Note: In the spirit of Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement’s Western Fall, we are going to show a music video a day until this weekend from the prolific songwriter and singer, David Rovics. Rovics has been compared to the late Phil Ochs who attacked the establishment with his words and music. Today’s video is about the beginning of the uprising in Tunisia. Thursday and Friday we will post music videos about Bradley Manning and John Brown. We hope you enjoy David’s music. Some of us have known David for years. In Rostock, Germany during the G8 in 2007, David, Morrigan Phillips and GJEP’s Orin Langelle were a three person affinity group during the first mass march. We could say more, but we’ll leave it at that. We hope you enjoy the videos and music of David Rovics today through Friday.
-The GJEP Team
Tag Archives: human rights
Music Videos from David Rovics for the Occupy Movement: Tunisia, Bradley Manning and John Brown
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Filed under Corporate Globalization
Occupy Burlington (VT) Takes City Hall Park
photo: Langelle/GJEP
Note: At the first General Assembly of the Occupy Burlington encampment, GJEP ED Anne Petermann grounded the space in the history of the Indigenous Peoples of the region: the Abenaki. She opened the circle by stating, via “people’s mic” that, “the land that this encampment is on is the traditional land of the Abenaki People. This land was never ceded, never signed away in a treaty, but was stolen. It has been occupied by the state of Vermont. In 1992 the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that any rights the Abenaki People had to their traditional lands was no longer valid due to “the increasing weight of history. For these reasons, I am asking the Occupy Burlington encampment to recognize that this land is Abenaki land.” The proposal was met with nearly unanimous twinkling of fingers supporting it.
The GJEP Team
Video: Occupy Burlington general assembly from the Burlington Free Press [Please ignore the short sponsor advert in the beginning-The GJEP Team.]
PDF: Letter from Burlington Mayor’s office to Occupy Vermont after next two photos.
photo: Langelle/GJEP
- Occupy Burlington takes over City Hall Park and spends the night. The city of Burlington issued ground rules to the Occupy Burlington crowd Friday afternoon with officials saying they do “not object to your use of the park” until midnight — City Hall Park’s official closing time — and reminding the protesters that camping is not allowed in the park, which is closed from midnight until 6 a.m. “However,”read the statement, signed by Mayor Bob Kiss, “in light of the circumstances, so long as the rules are complied with and no other public health and safety concerns arise, either internally or externally from the gathering, the City will take a wait and see approach as to enforcement of the camping ban while we carefully monitor the situation.” photo: Langelle/GJEP
Full Mayor Kiss Letter from Burlington Mayor’s office to Occupy Vermont
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Filed under Actions / Protest
“Blood on the Tracks”: Brian Willson’s Memoir of Transformation from Vietnam Vet to Radical Pacifist from Democracy Now!
Note: Waking up this morning to Brian Willson being interviewed on Democracy Now! had great meaning for me. Many years ago, around 1996 or so, I received a letter from Brian urging that the group I then worked with, Native Forest Network, to please get involved in the effort to stop the destruction of Nicaragua’s Bosawas Rainforest which was, at that time, the largest intact rainforest north of the Amazon. We did become involved and I’ve been to Nicaragua many times. In 1997 we had a major victory for the Bosawas jungle when we worked with Mayangna People to stop a 150,000 acre illegal logging concession on their ancestral lands. Thanks to Brian, I became so active in the region that I co-founded a new organization: ACERCA (Action for Community and Ecology in the Regions of Central America) in 1998. I first met Brian in La Realidad, Chiapas, Mexico where the Zapatistas held the “First North American Encuentro” in the spring of 1996. GJEP’s Anne Petermann and I have visited with Brian many times since then on both coasts of the US–though not recently. It was great to see Brian again today, albeit via satellite dish. I encourage you to watch this interview and learn of Brian’s remarkable journey of personal discovery and resistance to the dominant paradigm–including the infamous incident in 1981 when he lost both of his legs after being run over by a train that he was blockading. The train was carrying munitions to the Contras in Nicaragua in a US-backed attempt to overthrow the Sandinista revolution that had ousted the long stranglehold of the Samoza family’s regime.
Orin Langelle for the GJEP Team
Click here for today’s Democracy Now! interview with Brian Willson
Also, Climate Connections featured Blood on the Tracks: The Life And Times of S. Brian Willson on June 17, 2011.
Filed under Actions / Protest
This Week’s Earth Minute: Occupy Wall Street and The Links Between Politics, Economics, Ecology, Race and Class
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.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the links between the ever-worsening ecological crisis and the financial crisis being targeted by the Occupation Wall Street protests. To Listen to the Earth Minute, click here
Text from this week’s Earth Minute:
For more than 2 weeks, demonstrators on Wall Street have been standing up against corporate power and these protests are now spreading to other cities. It is the unjust economic and social system that sparked these growing protests that is at the root of many of the crises we face.
It is a system driven by fossil fuels–fuels heavily subsidized by the US government, which gives away billions to oil companies while slashing benefits for the poorest among us.
Fossil fuels are driving climate chaos, causing catastrophic floods, droughts, wildfires and crop failures that further impact vulnerable populations and cause social turmoil.
The US military is deployed to ensure these crises do not impede our steady supply of oil. This military also happens to be the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.
Politics, economics, ecology, race and class are intertwined. If we are to find solutions to the many crises we face, we must understand these connections and take action–just action that respects Mother Earth.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Earth Minute, Energy, Posts from Anne Petermann
Earth Minute for September 27: World Bank-Supported “Forest Protection” in Indonesia
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.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the workshop on REDD at the World Bank’s annual meetings in Washington, DC. To listen to the show, click here.
Text from this week’s Earth Minute:
At the annual meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC, last weekend, I attended a workshop organized by activists from Indonesia about the impacts of World Bank-supported forest conservation projects like REDD. REDD is the scheme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation that is specifically designed to supposedly “offset” carbon emissions from Industrialized countries like the US by protecting forests in developing countries.
One of the presenters explained that unjust forest conservation projects in Indonesia are leading to violence that rivals the atrocities that occurred under the Suharto dictatorship.
Thousands of forest-based communities are being evicted from their lands by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police, who force people to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.
But as one of the speakers pointed out, what is happening in Indonesia is not unique; these strong-arm tactics are happening around the world in the name of “protecting” forests for the purpose of offsetting pollution in Industrialized countries like the US
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Filed under Climate Change, Earth Minute, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, REDD
Blog Post from the Belly of the Beast: In the Bowels of the World Bank
–by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project; North American Focal Point, Global Forest Coalition
… the Indonesian military is getting money through climate financing for REDD-type projects. The communities that live in the forests–some of them Indigenous to the area, some of them relocated there in the 80s–are being invaded by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police; and are forced to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.
Benoit Bosquet, Coordinator of the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, defends the bank's role in "forest conservation" in Indonesia, where forest-based communities have been forcibly evicted at gunpoint. Behind him is a photo of one such eviction. Photo: Petermann/GJEP
Today commenced the fall meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC. The Bank has long been known for its strong-arm tactics to force countries in the Global South to turn over their resources–whether natural resources or poor peoples’ labor– to corporations based in the Industrialized North.
While the Bank is notorious as a major funder of fossil fuel projects, devastating large-scale hydroelectric projects and deforestation projects, they have now become one of the leaders in the effort to use “market-based” schemes for climate mitigation. They are the world’s carbon brokers.
Indeed, one of the items on their meeting agenda is climate finance–pumping money into various developing countries to supposedly undertake climate mitigation programs that will predominately benefit countries in the north, by enabling them to maintain business as usual and avoid cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Appropriately, there was a civil society session this morning on the impacts of climate finance for REDD projects in Indonesia. Indonesia is a global focal point for climate action because of the massive climate emissions that have occurred there largely as a result of the burning of primeval peat forests for conversion to oil palm plantations. But even the climate mitigation programs come with a high price, and Indonesia provides a stark case study of the devastating social and ecological impacts of REDD (the scheme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).
But in order to participate in the workshop, it was first necessary to navigate the World Bank’s ridiculous security process.
It became obvious quickly that the Bank is quite paranoid about security. Now why, I wondered sarcastically, would an institution whose mission is ostensibly about poverty eradication need blocks and blocks of metal barricades and legions of police surrounding it?
Perhaps it has something to do with all of the people around the globe who have suffered under their severely unjust policies. Maybe they never quite got over A-16, (April 16, 2000) when thousands of activists descended on DC to blockade all of the streets surrounding the World Bank in a massive condemnation of the Bank’s dirty dealings.
But on this day, there were no protests, yet I still got the run-around by numerous unfriendly security officers and police, directed this way and that until I finally managed to find the registration building.
Once there, I explained for the fourth time that I was only there for one workshop and just needed a day pass. “We’re not giving out day passes today,” the desk jockey muttered. I had not encountered such surly, robot-like people since the Manchester, New Hampshire jail after a group of us were arrested in January 2000 for occupying Al Gore’s NH campaign headquarters in support of the U’Wa people of Colombia, whose lands were threatened by oil drilling by Occidental Petroleum. (Al had a lot of stock in Occidental).
Frustrated, irritated and thoroughly disgusted, I was ready to give up and make the trek back uptown when I saw a separate registration area for CSOs (civil society organizations). Okay, I thought, one more try.
I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say, I talked my way into an official access badge. Then after navigating yet more metal barricades, police officers and a metal detector, I finally arrived at my destination: the workshop on the impacts of REDD and forest “conservation” in Indonesia. It was horrifying.
Global Justice Ecology Project has been exposing the impacts of REDD on communities in Chiapas, Mexico and California as the result of a sub-national REDD carbon offset deal between the two states. Indigenous communities in the jungle of Chiapas are threatened with displacement for “forest protection” projects, and being subjected to intimidation tactics such as the withholding of medical services to try to force them to leave.
But what is happening on the ground in Indonesia is even more extreme. As one panelist pointed out, the violence happening to the people in the forests is even worse than the violence that occurred under the Suharto dictatorship.
While the dictatorship no longer exists, the military still maintains most of the power in the country–and now that the forests have suddenly increased in value because of REDD (because the carbon stored by the trees now has value), people who live in the forests but do not have official title to their lands (which is about 80% of the people in the rural areas) are being violently evicted for “conservation” projects.
In the 1980s, a program was initiated in Indonesia called the Transmigration Program. It moved 2.5 million people off of the heavily populated islands of Bali and Java and onto other islands, leading to tremendous land conflicts. In some areas, the ratio of migrants to locals was 2:1. This, the speaker explained, is exactly what is now happening under REDD. Massive population displacement.
In a nutshell, the Indonesian military is getting money through climate financing for REDD-type projects. The communities that live in the forests–some of them Indigenous to the area, some of them relocated there in the 80s–are being invaded by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police; and are forced to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.
All in the name of conservation.
I spoke briefly with the panel moderator, a woman native to Indonesia, about our work in Chiapas and what we had found there.
“Yes,” she replied. “What we see in Indonesia is not unique. It is happening all over with these REDD projects.”
And what is the point of all of this suffering and misery and violence? To provide corporations in the industrialized north with the opportunity to avoid reducing their pollution by “buying” carbon stored in some distant forest thereby “offsetting” their emissions.
So, in other words, impoverished rural and Indigenous peoples are being confronted with unspeakable violence to allow companies in the North to continue to poison and pollute poor communities near their facilities in the North.
Benoit Bosque, of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (the Bank’s program to help design and fund REDD projects in tropical and subtropical countries) spoke and tried to deflect this intense critique by explaining that REDD was extremely complex, but we shouldn’t give up. “These conflicts are about an accumulation of past mistakes. We cannot let fear of mistakes prevent us from taking bold steps forward.”
Yeah, tell that to the Indigenous Peoples being thrown off of their ancestral lands…
His callous reply received a lot of indignant responses from both the audience and the panel, who pointed out that the World Bank’s track record of enforcing even its own safeguards is terrible. “Consultations have been window dressing. Demands must be made for accountability with World Bank partners or don‘t make them partners. Don’t give them funding!”
At that Benoit bid his adieu before there were any more confrontations about the Bank’s role in funding violence against forest dependent communities.
For these reasons and many, many more, organizations and Indigenous Peoples’ groups around the world are condemning REDD. For more information on this, go to: http://noredd.makenoise.org/. To learn more about GJEP’s work in Chiapas and California on REDD, go to http://climate-connections.org/category/chiapas-2/. To view our photo essay from the community of Amador Hernandez in the Lacandon Jungle, click here
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Filed under Biodiversity, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Posts from Anne Petermann, REDD
Report Released on Dangers of Biofuels and Synthetic Biology
From the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) | www.field.org.uk
FIELD has prepared a new briefing paper on next generation biofuels and synthetic biology.
The paper explores how synthetic biology is being used to create next generation biofuels, their potential risks and harms, and the need for clear thinking on domestic and international regulationFIELD has prepared a new briefing paper on next generation biofuels and synthetic biology.
To download the 5 page paper, click here
Note: while the paper is quite clear on the devastating impacts that have been documented from so-called “first generation” crop-based agrofuels, they do not adequately explain the threats from second generation “ligno-cellulosic” agrofuels–many of which are the same as those associated with first generation agrofuels: competition with food crops for land, deforestation to make room for agrofuel feedstocks (and all the emissions that result from this land use change), and of course the threats from trees genetically engineered to make better fuel.
For more on these threats from second generation agrofuels, download our booklet “From Meals to Wheels,” or our report “Wood-based Energy: The Green Lie
–The GJEP Team
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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Synthetic Biology, UNFCCC
Listen to KPFK Earth Segment with South Africa’s Desmond D’Sa
Listen to this week’s segment on the environment on KPFK Los Angeles’ Sojourner Truth Show. Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with Margaret Prescod, host of the Sojourner Truth show on their weekly segment on the environment.
This week’s segment features Desmond D’Sa, chairperson of South Durban Community Environmental Alliance in South Africa, an organization in South Africa’s most industrial zone (indeed, the biggest petrochemical cluster in the entire hemisphere) that has led the charge for environmental justice.
On Monday, June 20, Desmond D’Sa, toured the toxic zone around Richmond, California (where Chevron has a refinery) to discuss how California’s environmental legislation could have global repercussions for those most vulnerable to climate pollution.
Desmond is convening a global day of action for climate justice, and is a lead organizer for events at the next UN COP, which will be in Durban this November.
To listen to the interview with Desmond D’Sa, go to: http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_110623_070010sojourner.MP3 and forward to minute 46:45.
Filed under Climate Justice, Media, Pollution
