union. For the past years not only it has not been able to deal with the arrival of a large number of refugees and migrants, but has resorted to the deadly, murderous policies of “Fortress Europe”. The result has been thousands of dead refugees and migrants in the waters of the Mediterranean. Some people say “there are too many refugees in the world”. Is this true? Well, numbers don’t add up. In 2015 the total number of migrants was 232 million, in a global population of 7.4 billion. Regarding refugees in particular, the numbers are indeed increasing.
Newsletter #NoDAPL, Indigenous Rights, Nonviolence, Oil and Gas, Pipelines, Solidarity, Sovereignty, Standing Rock, Water By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org
December 4th, 2016
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. As we write this newsletter, we are driving to North Dakota to volunteer at Standing Rock. We have been wanting to go for many months but could not because of our commitment to organizing to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and our political work outside of Popular Resistance. We were planning to join a team from Baltimore in late December, but recent events made us decide that it was more important to go ourselves now. For a while, a profound sense of the importance of this moment has been growing within us. There are and have been many fights against fossil fuel infrastructure, but this one is different. Given the history of the country, the crises we all face on many levels and the direction that we are going – growing revolt and an increasingly repressive government – the fight at Standing Rock feels like a major turning point.
By Levi Gahman for The Solutions Journal – One of the biggest threats to food security the world currently faces is neoliberalism. It’s logic, which has become status quo over the past 70 years and valorizes global ‘free market’ capitalism, is made manifest through economic policies that facilitate privatization, deregulation, and cuts to social spending, as well as a discourse that promotes competition, individualism, and self-commodification. Despite rarely being criticized, or even mentioned, by state officials and mainstream media, neoliberal programs and practices continue to give rise to unprecedented levels of poverty, hunger, and suffering.
By Kim Petersen for American Herald Tribune – LAX KXEEN3 – In January, a two-day Salmon Nation Summit discussed the science behind a corporation’s bid to set up industry in salmon habitat, habitat that is on unceded Ts’msyen territory. Concern for the wild salmon was generated by the proposal of Malaysian state-owned Petronas to construct a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Lax U’u’la (Lelu Island) in the Kysen (Skeena) River estuary. The estuary is vital salmon habitat, and hard science warns that the LNG project is a danger to fish habitat.
By Boyan Atzev for Resilience. The principles of food sovereignty are best followed in anarchy. The definition states that one should have direct control and choice over the kind of food one consumes and produces. The beauty of anarchy is that rather than worrying about a large scale, complex, centralized society one can focus on the immediate matters of one’s community. In case of peasants’ movements these immediate matters are exactly the production and distribution of food locally. The knowledge coming from direct involvement with food production ensures well informed appropriate decisions made directly by the peasants based on their immediate needs.
By Benny Wenda for FreeWestPapua.org. Yapen, West Papua – I am full of grief to learn reports that 4 more West Papuan people were killed and 8 more shot in cold blood by the Indonesian military and police in Yapen last week. According to recent reports, on 1st December the Indonesian military raided Wanampompi village in the Angkaisera district on Yapen Island. The villagers were simply raising the West Papuan national flag and peacefully commemorating West Papua National Day, which is marked internationally with a Global Flag Raising. But while hundreds of people around the world were able to freely raise the West Papuan flag and show their support for West Papua’s freedom, West Papuans were arrested beaten and killed just for doing so.
By Staff for Popular Resistance. The mobilization to stop the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) in DC from November 14 to 18 was a great success! Hundreds attended the arts build and training camp and many times more took to the streets. Three energetic and colorful marches and rallies over two days shut down the US Trade Representative’s Office, stopped at the White House, took over the front door of the US Chamber of Commerce, swarmed the lobby of Morgan Stanley, shut down streets and the entrance to Monsanto and performed actions of solidarity in front of embassies of TPP countries. On the third day, a group visited Congressional leaders to deliver TPP toilet paper rolls.
By Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. The struggle in West Papua is intimately related to international agreements like the TPP because West Papua is rich in mineral resources. West Papua has been under brutal Indonesian military control for the past fifty years and extraction is taking place against the will of the people. Indonesia is the largest island nation and the fourth most populated country in the world. Indonesia is a large exporter and plans to join the TPP. If it does so, the struggles of the West Papuans will be even harder as there will be greater legal standing for transnational corporations to destroy the environment, and with that, their way of life which is closely connected to the Earth. I invite you to learn more about this struggle and to show your support for the West Papuan people on Tuesday December 1 by raising a West Papuan Flag and sharing a photo of that. Spread the word. We cannot continue to ignore the genocide of the West Papuan people.
By Carey Wedler for Counter Current News – Honolulu, HI — This week, Native Hawaiians initiated an historical election that may grant them sovereignty from the United States and the state of Hawaii, itself, after well over a century of colonial rule. More than 95,000 indigenous people will elect delegates to a constitutional convention, scheduled for this winter, when they will work to create a government that serves and represents Native Hawaiians — the only group of indigenous people in the United States currently restricted from forming their own government. In the 19th century, European and American missionaries and traders began settling in Hawaii.
By Heather in Community Alliance for Global Justice – In this moment when it is vital to assert that Black lives matter, the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance honors Black and Afro-Indigenous farmers, fishermen, and stewards of ancestral lands and water. We especially commemorate them as a vital part of our food and agriculture system – growers and workers who are creating food sovereignty, meaning a world with healthy, ecologically produced food, and democratic control over food systems. In 2015, the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance’s two prize winners are: the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in the U.S., and the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras. The prizes will be presented in Des Moines on October 14, 2015.
By Idle No More – 2014 was a busy year for Idle No More, in Canada, across Turtle Island, and globally, as the movement entered a new phase, consolidating and deepening its organizing for effective long-term change through mass education, grassroots strategy building, and local and mass actions. This document cannot hope to capture all of the inspiring work that is done everyday by the hundreds of Idle No More groups around the world. This Year in Review lifts up some of the powerful actions, gatherings, and organizing out on the land and in the streets as we continue to build this peaceful revolution to honour Indigenous sovereignty and protect the land and water.
By Trinette Furtado. (Wailuku, Maui) Twenty protectors of Haleakalā were arrested Thursday night by Maui Police after the second blockade in just a month, of a construction convoy for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST.) The telescope is still in court after more than ten years of strong opposition from Kānaka Maoli, lineal descendants, cultural advisors and Maui residents, but that has not stopped DKIST from pursuing permanent damage to the mountain “for purely selfish research” (according to an astronomer who uses the scopes currently atop Haleakalā). The project has begun construction regardless of apparent violations of state laws on Haleakalā, Maui. The contested project, is still awaiting judgment in court and disregards environmental, cultural, archaeological and conservation laws with the support and approval of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
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