Category Archives: UN

by | 2011-12-16 · 14:15

Showdown at the Durban Disaster: Challenging the ‘Big Green’ Patriarchy

By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project

Dedicated to Judi Bari, Emma Goldman, my mother and all of the other strong women who inspire me

An action loses all of its teeth when it is orchestrated with the approval of the authorities.  It becomes strictly theater for the benefit of the media.  With no intent or ability to truly challenge power.

I hate actions like that.

GJEP's Anne Petermann (right) and GEAR's Keith Brunner (both sitting) before being forcibly ejected from the UN climate conference. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

And so it happened that I wound up getting ejected from one such action after challenging its top-down, male domination.  I helped stage an unsanctioned ‘sit-in’ at the action with a dozen or so others who were tired of being told what to do by the authoritarian male leadership of the “big green’ action organizers–Greenpeace and 350.org.

I had no intention of being arrested that day.  I came to the action at the UN Climate Convention center in Durban, South Africa on a whim, hearing about it from one of GJEP’s youth delegates who sent a text saying to show up outside of the Sweet Thorne room at 2:45.

So GJEP co-Director Orin Langelle and I went there together, cameras at the ready.

We arrived to a room filled with cameras.  Still cameras, television cameras, flip cameras–whatever was planned had been well publicized.  That was my first clue as to the action’s true nature.  Real direct actions designed to break the rules and challenge power are generally not broadly announced.  It’s hard to pull off a surprise action with dozens of reporters and photographers milling around.

Media feeding frenzy at the action. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

After ten or so minutes, a powerful young voice yelled “mic check!” and the action began.  A young man from 350.org was giving a call and response “mic check” message and initiating chants like “we stand with Africa,” “We want a real deal,” and “Listen to the people, not the polluters.”  Many of the youth participants wore “I [heart] KP” t-shirts–following the messaging strategy of the ‘big greens,’ who were bound and determined to salvage something of the Kyoto Protocol global warming agreement, regardless of whether or not it would help stop climate catastrophe.

The messaging and choreography of the action were tightly controlled for the first hour or so by the male leadership. The growing mass of youth activists and media moved slowly down the cramped corridor toward the main plenary room and straight into a phalanx of UN security who stood as a human blockade, hands tightly gripped into the belts of the officers on either side.  I found myself wedged between the group and the guards.

Pink badges (parties) and orange badges (media) were allowed through the barricade, but yellow badges (NGOs) were strictly forbidden–unless one happened to be one of the ‘big green’ male leadership.  They miraculously found themselves at various times on either side of the barricade.  The Greenpeace banners, I might add, were also displayed on the non-blockaded side of security, providing a perfect visual image for the media: Greenpeace banners in front of the UN Security, who were in front of the mass of youth.  This was another indication that the “action” was not what it appeared to be.  No, the rising up of impassioned youth taking over the hallway of the climate convention to demand just and effective action on climate change was just a carefully calculated ‘big green’ photo op.

There was wild applause when Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace (at that moment on the protester side of the security barricade) introduced the Party delegate from The Maldives–one of the small island nations threatened with drowning under rising sea levels.  He addressed the crowd with an impassioned plea for help.  Later, the official delegate from Egypt was introduced and, with a great big grin, gave his own mic check about the power youth in his country had had in making great change.  He was clearly thrilled to be there in that throbbing mass of youthful exuberance.

Youth confront security during the protest. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

But as with many actions that bring together such a diversity of people (youth being a very politically broad constituency), at a certain point the action diverged from the script.  The tightly controlled messaging of the pre-arranged mic checks, began to metamorphose as youth began to embody the spirit of the occupy movement, from which the “mic check” had been borrowed.  New people began calling mic check and giving their own messages.  Unsanctioned messages such as “World Bank out of climate finance,” “no REDD,” “no carbon markets” and “occupy the COP” began to emerge as repeated themes.  At first, the action’s youth leaders tried to counter-mic check and smother these unauthorized messages, but eventually they were overwhelmed.

After a few hours of this, with no sign of the energy waning, the “big green” male leadership huddled with security to figure out what to do with this anarchistic mass. Kumi, or it might have been Will Bates from 350.org, explained to the group that they had talked it over with UN security and arranged for the group to be allowed to leave the building and continue the protest just outside, where people could yell and protest as long as they wished.

This is a typical de-escalation tactic.  A group is led out of the space where it is effectively disrupting business as usual to a space where it can easily be ignored in exchange for not being arrested.  In my experience, this is a disempowering scenario where energy rapidly fizzles, and people leave feeling deflated.

I feared that this group of youth, many of whom were taking action for the first or second time in their lives, and on an issue that was literally about taking back control over their very future, would leave feeling disempowered.  I could feel the frustration deep in my belly.  We need to be building a powerful movement for climate justice, not using young people as pawns in some twisted messaging game.

There was clear dissention within the protest.  People could feel the power of being in that hallway and were uneasy with the option of leaving.  Finally I offered my own ‘mic check.’  “While we are inside,” I explained, “the delegates can hear us.  If we go outside, we will lose our voice.”

But the ‘big green’ patriarchy refused to cede control of the action to the youth.  They ratcheted up the pressure.  “If you choose to stay,” Kumi warned, “you will lose your access badge and your ability to come back into this climate COP and any future climate COPs.”  Knowing this to be patently untrue, I cut him off. “That’s not true! I was de-badged last year and here I am today!”  This took Kumi completely by surprise–that someone was challenging his authority (he was clearly not used to that)–and he mumbled in reply, “well, that’s what I was told by security.”

Crowd scene in the hallway. Photo: Langelle

Will Bates, who was on the “safe” side of the security line, explained that UN security was giving the group “a few minutes to think about what you want to do.” While the group pondered, Will reminded the group that anyone who refused to leave would lose their badge and their access to the COP.  “That’s not letting us make up our minds!” yelled a young woman.

I felt compelled to give the group some support. I mic checked again, “there is nothing to fear/ about losing your badge,” I explained, adding, “Being debadged/ is a badge of honor.”

After the question was posed about how many people planned to stay, and dozens of hands shot up, the pressure was laid on thicker. This time the ‘big green’ patriarchy warned that if we refused to leave, not only would we be debadged, UN security would escort us off the premises and we would be handed over to South African police and charged with trespass.

At that a young South African man stood up and defiantly raised his voice.  “I am South African.  This is my country.  If you want to arrest anyone for trespass, you will start with me!” he said gesturing at his chest.  Then he said, “I want to sing Shosholoza!”

Shosholoza is a traditional South African Folk song that was sung in a call and response style by migrant workers that worked in the South African mines.

The group joined the young South African man in singing Shosholoza and soon the entire hallway was resounding with the powerful South African workers’ anthem.

Once consensus was clearly established to do an occupation and anyone that did not want to lose his or her badge had left, Kumi piped up again.  “Okay. I have spoken with security and this what we are going to do.  Then he magically walked through UN security blockade.  “We will remove our badge (he demonstrated this with a grand sweeping gesture pulling the badge and lanyard over his head) and hand it over to security as we walk out of the building.  We do not anyone to be able to accuse of us trying to disrupt the talks.”

That really made me mad.  The top down, male-dominated nature of the action and the coercion being employed to force the youth activists to blindly obey UN security was too much.  I’d been pushed around by too many authoritarian males in my life to let this one slide, so I mic checked again.  “We just decided/ that we want to stay/ to make our voices heard/ and now we are being told/ how to leave!”  “I will not hand my badge to security.  I am going to sit right here and security can take it.”

And I sat down cross-legged on the floor, cursing my luck for choosing to wear a skirt that day.  Gradually, about a dozen other people–mostly youth–sat down with me, including Keith and Lindsey–two of our Global Justice Ecology Project youth contingent.

But still the male leadership wouldn’t let it go.  I’ve never seen activists so eager to do security’s work for them.  “Okay,” Kumi said, “but when security taps you on the shoulder, you have to get up and leave with them.  We are going to be peaceful, we don’t want any confrontation.”  Sorry, but in my experience, civil disobedience and non-compliance are peaceful acts.  And I find it impossible to imagine that meaningful change will be achieved without confrontation.

At some point from the floor, I decided I should explain to the crowd who I was.  I mic checked.  “I come from the United States/ which has historically been/ one of the greatest obstacles/ to addressing climate change.  I am sitting down/ in the great tradition/ of civil disobedience/ that gave women the right to vote/ won civil rights/ and helped stop the Vietnam War.”

Karuna Rana (left), sits in at the action. Photo: Langelle

About that time, a young woman named Karuna Rana, from the small island of Mauritius, off the southeast coast of Africa, sat down in front of me and spoke up.  “I am the only young person here from Mauritius. These climate COPs have been going for seventeen years!  And what have they accomplished?  Nothing!  My island is literally drowning and so I am sitting down to take action–for my people and for my island.  Something must be done.”  Her voice, from such a small person, was powerful indeed.  An hour or two later, while standing in the chilly rain at the Speakers’ Corner across the street after we’d been ejected from the COP, she told me that it was my action that had inspired her to sit down.  “You inspired me by standing up to the people that wanted us to leave.”  I told her that her bravery had similarly inspired me.

Kumi led a group of protesters down the hall, handing his badge to UN security. Those of us who remained sitting on the floor were next approached by security.  One by one, people were tapped on the shoulder and stood up to walk out and be debadged.  Keith, who was sitting next to me said, “Are you going to walk out?”  “No.”

Security tapped us and said, “C’mon, you have to leave.”  “No.”  Keith and I linked arms.

Then the security forcibly removed all of the media that remained.  I watched Orin, who was taking photos of the event, as well as Amy Goodman and the crew of Democracy Now! be forced up the stairs and out of view.  As they were removed, Amy yelled, “What’s your name?!”  “Anne Petermann. I am the Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project.”

I was familiar with the unpleasant behavior of UN security from previous experiences, and so I was somewhat unnerved when security removed the media.  Earlier in the week a UN security officer had shoved Orin’s big Nikon into his face when he was photographing the officer ejecting one of the speakers from our GJEP press conference who was dressed as a clown.   Silly wigs are grounds for arrest at the UN.

One of the reasons that media have become targets of police and military violence all over the world is because they document the behavior of the authorities, and sometimes, depending on their intentions, the authorities don’t want their behavior documented.  Not knowing what UN security had in store for us, I decided I should let the remaining people in the hall–who could no longer see Keith and I since we were sitting and completely surrounded by security–know what was happening.  I explained at the top of my voice that that the media had been forced to leave, and encouraged anyone with a camera to come and take photos.  The photos on this blog post by Ben Powless of Indigenous Environmental Network are some of the only ones I know of that document our arrests.

Keith Brunner is hauled away by UN security during the sit-in outside of the plenary at the UN Climate Convention. Photo: Ben Powless/ IEN

They took Keith first, hauling him away with officers grabbing him by his legs and under his arms and rushing him into the plenary hall–which, we found out, had been earlier emptied of all of the UN delegates so the racket outside would not disturb them.  I was then loaded into a wheelchair by two female security guards.  A male guard grabbed my badge and roughly yanked it, tearing it free from the lanyard, “I’ll take that,” he sneered.   I was then unceremoniously wheeled through the empty plenary, past the security fence and into the blocked off street, where I was handed over to South African police.

“They’re all yours,” said the UN security who then left.  The South African police discussed what to do with us.  “What did they do?” asked one.  “They sat down.”  “Sat down?”  “Yes, sat down.  They are environmentalists or something.”  “Let’s just take them out of here.”  So I was loaded into the police van, where Keith sat waiting, and we were driven around the corner, past the conference center and to the “Speakers’ Corner” across the street, where the outside “Occupy COP 17” activists had been having daily general assemblies during the two weeks of the climate conference.  “Hey, that’s cool,” said Keith.  “We got a free ride to the Speakers’ Corner.”

I was told later that Kumi was the first arrested and had been led out of the building in plastic handcuffs, offering a beautiful Greenpeace photo op for the media. I rolled my eyes.  “You’ve GOT to be kidding me.  They used HANDcuffs???  Gimme a break.”  More theater.  Greenpeace is nothing if not good at working the media with theatrical drama such as pre-orchestrated arrests. Kumi may not have wanted to lose his badge, but he made the most of it.  At the Speakers’ Corner following our arrests, the media flocked to him while I stood on the sidelines.  The articles about the protest in many of the papers the next day featured Kumi speaking at the protest, Greenpeace banners prominent.  The fact that it was a COP 17 occupation that he had repeatedly attempted to squelch somehow did not make it into the news.

I lost a lot of respect for Greenpeace that day.

But many of the youth also saw how it went down.  I was thanked by several participants in the protest for standing up to the ‘big green’ male leadership and defending the right to occupy the space.  I, myself was deeply grateful for the opportunity to do something that felt actually meaningful in that lifeless convention center where the most powerful countries of the world played deadly games with the future.


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by | 2011-12-15 · 18:44

MOBILIZE TOGETHER TOWARDS RÍO+20 AND BEYOND

For Our Rights and the Rights of Nature, Against the Commodification of Life and the Greenwashing of Capitalism

Social Movements in the People’s Summit for social and environmental justice, against the commodification of life and nature and in defense of the commons

We, organizations, networks and social movements, involved in the building of the Peoples’ Summit for social and environmental justice, against the commodification of life and nature in defense of the commons to be held in Río de Janeiro, Brazil, June 18 to 23, 2012, simultaneous to and in the same city as the United Nations’ Conference on Sustainable Development (Río+20), call for the mobilization and coordination of struggles across the planet. To ensure fulfillment of the rights of all peoples, especially those most vulnerable, to have access to water, food, energy, land, seeds, territories, and decent livelihoods, and to demand the rights of Mother Earth. As part of this process of articulation, we are building together an activity to be held in Río, the Permanent Peoples’ Assembly .

This Assembly will have the challenge to give voice to the women and men, young and old, who are resisting daily the advance of a development model that is by definition unsustainable: a model whose predatory inhumanity is trying to subject every aspect of life to the dictates of the market, always putting the profits of a few ahead of everyone’s buen vivir or wellbeing, while simultaneously trying to hide behind a green-washed face.

It was during the Río Conference in 1992 – the so-called Earth Summit, or Río’92 – that an almost unprecedented social mobilization in the face of an official conference gave way, among other things, to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It is the founding principles of that Convention on Climate Change- the historical responsibility of the industrialized countries for climate change, ecological and climate debt, and thus common but differentiated responsibilities for its treatment – which are now suffering as never before the onslaught of the most concentrated forms of capital in their attempt to turn all of life into a commodity at the service of their profits. Following on the setbacks marked in the climate negotiations in Copenhagen (2009) and Cancun (2010), there is no reason to expect less disappointing results from the COP17 in Durban (from November 28 to December 9, 2011). Also after the COP10 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya (2010), the mercantilization of Nature also got a central role with the proposal of the so called innovative financial mechanisms that replicate the logic of the failed carbon markets.

But it was also in Río’92 when the corporate world began to raise the banner of “sustainable development,” seeing the possibility of turning it into a good business. That same concept, complemented during Rio+10 by that of “corporate social responsibility” and subverted to the core by the simultaneous neoliberal opening and deregulation and global financialization of the hegemonic capitalist economy, is now wreaking havoc in the lives of people and the planet and threatens even worse impacts. It is this agenda that is being deepened through the mechanisms and structural adjustment policies of the so-called “green economy.” Just like the neoliberal agenda of essential service privatizations in the ‘90s, the “green economy” is all about liberalizing market access to Nature, dividing it up into components such as carbon, biodiversity, and environmental services, while at the same time generating new instruments of financial speculation, corporate control, and the emptying of territories.

Given this reality, we need to turn Río+20 into a strong process of global mobilization that confronts the reality of a system of death that will stop at nothing to perpetuate itself, and strengthens our resistance and struggles for survival through the building of non-capitalist alternatives, such as food sovereignty. The continuity and depth of current crises, its’ systemic and increasingly militarized and violent nature, the lack of adequate response by most governments, and the taking hostage of multilateral negotiations by geopolitical and big corporate interests, all lend urgency to the need to build this process as our own pluralistic, democratic, and autonomous space, with a strong message and concrete achievements. It must be able to give echo to our denunciations and demands as well as to reproduce our creativity and strengths, our solidarity and hope.

Faced with the huge festival of false solutions that the large corporations, banks and international financial institutions, and accomplice governments are preparing for Río+20, in order to consolidate a green-washed capitalism as the only response to the multiple crises they themselves are responsible for unleashing – economic, ecological food, energy, democratic, climate, rights, gender, in short, a civilizational crisis – the Peoples’ Summit will have the challenge to articulate and draw attention to the real solutions that peoples everywhere are building, in the fields and forests, factories, communities, neighborhoods, schools, and other places of work and livelihood.

We, therefore make a call to engage in this process and to mobilize everywhere towards Río+20: promoting campaigns, initiatives of debates and capacity-building, broadening platforms for joint strategy and action, coordination and solidarity support among struggles and specific demands that bring us together.

We call on the peoples and movements struggling against all forms of exploitation, depredation and domination, to join with us in building the P ermanent Peoples’ Assembly , in order to affirm our rights and those of nature against the commodification of life and the greenwashing of capitalism, under the rhetoric of the “green economy”.

Through testimony and analysis, exchange and solidarity, mobilization and concrete actions, the Assembly will also be challenged to strengthen participating struggles and call for new actions and initiatives, generating new platforms of unity. In this regard, in the Permanent Peoples’ Assembly , those who are affected and who are the true creditors of the social and financial, ecological and climatic, democratic and gender debts that throughout the development of capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, racism, and anthropocentrism have been accumulating, will be challenged to contribute significantly to the coordination of our diverse efforts to develop non-capitalist economies and societies that are fair and equitable, in harmony with nature and all beings, overcoming hunger, impoverishment, exploitation and oppression, building on the basis of the many ongoing struggles and helping to prepare to confront the strategic challenges of the near future.

Self-organized activities will also be held on critical aspects of the processes of systemic and civilizational transformation, and the Summit will include opportunities to get to know and support directly the struggles of the inhabitants of Río de Janeiro and elsewhere in their efforts to survive the onslaught of capitalism and its greenwashing, including mega-events, land grabbing, mega-projects, the so-called clean development mechanisms, and many other acronyms and misleading names such as REDD, REDD+, biofuels, etc. We will denounce the perpetrators, organize direct actions, and, as befits, celebrate the life and hope that are born and nurtured in our struggles and victories.

Let´s mobilize together to build the P eoples’ Summit for social and environmental justice against the commodification of life and nature in defense of the commons , and the Permanent Peoples’ Assembly , on the basis of the many ongoing struggles in defense of life, sovereignty -food, energy, financial, territorial, and political- self-determination, equality, and human and nature rights, analyzing the origins of the present crisis and new forms of capitalist accumulation, colonization, and slavery. As social movements, organizations, and networks, let us unite to ensure that Río+20 becomes a massive, global popular mobilization that strengthens our capacity to act locally, regionally, and globally in order to address capitalism`s green advance. Rio +20 must be a starting point for a more just society with more solidarity. December 4, 2011

Let us build together!

Life is not for sale, it must be defended!

We, the peoples, are the creditors!

Let’s globalize the struggle, let’s globalize hope!

We will continue until all are free!

Continental Cry of the Excluded, Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas, Coordinator of Andean Indigenous Organizations, Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean, Grassroots Global Justice, Jubilee South/Americas, Oilwatch, Southern People’s Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance, Vía Campesina, World March of Women, World Rainforest Movement

To add your support , contact us through: movilizacion.rio20@gmail.com

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by | · 16:33

THE DURBAN CLIMATE SCAM

Cross-Posted from Wihd Wihd Online on Dec 15, 2011 

  • Agreement with “legal force” is “planned” to be ready only by 2015, effective only 2020 
  • Second commitment period for enfeebled Kyoto Protocol

Imagine a mother tells her car-washing twins, who let the water just run from the hosepipe while they are already drying and polishing their beloved SUV – with idling engine and full-blast rap blurring from the speakers – to shut the engine, the car-stereo and first of all the water-tap.

And then imagine the two teens would, while turning the speakers even louder and let the engine revs roar, answer: “Well, we actually thought about this already twenty minutes ago and maybe we should, but we have to first built consensus – so please come back in about three minutes and thereafter, starting from around ten minutes from now, we will tell you if we will shut something down, who of us might shut what and to which extend or if we decide to not shut anything down at all.”

Everybody would assume that upon such response sparks would fly immediately in this scene of the mother and her twins.

But while Mother Earth tells us since the industrial revolution to plug our pollution and to not poison clean air or spoil precious water, and she actually had told us since the agricultural revolution to not cut forests for beef production, the governmental delegates in Durban, all grown up men and women, hug each other and clap and tap each others shoulders – most likely just in relief that no real sparks did fly, which deep down in their own consciousness they realize should actually have created a gigantic and holy fire-blast, cleaning the whole place from all the lies and deceptions.

But nothing like that happened, thanks and no-thanks also to armed Big-Brother-Preparedness of the UN inside and war-hardened South-African security forces outside the conference centre.

While the initial scenario is exactly what happened in Durban – there are only two differences: It’s not minutes, it’s years set as pondering time with no action, and the car-washers are the adult uncles and aunties, who were reminded only by some moderate voices of a few youth and young at heart and brain to better take care. Most of the young global population, who know that it is their future and no any longer the future of those expiring role models holding on to the steering wheel by all means, had no say and even didn’t want to go to this circus.

But who cares, some renegotiable pseudo-promises were printed on recycling papers for the mainstream media to further brainwash and massage the masses about a “landmark achievement”. That’s what counts and also that all available money was spent as well as some new honey-pots were opened for the already rich friends and friends of friends as well as “of course” oneself to prosper.
Distracted by the few coins thrown into their direction, even some representatives of indigenous peoples leave South Africa with the feeling they had achieved something. Well, for people on death-row every day more until the drop-door is opened might be worth celebrating, but is it just and is it a way forward for all? The answer is clearly no! It’s not people’s democracy, its diplomatic democrazy like when eight wolves and one sheep sit around the evening fire and vote what they will have for dinner.

Alas, used to these conference-dances on economic- and war-volcanoes already, the political god-fathers and -mothers, with their two-letter vehicles of EU, US or AU, their entourage on their three or four letter bicycles in tow and the UN bandwagon rumbling along, dance off to the next show ground: Rio+20, with another vision-blurring agenda already set in place and set in motion by the corporate players in the background – so that nothing will change for the better or for all and most importantly nothing must be allowed to change for the present monetary system based on global to local injustices just to prevail. Casino politics with the hope the world turns to shambles already before someone could hold these “officials” responsible.

But it is now only a question of time when the youth and the mentally young and bright finally and really will stand up and close the taps – anywhere and everywhere – and especially on overpaid and under-performing politicians and their entourage. Turning their back on unworthy state-governments is a first step, but certainly not enough, everybody realized.

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by | 2011-12-14 · 14:28

Communitive Organizing: Local is Global

Joaquin Quetzal Sanchez is an organizer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a friend, comrade and office-mate in GJEP’s Oakland office. On returning from Durban, South Africa just now, I discovered Joaquin’s note in my in-box. Among other powerful statements here, Joaquin mentions a moment in Durban when Tere Almaguer, of PODER! in San Francisco, had the chance to directly challenge Mary Nichols, Chair of the California Air Resources Board,  “by reminding Chairwoman Nichols that Nichols did not speak for the 1,000′s of low-income people of color in California who are opposed to California’s cap and trade program.”
Still exhausted after the long trip home from yet another Conference of Polluters, Joaquin’s article reminds me why we go to the trouble of attending these global power summits — because those in Power need to be kept on constant alert that they do not represent the 99% — and sooner or later they are going to have to get out of the way. — Jeff Conant, for GJEP

Communitive Organizing: Local is Global

By Joaquin Quetzal Sanchez, Cross-posted from Queer Resilience in the Climate Crisis,  December 9, 2011

 

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, dubbed the Conference of Pollutors by many in the global movement arena, or COP17, is concluding in Durban, South Africa. Last year, I made the journey to the 10-day conference, COP16, in Cancún, México, where I was ejected from the conference after participating in an act of civil disobedience in protest of the closed-door and high-stakes negotiations that excluded the participation of 1,000′s of campesinos y campesinas in Cancún, and the 99% of people who will be most devastated by climate change. The action I participated in caught the attention of media outlets around the world and most notable in the US was the coverage of the action by Democracy NOW!

Yes, of course it felt cool to see my face and the beautiful brown faces of my peers televised to millions across the world. Yes it was neat to hear my name come out of Amy Goodman’s mouth in the affirmative, and not as a racialized, criminally profiled Latino we’re used to hearing about on the 10 o’clock news. Cooler than the 15 seconds of “fame”, though, is what was achieved during this encuentro of progressive media, grassroots organizing and global solidarity. Before we get to what was and continues to be achieved, I want to provide some more context about where we are.

Industrialization, in the United States especially, has done quite a job of instilling in our consciousness social order and consumer options, even in the minds of those of us who consider ourselves progressive or change-makers. Industrialization has positioned us as consumers with options. While my parents’ generation was a generation that was primarily positioned to consume actual products (i.e. sub-prime mortgages, credit, citizenship), the mutations of the global capitalist economy, from the US (land-based) to the speculative pockets of the “1%”, has left my generation with fewer material options and instead has presented us and subsequent generations with a full menu of identity politics to consume.

The backdrop to this menu of identity politics is a social order, or the way power is organized, also known as hierarchy, which in essence forms power-containers– the ranks or levels of an hierarchy that is navigated through the identities we embody and use to access a power-container, like “white, heterosexual, male”, or the identities we embody and use to critique a power-container, like “queer, woman of color”. As individuals from both sides of the spectrum, we’ve learned to use our identities to access and critique power. As individuals through our experiences navigating and negotiating power, we’ve gained a taste of a major transformation of power. As community, it is our opportunity to bring forth the transformation never before seen, the transformation to restore social and ecological harmony. Are we all on board?

I can only speak from my experience as an environmental justice rights activist and organizer, and as a joto xicano. Having worked within community-based organizations, I have observed some organizational practices that force a separation between “local, community work” and “movement work”. Understandably, many community-based organizations are funded to conduct “community-level” work, but we, as queer and trans folks, people of color, indigenous people, immigrants, women, young people, or any combination of these identities, must be brave and define community for ourselves. From this place, “community” can come to mean the housing complex and neighborhood we live in and our homelands and the homelands of our parents and the spiritual spaces we share with those closest to us who might live hundreds or thousands of miles away. We must not limit the terms of community, instead continue to figure out the conscious means to transform community and make community stronger. It is from this communitive consciousness that we can build the relationships with peoples’ struggles against capitalism around the world.

Over the years I have heard much criticism, from executive directors of non-profit organizations especially, about the choices made by community organizers to participate in “movement” work: national or international conferences, alliance-building gatherings, or convenings that require organizers and leaders to travel to another city.

From what I observe, the biggest reason for censoring organizers’ participation in movement-work is the perception that movement work compromises local work. Often, this patriarchal critique (the “either/or”, “all or nothing” kind of thinking) ventriloquizes itself through heterosexual males or females of color, or white lesbian women or white gay men at these “community-based” organizations. Fast-forward to the present and the most recent round of internal-negotiations at community-based organizations took place as it pertains to the UN Climate Negotiations taking place in Durban.

Acknowledging the real, material, financial, and resource needs of community-based organizations, I write this as an invitation to strengthen and example of how we might redefine “community” in powerful ways. Tere Almaguer is a veteran organizer working with PODER in San Francisco for over 10 years. Tere, along with other PODER staff, and the hundreds of PODER members, have successfully campaigned to convert public lands in San Francisco’s Mission District into public benefits for immigrant families, creating public spaces to for members to share costumbres and recreate the tradiciones that have sustained PODER families for hundreds of years in their homelands, traditions of caring for one another, trusting one another and relying on one another.

In California during 2011, PODER began organizing around climate justice issues affecting PODER members, particularly around cap-and-trade, a false solution to climate change and greenhouse gas emission reductions being put forward at the state-level by private research, private interest groups and a California government agency, the California Air Resources Board, that has ignored the thousands of calls made by low-income people of color in California. Cap-and-trade grants pollution permits to pollutors in exchange for finance ($) or carbon-offests (planting trees on the other side of the world). Thus, cap-and-trade does nothing to ensure the low-income communities of color, the communities MOST affected by pollution and carbon emissions, are alleviated of the environmental and climate burdens that already exist in their local communities.

After organizing political education trainings, preparing and taking direct action throughout the state, Tere and the youth at PODER, along with allied organizations throughout the state such as Communities for a Better Environment and Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, have not been able to bring down cap-and-trade, in spite of the cries from communities throughout the state.

Tere had the opportunity to travel to Durban, South Africa for COP17 with a delegation of grassroots leaders, indigenous climate activists and allies from the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Global Justice and Ecology Project. While Tere was in Durban, PODER members were back home making the connections between their land reclamation work in the Mission District in San Francisco and the debate about REDD’s and carbon market schemes that forcefully displace indigenous peoples and allows polluting sources to continue polluting in low-income communities, indigenous communities, and communities of color in the US.

After more than a week of protesting and meeting people representing struggles for climate justice throughout the world, Tere found herself attending a session at COP17 where Mary Nichols, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, was delivering a new way of talking about the cap-and-trade scheme in California that promises GHG reductions for all Californians. Tere intervened in Mary Nichols’ otherwise seamless presentation by reminding Chairwoman Nichols that Nichols did not speak for the 1,000′s of low-income people of color in California who are opposed to the program.

The 1% and private interests groups operate at all levels of the social order we have inherited. Mary Nichols works for a California state agency, is paid with taxpaying dollars, has ignored the widely supported demands of state residents, yet had the resources and time to attend an international conference in Durban, South Africa to advertise a carbon market she is championing. As communitive, conscious organizers and community-based organizations, the hard work at home is compromised if we don’t meet our opponents in the key, strategic places where they arise. It is my hope that as COP17 concludes in Durban and as the countries most responsible for climate change withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, that we begin to look to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, taking place June 2012, and other international and national convergences in the future; that as we engage in these transnational/translocal politics, we keep in mind- our opponents have become and maintain the “1%” through their exploitation of land, time and people. As the “99%”, our call is to reclaim land, time and the rights of people from the 1%, and, like the desert maguey following the water, that sometimes requires travel.

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by | 2011-12-13 · 19:07

Indigenous Peoples Condemn Climate Talks Fiasco and Demand Moratoria on REDD+

December 13, 2011 – Indigenous leaders returning from Durban, South Africa condemn the fiasco of the United Nations climate change talks and demand a moratorium on a forest carbon offset scheme called REDD+ which they say threatens the future of humanity and Indigenous Peoples’ very survival. During the UN climate negotiations, a Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD+ and for Life was formed to bring attention to the lack of full recognition of Indigenous rights being problematic in the texts of the UN climate negotiations.

“It was very disappointing that our efforts to strengthen the vague Indigenous rights REDD safeguards from the Cancun Agreements evaporated as the Durban UN negotiations went on. It is clear that the focus was not on strong, binding commitments on Indigenous rights and safeguards, nor limiting emissions, but on creating a framework for financing and carbon markets, which they did. Now Indigenous Peoples’ forests may really be up for grabs,” says Alberto Saldamando, legal counsel participating in the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation.

Berenice Sanchez of the Mesoamerica Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network says, “Instead of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% like we need, the UN is promoting false solutions to climate change like carbon trading and offsets, through the Clean Development Mechanism and the proposed REDD+ which provide polluters with permits to pollute. The UN climate negotiation is not about saving the climate, it is about privatization of forests, agriculture and the air.”

Tom Goldtooth, Director of Indigenous Environmental Network based in Minnesota, USA does not mince words. “By refusing to take immediate binding action to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions, industrialized countries like the United States and Canada are essentially incinerating Africa and drowning the small island states of the Pacific. The sea ice of the Inupiat, Yupik and Inuit of the Arctic is melting right before their eyes, creating a forced choice to adapt or perish. This constitutes climate racism, ecocide and genocide of an unprecedented scale.”

Of particular concern for indigenous peoples is a forest offset scheme known as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Hyped as a way of saving the climate and paying communities to take care of forests as sponges for Northern pollution, REDD+ is rife with fundamental flaws that make it little more than a green mask for more pollution and the expansion of monoculture tree plantations. The Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD+ and for Life, formed at the Durban UN climate negotiations, call for an immediate moratorium on REDD+-type projects because they fear that REDD+ could result in “the biggest land grab of all time,” thus threatening the very survival of indigenous peoples and local communities.

“At Durban, CDM and REDD carbon and emission offset regimes were prioritized, not emission reductions. All I saw was the UN, World Bank, industrialized countries and private investors marketing solutions to market pollution. This is unacceptable. The solutions for climate change must not be placed in the hands of financiers and corporate polluters. I fear that local communities could increasingly become the victims of carbon cowboys, without adequate and binding mechanisms to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples and local forested and agricultural communities are respected,” Goldtooth added.

“We call for an immediate moratorium on REDD+-type policies and projects because REDD is a monster that is already violating our rights and destroying our forests,” Monica González of the Kukapa People and Head of Indigenous Issues of the Mexican human rights organization Comision Ciudadana de Derechos Humanos del Noreste.

The President of the Ogiek Council of Elders of the Mau Forest of Kenya, Joseph K. Towett, said “We support the moratorium because anything that hurts our cousins, hurts us all.”

“We will not allow our sacred Amazon rainforest to be turned into a carbon dump. REDD is a hypocrisy that does not stop global warming,” said Marlon Santi, leader of the Kichwa community of Sarayaku, Ecuador and long time participant of UN and climate change meetings.

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NO REDD Resources http://noredd.makenoise.org/

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by | 2011-12-10 · 17:24

Protesters Expelled From UN Climate Conference Hall

Cross-posted from Environmental News Service
DURBAN, South Africa, December 9, 2011 (ENS) – Demonstrators calling for “Climate Justice Now” interrupted climate negotiations today in Durban on what was to have been the last official day of the annual United Nations climate conference as agreement contined to elude negotiators.

After government delegates from around the world talked without resolution until nearly midnight, officials called it a night and decided to reconvene for further talks at 10:00 am Saturday morning.

Head of the U.S. delegation to Durban Todd Stern, left, with China’s head of delegation, Xie Zhenhua. (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

A special type of meeting indigenous to Southern Africa, known as an Indaba, is continuing until 4:00 am to resolve outstanding issues. At an Indaba, everyone has a voice and there is an attempt to find common ground.

Conference President Maite Nkoana-Mashabane(Photo courtesy ENB)

Conference President, South African Foreign Affairs Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said, “The Parties are engaging genuinely and working very hard to ensure that agreement is reached on the matters before the conference. Parties are looking at convergences, guided by trust and a spirit of give-and-take.”

The Parties are considering their options “in relation to the issue of the Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol and future process” as well as long-term finance “with specific reference to the operationalization of the Green Climate Fund,” she said.

“Parties are expressing the hope that the Green Climate Fund can be launched here in Durban,” she said of the multi-billion dollar fund to help developing countries cope with climate impacts agreed in principle at last year’s UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico.

“The various groups, including the Association of Small Island States, the Least Developed Countries, the European Union and the Africa Group are moving towards common ground on various aspects of the negotiations. Other parties are coming on board. Despite these positive sentiments, we are still not there yet,” Nkoana-Mashabane said.

Protesters block the halls at the Durban International Conference Center, December 9, 2011 (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

Meanwhile, civil society activists erupted in protest this afternoon, blocking the plenary halls and bursting into chants of “Climate Justice Now!” “Don’t Kill Africa!” “World Bank out of Climate Finance,” “No Carbon Trading,” and “No REDD!”

When UN Security began to remove the activists, Anne Petermann, executive director of the Vermont-based Global Justice Ecology Project, sat down. When she was asked to leave willingly, she refused to comply. While others were escorted out, Petermann refused to go, until she was lifted into a wheelchair, and rolled out of the conference center.

Petermann sent a statement to a press conference held by Climate Justice Now!, a coalition she co-founded in 2007.

“I took this action today because I believe this process is corrupt, this process is bankrupt, and this process is controlled by the One Percent,” Petermann said using language of the Occupy Movement.

“If meaningful action on climate change is to happen, it will need to happen from the bottom up,” she said. “The action I took today was to remind us all of the power of taking action into our own hands. With the failure of states to provide human leadership, and the corporate capture of the United Nations process, direct action by the ninety-nine percent is the only avenue we have left.”

Anne Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project (Photo courtesy Global Forest Coalition)
Journalist Rana Karuna of Mauritius on the beach in Durban (Photo byChangeandSwitch)

Also removed from the hall was Karuna Rana, a young woman from Mauritius, who refused to leave willingly. Rana is in Durban with a group of young journalists called Speak Your Mind.

Standing with Petermann in the rain at “Speaker’s Corner,” the Occupy site outside the Conference Center, Rana said, “I went to the protest action to take a picture, but I got emotionally empowered and I started to take part. I am the only young Mauritian here, so I found it my responsibility to speak on behalf of Mauritius, of small islands, and of global youth.”

“I’m scared for my future. Mauritius is a small island state and it’s terribly unfair to have no voice in this process,” said Rana. “If I did not take a stand, my voice would not have reached the negotiators.”

Desmond D’Sa, of South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, who also was expelled, said, “We cannot wait for 2020, as that will result in millions being displaced or dying in poverty due to extreme climatic conditions.”

Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director, and other Greenpeacers also were escorted out after the protest action inside the International Conference Center.

A South African human rights activist among those who battled apartheid and won, Naidoo wrote online today in an open letter to climate negotiators, “Now, twenty years after our victory, in the remaining hours of the Durban climate talks, with great urgency we call for a similar breakthrough – one as unexpected, as deserved and as vital as South Africa’s transition to democracy.”

Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace International, second from right, and other protesters are removed from the conference center by UN security, December 9, 2011 (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

“You may not have felt it inside the rarefied air-conditioned corridors of the conference centre, but a restless anger stalks this land – an anger driven by a new apartheid that has trapped close to half of humanity in a deadly embrace of poverty, inequality and hunger,” wrote Naidoo.

“Our institutions – local, national and global, across public and private sectors – are rapidly losing legitimacy,” Naidoo wrote. “A mistrust that is driven by the human greed of a minority has plundered the hopes and aspirations of the majority. People sense it at a visceral level, this year alone it has toppled dictators, and someday soon – perhaps not this year or the next, but someday soon – the victims of rising temperatures will similarly find their voice.

“Your job is to meet their hopes before you meet their anger.”

Mike Ballile of Greenpeace International was also escorted out of the conference center. Ballile wrote online just after 11 pm, “We were told our chants of “2020 too late,” could be heard as the lame U.S. proposal for implementation after 2020 was rejected. We wanted vulnerable countries to know that we support their fight, and climate laggards to feel a little more pressure and from what we hear that’s exactly what happened.”

“The peaceful protest carried on until we were removed by UN police, de-badged, and escorted out the ICC,” wrote Ballile. “I walked out with other young people from Egypt, the Maldives and South Africa, and we were happy to have taken a stand and raised our voices to the injustice we had witnessed.”

Hopes for a fair deal in Durban are sinking, said Ballile. “But for a few hours this afternoon, in the heart of the conference centre, the governments were forced to listen to the people and not the polluters and our message was clear: act on climate change now!”

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by | · 08:47

Video: Hundreds of Activists Protest Inside COP17 demanding CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!

Video © Rebecca Sommer (Sommerfilms) . This video shows parts of the CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW! (CJN!) movement’s press conference, and our protest inside the halls at the last day of the UN Climate Change negotiations COP17. (Comments by Rebecca Sommer after video.

Kumi Naidoo , executive director of Greenpeace (member of CJN!) was banned from UN premises after leading this protest. Many others, such as Anne Petermann (member of CJN!) have been thrown out as well., their UN badges revoked because they participated ion the protest. Background why the people protested: A central piece of what is being negotiated here at COP17 is the Green Clmate Fund, with a goal of raising $100 billion for adaptation and mitigation projects, but most of the funding is being linked to programs like carbon markets and offsets (REDD+, CDM), which allows companies to continue polluting and ignores the need to drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels, and not simply try to offset them with other projects.

Protesters have said they want that their voices are heard.

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They are calling for the World Bank to be taken out of climate finance, a reference to the predominance of private financing and market mechanisms in all funding solutions for climate change reduction projects being discussed at the conference. A central piece of what is being negotiated is the Green Clmate Fund, with a goal of raising $100 billion for adaptation and mitigation projects, but most of the funding is being linked to programs like carbon markets and offsets, which allows companies to continue polluting and ignores the need to drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels, and not simply try to offset them with other projects.

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Protesters are also calling for a recognition of historic climate debt: that developed and Northern countries have predominantly been the cause of man-made green house gas emissions, and that they have the responsibility to take a frontline position in cleaning up the problem. This historic reality was included in Kyoto Protocol, but Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent recently called such demands “guilt money”

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by | 2011-12-09 · 14:41

Global Justice Ecology Project Director Anne Petermann Ejected from COP17

Delegates from Mauritius, South Africa, and Elsewhere Expelled as Well

GJEP's Anne Petermann (right) and GEAR's Keith Brunner (both sitting) before their forced removal. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

December 9, 2011, Durban, South Africa – Civil society activists erupted into protest in the halls of the UN Climate Summit this afternoon, blocking the plenary halls and bursting into chants of “Climate Justice Now!”, “Don’t Kill Africa!”, “World Bank out of Climate Finance, “No Carbon Trading,” and “No REDD!” When UN Security began to remove the activists, Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, sat down. When she was asked to leave willingly, she refused to comply. While others were escorted out, Petermann, and GEAR’s Keith Brunner refused to go.  Brunner was carried out and Petermann was lifted into a wheelchair, and rolled out of the Conference Center.

Close by was Karuna Rana, a 23 year-old woman from Mauritius, who similarly refused to comply.

Crowd scene in the hallway. Photo: Langelle

Petermann sent the following statement to a press conference held by Climate Justice Now!, a coalition co-founded  in 2007 by Petermann and GJEP:

“I took this action today because I believe this process is corrupt, this process is bankrupt, and this process is controlled by the One percent. If meaningful action on climate change is to happen, it will need to happen from the bottom up. The action I took today was to remind us all of the power of taking action into our own hands. With the failure of states to provide human leadership, and the corporate capture of the United Nations process, direct action by the ninety-nine percent is the only avenue we have left.”

On hearing the news of Petermann’s expulsion, Flora Mmereki, of Botswana, who also took part in the spontaneous protest, said, “It really broke my heart seeing Anne taken out in a wheelchair, because she was acting for climate justice. It is so, so sad to see how they are treating people who stand up for humanity.”

Karuna Rana, at the action earlier in the day. Photo: Langelle

Karuna Rana, of Mauritius, is in Durban with a group of young journalists called Speak Your Mind. Runa, standing with Petermann in the rain at “Speaker’s Corner,” the Occupy site outside the Conference Center, explained her motivation: “I went to the protest action to take a picture, but I got emotionally empowered and I started to take part. I am the only young Mauritian here, so I found it my responsibility to speak on behalf of Mauritius, of small islands, and of global youth. I’m scared for my future. Mauritius is a small island state and it’s terribly unfair to have no voice in this process. If I did not take a stand, my voice would not have reached the negotiators.”

Petermann said, “We willingly took this action that cost us our credentials because we know that the only time to act is now. We hope that our refusal to move – our refusal to comply with the bankrupt UNFCCC process – will inspire others to take action in support of a new world – a transformed world that will be rooted in justice and in harmony with the earth.”

Emotions were high during the protest. Photo: Langelle

Petermann will sit out the rest of COP17 at the Speakers’ Corner, as global decision-makers come to the most likely outcome of these negotiations: a new non-binding legal framework, to begin in 2015, to begin voluntarily reducing emissions in 2020.

Local Desmond D’Sa, of South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, who was expelled as well, said, “We cannot wait for 2020, as that will result in millions being displaced or dying in poverty due to extreme climatic conditions.”

In other words, the talks have failed, the world powers are stalling for time, and the voice of civil society is locked out. Again.

Locked out, but for how long? Photo: Langelle

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