KPFK Earth Minute: Occupy in 2012 and Indigenous Response to the Occupy Movement

This week’s Earth Minute addresses the Occupy Movement mobilization in Oakland, California last weekend, as well as a gathering of Indigenous leaders in Toronto on January 23rd in which the meaning of the word “occupy” to Indigenous People was discussed.

To listen to the Earth Minute, go to the link below and scroll to minute 40:07

Earth Minute 1/31/12

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.

Text from this week’sEarth Minute:

Earth Minute for Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This past weekend, Occupy Oakland rose up to take over a vacant building and transform it into a new community center.  They were met with brutal police repression.  Four hundred people were arrested.

One week ago, in Toronto, Indigenous leaders came together for an event called “Occupy Talks: Indigenous Perspectives on the Occupy Movement.”  During this event they acknowledged the crucial role this movement is filling.  But they also questioned use of the word “occupy” in its name; pointing out that for indigenous Peoples fighting the occupation of their homelands, Occupy implies injustice.

Tom Goldtooth of Indigenous Environmental Network explained that economic injustice is perpetuated by the same system that is marginalizing and oppressing Indigenous Peoples; and that far from being broken, this system is functioning exactly as it was intended.  Understanding this allows us to build a movement that will fundamentally change this deadly system of inequality into one that serves not just all people, but all living things.

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann, from Global Justice Ecology Project.